She mentioned in her blog today that she was writing an article of how farming changed her in ways she didn't anticipate, like what she wore to work. I keep thinking of the saying don't dress for the job you have (I'm an executive) dress for the job you want (farmer). Somehow, when I enter my office in my carhart vest and cowboy boots, something feels amiss, but then that is kinda normal for the Rocky Mountains. But, I can't wait to take off my suit (or what I have recently got to telling myself passes as a suit) and put on jeans, work boots and go out and check on the chickens while drooling over tree catalogs from the division of forestry and mapping out how to set up rotational grazing pens on the property for the goats. I have a feeling if someone checked my Internet cruising at work it would surprise them. Do you think reading about goat breeding counts as porn?? Let's hope not.
Things continue to move along. The roof was completed last week. Right after I blogged about how long it was taking. Do you think they read the blog? Tomorrow the electric company comes to move the meter off the house so we can finish the siding. Tomorrow night also calls for 20 degrees and snow.
Saturday was pretty windy and we were pretty much done with what we could accomplish outside, so we moved inside. Mudding new drywall and prepping the living room. I was not in my best form on Saturday, once again scrapping at little hard circles of paneling glue off the old drywall thinking to myself do I really want to spend all this time preserving this disgusting, cat stained drywall. That would be a resounding "NO". Luckily before I voiced my opinion, not to sound cranky and all, J came in and said this is gross. Let's replace it. (Hurray!)
Well, as you may or may not know, decisions like these can open a whole can of worms. So as we were discussing it I asked, can we replace the drywall and not get sucked into any additional projects replacing everything. It is an old house. Not everything is all shiny and new. The temptation to make it that way can be strong. We both firmly agreed that we could. So, as we would be making a mess, we decided to roll up the new carpet the previous owner had put in so as not to ruin it. And then, we saw the disintegrating particle board, cat stained and soiled, under the carpet pad. So....new carpet pad gets tossed, new carpet goes into the grain silo for storage and we commence to spend the next two hours ripping out the most appalling sub-floor ever. Note to readers, never use particle board as a sub-floor. It absorbs everything, gets musty and smelly and then turns to gross dust. The bright side to this, there was not so gross plywood sub-floor under a layer of tar paper. As a result, we did not tear down to the frame, and I spent Sunday putting Kilz on the plywood to protect it from any moisture coming from underneath. We will add another layer of tar paper and plywood and then lay hardwood. No side projects, I swear, pinky promise and everything.
Sunday I spent the day at the farm by myself. It was lovely, warm and I spent most of it outside and in the barn. I scraped the barn doors and framing and put on a coat of primer. We will be replacing them, but I wanted to give it a protective coat until the spring. I painted the feet of the claw foot and the outside of the tub. The tub is now a nice misty/smoky blue to match the tile accents and the feet are oil rubbed bronze to match the fixtures. Once we finish the bathroom and can put in the tub/sink/toilet, we will probably move the spare bed up there and stay all weekend. We have owned the house for two months today and have yet to spend the night. Seems strange.
I also met with John from prairie range land services. Awesome guy. Would love his job. We basically spent an hour walking the property and talking about what I need to do to grow grazing grass, prep the fields, plant the trees, how and where to plant the orchard, a new product called bio char that rocks in the growth department, and healing some of the field that was a parking lot for tractors. He went back to his office and sent me that same day a huge packet of articles, catalogs and how to's for the grass farmer. I don't mind so much paying taxes when I get a host of "free" farm consultants. So, I am almost ready to place my tree order for the windbreaks, and also ask his colleague Mike for a quote on them doing the planting. The tree order will likely be 200+ baby trees and shrubs for approx. $250.00. Gotta love the tree people.
Well, off to wind down. Dream of berries and pies (of which the Thanksgiving pie was not so great, as J enjoyed, repeatedly, pointing out. Totally humbled.) and grazing goats.
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| new roof and siding (to be painted) |
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