Whatever Weather

Tuesday evening. It has been hot and sticky all day. Yesterday I drove to NH and back (Yee hah!) and it was really hot and muggy there too. But it evidently stayed overcast with sporadic hard rain through out the day up here in Maine. Kelly and Ted attempted to get our big pile of brush to burn but it just wouldn't stay lit to finish the job. And it was still too wet to burn today. The ride home last evening had steamy roads and fog on the streams. There was the glint of standing water between corn rows and potato hills as I got further north. Still haven't seen much hay cut. I guess no one is willing to take the chance of rain when its been raining at least every other day for weeks now. And they tell us more is on the way. We may get a break the evening of the 4th and the 5th. We'll see. We would like to get started on refinishing the main room floors but we haven't sorted out how to keep the cats, dog and us off them to dry, and how to have access to the bathroom, and how to get to the upstairs to sleep, without crapping up the urethane or doing each floor in pieces. We really don't want overlap marks or paw prints or to have to sleep in the cars. And we won't even discuss how to exist without a bathroom for the number of days it will take to stain and put down 3 coats of urethane. Some of our cats are NOT barn cats and will be most put out at even being confined to the kitchen.i.e. Abby the Diva prefers not to leave Kelly's bed except to eat and hiss at all the other cats. They are after all her underlings. Max and Sara are Maine Coon Cats but both like long naps curled up inside. Beau and Sugar are both ones who prefer to be outside during summer and will not be a problem. Oreo is a big tuxedo cat who like Timba the orange kitten use us simply for cat exchange at the kitchen door. in-out-in-out. all day long. And Lastly Little Mo, our petite grey baby. She Is the mightiest hunter of them all but after having gotten lost in the woods for 4 weeks when we moved here, is not comfortable too far from the house. And then there is Ivy, our silly Pug dog, 8 yrs old deaf and sweet as they come. she sleeps with me or on the sofa 20 out of 24 hrs. What will we do with the critters? What will we do with us? We did pick up the paint for the guest room and I will try to get all the new overhead lighting fixtures installed over the next weekend or so. And we have to finish work on the next section of the barn because the new chicks arrive on the 14th . Their stall/coop still has several year old petrified cow poop on the floor and holes in the outside wall. No rest for the wicked.

Friday night in the Big City

Here I am at work again. Fairly busy tonight for both of us. It was a good morning for sleeping but a million phone calls this afternoon. Most of them crap. But we both did get some sleep. Kelly has a headache that we think may be sinus/allergy/humidity. Who knows, She's feeling miserable. May be lack of sleep. Brought a bunch of Kelly's soap in to other nurses and it's very popular. It's all natural and made with lots of goat's milk, which we've been buying. But Kelly has been looking at all the wonderful farms with goats and now it seems she wants goats too. I WANT IT ALL and I want it NOW. So in addition to chickens and sheep , cats and a dog it seems we are going to look for goats . What I really need is a tractor. No what I really need is money. Or maybe I need sleep too.
Ted spent the day fixing my car. Teddy, 18, was using my car to go to games and practice for basketball last winter when someone hit it in the school parking lot. His attitude was, I wasn't in it so it's not my fault and definitely not my responsibility. NEVER lend things to a teenager. So because his father is a nice guy, my door now opens all the way and the major dents and crumples are out. A quick coat of paint to slow the rust and I'm back in the saddle again. Or back in the Hyundai.
So we're looking forward to Sunday off (to sleep) and Monday off. I am heading to NH again but this time to visit my mom(she's 85) and take her shopping and out to lunch. Then 3.5hrs back. God I wish I had stock in gasoline. posted by Alex

New Week, New Exhaustion

Well, here we are at the beginning of another three nights on. But boy have we gotten a lot done in our time off. On Friday Kelly's daughters family left the farm for their own apartment. And their baby now has her own room. Saturday was a shopping day. Groceries, Wal-Mart, Feed store etc. With some laundry thrown in for good measure. Oh, and we got the new freezer. Sunday was sunny and warm. Actually Saturday was too for the first time in weeks. So we mowed and trimmed and tended gardens. Jasmine had a ball feeding new mown grass to the chickens. They had great fun eating it. Kelly got all the tools out of the kitchen now that construction has narrowed its scope to walls and ceiling. She spent most of the day cleaning house. Ugggh.We unpacked some more boxes that have been stored since last July. Like getting Christmas presents. Sunday late at night we stole into the coop and put the sleeping roosters into the carry boxes. No muss , no fuss and only the occasional squawk. Nothing like the dead of night by flashlight for unpleasant tasks. Early Monday morning we were off to the butcher.Jason's Butcher in Albion ME. Now I have never done this or seen this done but where we went was very clean and very humane. Also very quick. We handed them the chickens (actually Ted and I- Kelly stayed in the truck to avoid crying) and they put them in cones to kill and bleed them. Then to a big hot vat and off came their feathers. Now they no longer looked like our chickens , just food. Then they were thoroughly cleaned and packed in ice. But the chickens before and after ours were HUGH. Seems Layer/meat breeds mean layer and not much meat but meat breeds are big. So we have 40 smallish chickens in the freezer and we are going to order 25 big breed chicks right away to have ready by fall. Sunday night Kelly and Tiffany made two batches of soap. Tuesday Kelly and I drove Jasmine and her Mom back to their apt in NH after a nice summer vacation with us. We will all miss them and hope they can get up for awhile before school starts. Wednesday Kelly and Ted did business in town and I did piddly things around the farm like hoeing weeds and peel a couple of cedar logs for fence posts. The garden is still pitiful. Out of 6 long rows of corn I think we have 5 plants. No beans came up. We lost all the tomatoes,and most of the peppers but I'm replanting some of those. We have cabbage, Brussels, Spinach,onions and squash. We have one lone pumpkin plant. We have 2 baby grape vives, 2 blueberry bushes , 2 rasberry and 1 blackberry plants. About half the asparagus came up and it is so thin I almost missed it and weeded it out. Herb garden is doing well. And we unfortunately have a whole section of garden thick in thistle. We will dig all that out and burn it this weekend. We are all kind of tired. Kelly cut the new soap to harden in the evening. Today was very lazy. Hate to get too tired when we have to work all night. Ted however made a beautiful 9 unit condo for the hens when they get ready to lay. So now the farm is quiet with just 4 adults and only one rooster- Sampson. We'll have to see what we can do about that. I miss the noise. posted by Alex

Lost Days

Well we worked last night, came home , fed chickens and went to sleep. The day was beautiful they tell us. We wouldn't know, slept through the whole thing. Tonight is our second of three in a row. We should be feeling human again by Sunday evening. For all the grumble working 3 days a week lets us truly have time to work on the farm. Ted spent the day trying to locate the old water line to the barn with a pick and shovel. Its down there somewhere. We have a new draining pump thingy to put in. What do we Floridians know about water lines that have to drain so they don't freeze? What I do know is we have to break up the concrete floor in the barn to dig some kind of pit to fill with rocks for the pump to drain into. This is going to be hot ugly work, I can just tell. But we need to get water for sheep and chickens before winter and a garden hose wont do. The original line comes out just behind the stairs in the barn and the floor is broken and sunken about 18 inches. So we need to run a new line into the house to connect just after the pressure tank and out the wall where the old one was, then into the new spot in the barn and hope the front of the barn doesn't fall in on us or something. Oh, Kevin got home and says he knows what is wrong with the tractor and can fix it easily. Thank God for small favors. Made the appointment to have the chickens "dispatched" in 2 weeks. Now we seriously need to decide if we need a new freezer by then. Since the old one is pretty full we probably do. Drat.. always something to buy that is simply not fun at all. Why cant we get a flat screen TV that will store chickens? We lost a rooster yesterday and another looks poorly. They were exposed to avian encephalitis as newly hatched chicks. We lost 19 then but now this guy is doing the same stuff, walking on the backs of his legs kind of hunched down. Anyone know what this is? Posted by Alex

Small Accomplisments

Well, here we are in June. The kitchen cabinets are finally done and we have just confirmed that,as suspected, the outside kitchen wall has NO insulation. Not a good thing in Maine. So our next project (as if we needed a new one) is to tear down the crappy hardboard over old wallboard (like30's or 40's judging by the wallpaper) and put in insulation bats. Understand these will not fit. Our studs vary from 32 to 46 inches apart and are made of trees. Then we can put up new wall board that will be custom fit because the floors are not square to the walls. Actually, nothing on this farm is square.
This afternoons accomplishments included setting up for the roosters to go to butchering in two weeks. A good thing because they are starting to crow and get all roostery, pushy and pecky. Time to go to the freezer! The heat followed by days of rain has seen all our tomato and pepper plants done in. The corn has not even come up. I may try some more tomatoes but it is getting late in the season to start and the whole garden thing is pretty discouraging. Maybe next year when we get a chance to do something with the soil in the garden it will be better. We are in Maine so we mostly raise rocks. Then we surround them with clay that is either dust or sticky muck and has no organic content . Hired someone to roto-till and find it goes only 3 inches down after 3 days of work. Add seeds and get what? More rocks in neater rows. I need to find manure and not the kind I get at work.
Ted spent the last two days trying to fix our neighbors lawn tractor which we borrow. But it still eats belts at $37 a pop. And the lawn is now 1/2 the height of the hay. Maybe we'll just hay the lawn.
Confirmed the 3 ewes for this winter. They will be AI bred before they arrive and Elaine at Frelsi Farm has promised to help us with the selection of ramAI stuff as we know from nothing. Less than nothing. Still in the "Oh how cute that lamb is "stage. How will we know if our lambs are good when we think all lambs are great.
Kelly's granddaughter Jasmine, 5 has taken to naming the bugs as they get in the back door. We have these huge iridescent beetles. She has called one Jimmy as in "Jimmy is in my bedroom and now I can't go in. Come help me" She told me a couple of nights ago that Jimmy's cousin Timmy Turner was trying to get in the kitchen window, pounding on the screen. Beetles have last names?
OK The new predator wasps are on the compost pile, the flowers are planted in the front yard with the new stone wall under slow construction, the lilacs are all just about done, tulips gone lilies not yet budded. We are still just at the beginning of summer here. But the days are long now this far north. Sun up well before 4 and still light at 830. Not that we always see it. Very few windows in the ICU and we work nights. This Post written by Alex.

Rehabing a 160 year old farmhouse, just the beginning

The kitchen after the wall is down, all insulation gone.

I never want to see cellulose insulation again!

Air mattresses never felt so comfortable.

Alex in our new kitchen in the dining room
The cows, outside looking in.

We arrived in June 07 and immediately started ripping out walls. The kitchen was too small and the cabinets were inadequate to say the least. It's not like we were destroying something that was antique. These cabinets were recently made by a very incompetent carpenter. They were varying sizes and shapes, nothing we wanted to keep. They were taken out and placed into the dining room to serve as our temporary kitchen. Alex and I went to work on tearing the wall out between the kitchen and adjoining room. We could not find any reason for it to exist. The wall stood no chance against two women armed with a sawsall. It bowed with grace and dignity then fell like a mighty giant. Ok, now the wall was down, why is the ceiling sagging with sewing thread hanging down? Hmmm..... Ok, being the person that I am I had to find out why. So we began pulling on the thread. Remember when you were a kid and there was a thread hanging on your sweater and your mom said to leave it alone? Well, I never listened. So the thread pulled and pulled and all kinds of sewing notions came down upon our heads. We took a hammer and commenced to remove the ceiling. It was actually a false ceiling that had been installed for blown in insulation. Imagine us covered with sweat from the July heat and then heavily dusted with cellulose insulation. Tar and feather really comes to mind. The wall was down, the ceiling ripped out and cellulose everywhere. What to do with it? Stuff it into contractor bags of course and put it in the dumpster. When this day was over we were totally exhausted. No running water to shower. The hose outside was really looking attractive. The neighbors across the street came to our rescue. Kevin and Cheeta have turned out to be great neighbors. They had the wonderful idea of inviting us to a shower (in an actual working bathroom) the use of their laundry for clean clothes and a burger on the grill complete with cold beer. We were in heaven. It felt so wonderful to crawl clean into our air mattress beds and go comatose. In Maine the air cools off at sunset drastically. The next morning we were up early, hot coffee from our New Hampshire water that we brought with us, bacon, eggs all cooked on the two burner camping stove we brought with us. It tasted so good. As we are eating breakfast Alex and I look at the window in the dining room and there are 4-5 cows looking in at us. I could just imagine what was going through their minds. Kevin is a wonderful neighbor but not the best fence layer. As we found out later there were always escaping cows. Even with all the work facing us we could envision the beauty of the land and see it as a farm one day. There is so much satisfaction with hard work. This Post written by Kelly.

How we got here-Maine

Hello everyone. This is my first attempt at blogging. I even had to read a few to understand what a "blog" was. I'm from the age of write a letter and wait for a reply. They now call that snail mail. Hmmmm..... I am originally from Florida, Jacksonville to be exact. One of the few who were actually born there. I lived there for 36 years and felt like I needed a change. I had just been through a amicable divorce and wanted to live somewhere else. My son had just gotten married and would be staying in Florida, my daughter and I found a wonderful, quaint, however expensive town in New England, Portsmouth, in which to relocate. I had always dreamt of the cool fall days with leaves changing, snow on the ground for Christmas, summers not so hot that I melted by noon. Ok, now you know that I'm a dreamer. The closer the day for the move came, the more homesick my best friend Alexandra (Alex) became. She had originally lived in a nearby town named Newington and had moved to Florida after her not so amicable divorce with her two teenage sons in tow. Jacksonville had left her disappointed with the crime and general nasty temperament of much of the population. She was ready for a change. I had just met a gentleman who had decided that Florida didn't hold anything for him and would love to add himself and his two kids to my caravan north. So, all three families loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly, hills that is.... oh wait that was the Beverly Hillbillies. Sorry, we all loaded up Ryder trucks and moved to Portsmouth, NH the land of no income tax but property taxes to choke the average income earner. This is where we remained or near there for about 10 years. We did love the cool falls with changing leaves, the winter with snowy surprises and the manageable summers. Hey, the first time in my life that I didn't have the ac on from March-December. How nice. I can always add a coat when it's cold but society really frowns on running around in your birthday suit. Alex found a lovely house in Epping, NH and I found one big enough for my expanded family in Raymond, NH. Everyone was happy. Alex's oldest son got married and had a beautiful daughter. Her youngest son is working and still looking for the right woman. My longtime boyfriend we will call T and I combined families well. The kids really seamed to get along well. We even had two of his other children move up from Florida to live with us. We went through graduations, marriages, births of two beautiful granddaughters and one grandson. My oldest daughter went on to start a pipe and tobacco shop in Dover, NH. Our next to oldest had a daughter and is still in college, our youngest son is graduating high school this fall and will attend college. Our youngest daughter had a beautiful daughter and is living with us now. Ok, I really got off track...Maine, how we got here. Well, Alex and I remained best friends and it seemed that our families were always at the others house. We often talked of living in a rural area and starting a sheep farm. Now please keep in mind that neither of us have ever raised sheep. That didn't seem to be an issue to either one of us. We both have been nurses for many years so getting employment wasn't an issue. We had two homes with duplicate bills, taxes that made us cringe. We had a moment of inspiration! Why not sell both houses and find a big farmhouse that would be great for holidays when all the kids could gather around. Well, I know that most of our friends thought we had lost our minds. T is a long distance trucker and was often on the road. He didn't mind relocating. It seemed like a sure thing. Now for the reality check. No where in New Hampshire is there enough property and reasonable taxes to allow for our farm. We had to look elsewhere. Viola, we found Maine. We came across a 55 acre farm with a one hundred sixty year old house, three story barn on the Internet. Well, we just drove up one winter day in December 2006 and took a look. Please understand that when they take pictures for the Internet they take them from the best angle possible. The house was in great condition if you don't need running water, heat (Maine remember), electricity and of course plumbing. The barn looked big. That is the best I can say. The bones are good but it sure could use a face lift. There was a dead calf by the door. Yes, and the door was a garage door someone had poorly installed on the front of the barn. There were pigs in two stalls knee deep in some foul smelling liquid, cows in the pasture who frequently left their enclosed area for neighbors homes, yards, etc...
Oh, I must not forget, the back door of the house was just about one foot shy of reaching the frame. Do you get the picture I'm painting? To be fair there had been work done on the house. The floors were stripped to bare wood, wallboard had been installed in the rooms and one of three bathrooms had been completed. No running water but it looked good. Remember when I said earlier that I am a dreamer? Well so is Alex. Not a good combination. We thought, we can do this. It would be fun. We are women, hear us roar. T thought I had lost my mind. That was until he came out and sat on the back porch with millions and millions of stars overhead, quiet, quiet, quiet. It was beautiful to us. So Alex and I both put our houses on the market at Christmas with the slump in housing sales just starting with a vengeance. And we waited and waited and waited. My house sold in July of 07. I can honestly say that I would rather be stoned to near death than sell and buy a house. It is painful. People are just not nice. The woman who signed the contract on my house decided the day before closing that she really didn't want the house after all. She thought that she would just loose her deposit. No, my wonderful real estate agent said. She has packed all of her belongings and moved to Maine. You will loose much more than that measly deposit. All said and done we had to get an attorney to push her into closing. We actually signed the papers in separate rooms. I wanted to perform a lobotomy on the #&%#%. Alex's house sold and she was able to pack everything and move to Maine too. So here is where our saga begins. Maine, the last frontier. No running water, no electricity in most of the house, a furnace in the basement but no duct work and winter on its way in three months. What were we thinking? So here we start with the "blog". If you are so inclined to return and follow our misadventures both Alex and I will be blogging. You will get to know our families for better and worse. Nice to meet ya'll. After all we are southerners and from away. This Post written by Kelly.