Work Wednesday—Making Progress


When we first began looking for property out in the boonies, we’d planned on buying vacant land and building up our homestead exactly the way we wanted it:

As many acres as we could afford to buy with cash;

Water, preferably live;

Mostly trees, with or without a clearing in the middle;

And access to utilities for the initial build.

Our intent was to build a 640-square-foot cabin and add a cluster of 4-5 outbuildings for different types of storage. It was a good plan, even if I did seriously underestimate the time requirements!

Thankfully, we ended up with 35 acres of mostly woods, with a pond; well and electric on site; a 900-square-foot cabin, and a barn. Or, as my husband calls it, a shop.

The thing is huge, 40 X 60, which means plenty of room for all his projects, our building needs, and storage. Except for fuel storage; that, for obvious reasons, will go elsewhere!

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This week, we started working on the interior: three storage units, approximately 10 X 10, inside the barn. One is for memorabilia—stuff I’m not willing to part with like old photos and the kids’ baby things and even some of my own; things I enjoy looking through from time to time—but even so, I’ve downsized a lot of that.

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The second one is for some larger items that I’m simply not willing to sell or give away yet, or I may or may not use in the house or elsewhere.

And the third is for supplies: food, incidentals, meds, etc.

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Since we’re moving, permanently, in eleven months or thereabouts, we never go down without a full load. This may end up being the easiest move we’ve ever made.

 

Prep Monday—Getting Organized


Between kid activities and my business and a few other things, I’ve barely had a chance to get down to the farm lately; except yesterday, when I took my mom down to see the place. She’s visiting from Colorado, and won’t be back until fall at least, so we took the opportunity while we had it. It was a quick trip, which means I didn’t actually do any work . . .

However, my husband has been on the job—yesterday, he put in a new water heater and last weekend he spotlessly cleaned the bathroom and went over the kitchen again. So we’re kinda civilized now.

The downside of this is that things are getting a little crazy, and by “crazy,” I mean disorganized. Bless his heart, he’s a really hard worker and can do ANYTHING, but he tends to get off-track a little. So my immediate goal is to get a few things finished and organized, like the rest of the trash around the edges of the yard, the interim storage in the closet, and the odds and ends sitting around on the deck and in the kitchen.

THEN I can focus on what needs to be done.

Complicating things a bit is that the kid got a job and it’s mostly weekends. That’s going to slow us down for a few weeks, until school is out for the summer, but after that we can adjust. Of course, it might limit any assistance, as most people I know will be working during the week, but we’ll figure it out. And, too, the coming weekend has a rainy forecast . . . for now.

My short-term goal is to work on the garden area. Trim, pick up junk, mow, plow, plant. In that order, of course. And soon. My cabbage plants are crying for a new home.

And after that, we’ve got to get the campsite built out. No, it’s still not done, but to be fair, we had a heck of a time choosing the location. And then, too, our plans were a little ambitious that first weekend. But, we have the materials, so there’s that. Hmmm. This kind of falls under the “get stuff finished!” headline.

You know, when we started this venture, we’d been thinking about everything for quite some time; and then we figured we’d find a place in a few months and have some time over the winter to get started on improvements. As it turned out, we didn’t close until spring, about 14 months before our targeted moving date, plus we had a head start with the house and barn and utilities already being on site.

But.

There’s a lot of outside stuff to do, and come fall, we’ll be working inside, moving walls and re-doing others, and adding to the kitchen and maybe some work on the bathroom. It’s not critical that these things are done before we move in, but it sure would be easier to have the remodel finished without furniture and other “stuff” in the way.

A year seemed like a long time—but the clock is ticking!