Slowly but Surely: Parlor Progress

In this post, I'm going to give you a run-down of the parlor project. Perhaps you'll get a better understanding of WHY it's such a slow-moving project.  

Some of these pictures you've no doubt seen before, so bear with me.

In the beginning, the walls looked pretty simple and unassuming,

being covered in hideous wood paneling:

Beneath the wood paneling was sheetrock, and beneath that a couple layers of wallpaper (one of which had been nailed on), and finally, our wonderful tongue and groove oak that had been painted a scary grey color.

The ceilings weren't quite as time consuming, as the "tiles" come off pretty easily. After that it's just a matter of moving your ladder over every few minutes as you remove all the staples that held the tiles on. We have 9-foot ceilings in this room, so the ladder was a necessity.

Pulling out staples:

Lots of wall scraping:

Here's a detailed picture of the nails that the wallpaper was nailed on with. There are literally thousands of these things covering the entire walls:

 After filling the nail holes, our walls now look like Dalmations:

Oh, by the way, we're not even done with all the spackling yet. I promise you the next time I even MENTION the parlor, it will be because we've painted it. Promise!

Summer Fun

Kids & Kids

R.I.P. Princess

We lost our beloved Nubian doe Princess this past Sunday night. After laboring too long with no progress, her babies were pulled (both dead), and she later died that night.

It was such a horrible experience that she went through, and I have decided that we will no longer be breeding the goats. There is nothing in the world cuter than a newborn kid, but the trauma they go through at times like this is not worth it.

My handy husband did a wonderful job assisting our neighbor, Farmer James, in pulling the babies. We knew they'd be dead on arrival, and our main concern was saving Princess. Our efforts were fruitless. I believe it was all just too much for her. She died during the night, surrounded by her herd that she watched over and protected all these years.

Superheroes

While still doing the electrical in the boys' room, and working on two of the walls that need some sheetrock patching and touching up, we went ahead and put some of the boys' superhero decals on the two good walls. They turned out really nice and the boys love them!



More Kids!

Dolly finally gave birth, after a uterine prolapse scare, to two beautiful little doelings. Mom and kids are doing great!

 Dolly is one of the most loving, attentive goat-mommas I've ever known. She is constantly talking to her babies, checking on them, and keeps them close.



New Kids on the Farm!

Lucky gave birth on Friday, May 25th to two beautiful little bucklings.

Mom and babies are doing very well.



New Additions to the Henhouse

Our poor hens are outnumbered. Severely.

In fact, it's so bad, that the roosters don't even bother fighting each other over the hens anymore.... they just all take turns on them. One after another. And we've had hens come close to death because of it.

The last straw was seeing the roosters take out their pent-up frustration on a fellow rooster- taking turns on him, just like they would on a hen. It absolutely disgusted me!

So, we called in some reserves: sixteen young hens. Not nearly enough yet to satisfy all the roosters, but hopefully it will relieve the older hens a bit from the constant torture.



Commenting?

I'm hoping the issue with commenting has been fixed. Apparently, certain browsers don't allow commenting due to a "glitch" in the formatting and I've had to manually edit some of the HTML on the blog to allow for it. Let's see if it worked...

Boys' Room- It's a Start

We were anxious to get started on the boys room, so, over the weekend, Handy Husband and I alternated between working in the Parlor, installing a toilet, and we also began painting in the boys' room. We went with a neutral color on the walls, with white trim. I love it! Even with all the imperfections of the old sheetrock.

Here's a before:

And here are the afters. We only painted two walls, as the third and fourth walls need some work done. But at least we can get started getting the boys room decorated the way they like.

Uncovered Doorway

While continuing our demolition of the Parlor Room, we discovered the kitchen's original doorway.

We'll probably use this original doorway and fill in the "old" one.

 



How Does My Garden Grow...

It seems like the garden got off to a slow start, even considering that I started almost all of my seeds indoors, and we were able to plant so much earlier this year than normal, due to the mild winter.

For the most part, everything's doing pretty well. Some of my old seeds didn't have a very good germination rate, so I had to buy a few packs of new seeds to re-sow in places.

The corn looks funny, with all different size stalks, due to the old seed's low germination rate. Tomatoes are doing well, all being grown from 4 year old seeds.

Jon's garden looks good! The only things that never did sprout were the green beans.

Cucumbers are growing well and are waiting for me to build them a trellis to grow up.

I made sure to do successive sowings of radishes this year.
We ALL love radishes and almost never have enough to go around.



Billy the Weedeater

Makin' Hay

We met a friendly neighborhood farmer a couple weeks ago and asked him if he knew anyone that could bale our pastures for us. He offered to do it himself and came by last week and got the job done. The pastures look SO much better now. He said it's really good hay.

We got 27 bales total out of the two pastures, and he'll be keeping half as payment for his work. He said he'll move our bales into the haybarn for us, since we have no way of moving such big bales by hand. If the grass continues to grow at the current rate, we'll get a few good cuttings throughout the course of the year, and have more than enough hay for all the animals.

Equine Arrival!

Yesterday was one of the most physically exhausting days I've had in a while. I went to a friend's farm in the morning to watch her do her horse chores, so that I'd be able to do them for her when she's out of town. It was fun visiting with her and seeing all her beautiful horses, but all the walking and feeding about wore me out.

Then, in the afternoon, my parents and sister came out to our house, with a special delivery for me...

Zander and Zorro!

Unfortunately, we made the mistake of releasing them out into the pasture, where they enjoyed eating belly-high grass. I say unfortunately because, as it turned out, we spent 4 hours trying to catch them again to lock them up in their pen. Being overweight that they are, over-eating can be very dangerous for them, so they HAD to be brought in.

Thanks to the help of my sister's ingenious plan, and my Handy Husband's quick sprinting-through-tall-grass ability, and to my daughters' helping hands, we finally got them "herded" into an enclosed area where they quite willingly allowed us to halter them and lead them to their pen. They were exhausted and sweaty from all the excitement. And so were we!

We all felt a huge sigh of relief when they were locked away safe and sound in their pen, where they were lavished with treats and pettings. It made all the stress and frustration worthwhile.

We have strawberries!

Our tractor-tire strawberry patch, holding a measly 5 plants is producing like crazy right now!

 

 

Our new patch, holding about 25 plants, is getting off to a good start with lots of new growth, however I don't have any current pictures. 

Parlor Room: The Demolition Stage

We started work on the parlor room this past week. The parlor is actually the front/living room, where the front door enters into. It's a room of about 15x15.

We began to take the walls down to their original, solid wood, tongue and groove planks, which proved to be harder than it was upstairs in the girls' rooms. Here in this room, they had covered the wood walls with wallpaper, then sheetrock, then wood paneling. All attached by an assortment of glue, and millions of nails. It's proving to be quite time-consuming, though not necessarily hard work to remove it all.

We finished taking all of the old ceiling tiles down as well, and removed all the staples,
which was an easy job compared to the walls.

 

We're not quite half done with this stage yet, but we are so looking forward to seeing the finished room, with a new coat of paint, new window, and all new trim installed. Plus, we'll eventually move on to the flooring, and see if we can't refinish the original hardwood floors that are hidden beneath layers of linoleum. 

An Afternoon with the "Kids"

Yes, I call my goats "kids," though they're all fully grown. I love visiting with them and scratching their chins and necks.

Here they come!

Duke and Holly, doing their best at mountain climbing.

Holly and Molly displaying some sisterly love.

Willy and Billy get tied out every day for a few hours at a time so they can enjoy more roughage than they get in their pen. They love it, and it helps to clear areas that I don't regularly mow. Eventually, I hope to "goat fence" more of the property so all the goats can have much bigger pastures.  

Garden is In!

My four year old and I took advantage of a cooler day to go ahead and plant the garden.

It's not as big as other gardens I've had (it's about 600 square feet), but I think it will keep me plenty busy this summer, with everything else going on around here.

Here's my son's little garden, in the middle of mine:

He planted green beans, corn and radishes, and decorated it with petunias and bricks around the border, and a piece of PVC down the middle.