Last weekend marked nine weekends left until move in date! Though with all the shut downs with the corona virus maybe that’ll be altered. Last Friday we went out and attempted to bring home enough supplies for the next 4 major projects. We’ll see how we did as the projects progress I guess :)! I’ve already had a week of Spring break and am not going back to school until at least the 20th of April now. I’m a little anxious to find out if we’ll still be graduating in June, or if we’ll need to make up some clinic time before that’s possible. Time will tell!
The major project this weekend was to seal in the crawlspace with the 6mil black plastic as per code in our area. Originally I was hoping we might be able to get the subfloor down as well, but this ended up being a bear of a project! It was very tedious and time consuming. But the end result was so worth it! Our good friend A came and assisted Husband while I worked after the three of us put up a good fight the day before. They were able to finish up the project and even get a little further!
Since we had lured A into helping us by promising a bike ride after a day’s work, the guys worked extra hard to get a few sheets of subfloor down so that we could put all of our supplies back in the Cabin for shelter (it’s been far too rainy….but I guess it is March…). Then we zipped off to get a good bike ride in. Little did we know it would be our last social event before the Stay At Home Order!
Through the week I worked on getting our new habitat set up. I built this (animal soon to be announced!) shed entirely by myself! It’s my first ever wood project, so I’m pretty proud of it – even if it does have a few quirks. I used almost all products that we had at the property, including pallets we got for free, screws and nails from previous projects, wood flooring that we pulled out of the Cabin for the sides, 2×4’s from previous projects, and corrugated metal from the roof we replaced on the Honey House. The only things I needed to purchase were the hinges and the latch. Oh, and the feeder and the solar powered motion sensing light of course!
I also have been doing a fair amount of gardening. I am definitely addicted. Every day I go out and check on all of my plants. Sometimes I do it TWICE. Because that gratification of the plant popping through the soil at last is SO addicting. I think Husband thinks I’m crazy for being so interested in the plants…but I really can’t help it.
I found a random peony (I think?!) coming up through the grass next to one of our pear trees, so I staked it off so we wouldn’t accidentally mow it down. I also planted the Hydrangea I got (which looks like a stick…I hope it comes to life!!) and an Azalea that my MIL brought home last Fall. I’m pretty excited to watch them grow and get more established!
I also finished up the bed in front of the Cabin! I planted some Heath around the base of the pear tree and tried to keep as many of the plants that weren’t weeds or grass (which was semi challenging!). Then I did my best to bring all the extra greens to the birds once I was done. They had an absolute blast going through it for bugs!
I can’t recall if I ever introduced our new birds, but awhile back now we ended up getting rid of the male ducks as they were constantly taking advantage of the few females we had. Then somehow we ended up with more ducks than we started with in an effort to replace the males (insert shrugging emoji here). At this point we’ve got all six original chickens and now six female ducks. Deena is the one remaining duck from our original group, then we got three Indian Runners: Spice Girl, Snow White, and Baby. Spice Girl is sandy colored, Snow White was pure white when she arrived (though she’s been getting a little darker in color), and Baby was…the baby. She was the youngest, very small and grey when she arrived. Then a few weeks ago we inherited Deena’s mother and sister who were named Molly and Dolly. Molly (mom) is black with light spots (the prettiest of our ducks in my opinion!) and Dolly is nearly all black. We’ve been getting more than a dozen eggs a day between the chickens and ducks. Holy cow is it hard to consume more than a dozen eggs a day!!
Our newest arrivals will be coming to the Homestead soon. Can’t wait welcome them to the family!!
The Homestead Journey 