December 6, 2022 - Day 9

There are times when I decide to NOT go anywhere, which means I don't shower or do anything that would make me appear presentable should I encounter another person here at home. We all need a "down" day every now and then. However this day was not really a down day, I worked on making Christmas fit in the living room. 

The original fake Christmas tree was in the basement and I thought I would bring it up to see if it would work out. In the end, Tom said that he didn't think it would be necessary, so I think it will go back downstairs...OR...maybe on the deck out back. That would be kind of cool. 

Anyway, the day was truly a do stuff around the house day. Until I get the living room back in order, this will be my main project.

We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

December 5, 2022 - Day 8

Foggy Morning on Windswept Farm

Monday is my bank day. So, I spent the morning after doing the critter chores working on the Sunday morning offering and getting a deposit ready to go. My routine is to outline the cash and the different categories that the cash is intended for and then enter checks and then prepare the Offering Report to send out on Tuesday morning. Most weeks are the same and I'm pretty happy with this routine. This makes my Monday morning go smoothly. I also had to make a stop at my former supervisor's house to pick up some critter snacks and then a quick stop at Chuck's for EGGS! 

Yep you read that right, we are now buying eggs. Our hens are not laying! This is the first time in FIVE years...I'm annoyed, but planning for the next year.  In 2023 I'll be adding a half dozen or so of Australorps. They truly have been the best laying hens we have ever had and at this point we don't have any young Aussies. The feed store usually has aussie pullets available as well as Wilco. So you can bet that I'll be heading to Wilco as soon as they have their chicks to see when they'll have a batch in the store. 

I've also decided that December is too gloomy here to do any work outside. Late fall in the Pacific NW is a gloomy affair and the temperatures tend to hover in the mid to upper 40s and into the 50s. While I'm okay with the cooler temperatures, I'm not ready for the cooler weather right now. Also, there are days when the fog will stick around for most of the day. Those days can be depressing. 

Since I spend the majority of my time alone, I'm pretty keen to get the house in order for Christmas and enjoy the decorations until then. We'll see how things go in the next couple of weeks. It is possible that I'll decide to do something farm project related. 

Additionally, I'm planning to NOT volunteer at the food pantry this week or meet my friend there later. After the super busy week I had last week, I'm looking forward to a down week. Relaxing a taking care of indoor projects and maybe even bake later this week. 

We'll see how the week goes..

Who Needs A Dining Room Anyway?

The tour continues...

Once upon a time a few years back the second upstairs bedroom was my very own sewing room. It was a spare bedroom/sewing room for quite a while and then the day bed was sold and I got to use the space for sewing for a long time. It worked great for a while and I enjoyed working on projects upstairs by myself. I was set up with a TV and could have shows going in the background while crafting. Over the years I started to feel a little isolated and it was super cold upstairs and during the winter months and it took forever to heat up. 

Fast forward to 2015/2016 the walk in closet that we had was more of a hallway turned into a closet. It was hard to keep clean and organized. After many years of living with that mess I suggested that we turn the spare room into a dressing room. That idea was well received and we planned to start the conversion. However, that meant that my sewing stuff needed to go somewhere else. 

That natural somewhere else was the main floor. and the only space that made the most sense was the dining room or living room. After setting up my brand new Arrow Sewing Cabinet in both the Living Room or the Dining Room at different times I decided that the dining room was the better location, mostly because I could be near a window and close to the kitchen. Until this year my sewing adventures were minimal as I was working full-time which made it easy to store stuff on the cabinet since it is just another horizontal surface when it is all closed up and my machine is stored away.

Now that I am retired I have decided to set up "shop" in the dining room and leave my machine out and ready to go. I also have relocated the ironing board to the same space so I don't have to use the table top version. I have resurrected so many projects in the last couple of months that I can keep busy for a good long time.  

I finally finished the quilt on the wall - after 17 years of it sitting around.

View from the Living Room into what used to be the Dining Room

The space still needs some help, but I can make changes over time

There are still some things that need to be organized, but that will happen in time. For the past year or so I have been storing some fabric, miscellaneous tools and patterns on a card table in our front entry. We are not a front door household, back door guests welcome! 

Anyway, this space has been quite comfortable and I look forward to spending a lot of time here sewing and creating fun quilts and other crafts.

March?

Okay, I'm not like the rest of the world when it comes to time...I guess. Earlier this week on one of the YouTube video's we watch a late night talk show host had a compilation of different news stations exclaiming that it was March again...Wow. Whatever people...you'll get over it and pretty soon it will be spring and then summer and then March will roll around again. 

So, for me January was all about rest and February I started to do some fun stuff along with regular daily chores.

BUT...

March is when we get busy around here. When I was still working I think it was more busy. March was the month that I would take off a week of vacation to do all the things that I needed to do to kick off food growing season. I would try packing every little thing into a week. Starting seeds cleaning the garden and the hoop house, getting ready to bring home chicks from the hatchery and so on. Inevitably, I wouldn't be able to do everything on my list. That just meant I had to cram things in whenever there was extra time. 

This year is different. Now that I am into month three of retirement I am ready to get things going without the fear of running out of time. I've already gotten seeds into trays, but that wasn't without issues.

This is from this past Monday - March 1

STARTING SEEDS

On Monday I decided to start getting my seeds started. My preference is using my soil blocker and placing them into trays. I can get 9 rows of blocks into a standard size tray and get all sorts of seeds sown. Over the weekend I did run into a little problem. All of the domes/lids for the trays were nested together in the corner of the hoop house and were damaged from all of the heat...Oooops. Since I got all of the lids at Wilco, I didn't think anything of it and planned to trek out to Battle Ground to purchase some more lids.

Issue #1 - I drove all the way out to Battle Ground. It's not far, but it's also not as convenient as popping down to Freddy's. I know, first world problem... Anyway, arrived at Battle Ground, marched into the store and to the garden area only to find that they did not have the domes. What the WHAT? They had all sorts of trays, but no lids. Not all was lost though, as there is another Wilco in Clark County. Instead of heading over there I decided to be smart - I asked a clerk if they could check the Vancouver store. Nothing there either. Mind you, the Vancouver store is nearly as far away from our home and a little bit of a trek from Battle Ground. I was not in the mood to go there. 

DANG! 

So, off to home I went. Although, out of curiosity I decided to stop and see if Freddy's had any. What on earth was I thinking?! Of course they didn't.

Issue #2 - The next best thing...Amazon of course. After a couple of searches I decided it was not worth it to buy FIVE lids for $30. You've got to be kidding me these things are plastic! If I'm going to spend that much money I'm just going to get another set of mini trays. 

The mini trays that I chose are same size as the ones in the photo above, BUT the lids have vents. That's a bonus in my mind. I placed the order on Monday and they delivered a couple of days later

These vents - so very cool! The other thing that was different about these - the cell tray is clear. Tom mentioned that this way I could see the roots - which is always cool! So this was a win. 

The soil blocker will still get used though. When it's no longer +/- 40 degrees I can get stuff into the trays without using the lids. I think I had done that in the past and it worked just fine. 

MEATIE CHICKS

We have ordered our meatie chicks from Jenks for the past three seasons. Just to be different and not go the Cornish Cross route we decided to go with the Freedom Ranger. Our last batch was the FryPan Special - we did not like that batch at all. You can read that post HERE. We REALLY like the Freedom Ranger, but they take several weeks longer to grow out. Like fourteen weeks, not eight or nine weeks like the CC. As much as I like the Rangers, I think after this batch we'll try the CC. It would be nice to harvest the meaties after a couple of months - tops. Less time = less feed. I think I'd be okay with the chubby CC.

We order from Jenks Hatchery which is a nice drive down the Willamette Valley. It's nice to get out of Vancouver now and then. Also, we take the opportunity to do a little Pokemon hunting :)

PROJECTS

Like I'm really helping with projects. What I do is come up with projects  I'm the queen of thinking up projects! Yesterday (March 4th) Tom built a simple table with the shelf underneath it so I could store my canners in my new storage space in the basement - 

I wasn't looking for anything fancy and just wanted to get the canners out of the kitchen. This works out perfect!

Today Tom is out building a new brooder for the meaties. The big brooder currently has a dozen pullets in it and the livestock tank that we bought to  brood the last batch of chicks is actually a nesting shelter for one of the turkeys. ANYWAY - chicks coming home on Tuesday means we or Tom needs to build a new brooder. That should be done this morning. 

So, even though I've got more time than ever, I'm finding that I don't necessarily have the energy. I'm still spending time resting as I did throughout the month of January, but not napping as much as I did then. I'm trying to designate different activities to specific days of the week. That way, if/when that project or task is done I can focus on doing other things. That's how my days get filled up when I fill in the "free" time with stuff. It can be something enjoyable as sewing or cooking/baking. A lot of times I'll hang out and watch some TV shows or read. Things that I didn't have time for while work. Well, we did watch TV, but usually YouTube videos. 

Anyway, I welcome the month of March because it means that it's time to grow stuff! That's really the whole point of us and our farm.

Full-Time

Farmer! Now that I am officially one month into retirement, I thought it was time for a post here.

January was a month of rest and relaxation as well as trying to figure out life without a work schedule. Not gonna lie, it's been little rough. It never occurred to me how hard it would be to quit work cold turkey. It's hard, like really hard. It took a little while for me to NOT think about the stuff that I started and hoped that it would be done. Not just done, but done well. In the first week I woke up thinking about whether or not the apparel for the new hires would be done in time for their first day (which is today).

ANYWAY

SLEEP

Sleep is something that I don't do well. My goal for January was to make sure that naps happened. So almost everyday I took a nap. A nap that was as short as twenty minutes or as long as an hour or even just a little longer. Amazingly, I was still able to get to sleep at night. Even now, on this first day of February, I might still need to take a nap. In the last week I don't feel nearly as tired as I did in the first week of retirement. 

PROJECTS

There were some things that I wanted to do and made the time to do them. While a lot of the things that I wanted to do was indoors, I did help Tom with a couple of outside projects. Tom wanted to replace the pet carrier nesting boxes that we have used since 2017. After a couple of days we ended up with - 

New and Improved

Same Cart different set up

Once we put the finishing touches on the cart I wheeled it out to the chicken run and most of the older girls immediately had to check it out. The ironic thing is that the older girls are from our original bunch of girls from 2017. They may have slowed down their laying or completely stopped. I think we'll find out for sure in a few weeks. 

FENCE

In the last week and a half Mr. Victor has been breaking out of the safety of our yard/property. A couple of neighbors sent texts to me to let me know that someone was out. One day Victor and Little Momma found their way down the path a bit and close to the private road between us and the church next door.  STINKERS! Last week we had at least two neighbors text or knocking on the door and another time our friend Robin sent me a text saying that her neighbor asked to let us know that there was a pig out. The only problem then was that WE were out...blah blah blah...

Now we have fence materials and started working on getting the fence installed.

Thirty Feet done

This fence is 36" high and will go across along the road on the garden side of the house as well as on the other side in front of the house. This should help keep the swine where they are supposed to be.

BAKING

January was also the month for baking. French bread, sandwich rolls, pizza all the good stuff. My goal was to make bread of some sort for sandwiches and I succeeded! 

So many fun things in my first month of retirement and I am feeling pretty good about being retired. As I look ahead I can see that a lot of work that will be done from now until forever. Just writing this makes me pretty excited about the possibilities that are on the horizon. Things that I could only dream about. Things that I would have to cram into a weekend or a week of vacation. These days I can make goals for the month and not just the weekend. If I don't get something done one day, I don't have to feel bad - there is always the next day. 

I'm going to go ahead and end this post and go do something fun or take a nap or play a game or read a book...

Farm Life, Best Life