It's been a long time

A lot has happened since I last posted.  This is what my downstairs looks like, minus some furniture.  We have been living and doing school like this since last July.

We also had a run-in with the neighbor this fall.  We told them that their dog seems to have an unhealthy interest in our sheep and they should make sure it does not roam here because we don't want our sheep hurt or our llama to kill their dog.  We thought it was all worked out, but one night I was home alone without a vehicle and their dog was chasing and biting my ewes.  All of my ewes were pregnant at the time.  Well, I could not catch their dog, nor did the neighbors respond to my screams that their dog was over here.  The dog split the flock, confused the llama, and had already seriously injured one of my colored merino ewes (Button, the one that gave the awesome banded fleece).  My only option at that point was to shoot their dog and call the police.  The neighbors never asked about the sheep, never paid the vet bills, and told me I should have just let their dog kill my sheep, they would have bought me more.  Where in the world he was planning on picking up an ultra fine merino ewe, let alone a dark brown one, I have no idea.  They started tearing down our fence and driving by our place slowly.  They even screamed at my 12 year old daughter when she waved at them (H did not know who they were when she waved).  Well, spring is coming.  Hopefully they settled down. 

We also had the roof of our sheep barn slide off from too much snow on one side and no snow on the other side.

So, we had to move all of the sheep outside while we worked on building pens and moved them to a new building.  We got them in just in time.

27 also rejected her lambs again.  This is the third year in a row.  She had 3 girls, but one did not make it, its spine was blocking the birth canal and she had to be delivered, but she was too weak.  These 2 Suffolk X Merinos are Pinky and Quiggles (standing).

We lost a few lambs early on because the barn the sheep were moved to did not have the bedding build up and it was too large of a space for them to keep warm (we had a very cold winter, colder than normal).  We were being very careful about checking on the sheep and getting them into pens a day ahead of their lambing date and putting in heat lamps.  We also coated every lamb with a polar fleece coat.  Still, if we did not catch the lambing within 1 hour, we lost a lamb.  Hopefully next year will not have those problems.

We also had a tragic death this winter, one of my husband's co-workers.  It was very sad and confusing for everyone.  He left a little boy without a father.

We changed churches so the kids could be a part of a larger pool of children; our old church only had a few kids in it.

Now?  We are working with a general contractor to get our house lifted, a new foundation poured, add some bathrooms (we only have 1), new electric, new plumbing, and square off our house.  We will have to pack everything up again, including the basement, finish tearing off all of the plaster upstairs and pull all of the plumbing and electrical, and move out.  They hope to begin by the end of June and be done by September.  We are excited to finally see progress in getting our house in order.  This project is very expensive and we hope we can swing it all because this old house really needs it.

I also did some knitting.

 This is 4' in diameter and 100% hand spun alpaca. 

This last project was changed from a sweater to a sun dress, so no sleeves, and more shaping.  I think I have ripped this apart about 5 times.  My middle girl will look great in it, though.  The yarn is Zauberball.

Signing off for a few days

I did get a lot of work done this week.  However, I am still behind.  We are having our floors redone and Dear wants to tear off all of the plaster in the living, dining, front entry, office, and possibly the stairs before the floor guy comes on Tuesday.  I hope we get enough helpers because I am a little concerned we will not get it all done.  When dear was in Iraq I did a similar project in our bedroom.  It took a long time.  I carried plaster down the stairs in 2 five gallon buckets.  It was heavy, hot, work.  I like doing it, though.  Even more exciting, we rented a 5th wheel camper for the week. 

  Well, my computer is is the office and we may move it to where it can still be used, but if not, I will be offline for about 10 days. 

For those waiting for fleece, I will be working dilligently on them those 10 days.  I want to get them all done before we move back in. 

The new stove in action

We are processing our turkies today (and yesterday). After the turkey is dead, we skin it, take out the insides, take off the head, and clean it. Then it gets tossed in a pot of seasoned water and vegetables to boil until it is fully cooked. We then pull out the meat and bones and separate the breast meat for sandwiches and the dark meat for soups and other things. We add another turkey to the pot and cook that one as well. The front right pot will hold about 35 pounds of fresh turkey (10 gal pot). The two back ones will hold 25 pounds. In all, we can do 4 turkies at a time. After they are all done cooking, we separate the fat out, cool it to get even more fat out, and cook the broth down till it is fairly concentrated. We then freeze the broth for soups and gravies. Our old stove (standard 30") could only handle 2 of the large pots at a time. It was very difficult to work because the pots were touching each other and not completely under the burners. It would also take 2 hours for water to boil in the 10 gallon pot. With this stove, water is boiling in under 20 minutes in each of the pots. The turkies cook faster and production moves right along. Our whole house smells like turkey soup.

This is working so well I can hardly wait until canning time.

Just sanded and sealed

Now we need 3 more coats of poly.

Geneva Metal Kitchen Cabinets

I am thinking of selling my kitchen cabinets. I love them, but I can not find them to complete the kitchen. They are highly collectable so many get snatched up pretty quickly. I will take a couple of photos and share them when I get the camera out of the kitchen. I can not walk in there to get it and it is killing me because I want to take some pictures of the floor for you all. It is amazing. Now our kitchen has the nicest floor in the house. How is that for a turn around?

The air we breathe

AHHH! Breathe in, Breath out.

I had some terrible lung problems. Pluerisy in both sides of my lungs, near collapse of both sides of my lungs, and a growth in the left side. Geee, I wonder why. This wall used to be white. The build-up on the wall is soot and other icky debrise from our old furnace. I am shocked everytime I come across evidence of our old furnace. This little piece was behind some cabinets we had put in that we just took out to work on the floor. I am so glad we got rid of that thing. It sure could heat the house, but it was really bad for our health. I have not had issues since we stopped using it and switched to corn 2 years ago.

What's under there????

Every time some show has on "The Ugliest Kitchen Contest" I laugh at the entrants. Well, here is one reason why...green hideous cobblestone linoleum, over faux brick disgusting linolium, over faux silestone linolium, over masonite, over plywood. We were wondering if we had wood floors in the kitchen so we could remedy this eyesore, but no, we ran into plywood.....or so we thought.
Well, we had to remove the cabinet and broken range to make room for the new range when what should we find?

1" maple flooring, like the rest of our downstairs. The dark spots are a buildp of something and not stained. Yipee!!! Bub bye ugly green coblestone, hello maple.

The Justification

It was getting impossible to even wipe down the stove because the glass is pretty sharp. So, FYI, if you get a stove like this one or aquire a glass top electric through a home purchase like us, do NOT put hot things on it when it is cold or cold things when it is hot!

The Replacement

electrolux icon 48"

I have been waiting about 7 years for a stove like this. Dear kept pushing me to replace the ones we had (old house and here) but I kept saying no, I do not want to buy a replacement unless I absolutely have to or unless we get the opportunity to buy what would really work for us. This will make canning time go so much smoother. I can not even express how much of a pain canning time is with a tiny stove. I could not cook meals for a month because the stove top was taken over by only 2 pots! I did not really need 2 ovens, but Dear wanted 2 and they will actually work out really well for us since the small one is 15” wide inside we will probably use that one all of the time and the larger one will be reserved for massive cooking projects (many loaves of zucchini bread) or turkeys. The one I was looking at a few years back was $4000 more than this one, but it was the only one available at the time and I could not justify that price, but then Electrolux came out with this one and I have been pouring over ratings and reviews on this stove and the only “bad” comment was that one lady was surprised you actually needed to use the simmer plate that was included. So, I think this will be good. I also did not want to get some fancy stove that no one could repair or that I would have headaches with the manufacturer and the warranty. This one is sold at Sears, so it is really close by if I need anything or if I need to harass anyone.

My old stove had a glass top and someone put a hot dish on it when it was cold and cracked the top. The glass has gradually been sagging and the heating element has lost a lot of power. I have cooked on the hazzard for about 2 years. So now the count...We have replaced a refrigerator and purchased a Kenmore Pro, a washing machine with a Kenmore HE4T, we bought a Bosch dishwasher, and 2 chest freezers (both Kenmore). Our kitchen should look fabulous, right? Wrong, we still have the ugliest kitchen in the world. We have 3 different counter top styles (green, tan, and charcole), we have 3 different cabinet styles (awsome Geneva metal ones, crappy stock wood ones, and really crappy metal ones I had moved in the house from our garage). Our floor is green cobblestone linolium with a huge hole in it because it was bubbling. Our sink is an odd white plastic two bowl. So, please do not be jealous. You can do so much better. I don't even want to talk about our one bathroom or I may cry. But the stove!!!! So functional. I am truely excited about that.

Left Unfixed

We received an estimate to reroof the quonset. It is 36' x 100' and all curved wood trusses. I love the look of this building. Sadly, though, the roof is starting to leak. So, what was the magic number????

$14,000!

Not sure what we are going to do. All I know is, we will not let it tumble to the ground like so many old barns do.

Furnace update

So far so good. We are heating with the heat pump and cooling with it since the temperatures are fluctuating so much.
The house even smells better. The purifier sure makes a difference. The service was really good too.

Furnace

We are having a new furnace put in right now. Our old one was from the 60s and spewed fuel oil soot into the house. We also got an air purifier and a heat pump so we will have central air! They threw in a whole house humidifier which is great for us because our house gets really dry in the winter. I will love the new thermostat that controls it all too.