Moving Day!

Moving Day finally arrived!  It was a cool drizzly day, but there wasn't any serious rain while loading or unloading.  A friend was able to borrow a 17' box truck from work.  That was real handy.  It is so beautiful this time of year.  The leaves are turning and are at their peak.

T-Bob has carried many heavy boxes this week.  He is developing lots of muscles!  He starts basketball practice next week.

Of course, You gotta use a horse trailer if you are moving to an old horse farm!  We loaded it with furniture and boxes of stuff - no critters.

My brother backed his truck under it in one shot and we didn't have to move the hitch arrangement.  I was very impressed!  Excellent spatial awareness.  We appreciated his help in providing the trailer and moving it for us.

My friend Kathy came over and helped us pack up the kitchen and cleared up the breakfast dishes.  She also came out to the farm and helped me set up the kitchen.  She is a good friend!

Alayna and her friend Anna came over and helped pack up my herb and supplement inventory.  It was amazing how much harder the boys worked and what muscle flexing was required when these beautiful young ladies showed up.

See what I mean....

So many books to pack up.  I was grateful for all the helpers.

I had lots of bottled of inventory to be boxed.  It kept lots of people busy.  Mr. D and Elizabeth worked on it too.  Had to pack it carefully so nothing was broken.  Glass bottles are fragile.

The Boss suddenly started packing in a big way.  Anything and everything went into boxes.  He will process it later.  He has been busy working at the farm to get it ready for us to move into!  HE is a hard working man!!!

Here are some other hard working men who packed up and carried boxes for us.

Here the elder men are engineering how to keep the freezer balanced and in place.  For some reason we didn't have straps for inside the truck.

At the end of the day the guys were all worn out from carrying so many boxes up to the third floor attic.  They just wanted to sit and relax.  We got everything moved that we had packed.  There is still some books to box and some cleaning to be done, but we are definitely on the home stretch.  Then we will start to fix up and paint the old house so we can get ready to sell it.  Still a lot of work to be done.

Moving and Life with the Mangos

Our family is not early risers.  In order to get the children started early on a day with much packing, I told them they could have waffles if they were up by 8 AM.  This was a challenge to them.  5 of the 6  got there on time.  Poor Thomas, missed out.

T-Bob got busy and made some peach sauce from some frozen peaches we had.  It was yummy!

They worked together and

ended up with this yummy morsel.  Yes, they are gluten free and as good as any normal waffle.

 Thomas is growing quickly and prefers his sleep.

We also cleaned out the garden and found a lot of eggplant and basil left, that we didn't want to go to waste.

We made pesto from the basil, which is one of our favorite foods.

I have been substituting pumpkin seeds for the pine nuts or other nuts, primarily for financial reasons.  It tastes really good too.  One uses olive oil, fresh garlic and sea salt.

We even  had enough to freeze!  Yeah!!

We packed boxes the entire day!!!  My friend Kathy came over and worked with us for 6 hours, helping us pack boxes.  We still have way too much left to pack.  There is no end to our book collection!  The bedrooms are getting emptier and should be OK.  The china is packed and some other kitchen items are packed.  We are hoping to be down to mostly furniture come Saturday.  We have managed to put enough food in the freezer that we should only have limited meal preparation for the next 5 days or so.

There is much taping

and labeling of boxes.

Tonight our Boss friends came over after prayer meeting with their two large vehicles, and my DH took our big beast van and we loaded up most of the stuff we had packed the last couple days.  Things are coming along.  My DH still has 2 garage-fulls  of stuff, and his office and other hidey holes to pack, but he is planning to do it in stages, since he will have to come up this way to work anyways.  He has been super diligent on getting the house ready for us to move into.  We are blessed with many friends to help us.

Farm/ Moving Update 10/30

My DH at the farm

We are busy packing.  We plan on moving on Friday and Saturday.  Don't have a lot of time for writing blog posts.

We are spending a lot of our evenings at the farm getting the final details ready so we are able to move in.  There are a lot of little details.  Back at the house we are also working hard.  Paul has the front yard all empty of vegetable beds.  No more vegetable gardens in the front yard.

Paul has been such a blessing to our family in this move.  He has worked hard, without complaining.  He has put in many long hours to get the farm ready for us as well as working on the house.  He has been diligently selling off the firewood from the old house.  We won't need it anymore as we heat with gas.  We had about 7-8 cords sitting around in the back yard.  He has been my right hand in getting everything done!

Elizabeth doing the 'wild child' look.

We still have LOTS to pack up!  We are still discarding as we go along.  No sense moving stuff we don't want or need.  But the books... They are needed and so heavy.  Some are being sorted and discarded, but there are still thousands left.  Definitely need more boxes.  I want to be all settled in by Thanksgiving!

Here is what we see as we drive back and forth from the house to the farm.  Autumn and her glory is finally and truly here.

The soybeans were harvested yesterday.  Hip hip hooray!  Now it feels like it is really our property.

There may be a few gaps in my postings as I am rather busy.  Also we are still trying to figure out our internet provider for the farm.  Thanks for following our journey!

Farm Update- 10/27

This past week I was down on North Carolina at a Camp.  I will tell you all about that very soon.  Today I went over to the farm to see what had been done while I was gone.  It looks so nice!!!

The counter tops are done in the kitchen.  I really like how they turned out.  They match the cabinets very well.

We are still missing the faucet for the peninsula sink.  This pretty close to how it really looks.  The granite was called Ivory fantasy, but this particular piece is a little darker than ivory....

Here's how we fit the counter around the stove.  This week my DH is going to build a wall behind the stove.  Eventually we will redecorate the eating area, but it can wait until later after we move in.

The living room and dining room floors look amazing.  For being almost 100 years old, they  are in great shape!

This was the view today from the family room into the kitchen.  We have protective paper down for now, until we move in.  This will give the finish time to set up and protect it while everybody is carrying things in from outside.

This is a better picture of the floor and gives a truer sense of the finish.

We had a different fella finish the floors in the bedrooms.  He used different finishing technic and it looks different.  They are very shiny while the downstairs are more of a matte finish.

The soybeans have still not been harvested.  I hope the farmer gets to it soon.  For those who wondered, this is what soybeans look like when ripe and ready to be picked.

The leaves are starting to turn color.  This is such a late year for that.  It is like a month late.  There were actually snow showers this past week already, although nothing stuck to the ground.  There were ducks on the pond this afternoon when we arrived.  They flew away before I got close enough to photograph them.   

We are planning to move in on Saturday.  It will be a busy week with lots of packing.

We have the Keys and are Ready to Start Rolling!

 Tuesday morning we left the house early to go sign the final paperwork and give them the check and make the buying of the farm official.  When I left, the living room was packed with boxes!  We have cleaned out the storage areas and have that stuff ready to move.  We are packing from the outside in.  We also gathered some furniture to put in the family room of the new house.  Have to have somewhere to rest and think, as well as to gather for a meal.

 Thomas wanted to come along for the signing to make sure we didn't mess anything up  and that it was all done properly.  He was there in case we had any questions.  We packed the car full as we were heading right over to the farm afterwards.  There was approximately 70 pages of documents to sign.  Some were funny.  One paper we signed said that we agreed that we were not being coerced to sign these documents.  If coercion was an issue,  couldn't they just coerce us to sign that one too?!!!  Another favorite was the one that said that we were informed that failing to pay our mortgage would result in a negative reporting to the credit agency.  Apparently, somebody sued them when the bank did that.  Duh, Really?!!!  The lady gave us a form to sign that said we promised to use the farm as our primary residence for at least a year.  We then had to fill in our mailing address.  The Title agency lady informed us that filling in a different address on that form would be seen as a red flag that needed to be investigated.  The society we live in is CRAZY!

 The seller for the farm was sitting happily in the waiting area when we exited.  He had all the keys ready to go.  He was so excited.  He looked like a guy who had just graduated.  He did say that he was going to miss the farm.  We offered to let him come visit and cut the grass anytime he wanted. ;-) . The farm comes with 4 cats.  He had bought and left us several 50# sacks of cat food.

 We left the title bureau and headed straight down to the farm.  We wanted to see what we had bought.  We started off exploring the barn and shop.  Thomas brought his machete.  Not sure what he thought he would need it for in the barn.

 We then started through the house.  Checking out all the projects we want to get done before we move in.  We have decided that the kitchen must be redone, the living room and dining room floors will be refinished, and my office must be completed.  There will also need to be some basic wallpaper stripping and painting done in some of the bedrooms.  My Dh would also like to redo the master bedroom ceiling.  It is low and a little tacky.  He says it reminds him of a cheap motel.  

We met two of the neighbors.  Earl and Charlie.  Earl has done all the maintenance on the farm for the last ten years.  He filled us in on all the projects that needed to be done around the place.  He told us that we needed to run a new electric line out to the shop and barn.  Then in the next breath he told us he had a trencher that he would be happy to loan us to do the job.  He is a hay farmer, among other things, and he would be happy to help us do our hay fields.  He is a gift from God.  He also told us where to get healthy steers from a local neighbor.   Charlie came over later when he got home from work.  He is a SWAT cop.  He had all his gear with him and he showed us his guns.  He has a shooting range in his backyard and is a shooting instructor.  He offered to have the kids over to teach them how to shoot.  He also said that if we had any trouble to give a holler and he would come right over.  He said he doesn't miss when he shoots.  Yep, we live in the country now!  It may be a very busy street, but it is clearly a neighborhood.

 Thomas and I went upstairs and worked on getting the attic ready to receive all the boxes.  We were happy to find that Tom had left behind a commercial shopvac for us.  Thomas swept while I decided how to organize everything.

 Thomas checked out the tree situation while we waited for the other kids to show up.  He had to see what trees he could climb.  He found a piece of old rope on a branch, where tis tree used to have a swing on it.  Hopefully, we can get one up again soon!

The other children arrived and took the machetes to chop a path to the back of the property.  It is a half mile back there, so it took awhile.  They found a pear tree and a couple crabapples.

They all explored the top of the barn and enjoyed the rope swing that hangs from the roof. Then we began to explore and clean out the shop area.  The boys were fascinated to find an old fashioned oil can.
There has been a cat living in the shop for several months.  There is a definite odor in there because of that.  We moved the cat and cleaned everything out and then power washed it.  It will need some more work, but at least we have started.  We need to get the shop set up as my office ASAP.

When most of that work was done the kids decided to take the junk wood and burn it in the fire pit.  They all enjoyed sitting around and throwing stuff in the fire!  Joann had to leave before this and missed the fun.

Michelle

After only one day, the kids are starting to look like they belong on the farm.

In the evening, we had our first visitors.  My brother and his wife and their children  brought the trailer over that had all our boxes and other things in it.  They took a tour of the place and seemed really pleased.  My brother is the one who found this property for us.  We really appreciate their help.  He has a large horse trailer.  I couldn't believe how much it held!  It is a real blessing!

We unloaded the trailer and were pleased to find the table we brought over.  We put it in the kitchen found a collection of things that might be called chairs and ate our first meal at the farm.  It was a great day!!!