Old Farm Sign

This hand painted mural is inside our side porch over the doorway.  I have no idea who painted it but it's beautiful and if we ever take out the brick wall to make room for a new kitchen, it'll be taken down carefully and preserved. 

This strip of marble is underneath the above mural, joining the living room and the side porch.  If we ever redo the side porch (it's on the south side of the house and very hot all summer and very cold all winter - a few degrees above 0 - due to no heat) I'd like to save this little piece and incorporate it into the new room.  The floors are different heights so I'm sure that it would have to come out.  There's not much about this farm house or farm that I like but every once in a while, I find some little thing that tells me that, at some point in time, there must have been some love shown to this house.

My Garden Paradise - Part 2 Fence

          

www.gardening-inspirations.com

www.asoftplace.net
I've been thinking lately about my perfect, ideal garden and what it would look like.  I know that gardening is not the normal thing to be pondering at Christmas but if I start now, I might actually be ready for spring planting this year.

The fences in the above photos are beautiful, both the wooden rail fence and the white picket fence.  There are other styles and building material of course and lots more choices in colour but I have a thing for the traditional white picket fence. 

I've had a few gardens over the years but none have ever had a fence even though they certainly needed one.  We lived on our first farm for 9 years and every year, without fail, DH would leave the barnyard gate open and the entire dairy herd would find their way to and through my garden 5 or 6 times each year.  There were other directions that they could have headed in but it was always my garden.  The straightest path of least resistance perhaps?

DH had torn up all of the lawn in order to level the land and put down new grass seed.  We couldn't afford turf so we had to do the longest, slowest and cheapest way that we could but it was fine since there were only 2 of us at that time.  The instructions were clear - DO NOT walk on the seed-covered dirt until the grass had grown in enough to hold the weight.  The only problem?  The cows did not get the memo!  They left deep hoof prints in the soft earth and DH filled them in the first few times but then gave up.  Those holes are likely still there 25 years later, filled in with grass and waiting to twist an unsuspecting ankle.  A fence may not have saved my garden and new lawn every time but it would have deterred the cattle more often than not. 

Our second farm had a white picket fence that the previous owner had taken down.  He knew that he was only going to live there for 1 year so I'm not sure why he had to destroy it.  When we were moving out 11 years later, we found an old farm photo from the '30's or '40's that showed the fence and the original owner told us that the fence had always been repaired, replaced as needed and repainted.  Such a shame that it was gone.

When we moved to this farm 2.5 years ago, I quickly realized that there no good spot for a garden.  There's only 10 - 15 feet on one side of house and about the same on the other side of the driveway and the rest was field.

Not much room beside the house.  The field to the left is where I had my second year's garden.

The previous owner of this farm had let the whole farm go for a few years due to a divorce and everything was in tough shape - the house, the barns and the fields.  Since every acre of the 150 acres was old hay and needed help, DH decided to leave certain fields alone in order to concentrate on other
 fields.  He gave me the corner of one field on the far side of the driveway for my garden that turned out to be fabulous soil because it had been left alone for so many years.  Our feet would sink deep into the soft dirt and it was stone-free, a real rarity on any farm.  When DH heard all of this, he decided to use this field instead of leaving it alone for an extra year so there went my garden. My revenge?  It turns out that only my little gardening corner of the whole field was stone-free!  Happy stone-picking!

The second year, I put my garden in the field in the above photo, right next to the house.  The good thing about this location was that it was easy to pop out to pick the veggies and weed, even if only for a few moments.  Water was available here and I could look out through my kitchen window and see if weeding was needed, whether the kids were doing their weeding or picking or not or just to enjoy watching the garden grow.  The negative?  It was easy to see if weeding was needed!  Immediately after moving in, DH started working with our next-door-neighbour farmer who loves to spray - extra - and the spray would always waft over onto my garden, guaranteed.   My gardens have always been free of chemicals (except for one year, many years ago, when I put some powder on my potatoes to get rid of Colorado Potato Beetle) so I don't appreciate it much. 

Putting a garden on the edge of a field does not spell permanence because, in my case at least, it means moving said garden each and every year.  My 3rd. summer here (this past summer) I decided not to have a garden because of the whole 'location, location' problem and not sure yet what I'm going to do this upcoming summer.  For me, a garden with a fence means stability and commitment because who wants to move a strong, solid fence around, year after year? 

www.idealbuildingconcepts.com  describes this fence as:

Recycled Branch Fencing

"A unique garden fence designed from detached tree limbs"

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www.veddw.com

Even though I usually like order and symmetry, there's something about the unevenness of each board that I love!

www.star-foreveryoung.blogspot.com

www.khakidevil.co.uk

Now THAT'S a garden fence!!

For Part 1, click here.

For Part 3, click here.

Food Storage Interrupted

Continued from here

www.homestead-store.com

The way I'd like my canning shelves to look someday!

Things went along swimmingly well, the stock growing and shrinking, until we sold the farm in 2008 and did not have another farm to move into.  A farm needs to be bought in the spring so that the farmer can get a crop in for the summer in order to make mortgage payments.  Any later and he'll be making payments on the mortgage but not getting any income from the land.  The selling owner will try to rent the land out to a neighbor, just in case his farm doesn't sell that spring, as the farmer would like to recoup a bit of money for that year's mortgage payment.  Farm prices had risen drastically and try as we might, we couldn't find a farm that we could afford.

In the end, we knew that we were going to have to buy or rent a house in town (not an idea that we cared for!) until a farm came along.  Because we didn't want to sign a long term lease for renting, renting was no longer an option and we ended up having to buy a small house in town that was not fixed up.  It was built in the 50's and had a lot of character and although it was on the smaller side, by the time we had finished fixing it up (character left intact), the whole family was in agreement that if we could have just picked it up and taken it with us, we would have.

1.5 years later, we found a farm (this one) and were able, after some time, to sell the house in town.  The buyer, a young woman in her early 20's, wanted us out in 3 weeks!  Thank goodness saner heads prevailed (her parents and the real estate agent) and convinced her that this was impossible for anyone with children and she gave us a full 2 months.  But, of course, the farm would not be available for another 2 months after that so we needed to rent a place for that time.  This time, we were able to rent from DH's relatives who were moving into their house but not for a few more months.  This is the only time that the timing was perfect!

Confusing?  I know.  I knew ahead that it was going to be confusing and I tried to downsize as much as possible, throwing away, selling, giving away, donating but moving from a 190 acre farm to a .5 acre lot in town (that's being generous!) meant that there was a lot of stuff that had nowhere to go.  The problem was that we knew that we would need all of the kids' stuff still and all of the farm equipment, gardening supplies, etc. so there was a lot that we were stuck with but couldn't use at the time.

The one thing that I did not want to needlessly cart around with us, house after house, was box after box of canned, boxed and bagged food (such as rice).  I stopped buying food months before we moved and we ate up everything in the fridge and freezers except for DH's canned pineapple.  He had and still has, a fixation with them and if canned pineapples are on sale even now, we hide the grocery flyer from him!  We carted those pineapples around with us from house to house! 

We also had some leftover containers of hand lotion.  I thought I liked it then realized I didn't, no one did, and we were stuck with 7 or 8 of these large containers.  One of the downsides of food storage, I guess, is trying something new, buying multiples of it while it's on sale because if it's an unfamiliar item, you don't know when it'll be on sale again and then finding out that you don't like it, no one likes it and what do you do with it?

All of this moving meant the eventual death of my food storage.  I felt like I'd lost a friend (OK, a slight exageration) but I did lose something that I had worked hard on and I really had no idea, looking ahead down the road, when I would get the chance to do it again.  It wasn't as though someday I'd get to just carry on.  I had to start over completely - unless you consider unwanted hand lotion and oh-so-sick-of-it pineapple to be food storage!

Our 3rd Farmhouse

 This farm needed a lot of work in every aspect - house, barn, all sheds, every field, every fence row - and none moreso than the other.  We had been told by the real estate agent that the wife had left the husband 2 years before, the implication being that the entire farm had only been neglected for those 2 years.  Later, neighbors told us that she had been gone for 5 years but the reality is that this place had been neglected ever since the husband's parents moved in - appro. 1975.

DH and 2 of our sons came up 1 week early before we moved in to take the wall down between the tiny kitchen/dining room and the main living room.  DH needed to be in the basement quite a bit as there was hydro in the wall that needed to be looked after in the basement.  When he got to the basement, he realized that he wasn't going to get anything done on that wall for a while - he couldn't get through the basement until he cleaned it up first.   There was stuff down there that had been there we figure for at least 50 years.  An old chair had rotted against the wall and piles of old lumber had to be removed, one piece at a time. 

It had been so many years since wood had been burned down there (if ever) but there was firewood in one section. The only furnace was an oil furnace that was so old, it no longer worked and had to be removed.  2 old oil tanks that had been condemned also had to removed.  There was no more room for any other furnace or wood stove so we're not sure as to why there was firewood but after all those years in the basement, that wood certainly was dry and made some great fires that first winter.  Only problem was, these pieces were huge and each one had to be brought upstairs and chopped up. 

There were live wires hanging everywhere down there (and all over the whole house) and outlets and light switches (downstairs as well as upstairs) that did not work.  We're thinking that the owner fancied himself an electrician and we're shocked (no pun intended!) that we're all still here to tell the story.  My son found 2 nails through live wires, 1 through the board and batten in the garage and the other through the upstairs bathroom where they're renovating now.  He wasn't too happy about being shocked twice and I'm wondering how many cat lives he has left!

The strangest thing that DH found down there was what he found under the stairs - old boots, shoes and gloves.  Some went way back through the years, some were fairly new.  There were a large number of recent children's shoes that must have belonged to the owner's 2 sons who were about 13 and 15.  There wasn't much to laugh about with the whole situation of supposedly respectable people leaving years and years of their junk behind but he did have to laugh when he realized that the children's shoes got smaller and smaller the further back they went.  We figure now that even the children's mother (the ex-wife) was in on it.  They must have taken each pair of shoes as the boys outgrew them, set them on the first step and kicked them backwards under the steps.  How else could so many shoes end up under there in such perfect order of growing - and in full, matching sets?  Why not give them to second-hand clothing shops?

When he started the job that first day, DH had no idea that it would take 3 days just to clean up under the stairs.  That stuff under there went on forever and reached so far back that he needed a rake to reach it all.  He brought huge garbage can after garbage can, packed to overflowing, up the stairs, time after time which I imagine is why the stuff was still down there - they didn't want to do all that work.  I can't really blame them except if they hadn't put it all down there in the first place...

DH only had 5 days to work on the house because we were moving in then.  5 days seemed like a lot of time to get a lot done.  It was a 2-hour drive each way and after they'd done that for 1 day, I told them to take the mattresses (they were going to take some furniture along anyway, might as well be mattresses), packed them food for a few days along with mousetraps and sent them on their way.  At first they thought it a dumb idea - until that first night when they realized that they could work as late as they wanted, stop to eat whenever they wanted or not at all, didn't have that long drive home at night but best of all, didn't have to get cleaned up at the end of the day because there were no women around to tell them to.  I think that they were pretty much in a man's heaven ---except for the basement.  DH was serious about getting it done because of the mouse/rat problem (we weren't sure which it was at that point) and he didn't want to give them any extra hiding places in the basement.  After everything, the basement never did get completely done because as soon as we moved in, there were, unfortunately, other pressing worries. 

He ended up using the last 2 hours of the 5th day to take down the kitchen wall then drove the 2 hours home.  We were all pretty deflated after that and we hadn't even moved in yet.  We knew that this place had problems and we were used to farms with problems as we had always bought old farms with unfixed houses but this farm got us down before we even got started.  We've been behind the 8 ball the whole 2.5 years that we've been here.  I feel like we're a flock of Chicken Littles, running all over patching this problem before it breaks completely, fixing that problem so that we can keep using it.  The next few years will prove interesting, just to see how many of our dozens of projects get done!

More Random Farm Photos

My daughter informs me that her friend wants 'farm action' photos.  Well, um...it's kind of late in the season for 'farm action'.  The crops are long gone and the fields are worked up for next spring so there's nothing going on here.  The 12 + 1 calves aren't doing anything too exciting...just eatin, chewing, pooping, making more mess in the barn...that's it.  No real action. 

So I'll just have to post more random photos even if they're boring.

DH waving hello to photographer daughter.

DH emptying round hay bales from an extra shed to move into the main barn.  

Feedin 1 hay bale to the new calves.  

Random Farm Photos

My daughter was home this weekend from university (a rare occurence) and mentioned that her roommate wanted to see some photos of the farm so these are rather random. 

These are 2 huge new doors that my son made himself.

Our very old truck and horse trailer (both need replacing) that brought home...

...these 12 brown calves 2 days ago.  The black calf on the right is older and one that we held back from the group of calves (75) that were sold about one month ago.  He, like Wilbur the pig, will grace our dinner table in about 2 months.  We'll have lots of chicken, pork and beef.

 Suppertime.  Isn't he cute?!  Speaking of cute...

these kitties are too.  These are some of the 14 (at last count) barn cats.  They do a good job of keeping the mouse/rat population down but have to watch out for skunks and racoons that would like a little kitty for supper.  They get fed cat food every day (sometimes twice), have lots of water (that doesn't freeze), a warm place to sleep and lots of feline company and they all seem to get along.  Not a bad life for a barn cat!

3 Cute Kitties in the Window

3 cuties waiting at the window! 

 
The cat in the middle we call "The Green-Eyed Monster", shortened recently to Monster.  He and his 2 yellow-eyed brothers were given to us as 6-8 week olds, about 2 years ago.  These kittens looked after each other so amazingly well, licking and cleaning, just as their mother had done.  That is, until they all matured about a year later.  Then 2 of them 'disappeared', dead or run off by the dominant Monster, we don't know which but it was a real shame.  There's room on this farm for all of them and more but apparently adult males don't think so. 

Of the 3 kittens, Monster was the best at jumping onto countertops, the kitchen table, getting into food so quickly before you could stop him but over time he has stopped most of that.  He will sit patiently on the floor like a dog and wait for his piece of food.  He's not a house cat kicked to the barn.  He's a barn cat rescued to the house.  The 3 kitties were so tiny when they came and it was early enough in the spring that there was still snow on the ground and since they no longer had their mother and with both racoons and skunks taking up residence in the barn,  I couldn't leave them in the barn at night.  I would step outside at night and call them and they would come running to sleep in the porch in a warm, blanket-filled box, then return to the barn in the morning to get their fill of mice.  Now, Monster comes to the house in the daytime and sits patiently by the door later to be let out.  He returns to the barn at night to chase his favourite dinner and to keep all his girlfriends company!

The other 2 kitties in the photo are barn cats that were given to us last year.  They came later in the spring, there were 4 of them and my daughter started going to see them everyday and feed them so I had no qualms about leaving them in the barn permanently.  The day of this photo, daughter could not make it to the barn at all but had left extra food the night before.  I guess they missed her cuddling and petting so they came to the house to find her.

 I think I've found me a spot to rest awhile.

 First, let me sniff it...

 ...look for enemies...

 ...take a quick bath before bed...

 ...and that's all.  You can leave me alone now.

 Ahh!!!  Peace and quiet at last! 
And that's the life of our house kitty, Lilly (new name, last name!), found here sleeping in her owner's laundry hamper!

Our Second Farmhouse - Previous Owners

Our 2nd farmhouse had been in the same family since the land was first bought from the crown.  The farmhouse was well over 100 years old and had been the replacement house for the original house and that first house would have been old before it was torn down.  The previous owner, F. M., had bought the whole place from his uncles when he was young.  He had to walk 44 miles (70 kilometers) to register it so that squatters could not take over.  I don't quite understand why his uncles didn't have to do this but it must have something to do with the Homestead Act and possibly the resale of the farm, not sure.  That must have been quite the walk with not much along the way except for bush, a few farms and maybe 1 very small town. 

When he was in his 60's, he wanted to retire but none of his 4 kids wanted the farm - typical story, unfortunately.  They had all 'fled' to the city as soon as they could.  One was a lawyer, one a doctor and one was allergic to everything so there was no way any were coming back.  The youngest daughter, C., had left for Vancouver years before and had wanted nothing to do with farms.  F.M. and his wife went to visit C. and mentioned that they were going to sell the farm.  Suddenly C. says, "Mom and Dad, I'm coming home to run the farm."  They were thrilled, she did just that for 20 years and was successful but my first thought would have been more like "After all the years of hating the farm, staying as far away from it as you can get - literally the other side of the country - are you sure you're really committed to it?" 

During her 20 years there, she married a local 'big' farmer, had 3 kids, ran a successful laying hen farm for 5,000 birds, divorced same said farmer, sold the farm to the first non-family member to ever own the place and used her share of the money to open a sewing store in town, again successfully and it's still going strong.

The new owner whom I'll call T.G. moved in with his wife and his brother moved in upstairs.   They were welcomed by the neighbours who thought that this couple had every intention of living there forever but instead they just wanted the timber.  They earned over $100,000.00 worth of wood in 1 year.  I don't quite understand this either, but according to the law, if you officially own the property and live in the house for 365 days, you pay way less taxes as it's your own wood that you're selling.  The neighbours knew nothing about this and when they finally figured it out, they were furious.  As one local put it, "T.G. raped the bush", which essentially, I guess he did.  7 years later, when we had someone in to assess the bush, he found 1 tree ready and 1 tree almost ready.  The rest of the entire bush was at least 5 years or more away.   He definitely was within his rights to sell his own wood and all of it too but people were bothered by the sneakiness and underhandessness of it all.  T.G. also did not bother to cut up the tops for firewood (not enough money, too much work?) and instead, just left it all to rot.  He didn't really clearcut but didn't mind running over any and all smaller trees to get to the tree he wanted.  He left paths through the bush 2 bulldozer-widths wide and didn't care about tearing up good farm fields with his 'dozer.  He also left dozens of piles of brush at least 20' high all over the fields.  As part of the deal, he was supposed to have those gone, completely gone, not piled all over the place.  At the urging of his lawyer, he did finally push all the piles off the fields and to the edge of the bush/fields, thereby tearing up more of the fields with his bulldozer.

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 http://www.thehumanfootprint.wordpress.com/

We purchased the farm from T.G. as of April 15 but agreed that he could stay there rent-free until June 1 if need be.  We had no idea that he had kept his other house the whole time and did not need the extra time to buy himself another place to live as he had led us to believe.  We knocked on the door one day to ask them something but got no answer so we decided to peek in the windows (I know!  You're not supposed to do that but we figured that since we did officially own it...) to try to get a better picture of the layout and where to put the furniture.  With all of the additions, we just could not remember.  Hubby heard a hum through the open window and instantly became furious as he was pretty sure that it was the furnace running.  It was May, over 90 degrees F. and it became obvious when we entered the house that no one was living there - there was definitely no reason for any more heat.  The problem with this was that they had agreed in the deal to leave the oil tank full.  This is now mandatory but at that time, it had to be in the agreement.  It was obvious at this point that they had moved out and were trying to empty the oil tank.  Thank goodness we found out when the oil tank was still half full and thank goodness the wife was actually nothing like him.  She gave us a cheque for the right amount and it actually did not bounce.

The worst he did though, was to his wife.  He went out, got himself a girlfriend and invited her to move in with him - with his wife still in the house and at first not knowing anything about it.  The worst of  all was that the wife also had cancer.  It was only a short time later that I heard that she had died.   I guess her jerk of a hubby was just making sure that he had another woman waiting in the wings.  About a year later, he was dead, too.  I guess what goes around comes around!

Because of this guy, the neighbours became sour on new neighbours and this was the atmosphere that we moved into.  We were nothing like him though, and we were there for 11 years.

One good thing that came from clearing out the bush was - blackberries.  I didn't know anything about blackberries but one day shortly after we moved in, there was a knock on the door from an older local farmer asking if he and his friend could go back in the bush and pick the blackberries.  He explained that after a lot of trees have been cut down, blackberries will show up for a few years.  He made enough Blackberry wine each year for the next 3 years to last his family for the year and always brought us a bottle.  I knew that blueberries could grow in an area that had been affected by forest fire but I didn't know about blackberries.  The things you learn!

http://www.alchemybaking.blogspot.com/
 

Our 2nd Farmhouse

I don't think that there's such a thing as an old farmhouse without a story to tell and our second farmhouse was no exception.  Because they usually date back over a century, there's no way that the rooms would not reverberate with peals of laughter, shouts of anger, bedtime stories and the spilling of tears...if only they could talk.

Stories come out slowly, usually out of necessity.   A question like "Where's the well?", asked of the original owner who had continued to live next door for over 20 years.  We found out about at least 2 wells, one a dug well out in front of the house that we knew nothing about and the other a fairly new drilled well that no one knew the location of.  The dug well had 2 pieces of cemi-circle shaped cement over top to form a circle.  An old full-sized hand pump stood over the centre and because it was not bolted down, we assumed that the entire affair was ornamental.  We were quite surprised when the original owner (he had sold the farm to the previous owner who had only stayed a year) told us that not only was the well real, it had never been filled in, had been in full use as the only well until just a few years before and he thought we should get it up and running again.  No thanks.  He and his family had paid a lot of money for the drilled well for a reason and we weren't going backwards. 

And you know that we just had to go right out and drop a pebble between the 2 pieces of cement, just to test it.  I was quite disappointed to hear the 'ping' of that pebble hitting water and probably made it even more attractive to the kids because of all my warnings to stay away.  They thought the 'pings' were exciting!  It was a few years before we got that well filled in.   

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Because of my fear of wells, having 5 small children under 8 and the location of this well being about 10 feet from the house, this wasn't exactly welcome news.  We had purchased the farm when there was snow on the ground and did not get to walk over the land until spring, so we did not know that right behind the barn and quite close to the house, was an another open, dug well, wide enough for a man to stretch across full-length and still fall in.  No one warned us about either dug well, so, of course, I was not impressed.  We managed to get that first well filled in right away, only to find out a year later about the other dug well by the house.