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We have chickens!

Well. We did it.

We promised ourselves over and over that we wouldn’t get any farm animals until we were completely set up and ready for them. But…a few weeks ago a deal on a flock of 30 young laying hens came up unexpectedly that was just too good to pass up. So, we picked up the chickens but didn’t have a house or pen for them yet.

For now they are spending the nights in our stock trailer, while Jordan works on completing their permanent house.

Marian is absolutely thrilled to have chickens. Her big fun in life now is letting the chickens out in the morning, feeding them and collecting scraps for them, and locking them up in the evening and telling them ‘night -night’. Whenever we hear a chicken clucking outside or the rooster crowing, she has to repeat the noise with great enthusiasm!

We got two breeds of chickens – Barred Rocks and Buff Orpingtons, and a couple that are a mix thereof. I really like both of these breeds so I’m happy about that!

We’ve had quite a time hunting eggs, sometimes we have found big nests, or a few here and there, but overall the chickens are being very sneaky. When we have their house completed we are hoping they will lay there so we won’t have to hunt so much!

Jordan began on the chicken house as soon as we knew we were getting the chickens. Here he is digging holes for the posts.

Marian is quite fascinated with the whole process. We went out and watched the progress whenever possible.

Some sweet moments with my babies.

My heart is melting….

Ok – back to chicken house progress. Here are the posts in the ground, with a birds-eye view from our upstairs porch of the layout.

Floor joists in.

Jordan had a lot of bed orders to catch up on at this point, so one day he hired a friend from down the road to keep working on the framing.

Jordan finishing up the roof.

The lap siding begun. Oh – also, I forgot to mention that Jordan also had to fell trees and saw out the lumber fresh for the chicken house, as we were out of wood. (don’t I have a handy husband? I’m not a bit proud of him or anything…:)

More siding on. I got to help with this part as Jordan needed another pair of hands to hold the end of the boards steady while the other end was nailed.

Looking good!

Marian enjoyed exploring the new structure!

The flooring going in…

Marian loves the chicken door!

I think its looking so good! I can’t wait to see it finished.

The chickens are happily awaiting their new home – pecking and ranging all over the pastures around our house.

One happy girl!

Marian likes to spend time with the flock, just watching them and trying to get a chance to pet one. This picture of her and her baby doll sitting with the chickens cracks me up.

Hope to be back for an update soon with pictures of our newly finished chicken house!

The World’s Most Amazing Clothesline

A few weeks back Jordan made me this beautiful, sturdy clothesline. I was so excited to start using it! I’ve had little cords tied from porch post to porch post to dry clothes, so this is a colossal improvement in our laundry system.

The posts are from big cedar trees that Jordan logged and sawed last summer, set deep into the ground with concrete. It has six strands of wire – so plenty of room to hang out the entire laundry hamper!

Here it is in action. Notice the full sun?? So nice. My little porch clothesline was in shade almost all the day, so this is another wonderful improvement. I love how the sun fades away stains, and of course speeds up drying time.

This may seem like a simple thing – but it makes me really happy! Marian loves coming out to ‘help’ me hang clothes – she hands me clothespins and says ‘thank you!’ every time. (I suspect she thinks the pins are called ‘thank yous’!)

What things have been making you happy lately?

Bookshelves

Ever since we started planning our house back in 2012, when we were just engaged, the design for the sitting room included window seats and built in bookcases in two corners.

Because we are still finishing our house, we just haven’t gotten to start on the finishing touches yet, such as bookcases and window seats. However, since it had been two and a half years since we married and I moved up here to Tennessee with all of my beloved books boxed up, we decided it was time to unpack them at last!

We got two spacious bookshelves to house our books for now, courtesy of Craigslist. I love having the shelf space – and unpacking my books was like discovering old friends again! It’s been great to have so much reading material handy. (it’s also been great to give the books a home that were formerly stacked all over the living room!)

It might seem like a small thing, but these Craigslist shelves have been a big blessing, and I am so thankful to have them!

I had so much fun decorating the top of the shelf in the sitting room with some crockery, dried flowers, and some of my Blue Calico china.

This second set of shelves went into my sewing room. It’s wonderful having all my sewing reference and history books within reach from my sewing machine! It also provides a place for some of my bigger art paper and notebooks. The sewing room is much more organized now.

plenty of shelves = happy housewife. :)

Mommy’s Helper

Something I have been working on with Marian since she was…goodness – six months old…is being a cheerful worker. Work is a good thing! Definitely not something to constantly escape from, or to shoo children away from until they are ‘older’. While I want Marian’s childhood to be as full of as much fun and joy as she can hold, I also want her to take her responsibilities seriously from a young age, and be able to work cheerfully and efficiently. Since before she could crawl, she was sitting on the kitchen table in her little bumbo seat ‘helping’ me cook. When she could stand, she was right beside me in her little wagon or high chair to ‘help’ me wash dishes or stir up cornbread.

Once when she was crawling (but not walking yet) She was standing by the couch watching me change Alan’s diaper and I folded up the old diaper, handed it to her and asked her to take it to the trash for me. (I didn’t know what to expect as I had never asked her to do something like that, or showed her where the trash can was located) Marian looked at me with wide eyes for a minute, then she dropped on all fours and crawled over to the trash can, dragging the diaper along with her, then stood up and threw it away! Apparently she understood a lot more than I had given her credit for! After that incident I start looking for thing she could actually do for me – fetching little things, or throwing things in the trash, or toddling across the room to give Da-da something. She seems to relish being a ‘big helper’, and it sure keeps away boredom while I am having to do my housework. Keeping her busy along side me is much easier than trying to make her amuse herself ‘having fun’ with her toys.

Here she is helping me put up strawberries in freezer bags, just as busy as can be!

She is only 17 months old now, and already helps in quite a few little ways. I am hoping that by the time she is 5 or 7 or so she will be quite the competent little helper (for real – right now her ‘help’ takes much long than me just doing it myself – but she has to practice sometime!) I think little kids are capable of much more than they are allowed to do most of the time – I don’t want Marian to do anything unsafe or unsuitable for a child, but I am going to keep asking her to stretch and grow her abilities as she works with me in the real world, learning real skills, and not consign her to the world of playtime and cartoons until she is ‘old enough’ to actually help.

Now – does this work? Does this ‘method’ help children into being cheerful workers? I honestly don’t know – I’ve never done this before, so I suppose I won’t know what worked and what didn’t for about another 10 years….but, I certainly hope so! I trust that the Lord will bless the efforts dedicated to him, and show me how to train up my children.

(Sorry about the photo quality on these- Most were taken on my phone while I had soapy hands from washing dishes or something!)

Atlanta’s Antique Woodstove

This is my cook stove. It is an antique from about 1899, designed to burn wood or coal. It was make by ‘Atlanta Stoveworks’ in Atlanta, GA. I bought the stove for $350 when I was 15 years old, at an estate sale.

My Granny actually found it first – she was at the sale and called to say she had found ‘my’ stove – since my name was written right across the door! Once I saw it I just fell in love with it. It sat on our back porch for about seven years, we cooked on it occasionally, even did some canning one summer. I did dream of using it for everyday in my own home in the future. (of course I thought I would never be able to find a guy who would want to live old fashioned enough to have a wood cookstove in the house!) Well – I did find that guy – or he found me, or something. At any rate – I was actually going to be able to use my beloved little stove!

Before the wedding, when we were moving all of my belongings up from Texas, Jordan did some cleaning up on the body of the stove – it was covered in old rust, dirt, and thick paint (the wrong kind). He ground all of it off to make it useable. We used it in that condition, clean but bare, and sans warming oven for the first two years in our house.

I had been anxious to get it restored and looking ‘pretty’. It cooked just fine – but I think all you ladies will agree with me that its much better for morale too cook on something cute as well as utilitarian? Anyhow – this spring Jordan finished the restoration project, and I couldn’t be happier with it! He cleaned and brushed every part – and then took apart and painted everything with high-heat black satin paint.

The before pictures:

The original warming oven brackets had been broken and then patched at some point, so Jordan hand-forged some pretty new scrolls to take their place! The white enamel doors on the warming shelf had gotten damaged as well. We may some day replace it with new enamel – but for now we decided to just paint them with white gloss, which turned out looking great.

Jordan painted everything but the stove top. This he polished with stove black. We will have to re-black it from time to time.

And – the finished piece! I’m so, so happy to finally have my little stove in my kitchen as I’ve been envisioning it for so long!

Don’t those scrolls look nice?

I’ve been using my handy warming oven to make yogurt. It makes a great place for bread to rise, too!

I feel quite fancy cooking on such a pretty piece!

I’m so proud of Jordan for doing such a beautiful job.

Homestead Progress

Well folks, it’s time for an (EXTREMELY overdue) update. :) We are slowly making some visible progress around the homestead. Here are a few pictures showing some of the things we’ve had going this spring.

The next three photos show the area of our yard that has been covered in leftover lumber, wood scraps, and metal roofing (originally used to cover the stacks of lumber) since the initial construction of the house. This has been what Jordan calls a “colossal mess” for the two years we’ve been married. Now the mess is cleaned up, and the area is closer to ready for it’s use as yard and gardens. Jordan’s brother Jeremiah was hired to do much of the work of cleanup, while Jordan worked on other pressing projects.

The lumber was sorted, and some moved and re-stacked, some given to friends, and the culls and scraps cut and split into firewood for our little cookstove. The “cooking wood” section of the woodshed is full to overflowing.

Here’s another project we’ve had going: our red raspberry patch. This patch was originally planted nearly ten years ago by Jordan’s family, and after they moved because of a house fire, became neglected. Our house now stands just a few feet from these raspberry plants. With help from another part-time hand, and Atlanta’s brother Stockton, we cleaned the weeds out from between the plants, and transplanted the many young plants that had sprouted in the past few years. Some of these plants went to start a new berry patch at Jordan’s parents house, and some were given to friends, and all the rest were used to fill out these two rows. The patch now has around 60 plants, at a spacing of about 18″ between plants. The patch is mulched heavily with wood chips about 8″ deep. The next step is to build trellises for the raspberry canes to climb on. We don’t expect the plants to bear fruit this year, but hopefully they will next year!

That’s all for now, but we have lots more to show y’all real soon, including things like porch railings, splitting fence rails, vintage tractor restoration work, and more!

Stay tuned, and God bless.

Spring Snapshots

Yesterday was the most beautiful spring day you could ask for! Marian, Alan, and I spent a good deal of the afternoon outside, enjoying the fresh air and new greenery springing up everywhere. Alan rode happily in my new Baby K’tan wrap, while Marian observed everything from her stroller as we explored. (her favorite thing) I snapped a few pictures as we went along to document our afternoon adventures…

The sky was very beautiful with thunderstorms brewing, but the sun still brightly shining.

First we set off into the woods behind the house to take a peek at some of our favorite spring flowers –

Violets! These little pretties are everywhere this year. I think they may be my very most favorite woods flower – but it’s very hard to decide!

Wild irises. The Tennessee state flower.

…and bluebells! We always look forward to the patch of bluebells being in bloom.

After our visit with the flowers, we strolled back towards the house to say hi to ‘da-da’. He was busy cutting down a firewood tree by the creek.

Marian crawled around for a while and played with her cat (named Violet – she just had five kittens in Jordan’s toolbox).

Marian tried to convince da-da to take her over to pet the cow. Her mission when she is outside is to greet as many animals as possible.

Instead we went to the creek. One of Marian’s happy things to do is throw rocks in the creek. She loves seeing the splashes.

By the time we headed back for the house, both babies were ready for a nap!

We had a lovely afternoon, indeed. It’s amazing how spring happens every year, but each time it seems new and wondrous all over again. It’s especially fun sharing it with Marian who probably doesn’t remember much about last spring!

Amish Auction

On Saturday, April 4th, Atlanta and I (along with Atlanta’s Mom and two youngest siblings) attended the “31st Annual Scottsville, Ky Horse-drawn Machinery Consignment Auction”. We left the house at 4 o’clock in the morning so we could get there ahead of most of the crowd, and peruse the goods before the auction started at 9 o’clock. We arrived just before cars started really filling up the Parking areas.

I had been to this auction a few times before, and this was the second year for Atlanta and I to attend together.
It is a large event, drawing quite the crowd, including locals as well as folks from many surrounding states.

Although it was a beautiful, sunny day, the auction grounds were quickly churned into soupy, sticky mud, as the ground was wet from heavy rain the day before.

There is a lot of horse-drawn machinery as the name of the auction indicates, but there’s also tons of furniture, horse tack, tools, and antiques of all descriptions, goats, poultry, and endless miscellany. We were there mainly for tools and home furnishings.

This is our friend Malcolm- we met him at this auction exactly a year ago, and have kept up since. It was great to hang out, Malcolm!

Atlanta bought a few household items – a stoneware jug, a crock, two cast iron skillets, and an oil lamp.

I was able to pick up this handful of tools:

A blacksmith’s vise, known as a “leg” or “post” vise, because of the long stabilizing leg which sits on a block or on the floor. This is a fairly large post vise, with jaws that are 5.5 inches wide. I was curious about it’s weight, so I put it on a scale: 75 pounds! I will clean this vise up and make any necessary repairs.

A boring machine, used for drilling holes in wooden beams for timberframe construction. I hope to be able to clean this machine up and put it to immediate use in the construction of our porch railings. It will eventually need all the wooden parts replaced.

Three axe heads. One Ward’s brand double bit, one Plumb brand double bit, and one little shingle hatchet by the Keystone Mfg. Co. These will be cleaned, sharpened, and re-hafted.

A nice lady standing next to me bought an old wooden tool box (that I didn’t much care for) for $20. She didn’t want the contents, so I bought them from her for $10. Quite a handful of nice wood-boring bits for my hand braces, with a few odds and ends.

Three “hardy” tools. These fit in the square “hardy hole” that most blacksmiths’ anvils have, and are used for forming and shaping metal. Most hardy tools like these that are made and used by modern blacksmiths are welded together with modern welding equipment. These were forged by hand. Unfortunately, they don’t fit the hardy hole on my anvil, as they were made for a larger anvil than mine. I will probably modify them to fit, or try to trade them for some that will fit.

…and one mystery tool. Purported to be a cooper’s (a “cooper” is someone who makes barrels) tool, it is entirely hand forged out of wrought iron. If someone knows what exactly this was used for, please let me know.

Here are all the tools together:

I’m pretty happy with my finds, and I’m looking forward to giving the TLC required to restore them to the useful, quality tools that they were once.

Our 2nd Anniversary

Yesterday marked our 2nd wedding anniversary. We are so blessed – the only thing we have to complain of is time is flying by too fast!

2 years and 2 kids later…what an adventure!

Click here to see pictures of our wedding day.

Our son – Alan Jordan

Early in the morning on March 5th we welcomed our new baby boy –

Alan Jordan Goodwin

He came 9 days before his due date, so let me back up a little bit to tell the story of his birth…

On March 1st I had a checkup with my midwife.

This is Marian ‘helping’ with the check up. She was very interested in everything, and enjoyed hearing the baby’s heartbeat. For many weeks I had been telling her about the baby inside me, and she would pat my bump and say ‘baby’ with much excitement, especially when I showed her pictures of what newborn babies looked like. (I don’t know how much she really knew or realized, but I tried to let her know about her new sibling as best I could!)

On March 4th I had a very busy day – we were having company supper that night, and I also had to go into town with Jordan’s mom to pick up our monthly Azure Standard order (a natural food co-op) and run some errands. By that evening I was pretty exhausted. The next day I decided to take it a bit easier.

So, that morning I organized the pantry and put up our co-op groceries, gave Marian a bath, climbed the ladder into the attic to pull out some baby items in preparation for the upcoming birth, changed the sheets on our bed, cleaned cobwebs off the ceiling, sorted through a bunch of clothes to take to the thrift store, and got several of our miniature beds ready to ship…

Looking back I’m not real sure how I thought doing all that in one morning was ‘taking it easy’!! (apparently the nesting instinct must have been setting in strong!) Meanwhile it had been raining hard most of the night and day so far, and our creek was flooded and up pretty high. We have to cross this creek to get to the highway, so when it floods it means we are pretty much stuck at home! When we woke up that morning and saw we wouldn’t be able to cross, I was joking with Jordan that if the baby came early he just might have to deliver it. (little did we know how close of a call we would have!)

Early afternoon I thought I might have lost my mucous plug, but wasn’t sure. Just to be on the safe side I decided to sit down and rest until evening. Since the creek was a up still I was a little bit nervous. As the evening progressed I started having what turned out to be minor contractions, but they were mild enough I wasn’t sure they were contractions, or just me tired from doing too much in that past few days.

As we got ready to go to bed, they were getting stronger, but once we laid down things seemed to calm down a lot, so we both tried to get some sleep. I never could sleep, and the contractions were getting pretty hard – so I finally realized this might be the real thing, and woke up Jordan and said we had better call the midwife. We were both pretty scared at the prospect of having the baby without help. Jordan got dressed and went outside (where the rain had turned to bitter cold wind and sleet) to look at the creek, thinking perhaps he could fell a tree over the creek creating a temporary bridge to at least get the midwife across.

While he was gone I called my Mom and talked to her about 20 minutes. During this time my contractions were hard enough I couldn’t talk through them and about 5-6 minutes apart. Finally, looking out the upstairs window, I saw tractor lights coming through the dark! The creek had gone down enough that they were able to safely drive the tractor across – praise the Lord! Many people were praying for us that night.

Jordan was able to get both the midwife and his mother across the creek. The roads were so icy that the midwife almost didn’t get there! After they got to the house it was about an hour and a half of pretty intense labor until we got to meet our baby! Total labor was three and a half hours, and he arrived at 3:39am. Everything happened so fast and so much earlier than we expected, that we were basically in shock after the fact – but very happy!

Our sweet baby boy!

Alan weighed 7lbs 10oz and was 19.5″ long.

Marian was very brave through the whole birth, and didn’t seem very worried at all. She was very interested in the new arrival and kept pointing to him and saying ‘bay-ee’ which is how she says ‘baby’.