Getting settled into the farm, and the new house

We've spent the past month trying to get settled in to life on the farm.  Much of that has involved furnishing the house and stuff.

A few things have happened on the farm lately.  A predator got 2 of our "house" chickens (the house chickens are the ones that stay in the coop near the house, see 1st pic below) - our awesome-looking Appenzeller Spitzhauben rooster, Fred, and one of our Americauna hens.  Not sure what it was that got them, but we haven't had any more issues in the past couple of weeks.  It's always a risk letting them out to free range, even more so than our other chickens since they don't have the big fence as a main line of defense, but it's a risk we're willing to take over the alternative of leaving them cooped up all the time - pun totally intended :)

We're also on baby watch for Mama Llama.  She's been getting very round lately, but we have no idea when she's due.  Could be tomorrow, could be in 2 months.  The gestation period for a llama is 11.5 months.

Jason finished the gate up front (whew!) and moved Stevie B and Lacey Lou up there.  They have enjoyed eating the new turf, but I have a feeling they also miss their friends.

Here's some pics from the past month:

Chickens scratching in the front yard

We got the "mudroom" done.  Don't mind the kitty coming out of the litterbox in the background...

Ezra standing on his stool making a waffle and showing off his awesome morning mohawk

CiCi and Pops came up and brought Ezra his new trundle bed.  Zelda enjoys it too.

We got a January dusting of snow

Zelda chillin on the stairs

Another pic of the snow dusting

Kitchen nook

Zelda ignoring Lou in the dining room

Zelda

Lou

Lou comes down to the main fence area to tag along while we feed the animals

Ezra playing with a big ole stick while Jason blows some leaves around

We got this awesome sign hung on the front gate

Fred and Darla - unfortunately, Fred was killed by a predator not many days after this pic was taken.  He was a cool roo :)

Lou immediately took a liking to our new couch

Ezra and the windmill

Neighbors Robin and her boy Ben came over to see the animals.  Ben loves farms, and he and Ezra enjoy playing together.

New bench for the master bathroom

Standing on a tall stool...

Got the swingset moved - Ezra was thrilled

Don't let Jason see this...

View of the swingset from our back deck

Mama Llama looking somewhat round.

One day's bounty of eggs

Brannon helped hang our new awesome "Whatever floats your goat" painting :)

Sunday Funday, I mean egg-cleaning day...

Wash the eggs and then put them on the island to dry before putting them in the cartons

We got 14 dozen plus an 18-pack plus a basket full of extras...  All in 2 weeks...

Zelda took a liking to our new bathroom bench

Our bed in the master - I like that it has drawers underneath

Rustic looking dresser

View of the swingset from the den - yes, we get a lot of swing requests from Ezra now that it is in plain sight from pretty much everywhere in the house.

View from the master bathroom window.  Hopefully one day, we'll have an orchard there.

Dining room - with awesome farm table courtesy of Mom and Dad

Different view looking toward the front door

Got the goat pics hung...  in the downstairs guest bathroom

And the llamas above the toilet lol

Sink area in the downstairs guest bathroom

View of the den, with a poor little sick Ezra on the couch...

View from the front door

View of the den from upstairs

Ezra's room

Guest bedroom has furniture now, but we still have some work to do on it.

Got some awesome tractor-seat swiveling barstools

Managing to junk up the laundry room...

Coolest spot in the house - the kegerator in the bonus room

Seating in the bonus room

TV in the bonus room, and Norman off to the right in his green cage in front of the window.  We should be able to move him outside soon, when the weather warms up some.

We're farmin' it for real now - well, we have moved to the farm

So we moved a few essentials to the new house and stayed here for the first time on Saturday, December 19 (that's right - this is the first blog from the new abode aka the farm).  The kitchen main appliances (fridge, stove, and dishwasher) had been delivered on Friday.  The fridge wasn't hooked up yet, so we couldn't use it, but we had the 3/4 size fridge up in the bonus room to put the essentials in (milk and beer, lol).

We realized quickly that we needed to get a lot of stuff for the new house sooner rather than later.  A few examples - curtains, curtain rods, bathroom rugs, shower curtains, shower curtain rods, blinds, - the list goes on and on.  So long that it spilled out onto 5 consecutive sticky notes...  Granted I did include a pool, driveway, orchard, and pinball machine in the mix...  Gotta dream big, right?

Back to the moving story -
I brought Zelda to the new house on Sunday, the day after we slept there for the first night.  She didn't handle the transition very well...  She stayed until Christmas Eve (Thursday), when we left to go to Albany to celebrate Christmas with the family.  When we got home on the 26th (Saturday), she was nowhere to be found.  I called and called for her for days, but she didn't surface.  It rained a lot on Monday or Tuesday, and I was so sad thinking that Zelda might be without shelter getting soaked.  On the 30th (Wednesday), I had gone to the old house to pick up a load of things to move and to do some laundry (still don't have a washer and dryer at the new house).  On the way home, a young cat was out in the road right inside the neighborhood gates.  It was the cutest black and white kitty - reminded me a little of Zelda.  I tried to stop to rescue the kitty, but there was a lot of traffic, so I drove down the street a bit and turned around to come back by.  This time, there weren't a lot of cars around and I stopped my car in a driveway and approached the cat.  It was really friendly, so I checked it out to see if it looked like it had an owner.  It was covered in fleas and had a tail that had been cut off and broken in 2 places, so at that point I decided it had to come home with me.  The kitty purred during the car ride.  We had to pick up Ezra at daycare on the way back to the new house, and she curled up on the back seat next to Ezra after we picked him up.  She had a new home it seemed.  We went to a New Years Eve party in Fairfield (our old neighborhood) on Thursday night and spent the night at the old house that night.  We got up the next morning and Jason took down the Christmas lights off the house while I packed up more boxes and stuff.  I was driving Jason's truck home after that and was 3/4 of a mile away from our driveway when I looked out to my left and saw Zelda!  And do you know, that cat went running for the hills when I stopped the car and approached her.  She was like, hell no!  She did not want to go back to the new house.  But I managed to grab her and bring her home with us.  That day, I went to the store and got some cat litter, and we got the litter box up and running.  So long story short....   We got Zelda back AND got a new kitty!  We ended up naming the new kitty Lou, after one of the characters in this show Heartland that we have been watching.  We also like the fact that Ezra says her name like "woo" - it's hilarious and adorable :)

On a sadder note, we lost 2 pet members of the family during the move.  Peetie the pig got overwhelmed over the situation of walking from the back yard (where she lived) to the trailer in the front yard.  Jason and I lassoed her during the process to be able to guide her to the trailer, but she freaked the EFF out.  I believe she ultimately had a heart attack caused by the surge in physical activity that she hadn't had in over 2 years.  The whole thing sucked.  Seriously.  Next, I moved Teddy (the other kitty) to the new house a day or two after moving Zelda, and he just immediately took off for the woods and we never saw him again.  We adopted him in 2006, so he's been a member of the family for almost 10 years.  Good ole Teddy Bear.  He was a good but talkative kitty...

Enough of this rambling...  Here are some pics from the last couple of months :)

Getting dark outside - gotta put the chickens up and go home...

They installed some of the granite countertops on the island.

Tiling the shower

Master bathroom

Llamas straight up chillin'

They poured the driveway!

The landscapers laid down grass seed (rye/fescue mix) and wheat straw

They laid concrete around the water pump

The landscapers put pinestraw around the trees in the front yard

View of the house from inside the fence

Ezra trying to pet Dolly Llama

Cheese!

They tiled the master tub

Downstairs guest bathroom

I think the faucet handles are awesome :)

The electrician installed the fan in the den

Farm sink!

Island granite finished and faucet installed

Railing on the stairs installed

Ezra is a master chicken feeder

Yep, as I said before...

Laundry room - shelving and faucet installed.  I really like the way it turned out

View out of our front door - overlooking the animals

Kitchen - coming together - microwave in place, we're in business :)

Fancy garage shelving.  Our favorite shelves in the house lol

KEGERATOR!!!!  WHAT'S UP!!!!!
Yes, it looks like a normal min-fridge, but that my friend is an awesome new kegerator!  There is a keg of Blue Moon sitting in our garage right now that will be making its way into that kegerator sometime tomorrow hopefully.

Steph came to visit and couldn't resist giving the baby goat, Carly, a big ole hug :)

Then Steph got us in a pic for our Christmas card

I think it turned out pretty freakin awesome!  Brutus is one handsome llama, I tell ya.

I've got to get my baby goat hugs in!

Jason posing with the coolest llama there ever was

Ezra climbing up high on some hay in the front building

They tiled the kitchen back splash

It turned out pretty nice

Grass is growing!!  Woo hoo!!

The demise of Peetie :(
We put her on the horse trailer and brought her to the farm to put her in her final resting place.

Jason temporarily buried her until the neighbors came over the next day with their bobcat (yeah, how cool is that!) and dug her a proper grave.  RIP Peetie.

Ezra checking out the master shower

Ezra stacking a block on Norman the tortoise

Not really sure how to caption this one...  lol...

Reminds me of Titanic, haha

We got a llama weather vane to put over the garage/bonus room - roofing guys installed it.  I think it's awesome!

First Christmastime in the new house.  Thanks to Jason, we did get a tree up.  Looks pretty Christmassy, albeit a little messy...

Meet Lou!

How awesome is she?!

Check out her poor mangled tail.  Then check out her beautiful face and markings :)  She's a really wonderful kitty.

First fire!  And you can see Ezra's train set and table he got from Santa.  We temporarily have it in the den since there's no other furniture to put there anyway at the moment.

Ezra hanging out on the floor with Lou watching

Nice fire and stuff :)

Ezra and Zelda chilling on pillows

Carly came over to visit and got to meet baby goat Carly :)

Jason and Carly hanging with all of the animals

Lattice up and grass growing - really looking like home now!

Gang o' chickens in the front yard - now that's my kind of house!  

Very crazy to think that one year ago almost to the day, we were applying for loans to purchase the additional 35 acres and build a house on it.  Now, we are moved in to a house on the farm that didn't exist a year ago and have water and electricity for the farm.  Everything is so much less complicated now.  If it hard freezes or doesn't rain for awhile, we have running water to be able to take to the chickens and put in the trough or buckets.  We can even heat the water to take out there if we feel like it!