Days of Bounty -- Summer Pictorial

It's high summer here in the Willamette Valley, and on our little homestead it's officially The Summer of Let's Just Buy It Now Since The House/Land Needs It. This will, inevitably, be followed by The Winter of Regret and Frugality. 

I'm not sure why we tend to hemorrhage money after, literally, making one of the biggest purchases of our lives, but it always seems to happen when we buy a home, and not just to us -- to everyone I know. (If it doesn't happen to you please just keep your smug mouth shut at this point so as not to humiliate the rest of us with your wise ways.)

Read on to see some of what we've been up to!

I'm so excited that we have wild chamomile growing on the property. I'm harvesting and storing seeds (dessicant is a great way to keep seeds dry when storing) to encourage them to grow in some more planned places next year!

A bounty of cucumbers, but I miss my Paso Robles apron farm sink. What's the saying, "you don't know what you got 'till it's gone?" Yup.

What girls don't love a nice salad for lunch?

Pumpkin plants are massive, actual pumpkins not so much (yet).

I have more than enough cucumber to keep us in dill relish for the next year.

Big Ag built this pretty garden gate between the vegetables and the henhouse. I'm still figuring out what I want to hang on it.

Soon this little, un-waterproof chicken house will become a storage shed and a larger, sturdier coop will go in its place. The wood on the ground is the form for the concrete of the big henhouse. Chickens do need lots of indoor space in places where it rains a lot, so this is really needed.

This is the old property owner's dog house, which was sitting on the small slab of concrete the little coop is currently sitting on. I'm going to re-purpose it by adding doors and turning it into some kind of storage...chicken food, cedar shavings, skulls of my enemies, etc.  (kidding on that last one, honest.)

Sunny days mean solar cooking! This is a mushroom bread pudding I made this afternoon.

All the little things

It's been a year of big things but a summer of little things. Little things are, after all, what ultimately makes the world go 'round, whether for good or bad. A magical day is usually comprised of a bunch of good little things. The Roman Empire fell because of a series of bad ones.

Around the homestead we are finally in the swing of growing, picking, and prettying up outside, and touching up, refining, and replacing inside. I'm in the process of painting all the trim upstairs white, which means a little bit of painting, every day. And I've also been refinishing the oak trim downstairs, removing old water damage on the sills, and re-sealing with stain and polyurethane clear coat. Every day there is some little thing inside this house that's improved upon. Or outside. And that feels good. Because even if it takes 1,000 little improvements, once they're all done it will add up to the house looking great -- one big win for us. 

I don't know about you, but I actually enjoy a series of little tasks so much more than one large one. If I can spend my days doing 11 completely different things -- outside for this, inside for that, I'm generally pretty happy. In high school, I was a sprinter, never having been any good at distances. Perhaps it's the same principle. Put forth a little burst of energy for one thing, rest, then move on to the next thing. 

Here's a little of what we've been up to around here:

There's always laundry, but no rain means drying outside.

pumpkin dog biscuits

 

Cukes, zukes and tomatoes coming along nicely. Big Ag did a fantastic job on these raised beds, and the hay bales in the back will be planted soon, too!

Goodbye oak trim. Hello crisp white paint. Wall painting next!

Speaking of painting....exterior house painting coming in September!

A country bouquet to brighten up the house.

Renting vs. Owning

So what are your feelings on the rent-versus-own dilemma? With home prices steeply rising before leveling off at the end of last summer, as well as higher interest rates, many people who could own are now opting to just rent instead, indefinitely. 

Home ownership does, after all, come with a lot of surprise costs (you often don't realize something like a stove or an HVAC system is failing until it falls over dead). There's also a lot of regular maintenance, which coincidentally, did not get done on this current house and which allowed us to knock thousands off the asking price, meaning you can pay for it now, or pay for it later -- your choice.  But you will pay. 

Renting, on the other hand, provides a lot of freedom from responsibility but very little security; you can be asked to vacate your home in 30 days by your landlord, for a variety of very legal and valid reasons which have nothing whatsoever with the fact that you've been a great tenant. 

Living in and renting a company house for a year, we debated renting versus owning a lot. I was actually pretty happy renting since we had room for the chickens and raised beds and the freedom to do pretty much whatever we wanted with the place, but Big Ag hated renting. He wanted a place he could own outright. So he never really settled in there, despite having his dream barn/shop. What I didn't realize is that I hadn't really settled in, either. 

I know this because now that we're homeowners again, things feel completely different. I can't tell you why, but it just feels more like home. The things you laugh at in your rental, like outdated fixtures, you check the budget on in your owned home to see if you can afford to change them. It's like dating versus marriage. There are marriage deal-breakers that we all probably think are amusing and interesting in someone we're having coffee with, like having a pet python or finding out they painted all their bedroom walls black. But is that person marriage material? Oh hell no.

What's funny for me is the amount of old household habits that have come back now that we're in our own place again. I just made a batch of soap last week, we have two new raised beds installed, all ready to go for vegetables this summer, and I planted one of the raised beds over the leach field with sunflowers, hollyhocks, gladiolas, peonies, and zinnias. I've also been working on the front yard landscaping, just adding a few plants I miss from California and which also grow great here in Oregon, like rosemary, English lavender,  and Russian sage.

I had four raised beds in the rental that I never used, and plenty of chances to make soap if I'd wanted to. So why didn't I? Probably because of some subconscious feeling that I just didn't want to do things that would make me feel committed to settling in there. Coffee was fine. Marriage was out of the question.  

Perhaps it really does matter whose name is on the title deed. There may be a deeper level of settling into a place that only comes when you know it's yours -- when no one can ask you politely (or otherwise) to leave. 

And I'm sure "settling in" means different things to different people, but settling in is definitely what we do when we're home. 

And we are home.

Slow but steady progress

We knew when we bought this house that our road to making it something we loved was going to be a long one. I don't think there was a single thing we gazed upon our first couple of weeks here that we did not want to change -- everything from ceiling paint to walls to trim to carpet to a remodeled kitchen, to exterior colors. That's a daunting feeling, which is a fancy way of saying sometimes it made me feel hopeless. But the key to overcoming that is action, and so every day we chip away a little bit at the chore list and try and take time to enjoy the progress. I will have to start taking more "before" pictures so the real impact of the "before and after" transformations can be seen. 

Some things will have to wait until we have the financial resources to make them happen, like the kitchen expansion/remodel, and exterior painting. But a coat of interior paint costs very little in comparison to either of those things, so I've been focusing my energies on that, as well as adding a bit to the landscaping (which was already about 90 percent complete and done well when we moved in, amen and hallelujah to that) and making the front porch a bit more welcoming. Our totally-out-of-place-in-a-farmhouse vaulted entryway needed something added to it, too. It's amazing what some accessorizing can do for a room, and I don't think there's a single room in our house (including ceilings) I will not be visiting with a paintbrush and/or some tchotchkes very soon. 

Come on up and sit down, even though heaven knows I'd love to get rid of this whole blue motif and go with a nice warm gray. Patience.

Coming soon....a new farmhouse chandelier. Be gone, brass monstrosity from 1996! In the meantime, enjoy some colored fish bottles and random farm decor.

I love clean, bright trim to a point of being neurotic about it. I literally re-paint baseboards once a year, so this freshly painted window trim is thrilling me. Help.

I also decided that the oak trim on the doors, windows and closets has to go, starting with the bedrooms on the second floor.  I've only done one window so far, but the difference is astonishing. 

One other funny side note is that there were some areas of the house which just weren't working. Namely, the entryway which runs directly into the stairs. Upon doing some research, I learned that this is actually terrible in terms of the feng shui of the house, or energy flow. I moved a painting, added some inviting candles, plus a nice round wine barrel and lamp to help the "energy" flow into the rest of the downstairs rooms, drawing focus away from the front stairs. I think it worked. I'm not big into the fortune-telling aspects of feng shui, but I do believe in having good flow from room to room, and some feng shui remedies address just that. So sign me up. I'm a believer.

Round shapes are supposed to invite energy flow in small, boxy spaces like this one, according to what I call Feng Shui and what Big Ag refers to as "Furniture Astrology." 

In unrelated news, we also visited the local iris gardens and I bought about 10 bulbs to put into the ground this fall, in an assortment of gorgeous colors.

For every problem, there is a solution

The solution to a smoke alarm that keeps going off intermittently, even when it's been turned off and removed from the ceiling but has a sealed battery (and a mind of its own)?

About five very satisfying whacks with a hammer. 

For every problem there is a solution.

Sounds of civilization

New chicken coop. It will be painted and pretty-ed up once we get more sun.

After what seems like a marathon move, I'm pleased to report that everything we own is finally in one place, our chickens are safe and dry in a REAL chicken house once again, and we have both TV and internet service.  These seem to be the foundations of civilization as we know it (in our household, anyway) and so it feels like once again all is well in the kingdom....the kingdom of unpacked boxes, ladders and paint cans, of course.

There are still more projects than I can count. But I did finish the yellow library walls before the furniture that's too heavy to easily lift got moved in!

I'm trying to pace myself on everything else, and enjoy the spring and the garden. There are three raised beds built over the septic drain field, which will now be used for flowers and ornamentals -- not food, ever. Big Ag will be building some other large beds not on the drain field and that is where we'll grow our food. Putting those three original beds over the leach field is a puzzler, as are a few other things, which I'm sure I'll be sharing in the coming days. I guess you never know what the previous owners were or were not thinking when they did stuff (I know they grew food there because there were still tomato cages in place).

Just say no to food grown over the septic system.

The best thing about living where we do now is that while we have two acres, we have all the sights and sounds of a neighborhood once again. I always felt very isolated in the vineyard. Sure, I loved the natural beauty that was present everywhere and yes, even the silence, but there was not a familiar face to be encountered anywhere except for Prince Albert, the resident and lone turkey on the property. Living on 200 acres is one of those things you think sounds great until you actually experience it. I discovered I really missed seeing other people -- just folks walking by, working on their yards, or driving past.

I miss Prince Albert, the vineyard's resident turkey.

I think that's because ultimately we are social creatures, even if we don't want our neighbors too close. I suppose there are a few Henry David Thoreau types who really could live in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no sight or sound of other people. But even he had his mom stop by to help with laundry and make dinner for him sometimes.

In this neighborhood, we have a lot of walkers, kids coming up the street on their way home from the school bus drop-off, and the occasional car, although since we live on a dead-end road the traffic is minimal. There's people out mowing their grass anytime it's not raining. You can hear the highway in the background, the trains running through the nearby town of Turner each morning, and also assorted domestic livestock noises from horses, roosters and sheep. But we're also less than 10 minutes from true civilization in Salem, where there is shopping, healthcare, and entertainment. The nicest part is, when we're done with the city, we can leave it and come home here to where there's plenty of space... but not too much. I have to be honest, I think we're in the Goldilocks Zone of property zoning and size. Lucky us. 

Saying yes to color

Spring is in full swing in this part of Oregon, and the fields, highway median strips and yards are all filled with gorgeous color -- daffodils, azaleas, cherry and flowering pear blossoms, all doing their part to make the local area a more vibrant, enchanting place.

My own contribution to the world of color came when I swapped out a boring beige study for a buttery yellow one. As someone who (years ago, in my minimalist phase) would have argued that Navaho White is, indeed, a dramatic color, going for this splash of yellow is true progress. This room gets predominantly northern exposure, so it does not get much direct light in winter. Plus it will host our large library units, which are dark wood. So I thought a definite shade of actual color would do well alongside all that wood and wintery exposure.

When using color on walls, the three stages of progress are excitement, fear, and then either satisfaction or horror. Luckily for me, Stage Three was satisfaction, although I went through a good half hour of abject terror as I was cutting in with my paint brush, mainly because it was such a different color than I'm used to using.

But I figure, this is a farmhouse, and so some warm farm-like colors are a good thing. In small doses -- most of the house will stay painted in shades of neutral. But a creating a nice warm, country feel in a library seems like it encourages reading and relaxing. Or, as we say in the country, readin' and relaxin'.

The other nice thing is that I see myself bucking that recent trend of gray everything. Although gray is one of the colors I'm considering for the exterior, so I can't sit on too high a horse. Either way, I'm happy with how this room turned out.

Fear...

Feeling slightly hopeful...

And in love with the look!