Last day of the month

...and I have nothing to report :(

The walkout with Jack

So this is approximate the home site.

Neil is about at the front left corner of it.

Neil at front left corner, Jack at rear left corner

Jack is at the front right corner of the garage.

I don't know if you can see it but the upside down hammer Jack is walking away from would be the garage entrance.

view from front porch

facing out the front door

approximate view from living room window minus a truck

approx. view from office window

builder's sign

Its cold! I want to go home!

Walk out scheduled

We have more progress!  On Friday, we will be meeting with the builder to do what they call a walk out (and I keep wanting to call a stake out- sounds so much more elusive doesn't it) where we go to the property and mark with stakes where the house will sit.  Pictures to come with the stakes in place :)

Small, but big stuff happening

I just got off the phone with our bank dude, Tony, he has officially locked in our interest rate.  He says the goal is to have our loan closed by the end of the month.  All goes well that means the build will begin in December.  Fingers crossed! 

How it looks right now

So this is our 9.4 acre field as it looks today.  Nothing too exciting yet.  I decided to take this picture as I pulled in on my way to drop off compost from our kitchen and I thought this would be a good time to take a picture like this.  I'm really hoping in a few weeks I can show you a similar picture but with a scurry of excavators and workers trying to erect the framework of a house.  The tire treads you see now will be the driveway and we plan to make it 400 feet long for privacy and well, if you have this much space why not?  We go all the way back to the tree lines on either side and the houses in the very back.  If you looked to the left you'd see the Christmas tree we planted the first year we bought the land and just after that our nearest neighbor's house.  We have a little additional land on the other side of her house too. 

Speaking of that tree line, thought I'd show you my husband's latest project: Removal of extra, broken, diseased trees in the windbreak.  Boy, he took on the task.  This picture (below) is either a Bradford or Cleveland pear that was broken in a storm recently.  Fun huh?  Still lots to do.

Hoping to have more soon!

Slowly moving along, but we have progress!

Ok so now we have the appraisal back....its good!  They appraised the land and house at about 20k higher than the cost.  The only possible problem at this point is that the land itself appraised at 50k which is about 7k less than it did 2 years ago.  The upside is the appraiser made a note that we had made about 10k in land improvements so fingers crossed that those count toward our down payment.  It sounds like we might get started next month if the weather holds but I'm still not ready to declare it as a done deal.  More to come soon I hope!

Dehydrator giveaway

Anyone need a dehydrator?  Nourishing Days is doing a giveaway.

Raw

The new of raw milk and cheese raids just keep rolling in don't they?  This Grist article suggests the problem will get worse and not that that is any surprise to me but it still just makes my stomach ball up to hear about it.  So it brings me to a pretty final realization in my head that dairy is out of the realm of possibilities for us.  No herd shares, no underground, no nada! 

Quick funny mental image but my son has been singing "cow, cow, cow, moo!" as I'm typing this..not sure why but its super cute.

It makes me wonder though, if I say takes my cheese or any kind of dairy product say to a pitchin or a family get together....will I be breaking the law?  Say I make my bread with whey from the cheese I make, is my bread illegal (for sale that is)?

I'm not even sure if we will drink our milk raw.  There is an awful lot of hype about its "healing" properties and quite frankly I'm not so sure.  One producer from my FB page said they "healed" three chronic illnesses with their milk.  A baby with an ear infection, a three year old with a runny nose and a viral infection in an adult....now first off...why wasn't the baby drinking human milk?  Seems like a momma as crunchy as to server her baby raw milk would breastfeed....not buying it. 

Going off course here but anyone follow the supposed food gurus?  Mercola, Weil, Weston A. Price, heck even Dr. Oz jumps in there....who are you supposed to believe?  They all have some overlap and some contradictions to each other but in trying to follow any of their advice I find myself really confused over simple things like say canola oil- which I don't use much because most of it is GMO- but Mercola and Price say its rancid unhealthy oil and Weil and Oz tout its as very healthy. Butter, which I use a lot of, is praised by Price and maybe Mercola but for Weil and Oz its unhealthy saturated fat.  Meats are avoided for all but Price.  Soaked grains to remove phytic acid or unsoaked to help move out cholesterol?  See how confusing this can be?  Of course this comes back to raw milk as Mercola and Price sing raw milk praises.  Not sure about the other two but Oz would probably warn about how dangerous it is.

Thats all I have, sorry for my rambling on and on.  Its been that kind of week already!

its just about seed ordering time

Guess I should start planning next year's garden.  I think we will move it, shrink it and keep it simpler next year.  This year it was still too big even though I only used half the space Neil did from the year before but it was still too much to keep up.  I think I could probably use the larger garden next year but I'm hoping if I can do a better design job and really maximize the space and plants I'll have a better outcome.