Welcome!

Well now that we're back from vacation, and I promised everyone I'd keep them up to date, I guess I should get started :)  Please note that you can click on any photo in this blog to make it bigger!

A little bit of background:

We purchased Lone Pine Farm in July 2012.  It is 40 acres, and has a log house and numerous other buildings already on it.  Most are in great condition (such as the barn, the longhouse, and the shop), but some need some work (such as the pole shed, the chicken coops, and the root cellar).  There is a small garden started by the previous occupants, and some strawberries and tomatoes in the greenhouse.  There is also a few raspberry bushes and some rhubarb.  We also acquired a quad with a brusher and a snow blade with the purchase, and this will be essential for mowing in the summer and clearing snow in the winter.

Our 40 acres.

The homesite, with all the buildings labelled.

The is the back of the house, it faces south.  You can see the garden on the left.

This is our barn just the other day.

Our vision:

We hope to become a little more self-sufficient each year.  This will include growing some of our own food (starting with veggies and chickens for eggs).  In the future, I'd like to install a solar electricity system.

Our projects:

Thus far, we have completed a few small projects.  These include changing the showerhead to one with a hose (as Zim will need many baths!); screening over the holes in the ceiling/walls to prevent bats from entering the house; hanging a clothesline in the barn; and setting up my sewing room in the longhouse.

We are in the middle of a few projects, including: creating a swale or ditch under the deck (it's been dug, we just need to decide if we will lay weeping tile or not, then fill it with drain rock); and excavating the crawlspace under the house (we need 2-3 feet of clearance in order to lay a vapour barrier under the house to stop the mould, and currently there is as little as 10" of clearance under the majority of the house.  At the moment, we have excavated a 6'X6' square under the kitchen, after three hours of work with three people.  As this job is best done with three, and there is only two of us, future work shall be *ahem* interesting).

We have a few projects planned for the near future as well: changing the hot water tank (as the current one is 24 years old and does not have the required temperature-pressure relief (TPR) valve); excluding the bats living in the roof (this will involve building some bat houses as well); sealing the crawlspace; cleaning/fixing the chicken coop; and cleaning/fixing the root cellar.

So, welcome!  We will  be updating this blog when we can; I am cautiously hoping to be able to post once a week.