Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Farm Update: The Last Improvements of 2012

I woke up this morning so thankful for another day. I was snuggling up with my lovely Leah in bed, my husband still sleeping, and I could hear my other two munchkins tossing and turning in their beds. The sun's gentle morning rays were beckoning my little loves to start the day and rub off the sleeps of the night.

Leah's precious little face warms my soul and the smell of her is intoxicating. I am so thankful that the Lord has let me be her mama.

Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked. Lovely babes have that effect.

Today is the beginning of the year 2013 and yet I can't help but reflect on 2012. It was a wonderful year and many things were accomplished and started. With living a farm life, I believe this is going to be the norm. Projects get finished and then new ones begin. A farm is always changing, growing, and going through cycles.  It is great fun to always have something to work on, but can be tiring too. You know?

When we first started to remodel our house, we thought we were going to keep the kitchen 'as is' and remodel it later. After starting to remove the counter tops (cause they were falling apart), we realized the whole kitchen was rotten. Everything. I was a little scared, I won't lie. We didn't have much money and surely couldn't afford a whole new kitchen. But God, being as awesome as He always is, provided us with a kitchen far beyond what we expected and it came in the form of my dad. He was very generous with his time and built us our kitchen. It's beautiful. If you want to see before and after pics go HERE. All this to say, there were a few things that remained unfinished. Until today that is.

Here we go.






I needed to add my dad in this post. After all, he worked so hard!


Better isn't it? My dad is such a fantastic carpenter. He finished up some other trim too, but this is the most noticeable.



And now, onto the next project.



What is this you say? In the matter of one day, we went from installing a simple filter on the main water line that went into our house, to replacing the WHOLE water line that runs from the well to our house. Turns out the pipe was super fragile due to it's age. When Seth tried to attach the filter to the water line, the pipe broke. Once he fixed that one, the next one broke and so on. It's a blessing to have it done, but it was a long and exhausting day. Glad we had an excavator on hand.

Here's the final project of 2012. Hopefully this will be completed in 2013.

We live in a two bedroom house. Needless to say, we'd like it to be a tad larger. So to further that cause, we've begun an addition on the house.



Seth got an awesome deal on some old redwood from a lumber yard. This is truly beautiful stuff. And if you ask me, the older the better. I like rustic, a lot.



Instead of doing drywall, we wanted to do cedar. And lo and behold, Seth found some that was too good to pass up. And by too good to pass up, I mean on sale. Perfect.



I have a game in mind and I'll start. I spy with my little eye Seth nailing on boards. Can you find him?

And here it is, finished. What do ya think? 







Isn't it beautiful? I feel so blessed. This is the beginning of the addition and yet I feel so blessed to have it as is. Thankful to be able to do this to our place.



View from the back. If you would like to see what it previously looked like watch THIS video till the end and you'll see it in it's ugly glory.

We still have a lot to do on the house. The siding needs to be completely redone. We are wanting to hold off on that project until we've completed our additions. You read it right...additions. It will probably take a few years to do it all, so the siding will have to remain. Old and ugly. And I'll remain continually thankful for the abundance of blessings that I don't deserve and yet thankfully receive.

I thought I'd leave you with my favorite view from our farm. The western Trinity mountains. I could stare at them for hours. 



I'd love to know what you have done in 2012 and have planned in 2013. I'm thinking about writing out a list of goals I have for the farm. Interested?

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful farm Noel. I found your blog on Kendra's FarmHop Mondays. While I don't have any sort of a farm (but its a huge growing hearts desire),it is very nice to see a young family in CALIFORNIA (sorry for the caps, real estate prices are through the roof in the central coast) farming. So exciting and inspirational. You seem like an awesome mom and Christian. Your blog has blessed my life with encouragement today.
    -Kate (REAL foodie and mom to 5)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ah, thanks Kate! Your comment has encouraged me as well and thanks for taking the time to drop a note (so to speak). If you don't mind my asking...do you life in CA? Almost all farm blogs I read are on the east coast, I haven't found one close by and it's such a bummer! I hope you 'see' you around again! :)

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