We put guests to work!

Matthew's parents, Jane and Richard, came for another visit two weekends ago on their way down to Florida.  They brought us some beautiful hand-made furniture and also helped us with a few projects around the house.


Matthew and Richard cut out a doorway and installed a new door in the barn.  This will eventually be my tack and feed room.  The door opens into the grooming stall part of the horses' shed.

















Jane and I worked on clearing some of the mess that the loggers left.  We started with all of the brush on the driveway.

















After burning all of the brush, we planted three fruit trees - a pomegranate, a plum, and a peach. (they are hard to see in the photo, but they are there!)
















The next day we all worked on clearing the trees and brush from the garden area.  Unfortunately, there was a burning ban and we broke the chainsaw so we didn't get quite as far on this project as we would have liked.  We did, however, end up clearing about half of the garden space.


The before picture of the garden:

















During cleanup:

















Two days later I was able to burn all four brush piles but we still have a long ways to go!
















Here's the fish tank stand and canopy that Richard made for me.  I can't wait to set it up!  (unfortunately, I need to completely re-do the kitchen wall behind it before moving the fish tank...)

















We have already filled up both of the book shelves that Richard made for the "nook" in our bedroom.

















And our new headboard looks great with our new matching touch lamps and comforter. 

Solo TN Trip

Two weeks ago I took my horses to TN for a week to visit with my parents at their cabin.  It was quite an adventure as my truck broke down both directions.  On the way there, it overheated (in the mountains of course!) and started smoking.  I managed to limp it along for the last 100 miles by stopping every 30 miles or so and pouring in more coolant.  I was able to take it to a shop during my visit and they installed a new radiator.  My mom and I drove the Envoy to Nashville to pick up my dad at the airport and everything ran fine.  On the way home, however, it all of a sudden started running really rough and I lost a lot of the engine power.  The check engine light came on and I stopped at an autozone.  There were three different codes but none of them were life threatening at the moment so I once again limped it home (this time for about 300 miles) by going slow and not pushing it up the hills.  At least we eventually made it home safe!  Looks like we will be buying a new truck for Christmas...

 

My parents and I did have fun while I was there (although my horses managed to escape from their pen twice) and put a lot of miles on the horses.  Here are a few photos from our rides.

 

 

My mom also sent me home with an early Christmas gift, lots of home-grown, home-canned goodies!

More Logging

Here are a few more photos and some videos from the logging operations.  They finished up and took all of the equipment away about two weeks ago. 

 

 

Here is one of the four truckloads of trees they removed:

 

 

Before and after photos of the horse's pen and shed:

 

 

Before and after photos of the driveway.  This is where I plan to plant fruit trees.

 

A view from standing out in the "pastures" and looking back at the house:

 

And the mess they left for us to clean up:

 

 

Here is a video of stripping the branches off the trees and preparing them for the truck.

 

 

And a video of the cutting machine in action.

 

It took me about 6 hours to put the yard back together after all of the heavy equipment.  Too bad the grass won't be growing much until spring!

Country Living

Matthew and I have been reminded many times over the last few weeks that we really live out in the country now.  Last Friday morning, while Matthew was taking his Professional Engineer exam, I discovered that we no longer had any water.  After a lengthy cell phone discussion with my dad (including sending photos via text),  we couldn't figure out what was wrong with the well or pump and decided that I needed to call in a repair man.  I ended up not going to work and waiting until 6 o'clock at night before the repair guys finally showed up!  It turned out to be a bad wire and a half hour later (and lots of $$) they had us up and running.  Matthew buried the new wire the next day and everything has worked alright since.

 

Since we no longer have cable and refuse to pay for satellite service, we have been trying to tune in to the local tv channels.  A purchased antenna from Best Buy allowed us to get a few channels (sometimes) but Matthew decided to try building a new antenna (plans found online) to put in the attic. This new antenna combined with the old one seems to work pretty well.

 

Two weeks ago we finally stopped by a neighbor's house to introduce ourselves and find out about the loggers that had cleared their land.  They gave us the guy's phone number and half an hour later he was walking around our property figuring out where to put his equipment.  It took another week for him to actually move the equipment to our house (from another neighbor's) and more than a week to do the logging.  Everything is quite a mess and it will be a while before we can get it cleaned up.  We ended up clearing about 2.5 acres for horse pasture, fruit trees, and my garden.  Here are some photos from the work:

 

In case you have never been up close to logging equipment, it is huge!  Here Matthew stands next to some of it.

 

Day one of logging.  They ended up getting about four truck loads of trees total.

 

 

Here the cutting machine is taking the trees from around the horses' shed.