J & J’s Farm-ily

As I mentioned, Mr. C and I bought a house on the lake.

It’s not a super-fancy place, but it’s OURS and I want it to have that ‘vacation/cottagey’ feel to it.

That being said, the colors that are all throughout the house are BLAH.

And trying to find help on how to replace the Manufactured House stuff is NOWHERE to be found.

The gypsum board (or whatever it is) is covered in this:

(It’s got a ‘distressed’ look, it’s not dirty.)  

Red. And Green. And it’ll only go with the Christmas decorations about a month out of the year. Not good.

Then, in the spirit of red and green, I give you the wall panelling type stuff. (Does anyone know what this is called? It’s a border thats about waist-high, but it’s completely removable by removing nails- or is it staples?)

The countertops aren’t bad, but there’s more GREEN:

The cabinets are the brown color you see above.

So far the only thing I’ve done is get a couple of cute Sunflower kitchen linens from Kmart.

What I’d like to do is take out the wall-panelling type material and replace it with a light-blue material (I think blue because it’s a cottage type color- and water- and we’re on a lake!). The kitchen and living room are adjoining, so it would go all the way around both.

The kitchen? I’d love to paint it a bright, cheerful color… like yellow. (Or is yellow a bad kitchen color?) Then maybe throw a splash of color using striped kitchen blinds.

But then the question comes up as to if the yellow paint would cover the gypsum board (or WHATEVER it is) correctly, or if it’s too much work and I should just work with the red and green.

Also? The guest bathroom is done in the red-and-green striped gypsum. (You get it by now right? I have no idea if it’s really gypsum board, or what they make the walls out of) Which thwarts the cute bathroom-decorating I had planned.

Does anyone out there have any advice? Or know what in the heck the panel around the rooms is called? Or what the walls are done in?

Farmily Updates

In other news, we ate some of our FIRST ears of corn yesterday! They were fabulous (even if I did pick them a little early, I was impatient)

Yumm. And there weren’t even any bugs on them. I should probably thank the chickens for that.

Also, Mr. C and I picked up our new Maytag Washer and Dryer! Our old clothes washer quit working right about the time we bought the lake house. (Isn’t that how it always goes) So we had to get new ones. Yay!

Speaking of clothes washers… the HE-front load washers are a good $1000 more than the one you see above. To me, they’re not worth getting. It’ll take 10 years before you can recoup that extra $1000.

Or maybe we’re just tightwads and are perfectly happy with our less-than-$400 washer. Hmm… yep, that’s probably it.

Mr. C and I bought a house.

And not just any house.

 An on-the-lake weekend house.

So we’re still renting our little farmhouse, but we now have something that we OWN (or rather have a mortgage to) that will give us equity.

It also means that we’re full-on responsible for a HOUSE. Scary.

The house sits on a 5,800 acre lake. It’s an 1800 sq. foot manufactured house with a detached 3-car garage and a little garden shed. There’s already a fabulous back deck that overlooks the lake.

It also needs a lot of work. The garage doesn’t have any garage doors and there are some unfinished steps that go in between the house and the garage and lead to the deck:

The steps are made of concrete and creek rock.

Also, the deck needs pressure-washed, sealed, and re-stained/painted. Actually, there’s a lot of stuff that needs pressure-washed.

But we have a house! On the lake!

I may be posting ‘home improvement’ updates on this blog, since the Lakehouse is officially part of J&J Acres.

And one member of the family is VERY excited b/c now she gets to go to the lake with us!

Our peke-poo, Jolee.

On backyardchickens.com, they are always talking about how a fresh chicken tastes way better than a store bought chicken. Curious, I contacted a woman in my area who mentioned she would be raising cornish cross chickens, and she was willing to sell me a couple. (Completely processed, of course)

So last Friday, I went and picked up 5 HUGE chickens. She said they were in the 8-10lb range.

Jimmy and I decided to try the beer can chicken recipe that we’ve been talking about for a while.

First we had to make sure that the stand would hold the monster chicken up.

And it did. So Jimmy added flavoring (lemon juice and various spices- including lemon pepper) and put onions on the inside to add extra flavor.

You can barely see the Miller Lite can in the center of the stand.

Then she got put on the grill (20 minutes per pound- it took over 2 hours to cook!) along with our home-grown cabbage and onions:

The chicken was good, but it wasn’t as tender as what we thought it should be (although it was extra juicy), so we may try cooking it differently next time.

So in our big freezer, we have: deer meat, pork, and now chicken. We’ll be getting beef once Jimmy’s dad butchers his next cow. I like not having to buy meat.

And to end the post, here’s a picture of a beautiful sunset over the now-golden field of wheat.

I know a lot of you out there are struggling with droughts and crappy crops… so I thought I’d give you the OTHER end of the spectrum. A couple weeks ago, the city where I work got flooded. It was a flash flood, it literally happened in 20 minutes. We live 53 miles south, so we didn’t see the damage that they did.

The pictures are a little blurry, but you can see cattle standing in water in the last picture… and you can just imagine the devestation it’s had on crops. Estimates are saying that 90% of the people impacted by the flood had no flood insurance.

Can you imagine paying $1500 a month on a mortgage when the house isn’t even liveable anymore?

The farms pictured above weren’t anyone I knew, but my heart still goes out to them. Farming is hard and a flood isn’t going to help them any this year.

Any gardening plans for the weekend?

Yesterday, Mr. C and I worked in the garden. Or rather, he worked in the garden while I took a nap… then woke up just in time to get updated pictures of our garden’s progress. heh.

I like the way the sun is hitting the corn’s tassles on this one.

Left- baby carrots. Right- Sugarsnap peas

Left- Cabbage. Right- Baby yellow squash

Hot peppers!

So the garden is coming along quite nicely, although we need to pull the weeds that grew while we were on vacation last week. Really it’s needed minimal upkeep this year since the rain has been fairly decent. *Knock on wood*

Cute Chicken Picture of the Day

When chickens get hot, they’ll do this:

They’ll hold their wings out from their bodies. I happen to catch her in the middle of a yawn, which made for an even better ‘woe is me chicken’ picture.

How are your gardens doing?

I haven’t written much lately, but Jimmy and I just got back from vacation so hopefully things will settle down a little bit. We did see a gorgeous pair of swans while we were shopping at Barefoot Landing.

They were eating the fish food that you buy out of vending machines for $.50 .

You can see my youngest brother (#8 in the family) leaning in to get in on the shot.

And finally the both of them:

Last weekend while we were at the lake (Nolin Lake in Kentucky), our friends whose house we stay at were talking about selling their 4-wheelers to get another Kawasaki Mule (kind of a beefed up golf cart). After talking about it, we decided to buy one of them and came home with one of these guys: (this isn’t ours, just one I found in google images)

Our new addition.

So we now have a new toy: A 2002 Polaris Sportman 600. (Or something like that) We never had four-wheelers growing up so I do about 10 mph and grin like I’m doing 90. When Mr. C unloaded it off of the truck after returning home from the lake, he said “Wanna ride?” and scooted up for me to get behind him. I gave him a look and said “I ain’t ridin- I’m DRIVIN!” He just grinned and scooted back. My reasoning for getting a four-wheeler with no real purpose was that eventually we’ll need one since one day we’ll have LAND. Everyone have a good weekend!

Those who have chickens know that there is always a favorite nest to lay eggs in. We have ten nests. Five of which are usually empty. Example of yesterdays action:

Nest 1:

3 eggs.

Nest 2:

1 Egg.

Nest 4:

2 eggs.

Nest 6:

1 egg.

Nest 9:

9 (!!!) Eggs.

The popular nest changes locations daily so I’m not sure what makes it a hotspot.

Garden Update

I haven’t said too much about our garden lately. 1/2 of it is doing really well:

From L-R: Peas, Carrots, Lettuce, Cabbage

We plan on putting woven wire up for the peas to grow on. They’re already reaching for something to grab onto.

Ugh. Weeds.

The other half isn’t doing so well. The tomato plants are really suffering. This poor little pepper plant lost all it’s leaves during a really windy day a couple of days ago.

He’s a little pathetic, eh? Ignore the weeds. The dirt has been too wet to hoe!!  

So we may be re-planting some things this year. My corn isn’t popping up like I hoped it would either. But I don’t mind replanting since it’ll stagger the time when the vegetables are ready to be picked.

Homemade Gifts

I worked with a woman named Maria at the Restaurant before I graduated college. She had chickens and really she was the one that reminded me about how much fun chickens were. She had to give up her chickens because the house she was renting is now the home of a crop-advisor (or something like that) for the farmer who’s land she lived on. Now she lives in a sub-division. And hates it.

So I like to send eggs to her every once in a while since she of all people appreciates farm fresh eggs. She sent me homemade yeast rolls a couple of weeks ago. This time she sent me homemade scones which are fabulous. She also sends any egg cartons she has. It makes me smile to get packages from her.

The scones are in the tin.

It’s funny because if you were to have worked with me (young, know-it-all, with a bitchy attitude) you’d never think that Maria (sweet, easy going, and never talks bad about anyone) and I would be friends, especially after I left the restaurant. 

That’s all for now. I hope your gardens are faring better than ours!

So a couple more pullets are showing wear signs, so I picked out the worst two out of the group and gave them the last two saddles I had ordered. I may have to order more b/c apparently our roosters are busy little bees.

Here’s one of our speckled sussex before:

She looks sort of rough after being out in the rain all day.

And her happily preening after getting her new chicken saddle:

She seems to think she’s sexy.

I also put one on another Rhode Island Red. She was NOT happy about it at all. (She’s in the younger group and they aren’t as human-socialized as the older group)

Mr. C thinks she would find it very offending if she knew there was a DUCK on her back. hee hee.

Like I said, she’s shy.

God said “Not yet.”

We never heard back about the 53 acres, and the ad hasn’t been in the paper for the last two weeks… so I think that idea is shot. I’m still going to keep looking in that area for land. I think everything happens for a reason and obviously that just wasn’t the perfect land for us! (But it sure sounded like it, gosh darn it)

A horse, of course.

I’ve always wanted a horse, for as long as I can remember. I’ve also thought it would be a neat experience to volunteer at a horse rescue facility… that way I could learn how to take care of them and learn more about them before I have one of my own.

I found one that’s about an hour from our house. It’s called the Indiana Horse Rescue South. Unfortunately with me travelling so much for work and having weekend plans, it looks like I won’t be able to start volunteering when I want to. (RIGHT NOW!) But it is something to look forward to when things settle down again.

The chicken saddles arrived!! Actually, they arrived this past Saturday. For those who don’t have experience with overly-anxious roosters, here is a picture of one of the hens whose feathers had all been pulled out:

You can see that her back was almost bloody from all the ‘action’.

But now she has a beautiful sunflower chicken saddle:

Hopefully her feathers will be growing back very soon. And I happen to think she looks fabulous in a saddle!

 The Staples of a Fridge

Ah yes. Alcohol. Milk. And a CRAPLOAD of eggs. And that’s after I gave my family 4 dozen!!!!