Weekend Update

It was the first weekend of December, wow the year has flown by...oh, yeah and we got a lot done this past weekend.  I found several more shrines, a few pieces of armor, and collected lots of korok seeds.  Oops, that's my gamer blog update for Zelda: Breath of the Wild.  Actually, I don't have a gamer blog and yes we do play video games on the farm when not working our asses off.  Well some of us work our asses off, or at least I do trying to finish all these side quests... :)

In typical Oregon fashion we enjoyed a wet weekend of rain and did some inside work, and a little outside work when we could.  I made the mistake of ordering a ceiling fan online a couple weeks ago, and last week when it arrived I had it installed before Theresa got home from one of her late nights with Zach at ballet.  Well, the fan didn't go over so well, and I actually didn't like it either.  The direction switch was inside the light dome cover!  That and it really looked ugly.  We decided to drive into town Saturday morning and find a couple ceiling fans at Jerry's and then take back the odd one I ordered to HomeDepot.  These pics don't do the fans justice, they actually look really nice in the house and the family room fan makes a huge difference moving heat from the pellet stove around the house.  Big win after a purchasing fail.

Family Room

Dining Room

Besides video games, the fans were about all the work done inside this weekend.  Oh, I'm sure we did other stuff but just not as important.  Outside I was gettings things ready for some of the planting we'll be doing in the spring.  I prepped sites for the fruit trees and some blueberry bushes by staking the locations and mulching.  I'm far from finished prepping for spring planting, but it's a good start.  We've got sites ready for the semi-dwarf cherry trees ( a bing and black tartarian), and the two royal plums, and two suncrest peaches.  We'll also be planting 12 blueberry bushes out front near the boarder fruit trees.  In addition there will be a new pear and probably a couple apricot trees (although, not sure how successful we'll be with the apricots).

Front Border Fruit Trees and Bushes Prep

After the mulching work Zach helped me clean out the pump house.  There were old kitchen cabinets that were left from a prior house remodel years ago and they were just a junk mess.  We pulled them out of the pump house and used the tractor to smash them down, then loaded them into the farm truck to haul to Lane Forest Products where they'll be ground down into mulch compost for future use by someone else.  After getting the pump house cleaned up I finished putting in posts to fence off the 'backyard' so the dogs have free range to come in and out of the house to do their business.  We have to have a fenced area so Dexter doesn't run off or the little dogs don't go wondering into the roadway.  Should finally have the backyard fence wrapped up by next weekend!

I don't always remember to get before and after photos of the work we do, I'm usually to busy focused on the tasks at hand to worry about taking pics, even though it is nice capturing those moments.  We still have plenty of projects to go and there's always things to do so hopefully I'll remember to get those pics before and after.  Here's one of the next projects that really needs to be taken care of.  The prior couple of weeks I worked on grading and adding gravel to the driveway and parking area next to the house, but in the process I took a lot of the accumulated debris and dragged it in front of the barn which made that mud pit look even worse.  The prior owners only put gravel down to the first stall, so in front of the last three it was mud.  In fact, the last stall they actually had a huge hole about 3' deep dug so they presumably could park a truck with a camper in it.  It would have been a small pond in the winter, not really sure what it was like but filling that hole was one of the first things I did.  Now we just need to put down a bunch of big gravel for the base and some 3/4" on top.

Mud Pit in Front of Shop

Mud Pit out to Pasture

Look for an update soon on the progress of the mud pits.  I'll be hauling in lots of gravel to make improvements here!  There's also still lots of clean up left from the previous owners, piles of wood and pvc pipe that need to be either hauled off or cleaned up, organized and stored.  It's never ending...