Country Girl Comes Home

Vividly Spring joined us at the homestead...

Snow melts and nourishes the Earth.

We contribute to the cleanup.

Oh and remember the Deer bones... the vultures came and took those away...

We had marked the area for the house, and now it was time to clear the area. John cut down his first tree... it was an Alder...

Our Amish neighbors most likely coming home from church...

Woodland critters leave their calling card...

An ax seemed like a good idea...

While we work on getting our homestead is underway, the Alpaca Boys reside on the family farm 45 minutes away. They are our constant inspiration. While they are comfy with my parents on land that has been in the family for 3 generations, we want to give them more.

We made the decision to adopt alpacas before we found our homestead. My parents had an old goat pasture and barn that we converted. And while the boys are happy and healthy, and my parents like the daily chores they bring, John and I long for a time when we can step out of our own home and care for them ourselves.

Often times it feels as though life is divided in 3's. There is day to day city life in our old Victorian, where we dream and plan for a future in the country. Then comes Sunday when we drive out to the family farm where hay is stacked, the poop cart is emptied, filled, and emptied again. A few hours of togetherness and health checking. Are they too warm or too cold? Are the flies bothering them? Does their poo look 'healthy'? Are they fussing with each other? Then it is out to the homestead to maintain the future pasture, and check out any progress left by the contractors.

What keeps us going is knowing that someday we will be living in the country, on our land, and step out of the home we built, to go tend to the alpacas we love. That dream is worth the longer commute to work, the time spent planning, and the effort in making it real.

While we were plotting and planning the alpaca were busy growing their fleeces. Here they are before the annual shearing. At this time I like to think of them as, 'my wooley bears'.

On the homestead it was time to make room for the house....

John got a gas powered weed wacker with a brush attachment to take care of those pesky thorns....

The field began to green...

A wild turkey sought refuge in the tree line... hard to see cause he had just crossed the road and was moving at a rather high rate of speed....

Step 2 on the building permit application is installation of a septic system and water well....

Tim our 'Septic Guy' marked the spot it would go...

The closer to shearing we got the fluffier the boys looked...

This is Hudson's "Shear me now! It's hot under all this fleece!" face. Okay, in reality, he was yawning... but if he could talk, I am sure he would have said the above phase.

Pumba thinks he is pretty sexy for a gelding...

Stan the man is our alpha and will remind the other boys, should they ever think otherwise...

Sometimes when we drive out to the homestead, we never know what we might see... this time, it was Tim's equipment.

John had to check it out....

Aside from being our 'Septic Guy', Tim also cleared the build spot for the house! So John didn't have to cut down trees and deal with stumps. Tim was just, 'while I have the equipment here, I might as well clear that.'

So our wood pile became a tree pile...

Deer tracks indicated they were clearly keeping an eye on things when we weren't around....

May apples sprouted in the woods.

Lots of stony soil...

Excavation for the septic system begins...

Here comes the septic tank....

It stays uncovered until the County Health Department inspects it.

Once the county approves, it is covered up. Another stick appears! Tim says the stick indicates where to bring the pipe into the crawl space of the house. He has offered to excavate for the foundation of the house and put in a driveway for us. Tim is a good guy to know.

This photo always makes me realize it will look much worse before it looks better.

While he gets out of bringing any big trees down, John does have a large pile to buzz up into logs...

And then the alpacas were sheared! Stan takes a dip in the pool to celebrate.

They go from wooley bears to naked aliens real quick....

And maintaining the 'lawn' on the homestead is a never-ending job.

Strawberries...

Next is the water well... Fritz says it goes here... ya know, where the yellow stick is.... (are you sensing a pattern yet?)

Future paca pasture....

John sits down on the site of the future kitchen... we think... not sure...

A second driveway is installed after the discussion the town had with Tim about driving his large heavy equipment directly off the road. I did get to go culvert shopping though... that was weird...

What happens if the pasture is not maintained? Elves come out of the woods and plant berries and grapes while we sleep....

January 2014 we celebrated ... this time with cake...

We enjoyed seeing critter tracks in the snow....

And added some of our own....

Bit of orange and yellow indicates there will be a house here...

As Winter began to yield to Spring, our eagerness for further progress was evident. After meeting with the Town Code Enforcement Officer, the steps to take were clear. Attached to the building permit was an outline.

The land we purchased was always part of a larger parcel. The previous owner used it for hunting. With no house there was no need for an address. We however plan to build our home here, so we need an address. It was somewhat odd for me to think about living in a place that no one had ever built a house on before.

The 911 Address System is where to go for an address. That made sense to me. The pressure to commit to a build site was on. We thought and thought and thought some more and made sure we wanted in the house in the place we picked. Not too close to the neighbor or boundary line. Town Code helped with that. Then the question was, "How long do we really want our driveway to be.... especially in the winter!"

After a few more assurances, we committed to the spot. I was told to mark the middle of the front of the house with a milk jug on a stick. Seriously. That is what I was told.

I thought, "No problem!" Then I realized, the ground is frozen. So I went to Home Depot for inspiration. I found a tamper, used to tamp down sand and dirt for paths and driveways made of brick or flat stones. I thought well, with it's heavy metal base, it will stay up and I can put the milk jug on top. There was one tamper 1/2 the price of the rest so that is the one I went with. I had my stick.

The milk jug is actually a water jug, but I didn't think anyone would mind. I wanted to weigh it down a bit and thought I could use the freezing temps to my advantage. Two plastic water jugs with some of the water poured out to make room for when it froze so as not to break the plastic, were used as weight. Once frozen, it was not going anywhere.

The only think I had to tie it all together was the orange, plastic, boundary marking ribbon. And there you have it, a milk jug on a stick....

I thought it was hard to see the white jug against the snow so I put the safety orange hat on the jug. (I know, I over think these things.)

Oh look... that has to be a brisk buggy ride!

Once Winter was in a terminal condition, our address situation was all sorted out! Yay! Now things started to seem more and more real... and less like a dream. With no mailbox yet, we got another stick. By now the ground was willing to cooperate a bit more. We attached a sign to the stick.