Getting close....

We went to our first Lees Summit Market yesterday and had a great experience. We sold out of everything and talked with a lot of people that were interested in what we do and interested in buying healthy, home grown, pesticide free food. It was very encouraging. We had Yukon Gold Potatoes, Purple Viking Potatoes, wild blackberries from our property, herbs and radishes.

Adam's all set and ready for the day! Hopefully we will need three tables soon.

We have been busy getting the summer crops ready and keeping them watered. The lack of rain this year has made it harder but we are on a roll. We have 75 tomato plants in the ground and doing great. Little green tomatoes waiting to turn lots of colors (16 different varieties!).

Cantaloupe and Watermelons

Peppers and eggplants are getting bigger and the melons are looking great. 

16 Brahmas (White)
16 Speckled Sussex (Brown)
13 Purple Guinea Foul (Grey)

  Chickens are getting bigger fast and they are fun to watch. They are all healthy and should start laying in the fall. It is neat to see them turn from fluffy chicks into some very pretty birds. The Guineas are still living with the Chickens but will be relocated to the garden soon to eat bugs and keep pests away. They like to fly out of the fence for a bit and come back at dusk or sit on the roof of the coop and keep watch. They sounded the alarm the other afternoon when some dogs started to walk up the driveway, they scared the dogs away. :)

First years lessons so far.....

Well, the last 3 months have been busy and full of learning "opportunities."
1) Everything takes longer than you think...
2) Always costs more than you think.....
3) Turns out a little differently than you think... but that is sometimes a good thing.
4) Don't dig holes for fence posts if your not ready to put up a fence. (your friend may step in the hole filled with muddy water... sorry Matt.....)

We tilled up two 1 acre areas and one of them was slightly down hill from the water collection pond and is ALWAYS wet. Lost all the cauliflower, had to start new patch of lettuce, and had to transplant the spinach and the brussels to the other tilled area on the other side of the pond and they seem to be doing better. Potatoes are loving the wetter area and sprouting like crazy. We have about 300 ft of potatoes doing really well.

"New" garden site, 200 ft rows.

Just got peas, beans, squash, lettuce, beets, radish, broccoli, herbs, cabbage, kale, and some grains planted last weekend and some of which are already sprouting. The rain was PERFECT timing. We also planted aprox 500 cloves of garlic with the lettuce.

Lots and lots of garlic!

This Saturday is a full moon so the corn, and oats are getting planted as well as melons, cucumber and some more beans. (Full moons energy helps sprout above ground plants, while root crops go in on a new moon.)

Adam getting the corn/oats spot plowed.

We also got the chicken coop built with the much needed help of Matt. What would we do without him? He has two hidden hatch doors for collecting eggs from the nesting boxes and one for sweeping out the coop. We had enough vinyl siding from the house to use on the coop. Hope to get the chickens in about 2 weeks. We also plan to get some Guinea foul to live in the garden and eat all the bugs for us.

Hatch to nesting boxes.

Want to be able to start at the market in lees Summit in a couple weeks but waiting for some growth! We will email again the week we plan to start.

House is done! Time to FARM!!

Monday we closed on the house and are moving forward to starting the farm. Matt did an AMAZING job on the addition and got it built fast! We now have a spare bedroom and an office! We got satellite internet yesterday so we can finally post new pictures!

Need some grass!

Matt's tile work in the mud room

Hallway in addition

Master Bedroom

Add caption

After lots and lots of hard work and jumping through more hoops than expected from the lender we are all moved in and taking advantage of the fall-like winter we are having.

Adam got his tractor this week and already mowed the farm area so we can till this weekend. We just cant believe its almost February and we can actually turn the soil for spring planting, an important step we thought we would miss this year.

We are also working on getting the basement cleared out of moving boxes so we can set up the seeding stations and get ready to start seeds.
Spring will be here quick and we hope to be at the Lees Summit Farmers Market in April when it start up again.
Below are some construction pictures.
More updates to come!

Building basement stairs

Clean House, Rud's waiting for the appraiser

Stove install

Matt C and Matt H framed it all in two days!

House is set!

The crane set the house today. Once they got started it only took a little over an hour to set both sections. They spent the rest of the afternoon bolting it together and putting the siding on. We are going to get started building the 2 bedroom addition this weekend and hopefully we can be in by Christmas.

House has Arrived!

The House finally made it Friday. The trucks arrived at 8:30 and set the two sections next to the foundation for the crane to set next week. Once they have it set they will drywall the connection seams and install the carpet. More to come next week!

These guys made it look easy. 

Rolling up the driveway.

House ready to be set on basement

Rolls of Carpet in the kitchen. 

Kitchen

House is in progress!

The factory started building the house this week and are scheduled to be done with it next Thursday the 27th. They plan to deliver the first week of November assuming we dont start getting rains. The house is in two 15'x48' sections and will be connected together once it is set on the basement.  Will post some new pictures when we get them!  

                          

East side of house. Matt is Building on two bedrooms off this end.

Back of house looking in Kitchen Windows and back door.

West end of house, mast bedroom window and plumbing for bathroom.

Hall bathroom and living room. Short wall will be stairs to the basement. 

Back on Track

In August we found out that the factory that was going to build our house had actually been closed since May (2 weeks after we put down a deposit and ordered the house.) They kept saying they were getting a loan and would be back up an running in two weeks, but after 4 months it appeared they were not opening up at all. Luckily the dealer we have been working with found a new factory and worked out a deal with them to build the same house minus the deposit we lost, plus his company threw in some money of theirs to help.
He has been wonderful to work with and is also giving us some furniture, air conditioner and propane tank. The new house is scheduled to be delivered the last week in October. While we are excited we are still cautious until we actually see the house. We will post again after we get the house and have some new pictures.

Moving Slow....

Things have slowed down a bit on the house. The factory is about 5 weeks behind. We are now expecting the delivery around mid August.

Since we had some spare time we decided to take a 9 day road trip out to Virginia to see Adams Grandpa and Aunt. We may never fly again, the road trip was so great an we used the money that the airline tickets cost and went to the Biltmore in Ashville, North Carolina. HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS DESTINATION!!!

View from Balcony overlooking Vineyard, Farm & Shops

It was right in the middle of the smokey mountains with amazing views, food and service. It was the nicest hotel we have ever stayed at. The Hotel itself was 4 miles though the forest from the actual Biltmore. They have a shopping and dining village at the bottom of the hillside from the hotel with everything you need and a farm! We spent a lot of our time playing with the chickens and goats and Adam drooled over their farm set up, lots of ideas he has for our farm was implemented in theirs. (He kept stating that he was a GENIUS! ) :) Yea Yea. The Biltmore was HUGE, we only saw 1/8 of the house and could have spent 3 days going through it.

The Biltmore

We went kayaking down the river behind the Biltmore and ate dinner in their fabulous restaurant each night and for breakfast.

Adam doing all the work....

We went to the hot tub at 6 am and watch the sun come up over the mountains and snacked at their on site creamery each day. YUM.
We spent 2 days with Les in Virginia Beach, and fought the traffic getting in and out of the beach area. Took over an hour to get in or out of the parking areas.
Then we spent the night in Richmond with Aunt Trish and she fed us well and let us take a much needed nap. She took us to a seafood restaurant called Crab Louie's and it was the best seafood we had the entire trip. Nothing beats the fresh seafood on the coast.
On our way out of Virginia we went to Thomas Jefferson's Estate, Monticello, to see his farm and orchard. Adam is basing some of our farm layout on Jefferson's so he wanted to get an up close look at it.

Half of Jefferson's Vegetable Garden

Now its time to start working on the house again. We need a new electrician, ours skipped town on us and we have called 4 others that have not called us back. Frustrating but we may have one guy that will be good and are talking with him again Monday.
Hope everyone is well and had a great 4th of July!