Colors

We were looking forward to seeing what had happened with the house because there was much in the works for this past week.  Mother Nature stepped in in the form of rain so all of those visions of a painted exterior went belly up.  All was not lost because today the sun was out and it was gorgeous!  Spring seems to have won this round.
We swept and cleaned out the garage to finish that job from last week.  The house looks good on the inside and the painters were working on the outside.  One was finishing the caulking while the other started spraying on the paint.  We like the color very much.  News has it that the painting of the exterior will be done by Wednesday.  Unfortunately, there are rain chances just about everyday this week.  On the other hand, the farmers are happy as the crops need the moisture.

Here are a few pictures of what's been done so far.

The other colors we enjoyed were some wildflowers including bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush.

Several other flowers were out too, but I recognized these two.  So the trade off for the rain, is the wildflowers are here!

If the clear and sunny weather holds, the roofers are scheduled to be out Friday.  I've got my fingers crossed!

Doing Some Sweat Equity

Today we had the opportunity to do a little sweat equity.  In theory we saved maybe $100.  Not much but hope it will go towards a tree, a fence, or a sprinkler system.  So many choices and so much need...   Thank goodness Ryan arrived and saved us because we were moving too slow, were too fanatical in our sweeping and cleaning, and lacked some of the basic equipment.

The new fireplace has been installed so we are ready to use some of the wood we've been cutting for the last several months!

We also reloaded the deer feeder and attempted to change out the video card.  Alas the batteries were dead on the game cam...  What will we miss????

 

  

View of house from deer feeder

In theory, we have our big inspection this week where all the electrical, plumbing, and HT/AC lines are checked out before the insulation and drywall get installed.

Also noticed that the painter had begun exterior caulking and prep work for paint.  We may have some color this week!  When the painter is finished with the exterior paint, the roof can be installed.  So we're moving along.

Yesterday's Weather Was Only Hype!

Showers

In Dallas, the weather people say we are going to have "sever" thunderstorms today.  At the farm, the weather people say the thunderstorms will be "dangerous."  Not a very positive outlook!  They say we will have rain tomorrow.  Sadly, it is not surprising that we decided to stay home this weekend.

Annual Fight Between Winter and Spring Has Begun

The annual fight between winter and spring has begun.  Yesterday the temps were in the 70s and today a cold front was knocking on the door resulting in cold, cloudy, drippy weather.  Since we missed last weekend, we were determined to be at the farm today.

We first headed up to the house to see if anything had been done.  It looked like the electrician had finished his work stuffing the wires into their little blue boxes and wiring for "multi media."  Wiring for multi media sounds much more complicated than it actually is, as all he did was run wiring for the satellite dish to the various rooms.  I am hoping to avoid all the exterior wires that happen if you don't do it at the time of construction.

Also wanted to see septic system area:

buried septic tank



buried drain field

another view of drain field





The weather was not really pleasant but we didn't want to head home so we decided to do some work removing vines from our good oak trees.

 This is what it looked like when we started.

 After an hour and a half cutting and pulling out vines and little trash trees...

Finally after 2 hours, we were about half finished.  We will be spending more time on this one tree and then will be off to "free" the others.  Of course, we still have mesquite to cut and move to brush piles.  The neighbors have also left lots of downed dead trees and vines which we need to move to the brush piles.  I know there are lots of other projects yet to be done; we'll eventually hit them all and maybe finish some of them. 

Buried

Peg is buried at work and I didn't feel like going to the farm alone.  Saturday the temperatures were in the 70's so it would have been wonderful.  Today, we woke up to freezing drizzle in Dallas!  Texas weather never ceases to amaze!
Thought I would do an update on our acorn plantings.  We haven't seen anything sprout at the farm but I'm not too positive about those prospects anyways because of the squirrels.

We're having a bit of an ice storm here and except for a couple warm days, it has been too cold to have any sprouts.  Hopefully we'll see some baby trees soon!

Septic System, etc.

Today we were able to see the construction of the septic system in action.  We are totally unfamiliar with these kinds of things and we were curious and asked a lot of questions.  One thing we realized is, if we take care of "it" it will take care of us.





Checked out the house and it appears all the windows and most of the outside doors are installed.  Plumber had installed the tubs, framers had replaced most of the soffit, etc.  Unfortunately when we really started looking at the fireplace, we realized it was not woodburning.  It is a gas ceramic log type of system.  So when Ryan arrived and we told him, tho he was gracious, we could see it was going to be a problem.  Some how we didn't communicate what we wanted to him....

Most of the day up until lunch, we worked with the neighbors on removing the brush along the fence line.  Peg was totally into working the brush cutter.  I think we have pretty much finished removing the brush so they can begin pulling wire, which they were doing by the end of the day.  They have worked very hard.  Today, for example, they were there working before we arrived at 9:00, and were still working when we left at 3:00.  We were pooped after our short little stint of 21/2-3 hours!

Ryan, Larry, and kids arrived around lunch time so we ate.  After lunch, Emily and her crew arrived.  The children ran around and played as the adults talked and Ryan inspected.

Finally we headed down to the deer feeder where we have seen from the game cam that the raccoons have totally taken over.  I had planned to make a repair or two to the solar panel because it had partially broken off.  Well, it was really messed up so I will need to spend some time figuring out how to repair it.  We had thought it was the deer with their racks of antlers that had mangled the panel up.  But it wasn't.  It is the raccoons that climb up to the top of the feeder poles and drop down onto the feeder bucket and panel breaking it off. 

What Happened To Spring?

We were happy to have fall and winter arrive so we could enjoy those crisp cool days.  Today the temperatures are in the high 70s.  What happened to spring?  Geez...  In any event, the day was gorgeous!

We first  headed to Taylor to pay for another 3 months on the storage unit that is housing the bulk of our furniture.  We debated a long time about how long to extend the lease as there were some freebies included if we went longer.  We finally decided we would be optimistic and go for the three months because we would rather have the house complete than have an extra month or two of free rent.

As we drove into the farm, our neighbors were working on the fence.  We felt very sleazy about ourselves because we haven't helped at all.  So we told them we would be back to help after we checked out the house. 

The framers were back to finish odds and ends and repair/replace the soffit.

Planted a few little bluestem seeds we had acquired.  Maybe we'll have some luck.

Then we headed back to help with the clearing of the fence line.

If you look closely, you can see the near perfect brush piles in the neighbor's pasture in the top couple of pictures.  I've taken pictures of our hodge-podge piles in other postings.  They are so organized and methodical in their approach.  They have three kinds of piles.  One is of larger logs which will be transported to a place in town that turns the logs into wood chips for public use.  Another pile is only for fast burning vines, and the third is smaller branches which they will push into their pasture for a slower burn.  At this point, we just keep making more and more new hodge-podge piles. 

We have learned from the neighbors in the past and were reminded again that the vines will kill the trees if we don't keep them in check and out of the tree's canopy.  In my research, I've learned that once we chop them down, the cows will eat the new emerging shoots which will stunt/limit their growth.  So it looks like brush cutting the vines is on the agenda for a while.