Construction Continues...

We are finally approaching the "finishing touches" of the finishing phase.  As might be expected, there are a myriad number of details and minor things that need to be fixed, but in general we are very pleased with the way things are coming together.  The final frustration remains the slowness of the septic system installation, but all we can do about that is pray that the dry weather continues until the inspection gets done (I can't imagine trenches full of water would impress the inspector much!).
As of our last visit, the wood stove has been installed, the tile is grouted, and the trim is up.  They should be laying carpet as I type, as well as installing plumbing fixtures and hanging doors.  We are well on schedule for the work to be done by Nov 9, which is rapidly approaching!  With that in mind, we are now hauling a trailer-full of belongings with us each time we head to the farm.  It is depressing how small of a dent we have made so far, but things should start moving faster once we get to the interior of the house.  It is amazing how full AdventureDad's new shop is getting just with the stuff from the garage.  How did we get it all in there?  We made a little progress on the chicken coop, but were unable to finish it because we had to take time to winterize the trailer.  Yup, freezing weather is here, which makes living out of the camper a little more troublesome.  If it was going to be longer we would go ahead and put skirts around it and run a heater to try to keep the pipes warm, but hopefully it will only be a couple more weeks before we can move in to the house, so instead we are blowing the water out of the pipes with the compressor and pouring antifreeze in the sink traps before we leave.  It is a pain, but less painful than frozen pipes!
I am a bit behind on photos, so there are a few from last week as well.

The Great Chicken Coop... in progress still

Wood Floors Are In

Exterior Almost Complete

Kitchen Taking Shape

Just Add Fire

Did you ever count how many doors are in your house?!?

It's Really Coming Together! (From Last week... forgot to post!)

Another crazy weekend, another big leap forward in progress on the house.  The wood floors, tiles, and counter tops went in this week, not to mention the stone on the exterior, as well as all of the exterior concrete; front porch, back porch, sidewalk, and parking pad.  The house looks completely transformed, and we can really start to see what it is going to look like.  We love it more every time we go out there.  If AdventureDad didn't have to work every morning, I think we would just move permanently into the camper until the house was done, because it is also that much harder to leave every Sunday.  Thankfully, we can really start counting down the number of weekends left for making this crazy journey.  Toward that end, we are hauling full loads of stuff out there every time we go, and we reserved our moving van for mid-November.  We will be moved in before Thanksgiving, so that is a relief!  This weekend AdventureDad and I used part of the old horse shed to make a chicken coop (the rest is becoming a machine shed).  We will hang the wire on the chicken yard next weekend, and then the chickens will be joining the horses out there.  Pretty cool!  It also means that I can really start getting the grounds cleaned up here in Gig Harbor...something I definitely need to do before the rain settles in for the winter and the job becomes much more miserable.  I also started the ball rolling for M to switch schools in November.  That really feels like progress toward the move!
While we were working last weekend, a family from down the road stopped by during a stroll to welcome us to the neighborhood (quite a stroll considering it is about 1.5 miles to their house!).  It was a really nice gesture, and made me so anxious to settle into the community.  We have been strangely isolated here in Gig Harbor.   Our house is isolated on 7 acres, and although friendly, our neighbors are elderly and we don't have too much in common.  We have been so busy on the farm (and thus not home virtually every weekend), that I just haven't had the time or energy to "get out there".   Of course the farm is even more isolated in many ways, but at the same time there is a whole community on the county road that shares that isolation.  It  seems to draw people together judging by the number of people we have already met.  I really miss the sense of neighborhood we had in Germany, and I hope to fill that gap.  Time will tell :-)

Fruitful Fall

As I may have mentioned before, it has been killing me to not have a veggie garden this year.  Granted, I have not regretted my decision, as it has been crazy enough trying to get the house built and finish all of our other projects 300 miles away on the farm while simultaneously keeping the household at least somewhat functional.  However, the lack of a garden did certainly leave a part of me unfulfilled, so I had no choice but to take advantage of the plentiful fruits here on our rental in Gig Harbor.  I picked 5 lbs each of plums and blackberries and tried my hand at wine-making. 
I am hooked!  It is certainly a hobby that fosters patience, as the fermenting, racking, settling, bottling, and aging takes around 6 months before you have a finished product.  I just got to bottle the wines that I started this summer.  I am happy to say that they are drinkable, although they definitely need to age some more.  We will probably try them at Christmas time, although they won't be at their best until Feb or March.  Next year I plan on trying some of the wild fruits on Nine Trees, including elderberry, chokecherry, plum, and rose hip.  I think I will be starting a new blog specifically for farm doings... Nine Trees News.  Anyone interested in the farming aspect of our lives, stay tuned!  It will be everything from starting the market garden from "the ground up", to chicken husbandry and my preparations for selling eggs, hay making, canning/preserving, etc.   I will post a link once I get it started (probably with the New Year, so don't hold your breath yet!)
In the meantime, here is a little wine :-)

Bottles washed and ready to go...

Corks are sanitized...

...and Voila!

Marathon Week

Marathon week of driving, that is!  This week we returned from the farm late Monday night, then on Wednesday I loaded up the adult horses and took them to the farm (Yay!!!).  While I was away AdventureDad's brother came and helped him disassemble and load the horse shed onto our flatbed trailer, then after I returned from the farm they took of on Thursday for another round trip.  They got back late Thurs night, and the whole AdventureFamily promptly loaded up for another weekend on the farm after M got out of school Friday eve, with a return Sun night.  At 300 miles each direction, that means our hard-working truck covered 2100 miles this week.  No wonder we're tired!  It finally feels like we are making progress towards the move though... the horse shed is beginning its third life as an equipment shed and chicken coop.  The horses are all moved to the farm and tucked away in their nice green pasture and newly-outfitted barn, and the chickens will be following soon.  The shed was our biggest and hardest thing to move (boundless thanks to Michael for his help!), and now we can take a full trailer load each time we go and really start emptying this place out.
While on the farm this past weekend, we got the last of the siding scrap cleaned up out of the yard (It is AMAZING how much waste material is produced during the construction proces!), as well as getting the house scoured out in preparation for the flooring contractors.  The lights are mostly installed, the cabinets are roughed in, and the trim is going up on the doors and windows.  On the exterior, we are just waiting for the rock work on the front, gutters, and the cement pads and porches.  We are still looking at a mid-November move-in, but it is very exciting to see the finish work taking place!
As far as non-farm-related news, AdventureDad has failed to improve as we had hoped following his back surgery.  A follow-up MRI revealed a piece of disc remaining in the spinal canal.  They are trying a 2-week medical-management trial, although it looks like more surgery is likely.  Sigh.  Poor AdventureDad!
Happier news comes with O's 4th Birthday.  We kept it small and family-centric due to the turmoil in our lives right now, but we sure our proud of our little bug and how fast she is growing up.  She is such a happy little kid, and both she and M have been such troupers through this crazy process.  They take it all in stride and find the adventure and fun in every trip we take.  They are such good reminders that although we are so focused on the move and our future at the farm,  we also need to enjoy every day life brings us and stop to smell the roses.

Light Fixtures...

Hickory Cabinets...

... and Cement Forms

Four Big Candles Out in a Puff!

New Dress-up Jewelry.  Thanks Great Grandma T!

Fall Already ?!?

The AdventureFamily is home once again, following a cold, rainy, WINDY weekend on Nine Trees, followed by a putrid drive home over the pass in a downpour and severe wind hauling a horse trailer full of hay.  The up side?  This is likely the VERY LAST load of hay that we will have to haul from one side of the state to the other!  Why?  Because this weekend, AdventureDad  set the last few fence posts needed to enclose the horse pasture.  Next weekend we will stretch a little more horse wire (temporary fix until we can move our horse pen from here to there), hang a few gates, and the farm will be horse worthy.  Yay!  Considering that we have had record rainfalls this month on the "wet side", it will be a blessing indeed to be able to move the horses out of their current quagmire into a nice green pasture. 
Speaking of record rainfalls, the weather this month really has me down.  September and early October has historically been lovely on the farm... clear crisp mornings, the canyons full of reds, yellows, and oranges as the huge variety of trees and shrubs turn for the season, followed by sunny warm afternoons with just enough breeze to make the leaves dance.  This year it has been chilly, rainy, and windy.  It feels like the end of October, not the end of September.  The construction site is already a mud fest... not what we were hoping for at all!  We have been unable to work on the outside of the house until they were done with the siding (which has now been accomplished!) due to the materials stacked around, and simply being in the way.  That means we have a lot of dirt work left to do... finish grading, drainage, and septic systems, not to mention the parking pad, front and back porches, and sidewalk.  The last thing we need is mud!  We are all crossing our fingers that this current spate of rotten weather blows through and the October that we all know and love will return.
Well, enough ranting about the weather.  That is certainly one factor that is out of our control, and we just have to deal with whatever comes, just like so many other factors in this endeavor.  Take, for instance, the giant leak that developed at our well head.  We arrived Fri night to a saturated building site, complete with a stream of water running down the hill.  Obviously a downpour had just occurred.  We went to bed, but when we got up the next morning, the stream was still running. I became concerned when I found that the origin of the stream was our well head, and my fears were confirmed when turning off the well pump dried up the stream.  Sigh.  Luckily our dirt work guy (who also hooked up the water) was already aware of the problem and showed up the same day to dig up the water line and fix the broken pipe.  Hopefully that is the last of those problems for awhile!  Now we just need the lakes of water to dry out of the excavation holes so that they can be filled in.
Back to the construction... so what was I doing while AdventureDad was fencing?  Cleaning up of course!  We had to move piles of construction materials out of the garage in preparation for the cement floor to go in, as well as cleaning up siding and lumber scraps from the yard so that they won't be in the way of the painters.  Yes, the painters are coming!!!  The wall board is up and plastered on the interior of the house, the texture people are doing their thing today, and the painters should show up on Wednesday to do both the interior and exterior.  Pictures coming soon!   This current spate of progress also means that we had to order our appliances so that they will be ready when needed.  Very exciting!  It is killing us to see it so close to done, yet knowing that it is still over 6 weeks before we can move in.  Of course then I think about having only 6 weeks (read 6 weekends) to move our household and farm (horse sheds, chickens coops, etc.) and it is suddenly overwhelming from the opposite perspective.  One weekend at a time :-).
The last bit of family "adventure" is of course AdventureDad's back.  He did end up having back surgery to remove fragments of disc out of his spinal canal.  He is recovering from the surgery well, his back pain has improved dramatically, but both he and the surgeon are frustrated that his leg pain and weakness have not improved more.  Another MRI is coming today, he will see the surgeon again in a couple weeks, and we will go from there.

Siding is going on...

Interior in progress... insulated interior walls to add a little peace and quiet to our lives :-)

Siding is Done!

M in her latest "design" sporting her first lost tooth

Slow Spot

Well, the rush of progress on the house has slowed a little bit as we wait for the inspectors to catch up with where we are at.  Currently, the roof has shingles, the exterior walls are mostly covered in Tyvek (house wrap), and the plumbing and wiring are roughed in.  The siding should be going up this week, and the insulation should also be going in.  Once the siding is on, AdventureDad and I can start working on the outside, getting the patios put in, the finish grading done in the yard, and even start landscaping, etc.  Even bigger, once the exterior of the house is done, the septic system can go in... our last big piece of dirt work  remaining.   This last weekend we finished the vast majority of the fencing as well.  We just have a few more bits and pieces to complete, and the horse pasture will hold horses.  Lovely!
The rainy season has returned here on the "wet side".  It only took a few days of heavy down-pour to completely revive the muck in the horse pen.  I am so anxious to move the horses to a place that has been designed for them, where we can do what we need to for drainage and mud control so that they no longer have to live (and I no longer have to work!) in a mud pit.  The rain did force me to be inside, which revived my desire to learn more about wine making.  As a result, I now have a small batch of plum wine and a small batch of blackberry wine in the works.  We'll find out how this experiment turns out sometime near Christmas! 
Catching up with the family, my Aunt, Uncle, and Grandma (the girl's Great-Grandma) came for quick but enjoyable visit.  Hopefully once the construction/moving craziness is over we will have more time for that sort of thing.  We have so many close friends and family members to catch up with!  In addition M started First Grade today.  She is officially a "grader", as she called them last year, and she couldn't be more thrilled.  A couple of her close friends ended up in class with her, and her teacher seems wonderful.  Of course all of this will come to an end when we move in a couple months, but it is a nice way for her to start, and I know she will settle right in at her new school when the time comes.  Last but not least in the family category, sadly we just got confirmation that AdventureDad herniated a disc in his back.  Not good!  He is in a lot of pain and can't walk more than a few steps at the moment.  He will have a surgical consult soon, and we will know more about what his options are, and what the near future will hold, but obviously we will have to take things slow around the construction site and farm until he heals. Hopefully things go more expeditiously than they typically do with military health care and he will be on the road to recovery soon!

A Lightening-Strike wild fire a few ridges over... kept a close eye on this for awhile!

First-Day Greeting with Mrs. Jensen

Sheathing is on

Now Shingles and Tyvek

A Forest of Studs

Let There Be Fence

Hello First-Grader!

Summer Sizzle

It finally feels like things are sizzling along with the house!  Of course there have been the inevitable headaches (like the electricians not bringing enough cable to reach the house, the inspector not showing up when we needed, and permits found blowing around in the wind), but no huge disasters have happened, and every day brings us closer to a weather-proof structure.
Last weekend, we had a grand time choosing our flooring, counter tops, tiles, carpets, etc., which really makes the reality set in that we will be living here before winter (trying not to count chickens before they're hatched though!!!).  This weekend we are meeting with the painters to decide on both the exterior and interior colors.  Thrilling! 
I am in a rush, as we are heading out the door for another weekend at NineTrees, so let me finish by posting pics.  Notice the completed shop :-)

The Building Blocks

Trusses Away!

Completed Shop (Ignore the Electrical Trench!)

AdventureDad in his Man Cave

Forest of Interior Walls

Taking Shape!

Guess what our next project is?

Foundations

It is late and I am tired, so "gasp" I am going to keep it short.  We had a couple great developments since the last post... The foundation for the house went in AND has been backfilled, the garage is filled and compacted (ready for cement) and a LOT of dirt was moved to create drainage sloping away from the house on all sides.  The site passed the final pre-build inspection by the construction company, and they should start framing before the end of next week.  I'll believe it when I see it, but the excitement builds!  In addition, more dirt was moved to create better drainage for the barn, and the trusses for the shop went up.  We are hoping the shop will be complete in about 2 weeks.  That is huge for us, because once it is we can have the permanent electricity installed, and we will have a clean, weather-proof place to START MOVING!  With all of the animal and farm related detritus we have to move, an early start is a blessing.
Next, AdventureDad and I started the Great Fencing Project.  We are only fencing (and cross-fencing) the upper 20 acres right now... the "back 30" will have to wait until we get some other more vital projects done, but it is really neat to see the outlines of our property taking shape.
Last but not Least... AdventureDad won out against the competition and got the job in Walla Walla!  He is with the same clinic but the previous job offer was in Hermiston, OR, so this is a lot closer.  We are thrilled, and so proud of the hard work he has done.
Enjoy the pics...

I did a little sewing (the nighties) and the girls got some new tutus...

Our "Gate to Nowhere" 

Trusses are on, waiting for the metal...

Foundation...says it all!

Shopping

I'll start with the construction update... I think I will publish at least the construction part of this blog in hard format so that someday, when the girls are grown and we are feeling nostalgic, we can flip through the pages and remember "way back when" the house wasn't even built yet, and what an adventure it was/is.  I feel so blessed to be living our dream! Although the process of starting with a bare piece of ground and converting it to a farm and a home is a lot of work, a lot of stress, and a lot of money, it is also very exciting and fulfilling.  I feel like we are embarking on a healthy and literally "down to earth" lifestyle, and I can't help but hope that knowing where their food comes from, and learning physical labor and job satisfaction will provide the girls with a solid foundation for whatever the future holds.  (I believe that this aspect in my own upbringing has a lot to do with who I am today... Thanks Mom and Dad!)
So, where are we in the process so far?  Well, we are still waiting for the concrete company to work us into their schedule to pour the house foundations, and with another wet weekend ahead of us, I am sure the delay will be helpful in allowing the pad to dry out once again, but it will be SO NICE once the foundation is poured, because then we can actually start counting days and get a real feel for when the house will be done.  The shop, however is progressing quite nicely.  The girls approved of the "shopping" that has happened so far (see pictures) which includes setting the poles in concrete.  Again, once the ground dries out after this latest downpour, the cement slab will be poured in the floor, then the walls and roof go on (a relatively fast process).  Once the shop is weather-tight, the electrician will come in and viola! we will have real, permanent electricity in the shop and the barn!
AdventureDad and I spent the last weekend picking up the remainder of the hay we cut the previous weekend (thankfully it was a dry week and we were able to leave it in the field!)  We picked up 5 tons of hay, so in addition to the 1 ton we already hauled to Gig Harbor, it is our largest cutting so far.  We actually left a lot of the field uncut this year, as hay is second priority to the house and other tasks (like putting in fencing/animal pens, building a chicken coop, and flooring the barn), but we got enough to keep the horses fed until next hay season, especially since they have a virgin pasture to go out on once they move to the farm. It should take them a month or two to mow that down!  It was a bit of a punishing weekend, because of course to put 5 tons of hay in the barn it means we have to both load it onto, then unload off of, the hay wagon, so we moved 20,000 pounds between the two of us (not to mention another 2,000 pounds in "re-bale" bales that resulted from some baler problems!).  Whew!  Then poor AdventureDad came down with a nasty GI bug that laid him out flat for the ride home and the next day too.  We will be having our Father's Day dinner this coming Sunday :-)
To wrap it all up, we added yet another furry member to the family (because I really needed another warm body to take care of!)  AdventureGirl has been begging us for a pet of her own, and finally saved enough stars on her chart to earn one.  So, hello Peter!  Our new 6-week-old little buck bunny.  Luckily he is pretty adorable, so it isn't too much of a burden.  Sigh!

Meet Peter

Exploring the Shop

Daddy's Shop Will be THIS BIG!

All Kids Really Need is a Pile of Dirt

Yay for Hay!

Making Hay While the Sun Shines!

Whew!  The AdventureFamily was at it again, packing a whole week's worth of activities into a few days.  AdventureDad was able to get a few days off, so we headed out to NineTrees to take advantage of the wonderful weather and truly make hay.  Sounds pretty straight-forward?  Oh no!  Of course the weekend couldn't be that simple!  (We have yet to have a disaster-free hay season.  That may be an oxymoron we are not aware of yet!).  I do have to mention, however, that we arrived at 11 PM Thursday night to find that we now have POWER and WATER!!!!  No more hauling batteries and jerry cans full of fresh water for this family!  WooooHoooo!!!!
Our first scheduled activity was to drive to Richland to pick up AdventureDad's new (and last, for a LONG time!) tractor.  This would be the fourth tractor we have purchased in as many years, granted that one of the aforementioned tractors was ANCIENT and one was merely old.  However, living where and how we do (will be), we need a reliable way to clear snow in the winter (the county won't commit to maintaining our road yet), not to mention till the garden and fields, make hay, drill post holes, move, and lift all things farm-related.  The old tractors were just not reliable enough, so we finally finagled our finances enough to get a new one.  On our way back to the farm with the new tractor in tow, not to mention the new disc mower and snow blower to go with it, we had a blow-out.  One way or another, we have neglected to get a spare for our utility trailer, so we were at the mercy of the Les Schwab service team.  It was a busy day for them, so after waiting an hour or so in the sweltering heat, we finally got a temporary fix and headed back to the tire store for a set of new tires.  We had the tractor in tow, so we took the opportunity to add ballast (liquid weight that goes in the tires for added traction and momentum), and yes, saved one of the old tires as a spare.  Once again on our way, we finally arrived at the farm at almost 8 PM, approximately 7 hours later than we had planned.  So much for mowing hay that day!  AdventureDad decided to set up the mower so that he could get an early start the next morning, but it was a new tractor and a new mower, and Murphy being omnipresent where farm equipment is concerned, something was bound to, and did, go wrong.  While lifting a part of the tractor, it managed to hit part of the hydraulic system, and stripped out some vital threads.  After a gush of hydraulic fluid, we were left with a crippled hydraulic remote (that runs the arm that lifts the mower up and down).  Luckily, the mower was already in the proper position, so the hay cutting could commence.
Second on the list... we put a floor in a section of the barn to give us somewhere dry and level to stack the hay we were about to cut.  This project was actually much quicker and easier than we expected, and a good test run for the rest of the barn.  Yay us!
Our third scheduled activity was the cutting of the hay.  This too had a hiccup, as we were mowing a new part of the field.  AdventureDad found a ditch the hard way, and the impact broke one of the brackets that holds a piece that steadies the mower.  Luckily for us, we have an incredibly helpful neighbor who is also a proficient welder, and he fabricated a new one for us and welded it into place while we were in town looking for hydraulic parts.  Amazing!  Hiccups notwithstanding, the new mower did an amazing job, and AdventureDad is pretty tickled with the whole setup.  The raking and baling went surprisingly well, and with the help of the hot weather and breeze, the hay dried beautifully.  We cut 5 tons of hay, and hauled about 1 ton home to feed to the horses. Not our biggest cutting (we kept it small on purpose this year), but the best quality we have put up yet.  While AdventureDad was baling, I also broke out our small tractor and got our campsite mowed.  Considering that the grass is 4 feet high and the girls can get lost in it, this little detail made life a lot easier for us!
Last but not least, we met with the foreman from the construction company and got the go-ahead for our
foundation!!!  Hopefully the foundation will be poured before the end of June.  There is still hope for an October move-in.  Fingers crossed!  In addition, the crew that is putting up the shop got the holes drilled for the support posts.  That means we will likely have a completed shop before the end of the month... fingers crossed again!  It is so exciting and wonderful to see things progressing, FINALLY!
So, tired, sunburned, filthy, but satisfied, we limped home for a short week of "normal" life here in Gig Harbor before another weekend of "fun on the farm"  this coming weekend.   Catch our breath?  Nah!

Taking the New Hay for a Test Drive

AdventureDad's New Wheels

Temporary Water

The Beginnings of the Shop

Power!!!  Meter is at 0, but not for long...

A Whole Lot of Hole!

Wow, did we have an exciting weekend at the farm!  The pad has been excavated for our house!!!!  Our plan was to get the hole dug, then allow the still damp soil in the bottom to dry in preparation for pouring the cement foundation.  Alas, as usual, things didn't work quite as planned.  Less than a week after excavation, the heavens opened and promptly turned it into a mud bath.  So, now we wait a little longer for that foundation.  Once the cement is poured, things should be able to progress a little more smoothly, but until then it is a waiting game.
In addition to the house progress, the pad for the shop is also going in (again cement-weather dependent, although slightly less so), the driveway has been gravelled and compacted, and wonder of wonders, we got an official county address pole.  We are officially on the map!!!! Woohooo!!!  Also, the meter box should be going in as I type, and that means we should have actual, real electricity before we go out there again.  Talk about a game-changer!  We are rapidly moving from the stone ages into civilization :-)
While we were out there, AdventureDad and I also repaired the much-needed wind break for our baby orchard, and did some heavy-duty tractor shopping.  We live in a remote enough area that the county will not commit to plowing the road in the winter, so the tractor (with snow-blower) will be our link to civilization during the winter.  We made some great progress, and I am sure I will be posting more on that in the future!

Back home in Gig Harbor, I had an exciting day today when my first chick hatched.  Yes, the craziness has progressed to me incubating eggs in an attempt to get some chickens of a hard-to-find breed (in general, hatching eggs are easier to come by than chicks, but the outcome is far from certain after they get scrambled by the post office during shipment!)  It is nerve-wracking, but a lot of fun!  Yes, I am now officially chicken crazy!
O finished her last day of school today in true NW style...  a picnic complete with rains slickers and galoshes.  M's Kindergarten goes until June 18, so we have a little while before summer break officially begins. 
The baby horses are growing like weeds, and I have made pretty good progress halter breaking them, although I am dying for a round pen to work them in.  It is much harder when I have to chase them in and out of all of the nooks and corners in their current pen!  The AdventureGirls are becoming more and more interested in the horses, which makes my heart smile.  I have been reluctant to push them, as I don't want to overdo it and ruin the fun of the horses.  I am hoping my strategy will bear fruit when I can get a nice calm kids horse once we move to the farm!
AdventureDad is literally counting the days until he is done physically with the Army.  The plus side of house construction getting off to a slow start is that our time apart will be much shorter.  Now, we will likely be in the house less than a month when he can come join us at the end of November.  Yay!

I think that is it for now.  Enjoy the photopalooza!!!

Another Use for the Hay Rake

True Robin's Egg Blue!

AdventureGirls in Their Element

The Hole

Windbreak Mark 2

It's Official!