I’m getting chickens this spring. I am beyond excited to say the least. I still have to pick my breeds out and am not sure whether to buy them local or order from McMurray Hatchery. If I order from McMurray then I know that I can get some of my exotic breeds that I was looking at. I did have three species picked out but then I got nervous and changed my mind. Guess we shall see what I wind up with.

So you may be wondering what tree limbing has to do with chickens. Well we are going to have the future chicken coop back by the barn in the small fenced in area. And to get ready for this chicken coop we need to limb trees. We are going to have our brother-in-law build us one. And there is NO way I am going to be limbing HUGE limbs on top of my newly built chicken coop.

We had taken down some of the smaller limbs earlier but still had the much bigger ones that had been on the roof of the barn. So they needed to come down anyways. Lee’s brother Greg gave us a 24 foot ladder so that helped us get what we couldn’t reach before with our smaller ladder.

After much begging on my part to let me have my turn Lee finally let me up. Well mostly because I think his arm was falling off from all the sawing. Jessica came out to see us earlier. So when my arm started falling off she got her turn on limb sawing. I wonder if she is going to stop coming over as she always gets to help in what ever we are doing.

The tree limbs were huge so we are going to use them for next years kindling. Gotta put some of the yard debris to good use eh?

For those who remember our post regarding a mouse poop shower, recent developments have make that one seem like showering in a spring rain.  Our living room and front bedroom have plywood ceilings oddly enough.  That was apparently a quick wall-covering method in the days of slow (and expensive) lath and plaster.

Unfortunately, before the stove can go in, the plywood ceiling must go out.  The good thing about tearing out plywood is that it comes out in large sections.  The bad thing about plywood is that it comes out in large sections, like this:

When I tore down the first section, a plume of dirt, mouse poop, shredded insulation/nesting material, and mummified mice followed.  By the time I got to a respirator, Robin was calling down from upstairs that she could “smell mouse poop” in the air.  “You mean that general haze?  Yeah, sorry about that.”

So, once again, a deceptively simple project turns messy … literally.

Every time Lee goes about trying to do a job all I hear is how he never can find the right tool. I of course always tell him that if he put it back in the same place he might know where they were at. It’s the same story all the time.

We needed to get the place cleaned out where the stove will be going. Since there are tools scattered all around the house Lee decided to put up shop in the back bedroom where he just installed the subpanel. It is his official tool work room for the moment. After he finished the job of organizing all his tools he told me that he was finding lost ones all over the house.

Except he still has an excuse. He now tells me that it will be the tool gremlins that come at night and mislay them. Un-huh.

Here is the clean area again that we will be working on. Edgar is staring in amazement. So am I for that matter. Lee wants to get the stove in this weekend. We will see though because I think he may be coming down with my cold.

We decided to put off installing the tiles under and behind the stove. That means that we don’t have to jack up the house before we install the stove. Woohoo. The reason being is after Lee talked to his brother it was suggested to wait. We have roofing, more walls and ceilings to tear out, and a million other banging around things to do. If we installed the tiles now we run the risk of cracking them during the other house work. So we are going to do a quick install that will keep us warm now and do the final finishing up later.

Lee and I worked on cleaning out the trash shed. I am really quite disgusted every time I work on it. I think that it is worst in some ways then all the other trash that we had to dig through around the property. The reason being that it is full of recyclables and outright garbage (like fast food wrappers etc.). The other stuff that we had cleaned up while it was still trash (rotting clothes and whatnot) it wasn’t usually household nasty stuff. I really don’t understand why the former tenants didn’t take this stuff to the dump. It makes me mad and grosses me out that I am having to dig through their household waste.

I had to laugh though as I found carpet under all the trash on the dirt floor. Lee say’s maybe their plan was to vacuum it every ten years but then they couldn’t because of all the garbage they piled on top of it.

I found two dead things. One which we think was another dead cat so that would bring the count up to three. The other was just a pile of jumbled bones. I don’t know my skeletons so my guess is maybe a dead rat or squirrel?

The last couple of afternoons I have spent outside cleaning up sticker bushes, brush, trimming or cutting out small trees, pulling up ivy, and picking up fallen limbs and trash. I am now working on my second burn pile as the first one got too big again. Anyways I thought that I would show some more pictures.

The first two are of the front yard. They are the pictures that I forgot to take after Jim and Sallie were done cleaning it up last Saturday. Doesn’t it look nice? I love not having any trash in my front yard!

Next is an area that I cleaned sticker bushes out of and limbed up small trees by the fence line. It looks much better. Since the sticker bushes are gone you can actually see the ferns that were in that mess. By that is an  area that I still need to work on. Night and day in the difference though. One area you can walk through without getting torn to shreds. The other you walk through at your own risk.

As I was working I came across two different types of mushrooms. I would say “YUM” but I don’t know my mushrooms. So it might be “YUM” and then ‘CLUNK’ as I dropped down dead from bad mushrooms.

Then as I was working back by the barn clearing out tree’s, sticker bushes, limbs, and other assorted stuff I came across tree slime. What may you ask is tree slime? Well I don’t know but that is as close as I can describe it. The slime was, well, slimy, jiggly, and wet looking. I found it growing on a tree branch that I cut down.

I actually have most of the unwanted flora by the barn cleaned up. Just the big sticker spot in the fourth picture and then some tree limbing higher up to do. Once that is done then I can start working on one of the two big pastures. That is gonna take a while.

This Saturday, Jim and Sallie came down to help. It also decided to pour buckets of rain on us today. Sallie and Jim got all the stuff left over in the yard carted away to the appropriate recycle/trash piles. Now the front yard looks really nice. Every time Lee and I go in and out now we have to stop and stare at the yard and talk about how much better it looks.

Today my Mom and I cleaned up the house. Lee and I are supposed to be moving in tomorrow and Thursday and the house was a complete disaster. So we vacuumed, mopped, and moved boards around in the upper two bedrooms. Vacuumed and mopped the stairway and hallway sections. Swept and vacuumed the living area along with organizing the tools somewhat. Then we swept and mopped the kitchen along with tiding up the counters. The house seemed a million times better after all of that. Like, well, maybe that we could actually move into it and live there. I have banned Lee from demoing anything else until after we get moved into the house all the way.

Later today Lee and I went back up there and brought a mattress set with us. That was fun. Lets just say that the staircase was not designed to have a queen sized set go up it. The bed is all made and ready for us when we officially move in.

The real reason we went up to the house tonight with the bed was I had forgotten to take in two boxes that had been shipped to us. So since we had to go up we might as well put the trip to use eh? Today I got my Lodge cookware shipped to me. Lee bought several pieces for me to use once we get our stove. I am very excited.

Our third burn pile of the season. WooHoo! Okay I guess it seems rather pitiful when you look at how much yard debris that we still have to burn. I wonder how many fires we will have before the burn season is over with?

Much of this week has been nice and clear. That led to me not wanting to work inside and doing brush patrol. Our burn pile got so big that we started a second one. Though the second one got put on the fire once it got going.

Sunday we had the last yard sale. We got rid of a bit of stuff and have already taken a truck load of left overs to Goodwill. That is our second truck load of stuff in two weeks and I need to take one more. Anyways, I’m sitting in the house feeling sick, freezing my butt off, and getting worried. We don’t have much more time before we are moving in. The house is a disaster and that little space heater was not making my feet warm. My plan for upcoming days I think will be mopping so I have at least one room that feels somewhat clean to put our stuff. That and buying some wool socks and warm underclothes.

Later Lee decided to start burning. I was going to join him to help get warm but yard sale business picked up. By the time I got back there the fire was down (still hot though) and all the burnables were gone. I couldn’t believe it. It proved to be a stubborn fire as we poured a ton of buckets of water on it to get it out. Then we went back later and coals had come back. So more buckets of water. Lee was grumbling because he would have just let it burn itself down. But we don’t want to get in trouble.

Today was one busy day. It started with us getting around early and doing a million errands in town. We went to a ton of tile shops. I picked out a bunch that I liked but Lee wasn’t quite sold. He wanted a tile that was richer in color. I have already picked out (as of now) a dark slate for under the stove. For behind the stove we are looking at hand painted tiles. That’s what’s hanging Lee up. We are looking for a jade green. Not too light but not too blue but not too bright green and not too shiny. Sounds easy huh? HA! And not only the special color of green but coordinating tile colors to go with it.

Tiles aside we then bought low VOC primer to get part of our house ready for the electrician on Monday and a pressure washer to also do prep work. The below picture is Lee later that night trying to figure out how it went together. I should start a list of new tools that Lee gets to buy for working on this house but I am afraid I’d loose track.

As soon as we got to the house we ended up burning one of our small burn piles. It was the pile of brush that we took away from the side of the house. My Mom and me had a ‘burning’ urge to start something on fire since it was the first burn day of the season. Evidence below that it really happened. We had it put out on time as we were warned by a neighbor that the Fire Marshal lived down the street and was a real stickler for making them be out by 5 p.m.

Lee then went on to vent his frustration on a poor innocent stump. He had to grade soil by the house for the ground rods that get put in on Monday. Yeah new wiring soon!

Lastly my brother Robert came over to help for a while. He is feeling sorry for us because he didn’t realize we were moving in so soon. Robert ripped out the top part of the divider wall for us and a bit of the molding. We always appreciate free labor from sympathetic family members. Thanks Robert.