My Uncle came over to look at our old fruit trees, give us a lesson on tree trimming,  and then trimmed them up for us (Thanks a bunch). Unfortunately the ones we have are in vary bad shape. They will probably be taken out later on. But he did a really good job with what there was to work with and then showed us several times how to not trim a tree. I had to not look and think thoughts about how close the hospital was in case something bad happened.

We have mice! YUCK. The nasty putrid little vermin had the audacity to poop on my counter. Which then inspired a kitchen disinfection cleanup. So far we have killed three in mouse traps.

It all started with a noise that we heard late one night. It didn’t sound like squirrels so we went and got some mouse traps, baited them with peanut butter, and set them. We checked them the next day and nothing. So we then promptly forgot about them. Then for about three days in a row I started smelling something in the stairway that reminded me of when we moved in and I was cleaning up dead mice and their nests. I finally said something about it to Lee and made him check the traps. Yeah. We had one that had been there for a few days. So he told me to go check the other trap. Ditto. Oh how I hate them. Cute outside but don’t come in please.

Now I have been keeping a close eye on my counters as I knew how many dead mice we found in the house when we moved in. The house had to be alive with their rattlings of them at one time. I had never found so much as a dropping. Then the morning after we found the two dead mice I had two places show up where they pooped on the counter as mentioned above. We checked the traps again and we had one tripped trap and another dead mouse in the other.

So far we haven’t had another dead mouse today and no mouse droppings in the kitchen. I am so grossed out. Why now do they want to move in when the weather is getting warmer?

We rented a D R Brush Mower and had fun taking out sticker bushes. It was wonderful. Okay so maybe it was exhausting and I did get three blisters. BUT, it was so nice getting rid of some of those nasty buggers. We have read that it takes several mowing downs of the bushes before they are killed all the way and don’t come back. Our work is cut out for us. It is going to take several times of renting a brush mower before we get all of them mowed down. But once the forest of stickers are mowed down then it will be easy to keep it under control and keep the small stuff down.

Hmm, what is there to say about this other than yes I did burn another pile of brush.

It’s been dry enough that I was able to start our fourth and fifth burn piles for the season. Four more piles are waiting for me to burn and more to be made. I am going to feel very happy when our land is completely cleaned up.

Yup, we have managed to put off working on this room for over a month. Mostly because we knew it was going to be a pain in the butt getting all the plywood off. Not to mention we would be in for major mouse poop showers again.

First off it meant clearing everything out of the room. It had become the store all for everything we had torn apart in the house that we will want to reuse again. Then came out the handy pry bar for tearing off the trim. Poor Lee, he hates ripping out the plywood walls.

Here is an overview of the room.

A few of this rooms lovely highlights are the fix jobs on the ceiling done with tape. One spot uses duct tape to patch delaminating plywood. The other spot uses scotch tape to fix a crack in the plywood. There were two mouse holes in this room. One you can barely see in the left side of the closet picture above. The second was a duct taped (but chewed through) hole behind the box in the corner of the same  picture.

After the first two pieces of plywood were taken off the walls we came upon something odd. Odd in the fact that this one wall has nailed boards behind the plywood while the other three walls all have tongue and groove like the exterior sheathing behind the plywood. We also had to admire the wood grain. You don’t see grain in plywood like this anymore–certainly not in stuff that’s going to be painted.

The last thing that we found interesting was that it looked as if they reused some plywood that they got somewhere when they built the house. It was painted pink underneath the trim of the window. The other parts that we uncovered were not like that and the original paint  color that we are seeing on the plywood is a taupe kind of color.

Well, we stopped after ripping the two boards off. It was late by then. The important thing being that we finally started on the room. Now it will be easier to go back to working on. Least I think. We still have that ceiling to take down and we have seen a precursor to indicate major mouse poop rain showers again. That always makes you want to put something off.

Seems like there hasn’t been a whole lot posted this month on progress we have made on the house. That got me thinking about what we have been doing. So here it goes…

Lee has basically gotten all of the logs (two still need chopping) that were dumped by our house chainsawed up. Then most of that he got split and we have already burned it. Needless to say we got another cord delivered and then packed away into the wood shack (formerly know as the trash shack).

More bramble pulling on my part. Oh how I HATE sticker bushes.

I have been working in my future shade  garden area. All the clear weather made me want to do some fun stuff. So I carried all the rocks  I have found around our property to make a small retaining wall. Then I shoveled dirt to raise it to the rock level. As I find more rocks I will add to it. Then I decided to be creative and use the broken out fire brick for another small raised retaining wall. I haven’t back filled that one with dirt or finished it either as I will need the rest of the chimney stack sledge hammered out of our house. I think it will look nice when it is all done and the ultimate in reusing. Otherwise it would be dumped at the, well, dump. And more limbing on the tree by the rock wall.

My dad came over for a week and a half after work and mowed down a lot of our fields. This has been probably the most exciting looking of all that has happened here. Now Edgar can run around and not come in covered in burrs. He used an old Cushman and a mowing deck. That thing went over smaller brambles like it was nothing. I about wept with joy. Lee and I are just amazed at how much better it looks.

I on the other hand did a ton of limbing on all the wild Hazel nut trees so my dad could mow around them. I still haven’t finished them all but now there are SIX burn piles waiting for some fire. My sawing arm is still sore. The effect of the mowed field and somewhat tamed trees makes every seem so much nicer.

Here is a picture of the back field and burn piles everywhere. Anybody want to come for a bonfire or two?

There was one casualty though…..my dad’s Cushman broke.

Well, the weekend didn’t go quite how we hoped, but at least a few things got done.  We took another load of the former occupant’s trash to the dump.  Yes, we are sadly still working on that.  I believe one more load, or two, should do it.  We also took a half load of their recyclables, and updated the cleanup report page.

Also on Saturday, we went to the Good Earth Home Show at the Lane County Fairgrounds.  It was nice to see companies trying to put up their green side, although I was expecting a few more environmentally friendly home building products for DIYers.  It seemed like a lot of home builders pushing eco-edifices for the wealthy.  However, there were also a lot of small local businesses: CSAs, plant & seed suppliers, herbs, soap, chicken coops, blacksmithing, etc.

On Sunday, Lane County finally lifted the burn restriction so we attempted to burn a couple of the large brush piles that have formed during clean-up.  Unfortunately, the fire was a no-go. It poured down rain last night, so any chance of a clean burn was lost.  Robin says they were just waiting for the weather to change to carry away smoke.  I think they do this sort of thing to mess with us. “Oh look, days of clear dry weather.  Let’s keep a burn restriction in place until the next downpour.”  Nevermind that those fires would be a lot less polluting if they could burn hot and dry.

I’ve been experimenting with a customized theme for the site.  What do you think?  Robin says it is still too plain, and I agree.  I’m just not sure what more to add.  Comments welcome!

We bought another cord of firewood this past week. It arrived cut and split and very dry! Perfect to fight back the chill during these 22°F nights.

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 28 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?

Yes we did it again. After much putting off on Lee’s part we finally worked on tearing out most of the living room ceiling. We left a stretch on at the very front of the house as it helps keep the heat in. That part of the ceiling goes straight up to the roof so we aren’t taking it off until we have too.

Lee starts out the nasty job by wearing eye protection but forgetting his breather mask. There was much grumbling coming from him as he was not looking forward to starting this task. We moved most of what we could out of the way.

I helped out by vacuuming the plywood ceiling before it was all the way pulled down. That way it helped contain the mess and get less poop everywhere. It actually worked pretty well. There were no clouds billowing up. Still a lot of mouse poop and what not every where, but that couldn’t be helped.

Lee remembered to put on his breather mask. Jessica and I resorted to using our shirts. After Jessica left I went and got my mask though.

Lee was thrilled to see that the builders of the house cut into the ceiling floor joist to install the light fixture. I think that they wanted people to fall through the floor.

We also discovered that there was a house fire at one time. Lee had to take off a few paneling boards by the kitchen to get the ceiling plywood off. When he did that we saw this…

So we are thinking that there was a kitchen fire at one time. The paneling boards are not put back in order so some are charred and others are not. There are also some new two by fours and different nails used to put the paneling boards back up. It will be interesting to see how many more boards are burned like that in the kitchen wall.

And finally the air quality picture…..I so hate mouse poop….

After all the floors had been vacuumed up and then mopped, couch disinfected, showers taken, poop clothes taken down to my mom’s to be washed, and the kitchen wiped down, we are all ready to put off taking out the rest of the ceilings for a long while again.