From Cedar Pond to Laughing Dove Farm

 Cedar Pond was sold last May and we moved out in June. This is a picture of the back of our new home from our hay field. Anyone keeping livestock can appreciate having their own hay field, and with 24 sheep we really do appreciate our hay field !

 A closer look at the back of our new home. We moved to a home half the size of our home at Cedar Pond but with 21 more acres of land. Plus, this cozy home is tucked into a valley below beautiful hills and mountains .

 My Jacob Sheep have pasture. Acres of pasture !

The weather is more extreme here. The winters are colder, the summers are hotter.

We have a few acres of forest too , forest with wild turkeys, deer, pheasant, cougars, coyotes, and bears. Most of them are seen frequently from our living room windows. ( pic of husband and 2 of our dogs walking through our forest.)

The move was a lot of hard work but the most frustrating part of moving has been getting our e-mail changed and receiving e-mails. As soon as we disconnected our phone line at Cedar Pond we lost every single e-mail contact and any e-mails sent to me since June 15th are lost to us. ( Don't ever make your main e-mail through your local land line phone provider if it is important to keep your e-mail contacts ! ) I am still in the process of updating so many important contacts and very often after a day of hard physical work outdoors I am simply too tired to fight with the internet. That's my excuse for not blogging for so long. That and the fact I did not have dependable internet until September.

Thank-you to those who e-mailed me and missed me, you touched my heart. I think I've successfully updated my blogs and am excited to get back to blogging. I know I've missed a lot and can't wait to see what's been going on in blog land with my friends the last few months !

Our Last Days at Cedar Pond ?

The sale of Cedar Pond is pending. We had two offers to buy Cedar Pond right after the open house, the first day it was shown.

I see I haven't blogged since April 10th, but we've been busy packing, sorting, cleaning, moving things to our future home and depositing other items at the local dump and Goodwill.

I am still tending my gardens and sometimes have to distract myself so I don't cry. That is really the reason I haven't blogged lately. Every time I begin to post pictures or write on my blog , so many emotions flood my heart and mind that I opt for a snack to munch while watching t.v. or reading a book, or catching up with friends and family on Facebook. Quick distractions.

Of course, having kept chickens for many years now I have learned not to count my chickens until they hatch and I know Cedar Pond is not truly sold until all the paperwork is signed and official. But it does appear another family with young children will be loving life here at Cedar Pond soon.

We had a big work party in April when most of our family came together to help prepare Cedar Pond for sale and also help load a lot of heavy stuff into a rental truck. We drove 6 hours , over the mountains and far away, to our future home. We unloaded the truck , storing our belongings in the barn there. We still have at least 2 more truck loads of stuff to move  ( how did we accumulate so much STUFF ? ) not including my sheep, my geese, and my chickens.

I hope you don't get the wrong idea about my feelings though. I am prone to nostalgia and "what-if's", but not sorry to be moving . We built Cedar Pond from raw land almost 30 years ago. We raised our children here and enjoyed life here . I knew this was the right decision for many reasons, but I also knew I was ready to move for sure when the last few trips to our future home I did not want to return to Cedar Pond because I was home . My home over the mountains and far away !

Shoveling Poo , Spinning, and Packing

 Look at the late winter sun shining on and through the bottles in my Blue Bottle Garden. Some herbs are just beginning to poke through the soil, the rosemary is going strong, the lilac in this garden is budding. The temperature has been in the low 60's for several afternoons now, and the sunshine is making my animals very happy and busy about all the activities spring brings on in the animal world.

 My free-range chickens spend their nights and mornings in the shed in the left of this picture. I release them after noon to do what they love to do. Scratch the earth for bugs and seeds, interact with each other creating some very interesting chicken drama , nap in the sunshine. A few motherly hens stay indoors to incubate clutches of eggs.

 The chickens are scratching through piles of manure placed here for future plantings. These piles are from my sheep pen. My oldest grandson shoveled all the sheep poo for me. Over the past 20-some years my husband has built up the soil in our gardens using the many, many loads of manure from our sheep, goats, chickens, and rabbits. You know of course, there is a lot of hard work involved in shoveling all that poo. We don't have a tractor , shoveling is done by one of us ( me, husband, or grandson) requiring a shovel ,a wheelbarrow, and a lot of hard physical work.

 Sheep enjoying the warmth of the sun as they snuggle into a downed tree and stump.

 This is a flower bed on the shady side of our home. I dumped 2 wheelbarrows of mostly composted chicken poo into it yesterday. Two of the twenty-five overloaded wheelbarrows of chicken poo I cleaned out of a chicken pen over a period of 3 days. All by myself, just me and my shovel and wheelbarrow. Shovel, load, dump.Shovel, load, dump...25 times. That is a lot of poo. I have been so tired after shoveling so much poo that I have been unable to stay awake late , very unlike me.

In preparing to sell our home we have been taking down poultry pens and reducing the number of chickens I have. We are down to 2 pens of laying chickens, and my silly frillies ( frizzled bantam chickens ) inhabit the old shed and free-range. No more breeding pens for show chickens. I don't think I'll ever show chickens again but I will keep them for eggs and entertainment.

I cleared out my craft room. Last weekend my husband and I carried all the shelving out to the garage, along with many boxes and bins packed and labeled for the move. The craft room is ready to be painted and re-carpeted . After painting and re-carpeting I'll keep in my craft room only my sewing machine and all supplies necessary to work on a quilt I want to finish before we move. The supplies can all be contained in a big basket.

I have a lot of wool to be spun up into yarn. The 2-ply yarn in the picture above is some of my handspun Jacob sheep wool blended with Wensleydale wool  (500 yards of yarn ) spun up in the last few days. I spin most evenings while I watch television with my husband. I can get a lot of yarn spun up and don't feel like I've completely wasted my time when I watch t.v.

My past few days were spent spinning wool, shoveling poo, and packing. I need a nap.

Accomplished This Week~

1. Poultry pens cleaned and taken down.
2. Goat pen cleaned.
3. Craft room packed , ready for painting and re-carpeting.
4. Tea-cups packed.
5. 3 skeins 2-ply yarn ( 500 yards ) spun up and ready for sale.

The Work Begins ( Packing Up )

 The work began right after Christmas ~ sorting through belongings , deciding which to discard and which to keep. My craft room has to be sorted and emptied out by the end of this week so we can  re-carpet and paint it in preparation to sell our home. I have been finishing many projects to accomplish some sense of order and help me decide what I want to do with our space and my time in a new home. What is worth keeping here ?

 I sorted through my fabric stash and have a huge box ready to donate to the goodwill . I have kept most of my fabric though . I have collected fabric for future quilts and comforters and know I will sew them in the future. ( above picture ~stack of things I will sew before we move.)

Later on today I am hoping to finish packing up the craft room. I have art supplies and scrap-booking supplies to sort through. This is going to be my hardest work because I know I have too much to justify taking it with us on our move. I am also NOT looking forward to going through years of paperwork in the office section of this room. I am amazed I have been able to neatly and efficiently stash so much stuff away in this room that was once our daughter's bedroom. I also know I never want to store this much STUFF again.

Blizzard has been helping me by checking out every pile of fabric and seeing which ones are suitable for a cat nap.

 

Tasks &Accomplishments thus far since January :

1. Finished weaving 4 rugs , took off loom to pack rugs and loom, weaving supplies packed up.
2. Had sheep sheared , ready for lambing.
3. Began skirting * wool fleeces to take to wool processor so I can have wool batts ready for moving.
4. Mucking out poultry pens , taking big pens down for moving. ( HARD physical work ! )
5. Deciding on which poultry to keep, sell, etc.,
6. Already cleaned out most of pantry, boxed up dishes, etc, some for future garage sale.



 

Our Future Home~ 2016 ,Year of Great Change

 

2016 is shaping up to be a year of big changes for us. My husband is retiring in the fall and we're hoping to move to our place over the mountains and far away. You can see our future home in the pictures. This is a view of the back of our home , I was standing in our field.

My husband loves this place and we work on our future home every chance we get. Our oldest grandson also loves it here and is a big help. Grandson and my husband have some big plans for the pastures, woods, and livestock housing. Unfortunately the trip there requires us to drive over a mountain pass that is treacherous in the winter, and sometimes in the fall and spring too , making our trips not as frequent as we'd like. Plus, it is a 6 hour drive one-way.

We have an old travel trailer there ( shown above ) we use as a guest-house. I have made some simple changes to the interior and have so many more ideas and plans for the trailer, but first we have to sell Cedar Pond and move. I have been very busy since the beginning of the month sorting through my craft room and closets , deciding what things to sell, what to donate, what to box up. I have a BIG job ahead of me !

This is a picture of 6 of our grandchildren taking a walk through our field and heading into our woods. As much as I love Cedar Pond my heart has turned to our home over the mountains and far away. The hard work of packing up and preparing our home for sale has begun. My husband and I are in for a lot of work and a new adventure this year, a year of great change.