Farewell 2015, and hel-l-lo 2016!

All things considered 2015 was a pretty awesome year. You may think that coming on the heels of 2014 and 2013, the worst years of my life, it wouldn't take much to make me happy, and you'd be right. But even if it hadn't followed 2014, I'd still say that 2015 was a good year.

First and foremost, my health is improving by leaps and bounds. I've put my Hashimoto's disease into remission, which most doctors would say is impossible. But lab tests don't lie, and my TPO antibody levels are continuing to fall. Depending on who you ask, some people would not even diagnose me with Hashimoto's now because my antibody level is down to 47. Some health professionals draw the line at 60, some at 30, and some at 6, so the lower it falls, the better!

However, as I said, 2015 would have been a good year even if I had never been diagnosed with Hashimoto's. Why? Because I lost 38 pounds without even trying, and many little health annoyances have disappeared or are improving. For example, I used to wake up in the middle of the night feeling nauseous, and that no longer happens. After 30 years of migraines, I no longer have them either. After a lifetime of constipation, that rarely happens now. My arthritic knees are also much happier, which is no doubt a direct result of giving them 38 fewer pounds to carry. I have actually never weighed less than 150 pounds since I was 14 years old (other than when I was breastfeeding), and now I've been at 132 pounds for more than six months. But if I'm honest with myself, I never would have made so many positive and healthy changes in my life if I had not been diagnosed with Hashimoto's, so it appears to have been a blessing in disguise.

As a result of my health challenges, I became certified as a health coach, and I've decided to start a new blog, which will be launched very soon. I've been working on it for a couple of months. So many people have asked me how I put my autoimmune disease into remission -- and accidentally lost 38 pounds -- and there is no short answer to that question. What worked for me may not work for anyone else, but the path I followed, which was long and winding, will lead many people to a healthier life, so the new blog will be called Healthier Paths. I'm hoping that by sharing what I've learned, others will be able to find their own healthier paths.

In addition to my personal goals for 2016, I have also been working towards my goal to turn Antiquity Oaks into a teaching farm, as well as a truly productive farm. This year we will be partnering with one of our former interns to create a market garden and sell produce at farmer's markets in the Chicago area. You might remember Sarah from three years ago, as she wrote some wonderful blog posts on here, such as this one about Gerti the blind goat. After leaving here in 2013, she went to the west coast and interned on several farms there before coming back to the Chicago area to work on some farms in this area. We are really excited about her coming here as our garden partner this year.

We are also partnering with the wonderful people at Nature's Farm Camp to have an overnight camp here on the farm for five weeks in the summer. Each camp runs from Monday through Friday. Four weeks will be for kids 8 to 12 and one week will be for young teens. I can hardly begin to explain how excited I am about this! It's going to be so wonderful teaching children where their food comes from and how to prepare it, and I'm so happy and honored that the wonderful people at Nature's Farm Camp found us and decided to have us host the 2016 camps.

I'm also increasing my online teaching load for the University of Massachusetts in their sustainable food and farm program. For three years now, I've taught a class in raising dairy goats sustainably, and this spring, I'll be teaching a class in pastured poultry. Their sustainable agriculture program is growing by leaps and bounds, and US News and World Reports ranked them as the 8th best agricultural university in the world with only two other US universities listed higher.

Thursday marked 11 years in our house, and it's still not finished. When you live on a farm, there are always more important things to do than put trim around your windows or baseboard on the walls. Mike did finally put tile around the master bathtub this year, and I was planning to do a blog post as soon as he gets the grout on, but it's been five months without grout now. I should probably go ahead and show you how great it looks, even without the grout. Then I can celebrate again when he gets the grout on.

Later this month, this blog will turn 10 years old, which is hard to believe. One of my goals for this year is to get better about posting on here.

So, that's where I find myself at the end of 2015 and heading into 2016.

Beef, our house, and the new year

Bridget's and Molly's calves are now beef -- or something between veal and beef. They're not technically veal because veal is supposedly one hundred percent milk-fed, and these boys spent their whole lives on pasture nursing and eating grass the way nature intended. The butcher at the locker said that they'll have more flavor than veal but not as strong as beef.

I'm thinking this is probably what our ancestors thought of as veal. After all, historically animals would have been raised on grass with their mother. Today's veal comes from anemic calves that are fed an unnatural diet of only milk, and they're confined to small pens. It would be really interesting to find a book written more than a century ago on the raising of cattle. I'm sure one is out there. I just have to find it. After all, this really makes perfect sense. Calves are born in spring and grow up eating fresh pasture and their mother's milk. They are never castrated and are butchered before winter sets in so you don't have to start feeding hay.

Happy birthday, house!
It's hard to believe that we moved in to our house seven years ago tomorrow -- not because time flies, but because it is still not finished. I can't believe that we have lived here for seven years and have not finished the stairs or all of the trim around the windows and doors. Then again, on a farm there is always so much other stuff to do. And the needs of your animals and garden don't wait. Stairs and trim don't seem very important in the grand scheme of life.

Happy New Year!
Our first goats will be arriving around Jan. 12, and Bridget and Molly will be calving again in April. And my next baby -- er, book, called Ecofrugal -- will be hitting bookstores in the fall! I hope everyone has an outstanding 2012 where all of your homesteading dreams come true!

The annual panic post

If you've been around for awhile, you know that I generally panic this time of year. Husband-professor Mike is back at school, and the three now-adult children are all in college. Margaret will be graduating from University of Illinois this December. Katherine, my baby, is editor of her community college newspaper this year, and favorite son Jonathan is in theater and has already been cast in a play this semester. That leaves me home seven days a week to milk goats, make cheese, harvest vegetables, can, freeze, and deal with whatever emergency happens to be happening around here, which seems to be coyote related lately. Most days, I have one additional person here to help, and I hate to sound ungrateful, but that's not usually enough.

In past years, I've also freaked out about the fact that we still didn't get drain tiles in the ground around the house and barn, which means that we'll have to deal with continued flooding at random times. And no, we didn't get the drain tiles in this summer either. And the potting shed still is not done, although Mike did buy the lumber, so we are one step ahead of previous years. Maybe my dining room won't be taken over by seedlings next spring. And we got nothing done on the house -- you know, the one in which we live, the one we started building seven years ago. So we're still living with no tile around the master bathtub, few baseboards, and an open staircase. Someday this will be a beautiful house.

But this year, I have new things to add to my panic list -- I have a book coming out in a couple weeks, which means I'll be doing lots of speaking and book signings. So, I have speeches to write and Power Points to create. If you're in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Kansas, be sure to check out the events that are already scheduled there, as well as Illinois, where I live.

I also have to write my second book, which is due January 15. And I started two new blogs, which is one reason I don't post here quite as often. I've already introduced you to the Homegrown and Handmade blog, which is a supplement to the book and contains recipes and information on growing your own food and fiber. But I also decided to start a writer's blog -- a blog where I write about writing.

Does it surprise you to know that I've been thinking about selling the Irish dexter cattle and most of the Shetland sheep? I just haven't worked up the nerve to actually post any ads. Part of me keeps saying, what if it's a mistake? I'm not sure how it could be a mistake to reduce my workload around here, but fear of making a mistake paralyzes a lot of people.

Now the sun is low enough in the sky to be shining into the window next to my computer. It's my cue that it's time for evening chores.

Happy birthday, dear house!

Six years ago today we moved into a very unfinished house. Our mobile home had been sold, and it was going to be moved away, so we had to get out. We live in a very lenient county. They said we didn't need an occupancy permit, but our insurance company wanted one, so what did the county ask us to do before they would provide it? We needed a working kitchen, a working bathroom, and a bedroom. And that was about all we had!

The floors were bare gypcrete, which is this lightweight concrete that covers in-floor heating, and it gave off this horrible dust that settled on everything. We put three beds in one of the bedrooms like a dormitory, and that's where we all lived for more weeks than I want to remember. Silly me said that the one working bathroom should be on the first floor, although the bedroom was on the second floor. I'm just lucky I didn't fall down the stairs in the middle of the night going to the bathroom. Those were some crazy days.

As the days, weeks, and months passed, and more work was finished, the more we slowed down. We are still not finished. Windows still need trim. Walls still need baseboards. The stairs are still completely unfinished. Our summers are consumed with farm work, so Mike generally works on the house for two weeks a year -- now during his winter break between semesters. And that's when I give y'all an update. Not much has happened in the last two years. This year, he's been spending his Christmas break working on the barn office, trying to get the insulation installed, as well as a new sink. Everyone told us not to move in until the house was finished, and they were right.

My new solar clothes dryer!

Shortly after moving out here, we put up a clothesline for drying clothes. It was behind the mobile home that was here at the time. We were thinking about where to build our new home and did not like any of the options very much, and then this big storm came through, and when we woke up in the morning, we saw that there was no longer a tree in our backyard. The enormous hickory tree, whose trunk was about two feet in diameter, had been blown down in the storm -- luckily in the opposite direction from the house. The clothesline was completely demolished, but it was certainly preferable to our home being crushed by the tree. It wasn't very long after the tree went down that a light bulb went on, and I realized that the space between the mobile home and the pond was the perfect place for our new home. We simply had never considered it before then, because there was a big, beautiful tree there, which we didn't want to cut down.

I can't believe it's taken us six years to get another clothesline up, but we live on a dusty gravel road, and when we've gone a few weeks without rain (as we just did), a big cloud of dust blows towards us when cars drive past. Luckily, not too many cars drive past, but I didn't see the point in putting up a clothes line if our clothes would be dirtier after drying than they were before washing.

After Mike finished the wood shed a couple months ago, it clicked! Let's put the clothesline south of the wood shed. Then another light bulb went on, and we realized that we could attach one end of the clothesline to the wood shed. So, now our clothesline is an extension of our local fuel preservation station.

Can I panic NOW?

A month ago, I realized it was crunch time, perfectly defined as when you realize you will have to work like a dog to finish your work by the deadline. The difference between our world and the modern world is that in the modern world, people give you an extension if you don't meet your deadline -- or you get fired, and it's not your deadline any longer. But in the world of Antiquity Oaks, there is no one who can grant an extension. We snooze, we lose. It's just that simple. Winter waits for no one.

Number one on the list of things that had to be done this year was "put drain tiles in the yard around the house." Without drain tiles, we will be ankle deep in water next spring when the snow starts to melt and the spring rains begin. The dogs will have muddy paws and wet legs and bellies for three months. We'll have to wash the front-door rug every day. And most fun of all -- we'll have to balance on concrete blocks as we walk across the mote in front of our house. Yes, we have a mote on Antiquity Oaks. Although I did have daydreams about being a princess when I was a child, now that I have a mote in front of my castle, I don't really like it at all.

Although Mike bought four rolls of woven wire and two rolls of welded wire, he's only finished the fence on a new chicken yard. This past weekend, he and Jonathan worked on digging holes for fence posts, so we should have some new goat pens operational next weekend. At this point, I'm not very optimistic about finishing the far west pastures this fall, but it won't be a problem until the next flood.

The kidding pens in the smaller barn have not even been started, although that is an inside job and can be done over the winter. And I won't bore you with a list of everything else from last month's post that has not been done. But if you read my blog regularly, you know that we've been keeping ourselves busy.

This morning I gave all the milkers a BoSe (selenium) injection in preparation for breeding season. I still need to give it to the dry does. We injected the bucks last week and gave them copper boluses. Mike finished the desk in the library, and we spent half a day making soap a week ago.

One thing that was not on that list last month was the new garage. We were going to build a garage in May, but that project didn't get any farther than estimates for the concrete. This means we will once again have the fascinating experience of trying to figure out how to enter a car when the doors are frozen shut.

But when I started this journey seven years ago, I read a book that said you can always tell the real farmers from the hobby farmers because the real farmers take care of their animals first. Hobby farmers build nice houses, garages and white fences across the front. Real farmers are always making their barns better and improving the livestock fencing. We are so busy taking care of the day-to-day things with the animals that the drain tiles (for our comfort) and the garage (for our comfort) didn't even get started this year. As for the kidding pens, well, the goats don't mind kidding in the big barn. It's just us wimpy humans who want to sit in a nice warm office and watch them through a window until we're really needed. And the other stuff that didn't get done from last month's list is also for us humans. Does this mean we're real farmers now?

It's crunch time

Around this time every year, I start to panic. Mike has gone back to teaching, which means that he only has Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to work on the farm. I know I should be happy that he doesn't teach on Fridays, but three days compared to seven is quite a reduction in hours. And fall is approaching, quickly followed by winter, when hibernation is the only reasonable option for all living things in Illinois, including people.

My annual panic had not set in until last night when Mike informed me that the forecast is calling for nighttime temperatures to fall into the 40s within the next week. Unlike some parts of the country, we have been having unbelievably cool weather this summer, which I love. This colder-than-normal weather pattern has been here since last winter when we had temperatures at something crazy like 16 below zero, which I did not love. I've been hoping something would snap soon, and we'd be back to normal seasonal temperatures. If this trend continues, our first-frost date of mid-October will probably be coming a lot sooner, which means less time for things to grow in the garden. I'm still waiting for my fall lettuce to sprout. And if frost comes sooner, frozen ground probably will also, which means we have even less time left than normal. In other words, it's crunch time.

The Urban Dictionary defines crunch time as:

The interval of time immediately before a project is due, when it becomes apparent that the schedule has slipped and everyone is going to have to work like dogs to try to complete the project in time. Crunch time usually occurs during the period between the next-to-last scheduled milestone (prior to which everyone was able to delude themselves that the schedule had NOT slipped) and the final deadline for delivery. During crunch time, workers are in crunch mode. Prevalent in the software industry, but used elsewhere as well.

My delusion this year was acute. So, what do we have to do before our world freezes over?

• Put drain tiles in the yard around the house. Every year the flooding is getting worse, and we said that we were definitely going to get this done this year. Can't do it once the ground freezes.
• Replace almost all the electric fencing with woven wire. Goats and sheep do not respect electric fencing. Woven wire is destroyed when it floods. So, we're going to put woven wire in all the areas that don't flood, and we'll use the temporary Electro-net for rotational grazing in areas that do flood. New fence posts have to be put in before the ground freezes.
  
• Create kidding pens in the smaller barn. Last winter, Mike created "temporary" pens in the smaller barn for me, so I could sit in the heated office and keep an eye on goats that were in labor. Over the summer, he removed all of them. New pens have not been built. After last year's experience kidding in below-zero weather, I am not breeding anyone for due dates in January or February this year. Although we could do this after our world freezes, we are kind of wimpy when it comes to working outside for very long in cold temperatures, so it needs to be done soon.
• Stain more trim for the house. Yes, this can also be done after it gets cold, but then Mike is tempted to do it in the heated barn office, and I'm afraid that the fumes are going to cause him serious problems. Katherine is supposed to start staining this weekend, so she can do it in fresh air.
• Put tile around my bathtub. This might sound like a low-priority item, which is why I have been staring at concrete board for four years. At some point, it needs to be moved up on the priority list. And it has to be done when windows can be opened because it's a headache-inducing-stinky job.
  
• Landscape in front of the house. I'm over-the-top optimistic to think that this is going to get done, but I either need to seriously get it landscaped or learn the names of all the weeds growing out there so it sounds like it's a "planned natural area" when people ask what we're growing in front of our house. It is kind of pretty when the weeds are five feet tall and blooming, but I don't think anyone would ever want that much Queen Anne's lace.

And we need to get all these special projects done while continuing to do the daily work on the homestead. Right now, there is also a lot of gardening that needs to get done, as well as canning and freezing vegetables. I was going to make salsa yesterday but ran out of time. I need to remember to order garlic for fall planting, but my indecisiveness in choosing varieties usually leads to procrastination in ordering. You can see how this is problematic.

Speaking of ordering, I need to order maple sugaring supplies, so we can tap our maple trees next spring. I just ordered two books from Amazon on the whole process. As we were walking around looking for oak and hickory trees, we realized we have a lot of very large maple trees. My sister-in-law in New York learned that all the suppliers are sold out during sugaring season, so last spring she used Chinese take-out cartons to collect sap. I've already started looking for supplies, but the less-expensive suppliers are still saying "sold out," so I need to remember to keep checking back or just order and hope it all arrives before next spring.

This weekend, we need to do goat maintenance: FAMACHA everyone (check their anemia status), give copper to those who need it, trim hooves, tattoo summer kids, and probably a few more things that I've forgotten at the moment. Oh, yeah, the bucks need to be moved to new pasture, which is always a fun job.

Now, I have to get ready to teach today.

We and us for 23 years

So, who is this "we" that I write about all the time? We built our own house. We put up a new fence. We built chicken tractors. It's time for true confessions -- if "we" ever do anything that involves power tools or large amounts of physical strength, it generally means that I came up with the idea and my husband Mike did all the hard work.

But if you've been married for a while, you can understand the fine line between me and we. Today is our 23rd anniversary, and there doesn't seem to be much difference between me and we sometimes. (I know psychologists have a word for that.) On one hand, we are total opposites. On the other hand, we compliment each other perfectly. On our wedding day 23 years ago, people thought I was being mean to Mike when I scooped all the frosting off my piece of cake and put it in his mouth. On the contrary, frosting is his favorite part, and I don't like it. He's an engineer; I have degrees in English and communication. He likes making things; I like reading and researching.

So, when I say "we" built the house, it means that I looked at house plan books for years, finally bought a plan, then made a number of changes in the floor plan and roof elevation, handed it to Mike, who then built it with an old-fashioned hammer and other tools. When he needed extra hands to lift a wall into place or something like that, the kids and I helped. I also cooked three exquisite meals a day, so he'd have enough strength to work like Paul Bunyan 14 to 18 hours a day.

And I also dragged him out of the master bedroom closet one night to save him from his perfectionism. When I woke up at 1 a.m. alone, I immediately thought he'd fallen off a ladder and knocked himself into a coma, so I went running to the new house. I found him standing in the closet staring at the top of a wall. "It's not straight!" he said, clearly disgusted.

I looked up at the two-by-fours. "It's in our closet. No one will ever see it." I took his hand and tried to pull him toward the door. "It's time for bed."

"But it's not straight. It's going to mess up everything in here."

I finally convinced him that he needed some sleep and that it would look better in the morning. Of course, being an engineer, he doesn't think about the way things look! The measurements don't lie! He did finally agree, however, that it was not worth the time to tear down that wall and redo it for 1/4 inch of perfection inside a closet. (Now when he reads this, he will no doubt tell me that it was 1/8 inch or 3/4 inch, as if my blogpals need to know the exact fraction of error.)

When "we" built the chicken house and the chicken tractors, I did hours and hours of research, then sat down with him to develop a plan that would work for our site, and he put it all together. I do the research on how to care for the animals, and when I need his physical strength, he helps. Right now, we're working on a new fencing plan. So, you can see how we work together towards a common goal, each contributing our own unique gifts and strengths.

It might seem implausible that two such different people could ever be happy together for 23 years, but our goals keep us headed in the same direction. We both value healthy lifestyles and organic food. And we push each other towards our own personal goals. I keep nudging Mike towards his goal of creating a car that can operate without ever visiting a gas station. He is always asking me about my latest writing project, and if you enjoy reading my blog, you can thank him for reminding me to post often.

One of those days

The forecast for today's weather was a high temperature of 59 degrees F. The good news is that it actually got well up into the 60s. The bad news is that we hardly took advantage of it the way we had planned. We had planned to clean out the barn. We wound up cleaning out the basement, because it flooded.

Mike has been putting up walls in the basement, and he unplugged the sump pump a week ago because he was going to put up the wall where the electrical box was located. He didn't get the wall up, and he didn't plug the sump back in. Those high temperatures meant lots of melting snow, which then flooded the basement.

Then there was this poor guy coming to pick up a goat. I gave him directions and said, "Go six or seven miles." He thought I said 57, so he went an hour past us! I felt terrible, but he seemed to handle it better than me. Maybe because his basement was not flooded, and he didn't have blood on his jeans and a goat with three kids that weren't looking great.

Yeah, Charlotte's kids are not gaining weight like they should be. They look downright skinny, and their bellies don't feel full. Her udder looks huge, but hardly any milk comes out. I checked her temperature to see if she had mastitis, but it was 102.4, which is normal. We've given the kids some extra milk, and we keep trying to milk Charlotte, but I'm not sure if we're making a lot of progress. The blood on my jeans was from crawling around in the straw trying to look under Charlotte and see if the kids are nursing correctly. One is definitely not doing a very good job. The other two seem more clued in. The blood wasn't mine; it was from Charlotte's birth. I didn't see it in the straw, but I certainly felt it when I sat in it. Cold!

When doing chores this afternoon and when walking Joy half an hour ago, I heard the sheep making lots of noise. They were certainly not "quiet as a lamb." Mike went out there this afternoon to find a ram lamb with his head stuck in the fence. I had discovered one stuck in the fence yesterday. Then tonight when I heard a lamb screaming, I came back into the house and said, "Who wants to go save a lamb?" Katherine volunteered. We've never had this problem before. I think it might be because I wethered them between one and two months of age, so their horns are small enough that they can stick their head through the fence, but then they hook the fence when trying to pull their heads back out again. My only question is, why are they doing this all of a sudden!

I am very happy to see this day end and hoping tomorrow will be better!

Bookcases up, but not done

Mike says this post is way overdue, and he's right. He finished the last two bookcases a week ago, but with Sherri and Carmen kidding, I sort of forgot about the bookcases. Actually, I wanted to get the whole library cleaned up and looking pristine before taking pictures, but at this point, I'm not sure when that will be, since my to-do list is way too long. I can't say the library is done, because it still lacks trim on the bookcases and windows, as well as baseboard. But having the bookcases up means we are a couple steps closer to being organized. We will also be -- Mike will also be putting a built-in desk between these two sets of bookcases. He is hoping to get back to staining trim in February after we're done using the barn office for kid watching.

These are obviously corner bookcases. In the above picture, the bookcase on the right is the one Mike finished in December, and the one on the left is the one he finished a couple weeks ago.

The last two bookcases are only six inches deep. In this picture, the newest bookcase is on the right. The six-inch shelves are made to hold paperback novels, and yes, one of the bookcases is filled mostly with romance novels. My son referred to it as the "trashy section" of our library. And I suppose his Calvin and Hobbes books are high literature? Uh, no. When I was in grad school, I had to read a romance novel one semester for my critical theory class, and I realized that reading romance novels actually helped me keep my sanity. I will also point out that about 90% of these novels are not mine. I'm only saying that because I know someone will ask how I have time to read that much -- and I don't have time to read that much. However, the owner of those novels can finish one in about three to four hours.

This last picture shows all four of the bookcases that Mike has finished in the last month, and the built-in desk will go in front of the window, so I'll be able to blog and watch my goats and other critters at the same time.

These last two bookcases bring the total to nine, and when we're done unpacking all the boxes of books, I hope we still have a few shelves left, because I'm sure we are not done buying books.

A midwestern connected farmhouse?

With the terrible winter weather we have in Illinois, I keep wondering why the connected farmhouse was a New England phenomenon. I've been talking to Mike about how we can create a connected farm, so that when the kids are gone and we're old, we will still be able to take care of the animals and do chores in the winter. Here is one example of a connected farm, and here is another.

There is a big open area between our house and the barns, and we still need a garage, which we can build there. Mike mentioned adding a woodshed between the garage and the barn. This is definitely one of those dreams that is part of the five-year or ten-year plan, but we were talking about our place in the country for nine years before we finally found it and moved out here. I've heard people say that they don't like to make long-term plans because they might be disappointed down the line when they can't accomplish those goals. But is the flip side better? Make no plans, have no goals, and succeed at doing nothing? I'll keep dreaming, and right now, I'm dreaming of a connected farm someday.

The view from my toilet

Yes, this really is the view from my toilet. You can see several things from here.

First, we still need to put tile around our bathtub. Whenever I list the things that still need to be done on the house, I always forget that one. We have a separate shower though, so it's not a huge deal, since I don't splash that much when I bathe. On the list of "things I wish I'd known" before building this house, I would add, "Don't have a separate shower and tub." Why? Because if you don't use a tub for about a week, you still have to clean it. Yeah, it gets ridiculously dusty, and all sorts of stuff collects in there, like dead Asian beetles in the fall. Ugh!

Second, there is a tree out there that still hasn't lost its leaves. Six or seven years ago, I wouldn't have noticed that, and I wouldn't have cared. Today, I wonder why it hasn't lost its leaves. Healthy trees shed their leaves in the fall, just like healthy animals shed their winter coats in the spring. After the goats stripped the bark off our apple trees, they didn't lose their leaves in the fall, and when spring arrived, we realized they were dead. So, if that huge tree is dead, that's a lot of firewood!

Often, I see ducks and geese swimming on the pond, but this time of year they're confined to the small area that is kept unfrozen by the aerator. They look like little dots in the picture, but they're bigger in real life. I've seen deer wandering through the pasture, and sometimes our horses gallop around the back of the pond. Every now and then, I also see naughty goats back there after they've gone through the electric fence. Overall, I'd have to say that the view from my toilet makes it the best seat in the house.

2 bookcases up; 2 to go!

In spite of the power outage, we have prevailed! Okay, Mike has prevailed. I don't get any of the credit on this one. He finished the second coat of poly a couple days ago, and on Friday, he brought the pieces of the bookcases into the library and put them together. In the picture at right, the bookcases are laying front-down, and Mike is screwing the back onto the bookcase on the left.

Since they go from the floor to the ceiling, he has to make a small base for them to stand on. If they were truly eight feet tall, you couldn't put them together laying down and then stand them up because of that hypotenuse thing that we all learned in high school geometry and promptly forgot. So, you see the base is in place in the lower, right-hand corner of the photo, and then he has to lift the bookcase and set it on there.

And, voila! We have two more bookcases, for a total of seven! (Yes, we really do have that many books.) After he makes the last two bookcases, he has to make the end pieces and the trim, but there's a lot of things in this house that still need trim. The last two bookcases will go on the side walls next to the two he just put up. They will only be six inches deep, and that is where our paperback novels will be shelved.

A built-in desk will be put between these two bookcases. I did have a cheap particle-board desk there, but it doesn't fit any longer, so Mike needs to make the new desk a higher priority now. I really like sitting at that window when I'm on the computer, because I can keep an eye on the goats.

Four year anniversary!

Four years ago today, we moved into our partially completed house. It's still not done, but that's a post for another day. You see, we built this house ourselves. We only hired three contractors: the basement guy (because he had a backhoe and forms to make concrete walls), the insulation guy (because he had this cool pulverized newspaper to blow into the walls), and the concrete people who poured the light-weight concrete over our in-floor heating tubes. Mike did 95% of everything else, and the kids and I helped out when he needed a few more hands. No, he's not a professional carpenter; he's an electronics engineering professor. My main contribution was keeping him well-fed with four meals a day as he worked 18-hour days all summer. Our big joke was that he lost 20 pounds eating my cheesecake and creme brulee pie daily.

"Everyone" told us not to move in until the house was finished, but when someone walks up and asks to buy the mobile home where you're living, it is hard to say no. We only seriously regretted that decision for about six months. When we first moved in, we were all sleeping in one bedroom, and we only had one bathroom operating. To get the occupancy permit, we only needed to have a working bathroom and a working kitchen. That's about all we had.

Even though I've been getting up to go the bathroom every night since the first time I got pregnant, I foolishly suggested that the first working bathroom should be on the main floor, since that's where we'd be spending our days. Ha! In addition to having to traipse downstairs in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I was hoofing it up and down the stairs all day too, because guess which room I wanted to get finished first? My bedroom!

How far have we come in four years? Well, when we first moved in, we had no floor coverings, which means that we were walking on this light-weight concrete, which created a LOT of dust. You had to wash your dishes before you used them, even if they'd just been washed a few hours earlier. It was disgusting. Rooms were not painted. Most didn't even have drywall. There was no trim on any doors. In fact, there were very few doors -- there wasn't even a door on the bathroom. We had a sheet hanging over the opening for privacy. For more details on the construction, you can visit our website.

Where are we today? We still need a lot of baseboards, crown molding, some door trim, and all the window trim. We need to finish the stairwell, and Mike is working on the bookcases for the library over the Christmas break. We thought we would be able to finish the library completely, but the power outage really messed up those plans.

Here are a couple of tidbits we have only recently learned -- but wish we'd have known sooner. Windows that slide (double hung) are not very airtight. The best ones are casement or awning style windows. That's what they're using in all the most energy-efficient homes now. As much as I love our in-floor heating, there is an issue with the house being too air-tight. Yes, I know I just said the double-hung windows are not very air-tight, but they're air-tight enough that we have a problem with mold growth in the winter. [sigh] I'm not sure we can do much about that now.

Plans for the future: I want to add on a dining room, so when our kids are married and coming home for the holidays, we'll have a big dining room for those holiday dinners. I also want to add a master suite for the first floor, because I'm not sure that my knees will last a lifetime. (More on that in a couple days.) And we really need a garage! During the summer, I actually enjoy having the cars in the driveway because they get washed when it rains. In the winter, however, the doors have frozen shut on more than one occasion. Usually, a door on the south side will melt, and I can get in there and crawl over to the driver side. A couple weeks ago, however, a friend broke off her car door handle trying to open a frozen door. So, a garage is definitely at the top of the list of upcoming building projects. I'm not sure if we'll be able to afford it in 2009 though.

Home for Christmas!

The electricity was restored on Tuesday, just in time for another winter storm, so the kids and I stayed in our hotel, rather than attempting a possibly dangerous drive. Yesterday, the weather was completely opposite the ice-snow-wind that was being forecast, so we hurried home before it had a chance to get nasty again. After arriving at home, we saw just how cold it was in the house. That's frozen condensation on the inside of the windows.

Losing electricity was quite a learning experience, and although there are some things I like about life in the 19th century, the lack of electricity would not be one of those things. My favorite part of the whole ordeal was how we spent the evening after 24 hours without our modern appliances. Since we had no television or computer to keep us occupied after dinner, we played cards and Monopoly. We should do that more often. In fact, tonight, we're talking about playing dominoes after dinner.

Lesson #2: When my oldest (now 21) was six years old, I canceled cable television. After spending two days in a hotel with a television, I can still say that it was an excellent decision. It only took about three hours of viewing for me to ask, how do people spend hours every day watching this? We do own a television, and we have a Netflix subscription, and every Friday we have movie night with homemade pizza (using our homemade mozarella), so I don't completely eschew television, but I don't understand how people can blindly flip through channels looking for something to entertain them hour after hour, day after day.

Lesson #3: Plumbing was the greatest invention of modern society. If I had to choose between living without electricity and living without plumbing, I'd give up the electricity. Since our well pump is electric, we lose both when we lose electricity. As much as I missed lights, I really missed being able to wash my hands, shower, and flush the toilet. Mike, who wound up carrying buckets of water from the creek to the animals, really missed having a working well and faucets.

Lesson #4: Having a wood stove is a great supplemental source of heat. I'm glad Mike was so insistent about the in-floor heating when we built the house. Being in a hotel for two days with forced air has made me remember how much I dislike it and how unevenly it heats a room. The in-floor heating and the wood stove work very well together, along with our passive solar design. Having a wood stove as your sole source of heat is time-consuming, stressful and difficult. Someone had to add wood every hour and a half, even overnight. Of course, some stoves are made to last longer, so if your goal is total wood heat, you definitely need to buy a wood furnace, rather than a stove. A possible problem with that, however, is if you have an electric blower, you would lose it when you lose electricity.

Lesson #5: We still have a long way to go to be completely self-sufficient. We're doing great with food, but we have work to do in the energy department. We now own a generator, so we will be able to handle future power outages much better; however, it would be great if we were off the grid entirely. That's been a goal from the beginning, but when something like this happens, it makes you start working towards that goal a little more seriously and with more dedication.

And the final lesson . . . as Dorothy learned in The Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home." As much as I enjoyed the whirlpool, the exercise room, the maid service, and not having to cook, I really missed home.

A new wall!

It is amazing how a person's standards can go down. Three years ago, I would not have thought a new wall would warrant a blog post, but since we haven't had any new walls in . . . I don't know when we had anything as exciting as a new wall! Mike still has a week left to teach, but this weekend, he put up three pieces of wall board! Woo hoo! The two horizontal pieces behind the wood stove are concrete board, which now we realize is overkill. Concrete board is fire retardant, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. In the summer, when we can open the windows, we'll cover this wall with ceramic tile. (Opening windows when installing tile is important, because the adhesive stuff stinks!) To the right of the wood stove is standard drywall. The basement stairs are behind this wall, so until now, this was a pretty ugly site. Of course, this is far from finished, but at least you don't see all the junk under the stairs any longer. (Except for that junk on the left, which can't get covered because the left-over piece of drywall is only 16 inches wide, and that space is 19 inches.)

You can expect more house updates during our winter break. Next week, Mike will be putting the polyurethane on more bookshelves for the library. Our goal is to have the bookcases completely done before we have to go back to teaching in January.

Hibernation

It's that time of year -- time to cuddle up with a few good catalogs in front of the fire. The garden catalogs have already started to arrive, and yesterday I scored big when I found one of those freezer-bag-food-sealer-thingies for $17.49!!! Those things normally sell for about $50, but who would want one in December, right? It had already been marked down to $34.99. I'm glad I didn't see it then, because I would have snatched it up at that price. Now that we're growing more of our own food, we can certainly use one of those because it seals the food and prevents freezer burn. I know Ziploc wants you to believe that they do that, but they don't. Six-month-old vegetables look like a block of ice in a Ziploc bag.

Last night's temperature was 3 degrees Fahrenheit. 'Tis definitely time to be staying inside. The wood stove is running constantly now, and I should be sticking a chicken in the oven for lunch, instead of blogging. I also have a big pile of grading to finish. This is the last week of school for me, and then I can focus on Christmas baking and gift making.

Over the Christmas holidays, Mike is going to finish the bookcases for the library. Yes, we have been in this house for four years, and it's not done. He did half of the bookcases two years ago during Christmas break, then last year we decided to go on a vacation. That was a mistake. He got another pair of bookcases stained but didn't get the poly on them, so they've sat in the shed office for the past year.

I am also hoping we will get a couple of goat kidding pens completed in that building. I would love to be able to sit in the warm office and watch goats in labor through the window, rather than sitting in the straw with them for hours and hours, feeling my butt freeze and my nose go numb. It would also be preferable to listening to a baby monitor in the house and then running through the snow when I hear a goat scream. Every year, Sherri kids in the middle of the night in January. And being the stoic mom that she is, she makes no sound at all until the head is coming out. Then I fly out of bed, pull on the clothes that were sitting next to the bed, and run to the barn. As I open the door, I hear the kid screaming. On those cold winter nights, a wet kid can get hypothermia and die pretty quickly.

It happened last winter when I was at school. I don't want it to ever happen again, so the new system is as much for the human kids as it is for me. If they can sit out there in a warm room, hopefully they won't miss any births when I'm not at home. Of course, they're not going to be here much longer -- college acceptance letters for Margaret have started arriving -- but that's a post for another day.