Waiting for Winds of Winter

Yes, I am a fan of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as the show Game of Thrones. I try to be patient by rereading the books, but I'm having a hard time waiting to find out what is going on. All of the fan theories are interesting and I poke around fan sites about once a week to see what people are talking about.

I ordered the seeds for the garden last night. I had a few last minute items to add on. My husband was concerned that we wouldn't have room for all of the items, but I pointed out that we'll only have a few of each plant. I'm interested in trying the hubbard squash, but we'll likely only have 1 or 2 vines. The same is true for pie pumpkins. The majority of the garden space will likely be for tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers. I'm excited to make pickles, so we'll need to grow quite a few cukes.

I've been searching for more information on backyard chickens lately. I'm hoping I'll find a good book on the subject. It seems strange to need a lot of information of raising chickens when people had their own backyard chickens just 50 years ago, but no one in my generation seems to know anything about raising poultry.

More about our House

I meant to share more about the home buying process, but it ended up being such a busy time that I neglected blogging.

We viewed just a few homes, though I looked at hundreds online. We didn't want to waste our realtor's time, or our own, with homes that didn't look like what we wanted.

There are just a few towns in our area, but there was one that stuck out as being family friendly. I only found a few houses that looked interesting here, but one ended up being just right for our family.

The house we decided to buy is a small ranch, about 1,200 sqft. It is on a quarter of an acre and is tucked back in an older, quiet neighborhood. There were just two trees here, an apple in the back yard, and a young maple in the front. We planted our 8 new fruit trees, and we're planning for blueberries in the spring.

We haven't made up our minds yet about backyard chickens. Our town has no limit on the number of chickens and even allows roosters. I would love to raise our own eggs and have a source of manure for composting. The coops are fun to look at online too. The only drawbacks of chickens I can think of are cleaning up the coop regularly, and the increase in rodents and snakes in our yard. All of the neighbors have chickens though, so it likely wouldn't be too much trouble.

I've been working on my seed order for spring. It's exciting to be planning a large food garden. I know we want asparagus, green beans, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, lettuce, melons, and some squash. It's going to be hard to figure out exactly how much more will fit, and how many plants of each thing to do. I think it will be a bit easier next year after using the yard for a year. 

Pruning an Apple Tree

I never really updated on the housing situation. We found a house we liked and ended up buying it in late September. It is a small house in a rural town. There isn't much of a yard, but it is larger than what we had at the rental house.

Our small house came with a young apple tree that no one ever pruned. I looked up the basics and gave it my best shot today. It seems like the most important things to remember are to trim away crossing branches, avoid crooks between branches (bugs live there), and get rid of some older limbs to make way for newer branches (new growth tends to be more prolific). I guess time will tell how well I did. There were just a few wormy apples on the tree in Fall 2014, so I'd like to at least get rid of the worms.

In addition to the one original apple tree, we planted 3 apples, 2 cherries, 1 peach, 1 apricot, and 1 plum. We ordered them from Stark Bro's. They have a good selection with reasonable prices. They also prune the trees for free. The only gripe I have with them is that the trees didn't ship on time and the company never contacted me. I had to call them several times before I found out when the new shipping date would be. Despite the shipping delay, I plan on ordering some blueberry bushes from them in the spring.

Making decisions

A really important question my husband I have been asking ourselves recently has been, do we want to buy a property that meets 75% of our wants, or do we want to buy something that meets about 25% and will help us build equity?
We're leaning toward building some equity. We found out we do not qualify to buy vacant land, nor do we qualify for a rehab loan. The best choice for us financially is likely a stick built home in a neighborhood.

It's a hard decision to make, since we want to have a large homestead, but if we sacrifice now, we might be able to afford our dream property after 5 years. And in the mean time, we will be able to control our own garden. Renting is wonderful in some ways, but not when you have to keep a landscaped garden rather than growing food.

Once we make an offer on a property, we'll have another garage sale. If my head is on straight, I'll remember to take pictures so I can show you how to make a lot of money at your own sale!

Tiny Update

I've been busy lately. We've decided to go ahead and look at properties more seriously. As in, we're going to buy something. Hurray! I've been spending most of my free time obsessively checking for rural properties. It's kind of hard because they're sometimes listed under larger town names. I really like the site Land and Farm. It has an option to search the whole state or by a particular county, which sites like Remax don't.

I still need to post about the amazing garage sale we had (woohoo for making $1,400 in a weekend!). I'm going to blog more when I wear myself out from property hunting.

Have a good weekend!

Finding a Routine

Things didn't end up panning out with the house that we toured. It was lovely, but needed far more work than our family could do. It also wouldn't have been safe with 2 little children. I've been eyeballing other houses, and lots of vacant land, though. We're still unsure on whether we will buy a starter home, or go directly to our homestead.

On the homesteady/grow your own food front, I found a walnut tree growing in our flower garden! I was pulling weeds and didn't recognize it, so out it came. I wondered what on earth it was, then realized the plant was growing from a walnut! It was unharmed and I replanted it. I've been watering it and making sure it stays healthy. I'll move it to a larger pot soon.

During my break from blogging we had a weekend garage sale and made $1,400. More on that later. :)

It's been hard for me to figure out a schedule now that I have more energy. The kids are both really demanding and I try to give them each attention, but it leaves me feeling drained. It also makes it hard to get the housework done. I imagine most stay at home parents of little children feel this way, but it seems to be the sort of thing no one talks about (possibly because of the lack of time).

One thing that has helped is the nice summer weather. We go outside every day at around 10:30 or 11. We usually head in around lunch time and find something to do until the baby is ready for her nap. While she sleeps, Wyatt and I spend some time together, which he really seems to need. I'd like to get a routine in place for the morning. I usually stumble around until I'm sufficiently caffeinated.

Our summer is getting busier, so soon I will have more interesting things to write about (plus tips on how to have a great garage sale).

Looking at Properties

We're still looking at properties here at The Plastic Homestead. The one that sounded so right may or may not be. The shape of the land is a little different that what we wanted (it's a thin rectangle; we kind of want a square or fat rectangle). The price is amazing though compared to other pieces with that many acres.

I'm also poking around "normal" houses. I'd really like to get out of the rental and have our money go toward something we would own. I'm keeping my eyes out for fixer-uppers. It would be nice to get some extra experience with building/remodeling before building a house from the ground up, like we're talking about doing on a vacant piece of land.

There's one house that has grabbed my attention enough for me to request a showing. We've driven out to several others, but this one is good enough to tour. It's a dump at the moment, which means lots of potential for hands-on learning.

This whole house/land hunting thing is a bit tiring, especially when I realize I may be getting carried away.