Fantastic Find: Farmer Markets!!

Part of the reason we chose to move to the country was to be able to grow and produce our own food.  I am terrified of the foods I find at grocery stores, not knowing where it came from and how it was raised.  To obtain this level of self-sufficiency is going to take a while, so in the meantime I have been trying to find alternative sources for our foods.  Not at all happy with the local grocery store selection of meats and produce, I set out to find a way to buy foods direct from local farmers.  I hit the jackpot this weekend when I discovered not one, but two local farmer markets.  The beauty of these markets lies in the online ordering system.  You browse products available that week and add what you want to your cart.  You can read bios and farming practices of the growers on the site as well.  On delivery day, simply go to the market meet-up location, pick up your order, and pay.

I was simply giddy when I walked into the first market yesterday to retrieve my order.  This market was about 30 miles from us and we arrived a little early.  I was greeted and welcomed so warmly I almost started bawling right there!  I mingled with some of the growers bringing their product to market.  Everything was labeled and ready for collection by customers.  I have honestly never seen such beautiful produce in my whole life.  Being winter, the selection is mostly greens.  This is so fine with me, most nutritious of all foods!  I scored gorgeous spinach, kale, turnip greens, and collard greens, all beautifully packaged labeled for me.  I had also ordered a couple of natural chicken breasts, breakfast sausage, and a couple dozen fresh laid eggs.  What a fantastic experience.

We then headed to the closer market, only about 10 miles from us.  Bobby had to go pick up for me since we had to get one of our kiddos to basketball practice.  I was so sad to miss this initial pick up.  Bobby says he was greeted by the sweetest young couple. From this market I ordered a whole broiler chicken, fresh ground beef, mixed salad greens, lettuce,  turnips and greens, and 4 dozen MORE eggs.  I love eggs.  All was stunningly beautiful and perfect. The market managers even threw in some extra Gluten Free Almond Cookies to try.  Happiness.  

This has inspired us to start offering some of my homemade creations at the markets.  In the works are milk baths, natural laundry detergent and fabric softener, and sugar scrubs.  I also may offer my infamous peach cobbler and peanut butter blossoms.  :)  The only thing standing in our way is a name for our farm.  We need help!  We are on 37 acres in a beautiful hollow.  We want something original, catchy, and timeless.  We plan to start growing a large garden and raising chickens and cows in the near future.  Any suggestions?

To find a farmers market near you, try Locally Grown.  Happy hunting!

Thanks for reading!  Wishing you a fabulous day and a HAPPY NEW YEAR from the farm!!

Catching up and Dining Room Rehab

Wow, been a while.  I am finally forcing myself to sit down and catch up on what has been going on at the farmhouse.

Our trip here went well.  It was a very long drive, we drove through the night.  We arrived at our new home around 2:00pm.  The kids and I were first to pull up the long drive and make a beeline to the door.  Kids couldn't wait to see their new home!  We were welcomed by a spooked skunk who managed to spray the door and porch in his hasty getaway attempt.  Lovely scent to come home to! As if that wasn't enough we came to find out the heat wasn't working!  Eeek!  It was sub 20 degrees.  Of course we moved the week of the coldest cold snap this area has seen in years in November.  So our first night we stayed in the local Inn, all 5 of us and the pets...Jules and Griffyn.  They did very well, as they had been slightly sedated from the trip so they were still droggy.

The morning brought us to the local diner for a hot breakfast.  We looked mighty fine after our overnight drive and short rest in a hotel.  Lovely way to introduce ourselves to the town.  We then made our way to our home.  Luckily, the heater only needed a part to get it going and we were able to get the serviceman out that morning to fix it.  Now the daunting task of getting house clean enough to move into....

This house has been owned by the same family since 1988.  It was their vacation home so hasn't been lived in full time for who knows how long.  The previous owner left several furniture pieces in decent shape so we utilized a newer looking bed in a bedroom upstairs to sleep in for the night.  Kids got pallets on the floor in the same room.  I spent most of the day cleaning years of grime and dirt from the kitchen and bathrooms.  Our moving truck still sat full in the yard.  It ended up taking us about 7 days to unload it all.  The most challenging thing was my beloved refrigerator.  It was too big to go in any of the door frames in the house so we had to completely disassemble it.  Thankfully the kids were in school by now, so they didn't have to witness our many tantrums throughout the process of disassemble and reassembly.

Our first project required a contractor.  The home was in dire need of a new roof.  The original roof from 1900 was still being used and consisted of ornate metal shingles.  I kept those for future projects.  :) It took about 3 weeks for them to get out and get started.  We had them deck with Tech Shield for better insulation.  New soffits and gutters also went up, along with new columns and ceiling for the porch.  We chose a metal roof in galvanized silver.  My vision for this house is SIMPLE.  It will be very understated but elegant in it's mere structure. It merits mentioning that during the roofing process a squirrel found it's way in the ceiling and managed to fall through.  My 8 year old son, Dawson, found him and freaked the freak out.  It was quite comical watching the dog chase the squirrel (who failed miserably) then Bobby chase it with a baseball bat.  The baseball bat won, thank goodness.  

Next up came windows.  Again, original windows were still here!  We used Lowe's for the windows and installation.  FANTASTIC JOB.  The installers were nothing short of amazing.  The were able to remove and install 22 windows in ONE day, including my kitchen window we had resized and had to be reframed.  They came the next day and wrapped all the wood around the windows in vinyl.  It looks amazing.  We purchased Pella Double Hung windows which all had to be custom made for this house.  By the way, I kept EVERY SINGLE window that was removed.  Watch for projects to come from those soon....including mirrors and such.  :)

During the exterior construction, Bobby and I began working on the first room in the house.  We chose what has become our dining room.  I will include pictures of the room before.
       
 My awesome husband about to start one hella project:

 After the sheetrock is down and part of wall torn out:

 Closet that we opened into the kitchen:

 Odd shaped side of the fireplace:

 Tearing down the kitchen side of the wall:

View from kitchen side once we broke through the wall:

 We tore out half of a wall, opening the room to the kitchen.  We found old HVAC duct work that was about 10" in diameter in the wall.  More work.  Once the wall was down we exposed the side of a very unusual shaped fireplace. We tore out all of the sheetrock in the room. There were layers of wallpaper under the sheetrock.  We finally got to that beautiful antique tongue and groove beadboard.  Something told me to go ahead and remove the ceiling too and I am SO glad we did.  There were nests everywhere!  Also found the ceiling was not closed off to the front patio and back porch.  Not good for heat retention!!  So...we plugged the holes in between the beams with 2x10's cut to fit.  Then we caulked all the way around it.

This was as we added "plugs", in between the beams were openings onto porch:

 And after plugs installed and caulked:

We decided to plank the ceiling with 1x8 pine boards and paint them. Here are a few photos of them going up:

Notice the blue carpet is gone?  Hallelujah!!  The floors are original to the house.  There was a patch about 5 ft square that had been cut out for beam repairs at some point and plywood was laid to patch. We removed the plywood and bought the closest 3x tongue and groove boards we could find.  They are pine but the floor has to be painted anyways.  You can't find solid oak these days at a reasonable price like what was originally laid.  

This photo shows the plywood and where we started laying the new floor.  Yes, that is dirt ground directly under the floor.  Pier and beam house folks!! 

 After new pine boards installed and puttied:

Sanding the floor was next.  Since we are painting we just did a light sand with my orbital sander, using a 40 grit paper, to remove any chipping paint and give it teeth to grab the paint.  

Before painting we had a bit more to do...remember the ugly fireplace?  We chose to plank it like the ceiling to close it off.  I love how it turned out:

While installing this wall we have to mention we found this lovely piece of oak that fought a hard won battle with someone years and years ago that maybe had too many Colt 45's which we did find in the wall too:

Now it was time to paint!  Here were my paint selections (top is ceiling, then wall & trim which are the same just different sheens):

All paints we are using are Benjamin Moore.  Ceiling is in Calm, wall & trim is Winter White. 

Ok, so we painted then were ready to paint the floor.  I chose Ozark Shadows which is a light, taupey gray.  Here are some photos as it is right now.  We still have to add crown molding and a few pieces of baseboard.  We have them already just waiting for kids to go back to school to finish. We tend to get testy when working miter cuts. The mirror you see is also antique...mercury glass.  I feel so lucky to have found it left here.  

Oh, and somewhere in this process Bobby took the chandelier hanging in our bedroom and relocated it to the dining room.  It looks fantastic after a good cleaning.  It is definitely antique, the weight and wiring are a dead give away.  I love treasures!!

Well that kind of caught us up on what's been going on around the farmhouse.  I have more little stories to add in another post.  This is way long!  I intend to take better photos in the future too I promise.  

Until next time....