The Beginning of the Beginning

Not surprisingly it has been a while since our last entry.  I'll try to remember as many details as I can that have happened over the last 20+ days aside from the usual routine.

When it comes to the farm and what we're doing, we've been cleaning things out, sorting through stuff, looking at contractors and coming up with a plan for building one house and renovating another.  We feel confident that we have a "final" plan for the houses on the farm (see below).  Neta and I looked at several options, while also discussing those options with her dad - currently living in the main house (top arrow) - and several contractors.

Neta's Dad wanted his own place, and with us working at home full time, it is the best option for all of us.  You can see a small structure next to the bottom arrow (ignore the long structure next to it, it is no longer there).  We're calling this structure "The Cabin".  It's about 720 square feet with room for a bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchenette.  This will be Neta's Dad's house once we renovate it.

The main house, part of which was built in the early 1890's, will, sadly, be torn down.  It wasn't a decision that we took lightly, but looking at the cost of renovation based on the current state of the house was just too much to take on, coupled with the cost of renovating the Cabin as well.  We plan to salvage certain items as the contractor demos it, including some old, large timbers in the attic that could possibly be used in the new construction and any other old boards/timber that look vintage, rustic, appealing or useful.

In the meantime, the biggest and most time-consuming chore has been cleaning out the two houses in preparation for renovation/demolition.  Neta and Robert pulled everything down from the attic so it could be sorted.  As many family members were in the local area over Thanksgiving, we all gathered at the farm the day after and started going through items so people could take what they wanted or decide where certain things should go or who should get them.  Needless to say, along with all of the "things" in the house, there are lifetimes of memories as well.  Also needless to say, we didn't get to all of it that weekend and Neta is still sorting and boxing items, along with talking with family members to see who wants/gets what.

As I mentioned earlier, we spoke with several contractors, but it was the first one we called that we ended up going with.  We liked him from the first few minutes of talking and by the time our meeting ended, we just knew he'd be the one, but we talked to some others to make sure we did our due diligence.  He really understands the look and feel of what we're trying to achieve, has already provided us with lots of great ideas to consider about things we hadn't even thought about, plus he's as nice of a person as we've met since moving down here.  His references couldn't say enough nice things about him and his work and crew.  One liked him so much, he sold him a chunk of his property next door to build his own house.  Another liked the work he'd done so well that they asked him to build a house for their daughter.

But back to the house plans...  In the same vein of salvaging items for use elsewhere in the construction of our house, we've been digging around the house and barns for inspiration.  We've found old wood that we might be able to use for accent pieces.  I intend to use some of it to build a rustic farmhouse table for our dining room.  Along with some wood and other interesting items, we made a find that put a huge smile on Neta's face...a vintage, claw-footed bathtub.  We'd missed it in the few other times we've lightly dug around in the barn.  It was tucked under an old workbench and filled with dirt and the empty pecan shells of many a squirrels breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Future site of warm baths

The tub and its feet appear to be in good shape with just a few small chips, some exterior rust and an obvious need of re-glazing.  Finding all 4 feet intact was the icing on the cake.

The Mud Dauber nests add character

Being in a dry and dusty barn kept it
from deteriorating too badly

But finding this tub was not all good news.  We'd pretty much settled on our house plans with the builder, though nothing is cast in stone.  But this does mean that instead of just a shower in the master bathroom, we're now going to have to find room for a vintage tub.

That not only wraps things up for this blog entry, but the year as well.  It's been a good one.  What started out as just a "what if" idea a year and a half ago, turned 2015 into a year of big changes.  We changed jobs so we could be fully remote.  We sold our house of 8+ years in Vienna.  We bought a farm in rural, southeastern Georgia.  We left behind family, friends and neighbors and headed south.  We made my mother a bit sad, seeing us move away, and my father-in-law happy, having us in his neighborhood for a change.  We've had many new and exciting experiences, not the least of which was rattlesnakes, watching cotton grow and get harvested and getting to know new places.  We've enjoyed the warmer weather and won't miss shoveling the snow, though I will miss seeing it.  2015 was the year where we called a new place "Home"...and home it is now.

We hope everyone has enjoyed reading about our life and times so far and we hope to keep you entertained in 2016 and beyond.  Happy New Year!

Random Photos from a Daily Walk

Everyday Neta and I take at least one walk around the yard.  It gets us out of the house away from our desks and into the fresh air for a few minutes.  Along with walking Sammie, it allows us to just take a look around, notice things we might have missed recently and enjoy the weather.  Recently that weather has not disappointed with temps in the high 60's and low 70's and mostly sunny skies.  We are always on the lookout for birds, animals, flowers or anything else that might catch our eye.

Today we were only a minute or two into our walk when I noticed 3 jets flying very high and staggered like stair steps.  I ran back inside, grabbed my camera and snapped this picture:

3 jets, heading west over the trees

I figured that if anything else caught my eye, I'd snap a picture or two.  For some reason, this lone pecan at the end of a branch appealed to me:

The Lone Pecan

As we got down to the end of the backyard, the barn across the field that I've looked at dozens of times looked different to me.  I might have been the foreground of scraggly cotton plants left over after picking and the way the pecan trees next to it provided some additional "character".  I'm not sure, but it just looked like something I wanted to take a picture of.

Looks like something from
a bygone era

Getting fancy with the
B&W filter to make it look even older

A little further along I thought I'd take a picture of the silos that are next to our yard.  I'd love to get a few of these for our farm, if for no other reason than I think they'd add vintage character.

Imagine an old vintage sign painted on the side...

A few photos of the many camellias that grow around our rental house.  Several of them are producing a lot of blooms right now and a few blooms looked so perfect or close to it that I had to take their picture.

Who cares about a few small blemishes?.

Three in a row

This one was hiding deep inside the tree

A pale pink bloom

I was really amazed at the layers and lines of the petals

And just for fun here are a few other camellia photos from a week or so ago.

More Montage!

This is another one of those lazy posts - just pictures of whatever caught my fancy.

Happy Tractor

Early morning kitchen window

Hobbit hay bales

We are literally in high cotton down here

Partial snake skeleton lying in the road

Not rotten limes - these are black walnuts, still in the fruit.

I'm pretty sure I could have died getting this picture.

Black and white makes the old shelter down by the pond much more picturesque.

It's About Cotton Pickin' Time!

We waited all summer for this!

He's getting positioned...right after grazing the power line to the house.

We've been watching the cotton grow from just a small plant (maybe a foot tall by the time we moved down here) to almost 4 feet tall and very healthy by the end of the summer.  Then they came over a month ago and sprayed it with defoliant to kill the leaves but not the bolls.

Recently it's been raining every couple or so days and they haven't been able to harvest.  As we watched the cotton sag on the plants and begin to drop off, we wondered if they were ever going to pick it.  A lot of farmers in this area don't have their own harvesters and have to rely on others, and their availability, to pick the cotton for them.

They actually started picking the cotton down the road yesterday, moving to the field behind our house last night.  What??!!!  We waited all summer and halfway through the fall and they're going to pick cotton at night?  When we newcomers can't see it?  Needless to say, Neta and I were not happy with this schedule.

We had errands to run last night and when we got home we could see the ghostly outlines in the moonlight of the bales in the back field, but at least the cotton in front of our house wasn't harvested yet.  Whew!

This morning, around 10:30 (farmers apparently keep easy work schedules -- I want to be one!) the combines showed up for the front field.  The first one entered the field, but the second one had something sticking up from the top and it hit the power line coming into our house.  It didn't knock it down, but it caused it to spark or something, setting off Sammie on a barking binge and causing just enough of a power flux that our internet router reset, in the middle of a client call that Neta was on (she uses a fancy Voice Over IP phone).  Internet outage by farm equipment.  That's life in the country.

But finally...we got to watch them pick cotton.

About time!!!

Here's something I did not realize about harvesting cotton.  Unlike picking corn, they strip the cotton from the plant, but the plant remains (somewhat) standing.

Oh yeah...and I know some of you may wonder if Neta and I are going to try to grow cotton -- as a hobby crop - on our farm, the answer is probably not.  You cannot grow cotton, not even for fun, in the state of Georgia without a permit.  You can thank Mr. Boll Weevil for that!


Here are a few other pictures from both the front and back fields showing the bales.

That's a lot of t-shirts!

Bales as far as the eye can see

Bringing it home!

This brings our curiosity about cotton farming to an end...until next year at planting time.

Wildlife camera

This is Neta again.  You can always tell if the post is from me; it will either be about cooking or gardening or just a bunch of pictures.  This time I've taken lazy to a new level: I didn't even take these pictures myself.

We got our wildlife camera when we were still in Virginia, but didn't use it much because all we ever got were pictures of Sammie running around the backyard.  Since we've been living the country life in Georgia we've gotten much more use out of it.  We've gotten some cool animal shots, but we also have a lot of shots of Craig or Robert on the lawn mower.

Eating pears off the tree

We try to move the camera around to different spots, but putting it under a pecan tree in Autumn turned out to be a mistake:  we got about a hundred shots of falling pecans.  

I'm not sure but this might be a chupacabre, 

This guy was in a hurry

This fox must have a den nearby - we got several shots of him

We get a lot of deer pictures, and even some Deere pictures...

This isn't creepy at all, right?

(dirt) road grader 

The Harvest Spirit

I've been getting into the harvest spirit, taking advantage of what we have available here at our rental house.  It started with Scuppernong grapes.  If you aren't familiar with them, Scuppernongs are a type of Muscadine grapes, which are pretty common in the South.  There are both white and purple varieties of Muscadines; Scuppernongs are a white variety, although they are actually more of a bronze color.  We're lucky enough to have two looooong trellises of grape vines at our rental house and I took full advantage of them.

Ripe Scuppernongs

Muscadines are large grapes with great flavor but tough skin.  Anyone who grew up eating them knows the best way to do it:  suck the fruit out of the skin, then spit out the seeds.  Southerners are a genteel bunch.  One of the most common things to make with the grapes is jelly, but we don't eat a whole lot of jelly (I prefer jam) so I wanted to do something different.  

Normal size grape vs. scuppernong

Most of the grapes I picked were turned into juice, but I got a little creative and pickled some of them too.  You read that right:  pickled grapes.  I was inspired by a recipe I found online and they turned out pretty tasty. 

This is the 2nd bucketful

Pickled Grapes - that's a bay leaf in the jar. 

After the grapes it was time for the pears.  We have one tree here at the rental house and one tree on the farm.  We wound up with a lot of pears from just those two trees, so I wound up doing a lot more with them.  I dried some, I made pear sauce, I canned some, and I made Belgian pears.

Pears...not just for decorating! 

  

The dried pears were probably the most work for the least amount of return (just in terms of volume). I  peeled and cored the pears, then I sliced them straight across so I wound up with pear rings.  I dunked all of the pears into a bowl of lemon water as soon as they were peeled to prevent browning.  I placed all the slices on cookie-cooling racks on top of baking sheets and put them in the oven at 170 degrees. Dipping them in water first made them take longer to dry, about 8 hours.  I started with about a dozen large pears and was able to fit the dried rings in a quart-size plastic baggie with room to spare.

The Belgian pears were my favorite.  It was another internet find, from Fiona at The Cottage Smallholder.  The recipe sounds crazy - you cook the pears in vinegar for 6 hours.  6 hours!  You'd think they'd be nothing but mush; and what's up with the vinegar?!  But I had so many pears I was willing to take the chance of wasting some.  I peeled and dunked as many pears as I could fit in the bottom of my pot.  No coring necessary - I like this recipe already!  It takes about 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar and 2 cups of sugar, which you heat up in a pot until the sugar is dissolved, then put in a single layer of pears.  You are also supposed to capture any of the juice from peeling the pears and add it to the pot.  Now, these pears weren't all that juicy, but I capture all the juice from peeling ALL the pears.  Plus I had a couple of overripe pears that I crushed in a citrus juicer.  So I had plenty of liquid.  

16 pears in a pot

Once the pears come to a boil, you cover them and simmer for 3 hours.  Then you are supposed to uncover them and cook another 3.  I only let them cook for 2, because the liquid was getting so low. As you can see they take on a lovely golden color (and the smell is amazing).

 The pears shrink down considerably as well.  Those 16 pears fit into 2 quart jars perfectly, with just enough syrup to cover them.  Oh, how did they taste?  They were sweet and velvety, without the slightest hint of vinegar flavor.  They are wonderful eaten plain, but I especially loved slicing them up over pound cake.  I can see I'll be making these again and again.  Actually, I did make them again...several times!  It was such an easy and delicious way to use up the bounty of pears.  

Still decorative!

Here's most of the results of a weekend spent in the kitchen.  It doesn't seem like much but it was well worth it.  I just can't wait to add peaches and plums and blackberries, etc.

Happy Fall, ya'll.

Keeping you updated...

We wish, as we're sure you do too, that there was more news to report and we'd be posting blog entries several times a week.  Sorry...that amount of news just isn't there.  That's not to say there isn't news though.  For example, the weather is changing.  Two weeks ago we had days in the 60's and nights in the 40's.  Don't worry.  We returned to the 80's and until today hadn't seen clouds in about 15 days or more.   I know, you feel so sorry for us.

In other news, the cotton looks like it's getting ready for picking.  Looking out our front and back windows, you would think we had flurries as it looks so white.

The farmers came and sprayed it a couple of weeks ago to kill all of the foliage, and now that it has died off, it's picking time.  Some neighboring fields have already been picked so it shouldn't be long now.  I don't know who the farmer is that takes care of the fields around our house, but he's got the tallest and best looking cotton of anyone in the surrounding area.

On to our TOP STORY...

We've been talking to home builders!  That's right, we've taken that step in the process.  Between friends and family we managed to pare down to a list of 3 builders.  We've met with all of them so far, presented our designs (hand-drawn expertly by Neta) and now we're waiting for some estimates to come back.  We have made some changes to our housing plans as we've gathered additional information, based on feedback from the builders and (very) ballpark costs.

By the way, as it pertains to those designs I mentioned that Neta drew up, well...  We found some plans (drawings and designs) on line that we felt came the closest to what we wanted.  Neta worked on them for a couple of nights, swapped a few rooms around, changed some room sizes here and there and came up with something that we hope we can make happen.  We'll see once the estimates come back.

Not to confuse housing plans (where we'll build) with house plans (what we'll build), in this paragraph we'll be talking about the "where".  We mentioned our housing plans in the blog entry from June 27th where we talked about fixing up the existing house for Neta's Dad and building our own place down by the pond.  That was Plan A.  When we got a ballpark estimate for how much it would cost to fix up the existing house, we had to consider Plan B (a house for all of us, Neta's Dad too, down by the pond) or Plan C (a house for all of us on the current site, demo'ing the existing house).  We chose Plan C...version 1.a.  This plan, if we can make it work, will consist of fixing up a small, existing, two-room house up the lane for Neta's Dad, and tearing down the existing (main) house to build a new one for ourselves.  Despite our promises to be good housemates, Neta's Dad would still like a place of his own.  We weren't going to argue.  He's always said that he could live in a tiny trailer as long as he had a place to keep his boat and go fishing.  This house will meet all of those requirements and still give him the privacy that he wants.  And besides, it'll only be a 3 minute walk or a 30 second drive to join us for dinner.

So...that's where we are.  We hope to have more news in the coming days once we hear back from the builders.  Until then...Bye ya'll!

This, that and the other

Sorry it's been so long since we've provided any updates.  Not a lot of exciting news, though I figured I could cobble together a few paragraphs of mundane stuff and hopefully make it seem exciting.  For our Facebook friends, consider this the unabridged version of posts you've seen in the past, along with some news that perhaps you haven't.

Labor Day Weekend

I took off and headed north for the weekend, while Neta held down the fort at home.  While I was gone, Neta reported that we'd had some new "visitors" move in.  Sorry, no snakes this time.  We have...bees.  Not nearly as exciting or dangerous as a rattlesnake, but fascinating nonetheless.

They aren't camera shy, but they don't seem to want to stop and pose.  Busy, I guess.

They have taken up residence in the eave/ceiling of our front porch.  A quick call to a local beekeeper revealed that bees do not destroy the structure they inhabit, they only expand into existing voids.  If you do see a beehive that is messing up a house or structure, it is because wax moths or mites have affected the hive and the bees can no longer keep the temperature regulated (normally they keep it at a perfect 98 degrees), and the wax begins to melt.  The beekeepers also told us that since this hive is about 10 feet off the ground, they won't see us walking around under it as any threat.

They were far more active over Labor Day weekend and just after, but since then activity has slowed a bit.  We think the hive just formed, if not that weekend, not long before.  We are awaiting word from the landlord whether he wants to remove it or let it stay.  It's not bothering us.

By the way, while Neta was fending off hives of bees, I spent my Labor Day weekend golfing and fishing with friends in Maryland.  Tough life!

28 inch Rockfish at Bloody Point Lighthouse

Getting Started on the Farm

We've been a little bored and antsy.  Living in a rental house, there isn't a lot to do other than maintain.  Making changes isn't on the menu.  We don't own the farm yet, but we just couldn't take it anymore, so this past Saturday we loaded up the car with the chainsaw, string-trimmer, loppers, clippers, a saw and, of course, a shotgun (in case we encounter a critter with ill intent).

While there are plenty of places that need our attention, we decided to do some brush-clearing.  There is a lane the goes down to the big pond that, over the years, has become overgrown with trees and weeds.  We decided to start there.  Neta's dad chipped in to help as well.  Did I mention the weather warmed up a bit over this past weekend?

We had only planned to work for a couple of hours, which we kept to.  In the grand scheme of things we didn't make much of a dent in things, but it just felt good to get out there, cut down some mimosas and maples that had taken up residence in the ditches that line the lane and also clear away some tall grass and blackberry vines that had taken over.  Our progress was too small to warrant a picture, though Neta did take a "before" picture that we will eventually use for reference.

Ahhh....the beach

With only a few days to spare to say we went to the beach "this summer", Neta and I headed out to Tybee Island to spend a day relaxing in the sun, listening to the waves and enjoying the warm ocean waves.  It was a great day.

Photo credit - Neta Bozman

The temps were in the low to mid 80's and the water temp was 79-80.  It wasn't terribly crowded and we found a parking spot as soon as we got there.  We enjoyed a couple of hours alternating between sitting in the sun and relaxing in the warm water.

Around mid-afternoon, we packed up our stuff and went in search of a place to grab lunch.  We found a cool and dark little dive bar-like place called the Wind Rose Cafe.  The food was delicious (as TripAdvisor said it would be).  After that we walked around a bit, wandered out onto the pier and grabbed an ice cream cone.

It was a nice way to "end" the summer.  Though a trip back this coming weekend to say we enjoyed a fall day at the beach wouldn't be unreasonable.