The porch is complete!

 We finished the other end of the porch this month and it's already proving very useful. The "mudroom" end has a bench, shoe storage, coat hooks and large pantry cupboards. As with most old houses, we have virtually no closets in the main house so we desperately needed somewhere to store paper goods, vacuum cleaner etc. These big cupboards are perfect and already full :o).

 

In the sitting room end of the porch, we add three chairs. These chairs were in the barn when we moved in and have been caringly restored.

The before and after photos of the chairs definitely show the difference!

In the kitchen, we added a comfy chair by the french doors. It's the perfect place to sit while Maggie plays or watch the fall colors in the back yard.

Fall is all around us! We created a scarecrow that is helping us with the renovation work. He is part of a town-wide fundraiser by the Women's Club. You can find others on the town Scarecrow map.

We have also been busy in the barn with a lot of clearing and cleaning. We put up a wall along the back by the stairs to divide a bike work area from the open party space. We also added a few pieces of furniture that we cleaned up from the barn and hung farm tools that were also found in the barn. We were able to use it for Maggie's first birthday party.

Happy Fall!

Another room complete

We have been working on finishing the porch over the summer and today all the pieces came together. One half of the porch will be a sitting area and the other end a mudroom. The sitting area is complete and the perfect collection of found objects and re-purposed items.

A printer type drawer and drop side table that David found at the Swap Shed at our town recycling center.

Vintage crib that we refinished and re-purposed as a day bed. Hanging on the wall are a mix of new and old items including a chicken feeder from our barn and vintage milk bottle caps.

 

The crib before and a vintage advertisement for this style of crib from 1950.

Under the window, a refinished cobblers bench that my mom and I found at a barn sale. A bean pot from the swap shack and three vintage milk bottle hung on a piece of barn wood from our house.

Next to the day bed is dry sink original to the house. By the door we have a old milk can from David's family.

The mudroom end with great built in shoe cubicles and shaker pegs for our coats.

 

Our next project is to refinish this sewing machine from our barn which we believe is from 1895-1900. Stay tuned for photos soon and for updates on the mudroom end.

Garden fresh

Our first summer of vegetable growing has been a great learning experience. We have had success with several items and not with others. Our cucumbers and tomatoes are doing well. With over 60 cucumbers, Katie helped us pickle many of them. The tomatoes plants have produced 6-8 tomatoes a day for the past two weeks so we have been eating, freezing and enjoying Katie made Tomato Jam. Its a good thing the youngest green thumb of our farm loves tomatoes! We have several sunflowers that grew very tall, two pumpkins and a few squash. Our corn plants have tiny ears of corn! Maybe next summer, Margaret can help with the weeding :o).

Painting, painting and more painting!

One of our goals for this summer was to paint the outside of the house and we are making great progress. The curb appeal of the house has improved drastically since we bought the house - it's almost unrecognizable as the same property.

In the photo above, all photos are taken from the same spot. Top left is when we bought the house and the front yard was overgrown with trees. Top right is after the tree was cut down. Bottom left is earlier this summer with grass growing successfully. Bottom right is with the front almost all painted.

Barn painting and porch entrance in process. We rented a cherry picker to reach the higher levels of the barn and side of the house.

Painting in progress

The completed house!

Egg-cellent recipes

Our chickens are laying eggs consistently now. We usually have 4-6 eggs per day from the six chickens. We have three Rhode Island Reds and three Buff Orpingtons. The color of their eggs varies quite a bit each day. The darker red chickens actually lay the lighter, white eggs and the paler buff chickens lay the darker brown eggs. This article has great info about the why behind the color of eggs.

With so many eggs, I have been trying different recipes to utilize them for dinners. From left to right: Toast cups with eggs, garlic toast with ham, asparagus and fried eggs and bip bam bop variation with rice, veggies and a fried egg. If you have a favorite egg recipe - send it our way and I'll add to my Pinterest board to try soon.

Green and growing!

We have freshly grown and mowed grass in our front yard. The transformation of the front is still a work in process (painting will be next) but the grass looks great and is already such a change from when we bought the property. Check the before photos here.

In the backyard, we have planted a vegetable garden. We are looking forward to tomatoes, beans, corn, cucumbers, squash, strawberries, beets, spinach, lettuce and other fresh produce throughout the summer.

We put a low fence up around the veggies to keep the roaming chickens from helping themselves to the fresh sprouts. So far its working well!

Trees and flowers are in bloom all around our house!

Fun in the sun!

We have been loving our backyard now that the weather is warm! The chickens have been too.

We built a picnic table for outdoor dining and used it for the first time for a barbecue this past weekend. The barbecue for family was to celebrate David's recent graduation. It was great to just relax in the backyard: grill, relax and roast marshmallows.

 

We have been busy in the yard too - weeding, planting and clearing. Margaret enjoys watching us and the chickens.

Who has grown the fastest?

Our chickens and Margaret seem to be in a race to see who can grow faster ...

Our chickens at one week, one month and four months

Margaret from one month to six months

Spring is definitely here!

We have been enjoying more warm weather and days of sunshine! Last week we were excited to find that our chickens have started laying eggs. We have collected nine so far. Here's our first meal from our chickens and the ladies enjoying the yard. They love roaming during the day eating insects and ticks.

 

Work has been focused on the outside of our house with lots of raking, weeding and pruning. We cleared a lot of the debris from the front yard that was left from having the trees cut. Last weekend we started spreading loom so we can plant grass. It will be exciting to have the curb appeal improved soon.

Margaret has been learning about farm animals at school. It's hard to believe she is almost seven months old already.