Saying goodbye to 2020

There are so many words to describe the past year, but for today I’ll choose growth. This past year our garden grew an abundance of delicious produce, our children grew into 5 and 2 year olds full of wonder and energy, and our second floor renovations grew by another room. 

Since we were working from home, David was able to take advantage of lunch breaks and the commute time to work on the garden. The results was beautiful flowers and lots of great, fresh produce. We had an abundance of cucumbers (we made lots of pickles!), tomatoes, pumpkins and peppers plus beans, cabbages, celery, blueberries and potatoes. 

 

 

Upstairs we have made significant progress on the second room. My dad gutted, insulated and dry walled the room and new hallway. Originally the two rooms above the kitchen and parlor were connected by a door. You could only get to the second room by walking through the first. Knowing this would not work for a bedroom, we designed a new hallway and door placement. The new hallway allows access to the craft room and a distinct bedroom for Harrison. 

This is how the space looked when we bought the house. Before finishing the craft room, we closed up the door on the left, remove the closet on the right and added a door there.

In the next photo, you can see the new door and the closed up door (on the far left).

Here the hall is all dry walled and ready to paint. We added new windows and increased the ceiling like the craft room. Definitely makes the space feel more spacious!

  

Now we have the challenge of choosing a wall color ... I'm leaning towards green.

 

A few highlights from the seasons and growing children... spring, fall and winter holidays.

 
A new fence around the bee hives and lots of wildflowers which love the bee's pollination.

 

Helping with the ducks and chickens. We lost one of our three new ducks, but the remaining female is now laying eggs daily.

 

Festive fall decor and our annual entry in the town scarecrow contest (A covid work at home zoom call)

A new swing set perfect for climbing and exploring!

 

 

The house decorated for the holidays.

In 2021, we look forward to more demolition and rebuilding on the second floor. Hopefully heat and bathrooms will be started by the end of the year! 

Summer days

 

Summer is in full swing with temperatures expected in the mid 90's again this weekend. The sun has been shining and everything is growing! We have been enjoying lots of time outside especially in the garden. 

We have been picking carrots, cucumbers, blueberries, red cabbages, snow peas, beans, sweet peppers, broccoli and raspberries. We have a beautiful selection of flowers to enjoy as well. Margaret likes to eat everything right out of the garden so only a few things have made it to the dinner table.

 

Swinging is still a very popular backyard activity, but Margaret and Harrison are also fascinated with searching for bugs. They look under their log stepping stones to find worms and slugs, they look for butterflies amongst the flowers and get a little to up close and personal with bumblebees.

We have welcomed a few new animals to the backyard as well. We now have three Campbell Khacki ducklings. They are a chocolately brown color, very talkative and love to splash in water. When they are bigger, they will hopefully lay eggs daily. (left, this week, right, two weeks ago)

 

 

We also adopted four baby chickens to join our existing 7 hens. The four new chicks are all mixed breeds - we hope that two of them will lay blue eggs. Harrison loves to feed the chickens and is always trying to hug them. Like Margaret at this age, one of the first things he asks each morning is to go see the chickens.

 

Safe at Home

What a difference a few months can make! When I last wrote in January, we did not realize that just a few months later we would be spending A LOT more time at home as we did our part to stop the spread of COVID-19. We returned from a vacation in Florida the beginning of March to our offices and the children's school closed. What started as temporary has turned in three and half months of time safe at home. Although it has had it challenges, we have enjoyed the extra time together to spend outside playing and gardening. We excited to share some of our updates - mostly outdoor related with you all.

March

The start of our time at home was still cold with a few days of snow. We enjoyed checking the sap buckets on our tapped maple trees. My Father In Law tried his first season of sugaring and we enjoyed the "sweet" results. Margaret and Harrison enjoyed playing outside bundled up in their winter coats. We joined households across the country and around the world who decorated their windows with heart to show our thanks for those working on the front line to keep us safe.

  

April

After one month, we were still working to balance two full time jobs from home plus keeping up with two active children. Lots of playtime outside and the work preparing the garden for planting. The end of April brought beautiful daffodils and other flowers to brighten our days.

While staying at home, our large backyard has been a great outlet for energy and exploration. We have spent lots of time on the swing set, running laps around the garden, climbing rocks and going on "hikes" to different spots in the yard. Margaret has event perfected kicking her on legs on the swing to keep herself moving.

 

May

We were ready for warmer weather and May did not disappoint. We even had a few days of weather in the 80s! The seeds David started in the greenhouse were ready to go in the ground, bushes and trees erupted in beautiful blooms and we spent more time enjoying the sunshine. We also welcomed two new hives to our apiary under the watchful eye of our newest bee keeper. Our chickens continue to do well which was a great help when local groceries stores were running out of eggs.

Although we normally plant a large vegetable garden, this year's pandemic has made our planting seem even more important. Like Victory Gardens of the past, it's comforting to know we will have fresh vegetables in a few months without worrying about a trip to the grocery store.

 

  

 

We added two new hives to the backyard increasing the total number of Greenhouse Hives to 10. Both our existing hives overwintered very strong and we were able to split two to create two new hives.

Helping to water is always lots of fun ... especially if you can get people as well as plants a little damp!

  

Checking on the progress of the red cabbage and preparing the dirt for planting corn.

 

The garden in mid May