abby « Robin Writes

What a whirlwind weekend! The kid was supposed to work Saturday morning, so we’d planned to go down to the farm early that afternoon. Then we had a birthday invite for the oldest granddaughter for Saturday night, so we thought, okay, we’ll just go Sunday morning and come back that night.

For the record, it’s about a 3-hour drive, so I’m not a fan of this. Friday afternoon, the kid found out he wasn’t working, due to the weather, and around noon on Saturday we got a call that the girls were sick, so that was postponed.

My husband said, “Let’s go!” so we threw some stuff in the truck and took off. We got there around 6:00, a little late to get started on any big projects, but I did get the house organized.

Now, you might think there isn’t much to that, considering a lack of furniture, etc., but things were starting to get cluttered. Ahem. Not by me! So I fixed all that, and then we spent a couple hours on the porch, just sitting and listening to the critters around us, and a little rain.

Sunday morning brought a few clouds, but we got all the rest of the trash and junk picked up. Sadly, we found more, and now have yet another pile of crap over by the garden—but hey, I said “garden!” With the help of a push trimmer, a weedeater, a hoe, and a wagon, we have a nice cleared area now.

Well, close enough. Still a lot of rocks, but they’re (mostly) dug up; we just need to move them.

I also transplanted a rose bush we found in the garden area, trying not to disturb our new “pet,” Blackie . . .

What else did we find in the garden? ANOTHER FLIPPIN’ AIR MATTRESS! What’s the count up to now? Ten? Fifty? They’re everywhere!

Then we brought out the chainsaw. While I pointed, my husband cut down all the scrub trees, mostly cedar, and we dragged them into a big pile for burning.

We headed back home around 3:00, managing to miss all the storms except for about 15 minutes of hard rain at the halfway point. Whew!

Between kid activities and my business and a few other things, I’ve barely had a chance to get down to the farm lately; except yesterday, when I took my mom down to see the place. She’s visiting from Colorado, and won’t be back until fall at least, so we took the opportunity while we had it. It was a quick trip, which means I didn’t actually do any work . . .

However, my husband has been on the job—yesterday, he put in a new water heater and last weekend he spotlessly cleaned the bathroom and went over the kitchen again. So we’re kinda civilized now.

The downside of this is that things are getting a little crazy, and by “crazy,” I mean disorganized. Bless his heart, he’s a really hard worker and can do ANYTHING, but he tends to get off-track a little. So my immediate goal is to get a few things finished and organized, like the rest of the trash around the edges of the yard, the interim storage in the closet, and the odds and ends sitting around on the deck and in the kitchen.

THEN I can focus on what needs to be done.

Complicating things a bit is that the kid got a job and it’s mostly weekends. That’s going to slow us down for a few weeks, until school is out for the summer, but after that we can adjust. Of course, it might limit any assistance, as most people I know will be working during the week, but we’ll figure it out. And, too, the coming weekend has a rainy forecast . . . for now.

My short-term goal is to work on the garden area. Trim, pick up junk, mow, plow, plant. In that order, of course. And soon. My cabbage plants are crying for a new home.

And after that, we’ve got to get the campsite built out. No, it’s still not done, but to be fair, we had a heck of a time choosing the location. And then, too, our plans were a little ambitious that first weekend. But, we have the materials, so there’s that. Hmmm. This kind of falls under the “get stuff finished!” headline.

You know, when we started this venture, we’d been thinking about everything for quite some time; and then we figured we’d find a place in a few months and have some time over the winter to get started on improvements. As it turned out, we didn’t close until spring, about 14 months before our targeted moving date, plus we had a head start with the house and barn and utilities already being on site.

But.

There’s a lot of outside stuff to do, and come fall, we’ll be working inside, moving walls and re-doing others, and adding to the kitchen and maybe some work on the bathroom. It’s not critical that these things are done before we move in, but it sure would be easier to have the remodel finished without furniture and other “stuff” in the way.

A year seemed like a long time—but the clock is ticking!