Fall Bounty on the Farm

We've had this property for two years now...  Spring of 2018 we really didn't explore the land as our time was spent on the house demo. That Fall we saw a TON of nuts on our property but just didn't have the wherewithal to focus on what that really meant.  

Spring of 2019, we found one Mulberry tree and a blackberry bush.  That Fall I decided to collect the nuts and see if they were viable.  Pappy, our old neighbor across the street, saw me with a bag in hand and pointed out that I was going to be disappointed.  He cracked open a pecan and showed me how it was bad.  He mumbled something about fertilizing and I made a mental note to look into it this year.  The pecans I brought to our old house WERE bad.  I left the black walnuts outside to dry and they were demolished by the local squirrel population.  Obviously THEY were good but I ran out of time and let the squirrels eat what I brought to Suwanee.  

Flash forward to this Spring - we realized we actually have THREE mulberry trees.  None of know how we missed the other two.  Since early Fall I've been watching a multitude of black walnuts fall off the trees and have kicked what I could into the cut.  I needed to not trip over them walking the dogs, and I didn't have time to figure out if they could be truly harvested.  When the pecans started falling I figured I was looking at nothing because of what Pappy had said the year before... until my friend Sandra came to visit and was thrilled to see them on the ground.  I told her they were bad and she proved Pappy wrong.  She broke open a beautiful pecan and that began the last two weeks of me wandering the property looking for fallen nuts.  I am a woman on a mission.

Now mind you, since Sandra had picked up one of these lovely green husked beauties, I reasoned that the darkened husk nuts were bad which must have been why Pappy had been able break one and show me a rotten shell.  I spent two days picking up only green husked pecans, cutting the husks off of them and laying them on sheets to dry.  My hands were stained the color of pecans for days.  When Bill and I went to crack them, we had about a 50% yield of good meat.  I kept going outside daily looking for more.

One day I noticed a pecan sitting on the ground without it's husk.  I pick it up for shits and giggles and feel the heft of a good nut.  (Yes, in the past two weeks I HAVE become a darn expert on pecan weight).  I'm thinking maybe the squirrels have done the job for me.  I start reaching for others... all feel heavy with meat.  It takes me a few days to think maybe I should google "harvesting pecans"... there's obviously something I'm missing.  After all, I'm a California girl who is learning these southern ways...  I did it this afternoon.  Right in front of me is what I've come to believe I didn't understand from the start.  The bloody husks dry off ON the tree.  Pecans SHOULD be falling down around my feet sans husks.  I'm not taking the squirrels hard work away.  They are ripe and they fall.  I haven't really LOOKED at my tree - they're WAYYYYY up there in the sky.  I just assumed that everything I was looking up there were green husked pecans waiting to fall at during the next storm.

I looked up today ladies and gentlemen and I saw the husks peeling away.  I shook my head as I finally saw the complete picture.  It was right there in front of me all along.  Some of the green husks that fall to the ground will be viable, but a lot of them are falling before they're ready and will not continue to grow.  I'm ok with this.  I'm getting PLENTY of nuts.  I did, however, find mention of pecans not yielding if there are low levels of critical soil nutrients (nitrogen, zinc, iron and manganese)... so Pappy MAY have had something going there.  Next Spring I'll get a soil sample near the tree to see if there is anything more I need to do.  I want to keep this large baby happy for years to come.

For now though, did I mention we are harvesting a large bowl of nuts daily.  This is today's load.  During my google search I found that there are pecan picker upper gadgets that you can push like a mop over the grass to grab the pecans without bending over.  I'm torn between wanting that gadget desperately and feeling like it'll take away from the thrill of the hunt.  I kinda enjoy walking around the yard looking for the elusive nut like I'd look for a four leaf clover.

Now before everyone starts lining up at my front door looking for nut hand outs, I've got to see what my actual yield is this year.  I plan on making my Jack Daniels Chocolate Chip Pecan Pie and some Pralines... if I have more nuts than I can use I'll know what I can share with friends in the future.  This year, I'm being greedy.  I have to.  Because the other thing I read about nuts is that crows love them.  It's true in this house hold.  I should know, I live with the biggest nutty Crow there is.

Happy Thanksgiving y'all.  

Living With Architectural Salvage and Family History

Penny Without Vinyl

I mentioned today that I had a few blog posts rolling around in my head.  One, I did earlier around noon.  The rest, I'm going to try to combine into this one.  It's amazing what a few days of relaxation can do for your mind.  I actually have the energy to put collective thoughts together!!!  When I sat down to write the earlier blog, I realized that there were projects which we have completed in the last six months of Penny's renovation that I haven't brought you all up to date on.  The following is our latest project report for your perusing pleasure.

Kitchen Before

I think the best way to show how completely this house has changed is by showing the before and after pictures.  Sitting on my stool at the peninsula where the oven used to be, I frequently gaze lovingly at my kitchen today.  Before there was a refrigerator, clothes dryer and microwave.  The ceilings were dropped to 8'.  Now there is my dream stove, a beautiful backsplash and the piece de resistance... a pot filler.  The ceilings are 10' high.  There is so much space and warm light in this magical place.  It's a place where people want to stand and gather.  A place where multiple people can work in at the same time.  We are thrilled with the end result thus far. 

Go back to that kitchen before picture, but look beyond the kitchen into the dining room entrance.  There was a pocket door that you can't really see.  It was a vanilla box, somewhat age appropriate - probably the least remuddled part of the house over the years, with the exception of the painted over wall paper.  When we took the house down to the studs to fix all the issues, we decided to change the pocket door into a barn door.  It was too pretty to be hiding in a wall 90% of the time.  Bill stripped it of its years of grime and stained it back into a glossy beauty.  Then we looked at the doorway and decided that we needed a transom window above it.

Dining Room View

Bill cut the area out so that the drywall could be put in, but we had no window as of yet to place in it.  We played with the idea of making a stained glass window.  We even drew up the design and purchased glass.  It was such a big task to do that we kept putting it off.  One day Bill sends me a link to a window at Caravatti's in Richmond, Virginia.  I measure the space and we realize it's a perfect fit.  Before the day was out that window was on it's way to us.  It's a stunning piece and was truly meant for this space.  Even the center pattern is close to our backsplash behind our stove.  I can't tell you how relieved Bill was to not have to make something for that location... and how we're happier to have an old salvage piece instead of something new.

Living Room View

An integral piece to one of the last projects for our kitchen arrived in October.  My grandparents 1940's chrome and yellow formica kitchen table.  My childhood memories at this table include cracking nuts, eating family dinners with other kids while the adults ate in the formal dining room and as I grew older... sitting around drinking and laughing with the women in my family.  Gramma and Grandpa had a L shaped brown pleather banquette booth around it.  Bill's project sometime in 2021, will be to build two benches (think pew type) for us to sit at.  The main reason I chose the blue and yellow backsplash for our kitchen was to incorporate this table into the design.  I almost cried when Bill put it back together and placed it here.  It means so much to me.  I'll be deliriously happy the first time we sit at this table for sure.  :) 

Penny Before

Our biggest news is that "Phase II", our 500ish square foot addition, has started.  We have lived for eight months out of boxes because we don't have a closet... have either used a laundromat or Cherie's washer/dryer because we don't have a laundry room.  Penny went from a three bed two bath house to a two bed two bath house... we're now adding another bed and bath, laundry room and walk in closet.  We are eking out this last bit of remodel before our funds are gone, but we can comfortably live in this house and still work on it for a long time, once we have these rooms.

I have started shopping for the addition.  The squirrel in me has had to be tamed a bit as I can't overspend.  That said, when I see THE piece, I grab it.  One item we needed was another small colored glass chandelier for the addition's hallway.  While junking in California with mom, I found the answer.  The bohemian red etched glass body of this chandelier screamed my name until it was in my hands... I had to have it.  I didn't love the rest of the look, but I knew I could glam it up and make it blend with the others in the hall.  I'm loving how it turned out.  I may still change it up once more before it's hung but so far, so good.

The most exciting thing about the addition to me?  The fact that once it's ready to have siding, the whole house will be re-sided.  Bill has been tearing off the ugly cheap looking yellow vinyl siding that I've abhorred since day one.  The original siding that was under that monstrosity gives you an idea of what Penny will look like when her facelift is complete.  Unfortunately there was too much damage to try to repair.  Currently 60% of the house is wrapped in Tyvec and ready to go.  By the end of the year Penny should look finished outside.  The inside, no promises of a timeline... we still can't agree on a crown molding... but at least she'll be able to shine as strangers drive by.

Abundance of Blessings

I woke up this morning feeling abundantly blessed.  I started to upload a picture to Instagram to express this happiness and then realized when I began to caption said picture that I had a blog (or two) in my head.  I haven't had a lot of quiet time in the last few months.  My job has had me all over the United States.  I haven't had enough time to stop and sit, let alone be refreshed enough to know what time zone I was in.  While I've been zooming across the United States, my faithful and amazing husband has continued to chip away at the projects needing to be done for Penny's continued transformation.  Simply put, we were both exhausted.

Bill's Gramma's clock

Bill's sister, Beth, has been talking about driving down from Virginia to see Penny and bring cherished pieces of Bill's past for us to live with.  Between COVID and my insane work schedule, how do you plan a visit?  I decided to have an elective surgery that I have been wanting done.  I told her she could be sure I was home if she came after it.  Two days after I'm back home from the hospital, Beth and Arthur come pulling up our driveway.  I'm tired and sore and she comes in the door and starts cooking.  Hallelujah.  My kitchen is taken over by Bill and Beth.  I'm pushed to the counter stool with a glass of wine.  I could not be any happier at this moment.

Our Pecan Tree

The next morning they're both up early.  Beth makes biscuits and gravy...  OMG delicious!!!  Then she and Arthur are out the front door moving wood Bill had salvaged from the house.  They removed all the nails and then carted the wood to the back of the property to Bill's new tent. I swear I could see relief all over Bill's face each time he looked at that wood pile dwindling.  It was a project he hadn't been looking forward to doing but had to be done soon so that he could get the porch ready for the siding that will be done to the house in the next two weeks.  We have a clear porch that has been swept for the first time in two years. (insert angels singing in the heavens... oh wait, that might just be Bill's heart bursting).

Inside they come at the end of the day and Beth starts cooking again...  Arthur sits at the counter and starts shelling our pecans that we've gathered.  It's another long process but he's doing it with a smile on his face.  I'm sitting on a huge bean bag chair my girlfriend Audra made me take home for my recovery.  Conversation is good, food is amazing and I'm a groggily happy girl.  This shelling is going to continue to happen over the next few weeks.  Our pecan tree is full of fruit.  I'm loving the food our property is providing us, but there's days where I love watching someone else do the work needed to use these gifts.

Door that came with house

Yesterday, I woke up to Bill making waffles.  After breakfast the men ran to Lowes.  Beth and I spend the morning making cookies, pumpkin bread, and sourdough pizza crust while we cooked down another pumpkin.  When the guys come back, Beth and Arthur are out the door to begin another project I've been dying to have done.  Our front door.  I hate the cheap "new" hollow front door on this house.  It doesn't fit the character.  Every time I look at it I wonder what they were thinking.  Last year I found a door in a salvage yard that would replace it but we needed the time to strip and stain it.  Obviously that project was WAY down the list of things to do but it was something we could give to another person looking to help us.   They spent hours on that door getting years of paint and grime off of it.  There's still a bit of sweat equity that I'll have to do but once a project is started, I somehow find the motivation to finish it.  The goal is to have this baby stripped, stained and fitted for the front door replacement when the new siding goes on.  This solid vintage craftsman beauty is going to fit right in with Penny's facelift.  Here's a few photos of the progress they made.

Abundant blessings indeed this holiday season... 

• The gift of health insurance and being able to fix my body as needed. 

• The gift of a husband that works tirelessly to get this dream of a home I have completed.  I know each hour he puts into this renovation is an act of love for me.

• The gift of our family history - I know Bill will love the chair, mirror and clock for years to come.  We're both thankful to have these pieces lovingly delivered.  

• The gift of bonding with future family members.  Arthur, you are officially brother and sister-in-law approved.  We both look forward to warmly welcoming you into our family when you two make that step.  Thank you for your time here, and thank you for loving our Beth.  She glows in happiness now.  You have our undying gratitude for that gift.

• The gift of time with family... it's the most time I've spent with my sister-in-law.  Love you bunches Beth.  Thanks for this weekend.  It truly was priceless to both of us.  We need to try to do this annually.  Georgia or Virginia... maybe trade years driving...  Miss you already

From our farmhouse to your home, we wish you all a Thanksgiving where you too are filled with gratefulness at the blessings around you... 

Gramma's chair with Kimberly's pillow 

Evolution of a Country Burn

Bill and I both get spiritually rejuvenated when we sit together, drink in hand, in front of a roaring fire.  It's why we built an outdoor kitchen and fireplace at our last home.  We spent hours out there, enjoying the fresh air, the smell of burning wood... and the simple peace of being home together.  When you both have careers that take you far away for days at a time, these moments are precious.  When we moved down to the farmhouse we figured it would take a while to find that spot again. 

We started with the practical - a burn barrel, where we burned the branches that were forever falling down on our property, or trees that we were cutting and needed to dispose of.  We had the barrel too far away from the house, so Bill found a spot that made sense behind the house - in the center of a circle of trees.  Near the burn barrel he placed a few chairs to sit in while we were waiting for the trash to burn down enough to feed the fire.

As you know from the previous blog, we ended up tossing the barrel, and making a fire pit.  We found stones from around the property to encircle the fire.  Then Bill decided we should put all the chairs around the pit to make a great spot for social distancing gathering.  One night, he decided that he needed to hang lights around the circle so our area could have mood lighting.  It looks like a little fairy grove and makes my heart happy every time I see it lit up.

One night he mentioned that we should get stones, place another circle around the chairs and put gravel in the secondary circle so we wouldn't have to remove the chairs when our gardener came.  I told the story of moving those 77 stones in the last blog...  We ordered weed blocker and the egg rock last week - it was delivered today.  Two cubic yards.  At 2 pm and 83'.  I told Bill that my kids will love the fire pit because we were gonna die moving all that stone in this humid heat.

We spent three hours, but we did it.  This project is done.  So are our backs... but we're excited how it turned out.  The next two projects are inside.  Thank God for air conditioning in Georgia... but we'll be back out here later to enjoy the fruit of our labors...  MoonCrest is open for visitors around the fire... just holla out y'all!  The more the merrier any day. 

It's All Fun and Games Until a Tick Bites Your Ass and Other Gardening Stories

Corona time this week has meant a lot of work in the garden for both Bill and I.  One project is seasonal - our mulberry trees and our blackberry patch are in full bloom and producing faster than I can harvest.  So far I've picked:

*  18 cups of mulberries.  We've made a pie, muffins, scones and 4 jars of jam.

*  18 cups of blackberries.  We've made two pies, 8 jars of jam and maybe ate another cup as we've been picking.

To put the amount that I've picked and we've used into perspective... 3-4 cups of berries is a pound...  So I've harvested approximately 9 pounds of berries this week.  The mulberries are still raining down from the trees and the blackberry patch is filled with red berries starting to ripen.  I'm about to start freezing berries to use when summer cravings hit.  It's truly a bumper crop this year, and I'm totally grateful that I bit the bullet and bought my Pampered Chef Deluxe Cooking Blender.  That thing is a rock star!  I drop berries, water, pectin and sugar in it and 30 minutes later I've got jam.  I've always fought making jam because I remembered the time and labor intensive process it was for my mother.  This makes it a BREEZE!!!  I even made orange marmalade and applesauce this week in that baby!  If this makes you think "I totally need to look into that", hit me up... I started selling Pampered Chef a month ago as a side gig until I can start flying again.

One of the funny things about Corona life is I'm not showering as much... don't judge... y'all know you're in your pajamas as much as I am.  Yesterday I spent most of my time shaking the mulberry trees to get the fruit and making jam...  today, after I worked in our vegetable garden, I decided it was time to shower.  As I was showering, I looked down at my feet and there was a full mulberry just sitting there...  I'm not sure if it landed on me as I walked through the garden today or if I actually... SLEPT with it in my hair last night...  I know I should show some amount of shame here but I just cant bring myself to do anything other than laugh at that.

I mentioned the vegetable garden... it's coming along beautifully.  The tomatoes are getting big enough that they needed to be staked.  I had Bill cut us 50 stakes out of leftover scrap from our old hardwood floors.  Each of the stakes in the garden are pieces of original hardwood that broke as he pulled them up.  They couldn't be reused but he put them to the side to somehow be recycled at a future date... and ta da!!!

Cherie and I have learned a wee bit about gardening from our Master Gardener class two years ago, and from working in the charity garden in Fayetteville.  She recently even learned a trick on how to do the twine without bending over.... attaching the twine box to your belt, working the twine through a piece of pvc pipe and then making the pvc pipe do all the lower work.  It went by quickly.  When we were done with the twine we laid down hay mulch that our fabulous neighbor, Tiny, dropped off a couple of days ago.  It actually LOOKS like we know what we're doing... and LOOKS like a vegetable garden.  We're pretty excited about our progress.

Speaking of progress, we've been working on our fire pit area.  A place where we can hang with friends and family... or just the two of us, and enjoy the outdoors like we're camping but have a big bed to go sleep in.  A couple weeks ago we upgraded from a burn barrel to an actual pit... it was a big stretch... we removed the barrel and started burning on the ground...  I grabbed a few stones from around the property and Bill finished the pit's circle.  He then grabbed all of our outdoor chairs and put them around the pit.  A few days later he strung white fairy lights in the trees around that circle.  The one thing he complained about was having to move the chairs when our lawn guy came, so that he could mow the area.  We talked about getting more stone, putting another circle around the chairs and filling the area with pea gravel.  I put it in my mental to-do list and figured it would take a minute to feel financially secure enough to put money into an outdoor space.  Then Bill went away for two days.  One of those days I was outside and I looked at this... planter?  old fountain?... something that was a big square of stacked stone filled with dirt right behind our house.  I stared at that stone and had an epiphany.  This area has to be demolished when we start our addition... here was the stones we needed to do the outer circle... all that it would take would be a sledge hammer, and a chisel to remove the cement from the stones... if it's free it's for me...  

Bill came back and I pointed out the brilliance of my discovery and waxed poetic on the beauty of the plan.  He put it on his "Heather's list of 1000 things to do yesterday"... and walked away.  I went into his shed and grabbed a crowbar.... when he saw what I was doing he handed me a sledgehammer and a mallet of sorts...  and I went to town.  By mid day I knew why he'd walked away and let me do this.  It's not sooooo easy to deconstruct stacked stone.  I did it.  Nearly killed myself with my stubbornness, but I banged those stones out, chipped off that cement, shoved them in the wheelbarrow and plunked them down around the chairs.  Ladies and gentlemen how many stones do you think I needed to do that project???  Seventy freaking seven.  With my dying breath I counted those bloody tons of torture.  When the last stone was placed I marched my middle aged butt into the house, tossed off my clothes and crawled into the claw-foot tub with a Grapefruit White Claw...  I might have been crying "mommy"...  This project still has a chance to kill me though... as my weed block fabric comes Thursday and I'm scheduling 60 cubic feet of pea gravel to arrive the same day...  Pray for me y'all....

Pray for my hub while you're at it...  While I was whining about moving a gazillion tons of stone, he was in the back spraying the kudzu. It's coming back... we're on year 3 of fighting this battle.  It's an insidious plant that will kill everything in it's path if you let it be.  We can see grass now where it used to be in our back 'cut'... it'll take a couple more years of spraying before we can see it gone for good.   Anyway, spraying a poison seems to be relatively easy right?  Unless you're on top of a slope and you make a misstep... and you find yourself on your knees mid slope staring at the rear end of a copperhead.  Bill ran like a 10 year old, went to grab a shovel to kill it but it disappeared... Don't know who was more scared.  Bill went back to spraying 30 minutes later and saw a scurrying by his feet... he thought 'here we go again'... and then realized he was staring at a lizard.  He came over to me and asked what lizard has a pink head???  Funny enough we found that answer out later that day when someone posted this picture in Facebook asking what it was....  Apparently skink males heads turn pinkish orange during mating season.  Good to know lol.

This morning I woke up, went to use the restroom - this isn't too much information, y'all know it's the ONLY thing that gets you out of bed on a lazy morning...  anyway, when I was done, I stood up and stretched and scratched my ass... yes... y'all do that too... don't lie... and when I scratched I felt a bug bite...  but it felt like there was a scab... and I thought "Lord please no"... I can't see my ass... I went into the other bathroom to find my big magnifying mirror... I still couldn't quite turn around enough to see so I walked dejectedly into the bedroom with my underwear half down, walked up to Bill and asked "Do I have a tick on my ass".  

I am here to tell you, it's not really what any woman wants to have to ask a man.... and I'm pretty sure most men don't want to have to answer that question... but my hub looks from across the bed and replies calmly... "It looks like you've been bitten by something"....

"I feel something there.  I think there's a tick."  Next thing I know, I'm hanging over my claw-foot tub with my ass is in the air.  My hub has put his headlight on his head to see better.  He's verified that there is indeed a seed tick hanging onto my ass.  He gently takes it off with tweezers then says in his deep southern drawl "make sure you put peroxide on that baby..."

So yes... ladies and gentlemen... the moral of this whole blog is working in the garden is all fun and games until a tick bites your ass.

Put Down That Paint Brush

Let me start this blog by saying, we are not all going to agree on the end result... but I think we can all agree that the chairs I had were a mess.  A catastrophe of another DIYer.  I can't believe a woman would let her husband paint these chairs puke boring beige.  So for my soul to not be deeply wounded, I'm going to have to believe it was one of two things... 1)  a man that had spare beige paint and wanted to update his chairs at no cost... or 2)  this horrid color was a primer and the couple meant to put a color on it but never did.  I truly have to believe that it's one of those two things, because otherwise I have to question humanity. 

When I purchased the chairs in an estate sale they had a 'matching' hideous beige table.  I love vintage 50's metal lawn chairs.  I can't pass up these when I'm junking.  Especially when they're rusty or had a previous owner that was color blind.  I've had these for a year or two now.  Waited for the time and color to come to me.  Last week I tackled the table.  Sanded it then painted it Robin's Egg blue.  Came out adorable!  You'd think I'd go to the chairs and immediately make them the same color right?  Nope.  I'm not the matchy matchy furniture person.  Plus this furniture is all over my property.  So I waited until I was inspired.

Last night after everyone left, I stared at those chairs and decided today was the day I'd get them done.  I went into Bill's paint cabinet and chose the color they'd become.  Fire Orange... deep red with a orange tint.  They'd pop in the garden.  This morning I grabbed the sander, the paint and got down to business.  As the beige chipped off, I started to see remnants of the color's they'd been in their lives and the chippy aged look started to grow on me. 

For the record, I've never managed to allow myself to paint one of these chairs.  I don't know why I thought I'd be able to do it today.  I went from "They're all going to be Fire Orange", to "maybe I'll just paint the seats" to "Bill!!!!  What do you think?"

"You're gonna need some matte enamel sealer... at least two cans..."

He get's me.  Somehow that chippy aged look just pulls at my heartstrings every time.  I like to SEE the history.  Covering it is a shame.  Add to that, we've moved to the country... to an old home we're renovating.  Some stuff, that is age appropriate, just shouldn't look TOO new.  I just love how they came out.  I know, there's gonna be a few of you reading this that wish I'd just sprayed the Robin's Egg Blue... or the Fire Orange... and I understand you... these though, are going back to the fire circle and I'll smile every time I look at them.