The time has come.

In short order after Tuesday's post, things have changed again. Our furnace failed spectacularly. While we've always wanted a hot tub, 5" of boiling water in the basement was not quite what we'd wanted. With the results of that, and everything else going on, we've shifted from "We need to fix up the house, and sell but we'll keep it private for now" to "ASAP."

Where does that leave the blog? Well, sale in our area usually involves 2 years on the market once we get the repairs complete. I see no reason to not keep up what we're doing with this as we move along and keep doing what we're doing. I intend to keep going with the blog, and keep on keeping on for now. I will keep updating folks both on the homestead side of things, and will let folks know if the blog is likely to close or take a break for a while.

For now, I'm going to post the information from our Go Fund Me. If anyone's looking to buy a house in the hills of MA, or pay for all of our repairs let us know! We love the house, it's a great house in good condition other than a couple repairs. The real reason we have to move comes down to, our financial situation isn't improving, and hasn't improved for years. Without our finances improving, we end up with our one car dragging the Critter around for hours a day which isn't ok. So, it's time to change.

I figure, closing on a rainbow seems appropriate. If you're interested in the Go Fund Me you can go to the link, or I'm including the text below.

As some of you may know, we have reached a challenging point in home-ownership.  We had planned to keep it private, but we had already decided to move after the latest in several major expenses when the well suffered damage due to the previous home-owner's "DIY tendencies." We simply cannot keep up with the expenses, even with insurance.  We LOVE this house, but the distance and issues have made this a completely untenable situation.

We have long spent our emergency funds and ability to take loans/credit cards. Those who have been to our house know that we hadn't even had a chance to repair the damage from the first plumbing issue (affectionately known as the "Speed Bump") where the improperly installed dishwasher dripped through to the basement.

We just had our oil furnace completely give up the ghost. Our insurance is probably helping to cover much of the water damage caused by 4+ inches of hot water, but not the new boiler which is the priciest part. While having a hot tub is something we wanted, in the basement by surprise wasn't really what we were hoping for.  No one was hurt and there wasn't a fire though, which is lucky.

For the destroyed oil furnace, while we may qualify for fuel assistance to get a new burner through Massachusetts grant programs, they are out of money at this time, and may not be able to start qualifying us until November.  We are looking to see if an exception can be made but the process is slow and unclear. We also are out of hot water and heat until it is replaced (though the water otherwise works fine thanks to that last repair...thank god!)

We would normally never resort to such a thing, but times are bad.  We were trying to save for the new roof, or the painting that the house badly needs to be lived in long term, much less resold, but things kept coming up.

If left in this state, things are only going to get worse.

We are asking for help with covering some of the expenses because we are out of options. We are going to continue to try to pursue grants and things of that nature, but realistically much of it will need to be out-of-pocket. There are some things on our list that are musts, and some that are maybes.

Houses don't sell well in our area, so it's necessary that it's at absoluty move-in ready and passes inspection to sell in any length of time.

To start with the money would be used for:
Paying the well repair company
The installation and cost of the new furnace
Repairing the floor damage caused by the first leaks
Wiring the bathroom light
Fixing the wiring in the upstairs room
Painting the house
etc.

Some of it will also go towards paying the taxes on the funds.

For those who own a home, you'll probably notice that our list is long for 10K. If the money goes over, the money would still be used towards getting the house in livable, then sellable condition. If it's under, we will handle things in dire need first.

Of course we prefer not to just be handed money. Michelle also has an etsy store, and sells art.  We are happy to go that route as well.  She cannot take on many detailed commissions because we currently rely on the regular income from that time spent making gryphs so couldn't realistically give a reasonable deadline since it couldn't be prioritized. Smaller projects might be a go, such as pet portraits. She'd be happy to discuss work that is already created though, or custom size prints, etc.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. Any help right now would be invaluable, thank you for your time, anything you can give, and anywhere you can share this. If you'd like to contact us directly with support rather than through here, you can contact me at coureton@gmail.com.

Thank you.

Coureton, Michelle aka. The Lady of the House, and Gabriel aka. The Critter.

Unexpected help, and learning from the sun.

Well, to say it was a bit windy last night would be an understatement. The Lady of the House described it as sounding like a hurricane in terms of wind. The tarps over the wood piles blew off, and some pieces of wood were 30 + feet away where they'd been catapulted off the tarps. That said, this tree at the mouth of the driveway isn't the one I'd expected to go down. As you can see, it covered the entire base of the driveway. I started off by clearing the chunks of wood, and branches

off the driveway. As I was set to deal with the trunk, one of the folks who lives in town stopped and helped out. I guess he saw me working to clear the debris, and backed up to stop at the base of the driveway. He grabbed his chainsaw, cut the trunk into pieces and helped me clear it out of the driveway. It was amazingly helpful, and definitely reminded me of the really good things about living where I do. I probably could have gotten the tree cleared out of the way, but it would have taken a long time, or I'd have hurt myself in the process. Dean stopping to help out made all the difference in the day, and took him about 3 minutes because he had the right tools for the job.

Peak foliage, and kitchen labor.

As we've been focused inside if it weren't for having to drive back and forth to get materials and tools we'd forgotten or didn't know we'd need I'd almost have missed the most dramatic part of fall arriving. Almost, it's hard to miss it for real when you're living in the middle of it, even when you are face down working on floors. As for the work on the kitchen, lots happened, but not as much as we wanted.

All about the driveway.

After a very busy and physical weekend, our driveway looks very different from how it looked last we checked in on it, and far better than it looked in 2014 before the Lady of the House and I repaired it by hand. This time fortunately due to different circumstances we had the proper equipment to handle regrading the driveway, and just as importantly someone who knew what they were doing.

A touch of frost, greens, and more.

On this cold morning, we have lots still on plants, and some that I strongly suspect won't make it through the first killing frost, but won't be ripe by then. Always a bit of a challenge with our location. As for the beans, at this point it just comes down to picking them off the plants. Even with the weather, the beans don't seem to be done flowering as you can see Right. Even the scarlet runner beans set more flowers just recently despite being heavy with beans. 

A productive, and fun July 4th weekend.

July 4th was a very busy weekend for us around the homestead, and full of good people and good company to go with the significant amount of work there was to do. For the 4th, we had a brush clearing party, then a camp fire. When it started raining just before folks showed up I didn't expect to get much done, or have a fire. As you can see the fire happened, and below the cut you'll get to see just how much we got done in the thankfully warm rain.

A break for beauty, and a whole lot of chicken changes.

In between the storms that have been rumbling through the area dumping water in copious amounts, and bringing cold temperatures, we've had some gorgeous weather come through. We try to make sure we take the time to enjoy the beauty around us every day, even in the dark days. On days like this though, it's easy to appreciate even the most mundane parts of our home. In this case, even our regular trouble, the driveway, has provided real beauty to enjoy. Even with the pauses for beauty though, we have plenty going on.

More wood, green beans, and community

Still no critter, and another late(ish) post. This time it's because it was just a very busy weekend, and I am unused to having my patterns changed. Having Monday off which you'd think would put me in a better place for getting things done did nothing of the kind. Instead I found other ways to fill my time, and didn't have the pre planned preparation time in place, so blog prep didn't get done. Ahh well. A re used picture from last year shows what we're starting to look like, even if the weather tries to fake us out with 70 degree days, the 30 and below degree nights remind us winter is not just coming, it's close.

Sorry for the absence, it's been a hairy couple weeks.

It's been a rough couple weeks, and I'm sorry for missing not one, but two posts in a row. Unavoidable travel occurred, and left me with barely the energy to do my job and the around the house work that needed doing. Fortunately, as the song says, we get by with a little help from our friends. Above is the fatigued crew that helped out with moving and re stacking 7 pallets of firewood for the winter, and helped out more which I'll cover later. A thanks to them is the first thing.

Some very New England weather

Since Thursday the weather has been strange and all over the place in a very New England fashion, and promises to continue doing so in the near future with near freezing temperatures night before last and tomorrow promising to be a near 100 degree day. At least we're not seeing a 65 degree difference in a single day again.

Much Kindness, and Delight's Unfortunate Malocclusion

The past two days have contained more stuff going on than they usually do, so today's post was easy to come up with just due to how much has been going on! Above is the wood pile this morning showing how much, and yet how little we did over the weekend.

First Butchering Done

Yesterday we did our first butchering, and over all it went very well. We have one of the first two litters we are holding aside for potential breeding to bring Sunny's strengths into our American Blue lines if we can. As you can see Above he is still in the growing out hutch, and seems to be enjoying being able to eat without fighting off everyone else.

There are no photos of the process below the cut but there will be detail about the killing and butchering process.

Quick Hit: The Value Of Friends

There is more to say about the value of friends than just one short post, but it's worth making a quick start on it. One of the things I've been working on is a finished room in one of our outbuildings to use as an art studio/sitting area. This particular space was one of the big draws of our place, and was something we were enthusiastic about when moving in. Unfortunately there has been a bit of a debacle with the local building inspector, and things have gotten slowed down by 3 months. Unsurprisingly then when things started moving again, I wanted to get things done as fast as possible. To that end, when I had to insulate 800 square feet of ceiling, I called in friends.

Two friends showed up on 3 day notice, and helped out with the rather unpleasant job of doing ceiling fiberglass insulation. It was a learning experience for both of them which may be valuable to one of them who has been doing work on her own house. That said, both of them were covered in fiberglass and itching thoroughly by the time it was done. The value is obvious, I have friends, they showed up and helped cutting down the time this took significantly. It meant that I got that 800 square feet done within 5 hours rather than 15, or more. Not only that, neither of them asked to be paid (which I can't afford right now). They just know that if they need a hand, I'll come give it if I can do so at all.

Chances are over time, you will make acquaintances and friends with a variety of skills and abilities. As you homestead draw on those skills and abilities. Chances are you don't know how to be a plumber, an electrician, framer, finisher, floor installer, foundation layer, insulator, painter, excavator, lumberjack, farmer, animal expert, butcher . . . etc. Use the people you meet to learn what you can, and get done what needs to get done. Chances are you can do something that they can't and need done, or you can simply offer your time and labor helping out. Don't be afraid to help folks out "for free." In the end it will end up coming back and helping you when you need to reach out for help.