Past Revisited

Photos from May 1982, my sister-in-laws came for a visit!



Today is my birthday and I received a phone call from my youngest son wishing me a Happy Birthday! It was great to hear from him, and he had some news. He is in the Air Force and is stationed in Georgia right now. He has orders to go to ENGLAND! He'll be stationed there 2 years! I'm so excited. We spent 3 years there in 1980-83 and absolutely loved it. Two of my boys were born there and I've always wanted to go back and visit. I'm going to start saving my pennies and getting my passport!

Where Have all the People Gone?

Well, so far, relocating the horses is proving to be much easier than relocating ourselves! We have the two portable run-ins and the lumber ready for the new one, fence posts ready to go and they'll have plenty to munch on! Their transition to the land should be quite a bit easier to manage than ours.

We've looked at used mobile homes. We've been to 4 dealers so far and found one we would live in! Its $26,000.00 plus it would have to be moved and set up. The others ranged from $13,000.00 to $20,000.00 and all but one of those I would seriously not let my dog live in! The one I find liveable, Alan does not, so its not my pickyness holding us up, LOL! We looked at the camper, and it is in nice shape, but those close a quarters for an extended period, and then having to rent something different in the winter seems too complicated.

Bring in the yurt! We are going to get the house plans drawn up today, and get an estimate on materials. Since we want to do this move and come out of it financially free from a mortgage, it will probably take at least a year. So far, the most comfortable, economical and lets face it, fun (at least for a while) solution, seems to be a yurt. I know they resell quickly and are moveable. So a trip to NH to White Mountain Yurts is in order I believe. We are going to check out the yurt at Friend's Folly Farm in Monmouth, they got their Yarn Yurt from WMY. We stayed in a small yurt when we went to Grand Manan Island last year, and it was one of our best vacations there! More yurt info on this and many other sites.

Clary Lake Pony Club Lessons

Photos from May 17, Amber was sick so Macy borrowed Toby


The girls are doing a great job at their riding lessons with the Pony Club. We've had 4 so far I believe, 2 with Rachael and 2 with Ivy. They like our ponies and the girls and ponies are progressing quickly with the extra weekly lessons at our house. I think both Angel and Maya will be suitable for the girls to compete on, we just needed some consistant work and guidance! I'm still hoping FlyAway will be rideable someday, but have started looking for a horse that Alan and I can both ride right now. We need 4 rideable horses anyways, since we all enjoy trail riding together.

Photos from May 31, 2009

Bathing Beauties

As the days get warmer, the chickens start lazing in the sun. The first time I saw them do this, I thought they were sick! As it heats up outside, they really stretch out, legs fully extended, flat on their sides! Such a difficult life.

Just for Fun

Can you find the Unstuffed Animal?

This cat is so funny, she's the most awkward cat I've ever seen. Its funny until she tries to jump into your lap and doesn't quite make it so ends up hanging from your thigh by her claws!

The Adventure Continued

My oldest son, Ryan, arrived from Maryland on Monday to visit and help us pack, work on the land, etc. Its so great to see him! He has a wonderful girlfriend who has inspired him to think about the future and where he wants his life to go. He moved to Colorado right out of high school, all by himself, and Steamboat Springs has a strong grip on his heart. But I think its losing out to love! He moved to Maryland almost a year ago to be with his girl. I love that he is just an hour plane ride away.

We had our house inspection Tuesday. Although I had written the correct time on the calendar, I've been so busy that when Alan told me it was at 10:00, I believed him instead of checking. Well, of course they showed up at 8:45 as the inspection was at 9:00! Suddenly we had the new owners, her decorator, the inspector and real estate agent outside discussing what they were going to do to my house. Strange. I had to hustle the kids and the dog into the truck and find a way to amuse us all for 4 hours!

We're waiting to hear the results of the inspection, so far we just know the septic needs to be pumped and the baffle replaced, not too big of a deal. The buyers wanted to walk the property lines, so I asked if they could come back when Alan was home as he knows exactly where they are. They agreed. I found her (J's) overshirt, her house to do list and fencing person's business card that she left behind. So they arranged to come today and walk the line and take more measurements. I wasn't able to get a feel for her yesterday, but we talked a bit today and I really liked her! She's so excited, she just got her first horse a month ago, at the age of 50. Its a dream come true, one long waited for. They just love the property, they've been looking for 1 1/2 years! They appreciate all the work we've put in and any doubts of selling have been laid to rest. The place will be well loved.

Temporary Housing

So in order to do this project, and work on it ourselves as much as possible, we obviously need some temporary housing! We've looked at a used mobile home that is in nice condition, but is $26,000.00. We decided on Saturday to swing by the land and check the burn sites, then go to Ralph's Homes in Waldoboro to check out what they had for used homes. Alan had seen on the website that they had a few available.

Off to Ralph's we go, after breakfast at Moody's Diner. It brought back memories of eating there with my grandparents as a young girl, I think the seat cushions are the originals! Anyway, my mother had bought a double wide from a dealer in that area, I thought we had gone past Moody's to get to where she went, but Alan was sure Ralph's was on the opposite hill. He was right on that, but I was right that we had gone by Moody's to where my mom got her's, because it was at Bogg's not Ralph's! Anyway, we stop in and they have NO used trailers. I told Alan a simple call would've saved us a lot of time! But we decided to look at the homes anyway and got some good ideas for designs and I got a feel for the different dimensions.

When heading to Ralph's we had passed a modular home place with just 3 houses. I told Alan I wanted to stop in there on the way back. We pulled into the drive, and there was our house, a little gingerbread looking house with the porch and scalloped shingles on the top half, and can anyone guess what color it was?! YELLOW! (Upon seeing the house a second time, its not really Yellow but a yellowish brown, though I could've sworn it was light yellow the first time, LOL)

We walked into a little house, 28'x34', with the area over the dining, livingroom open to the ceiling, a little loft and extra room upstairs, an open kitchen, dining, living area like we've wanted and 2 bedrooms and a bath in the back. No master suite. But we loved it. We've been looking at homes off and on since buying the land, and while we've liked some features of each, none has been a "This is the ONE" feeling. We finally found it, and the homes are made by KB Builders right here in Maine. You can have them do as much or as little as you want and they can customize the plans any way you want. We got the floor plans and price list for the little cottage and headed home.

On the way home, we talked about how we could make the house work for us. We think if we do a full basement instead of a slab, the girls can have their two bedrooms down there with plenty of space for a living/rec room for company and privacy. We will have our mastersuite on the main floor, take out the downstairs bathroom and put it in the entry way we add to the side of the kitchen, change the stairs to one with a landing and move them into the space where the bathroom was, opening up the kitchen area more and making the livingroom bigger, and giving us a common wall so we can have a two sided fireplace, one in the livingroom and one in the bedroom (always been a dream of Alan's to have a fireplace in the bedroom!). Then the loft area can be a computer/away space and the little room behind a spare guest room. I also thought about extending the top of the house in the back, making the room upstairs bigger and creating a covered, screened back porch. The house at Hundred Acre Wood is designed like that, and I got the idea when I rode Saturday. We would have the laundry and 1/2 bath in the entry and attach a garage! Ta Da! Now I need to go get some cost estimates, but I'm confident we will have the money when we need it!

Oh yeah, to the point of this post! I called my sister on Sunday and told her about the little house and how things were coming together. She said her husband had worked with a man that does electrical, plumbing and heating, a master electrician that worked on his own on the side. They are going to talk to him for us to see if he'd be able to work on our house. Later she called back and said they knew someone with a 30' 1999 tag along camper for sale for $7,500.00! They had lived in it while building their house, and he was also a contractor. I had them e-mail pictures and it looks new. We're going to look at it Wednesday, that is an awesome price and I think we could manage to stay there. Then use it for company!

Now the funny part, the electrician's name is DUSTIN Oliver, and the camper owner is DARREN York, the names of my middle two sons, there's my sign!

Awesome Neighbors

When we first bought the property in Pittston in 2006, we met our neighbor, Steve. Steve had been away from his house for an extended bit of time and when he came back, the old growth stand of trees he grew up hunting and exploring in was decimated. It looked like a bomb site. And then there were plans for a 13 lot subdivision there. Every person we've met so far in Pittston has been so nice and welcoming. Many say they are happy that the land will be used as a farm and not a subdivision. We hope we can help heal the wound made when the land was plundered and left in ruin.


From the back of the property, you can just see the neighbor's house in the background on the left. This is what he came back to find instead of big old trees.
View from our house site

What is left blows down

Skidder track in the wetlands where they violated cutting laws
Slash pile

Where the property ends on the gas line

Remains of a forest

Our road starts next to Steve's driveway and the property runs beside and behind his. The first time we met him, he told us where the key to his house was and gave us permission to use the bathroom, the hose, anything we needed while we were down there! He insisted Alan use his plow truck one winter when we were going to try and snowblow. He's now married, and at Christmas we went down and put a card and my famous homemade caramels in their mailbox. I had forgotten about that.

While burning brush Friday, Steve and Carol came down to visit and invited us to a huge family gathering he puts on each year. Lobster, BBQ, you name it! Its an all-nighter and they wanted to include us. Carol thanked me for the candy at Christmas, and I didn't know what she was talking about until Alan mentioned the caramels! Steve does fireworks as a living and said the display he puts on at this party is always the best show in Maine! He told us we could take a break from the land and go hang out at the little marina where they have their boat whenever we needed to.

I've taken the opportunity when talking to people in the area to ask for recommendations for well drilling, foundations, septics, excavating and contracting. The first Steve who showed us his farm gave us a few names. Now neighbor Steve gave us some names, and a few were repeats of Steve the 1st! So I think we have our well guy at least. When I asked neighbor Steve about contractors, he hemmed and hawed a bit and then told me that he used to build houses, and group of his friends had built many houses for each other. He has a 40' trailer filled with everything you need to build a house, any tool you could possibly want and he was bringing it home and giving Alan the key so he could use what he needed. He said he was busy June, July & August, but would have time in September to help with whatever we needed! He knows someone with a boom truck to set trusses, etc. and thought we could do this ourselves. We can't believe our good luck in neighbors!

The Perfect House Plans

The day after talking to Steve, my in-laws came up to help Alan burn some brush piles on the land. It was raining quite hard the beginning of the day but lightened up towards noon. My MIL and I decided to stay at my house to pack a bit and get the girls after school then head down to the land to help burn. We started looking through the house plan books I have and one plan that I had not noticed before caught my eye. It was in the vacation type home section and was a two story plan, where we had been looking for a more ranchy type house. But I wasn't finding the floor plan that was just right and we kept ending up with cape style houses since a front porch is a MUST! I like capes, but had the thought that I'd like something a little different. We also wanted to be as energy independent as possible, and having lots of windows to the south would help with the solar aspect of heating the house in the winter. The capes had windows in front, but they were covered by the porch roof.


So this plan caught my eye, and the layout inside looked like what we had planned to do. We need our master suite as far from daily activity as possible, since Alan has to sleep in the daytime when doing night shifts. We already know we will be sound proofing our room! It has the front porch, having it open allows the sun to reach the windows. It has solar potential, but is more traditional looking.

Now that I found a plan I really liked, I was anxious to show Alan. When he got home that night, after staying down on the property til 10:00 pm to tend the fires, I showed him and he liked them too! As I was showing him the plans, I looked at the name of them, and it was BARNSTABLE COTTAGE, LOL! There's my sign. I asked him if we could make it light yellow, as there's a cute house in our neighborhood that is that color and I've always loved that little house. He said "NO".

So I think we've found our house plans! Or at least a starting point for developing a workable plan for us. I secretly was afraid that we'd be down there in two years, still living in a mobile home or camper while I was trying to pick out the "perfect" plans! After all, we've been thinking about this for 2 1/2 years already and tossed around ideas about living in yurts, or stackwood houses, to any number of small houses we can build without a large mortgage. Our two rules for the house are for it to be as debt free as possible and as efficient in space and energy consumption as possible.

One step closer!

Update on Back on Track

Every day a new piece of the puzzle comes together! We talked to an excavator that was recommended to us by a couple of people because he's good and he also has a horse farm, so would be knowledgeable about that part of it. He was just who we needed to talk to. I've been thinking about doing a barn/house combo and have been in them and talked to people who live in them and they all loved it. But some of the reason I thought of that was to save money and in order to live over the barn, I would have to build a much bigger barn than I would normally. So I've been going back and forth about the whole idea. The excavator, Steve, really discouraged us from living over the barn, although he has a friend that does it and loves it. He sited safety reasons and said "You will build an outside riding ring, people will start to board here, and pretty soon you'll have people knocking on your door all the time!" So he really advocated keeping house and horse areas seperate and then told us about his farm and a run-in he had made he thought would work well until we really knew where we wanted to put things.

Steve's farm is only 5 miles from ours and we went over and he showed us a run-in, 24'x24', an open end on two opposite sides of the building with a gambrel roof where he can store 600 bales of hay! That would be quick and easy to build, possibly moveable and we'd have hay storage in an area where if it ever, God forbid, caught fire, you wouldn't lose a barn or horses, since they're free to come and go. He said his horse loved it. They had built a small house with a barn just behind it, and he wished they had built the barn much farther from the house. They had started with a wooded 4 acres in the late '80s and had slowly built their farm over the years. His wife came riding out of the woods on a beautiful 4yo Friesian stallion, and Alan was awestruck, thankfully by the horse, although his rider was one of those people that, upon meeting, you know are beautiful inside and out.

So Steve was the person we needed to talk to at the time we needed to talk to him. I do think having moveable buildings at this point is the smartest thing to do, and so the search is on for the perfect house plans!

Horsemasters Pony Club for Adults!

About a month ago, I joined the Horsemasters group at Hundred Acre Wood, finally! I have been wanting to do this since I first heard of it about 4 years ago! At that time, Welcome Home Farm with Sam Morrison and Rachael at HAW were taking turns hosting the Pony Club, Prime Time Riders, but it got to be too much, so they split and Rachael has the meetings at her farm for people in her area, and Sam does the same.

Anyway, I am using one of Rachael's horses to ride in the lessons. She came from PDQ farm and is a 19 yo spotted Saddlebred mare named Satin. Okay, I admit to having a bit of a bias against Saddlebreds. I've seen some really nutty horses and saddleseat is something I've never aspired too. I think it just looks odd and uncomfortable for both horse and rider. JMHO. But Satin was a hunter, I'm told. She's very tall and very thin in build, not like my couch of a QH. So I go out to get her in the pasture and she doesn't look too happy to see me. The person helping me said she can be a "brat" in the stall and we should get a hay bag to keep her happy while I groom and tack up. Great! So with this warning in my head, I lead her into the stall and she tries to come right back out again! We get her tied and she is just attacking the hay in the hay bag. To me, this looked like anxious behavior, she was nervous being in the stall. Once I realized that, I felt more comfortable and was quiet and kind with her. I was alert, because they can hurt you if they're nervous, but she didn't display any defensive behavior, and I figured if she was that bad, Rachael wouldn't let people use her for lessons. We got tacked up and went to the ring and this horse knows her stuff. At the end of the lesson with Sam Morrison, she gave me the best feedback, that I had a connection with the horse and flowed well with her. I also was told I started very tense, was using my legs wrong, etc, usual things I do.

Walking back to the barn, Satin had her head lower, and her eye softer. I praised her and told her she was going to be good in the stall because I wouldn't do anything to hurt her, and she was fine. When the girls had lessons next, I went out and found Satin and gave her some scratches and reintroduced myself.

This week, we rode with Becky Morse and I picked Satin again. She was great in the stall, I probably didn't even need the hay, because she just played with it mostly. No problem bridling at all, last time she had played a giraffe and I was JUST tall enough to convince her it wouldn't work! Again I started out tense, but we got some really good trot work, some great upward transitions and worked on trot, halt. She's a great horse, and I'm coming to really like her. I spent time scratching her bug bites and trying to find her favorite itchy places. So much for my bias of Saddlebreds! I truly never thought I'd ride one by choice and now I look forward to our lessons together!

From Chicken Poop Stoop to Back on Track

We sold our house, in 24 hours! Last week I decided to stop finding excuses not to put the house on the market and turn it over to Alan. He called the agent we've used before and met with her Friday, June 5th. She knew she was going to be listing it, so at the sales meeting of her agency, she described the property and asked if anyone was looking for something like that. A fellow agent had clients that were looking for a place for a horse and had looked at "everything under the sun" but none was quite right. So they arranged for the house to be shown on Saturday, June 6th.

One June 6th the girls and I were going to Boston with the Girl Scouts to stay at the Boston Museum of Science overnight, 17 girls in our troop and 580 total! On cement floors. With two sisters that DO NOT listen and create drama where ever they go, and no, I'm not talking about my girls! (Although they can create drama at home, they are well behaved in public!) We took a bus down and back do had to take the subway to the museum and back, 17 girls with sleeping bags and pillows and 4 chaperones.

So on top of trying to prepare for the trip, I suddenly had to get the house in showing shape! We busted our butts, but did a pretty decent job of getting it presentable. As I took a last walk through with my daughter, we were talking and it echoed. I said, "Listen Macy, it sounds like we're already gone!" and I got a funny feeling.

So fast forward to Sunday evening, arriving at the bus station with very little sleep and another subway adventure under our belts. My husband kept it in half way home, then said "There's some paperwork you need to look at when we get home." "What?" With a huge grin he told me we got an offer on the house! I wanted to smack him and wipe that grin off his face! We hadn't even gotten all the paperwork done yet and I had to consider moving already? I suddenly didn't know if I wanted to move! What had I gotten myself into? And why wouldn't he stop grinning?!

After a bit of a night's sleep and some time to think, I started getting a bit excited! So much to do though. We had thought about what we wanted to do on the property, but never really settled on anything and didn't have any plan in place yet. It all seemed so far in the future, we'd had the land 2 1/2 years and I really thought we'd be here at least a year longer. I had gone riding on the trails behind the property a couple of weeks ago and written to my friend that we were idiots for not being on the land already, the house sold a week later!

Now we are scrambling to come up with a plan, but in an excited, happy way, not in a OMG, panicked way (at least not most of the time!) And some really neat things have fallen into place already!