First Impressions, well second for me.

School doesn't wait, just for a trip.

    As I sit at our folding table in the dining room, at the farm, my family is laying on a carpet remnant we brought in front of the wood stove playing banangrams.  The house is quite, only the sounds of us.  No car nosie, no highway noise, no annoying neighbor dogs barking, no refrigerator hum, just us.  I must admit the LED lights are a bit harsh, but I'm sure we'll get used to them.  From the table I can see the fire licking at the glass door of our FlameView cook/heat stove.  I've been told it's the Cadillac of wood cook stoves.  It's been burning now for a day and a half, the house is warm, sometimes hot, and it's probably in the high 30's outside.  I sit here and drink our spring water and write this under free electricity.  I know life is good.
  So it's our first trip to the farm together.  I bought the farm based on my first visit, and a bunch of pictures and video I took for her to see.  It was a long drive, 14 hours from the Shore, so we broke it up over a few days.  So Friday morning we arrived around 9am.  To pass the hours in the van, we talked about plans, dreams and excitement of building tree houses and forts.  As we drove down Russell Creek rd,  I was expecting to see a lot of "plain" folk in their gardens, or their children helping drive the team of horses with a plow, that's what I saw in my last trip.  But today the fields were empty.  Then we passed the school, yard full of bicycles, and it hit me that it was a school day.  We rounded the bend in the road by Lew Beachey's farm and saw the pink surveyor tape that marks our property.  I turned into the driveway as Erin and the kids saw our farm for the time.

Whoops....

     When we got out of the van, first thing on the list was to turn on the water, once the water was on we could fill the boiler tank and start a fire to knock the chill out of the house.  Now the ceiling of the basement is a maze of pipes and valves that allow us to move water from any one of our three sources of water to the holding tank on the hill to gravity feed to the house.  David had left us a DVD explaining the farm's inner workings and send instructions on how to "start" the farm, but it was a little more difficult than I had expected.  Finding and opening the valve for the main line was simple.  It was clearly marked, but filling the boiler tank was another story.  After about 35 minutes of staring at the ceiling, and rereading the instructions about 50 times, I finally finger traced the lines and everything started to make sense.  I had it narrowed down to one valve, this one had to be it.  As I turned it, I heard water flowing.  Now if only it was flowing to the right place.  I ran up the 2 flights of stairs from the basement to the 2nd floor and heard air purging from the boiler tank.  SUCCESS.  Once the tank was full, we lit the fire and decided to explore a bit before we unloaded the trailer.

Sweeping the summer kitchen

    The kids immediately found the hill directly behind the house and headed up it, scoping out possible fort locations.  Luke decided on an uprooted tree that left a great depression in the dirt behind the stump.  He started dragging scrap lumber up the hill from the wood pile to build a lean-to style fort.  Cutter, our perfectionist, insisted on hammer and nails, which unfortunately we weren't able to provide this trip,  So he settled with dragging an old door up the hill to serve as a wall.  Luke discovered a homemade scooter thing made from lawnmower wheels and plywood, it was missing it's rear wheels but he sat it aside for us to fix later.

     We walked around the property, investigated the barn and guest house, followed the spring line back up to the spring to see where the water came from.  We tried to climb the hill on the other side of the pasture, but got half way and realized we were crazy.  It's probably about a 60 degree incline.  Cutter and Luke made it to the top, I was so afraid that Luke would just jump and take his chances rolling down the roll.  He kind of did the jump and shuffle method.  It was amazing he didn't get hurt the whole week.

Warming the tootsies..

Surveying potential fort locations..

     The first night came to an end, it was getting dark, not dark yet, but near dusk, you know that time when if you are playing catch you get hit in the face cause you lose sight of the ball.  Well the hill the kids played on  all week, had a few dangerous small stumps on it, and when it gets dark our there, it's DARK, so I called them down.  Luke walked in, huffed has he plopped on the floor and said, I'm just going to die....no TV to watch, no electronics...then I heard snoring...he was out like a light in mid sentence.  It was the first and last time anyone mentioned technology or being bored.  It gets so dark in the valley so early, and I was being a bit stingy with the power, since I'm new to the whole solar thing, plus we didn't bring anything to waste time with at night, so we all went to bed.  Yep 7:30pm, we were all in bed.  I had to get up a few time to throw a log in the stove, still learning it, but we all slept good and warm.  The Sun woke us around 5:30, we got up and had breakfast done and cleaned up before 7am.  The kids headed back up the hill to play, within sight of the huge kitchen window.  Erin and I just walked around in the house and tried to imagine our stuff in it, and how/where it would fit.  After a few hours we walked down the road to see the underground cave/creek and just see our community.  We met a few of the neighbors, all super nice and friendly.  And all seem very eager to help us learn their way of life.  One particular neighbor, Vicki West, has a great little farmstead going, and one of the best swimming holes in the community, is like the great aunt everyone has and loves.  She has a youtube channel about country living and such.  She was so lovely to talk to and wants to have us over for dinner sometime.  She also turned us onto the Blue Healer breed of dog.  More research is needed, but she said they are the best family dogs that also have a working/guardian instinct.  She's also very knowledgeable in the homeopathic and natural remedies of the local area.  We learned about comfrey and mullen, which is all over our land.

Firewood warms you at least 2 times.

     The rest of our trip went about the same, early to bed, early to wake, meeting the neighbors and just browsing our land.  The kids probably spend at least 492 hours playing on that hill in the dirt.  I never thought I'd enjoy the sound of the screen door slamming, but it didn't bother me.  The boys and I re-stacked a fallen cord of firewood and spend a few lunches on the big deck eating and chatting.  Even with just a few things from home there, we brought our loveseat sofa, which we never even sat on, a double bed we slept in and some dishes, it felt like home, it felt like we belonged there.  Tuesday morning we loaded up, winterized the house and left, for now.  All the way down Russel Creek rd, the kids kept asking me, sleepily, if we had to leave.  And of course Erin was asking when we could come back.
   

     First impressions....June can't get here fast enough, we're ready for the next chapter.



More to follow..........