Little house near the Maine woods

Merry christmas!

2009-12-20T18:28:00.005-05:00

I haven't updated in a long time sorry! Let's see, what have we done since August?

The chickens are now grown up girls and are giving us plenty of eggs. We cleared some brush near the edge of the woods and built a little building that's half tool shed, half winter chicken coop.

We also got a new kitty! His name is Loki, he's probably about two or three years old and he's adorable. He looks a bit like Bast and sometimes we are confusing them if we look quickly or from down the hall. Once you get a good look you can't confuse them. Bast is the fattest cat ever and Loki simply isn't.

It's winter so I'm at my winter job and I'm on break right now until after new years. It's cold outside, we've got some nice snow on the ground but we didn't get any at all from this big storm that just buried most of the east coast.
My mother moved to maine! That's very exciting! She's renting a house not far from us. She needs to learn to drive in the snow, she's a bit scary.

Mr. Socston built some very nice cold frames and we have stuff in there overwintering. We harvested a bit in the fall and can harvest some of the greens throughout the winter and are letting the rest stay for an early spring harvest. Hardy greens, lettuce, spinach, and carrots will all be waiting for us nice and ready to pick with the snow melts.

The new radiant heat system is working wonderfully. Keeping us and the floors nice and warm. Now that the old furnace is done we are going to yank out all the old bits from it and pull out the old chimney. Mr. Socston has had it out for that poor chimney since we moved in. I never even noticed it was there but he hated it and said it was ruining the roof and the first chance he got he climbed up and started removing it. He got the whole top off and replaced the roof where it had been and next we are going to take out what's left in the wall at the end of the hall. Once that is gone we're going to build an actual stairway to the basement!
The basement is where the laundry area is and our pantry so we are down there daily. Trudging down the backsteps in the snow with a basket full of clothes to go down an oddly shaped door and fight it open one armed and step down a big step is wearing on me. I'm lazy and I want to just stay indoors on snowy days and go down normal people stairs to get to the laundry, freezer, and pantry.
So that's it for now, happy holidays to you!
Socston

Hello again

2009-08-30T15:40:00.006-04:00

It's been awhile since I've updated.
Here's what's been going on...
The chickens have a nice little summer house now. A movable coop with a fence around it so we can stick them in different parts of the yard. They enjoy exploring around the yard!

The garden did pretty well considering the slow start to summer. The peas, eggplants, watermelons and a couple of other flowering plants that like warm weather didn't produce very well but the onions, potatoes, cabbages, and winter squash have done fine. :)
a small pie pumpkin~
we are getting ready to put in the winter garden. We'll be planting carrots, lettuce, spinach, and salad greens under a cold frame. This is our first time doing a cold frame in the winter, I'm looking forward to seeing how it works.
Mr. socston is almost done with the never ending shower stall. He is actually working on tiling it today. Our summer house work plans have been spoiled by pesky real work. I usually only go in three days a week in the summer, but this year due to a co-worker being sick I worked five days a week most of the season. Mr. socston has gotten a lot of forced overtime and while the extra money we've made is good to pay for projects it sure has gotten us behind in actually doing the projects. He's been working almost 100 hours some weeks, if he only works 80 hours a week this summer we've been lucky.

We've gotten some canning and drying done. I planted more herbs than I usually do this year and I've had fun preserving them. Some things I've used the dehydrator for but others I was able to just hang to dry. Chives, dill and chamomile went in the dehydrator, most everything else was hung. I also made some herbs ice cubes. It's something local farmer told me to do a couple of years ago. Chop up herbs, place them in the cube sections of ice cube trays, add a little to cover them and freeze. This is great for soups in the winter. :)
We've already canned snaps and zucchini relish and are doing summer squash and tomatoes next.

Mr. socston wants me to show a picture of the shower tiling but I've refused. I told him when it's finished completely I will post it. It's a little carrot hanging in front of him, eh?

I do want to show y'all a picture I got for him. He loves his corgi and I had a painting done of him for an anniversary present. It's a very cute pet portrait I think and it captures him perfectly. It doesn't just look like any old corgi, it looks like fenris. A girl I've known since childhood and reconnected with online painted it, she did a wonderful job!:)

gardening stuff

2009-07-03T21:41:00.007-04:00

So New England this june has been wet. Really wet. Lots of rain. We saw the sun twice and that was nice and then there was lots more rain. Luckily we got all of the last minute seeds in the garden before the rain times really kicked in and since our garden is on a well drained (almost too well drained) spot it's actually good for us to get all this water. All the plants have done well and only just are starting to show signs of needing some sun. We realized today that although our boston lettuces are tasting perfect they actually are kind of pale!
picture from today~

We've had two flash floods in our streams and pond. There is a little penisula between the pond and one part of the stream and it flooded completely over one day. There is a wooden bridge over one section of stream and it was actually picked up and moved a little. Normally the water is a good four feet from even touching the bridge.

The chickens are getting BIG! They will soon have their coop built outside, for now they are still in their little house with a heat lamp keeping them warm.
we call them the goofball militia~

Inside the house we've finally gotten around to the bathroom renovation. Yay! We've got a shower stall halfway done. Mr Scoston did the plumbing and everything. All we have left is putting up the backerboard and tiling. Two rooms are turning into one so when the shower is ready to use we are going to knock out the wall to the old bathroom and take out the bathtub.

I'm back at work at my part time summer job and that's really fun. The boy is at summer camp and will be home soon. I have no idea how he's doing because he doesn't write letters. Bad boy!

Later,
Socston

Hot water heaven!

2009-05-30T19:23:00.003-04:00

So we finally got the propane boiler installed! This is fantastic news and I'll remind you why...remember early on the blog right around this time last year when I posted the tragic story of the horrible water pressure? Well it's better AND the water generally stays one temperature now. I had gotten quite used to showering while standing on one foot like a flamingo so that I could use my other foot to constantly adjust the hot and cold water knobs. No more! It's been 3 days now and things have been wonderful! The system we replaced was original to the house and was over 45 years old, it used tremendous amounts of oil. We'll be removing the old boiler and chimney in a few months when are installing the new radiant heating under the floors. I'm looking forward to removing all that because when we do we will build some real stairs to the basement and not always have to go outside to get down there. At that point we will also be sealing up the windows nicely and letting the animals have access to the basement. They will be happy with the extra space I'm sure. 3 people, 2 dogs, 4 cats, and a bunny are a tight squeeze in 960 square feet!
here is a picture of the beautiful boiler~

I'm a slacker girl!

2009-05-16T19:30:00.004-04:00

It's been very busy around here and I haven't updated in over a month, sorry! Here goes~
~We got six little baby chickies to raise for eggs (no eating chickies over here!)
~We got the garden started, it's looking nice.
~We cleaned up the last of the winter debris and cleared an overgrown area near the edge of the woods to plant nut trees.
~We both worked a gazillion hours at our jobs.
~The boy worked as a backstage intern at the show at my work and had a fun time.
~I'm off tomorrow from my main job until next fall, I'll have a couple of weeks off and then start at my summer job.
~Mr socston built a cute little animal hutch for the baby chicks to live in while they are growing. It will work nicely for bunnies or more baby chickens in the future.
~He also wrangled together a nice little cold frame for the seedlings.
~I came close too but did not actually have a nervous breakdown at work.
Yay for us and all our accomplishments!

So we got six chickens, two new hampshire reds, two black giants, two black sex links. The sex links are a cross of rhode island red and barred rock chickens. I wanted to get two buff orpingtons but there were problems with that shipment and so no go this year. I still want them, I'll get them next spring.

Oh, so have you ever heard about how mint really spreads and you should have a border in the dirt around it? Yeah me too! So last year in my little herb border that I planted, I put rocks down and around the mint. I had the border about four or five inches down. That's not enough just so you know. Next time I want to plant mint near other things I will sink a ten foot concrete wall in the dirt around it. We dug out a big chunk of the mint and found a nice spot near the woods on the other side of the yard to relocate the patch too and we dug out mint roots for a good half hour. A couple of days later I found more little mint plants and more roots to pull out. I think mint might be from outer space. I'm just saying, it was pretty treacherous.
This year we put a large load of compost into the garden. We're still cover cropping the second garden. So far in the ground we've got three varieties of lettuce, spinach, onions, beets, summer squash and zucchini, butter cup squash, pie pumpkins, tomatoes, and strawberries. I made a specific herb section in the garden this year also; in there is oregano and chives that I planted last year, and parsley and dill. I'm going to put in a bunch of basil. In my little herb border the things that came back from last year are doing nicely; chives, tarragon, thyme, and sage. (I'm not including the aforementioned alien mint)

You can see one of the little apple trees back there. We had three but are down to two, one had rodent damage on the trunk last year before we moved in and it didn't make it through the winter.
So there's what we've been up to, gardening, playing with chickens, not quite having work stress related breakdowns.
I promise it will not be so long again before I post!
Later,
Socston

Syrup is done...

2009-04-07T21:59:00.003-04:00

and here is a picture of the finished product~
the one in the back right in the jar with the white lid is for me. I like my syrup underdone. It's so nice and light tasting! We discovered it by accident and I insist on a very slightly underdone jar each year now. It has to stay in the refrigerator and I use it up first because something about the sugar content bla bla bla it doesn't keep the same as properly prepared syrup. Altogether we ended up with two and a quarter gallons. Not bad. He cooked most of it down outside on a propane burner grill kind of set up that he finagled and finished on the stove inside.

We planted seeds a couple of weeks ago. They are coming up nicely...
now the challenge is to keep the poor things water and alive until I can get them outdoors. I started stuff last year so late that I was able to keep them outside most of the time and they didn't need as much watering. These are driving us crazy trying to water enough. I guess it's drier in the house than I realized.

Last two kitties.

2009-03-25T16:23:00.005-04:00

Here are the remaining pet bios~

Have you ever tried to get a picture of a solid black cat? It's harder than you might think.
This is Shadow. She's less housecat and more leopard. The boy picked her out of her litter when he was 5 and she was a few weeks old. She's about our oldest pet right now, she's 8 years old. She is also the one we have had longest. She loves the boy a lot but isn't a big fan of people or animals she doesn't know, or people and animals she does know actually. She's moody but we like her that way. She likes bast and that's about it. She abhores fenris, and the poor guy just doesn't get it. She's a wonderful guard cat though, she knows she is the main pet in charge here, she bosses the dogs and the other cats wonderfully, she's the matriarch and she doesn't let anyone forget it.

And last but not least, Bast. She is her daddy's little baby, he loves her more than he does me or the boy. She's a fat piggy and will guard the food from the other cats if we don't watch her. She is sweet and lovey, she sleeps with us a lot, and she makes a cute little chirpy noise instead of actual meows. She is part maine coon we believe. I worked as a receptionist at a vet's office once and she was brought in as a stray kitten. I fell in love with her and called home to beg if we could have another cat. At the time we only had shadow. Mr. Socston was a little put out but he likes cats and he said finally gave me a grudging yes. I brought her home and he was smitten from the start. I like to remind him about how grumbly he was when I wanted her and how if I hadn't kept whining we wouldn't have her and he tells me to hush.

So now you've met all the animals! Aren't they wonderful? :)

Now let me fill in on some of the house mess going on. We knocked out the drywall in the room that will be the bathroom a while back and then stopped working on it. Mr. Socston has project ADD. He is always working on something and he's always finishing but he tends to skip around and do three or fours things at once, bless his heart. So we finally bought most of the mess we need to build the shower and get the bathroom going. We still need to get the base of the shower stall, I'm not sure if has ordered it or not yet, he keeps saying he will "soon" everytime I ask. We seem to have very different definitions of "soon"

He is hip deep in syrup right now though so I'm not going to say anything until maple season is over. He thinks he might hit three gallons before he's done.
His birthday is coming up on friday and I am presently annoyed that it's his only day off this week. At one job he sets his own schedule and when I asked why he didn't give himself another day off he said it snuck up on him. How does one's birthday sneak up on them? I suspect that if it didn't naturally fall on the day between shifts that he always leaves free he would have actually forgotten and worked.
I'm going to try to think of something fun to do that day and some nice treat to make him.

goodbye for now!

The sap must flow...

2009-03-08T20:58:00.004-04:00

I'm a Dune fan I couldn't resist that little homage.
I know I owe y'all two more cat bios but I'm a slow blogger and mr. socston is all excited about tapping his trees and said I must update now with his tree pictures.
He went out yesterday and today and got some trees going. Today I followed him out with the camera and took some pictures and a wee bit of video.

Here he is drilling a hole with his wonderful, fabulous, brace and bit that he found BRAND NEW at a second hand store. He's very proud of it.

Here's a picture of our collection set up.
That's some high tech stuff there. Milk jugs and twine. It's expensive high quality equipment but it's the price one pays...

We did 15 taps in 14 trees. Some of them were done yesterday and we checked them this afternoon and a couple were almost up to half full already. We're hoping to make about two gallons of syrup.

Meet some cats and the bunny

2009-02-17T17:09:00.003-05:00

Here is Tanner and Baby Bear. Baby Bear is also known as Bootsie. His fur gets matted very easily even with diligent brushing and he often gets fur balls so occasionally we have him shaved. They leave his head and his feet fuzzy so he looks like a naked cat that is wearing furry boots. It's adorable. And pathetic. But mostly adorable.
He is the kitty who was recently so sick. He's come back wonderfully. You can actually see in this picture a bald spot on one front paw. Right in front of the bunny nose is the shaved bit. That's where the IV was. He has a spot on his neck that is bald now also.
We've had him about 4 years now. My mother gave him and Zoey to us when she had to move. She had them both since they were kittens and they are very attached. They are often found together and when fenris chases zoe down the hall the next thing you will see a moment later is fenris running away from baby bear in terror.
He's a quiet and lovey kitty. Very sedate and loves to be rubbed but hates to be picked up and held. He is usually found sleeping and he's very smart. He already learned that he eats separately from the other cats since his illness. Now when they all run to the cat food area he stops halfway down the hall at the room where we feed him automatically and waits there at the door. He meows when he is done so that we can let him out. Very smart boy!

Tanner is the boy's bunny. He wanted an angora for awhile and he read up on them and thought they were very cute. We took him to a bunny show to buy one and all the angoras he liked were the various breeders best rabbits and weren't for sale. One lady was walking around with us and she joked that he has a great eye for rabbits. Tanner was the only one he really loved that was for sale was not an angora at all but a Netherland Dwarf. He got him strictly as a pet and he's a great one. He's very inquisitive and loves to hop around. His cage is in the boy's room and he sometimes wakes him up. He likes to rearrange the stuff in his cage and he's a rather loud thumper. He slams his back legs on the ground and it sounds odd, such a loud noise coming from such a small light creature.

And here is Zoey! She's probably the sweetest cat we have. She sleeps in our bed every night under the covers sidled up next to mr. socston. She does this thing when you pick her up where she goes all floppy and just lays there limp and purring in your arms, it's funny. Her coat is very soft and she's the only cat with white fur to shed. She and baby bear are the light colored half of our cat team. The other two are dark colors so lucky for us no matter what color fabric or laundry is lying about it will soon be covered in the cat fur with the most contrast.
There's not a lot to say about Zoey actually, she's the pleasing and quiet sort. Very girly, she always runs to her brother (we call baby bear her brother but they aren't actually littermates) when she needs help with dogs or Shadow, our grumpy cat. She usually hangs out in our bedroom or the the cat food room.

Next time I'll introduce the last two cats and catch up on some of the house updates. The living room is now all dry walled and about to be painted. Yay!

meet the dogs

2009-02-06T16:26:00.008-05:00

Scouty is my baby girl. She turned five in November and we've had her since she was about 9 weeks old. She was a christmas present from my mom for the boy and he almost had a heart attack when he first met her.
She is sweet and girly but she has a deep scary voice and people who knock on the door are expecting to see a ferocious dog and are often surprised to be licked mercilessly upon entering our home.
She is very mouthy in that way that golden retrievers can be. She likes to put one's hand or wrist in her mouth, and while she doesn't actually bite down she is usually bouncing and squealing in joy when she is holding on gently so her teeth do tend to bang up and down.
I met a golden on the street with his woman and while talking to them the woman taught me a neat trick. When I asked if I might pet him she told me yes but to wait a second, she then pulled out a clean washcloth from a pocket and put it in his mouth. When I loved on him he made squeaky noises and bounced just like scout does but he held his cloth in his mouth and never even tried to grab my hand. It was like magic. We've been trying this trick with scout a bit and it really does work.
As I type now she is sitting under the desk at my feet, on one of my feet in fact. She follows me around the house and if she isn't following me it usually means she is asleep somewhere warm with her kitty friend bast. She has a spot on the bed next to me with her own pillow that she sleeps on at night, but I'm not allowed to move at all or she fusses at me and gets up and won't come back until later when I'm asleep.

And this is Fenris corgi. He is actually our guard dog, beware intruders! Fenris will mess you up from the knees down! We've had him since last christmas and he will be two years old this summer.
He has very strong herding instincts and the cats really get annoyed after being run up and down the hall all day. Also he makes interesting noises, less like a dog and more like...some other sort of animal? His main noise is a short sort of grunt that sounds like "mergh!" It's hard to make up spellings for noises that only exist in the throats of corgis but trust me, that's really close. He is a destructive monster and if there ever was a dog that would eat one's homework it is fenris. We've been supplying him with a nice supply of chew toys but when he finishes them off there's no telling what he'll find. He seems to prefer hard plastic and small metal bits. When I wake up in the mornings, he and scouty are sleeping in bed with me and I have reached over to fumble for the alarm clock and found the most interesting half chewed things on the pillow next to me.
Speaking of sleeping, he's sort of like a parrot. If he gets agitated we can tuck him under a blanket or towel and he immediately lays still and falls asleep. It's odd. He also burrows down in the covers between the two of us at night.
Fenris is mr. socston's baby and he follows him around the house like scouty follows me.

So those are the dogs, I'll do a couple of the cats next time.

Cheers!
socston

chaos and drama

2009-01-30T09:52:00.002-05:00

We've had animal problems. First of all, Baby Bear our sweet fuzzy boy cat got very sick. He had a urinary blockage and almost died. He was acting a little off one morning, but still eating and drinking fine so I didn't really worry. I went to work and took the boy with me and when Mr. socston got home from work that evening baby bear was almost dead. He rushed him to the after hours emergency animal clinic. The clinic is in the town I work in so I ran over to meet them. My poor kitty looked awful and they were talking how he probably wouldn't make it. He spent 5 days at the vets and he came home fine. He is a strong good kitty and we are all so happy he is still with us.
This wednesday it was snowing and I had a snow day from work. I was snuggling on the couch with scouty our golden retriever when she started acting funny. She jumped off the couch and her back legs weren't working right. She ended up having an accident and throwing up. I was freaking out. Mr. Socston was at the vet with baby bear for a last check up and I called him. They said to come in and I got her in the car and we left. By the time we were leaving the house she was fine but I was terrified. Our vet said she probably had a seizure. We have another cat that has seizures and they looked nothing like scout's. This was the first time for scout and I hope it's the last. I don't think I could handle that again. She scared me to death.

So that's our scary animal updates. We've got performances this weekend at work and then I'm off for a couple of weeks. I'm tired at this point, can't wait for the last show on sunday! Sales have been very slow this season but this has been the slowest seller of all. I'm lucky if I get half a house in there. Hopefully the next play will be busier.

We've been coming along with walls and things. The living room wall is almost done. We've put up all the drywall now and are covering the seams with tape and plastery stuff. There are some pictures in the camera but I don't know how to put them in the computer. Someone will do it for me and in a week or so maybe I'll be posting some completely finished wall pictures. :)
I also think I should do a little bio of each of the animals and post a picture of them. Look for that in the future!

I'm off for work!
socston

The depths of winter!

2009-01-15T10:05:00.008-05:00

You're supposed to read that to yourself in a very deep dramatic voice, the way Mr. socston just said it to me.

Hello!
I hope everyone is having a nice new year so far. We are doing well. We moved the christmas tree out of the house, it's nice to have some more space and the woodland creatures are enjoying it outdoors. We stuck it straight up in the snow at the edge of the woods and looks like a real tree out there.
The pond has frozen over completely and we made an ice skating rink out of it. Mr. socston and the boy shoveled off all the snow and then sprayed down the top of the ice with a layer of water from the hose to make the surface smooth. We can't wait to get out there and try it out with real skates. We all went out there last night in the dark with flashlights and were sliding around on it in our regular shoes.

I think it's super cool that we have our own skating area. :)

It's been busy around here as far as working on the house also. We got the middle room all cleared of boxes and ripped out the carpet and drywall to expose the studs on the walls. Next is rough in on the plumbing for the new shower stall, moving the electric outlets for the new wall spacing and figuring out exactly where we want to move the wall. We've got to figure out just how big we want the bathroom to be when it is done.
the room before~
And After -

Goodbye for now and stay warm......

on the third day of christmas...

2008-12-27T12:59:00.004-05:00

Mr. Socston is cleaning up. I'm updating the blog and then I've got to do some rearranging in the kitchen cabinets. I'm still not entirely happy with how things are after we took up cabinet space for the dishwasher. The boy is helping us move things into the basement and I can't wait to knock out a wall in the coming weeks.
We had a lovely holiday, we all loved our gifts and we had a wonderful christmas eve and day. Our favorites~I got some snowshoes and I am really excited about exploring the trails around our house. Mr. socston got a cap with lights in the brim that he loves. The boy got a computer of his own, some fleece sheets and a flannel comforter cover, and an HD TV. That's an interesting story. My mom ordered a guitar from a big box store and we got a television. The receipt in the box was for a guitar, the product in the box was a tv. He was so excited and we realized that to take it away would be pretty mean so we just left it as is.
The good thing about it is this tv can be wall mounted and if we replace the bulky tv he got years ago that requires a stand we can free up floor space in his room for a dresser.
Of course now we have a third tv. We're going to stick it on a shelf in the basement for now. I'm aiming for a little rec room kind of area down there eventually so I guess we'll have a use for a third tv in a year or so.

The animals all got presents also. Sweaters, coats and toys for the dogs, treats for the kitties, the bunny got some treats and toys.

The snow outside is so pretty still, I love this yard in the winter. There is a tree right in the backyard that I can see from the desk. We have bird feeders on it and I can sit here and watch the birds all eat and play. We've got a few bluejays out there now and their colors look so nice contrasted against the white covered ground.

It's time for me to go help with the housework! good bye,
socston

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-23T22:30:00.004-05:00

Hello everyone!
We went to Freeport today and finished the last little bit of our christmas shopping. It's been really bugging me, I'm normally one of those people that have everything ready by october.
We were worried it would be crazy crowded but it seemed only slightly more busy than a weekend.
The big highlights were going to the british store and buying some branston pickle and over at LL Bean they were giving away free christmas wreaths.
I am now appropriately in the christmas mood, I'm finishing up candy tonight (that I should have made last week but was to sick to deal with) and tomorrow we will drop off presents at father in law's house. Yay for christmas eve day!

We got a little over a foot of snow the other day. We were in New Hampshire when it started. One of Mr. Socston's presents to me was a sleigh ride at a pretty little resort that has draft horses and beautiful sleighs. It was very fun, I really loved it! There were a few inches already on the ground by the time we got home that night, and it just kept falling.

We have two cute green doors in the house now, here's the front door~
that's small but you get the idea, it's a green door, eh? The back door looks similar but has windows in it. Replacing those doors has made a big difference. First of all I think it looks a little less like a crack house from the outside now, and they fit much better and there's no cold drafts coming through. Much nicer. :)

The next big thing to start is the bathroom preparations. We're going to clean out the middle room, which now has boxes of thing we haven't unpacked yet, we're just going to store them in the basement for awhile. After it's all clear we'll knock out one of the walls, start building another wall farther over and figuring out where we want things like the shower stall and bathtub. The bathtub is going to be a battle y'all. The last place we lived had a wonderful jacuzzi bathtub that was huge and I fell in love with that baby. I'm all about a bath anyway and now I must be kept in the manner to which I have become accustomed. No more little shallow bathtubs that my 5' 9" body barely fits in. Let me tell you, Mr Socston is regretting I ever met that bathtub right about now.

Happy holidays!
socston

one month later...

2008-12-07T15:29:00.005-05:00

Sorry for missing november, it's been busy around here and I've been lazy.
We are now burning fires in our toasty little woodstove and washing dishes in the dishwasher!
For Thanksgiving we went to Massachusetts to visit Mr. Socston's grandparents and have dinner with family. My friend Sarah was visiting and went with us, and while she was here she helped me paint the new front door that we will be putting in sometime this week.

Pictures of the fully completed stove~

Mr. Scoston made the hearth from concrete board and tiled over them. The one on the floor just sits there because it needs to move later when we pull out the radiator that's along that wall. He cut the hole in the roof and installed the chimney and hooked the stove up to it all by himself. I helped a teensy bit with the tile pieces, mostly moving them around, he worked on sawhorses in the kitchen and then we carried them into the living room when they were dry.

He did the wiring, plumbing and installed the dishwasher by himself also. He cut apart the cabinets and put them back together to make space, I'm missing some storage space but I'll live. It's so nice having it done! We bought it in june when we moved in and it's been sitting in the box in the kitchen all this time taking up space. I'm just as happy to have it cleaning the dishes as I am to have that big box out of there. Now there's room for a small table and I'm on the lookout for one I like.
here's the washer~

Today he is doing a computer network through the house. It wasn't something we planned to do now but I realized there's nowhere to put the christmas tree except where the desk is now. We are going to move the computer back into my sewing room and put the tree in this corner. We would have already gotten one if we had anywhere to put it. I'm kind of bummed it's not up yet.

It's the time of year for christmas parties and lots going on, we have a play next weekend at work and then I'm off for two weeks and will have time to get some baking done. I want to make some stollen this year, I like to make some different baking project each year at christmas and I've thought about these before but haven't gotten to making them yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stollen

Next post I'll show y'all our pretty green door!

Cheers!
Socston

Short post and snow

2008-10-29T21:37:00.003-04:00

Lots of working going on. Mr socston is busy at work, I'm busy at work. The boy is now a homeschooler! It's is kind of weird pulling a ninth grader out of school to homeschool for the first time ever but it is the best thing for him and he's enjoying it so far.

It's snowing here today! Ok, it's not sticking but it sure is neat to see the snowflakes flying around in October.

Happy (almost) Halloween!
Socston

woodstove is here

2008-10-15T20:50:00.003-04:00

Father in law brought it over this weekend. It was just refinished and looks so clean and pretty. We can't wait to install it and make a fire and get it all sooty and dirty!

The leaves are mostly changed and are falling all over the yard, very pretty and it smells like autumn. The woods are opening up enough to see through them, and now we can go in and clean up the underbrush a little better. When we first looked at this house it was march and april, at that time we saw where someone had dumped some large yard waste and refuse items in the trees, by the time we moved in it had grown up and we couldn't find the stuff to take it out. Today mr. socston was poking around and found and removed some metal roofing and a rusted out bucket. Saturday we are both off work and that's our day to get in there and really do some work.

Mr socston is canning grape jelly as I type. We got about 5 pounds of concord grapes off the wild growing vines and he's got 7 half pints of jelly going in the canner now. The boy will be happy, the grape jelly we made last year combines with peanut butter to be his lunch most days. We were almost out of last year's jelly so we're getting replenished just in time!

more later!
socston :)

It's october!

2008-10-04T15:03:00.008-04:00

October is my very favorite month, I love it. This year it will be a busy month. I start back to work on monday, and because of the show schedule I'll be working almost nonstop until mid-november. Our house goals this month are getting the wood stove installed, putting up drywall in the living room and possibly get the dishwasher installed.

We already tore out the part of the living room wall. The wood stove is going to go in the corner and mr. socston is going to build a tiled sort of mantle. I'm sure there's a real name for it, and I'm sure he knows the real name for it, but he's at work and all you've got is me and I'm calling it heat protecter mantle thingy. I had debated about whether or not to leave the whole wall and just build the mantle thingy into it, but after going back and forth over the summer, one day liking the wall, one day thinking it looked like a 70s rec room, I decided the other day I didn't like it again and mr. socston tore it out before I could change my mind again.
here's what it looked like before~
this is one side, where it ends there to the right there is a double door sized archway and the wood continues along for about 3 more feet to the corner and it stops. The other three walls in the room are normal wall material. ( I really should probably wait until he is home to try to write about the construction stuff. I know what's going on but I don't know proper terms, sorry!)
Anyway, he carefully took out each board, they fit together with tongue and groove (ha! I know a name for something!) and he wants to refinish them and use them somewhere else in the house at some point.
here's the wall taken apart~

Progress! It's coming along, slowly but surely!

Oh! here's a picture of the former woodpile all stacked up. I DID end up stacking one row of it. He got trapped into doing a day of overtime and couldn't finish when he wanted so I told him I would stack the rest of it if he PROMISED not to complain or take any of it off and rearrange. He voice shook a little over the phone but he did agree and I happily stacked. :)

happy fall equinox

2008-09-22T18:14:00.005-04:00

The air is getting cooler, the sun is starting to go down earlier (thank goodness) and the trees are turning here in maine. Pretty colors starting up the ridge from us~

On Saturday we went to the common ground fair http://www.mofga.org/Home/tabid/74/Default.aspx
There mr. socston looked around at the energy and building stuff and kidster and I hung out around the animals. We saw the border collie demo, which has become one of our favorite things to see at fairs. We see them at the fiber frolic and the common ground fair and love to see the dogs work the sheep.
We love the way the dogs slink down on the ground and peer through the grass at the sheep! So cute!
We also saw a lot of bunnies and poultry, and met up with some friends to watch a demo and hear a talk about milk goats. Afterwards we all wandered around together to see the vendors, this was one interesting sheep we saw all made of metal~

Yesterday we went to an orchard to pick apples, it was an overcast but dry day, cool and pleasant. From the orchard we could see mount washington over the apple trees, it was lovely. Exactly what I thought living in new england would be like before I moved here!
Last night I put a batch of crock pot apple butter on to cook while we slept, woke up this morning and started a new batch, and started canning. Mr. socston is out pulling up the garden now. Many of the winter squash we had coming did not get large enough before our frosts came. Putting in the garden so late was a problem. We got a few mature ones but not as many as we could have if we had had a couple more weeks of growth out there. In general though we did much better than we thought we would in this sad sandy soil. A decent amount of tomatoes from four plants, lots of squash, zucchini, and cucumbers, only two watermelons but the carrots did well and the sadly the cabbages that I fought for were completely destroyed by bugs. We only had two small pumpkins survive, the others kept falling off the vine and rotting once they got about fist sized, that was a bummer. The very young apple trees produced a small basket of apples, that was neat. I haven't had apples from my own trees since I was little.
We bought two pecan trees at the year end tree sale at the farm store nearby. Depending on who we ask they may or may not make it up here, so rather than put them in the ground still so young we planted them in large planters and are going to bring them in this winter. I though perhaps giving them a few more months before subjecting them to winter might be a good idea. One thing I really miss is pecan trees, growing up with two trees in my backyard spoiled me. It causes me emotional damage to pay for them at the store and yet like any good southern girl I NEED pecans in my diet. I better stop writing about them, I'm making myself want pecan pie.

good night!

Tired!

2008-09-14T18:12:00.003-04:00

Hello! I've had a busy weekend completely unrelated to house work. I volunteer with an animal rescue group. We shelter animals in disaster situations and I spent the weekend doing some fun little classes. Pet first aid, and wilderness first aid. I carpooled with some other folks in my group and we were gone twelve hours Saturday, and today about eight hours. It was interesting but I'm worn out.

It's getting to be fall up here, drizzly and cold today and a perfect night for a cup of cocoa and some knitting on the couch. We're out of milk so I'm going to make tea instead. I'm baking some zucchini bread and mr socston is bustling about. He put my super fancy saw horse sewing table together awhile back but it was too tall. The legs are getting cut down as I type. Don't knock my sawhorse table by the way, I had one when we lived in florida and it was awesome, huge area, strong enough to stand on to reach shelves above and I never felt guilty if I slipped with the rotary cutter and gouged the top.
We are installing the wood stove sometime in October and we've been getting fire wood together. Mr. Socston, kidster, and father in law cut and split several cords of wood at his house . I wasn't involved in that part but earlier in the week I was involved in moving three pick up truck loads of wood from there to here. The next day my arms were very sore.
here is a picture of the woodpile with a corgi for scale.
It looks very small but trust me, it felt like a LOT when we were loading them all. It's two cords and we're going to stack it this week. This is kind of funny, I can't help stack the wood. Oh I certainly am ABLE to stack it and am more than willing but mr socston has some sort of jenga puzzle method of wood stacking and I'm simply don't stack well enough for his standards. I've tried in years past and all he does is undo everything I stack and redo it himself. So I don't stack anymore.

I'm off to have some tea! good night! :)

Camping trip

2008-08-20T19:43:00.005-04:00

We've been busy! One third of the rewiring is done, we set up a sump pump in the basement because all the rain filled up our well, finished painting kidster's room, and installed new overhead lights in four rooms.

Monday and Tuesday Mr.socston and the boy went camping at Cobscook Bay State Park on the coast of Maine just before Canada. They had a great time! They saw seals, lighthouses, huge cliffs, the Bay of Fundy, blueberry fields, and all manner of exciting things! I was at home. I saw some rain, one day there was a bird in the yard being all loud one morning. I made some cookies. I basically was bored out of my mind left home to take of the animals and garden while they went world traveling. They did very graciously call me a couple of times a day to RUB IN what a fantastic time they were having.

picture of quoddy head lighthouse in lubec, maine

view of the bay of fundy

Last night was a bit chilly, it got down to about 45 degrees. Our priority at this point is getting the heating system going and adding some insulation. I love the cold or I wouldn't have moved to Maine but I do like the indoors to be at least a little warmer than the inside of my refrigerator.

another summer in ten picture! Morning Glory!~

garden stuff and a summer sunrise

2008-07-24T13:19:00.005-04:00

Our garden is doing a bit better than I first thought it would. I'm not thrilled with the way the zucchini are growing but everything else is doing ok. We picked our first vegetables the other day, some squash...

we also found that we have grapes growing wild near one of the streams. It looks like kudzu taking over the trees. We're going to pick the ones we can reach when they are ready and see about building a trellis of some sort next year for them to grow on and cutting them off the poor trees. They grow up much higher than I could show in this picture.

we've also been picking blackberries and raspberries. There are only a couple raspberry canes, just enough for the birds and us to taste one or two as we pass on the way to the far garden. The blackberries are right in the back of the house by the woods and there are enough to pick to add to pancakes or just eat as a snack.

and one final picture. The third summer picture, sunrise one morning a couple of weeks ago.

Second summer in ten and we've been slackers.

2008-07-09T10:47:00.008-04:00

So kidster is back from a week at camp and we had such high hopes for getting his room painted while he was gone but alas we didn't. Mr socston has been having to work some overtime lately and I was so busy doing yardwork I got nothing extra done inside.
Yesterday though we did some unpacking and canning. We picked strawberries in the afternoon, and I had some rhubarb in the freezer so I made a strawberry rhubarb sauce. I got the recipe from one of the vendors at the farmers market. The recipe made a little over 4 pints. I canned 5 half pints and put the rest in a larger jar straight into the refrigerator to use up. This will be great over ice cream or on pancakes with maple syrup. Though I am getting rather sick of cooking the strawberry rhubarb combo.
Canning is certainly one of the things that signify summer so I think it is perfect for the blog challenge~
As you can see we have some strawberries left over. Kidster and I are going to pick more today and I will make jam with some and freeze the rest.

Last week I started some seeds for late summer planting. I planted a few more winter squash and a bunch of cabbages. They've started coming up nicely. The big leaves are the squash, the smaller leaves are cabbage plants.~

In the garden the zucchini and the yellow squash have started to flower. I wish we had planted more, we only did three of each plant, but we'll have to be happy with what we get. I will take some pictures later in the week and show how much it's grown.

summer in ten

2008-06-23T20:38:00.015-04:00

Summer in ten is a blog challenge I read about where you take ten pictures of things that mean summer to you. I heard about it here...
http://thecherubscloset.typepad.com/weblog/2008/06/summer-in-ten-1-of-10.html
(check out her sewing while you're there, if I had a little kid I would be paying her mortgage each month)

We are going to spread it over the whole summer but now is the perfect time for the first entry because this week was the first week of our CSA (community supported agriculture). Last year our local CSA was run by one farm but this year it is a co-op of farms and is amazing. Our first delivery was friday. Here's what we got~

a pound of rhubarb, some dill, a quart of strawberries, dozen eggs, pint of maple syrup, loaf of bread, head of lettuce, mixed lettuce greens, and swiss chard.

What is the first recipe you think of from that list? If you're like me and your first thoughts are baking and dessert you come up strawberry rhubarb pie. I made this today~
it's really good :)

When I last wrote we were working on the bedroom painting. The walls are finished now and we've been stalling on the trim. Mr. socston started ripping out the carpet today. We're going to live with subfloor and a rug for a few months. The carpet needs to be out of there and we're not ready to redo floors yet. Zoey kitty was helping him with the carpet un-installation~
You can see his temporary outlet for the air conditioner. This circuit will put properly in the wall in a couple of weeks.
Here is a view of the purple walls~
the camera is having a hard time in this room. It's hard to focus, I had to get the floor in to even get it to focus at all and the purple looks grey. It really did turn out to be a pretty purple and looks nice in person. In addition to the blue painting tape you can see baseboard radiators down there. Those are in every room of the house along at least a couple of walls. They will be coming out in the late summer because we will be heating with radiant heat and a woodstove. We will no longer be heating with oil, we'll have a condensing propane boiler that will work the radiant heat and our hot water.
Goodbye for now!

kitchen pictures

2008-06-18T10:26:00.005-04:00

I've gotten a lot of requests for pictures of the house. I'm going to be honest, it's awful and I'm doling select pictures out slowly as we fix things up. So here are some kitchen pictures to get you started. Here is a snippet of the painting we have done. The wallpaper we ripped out...
and here it is ripped out and painted. It's a very light blue, it's pretty I like it.

the countertops are atrocious but they will have to wait. :)

we started painting our bedroom, it should be finished tonight. It's going from bright yellow to purple.

We discovered that the kitchen sink had a bit of a leak yesterday so after a run to the hardware store mr. socston replaced the pipe last night and now it's drip free.
I start back working this week but during the summer I only work three nights a week. I'll still have plenty of time for housework, lucky me!

happy friday the thirteenth!

2008-06-13T21:42:00.002-04:00

we've started our decorating inside. We began with painting the kitchen. It had cream colored paint that needed to be redone and some wallpaper that looked like grey bricks under the cabinets. Normally I love a yellow kitchen but the color of the wooden cabinets is nice and I thought perhaps a light blue would play off them better than yellow. It's mostly done now and looks very nice. We started together yesterday and I did most of the rest today. When mr socston gets home from work tomorrow he can finish, I left some of the high up bits for him. We're the same height but I'm pretty sure he has longer arms.
Outside the garden is coming along pretty good. The plants we put in as seedlings are plugging right along and with seeds we've put in half a row of beets and half a row of buttercup squash (I think, it's some sort of winter squash). I watered today and noticed a couple of plants coming up, hopefully things we put there and not fresh weeds. The place we moved from had such a nice garden spot I got spoiled, no rocks and we tweaked it for a couple of summers with compost and minerals, anything would grow in it. I'm getting myself mentally prepared for a little less output from the garden than I'm accustomed to. No worries though, we will get it going nicely in a couple of seasons!

Starting to look better

2008-06-08T21:00:00.009-04:00

pictures! this is walking into the woods from near the little pond. Standing here the pond was behind me on the left.

here is the pond. Please excuse it's looks, it is actually a clean little thing because it's spring fed but there was grass and weeds up to my waist all across the yard and to the edge of it and when I cut them down the bits fell into the water. See at the top of the water the little bridge? There is a winter trail for snowmobiles and skiers and that's the bridge to get across the stream.

Garden number one. This is the one we are doing a cover crop on this year. The people we bought the place from live two houses down and they came over to say hi yesterday. They told us there used to be a house sitting right about where we were digging here. It was demolished about 20 some years ago. This is where we found the bottle from yesterday.
next garden. Can you even see it? near the top left of the picture there you can see a slight brown bit beside the small white thing (which is a bucket of compost) I'm standing just past the driveway to take this picture and I'm looking to the left.
and I turn to the right and see the back yard. The little stone bit you see to the right is a square that goes to the corner of the house, it's a natural little terrace sort of. Then behind the boulders there if you look closely you see that there is a stone wall under the trees. That goes back through the woods and turns. It's our property line on two sides.

Today we spent most of the day cleaning rocks out of garden number two. We got the seedlings in the ground and finished out rows with seeds. I will take some pictures of it once they start coming up. Right now we are all tired, sore and shocked by the amount of rocks in the ground. Pine Tree State? I think not. Giant rocks in the ground state is more like it.

it was outdoor work day

2008-06-07T21:49:00.003-04:00

We bought a lawnmower today. A push mower. Good thing we have a little worker boy to push it around for us. :)

I cut the side yard and parts of the front, I used the weedeater along the edge of the woods and the little pond. Mr. socston borrowed his dad's tiller to get the gardens started. There are going to be two gardens, this year we will plant veggies in one and a cover crop of oats and red clover in the other one to feed the soil and get it ready for gardening next year. He found a lot of rocks and an old glass bottle completely under ground that wasn't broken at all. I'm a dork and was totally impressed with the bottle. It's from a local bottler and looks kind of old.

We got one garden spot all tilled and just need to work on getting all the roots and rocks out (I'm sure that picking rocks out of the ground is going to be our new hobby). Tomorrow we will dig up the next one, AFTER we go to the maine fiber frolic in the morning. yay!

Slightly bad news, there's a problem with one of the paint colors I ordered the other day. I had gone into the store and gotten some sample chips, liked them, went back to order them. I forgot them that day and couldn't remember exactly what one of the colors was. I thought I picked the same one back out and we ordered it. Have you ever messed around with paint before? The colors look different in various lighting and rooms. We ordered it and brought the new chip home. It is supposed to be a light purple and it looked light purple in the shop but it looks dingy grey in our room. Bummer. I called the lady at the shop (who we know so she knows how ditzy I am) and I'm going to go in monday and see if we can play with ALREADY mixed paint to get it to a pinker purple.

more later!

we're in

2008-06-04T21:28:00.000-04:00

it is wednesday night and we finally got the computer hooked back up.

We closed friday evening and moved in that night. :)
Now coming in over here we knew we needed a well pump, the first night we were here mr. socston went straight into the basement and started working on it, he fiddled a bit, got it sort of working that night, needed another part and finished it up nicely on saturday. The pressure is better thank goodness. I have thick shoulder length hair and the first night when I tried to wash it I was crying in the shower because I couldn't get the shampoo out. I had a mini breakdown right there covered in suds at 1am and mr socston (that thoughtful loving man) kindly suggested I cut my hair.

His other projects so far have involved electricity. He installed a new dryer outlet, rewired the outlet to the chest freezer and next will be rewiring all the outlets to make them grounded circuits.
I've been unpacking and generally being overwhelmed by crumpled newspaper and empty box clutter. Tomorrow while they are at work and school I am going to start some painting. We're starting with some kilz and the paint we ordered will come in next week.
We bought a weedeater because our old one has been broken for awhile. I went out and knocked down some overgrown mess and planted some flowers. We wanted to get the garden in this past weekend. I don't know what we were thinking, we barely slept we were so busy. We are borrowing a tiller this weekend coming and will get it going then.
The boy is enjoying the little woods. He discovered fish hanging out in a little section of one of the streams and took me to see them. :)

Goodnight!

Hello!

2008-05-29T20:14:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the first entry in our new home blog!

We are myself, Socston (the wife and mother) Mr Socston ( the Mr) and kidster ( the son). We lived in central florida for several years before moving to maine a couple of years ago. Mr Socston is originally from here so it was a move back home for him, kidster and I are originally from N.C.
We have a golden retriever who is way more pretty than your dog, a corgi who is probably sillier than your dog, four cats who are certainly just as catlike as any you have ever loved and a sweet little bunny. In the next few weeks we are going to add in a smattering of chickens!

We have had a rental for a couple of years, we weren't quite sure when we got here where we really wanted to live. We ended up loving this little area that happenstance threw at us and now are buying a home not far down the road. It is a small ugly little house with what we consider a perfect yard. Three acres in a slightly rural area, half wooded, two streams that meet in the middle in a tiny little pond. Plenty of open space for gardening which this blog will focus on a lot.
We will be writing mostly about our renovations to the house, the gardening, and maybe a little about some alternate energy sources we are looking into.

At this moment we are all packed! The closing on the house is tomorrow afternoon. We will be moving our things over most of friday night.
Today while kidster was at school, Mr Socston and I went to a local farm store and bought some seedlings for the garden! Normally we prefer to start most of the garden from seeds but we are getting a bit of a late start because of this move and with a short growing season we need all the help we can get. We bought tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, cucumbers, several types of squash, and a couple of herbs. We will go ahead and grow carrots from seeds. I am gunning for cabbages also but Mr Socston was exercising his authority today and we didn't get them. He likes to arbitrarily say "no" to silly things from time to time, I just wait a week or two and do whatever I want anyway. It's a system that works well for us :)

The next few days will be busy but I will hopefully put up some pictures of the yard and garden spots on my next posts!

more later,
Socston