Settling In ... Well, sort of.....

soon it will be just a
regular backyard again

It has been an exhausting week so far, having started by taking apart all the fences at our backyard farm, loading all the lumber and household stuff as we could squeeze into a 16' rented moving truck; driving the 600 miles to the farm and then unloading it all.  Nick, along with Sophie as company, drove the truck, and I followed behind with a carload of chickens and ducks.

The chickens were well behaved the during the ride, but those ducks .... two of them kept bickering and pecking and jabbering at each other the entire way!   The only time they stopped the noise was while Cher's voice came through the radio singing "If I Could Turn

the little farm

Back Time".  My thought exactly.

The goat transport arrived a day early, so that allowed us extra time to take down all the fencing and

the pergola is gone

the pergola for supporting
the Kentucky Wonder vines

the pergola which was used for supporting my Kentucky Wonder

green bean vines.

The yard seemed so empty afterward.  Well, no looking back now.

Now, we are at the farm and beginning our new life journey.  The landscape is barren of farm buildings and fences and all those things you'd normally envision on farmland.  But, with persistence, hard work and a bit of good luck we will change that.

unloading

It took two days to unload that truck which carried only the barest necessities to see us through the winter.  Since there is no place to store anything, we must wait until we have the house ready before bringing furniture and those other things that turn an empty house
into a home.

For this year, however, we will be living in the motor-home. What better incentive could there be for getting the house completed as quickly as possible?

The goats have been settling into their new surroundings, and we still must keep the little buckling

Dawson

apart from them.  Penny keeps head-butting the little guy and overdoes it sometimes sending him across the yard with one push.  So, in order to protect him from her, until he gets a little bigger, he must sleep in one of the large dog kennels we placed inside their shelter.  During the daytime, their yard is big enough for him to run away from her and hide-out behind their building or in the tall grass.

lots of bugs make happy
chickens and ducks

The chickens are happy in their temporary run tucked near a corner of the house.  They are doing an excellent job of getting rid of the weeds and vines that we have been unable to eradicate.  We had hoped to have their chicken
built and ready for them, but with the threat of  Hurricane Matthew we decided to wait until the storm passes before putting up those walls.  No need to go through all that work just to possibly have the building blown away.

Only half the flock came with us, there wasn't enough space in the car for all of them, so we brought the best layers.  The remainder will join us later.

Farmer John, our neighbor from a couple of miles down the road, came by with his hired hand and cut all our hay for us.  He and Nick have worked out a barter where we get our hay cut, the goats get enough hay to last until next hay season, and Farmer John gets a few large bales of hay in exchange.

The garden area is in need of more cardboard to go beneath the mulch in order to kill off the grass that lies below.  Where there is cardboard there is no sign of grass, where there isn't any cardboard, the grass is growing up through the mulch, which is as I expected.  I have been collecting cardboard, in as large pieces as I can find and will begin spreading them this week, weather permitting.

The latest weather report has the storm heading out to sea off Cape Hatteras, but we will get about 2"3" of rain, maybe....

For the remainder of this day I am resting and trying to make space to put things away inside the motor-home which seems to have gotten somewhat smaller.   Nick will be adding a few finishing touches to the goat fence, he has found a few places where the little buck could sneak through, or a predator could enter.  It's also time to move the chickens temporary run to another area along the side of the house that needs clearing.  They will be getting a temporary home today also.  Nick is building them a small shelter from pallets,  just a safe place to sleep until the storm passes and their new house is up.

The biggest excitement this week, at least for me, was getting the Internet set-up here at the farm.
Nick needs to have internet access since he will be working from home.  So yesterday the satellite dish was installed and I am now re-connected .... hurrah!  Well, at least for so long as the generator doesn't run out of gas.