Go East Young Men

 

just outside of Chama NM

There have been several times over the past few days that I wanted to post, but simply did not have the time. This week has been full of excitement, hard work and sadness. It was a week of good byes and soon to be "nice to meet ya's"

Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Kent's Beautiful Home

My view for twelve hours yesterday

we are currently motoring across Kansas, what a very flat and windy place! Yesterday we drove for twelve hour with eight children, four dogs, two cats, two roosters two grown ups, one motor home and  one van. Last night we had the privilege of staying with Dane's Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Kent, in Alexander, Kansas. What A warm welcome we received they have a beautiful old farmhouse, the dogs and children were able to run in there spacious yard! We were treted to a home cooked hot meal and ice cream and cake for dessert. Everyone was very happy!

Lunch Break

It is currently 7:45 a.m. Kansas time, we anticipate arriving at our farm aroud 2:00. Last night felt like Christmas Eve when I was a child, I could hardly sleep. Today is the day, I can't wait to see my childrens faces, when we give them this gift of a lifetime Our Farm. Updates to follow.

Taking a Break

Saturday was ZOO DAY!  We took a break from moving and cleaning and took off for the Zoo and Botanical Gardens!  We try and take the family every year, we thought the Saturday between the moving truck coming and us actually leaving seemed the right time to go!!  All week Rohan has been very excited, he LOVES the zoo!  He spent his week asking everyone what their favorite animal is, and what their top ten favorites are.  We also took our neighbor boy Avery.  My boys and Avery play all weekend and we will all miss him when we move! We also took my Mom with us the children really enjoyed having her along.  Here are a few pictures of our Zoo trip.  Enjoy!!

Eeek big scary snake!

Elsah like to take "pictures" too

The boys!

Kegan and Octavian hanging out!

Rohan and Elsah, "Zoo Buddies"

The whole crew!



This isn't even half the pictures Ileigh took, she is such a wonderful photographer and really enjoys taking pictures.  She has started a new blog to showcase her photos, you can find her here.  Why not stop by and comment, or follow, it would make her day!!!

Just 4 more days and we take off for Missouri, we hope to keep you updated while on the move!!

We Did It!!!

Dane's thinking, "Will it all fit?"

It's hard work watching the men load up the truck!

The truck came on Tuesday morning!  Dane, Kegan, Quinlan and my Dad spent the next several hours stacking, cramming, balancing, re-stacking, and finally shutting the door on all our earthly possessions!  Whew!!  What a day!
 There was a time in the afternoon where it looked like all of it wouldn't fit, but my men have a knack for packing and eventually got it all in there!  They picked the trailer up this evening and we will meet it next week in Missouri!  It was kind of surreal watching our things drive away.  It was good too though, to realize it's just stuff, it can all be replaced, what's important is the people in our lives.

Hmm how do we get the divider in?

YEAH!! We did it!

I would like to take a moment and thank my parents for all their help and time.  I know the last thing in the world they want is for their daughter, son-in-law and their only grandchildren to move 1200 miles away.  They have been gracious and giving, and we really appreciate it.
Thank you Mom and Dad, for everything!

Macaroni Football

It's late, we're tired and we want to go to bed, but there is still a bit of packing to do.  How is it we have so much stuff?  Crazy......we got rid of SO much too!  Truck comes tomorrow at 8am, then we load it Tuesday and Wednesday then Thursday morning they come back and pick it up and off they drive to MO!! Then we will spend the next 8 days painting and cleaning and seeing friends and family, then Friday the 29th we will take off!! Have I said all this before? I can't remember, my brain has turned to mush!
I wanted to let you know that this weekend while watching my stuff walk away for pennies, I was struck with the worst feeling of, well dismay, that was my blender and my waffle maker and my toaster, and how was I supposed to cook on a wood stove and hey, what the heck were we thinking?  I guess you could call it cold feet, the feeling passed, but I will admit I was surprised by it, after all this non-electric life was my idea!  Now I am back to being excited, but as the days whiz past there is a bit of apprehension.  We are leaving behind life as we know it, and starting up a new one, all of us.  I must be tired because it feels a lot harder than it probably will be!
Ok, why did I title this post "Macaroni Football"?  We all took a break this afternoon in the midst of packing.  Quinlan found a 5 lb. bag of dry macaroni, he and Ileigh began tossing and hiking it back and forth, normally this is not the kind of behavior I allow but I was spent and something about them tossing pasta and the impending doom of a huge mess, made me giggle hysterically.  I laughed really hard, tears were rolling!  They kept doing little touchdown dances and the like, ah life is fun!
Kegan is still working on a You Tube posting, we hope to get some video of us packing the moving truck!
Have a great day, and keep laughing!
PS (can you have a PS on a blog?)  Our Yard sale was very successful, thank you for all your kind comments.

Yard Sale Ugghh!!

Here I sit on a sunny Saturday morning.  Yard sales are NOT my thing.  I do not enjoy "bargaining" Something about fussing over .50 just doesn't appeal to me.  I hate confrontation, a yard sale feels like one confrontation after another!  But yesterday despite being cold and very windy, we did pretty good.  Just a few stragglers today, but a dollar is a dollar and so we will stay out here in hopes of selling more junk, valuable items!
The freight truck that will move our belongings to Missouri will be here on Tuesday, we have 2 days to load it, then it leaves Thursday.  We leave the following Friday and get to the farm on Saturday, April 30!!!
We are running out of days, eekkk, so much to do, it is nice to get this yard sale done, then we pack and clean then paint and we're off!!
We're working on setting up a You Tube channel, we hopefully can post some video of our cross country trip as well as some Farm "first impressions"!  I wanted to let you know the count of our pageviews is higher than it has ever been!!!  It's so nice to know folks are reading our blog!  Thank you!!  Why not comment and let us know if you are new readers, or better yet "follow" us!
I hope your Saturday is going well and you have a restful weekend!

I Hear You Don't Have a Date to Prom

Update: post now includes really old photo of said teenagers ;)

Twenty-one years ago today I met the man of my dreams, although I didn't know it then!!
My family had just moved to this area in January 1990, I went to public school for the first time, what a shocking experience that was!

It was April and the Senior Prom was rolling around, now I wasn't then, nor am I now, into that sort of thing, but I had very few friends and was hoping at least to be asked.  Danes mother was a teacher at the high school and had seen me, and told Dane I looked like a nice girl and he should ask me to prom.  My mother had been praying that God would bring someone nice for me to go to prom with.

The morning of April 14th, my mom ran out to my car and told me she felt today was the day, I thought, ok, sure mom whatever, and drove to school!

The morning of April 14th Danes mom told him, ask that nice blond girl to prom today.

SO between 5th and 6th periods Dane came up to me and said, "I hear you don't have a date to prom, would you like to go with me?"

I said sure I'll go with you, (which by the way is totally not like me I usually take weeks to make a decision like that!!  I got home that afternoon and mom was waiting by the door, I told her, yes, someone asked me to prom, but I didn't get his name!!!  I just remember he was very tall 6'3", and huge, as in muscular.  And of course very handsome.

It is amazing how God can bring people together, as Dane and I have talked about our childhoods, they were so different, and as we've grown so close over the years, we are still in awe of what God and praying mothers can do !!

Not to get mushy or anything, but I love Dane with all my heart, he is the butter to my bread, the light of my life, my soul mate, my kindred spirit, my beloved, My Daney!

So glad our Heavenly Father saw fit to bring us together!

Today, remember the one you love and give them an extra hug!

Our Cup Runneth Over!

Well, are you ready to hear about our newest member of the Inherit the Earth Farm Team?

I was contacted last week by two Inherit the Earth Blog followers, they stated that they would like to purchase and send us a NEW laptop for blogging on the farm.  You can imagine my surprise, what a blessing!  We emailed back and forth and determined which type of computer would work best for our situation.  They were so kind and thoughtful!  Yesterday, our NEW APPLE MACBOOK arrived via Fedex!!  We have never had an Apple before, so it will take us a bit to get it all figured out!  We were really moved by these followers and their generosity, there are no words to express our thankfulness, all they asked in return was that we continue our blog and keep everyone updated on our progress in our "plain and simple" life!
Thank you again dear followers and we will keep blogging away!

Guess What?

I have a little secret, I can't let you in on the details just yet, but it promises to be grand!! 

We are so blessed, as the days rush past and realizing our dream gets closer, we feel such a peace.  We are "going with God"!

Stay tuned for our announcement!!

Food Storage Questions

Mountain Home Quilts ask about food storage without electricity, I emailed her but I thought you all might want a general idea of what we are planning for keeping things cold.  It will no doubt be an interesting adventure!  People lived for centuries without refrigeration, really we've only had the ability to keep our foodstuffs reliably cold for a few decades.

One tip that really intrigued me if you have just had stew for dinner and there are some leftovers you simply bring them back up to a rapid boil then put a firmly fitting lid on it and put it on a shelf where it will not be disturbed, it should be fine for the next few days, simply because you have "sterilized" it by boiling it and if you clamp down a lid on it, theoretically, it will still be sterile.  I am wanting to try this one out!  We have also bought an antique ice box at an auction a couple of months ago.  We put three big blocks of ice in it and measured the temp over a 4 day period.  At it's coldest it was about 48 degrees, so that's not too bad!  We can keep leftover roast or things like that for just one night.  We plan on making our own mayo and salad dressings, then use them up without holding them over.  Things like salsa and ketchup can stand a few days in the ice box or cold room.  Our house has a pantry built on the North East corner of the house, the coldest corner, it will be the coolest room in the house, we can put cheese and the like in there.  We also have a cold room downstairs in the basement, it's set up to stay between 48 and 52 degrees all year.  We also plan on setting up an ice house.  Of course July and August will be hot and miserable any where you are so we'll just have to play it by ear!  Buying an already built Amish farm is really the only way we could do this, these people really know how to live this way, we hope to learn a lot from our neighbors, and become truly self-sufficient!  If you have any tip, ideas, or questions let me know, may be we all learn together!

The Old Home Place

I had a few minutes and Danes laptop was unused at the time so I thought I would post some shots Kegan took of our home and surrounding area. 

Above you see our little homestead.  We have 2.5 acres, there is no irrigation, if you want green in New Mexico you have to have irrigation.  So there is our double wide manufactured home.  You can kind of see our little chicken coop and our motorhome.  The trees are Juniper and cedar, very short, very scrubby.

We have a lot of washes here in the Southwest, they are dry most of the time, but when it rains they can flood!  And like most desserts we have a lot of sand!  The boys like to play in the wash, but only on sunny days!  Oh, there is also LOTS of sagebrush around here!

This is one of many hills around our place, we do a lot of hiking on them, very dry here in NM!

The children have spent hours running around up here playing and filming mini movies.

WAY out in the distance you can see a couple of natural gas refineries.  Most of the industry in this area revolves around oil and gas. 

This is a shot of my parents yard just three miles south of us, this is what you get with irrigation!!!

I hope you enjoyed our little tour of our part of New Mexico!

Soon, all of our pictures will be green, green, Missouri Green!!

Have  a blessed day.

The Home Stretch

Well, here we are in the home stretch.  We are down to a few weeks, just  over 20 days!  The moving truck will be here in 14 days!  WOW!  It is pure chaos here.  I do have a laptop to call my own though.  Years ago Dane and I got a Compaq laptop, I think it was in 2005.  In 07 Ileighs' puppy, Molly chewed through the power supply, at the time it was very expensive to get a new one, so we just packed it up and used the desktop. While we were going through things to sell at the yard sale, we came across it.  Dane got a universal power cord yesterday and after hours of downloading updates, I have a "new-old" computer!!!  The cord wasn't cheap, $80, but that's a lot less than a new laptop. I am so pleased to have a computer to blog on, I really wanted to be able to preserve all of our new farm memories, now we can!!
For some reason, it won't cooperate with our cameras sd card so no pics yet.  Kegan said he will work on it tomorrow for me. 
We were supposed to have our yard sale this weekend, but the weather might not work so that might be put off for another weekend.  Time is so short, and there is so much to do.  It feels like being in labor!!  I feel like I am in transition, the part where you just want to say "Enough,I am going home, I'll have this baby later."  That's me this week, I want to say, enough let's forget about packing and cleaning an painting, but like labor you can't just quit, so I will press on.  Also like labor though, at the end you get a really sweet baby, this time we get a really great farm!  Have a wonderful day and may God bless you the whole day through.

Here's a shot that was on the computer, from our 07  trip to the BIG TEXAN
The children look so young!!