Sunday Morning Stroll

Hello everyone, it is a very mild Sunday here at the farm so I went for a little walk.

 We have had very little snow this year, the bases of the statues are barely covered.  The temperature today is hovering around 5 degrees and the forecast is for unseasonably warm temperatures over the next couple of days with lots of rain.

Duck and sheep tracks!

Could we possibly have a robin so soon?  Apparently there have been many sightings of robins already.

The little garden shed tucked into a corner.

Mosses on one of the big maples along the road.

An old roll of fencing wire that was here when we moved here 23 years ago and hasnt moved since!

There are still apples on the trees for the sheep to eat.

Our two muscovy ducks enjoying some fresh air outside.

A mom and her little one looking out the window.

~Thank you for visiting!~

Sunday Stroll

Hello everyone, I thought I would take a little stroll around the property and share some photos with you.  We have had very little snow for this time of year but it was quite cold today with a wind chill of -20 Celsius...my fingers were quite cold!

A view of our old farmhouse from the road.  The addition is the wing on the rear of the house.  We have just enough snow to cover the grass.

Everything looks rather dreary perhaps because it was overcast today.  The main floor of the addition is our new dining room.  The second floor in this photo is a guest room-I recently shared photos of this work in progress.  We still have much finishing work to do. 

Sasha's statue is barely covered in snow.

We still have some round bales of hay in one of our farm lanes that didnt quite make it to the barn.

Our chickens are enjoying their winter residence in our barn.  Sadly most of our chickens were killed when a weasel gained access to our hen house.  These hens are old girls but still provide us with about 4 fresh eggs per day.  We are not sure but think that the weasel may have in turn been killed by an owl that has taken up residence in a large maple by our barn.

A lamb in action!

We have 6 lambs in the barn at the moment.   Although I asked politely most of them were not interested in having their photos taken today.

Many of the apple trees still have apples on their branches. 

I was quite annoyed to catch several sheep one morning eating our cedars.  They stand on their hind legs with their front legs on the split cedar rail fence and nibble on the green branches.  Very irritating!!  The sheep have done quite a bit of damage to this little hedge.

We have several bird houses scattered across the farm.  This one is on a fence tucked behind a large cedar to provide shelter and protection.

I painted a pair of old skates with gold paint and hung them on our gate as a Christmas decoration.   I was quite late putting decorations up and am quite late taking them down-at least I am consistent!

This deer is a prototype made from firewood and twigs and branches that fall from our large maples.  I think it is rather cute!

Guest Room Work Begins!

Hello everyone, now that the Christmas festivities are over we are starting to do work on the interior of our home.  In 2014 we finally moved ahead with a major addition to our 1850's stone farmhouse with the contractor finishing his work last spring.  Unfortunately the work took several months longer than anticipated so we didnt have last winter to finish the interior as we had planned.  Now we are back on track, one year later!

We hired a contractor that was experienced with old stone structures.  As we are both fairly handy people we had the contractor handle all of the major construction and thought we would do the final finishing ourselves.  We are optimistically hoping to have everything done by the end of 2016 and I will be providing frequent updates.

The first project is the upstairs guest bedroom.  Our plans called for a cathedral window to mimic another cathedral window that is part of the original old house.  We were also very specific that we wanted to carry the sloped ceilings from the old house into the new construction.  Our goal was to have the addition look like it has always been here.  All of the windows were specially ordered to have the same appearance as the windows in the old house.

We made very few alterations to the original design.  One of the changes we made was to eliminate a walk-in closet from the guest room.  As the room is not very big I thought that the closet would take too much space but after looking at the room for several months I thought we should have some sort of closet after all.  So we came up with a compromise and are building a small closet so that guests will have somewhere to hang their clothes.  The interior of the closet will be lined in cedar.  A custom door will have a slanted top which I think adds character and is in keeping with the style of the room.  The little area next to the closet with have a couple of shelves and a lamp.

The opposite side of the room shows some of the detail of the sloped ceilings.  When the construction was being done some of the workers were joking about the amount of swearing going on while I was away...all of the slopes and angles made for some very challenging construction.  

This room is immediately above our new dining room on the main floor.  Both rooms incorporated the existing stone wall from the old house.  We are so happy that keeping the stonework exposed was a major part of the construction.  As in the past I have selected heritage paint colours, this is a Benjamin Moore colour called Buxton Blue.  

While having dinner at a friend's home we were admiring the transoms that she had built over the doors in her new home and thought we would like to do the same.  As the doorways had already been framed and drywalled the contractor had to undo some of his work.  The framed area above the doorway will eventually hold a stained glass window.  I am thinking that the shop that sold the Tiffany lamp I recently purchased may be able to help with this as the owner does stained glass work.

 We spent a lot of time considering flooring options.  As we live on a farm and have lots of pets we needed something that was very durable.  Although we love the look of wood flooring our experience with our existing wood floors is that they cannot stand up to 4 large dogs, 3 cats and the general dust and grit that gets tracked through a farmhouse.  We finally settled on this high quality laminate floor from Mannington.  It was easy to install although it was quite fussy to cut and notch the end boards to incorporate the changing shape of the stone wall.

Have a great week and thank you for visiting!