Construction Begins!

The wood is here now it is time to build!  Bryan got to dust off all of his toys that have been sitting in the garage.   You know what?  They still work!  We had to cut the  8 foot boards onto 4 footers for the ends of our boxes. 

The kids got to help too!  Brendan loved using the drill to screw the boards together.  He is such a boy!  Gotta love those power tools!   

Samantha gave it a go as well, but wasn't as excited about it. 

I had fun watching Bryan work up a sweat while I took pictures.  This really was more of a one person job, but we all chipped in and helped.  At the end of the day, we had some really big planter boxes all ready to be filled and Bryan had some serious bragging rights!  Am I the most blessed girl ever or what?!  



My New Favorite Place!

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to my new favorite home improvement store!  This place is amazing!  Here is how it works: When someone wants to remodel their house and it needs to be gutted, they can call a contractor who will come in, break up the cabinets, floors, roof, fence, etc and then haul the pieces to the dump.  OR, they can call Whole House Building Supply!  This little company will come in and take out all of the materials carefully and then sell them.  If, as a buyer, you are really lucky, you might see something that you are looking for come up on a demo day!  Then you can be the one to go in and carefully remove it from someone else's house and buy it for pennies on the dollar.  It is pretty awesome!  

On this shopping day, we headed straight to the warehouse.  As you can see from the picture, they had tons of wood!  We got 2x10 pieces for $0.75 a foot and 4x4 posts for $1.00 a foot!  What amazing prices!  They have tons of other stuff too.  It was fun to poke around at all of the vantage doors and hardware.  There are new things too, like a jacuzzi tub that was never installed and is now being sold as used.  Oh, I wish I had a place for THAT!  

 

Bryan and Aaron worked hard hauling down the perfect pieces of wood.  Aaron cut them all into 8 foot lengths so that they would fit in the back of the van.  He was a perfectionist, so it took longer.  We were so thankful though because the boards are all just right.  Assembly will be much easier!

Here it is, all laid out the way we want it.  I was thinking that I had room for two 20 foot beds, but I must have measured wrong.  We are getting two 16 foot beds instead!  All of our lumber is cut into 8 foot sections, so this should be easy.  The extra lumber will be used for the chicken coop.  YAY!   I'm getting excited!!!

Grapefruit and Oranges - OH MY!

Boy do we have an abundance!  These trees were here in our yard when we moved in.  The grapefruit goes crazy every year!  Unfortunately, no one in our family likes them.  I usually have a couple of friends who come over and pick a few, but really, how many grapefruit does a person really need?  Each year we watch the fruit fall and splatter on the patio, making a big mess. 


This year is going to be different!  We have decided to donate the fruit to the food bank.  YAY!  I am excited to get picking and see how many pounds we end up with!  I have given notice to my friends that they have one week.  That means that after next weekend, there will be no more mess.  WHOOT!

Now for the oranges.  These, we LOVE!  But what to do with them?  I have heard of pickling them in salt to use in cooking.  hmm...not sure I would use them.  The juice doesn't really freeze well.  I might try again, but it tends to separate and not come back together well.  I can't find much on preserving them other than canning in heavy syrup - blah.  I guess, we will just start eating oranges morning, noon and night.  Manna from heaven! :)  If anyone has any great preserving ideas, I am open.  Please share!

Blessings and Garlic

Things have been busy here.  Due to the crazy schedule of the kids and me homsechooling them, not much has happened around here to move the garden along.  I wonder sometimes, what I am thinking, putting in this garden!  What I want and reality are colliding, more than I would like.  However, I am tough and don't give up easily.  Time is like everything else, you make due with what you've got.

On that note, I wanted to plant some garlic.  Back in late December / early January, I researched it online and found that it is really quite simple.  My garden hasn't been put in yet, but I have some room in my flower bed in the back, in between plants that are already established.  One afternoon, I grabbed my son and a couple of heads of garlic from my kitchen and headed out back.  Why not?  Let's see what happens.  We used a ruler to measure out a grid.  We pulled our heads of garlic apart and planted the cloves 4" apart, just under the surface.  We watered occasionally and pretty much left it alone.  I went out the other day and low and behold - GREEN!  We have garlic growing!  I am so excited!  I only planted what I had a little space for and only what I had in my kitchen, so it isn't a lot.  It is a good start though!  SO easy!  We also planted some carrot seeds, but those haven't done anything.  I don't know if the birds got them, or if there hasn't been enough water....who knows.  I will try again later when my beds are in.

Another blessing has happened!  A few weeks ago, my son and I decided to go for a bike ride.  We were riding through our neighborhood when we saw a man out front who looked like he was taking down his picket fence.  I slammed on my breaks and struck up a conversation with him.  It turns out, he gets tons of this fencing for free!  He has enough fencing to wrap around my new garden.  He wanted to get rid of it and would be more than happy to give it to me for free!  God is good!  I got his contact info, and just today went over and picked up the fencing.  It is a bit weathered.  Some pieces may have to be replaced, but over all it is perfect! It matches up nicely to what we have in place already.  Oh, did I mention?  It even came with a gate!  I am so excited!  The dogs, of course, had to check this new stuff out.  Little do they know it is the beginning of the end to their reign in the back yard.

Bodi, the wanna-be sheep herding farm dog

This afternoon, Bryan and I are going to head up to the salvage yard to see if they have lumber that we can use for the planter boxes.  Hopefully they will be built this weekend.  Next weekend, my wonderful nephews will be coming down to haul compost for us! 

I thank God daily for his provision.  The fencing could have been a huge expense.  The garlic is growing beautifully with out the purchase of special seeds.  Things are moving all in His perfect time.  We are blessed.