Home Away From Home

This post is going to be a little different than usual...this is a special request from my Mom. Today we had an Open House at my parents' house after church, celebrating 25 years since my Dad became the Pastor of this church. Because the house looked so nice, she wanted me to take some pictures. This house is a real picture of the grace of God - an 1800s farmhouse, it was in such rough shape when we first came to NH that the church almost decided to tear it down and start over. They ended up stripping it to the studs and renovating it instead. So this is the house where I grew up from the time that I was 10 until I moved to Maine, and this is where Thane lived for his first 3 years. I still visit on almost a daily basis, as the house is very close to church and to my job. Enjoy the tour!

The living room:

The beautifully organized laundry room/pantry:

The green bottle came from the back yard - there's tons of antique stuff back there that previous owners just threw away!

The hallway:

Master bath:

Master bedroom:

My Mom's work area. In addition to keeping up with the household stuff, she writes ladies' Bible studies and finagles tons of organizational/scheduling stuff for the church, such as the bulletins, calendars and directories.

My brother's room:

Upstairs bathroom:

My younger sister's room:

My older sister's room. This was my room for a couple years before I bought my land and moved out to the homestead. We converted the unfinished second floor of the barn attached to the house into a bedroom. The first floor is Dad's woodworking shop. Dad made the epic oak door at the top of the stairs, as well as the built-in bookshelves.

The kitchen:

The TV screen below is not normally there; it was playing a slideshow of photos from the past 25 years at this church.

So there you have it...a tour of a refurbished 1800s New England parsonage! :)

I hope everyone had a great Sunday!!!

A Few More Photos

Things are going pretty well. My sister and I are grateful that God gave us safety in traveling...we left Sunday afternoon for South Carolina, and made it back late Thursday morning with a puppy and 5 rabbits in tow. It was somewhere around 2300 miles round trip. 

Hazel seems to be settling in well. She's sweet, adorable, and VERY smart. Thane is ambivalent toward her, Molly likes her but can be pretty bouncy, Enna seems to really like her and is very gentle, and...the jury is still out with Breeze, lol. I had honestly expected Breeze to practically adopt Hazel, but so far she seems rather jealous. For now I'm keeping them separate, and I'll continue to monitor things.

Hazel trails after me whenever I let her...so far she's followed me all over the yard, and I've even brought her down to the rabbitry a few times. She barked at a couple of the rabbits this morning, but overall seems pretty chill about them. Here she is meeting my biggest new doe:

And here are a bunch of pictures of the puppies playing this afternoon, taken with my nice camera. Hazel was funny - she would dash over to the older puppies and act all tough, then they would playfully chase her, and she would flee back to hide behind my legs. Then she'd venture out again after a minute. I think she thinks she's a big dog, then remembers she's actually only 1/4 the size of her playmates. :P

Glamour shots of the "big girls." I absolutely love how they're turning out!!

Molly:

Enna:

Jumping to try to catch a tree branch:

And one more of the little munchkin Hazel:

I hope everyone has had a nice week!

Introducing Hazel!!

 First: yes, I'm crazy. 100%. 😂😂😂 

Second: meet Hazel. 

She is a daughter of Henry, from my first Butterscotch Farm litter, and while I wasn't necessarily looking for another puppy just yet, I really wanted to bring that line back into my program, and this was likely my only opportunity to do so. 

My older sister and I are bringing her up from South Carolina... we're currently at a hotel in Virginia on our way back north. We also picked up 5 more Creme d'Argent rabbits because they're very rare and hard to find near me, and we've got her sister Maggie Mae along for the ride too (we're dropping her off in VT) - so we've got quite the menagerie!! 

Many thanks to those who are praying for our safety on the roads! ❤️ 

Photo Dump!!

Today's post is mostly going to be photos - a LOT of photos!! I used my big camera instead of my phone a few days ago, and had a hard time picking which photos I liked best. Life is pretty slow these days, though I do have some exciting stuff planned at the end of the month/beginning of March, and plenty of spring and summer projects! I hope everyone is hanging in there over the winter! Happy Tuesday!!

Puppy Photos and General Updates

 It's been a chilly couple of weeks! Looks like there's a little more work to be done as far as winterizing the cottage - if my fire dies out while I'm at work, or if I don't add logs frequently overnight and it's a below zero night, I have a super hard time getting the temperature back up to a comfortable level (and comfortable for me is 50F). I'm thinking that I'll probably add skirting to the deck this spring, touch up my insulation, and maybe even add small mud rooms as a buffer at the two doors. 

Other than that, things are going fine. The puppies are about 6 months old now, and I still have both Molly and Enna. I really only meant to keep one. 😝 I got their hip scores back a couple weeks ago, and I'm mulling those numbers over - they're not awful, but not as good as I had hoped, either. I would maybe consider letting one of the puppies go, so I'm praying that if that's God's will, He will send exactly the right home at the right time.

Here are a few pictures of how they're turning out. Enna first... she's quiet and fairly independent but enjoys an occasional snuggle.

And Molly. She's sweet, a little needy, and very social. And her cute, perfectly tipped ears are one of my favorite things in the whole world. 

I'm planning for the spring... I'm hoping to start a garden this year. And there are more animals I'd like to add, which means I need fencing and shelter. I've done a little clearing for pastures, but have a long ways to go with that. 

I still have more interior work to do too - cleaning, organizing, drywall, painting...

In other words, I guess I should get off my phone now and pick a project. 😝 

I hope everyone is having a peaceful winter so far and staying warm enough... like Bartholomew. 😂😂😂 

Happy Tuesday!!

Adventuring

 Dad stopped by for a few minutes this morning. While he was here, we hiked out through the snow to take a look at a couple trees - we may try to use trees from my property when I build a barn. 

There are lots of deer tracks everywhere, but a little ways from the house, we saw some different tracks. We're no experts, but after studying them a bit, we decided that a dog or a coyote had crossed the trail there. 

We carried on and looked at the trees. Then Dad left and I got lunch. There's a lost dog in the area, and it occurred to me that there was a tiny chance that the tracks belonged to that dog. Feeling adventurous, I decided to follow the tracks and see if there were any further clues.

The trail led me through the deep woods, in 4-6 inches of crunchy snow, across a creek (I carefully balanced on a log) and well off my property. (I haven't noticed any "no trespassing" signs, and I don't believe that lot is occupied, so I'm pretty sure it's okay to hike there.) 

Here's approximately what my journey looked like, starting at the bottom. I gave up the search where the blue dot is on the left, just before I would have had to cross the road.

I started toward home...or so I thought. Lol, I pulled up the map after a few minutes and discovered I'd been going too far east and not enough south. That did lead me to an intriguing discovery, though - I found a cleared trail, a very sketchy bridge, and a neat little pond. Here's the trail and pond: 

And the bridge. I tested it carefully with each step - it's hard to see in the photo, but the dropoff on the right was probably 5 feet, and a lot of boards were missing. I had no desire to fall through a rotting board into the creek!

I never did figure out whether the tracks were from a dog or a coyote, but it was a fun excursion! 

Here's a neat branch I saw:

And a neat mushroom:

And then the scene I saw when I returned home:

Happy Monday!!!