It's Getting There

We've spent the last two Sundays painting. Last week we did the screen & side porch floors, and the new siding on the south side of the house. It's pretty much done on that side except for moving plants around and stuff. Here's a before picture from when we first looked at the house and one from yesterday:

The big window that we put in is also pretty much done, finally. It's been about a 3 month project, reglazing the windows and then painting. There were a few broken windows that I replaced, too. Here's a photo, I think it came out pretty good.

Yesterday we painted the studio porch, the back stairs and started on the fence. Here's a before and after of the studio porch:

Firing #2

Just unloaded the kiln, and I'm pretty happy with the results. There are a couple of things to work out, I'm having issues with my turquoise glaze blistering in the front third of the kiln. I can't figure out if it's getting too hot up there or if there's too much soda or what. I'll probably just put pots with that glaze on them in the back from now on.

Here are a couple of pics.

Do cows cry?

Thursday evening the outer bands of Earl gave us a little magic here in Hurdle Mills.

This was the weekend of mourning.  Yesterday, the man that rents the 10-ish acres of pasture land to our west came and took his three adolescent bulls away.  Their mothers were torn up for the remainder of the day yesterday and all of today.  Apparently, cows will loudly bellow for their young when they’ve been lost, and wander the entire pasture in search of their babies.  The cry that went up from time to time was a constant reminder of their misery.  While we worked this weekend, we sat vigil with the cowsies. Here's a picture of them from when we first got here.

So I finished mulching the new bed in the garden this morning and brought the fruit bed back up to standard.  The fruit bed had gotten completely out of hand with the overgrown grass, the weeds, and the ever pointless, purple basil.  So I installed a new aluminum siding edge, then weeded, and finally covered it with mulch.  Finally, the mulch pile is gone!  I had to readjust the garden gate.  It was swinging too low and catching the grass.  Evelyn said it was a little annoying so I raised it up a little bit.

Following that bit of bread labor (and a bit of a nap,) it was off to the chicken coop for a little cleaning and improvement.  There was a metal chest of eight chicken boxes hanging on one of the walls and two of our chicken regularly perched on its slanted roof in the evening - not quite as comfortable as you might think.  Since we have way more nesting boxes than our small flock requires, I ripped the metal cabinet off the wall and installed some proper perches for the girls.

While I was attending to such mundane and inexpensive chores, Evelyn was loading the kiln as we get  ready to fire it up tomorrow.

This is Lonely, our last surviving guinea.

Fall Garden

This week we planted the fall vegetables in the new part of the garden. We put in lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, carrots, sugar snap peas, beets, onions and turnips. Some of them have already started sprouting, I can't wait for the lettuce.  It's been really cool in the mornings so it's much nicer to work out there before the day gets started. 

We also started harvesting the apples. It pretty much took all day yesterday to pick and wash the ones that were ripe. We're not sure what kind of apples they are, maybe golden delicious or pippin, they're greenish yellow, a little tart but not too tart. It doesn't really matter, they're pretty good! What a bonus, we didn't even know there was an apple tree here when we bought the place. 

The pears are starting to ripen too, I haven't had one that I thought was fully ripe yet, though. The lady that used to live here stopped by a couple of weeks ago and said the man who she bought the house from used to get his whoopings under that tree!

Here are some photos of outbuildings around Hurdle Mills... and some horses. There are so many cool old farm buildings around here. 

A Trip to the Courthouse

We wanted to do a little research on the history of the house before Aaron went back to school, so today we went to the Person County courthouse to do a little digging. We didn't find out a lot but we did find out the house & land were sold at auction in 1937 to D. Long for the sum of $9482.55 for the homeplace of J.R. Rimmer and 177 acres. Mr. Rimmer died in 1933 and his wife died in 1936, after which their heirs sold the property at auction on the courthouse steps. We couldn't really tell but it seemed like there was some kind of dispute which the court settled by auctioning off the property. 

That was pretty much what we were able to find out at the courthouse. Then I did a little searching online and found out James Rimmer was born in 1855 and that would have made him 32 when the house was built in 1887. His first child was born in 1888 which sounds about right too. I also found out his dad was a Confederate infantryman and is buried up the road, and he shares a distant relative with David Koresh of Waco fame.... friggin' internet's amazing isn't it?

The garden is just about winding down for the summer so we're getting it ready for fall planting. Aaron dug up another big plot doubling the size of the garden after he got back from a much overdue visit to California to see his Mom & Dad and the rest of the family. It seems like they had a really good time, sorry I missed it!

This year was a really good year for cucumbers and we had so many I made dill pickles, which was surprisingly easy. They came out pretty good, they tasted like the kind you get in delis in the big barrels. I made 20 and they're already gone.

Last night I noticed these flowers out by the wooded area in the back of the property. I'm not sure what they are but the plant is shrub-like and it's got leaves like a mimosa tree and delicate golden flowers.

Up and running, for real.

I fired the kiln on Monday for the second time. The first firing came out a little light on the soda and I was pretty bummed. I have shows looming and a shop that's been waiting for pots and it feels like forever that I've been without a kiln.

So I was more than a little anxious to see how this load turned out. But yesterday I unloaded the pots and I'm super happy with the results. Yay!! What a huge relief. Now I can get back to work making more pots!

This is our cat Lucky.

summer pics

Here are the latest pictures from around the house; the newly done screen porch and a bunch of animal photos. Even the cows look hot...