Invisible progress and Knoblock's Prairie Ranch visit

Okay...enough about flowers (never)...

But, really, we are making progress every day on building our home at Happy Apple's Farm. The weather has been awful and there is yet another snowstorm on the way. And still yesterday we approved the final plan to make the order of the SIPS panels, roof trusses and floor joists eminent and today we saw and approved the layout of the PEX tubing for the radiant heating in the floor.

Once ordered, the panels could arrive in as little as 4 weeks. Given the weather, the builder may be hard-pressed to get the flat work done in time. We will keep our fingers crossed. Until now things have moved a little slower than planned. It would be a real shame to have to keep the panels waiting.

Meanwhile, Brent and I have made a visit to another alpaca farm: Knoblock's Prairie Ranch. That was a lot of fun and what a wonderful family and a wealth of experience and knowledge! This is Steve and Rose Ann Knoblock's 30th year raising alpacas.

We learned a bunch about keeping alpacas. Steve is in charge of the herd and showed us around the barn. Here are some photos:

Steve's free-standing feeder design

Feeders in pen and bales of orchard grass hay

Moms and cria wondering why we are in their barn

beautiful mothers in the sun

Steve's self watering bucket design- awesome!

I asked only for a little raw fleece and this is what I got - bags full!

Needless to say, we enjoyed our visit. I am so impressed by the enthusiasm and kindness of the alpaca people I've met so far. They seem to genuinely like the animals they care for - even after living with them for decades. But, really, what's not to like about these gentle creatures with the super-soft fiber?

Brent and I are off to buy wool combs tomorrow so I can start to play with the gift of raw fleece. This collection of fiber should keep me occupied for quite a while. Good thing, with the advance of the next winter storm poised to strike us tomorrow night.

I think I'm going to like spinning fiber to keep myself busy over my winters on the farm :-)

Winter in Paradise

Every winter, right about now, I start getting really tired of cold weather. Tired, impatient, irritable, grumpy. Luckily, in addition to my little collection of orchids and my wonderful husband and boys, I share my home with a lot of plants that flower in winter.

So, just in case you get a little bit of a smile when you see a flower, here are a few snapshots from around my home.

giant red amaryllis by the front door

pink cyclamen - a gift from Margaret

pink amaryllis in our bedroom

the "Thanksgiving" cactus blooming for the second time

waterlily begonia with its pretty cloud of pale pink blossoms

I hope these make you smile too. They choose this time of year to work their magic just to cheer up the cold for us, I think.

There hasn't been much visible progress on the new house at the farm. But things are progressing nonetheless. The details are being pulled together and finalized in preparation for the SIPS panel order and the roof and floor truss orders. Those items will, pretty-much, form the house.

And the next time these flowers appear they will keep us smiling in a sunnier and warmer space at Happy Apple's Farm. That's a thought to keep me smiling.

Updated house model

Brent has been busy (he can't help himself - and I'm so glad) improving his 1/30th scale model of our new home. The weather has been awful - super cold and icy streets here in the KC area. So we were pretty much stuck inside for the weekend and this is how he spent the time.

Toward the end of the week it became apparent that the layout of the stairs in the new house might need adjusting because, in case it isn't obvious, Brent is pretty tall. I think it would be super unfair to make him duck to avoid hitting his head when going downstairs in a house we custom-built for ourselves.

So, using all his engineering skills as well as some newly acquired software knowledge, he modeled a new stair layout AND found a way to add a bunch of storage space both upstairs and down.

New layout for stairs showing pantry extending over the stairwell

Here is a photo of the new kitchen pantry. It has about twice as much space as the original plan because it now extends over the stairwell.

The white wall with the angle at the top is the west wall of the pantry. It goes all the way to the ceiling. In front of it you can  see the coat closet (without its west wall) which does not extend to the ceiling to maintain the airflow needed to pull heat from the sunspace.

Not shown in this photo is the step up that's inside the pantry. That step forms a shelf and creates the head room needed in the stairs for tall people.

The big change in the stair layout is the turn at the top that changes the direction of the entry to the stairs. People will now enter from the south and descend just a few steps to a landing.

In the process of working out the new stairway, Brent decided to build all of the walls for the rooms downstairs. And he and Rick (our builder) found a way to add another storage area under the stairs.

downstairs with walls

The old plan used the space under the stairs for the washer and dryer. There was also a plan to stub in an additional water line for a sink (allowing for remodeling plan in the future).

With the new stairs Rick suggested moving the washer and dryer into the mechanical room. That freed up that under-the-stairs area. So Brent added a wall and doorway that will create a cool storage area. And the water line for the future sink will go on that east wall of the downstairs bathroom (in that little space under the top turn in the stairs).

We are excited to see the layout. This process helped us confirm we have enough space for furniture, too, because Brent also made some flat, to-scale cutouts of our living room furniture. We had a lot of fun arranging those cut-outs in the living room - all without hurting our backs :-). I wouldn't be surprised if Brent finds a way to make 3-dimensional versions of our beds and sofas if the weather stays this cold. Who needs Legos when you have foam core and an X-acto knife? :-)

Winter flower fix

Okay, you know you're a plant nerd when you get excited about this:

pineapple

It's a pineapple! You have no idea how excited I was when I noticed it today. It's on a shelf that's over my head, so I didn't see it coming (so to speak). I've been growing this plant for maybe 3 years from a top I cut off of a store-bought fruit. Dang, that's fun :-)

Not only that, but my orchids are blooming. This is the first year in several that I haven't gone to the flower and garden show. But, at this point, I'm pretty much full-up with orchids and that's all I want to see at the show anyway.

Here are my beauties:

creamy white phalaenopsis 

magenta phalaenopsis

close-up of Epidendrum bloom

 And here is an orchid I purchased a few years ago, three maybe, that has reliably bloomed and never fussed. It's called an Epidendrum. These blooms sometimes last into summer. Every new stalk will bloom. The photo at left shows the smaller of two stalks with blooms. There are at least two more stalks that are also forming flower heads.

Epidendrum plant

Here's another photo of this lovely plant to show you how big the plant gets. It is desperate for repotting, but I'm afraid there aren't orchid pots big enough! Right now it shares our bedroom with the giant Norfolk Pine.

There are more flowers, but for now, I think I'll just leave you with the orchids. Needless to say, the house in winter is a jungle - just the way I like it :-)

Backhoe Brent has been making progress

Brent by the earth from the greenhouse foundation excavation

That's a lot of shoveling! Brent has completed excavating both the west and east sides of the foundation. He digs a very neat trench and has a pretty detailed plan for using the salvaged cinder blocks from the house as the base of this greenhouse. It will be the first of the working structures on the farm - and my home-away-from (but still very close to) - home.

South side of garage showing "door" to greenhouse and foundation

I love being able to visualize the size of the space now that both sides are in. Brent has actually started the trench for the south wall of the greenhouse too. Lucky for me, he loves spending time out at the farm. And the fact that he also likes being productive - and is capable of designing and building - is about the most awesome thing ever! (Yes, I have to pinch myself often.)

So, even though the construction of the house is moving kind of slowly right now, rest assured that there are still things happening and growing at our little farm :-)

Water proofing and drainage

The pretty new foundation has a coating of water proofing and there are coils of tubing for the drainage. In addition, the extra concrete that was splashed into the area that will be the slab has been broken up and removed - all neat and tidy :-)

drainage tubing

water proofing on west foundation walls

view from east showing waterproofing (and the beautiful sky!)

 Not taking shape at lightening speed (yet) but it's progress and already it feels like a nice warm spot on a January day in Kansas.

Changes to the garden - before it even starts

We are getting to know our neighbors already and like them a lot. Community can be a little hard to find in a rural setting, but happily that isn't the case on our little stretch of road in Leavenworth County, KS.

Late last Summer, our neighbor Keith stopped by on his 4-wheeler to ask if we wanted to sign a petition to chip and seal the portion of 178th Street between Evans Road and Kansas Avenue. Currently our road is gravel with all the dust, noise and mud one might imagine. So paving (as in chip and seal) changes all of that. It will be a much better maintained road year-round.

Unfortunately, the change in road surface also means the county has access to more of our little acreage. They require an easement that will destroy a windbreak of mature (12 foot tall) cedar trees that borders the west edge of the area on our property where we will have our vegetable gardens.

You can see in this photo the cedars and the flag that marks where the easement will extend into our property. And all the cedars will need to go.

So, since the road project will happen in 2016 (I think), we have a little time to grow some new trees. We hope to start planting those in March. I know, it will take more than a couple of years to get them as tall as the trees we have now. But at least I won't be tempted to plant things too close to the road and there will be some visual screen that still makes it feel cozy :-)