Tying up the Loose Ends

With the house built and our furniture and belongings in it, it was time to type up the loose ends on our homestead. The first major project for our new house was to build a porch across the front of the house and a small porch at the backdoor.

From the very beginning Charlie has had the desire to have porch along the front of the house along with extra wide steps for the kids to sit on when they come to visit. We have rockers, chairs, and a porch swing up there right now. We are in the waiting process of letting the wood season, or dry out, so we can stain or paint the porch. We’re still debating what to do. The porch at the backdoor is a smaller porch but larger than I planned. I was thinking of a more utilitarian porch but Charlie was determined that it should be bigger. It was a good choice. It’s large enough for several chairs along with my gardening things. Sometimes it is cooler back there in the mornings for our coffee since it faces away from the sun.

The next step was to have a road put in from the county road on our property up the house. The choice was to put in a limestone and caliche stone road. The road man was worried about the huge oak tree that the road was to run under.

Rather than having the road crew trim the tree’s lower branches, we decided that it was time to hire a trim a bona fide tree trimmer. Along with the oak tree needing to be trimmed, there was a tall dead tree at the entrance of the property along with a few stumps to grind.

While all of this work was going on, Charlie decided to work on the chicken coup. The property had a well-worn and well-used chicken coup on it.

Since I would really want chickens and fresh eggs, Charlie decided that it was sturdy enough to use but the exterior doors and wall on one side needed to be replaced. The reconstruction of the house has begun as well as the yard is being worked on to get it ready to be fenced. Once it’s finished, we’ll paint it and make it all pretty for the chickens.

It was finally time for the road crew to come in. The crew brought in 10 truckloads of rock to build the rock.

They leveled the path and added and smoothed out the rock. We now truly have The Wheeler’s Country Road.

There was one last thing we needed to do to finish cleaning up the homestead. The trash pile that was here when we bought the property and that we kept adding to was ready to be burned. Outside conditions were right and we were ready to get rid of the pile! After a steak dinner, Charlie and Jason prepared the burn pile and the bonfire began.

Danielle, Raya, and I stayed on the porch watching the flames. Raya decided that she needed to dance to the country music that was playing! It took several days for some of the large pieces of wood on the pile to finish burning and smoldering.

Charlie kept a close and careful watch until he knew everything was finished burning. Since then, Charlie has run his magnetic roller over the ashes to pick up any pieces of metal that were left behind. I spread some grass seed there also to hopefully get it growing and turn the area green soon.

Although it was late in the season, I wanted to put in a small garden. I planted a few tomato, jalapeno and green pepper plants along with seeds for cucumbers and okra. I also planted some watermelon and cantaloupe seeds using different varieties to see how they grow. I’ve never had the room to grow melons before so it will be interesting to see what happens. So far, the vines with blossoms are growing very well. Only time will time how well they produce. In the meantime, we have eaten blueberries right off the bushes, sampled the pears from the trees, and are watching to see how well the pecan trees are producing fruit. We are in the midst of harvesting figs now that I will be making preserves out of this week.