Lots of water under the bridge - and a killer winter!

I know.  I have been a slack blogger!  Sometimes life just gets in the way of communication :)

First things first

In November 2013 our wonderful tenants in Colorado signed the paperwork and official bought BluBelle Farm.  You could probably hear the shouts of joy and relief from us all over the plant.  It was such a nice feeling to no longer be the owner of the Colorado property...and leave the world of 'landlord' behind.   Yes - we learned a few lessons:

1. Don't be a landlord
2. If you are going to be a landlord, live right near the property so you can deal with things quickly and by yourself.
3. And finally, don't ever be a landlord

Still, it all worked out in the end - but it took almost five years to sell the farm and cost us more than it should to take it through to the sale.    We really did not take a financial step forward with the ownership considering the blood sweat and tears we put into the improvements.  We would have liked to walk away $50,000 better off and not break even.  But, them's the breaks!   It's gone.  It's over.  And that, my friends, is a bloody nice feeling!

Back to Murramarang

Our farm in Maine has been developing very slowly.   Two things have been hampering our movement forward. The first was not knowing when the Colorado farm would finally sell and be off our hands.  The second was money.  Added to this has been a long and bitter winter forcing any improvements being done inside.

With the arrival of our eldest daughter to stay a few months we decided that we really needed more bathrooms.  When we bought this farm we had the plumber add a second toilet in what was a strange 'cupboard' off the master bedroom.   That little room ended up being a storage room with a loo - than a real functioning bathroom.   With a lack of funds but a load of time, we scrounged the local dump each week and finally found a nice bathroom sink etc for just $1.  With a coat of paint and a new set of fittings it looked great.  We finished the walls and painted the 'cupboard' (now the "ensuite"), laid some new vinyl tiles onto the floor and then installed the renovated sink.  A few lights a fan etc and our little brown duck became a wonderful swan.

We then started on a whole new bathroom/laundry area in the basement.  This tested our plumbing skills as we needed an upflow toilet that would pump the waste up and into our septic outflow.  Once we worked out the new toilet process we added a sink, shower and even a hookup for a laundry tub!   We build walls, sheet rocked, added power, light, fan and more.   Quite a project indeed.  As I write we still have to paint, add the flooring and test it all :)  

Outside we still have so much snow.  Its almost the end of March and last year I had started seedlings.  This year we will not see our vegetable plots for another few weeks...and then probably will not be able to plant for a month or so after that.  So vegetables will be a late process.

Our chickens continue to produce.  The five girls give us around four eggs a day and Harry Potter the Rooster does a good job keeping them safe.  Our little hen house worked well through winter with the chickens being given run of the barn during the day.  They are now escaping to the small patches of grass and mud around the farm to forage and scratch.  They can't wait for warmer weather.

Our plans this summer involve fences.   We will not be able to get the whole place done, but I hope we can fence the top few acres with something better than the temporary electric fence so Maggie the horse is more confined.

Life is godd - and we can't wait for spring to really arrive!

Winter was white and long....and spring has officially arrived.

It is now nearing the end of March 2013...and winter weather has been here for months and no end in sight.   We fortunately escaped six weeks of the snow and cold in Australia....but have returned to a world of snow and a blizzard every other day.    Just when we think the snow is melting away we get another dump.   Fingers are crossed that we have now seen the end of it.

Spring officially arrive last Wednesday - and we woke up to a foot of new snow - but spring activities have already started.

The first task was to make a start pruning the row of apple trees on one side of the home field.  Who knows how long it has been since they were pruned (if ever).  Last year they had flowers, but set no fruit.  After watching youtube videos and reading blogs and webpages I decided I was ready to hack into them with gusto!

 I have no idea if I have done a good job - I guess this season will tell!  We have at least five more apple trees on the property - four of them are so large and must be 100+ years old.  They are really now just ornamental shade trees and we will leave them that way.

The next step was to work on getting some vegetables started.   The kids helped with planting the first seeds in containers which we have under lights in the warmish basement until the last frost has gone (in about 50 days).

Already we have broccoli sprouted - something Madie finds fascinating!  Our plan is to try Square Foot Gardening techniques this year to see if we can beat the drainage issues we had last year, make it all more kid friendly, and same us time and work.  It's a big ask, but worth the experiment.

And the final stage for now was to get back into the world of chickens.  We have bought six little girls (well 5 little girls, and a possible sixth who could turn out to be a rooster).   They are currently living in a tote under a warming light as we prepare them for life on the farm.   We will have their company for about two months before they can go outside.  So I guess that means I have two months to build a chicken coop and run....fun!

So Murramarang is starting to feel like a real farm!

The farm in Colorado continues to be a thorn in our side.  The tenants have been great - but the hassles caused by the neighbors continues to have twists and turns to cause us heartache and money.  We hope it will all be over soon and life can be a little more free of stress!

Vale to Princess Belle - 4 October 2012.

It was the saddest day our our life saying goodbye to our little Chinhuahua Princess Belle!   She finally came to the end of her time - her poor heart decided that all the drugs in the world just could not keep her happy and healthy.   After days of indecision, we finally decided that she had given up on her own life by no longer eating and so wanted to give her a dignified end to a wonderful life.

The vet and vet nurses were wonderful - even if we were sobbing messes.  We said our goodbyes and she took her last breath in the arms of he human mother who loved her more than life itself. 

In December 2012 we journeyed to Australia and took with us some of Belles ashes.   We had always wanted to take her to Australia so she could run on the beach at Durras.   In a small way we fulfilled that promise and spread some of her ashes on the most wonderful beach on the planet.

We will miss her......always.

Autumn arrives...so much has been done...

First the Colorado farm news....

I am delighted to have found such wonderful tenants.  They are really working to make the place look great - updating fences, using the barn to its capacity, looking after the house...like WOW!  What a change from the past attempts.  Makes me happy.

But wait....the silver lining has a cloud.  It's the neighbors!  Seems that my tenants had had battles for neighbors about a number of issues...its so sad.   We have a boundary line dispute need to move water pipes and fences and overall a huge amount of stress.   Makes me very sad.

One day I hope we can get through all this and that the black clouds of this farm in Colorado will have a silver lining.    More details will come through once we are on solid ground with a few isues...for now all I can say is STRESS and its costing us a pile of money that we wanted to sink into Maine projects.  

Then the Murramarang news.....

The Farm in Maine give me a huge amount of joy.  Its a long slow process to get anything done as we share the responsibility to look after kids while one of us works on projects.  Since the last blog entry we have been working on a few issues:

Working on the kitchen....it has been out with the old and in with part of the new :)   Demolishing the old kicthn was a much bigger task than we thought.  It was built to withstand a bomb bast - and took a lot of strong arming to get out.

After a few days we managed to have it all taken out and the remains taken to the dump.  We then decided that the existing rotting window should be removed and a larger one installed.  This has brought so much extra light into the house - it is amazing!

Jen stripped off all the horrible wallpaper and we reclad some walls then painted the ceiling white and the walls a pale yellow - again to brighten up the place.

The next step was installing a new floor over the evil old tiles.  We picked up a load of flooring from a discount store that looks like old barn timbers - a little aussie gum-like in look.  After doing all the floors in Colorado, this was an easy task to get in.

We then went and ordered all new cupboards from Home Depot and started to install them to give us more bench space and functionality.  We found that we needed a new fridge in the process...as the old second hand one just kept leaking water!

The new cabinets were easy to install - even when the walls were just horrible.  The new bench tops were more difficult, but seemed to work out ok for us.

Now the big task is to paint all the cabinets and doors - a work still in progress but we hope to have completed by the end of October!

While all this was happening we decided that I really needed a better dedicated office space instead of spilling into a corner of the lounge room and garage.  The only place to do this is the basement - in which we have water issues.   So the first step was to work on the water.  We bought a dehumidifier and let it run n the basement fro around a month.  This was an amazing breakthrough - the basement lost its dusty musty smell and really dried out.   We now run the machine a few days a week - and it seems to keep the place dry.  The next phase is to install a good sump and sump pump - and we hope to do that through winter and before the major thaw (and basement flooding) season starts in spring.


We started the office space in one of the basement corners and decided to be safe, we would build up off the floor so any water that gets into the basement can flow under the floor and be captured by a sump pump in the future.  We build the stud walls and lined them with plastic, so the office is almost a plastic box.  We installed a new basement window (upside down I might add - dumb arse Gary!) in a hole that had just been boarded up with planks.

It is still a work in progress, but we hope to have it functional by the end of October - even it not really finished off completely.

We also made headway on getting the hay loft in the barn back to a working place - the doorway had be boarded over in the past.  A new door way has been made - and just needs a door and a clean up inside to have a space ready to use for storage (hay or otherwise).

So lots happening on many fronts....lets hope winter is not too harsh and we can continue to get the inside of the farm buildings finished and working!

A colorado farm update - late May 2012

A Colorado farm update!

After a failed attempt to rent over the winter and a few months being empty and on the market, we have been forced to get more renters into our farm in Colorado...at the end of the day we just diod not have the money to keep the place empty!

So we advertised on CraigsList and had a flurry of folks come and look.  One set of folks had seen the place before when the first set of renters moved in...and got back in touch.  They went out and looked and fell in love with the place.   Like all renters it seems, they have a sob story of not being able to finance a purchase, but these folks seem very determined.  They want to lay down $10K as a deposit if we will rent it to them till July next year...and then they will buy.

So, starting in the first week of June, we will have renters back into the farm.   I will breath easier that we have some income coming in....but wait for each and every call that they have had some sort of 'issue'........i hate being a landlord!

Some major steps forward.....and its May!

So May rolls forward (it fact its almost over) and we have made some major steps forward on Murramarang! On the house front, we now have a high efficiently propane furnace installed which we hope will save us heating costs in the future. It looks WONDERFUL - instead of a box that looks like it came off a WWI battle ship, we now have a set up that looks more like its from the Star Ship Enterprise (take us up to warp speed Scotty!) Of course, we will not really know how good this all is until next winter...but we hope that it will make some difference! It also means that we can scrap/sell the old furnace and tank and get rid of the fuel oil smell in the basement.

Another step in the house has been the installation of a new septic system. After some slow starts due to rain up here in Maine, the system is finally in. New tank, new leach field...so we hope that the backing up of water in the pipes is now just part of history. How strange it has been to wash the dishes and then find spaghetti strands coming up into the bath! And how nice it will be to have a shower again!

The Septic Digger arrives! 

The final house step has been to replace the water pipes. Our low pH well water has been stripping out the lead from the solder points as well as dissolving the copper pipes. These have all been replaced with PEX pipes by our friendly plumber. He is (as I write) hooking all our drains up to the new septic system, moving a toilet and vanity, adding a toilet (wow...we will now have a 1.5 bathroom house). This all has been a long drawn out process - mainly due to the bank stuffing around with paperwork and payments - but after May we will feel that we have really made some big steps forward. We have many more to do (a new kitchen, putting in a back door, moving the basement stairs, building a deck) All we need to do these is money (and time).

Out on the farm we have moved forward as well. We have put up horse fences for about 2 acres. The electric fence is so hot it is scary....it took two grounding rods, but worth the effort. This allows our one and only horse (Maggie) to roam and eat without turning the fields into mini dust bowls. We also hope that we have space to start to bring in boarders. We completed one stall in the small barn and added a door so that we have better access to the tack/grain room. We recovered some old fencing from family - some picket fencing and some stockade fences. After a power wash, we hired a commercial spray gun and gave them all a coat of white paint. We put a a first coat of paint on our garage - a change from the red/brown to the blue we like.

We installed a fire pit.....

 We have so much more to do.....but we think we have made a wonderful start and hope with good weather and finding some spare cash will help us to move a few steps forward in June.

February ends and we are in our new farm

After so many false starts, we finally made it into Murramarang! And we are delighted!

On the 17 February we finally closed on our small property. It had been a very rough road with complications on every twist of the road forward...and things did not get clear until two days before closing (this was the second attempt to close). But we finally signed away our lives again and were handed the keys to our sweet place.

With the keys in hand, we spent the next four days cleaning, repainting and getting prepared to move in to our three bedroom one bathroom cottage. The place cleaned up so well and with new painted ceilings and walls on all the bedrooms and carpets put down, most of the house looks fantastic!

The kitchen is in its original state. We took out the old propane 1960's stove and, after a flirt with a second hand stove, now have a spanking new stove in and connected. The kitchen cupboards needed to be cut to fit a fridge and we still have a second hand dishwasher sitting waiting to be installed.

The bathroom - well its will wait for a future renovation.

It is a lot of work, it is expensive - but its home!