Life is Busy and Good on the Homestead

With the weather warming a little on the homestead, we've been busy outside. While I rarely go outside when it's cold, you can hardly keep me inside when it's warm. I absolutely love warm weather. I even love hot weather. I don't even mind hot and humid weather. But I am really not a fan of cold weather.

Bernie's been busy with the fence. He's about 80% finished with the posts now. The last little bit is going slow as he has to clear a path for it. I helped him pull out some old, rusted, fallen field fencing with barb wire on it last weekend. He has some trees to cut down and brush to remove before he can do much more. He's reseeded the entire yard and laid down straw over the most naked parts. Today he started building my raised beds. Yay! Over the weekend he helped me get the radishes and spinach in some large containers outside. He also helped me build a little flower bed around the well head. We used a few of the thousands of very large rocks we've dug out of the ground around here. We filled it with some soil and then I planted a variety of wildflowers in it.

This weekend, First Choice Construction came out and built Bernie's barn shed and my garden shed. I have to tell you, we were completely impressed. This company not only beat the heck out of the price of pre-fab sheds from Lowe's, they custom built them on our property and used some top quality materials. Top notch workmanship, too. I just don't think I can say enough about them. If you live in Virginia and need a building built, I strongly suggest you get ahold of them. I have no clue how far they will travel, but they came about 120 miles to build our building. So check them out! http://www.firstchoiceconstruction.us/ In the meantime, here are some pictures:



Is that not the cutest little garden shed you've ever seen? I just love it! That's Chris, one of the owners of First Choice, on the left, and his helper Bruce on the right. I managed to chop off the roof in this picture, but decided to post it anyway because it's the only one I had with both Chris and Bruce in it. Chris is super nice and very professional. Bruce is really sweet, and spends a lot of time talking to himself. He even asks himself questions, and then answers them. It seems to help him work - and he is a very hard worker.



That's Chris in front of Bernie's barn shed. You probably have barn shed envy. I'm sure that's the coolest barn shed ever.



And that's Chris beside his monster freaking truck. That is one cool truck. And that bad boy can haul all kinda massive size loads. It has side compartments that carry every shed building tool known to man.

These guys built these two sheds in a total of two days. From scratch. Even the doors. I was sorry I didn't get to meet Kat, Chris' wife and the other owner of First Choice. She handles the customer service portion and scheduling of the business. Kat's great at what she does and she's super sweet. She spent a lot of time with me on the phone, not only discussing exactly what we wanted in these buildings, but giving advise on purchasing and caring for chickens, as well as building a chicken coop.

So there you have it. We're tickled pink with our buildings and totally impressed with First Choice Construction. We've got lettuce that's sprouted, garlic that's perking up, spinach and radishes planted, a new rock garden, vegetable beds in the works, and a fence that's close to being finished.

Life is good on the homestead. And Elvis has slept through most of it.

Bee Free,
Penny