Well, not really a finale per-say, because we’ll be working on this for the rest of our lives, but for 2016, this is what we’ve gotten done in the last few months. If you’d like to catch up here is 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5.
When we last left off, our new mobile home was being delivered and set up.
Just this in itself turned into a pretty large job- there was water and septic to hook up, propane tank and lines to run, along with propane appliances- dryer, stove and heater to convert and hook up. Then the dishwasher and clothes washer need to be brought in and installed. Electricity, phone and internet all had to come in and be hooked on as well.
After that was loading/unloading fifty bazillion truck loads and moving in ourselves, our cats, our tree frog and all our belongings, some of which we also have to assemble- things like the new kitchen island and bar stools, bookshelves, shelves… all while packing/unpacking and organizing some things so we can reuse boxes, because we have way more things then ways to pack them.
I have three sets of china. THREE. Two which have been handed down to me and one MrGillis bought me for christmas one year. Moving when you’re thirty is much different then the last time we did this in our twenties.
If my photo montage seems a little crazy and confused, well congrats, you get it, that’s how life has been for the last 8 weeks. Because oh yeah, we managed to do this in the time immediately before thanksgiving until basically now. In fact that’s a lie. We’re still not completely moved. Both our freezers, all our baby aloe pups, a bunch of our gardening stuff… all still at the old place. Thankfully, the old landlords like us.
So yeah, it was pretty much 8 weeks of malarkey… but we got the gist of it done, including our chickens moved and everything.
This was a bit of a project as well, as my honey do, had to put up the fence by himself… luckily he had access to a loader to use as a makeshift fence post pusher. He then stapled the fencing to them and we used another loader and a super nice fella to run it to get the coop over here. My mil took some pictures on her ipad at the time, and if I can ever get them, I promise I’ll add them in because I’m sure they’ll add to the photo narrative.
Why is there snow on the ground in one picture you ask? Because that’s fall in Maine. And sometimes we get what is referred to as just a dustin’. We no sooner moved the coop and the next day, this happened.
That, is not a dustin’…..There’s my wonderful hubby, hooking up the inside heated water base, so our girls can have access to fresh water all the time, without me freezing my crazy chicken loving ass off trying to keep them in water all day.
All the while we’re moving, we’re also installing more floor in the shed (three down, three to go, YEA!), a wood stove and its piping, and filling all the finished rooms to the absolute brim full of our stuff.
AND all of this is while Hen our silver laced wyandotte, was in the chicken hospital with a ripped comb. That took about the two weeks worth of tlc, vetericyn sprays, yummy treats and occasional escapes to some grassy areas to heal up, and by the time we had the coop moved she was able to go back out with the other girls.
As of today, Jan. 3 2017, you couldn’t even really tell she ever had a problem.
Now, its the beginning of a new year, we have a bunch of projects ahead of us. We have a kitchen to get into working order before sap runs, a chicken hospital to tear apart and rebuild before any other chickens get hurt, and a wood stove that is, as of now, not working with a very long cold 2-3 months ahead of us- and that’s a mini version of just the shed list.
I also have a whole 7 blogs drafted, other then this one, with topics ranging from cold weather chicken care to cooking to more lifestyle. So stay tuned, I’ll try to bust them out more regularly.
Have a wicked good evening.
Gillis Gardens, LLC 