Building a Barn

                                              

We brought some of our animals with us to this one acre lot (with a bit of the land including a slope down to a brook that isn't usable) - 6 goats, 8 chickens, 2 ducks and our guinea hen. Already on the property was a cinderblock building (used to be a chicken incinerator when meat chickens were a huge thing in the is part of Maine) with a large overhang. Mike and I drove over to Maine a week before closing on the house to make two stalls under the overhang for the goats and also build a simple greenhouse structure for the birds.

The animals had to wait until our new septic system could be installed before we could work on their permanent housing and fenced in area. In the meantime Mike added a small bit of fencing on each side of the stalls for the goats.

Before the new barn was finished my sweet goat of 14 1/2 years, Madeline, died. Sad for sure but she lived a long and healthy life until the end.

Here is the barn that Mike built. It has three sections - two for goats and one for the chickens - and is 12' x 12"

Off the front is a large fenced in area that the small goats, chickens and ducks share.

Inside the chicken coop part of the barn:

The hay feeder in the goats' stall:

Next up is to remove the large overhang as it is not attractive and it will let us have a view of the animals' fenced in area and provide a bit more open land.

Living in the Moment

 

In a phone conversation with my 75 year old father yesterday morning he commented that he needs to plan his next vacation trip this fall instead of waiting until the spring because he turns 76 in late October and no man in his family has ever lived past the age of 76. I told him that he will be the first and no matter how old we are, all each of us has is this very moment.

Later the same day I was face timing with a friend who turns 70 this year and although she has a strong faith and is generally optimistic, she admitted it is hard not to think about her "shelf time" getting shorter.

Myself, I will be turning 56 next month and will be closer to 60 than 50. Maybe it is hormones, maybe it is getting older and these thoughts are normal - but I also feel a bit of selfishness creeping in about how I spend my moments. 

Last night was date night - as it has been for years. On date nights we tend to get a little dressed up and pay a little more attention to how we look - generally the only night I will put on more than just mascara. Through the years with young children it would mean getting them fed early and watching a movie, while we would enjoy a quiet dinner and then get them to bed and enjoy wine and a movie ourselves. Now that we live close to a sweet coastal town, we have been generally going out  - hoping to get seats right by the water and have a locally made beer with some live music playing. 

Last night was one of the rare nights where the air was even warmer than 12 minutes inland where we live and the sun was shining and the sky a clear blue with a warm breeze blowing - truly perfect. After we left the wharf restaurant we walked a bit and found some more local music playing at another restaurant outside. We were able to stand on the outskirts with the bay behind us and the sun setting on our right side and Mike (my husband) was standing on the curbing elevated behind me, massaging my shoulders. For those moments everything felt perfect - like a slice of heaven.

Change Happens Even When You Fight It

Taken on moving day - March 31, 2025

Our family moved from our small farmstead in central Vermont back to midcoast Maine on March 31. We now live just a 12 minute drive from our daughter, son-in-law and 19 month old grandson and about 20 minutes from where we lived in Maine 6 1/2 years ago (albeit for only 2 1/2 years).

This was a very hard move for me. I was dearly attached to our home in the rural town of Vershire, Vermont. The house was built in 1839 and the property was very beautiful having a stream as the back border, an acre of fenced in pasture/yard, and a perfectly flat meadow that we converted to our market garden. Oh, and the “sugarshack” - this we converted to a farmstand, a place to set up food for gatherings, and a small private guest room complete with a woodstove. We had spent 6 seasons lovingly cultivating the property - building a greenhouse, improving the soil each season, adding perennials and more. The even harder part about moving was leaving dear friends. Never in my adult life had I had such strong friendships. These are wonderful authentic people that formed a small community when covid hit and our home was the meeting spot for regular potlucks. Because our house was along a main room, we also had friends stopping by frequently to drop off a plant, say hello, ask if our daughter might want to join them on an outing. These are individuals that I trust, love, and admire for their strength, wisdom, courage, and thoughtfulness.

Back to our move….

With the housing market seemingly nearing a peak in central Vermont we realized that we could probably sell our house and buy a fixer upper for cash near our daughter in Maine as well as pay off our debt and spend 6 months fixing up the house. We decided to put the house on the market in February because we wanted to take advantage of having as much nice weather as possible to spend fixing up the house we would buy. Within 5 days, we had an offer on our house for even a bit more than we were asking. Our next job was to see what we could find in Maine. This is when the sadness began to really creep in for myself. It became clear that to find a house for the price we needed to follow through on our plans, the house would not be very nice at all and it may be impossible to find something with land as well, and be with a 15 minute drive to two towns for each of our children’s needs. Later I would learn that being just a 12 minute drive to Belfast would fill one of my own needs.

Mike and I made 3 trips out (a five hour drive each way) to Maine as soon as our house went under contract in Vermont and after our 3rd trip, we were very discouraged. The next day I noticed that one of the houses we had looked at had been reduced $50,000. This put things in a new perspective and although we had only seen the house for 10 minutes (which I, at the time, had 100% disqualified), we put an offer on it. We had some slight back and forth, but we got the sellers to agree to $150,000 which was our goal. So we were going from 3 beautiful acres, a house perfect for hosting (which is one of my gifts), a market garden, etc.. to a very ugly house whose updates were all cheap and from at least the 1980s, just 1 acre (with some of that being a slope to a brook);no suitable barn or fencing (although we did make an out building work temporarily for the animals), very close to the road (yes, the traffic is loud), and really a house with absolutely no character.

My mental health suffered a bit in those interim weeks between being under contract and moving. Every ounce of my body kept hoping it would fall through. Our buyers asked for yet another inspection, for example, and I would think to myself “maybe this will be it”. Yet each time the buyers still wanted it. I would remind myself that God has a plan for all of this and tell myself to practice gratitude and remember all the positive reasons for moving. The day of the move was long and hard but we had good friends and family helping us. I still remember the raw feeling of that day - still mourning over all that we had left as we moved most our items into the garage as they would need to stay there while we fixed up the house. Every ounce of energy nearly drained as I helped to pull up carpet in the bedrooms so we could at least get mattresses down to sleep on that first night. (Thankfully the bedrooms had carpet that was easily removed with hardwood floors underneath. Not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely passable. This was in sharp contrast to the very hard job of removing two layers of dirty carpet in the living room with a layer of black glue that had to be scraped.)

I will share more of my own personal challenges as well as accomplishments in the coming posts.