The Refinance Adventure

 The Refinance Adventure

When we left off the last blog post, we had just gotten the turkeys, and I warned you there was more on the way. Little did I know exactly how much more! 

We needed someplace for the turkeys to roam and for the roosters to be separated so they would stop over breeding our hens, so we built the rooster pen. P.S. three of our turkeys died, so Papa brought us one more of the Black Spanish heritage breed. We think what happened was they were too dumb to figure out where their food was in the tiny pen we had them in and died of starvation. We were warned that turkeys were dumb...but that was a little ridiculous. We made sure the remaining two knew how to eat before we moved them. 

             

 They don't actually stay in the pen most days, but they do sleep on the door at night. 

We actually had a lot of issues with the pen. We moved the two Mama chickens that hatched out some 15 chicks to the pen as well as the 9 or so that we hatched in the incubator. Turns out, baby chicks are extremely good at finding ways out of safety, and even the 4-5 week old chickens would slip through the panelling to explore outside. Sadly, all but a handful of them got picked off by hawks and others animals. We ended up wrapping the entire bottom half with some smaller wire which helped save the remaining adolescents, but the remaining chicks continued to disappear until there were none left. 

There were also a few occasions where we saw hawks dive-bomb into the rooster pen. We have since bought a net to go on top, we've just been too busy to install it. We are going to wait for warmer temperatures, now. 

Trulee and Brett (my sister and brother-in-law) decided to downsize their farm. They gifted us with their two donkeys. Meet Waffle and her baby Boots. 

They escaped so many times from where we had Pancake that we moved them to the upper field where the garden is going to go with Pancake. We actually really like the set up. When we first got them, they had been so wild they hadn't had their hooves trimmed ever (for Boots) or in a really, really long time (Waffle). Our farriers are so great that when we told them we moved them to our farm and had them secured, they drove out that day to work on their feet. Since then, they've done even better than Pancake at getting their feet done. 

We also purchased their two Nigerian Dwarf does off of them. We weren't ready for goats at the time, but they were about $50 cheaper than normal, the exact breed we wanted...and we couldn't resist. So, we purchased some of the ElectroNet fencing we had been eyeing for goats and built them a small shelter out of some old doors we took out of the house. 

We renamed them Annie (red on the left), and Una (one horn on the right). Let me tell you, even with an electrified four foot tall fence, they are expert escapers. They learned after a few times that while they can get out, they don't really want to risk the shock. The idea was to move them around to clear the brush. 

By the time they finished clearing brush closest to the house and needed to be moved out to the field, it was the beginning of winter and there wasn't much brush left. We would have had to move the fencing and the shelter nearly every day for them to stay fed enough. Not to mention that goats can't be out in freezing temps, so we would have to move them to the barn everyday. 

Anyone who has visited the farm recently knows that for now they are free-ranging, and little pain-in-the-butts. They climb on anything and everything, like to try and sneak in cars, and love going inside even though they know they aren't allowed in the house. 

At one point, we thought they might be pregnant, but it turns out there's a thing called "goat bloat" which just makes them look super fat. It goes away on its own in a few days or you feed them some baking soda, and that does the trick. 

Once the girls reach 65 pounds (they started off at 20, 30 when we got them), we can safely breed them. It's a 4 month gestation and this breed has 2-5 babies each. I'm looking forward to milking them when they do have babies so we can make some cheese!

We also expanded our chicken butchering supplies in anticipation of the 50 meat chickens we have arriving in June. 

Thanks to the partnering of Pippa and Pap Pap, and the kids who helped me assemble, we got a chicken plucker. It doesn't work as great as I was hoping, but there's still a few things I need to try once we have more chickens to butcher. 

We also purchased bags to be able to store the meat in, and I was very pleased with them and how professional it made our birds look. Now, we don't raise the Broiler birds (usually Cornish Cross) for reasons I won't get into now, so our birds are smaller. But, they are a healthier bird. 

And tasty! We watched our friend's video on how to spatchcock a chicken, and we were not disappointed. This baby was DELICIOUS! 

Sometime in October, Sam approached me with a proposition. He wanted to refinance the house. Our current interest rate was 3.875% on a 30 year loan. We could get it down to a 2.25% on a 20 year loan by only adding $9 to our monthly payment. The catch....we had to completely finish the house...in three months. 

(I made the kids Dinosaur Train costumes for Halloween. They were Tiny the Pteranodon (Rylee) and Buddy the T-rex (William).

Here's a really cute video of their costumes in action! 

The work? Finish the wet wall on the main floor leading up to the upstairs so that we could plum the two bathrooms upstairs and the one on the main floor. Put back the walls in the bathroom on the main floor as well as the upstairs two bathrooms. Install sinks and toilets in the upstairs and main floor bathroom, cover ever single stud exposed wall or ceiling with drywall, cover missing flooring with some sort of flooring, mud, tape, and paint all the newly installed drywall, replace all the missing siding on the backside and side of the house, install new gutters, build either a deck or steps off of the door from the dining room, and I'm probably missing something. 

Sam rented a Boom Lift (aka "cherry picker"), to put up the siding on the outside of the house so he wouldn't have to deal with ladders. I helped him cut all the pieces to the lengths he needed and handed them up for him to install. 

He actually really enjoyed using the giant piece of equipment, and it looked really, really good when he finished. 

We had to knock off the rest of the brick and put house wrap on the side before we could put up the siding.

Sam had a great little helper! 

Sam and Pap Pap and I were able to do the side of the house on foot. 

We were so, so busy with Sam coming home almost everyday from work and working until it was much too late, that I didn't get a whole lot of pictures of the progress. Here are some. 

We took out the junk from the Master and put down a new floor so we could move in. 

We got a working tub and then the first toilet upstairs installed! It was SO, SO, SO, SO, SO nice having a way to shower indoors and to not have to go to the basement to use the bathroom every time. 

We have since finished the drywall, and installed a mirror and light above the sink. 

We also installed a half-bath in the master bedroom (pictured) and a half-bath in the laundry room. The wiring in this house is very sketchy, so we actually can't hook the light up completely in this bathroom without risking a fire. Replacing the electrical wires in the house is probably the next big project on the to-do list. 

We built a deck off of the dining room door, and the goats were very interested in helping out. You can see they are fluffier here and have started to grow their winter coats. 

We put up drywall on the ceilings as well as the walls in the den and laundry room. 

We were so close to the time limit (one week) for the bank that we had to hire a really nice handyman to come help for a few days. Thanks for the help, Brian Teater (and his son, Bryce)! 

We also installed recessed lighting in the den and laundry room. 

Lastly, we put up drywall for the dining room, kitchen, and living room. Though, we did take out one wall in the living room to open the place up a bit. 

The drywall work included taping, mudding, and painting. 

The painter we got from a family member was too old, so we had to purchase a new one. The time that it took us to paint made it worth it because by this time, we had a day or two to finish before our rate lock expired. 

In the midst of all this crazy, we found out this good news. 

Baby #3 is due around July 4th. We aren't going to find out the gender since we already have one of each, but we are REALLY hoping we are having a boy for Will Will's sake. Poor, buddy. 

The appraiser came and went and submitted his report to the bank. This was the weekend after Thanksgiving, so we went to Gatlinburg to relax with my family. 

We had some really fun times hiking. 

And we even had a good time shopping downtown for some Christmas gifts. 

Unfortunately, while we were there, we were told that the bank dropped us after 3 months of hard work and nearly $15,000. There was some miscommunication with the appraiser and although he told us he was going to do one thing, he submitted something else, and the bank was not pleased after the many time extensions they had to give us. They dropped us. We were THREE days too late. 

Sam woke up at 5am the next morning unable to sleep and searched around until he found a new bank that was willing to work with us. 15 year loan, 1.75% interest rate with a $270 increase on our monthly payment. 

All we had to do was get an appraisal (which we passed with flying colors!) and change our insurance policy. To get the insurance we needed, we had to fix some loose siding on the front and side of the house and install a fence around the pool. 

The siding was easy enough to fix with the leftover siding we had. 

Christmas time came around, and we did a few fun things. I made some aprons for my nieces. Look how precious!

And I took the kids to a cookie decorating party my cousin has held for the last few years. They had a lot of fun! Will Will mostly ate sprinkles until his mouth turned red and purple!

We set up a surprise Christmas Tree after the kids had gone to sleep in our bed Christmas Eve night. They had a great time opening presents after church the next morning to celebrate Jesus' birthday. 

It took us almost four months to finally figure out a way to keep the goats from climbing into the chicken coop and eating the chicken food. With everything going on, it was hard to think of solutions. We ended up opening the old automatic door by hand to let the chickens out. Big enough for the chickens but not the goats. (We stopped using the automatic door opener because it was guillotining our chickens. They were too dumb to move when the door started to close). 

Rylee learned to spell her name! She also turned three (next blog post). 

And luckily, it took us less than a week to install the more permanent fence around the pool. Also, it wasn't as difficult as we thought it was going to be. We were able to hammer the posts into the ground by hand with a t-post driver. 

Thanks to everyone who pitched in to help us with the fence (and watching the kids while we worked on the fence)! You guys rock!

We officially closed on the refinance last Wednesday, and we are still trying to get used to not having to do work around the house every single evening. It's been nice! All the hard work payed off in the end. 

To celebrate, please enjoy this really precious video of Will Will learning his animal sounds. This is the only song that will calm him down no matter what. It's the song he prefers me to sing to put him to sleep at nap time and night time. 

Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,

Torey, Sam, Rylee & William

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