Schmidt Homestead

Our new home in Woodburn, IL

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Happy Birthday to Me!

Steve and Phil picked up materials yesterday to build a roof for the front porch and some stairs for the back door. They’re supposed to be working on the front porch roof today, so that’ll be nice to have. The porch was covered in frost this morning. It wasn’t slick, but it won’t take much more for it to be very slippery.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Steve got door hung and the roosts up in the chicken coop yesterday. Once it was dark, we caught the girls in their tractor after they had gone to bed (when they’re calmest) and put them on their new perch in the coop.

Then we caught everybody napping together.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Our main project for the long weekend was to get the chicken coop dry. Steve worked on building it while I painted. We got almost all the shingles on, and I just finished painting when it began to rain on Sunday. We put some plastic over the top vent hole to keep it dry inside.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

We've had frost here several times, and we should get a good freeze tonight. We picked the last of our tomatoes Saturday - many of them were already frostbitten and soft. I have them sitting in three box tops in the second bedroom with the redder ones in the kitchen window. Whatever turns red will get canned in the next couple of weeks. We pulled the cages and stakes out of the garden, and Steve mowed down the plants. We dug up the carrots, and after we get the rest of the beets, he'll mow down the rest of the garden. After that it's just the birdhouse gourds and loofah on the trellis on the front of the trailer. We'll cut them off soon and lay them out to dry in the barn.

We went to St. Louis last night to see the Last Comic Standing on tour. It was a nice break from everything out here.

Steve has been making good progress in his two days off work so far. He finished wiring up the phone, so we have a hard line in the trailer. He got the internet hooked up. He installed a new kitchen sink - it's HUGE. And the biggie was getting the dishwasher installed. He ran our first load of dishes this morning - I am SO excited to not have to do everything by hand anymore!!!

The project list is still long, but Steve is doing a good job of shortening it. It's nice to be able to have lunch together now, and the doggies just LOVE having him home all day.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Laid Off

Steve got laid off at Alpine this morning. Like we needed more stress in our lives. I guess now he’ll have more time to take care of projects that we’ve been needing to do.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Steve sent me ‘spelunking’ under the trailer yesterday to run some phone line and power for the new dishwasher. I eventually had to belly crawl under a low hanging I-beam about a foot off the ground. EEK!