Food, Friends and Hobby Farming

Lots of grape vines on the property. It's been fun (and very therapeutic) doing a little bit of gathering.

The old owner left a juicer behind, so we got to try it out on a few of the grapes we harvested. Very yummy, and even better if you mix it up with a few other juices. Also discovered an apple tree as well, and made a small amount of apple juice from the few apples that were left. 

A PG friend game to visit while they were down visiting family, and soon Hazel was showing them around the property. I'm very glad that Hazel has adjusted so well so far (way better then I ever expected her too). 

In the process of trying to decide which grape vines should stay and which could go. We (Oma/Mom and me) decided to pick a laundry basket of grapes together and try make grape juice by boiling the grapes and mashing them rather then the little juicer. We probably would have been able to process them all had we stuck to one laundry basket, but I brought one and Oma brought one and soon they were both full! We learned that de-stemming grapes is very time consuming, but also made 3 very large juice jugs full of yummy grape juice that we got to share over the few family events happening that weekend. (we did run out of time though and only made it though about half of each of our baskets)

Family from Smithers was down for a visit, Hazel had not seen them before (at least not old enough to remember). But she warmed up much quicker then expected despite the large amount of people around and really seemed to have a good time. 

Hazel has also grown a lot during and after the move, so we went to the shop to find some Sunday boots that would fit. And what did we find tucked in one of those boots? a long lost favorite little pink bear!

Tired of renos and sorting items for the day, but still wanting to spend time on our property, we started clearing away the grape vines from the shop's back door. 

Hazel was content making flower juice. I love when she just plays and makes things with what she finds in the yard!

Much better! Now I can walk into the shop without ducking under grape vines and walking into as many spider webs!

Playing on a trampoline at a friends house, though we didn't maintain that much contact over the years we had see each other once and while. It was nice to have a catch up visit and see our two "slow warm" girls slowly warm up and play together. 

This is Dad/Opa's hobby barn. A wonderful place to head to every morning!

It has a nice spot inside where you can watch the chickens. There are a few other pens as well with different stages of meat birds too. 

Hazel and Jade really enjoy collecting eggs when they don't need to walk through 90-100 chickens to get to them. 

So far our cats are still sticking around.

And Custard had 5 kittens that we found behind the hay bales (poor cat must have been moved pregnant). I was surprised that they are all so similar looking, so far all the kittens litters have had more variety in coloring.  

Quite a few years ago Dad/Opa gave me a sign that said "Home is where the barn is" with a horse head on it. Though there are not any horses in this barn a lot of concepts are the same. There are animals that need to be cared for and fed, routine chores, the smell of feed and hay, a place to go that just makes you relax as soon as you walk though the doors. 

Phase 2: Demolition, Part one

With the house being empty, the fun work (according to the guys) of uninstalling and demolition began.

Kitchen Before (ish): 

Laundry Closet Before ish:

No more Kitchen....

No more closet...  the guys had finished the kitchen removal the day before. Dad (Opa Flokstra) went back the next and took out the closet walls and squared off the arch into the living room. 

It really opened up the area and view of the living room much more than I expected. 

This is a room in the building behind the house that we hope to turn into Jared's office. It was also full of furniture, cobwebs and piles of dead bugs :P Originally I had planned that this would be my warm up project for painting and refinishing while the house was being worked on, but Jared noticed a significant bow in the ceiling which upon further inspection revealed that there is not enough supports for the ceiling.

So with the guys still in demolition mode, down came ceiling number one.

And ceiling number two... which I believe had a layer or two of particle(ish) boards on top.

It also came with many other treasures that were stored in the "attic" space, some squirrel evidence and old nut stores (hence the coveralls and masks). 

There were times when we were in phase one of unloading the house where progress felt slow and the stuff didn't seem to end. But a few days of multiple hands on deck and bigger impact projects such as large furniture, carpet, kitchen and wall removal felt like huge wins that kept my heart up (even though this is work that kinda makes things worse before it gets better). 

Looking forward to rebuilding together! But until then stay tuned for Demolition, Part two. 

 

Phase 1: Empty the House

 We started our empty the house project in kitchen cupboards, which were thankfully mostly empty already and then moved to the upstairs "attic" storage that was accessible by a few doors in the upstairs rooms. I started with taking a box out at a time and bringing them to the shop, which got old pretty fast. So next time I unloaded this whole Christmas and seasonal decoration storage all at once and sorted through it in the room before bringing it downstairs.  This is a picture from when I unloaded all the boxes and was contemplating how I was going to get out of the storage area through the little door and over the mini mountain of stuff. 

It was actually a cute little attic space once we got all the boxes out of it. 

I did manage to clamor my way out and start sorting. Garbage went out one bedroom window onto the drive way (saved me some stairs runs), and donation items got bagged or boxed for when I had energy to do the stairs. We left PG just when it was starting to get the fall crispness in the air and arrived in Chilliwack to a very muggy and warm tail end of summer in September, so I found stair runs very draining and something that needed to be saved for mornings or cooler days. 

There were 5 attic accesses upstairs, thankfully I started with the biggest one, and two others were empty, and the last two were much smaller. One of them had some left over school supplies in them, these felt bears were really neat, they came with a set of 5 words, and you had to match what the bears were doing to the words. Hazel really enjoyed the activity. 

Next was getting all the little things and bedding down the stairs, at least it was easy enough to bag and toss, and then collect later. It was hard getting rid of so much stuff especially as a bunch of it is still usable, but we already had more then enough of our own bedding packed. So I was very pleased that I only ended up with one bag of items to keep (especially since saying "no" to free items is a weakness of mine). 

As I sorted and moved items out of the house the girls have been having a blast playing with items I'm sorting, or the left over toys or just exploring. I did "lose" Jade for a very short amount of time, quickly looked in all the rooms and was about to look upstairs, when I asked Hazel if she knew where Jade was " she's in the chimney" she prompt responded. 

Jared's old homeschool friend came over to check the place out, and got roped into helping move some of the larger furniture out of the house and into the shop. They got a good chuckle out of this island counter top that popped right off when they tried to move it. The quick visited turned into a impromptu BBQ and a neat time to connect with old friends, we even ended up visiting in the living room once it got dark, which just gave the emptying house a homey hopeful feel. 

Papa and Nana also came over for a work bee. We removed more of the bigger furniture, took down window coverings and took out the carpet in the living room, master bed room and one of the upstairs rooms.

Living Room

Front door, and Family room/playroom

Family room/playroom

Master bedroom

Thankfully it had normal carpet underlay and other flooring underneath the carpet.

Utility room

The plan is to move the washer and dryer into this room.

East upstairs room

Not sure what this is, possibility was once upon a time the rubber backing of the carpet... Papa worked on that project for us. 

A House to Make a Home

 It will be a big project, but we already learned with our PG house that the effort put in to make a house a home is really what counts. The house came with the majority of the big furniture left behind and the shop, shed and storage rooms full of items as well (which we knew going in). So there will be no shortage of sorting and purging for the next while! 

We are on 2 acres, some of which is hay field and some of which is gardens and grass. What I found really neat is when we measured it on google maps, the lived in space on this property and the lived in space on our PG property were very similar. 

Below are video walk throughs of downstairs and upstairs, some of the furniture was removed already by the time I remembered that a walk through video to compare to later would be neat. 

Moving Day

We did it. Packed up and moved out by 10:00am, September 10th, said our goodbye's and were pulling out with our convoy around 10:30. This place was really the first place we would call a home rather then just a house and it will always be very dear to us. We came as two and left as four, blessings abound!

Saying goodbye was hard, but a moment that I didn't want to regret missing later. Hazel and I walked around the house to say goodbye. "Goodbye house, Goodbye windows, Goodbye Curtains, Goodbye bedrooms" Hazels little voice carried a bit of an echo as we walked around. 

One last look and walk around the back yard while Jared buckled the girls in. 

Dad Flokstra's truck with the moving trailer, Jared's truck with the camping trailer, and our van made up our convoy. 

We made it safely to Chilliwack, our house to call and make a home in the background. It will be a process as we clean out and fix up the place before moving in. But so far we have settled well into the Flokstra's house as we tackle the house project together. Very thankful for all the help and support of family and friends through this big move and transition.