Another Addition to the Farm

Well, we are an official farm now!  Thanks to our neighbors who provided us with our first 6 laying hens.  The chicken coop is pretty deluxe as far as chicken residences go, plenty of space, multiple roosts, lots of daylight, great protection from the elements and possible predators.  We look forward to fresh eggs soon, although we realize that egg production slows way down in the winter-we'll take what we can get.  Life on the farm is lots of work, but still lots of fun.

Something VERY new for the New Year

Mowgli....the cat.Anyone who knows me knows I am not a cat person, but thanks to my cousin, Andy and I are starting the new year with a new orchard cat. Mowgli was a Seattle cat who was having trouble playing nice in the city life. He now resides in our greenhouse and is taking to country life quite well. I have been the one feeding him, so he likes me way more than Andy, so we call him "my cat". Somehow having a "barn cat" makes our place seem even more country now. Happy New Year to you all, I hope you each have something new to enjoy this year.

Country Living is Good

A quick 5 minute walk around the property can produce vases of flowers like this every day, so nice!

A summer staple: Pulled pork. Andy is smoking 30 pounds of pork for the 4th of July celebration.

Smoked Alaska! We are trying desert on the grill for the 4th of July. Pound cake, a layer of cherry preserves, ice cream, fudge, all wraped in a layer of meringe and frozen. The whole thing is put on a wood plank and placed in the grill to toast the meringe...should be exciting!

We net our cherry trees to keep the birds from eating all the cherries. Sometimes birds get caught in the net and we have to go out and "take care of them". While checking the nets the other day Andy realized he had caught something much larger than a Robin. This is a Hoary Marmot who was trying to get a free treat from the cherry tree and had gotten stuck. Andy freed him from the net and we have seen him every day since. He is currently residing underneath one of our out-buildings we used to refer to as the "Skunk House" because skunks used to live under it. Looks like we will now have to call the building the "Hoar House"...not sure about that.

We discovered that we have three fledgling Barn Owls living in our silo. When you peek in on them they hiss at you and snap their beaks to sound intimidating.

Life is good. We work outside every day, but love it. Our friends and family are over regularly to enjoy good food, help with a work project, or just hang out on a nice summer evening. I can't imagine life any other way.

Owl Banding

Andy and I got a chance to go out on a trip with the BLM and band fledgling Western Screech Owls for a day. We covered nearly 250 miles that day, most of them on dirt roads. It was a fun day, except for the baby owls poop all over your hands when you pull them out of the nest box!

A Photographic Update

Andy's newest love...an All Clad Skillet full of Apple Crisp!

It wouldn't be the Frahm house without a project...we rebuilt the front deck over Labor Day. (We take the name "Labor Day" literally at our house)

Another two of Andy's new loves. He has gone full charcoal and there is no looking back. (We may have had a major catastrophy with the previous gas grill.) Andy is now capable of BBQing for a small army with his new grill and smoker.

Andy ran a 1/2 marathon last year. This picture was taken at the last mile and he is still smiling even though it rained the whole time and was about 40 degrees.

Peace

This is what peace looks like at our house. May you also find peace during this season of celebration.

Merry Christmas!

(Yes, I am going to just pretend that I have been adding updates all along and not appologize for the 7 month gap in updated posts.)
Merry Christmas! Andy and I have been enjoying all the important things of Christmas: peppermint bark (homemade by Andy), Christmas cookies, waffles, peppermint cocoa, and NNU baseball fund-raiser oranges (gotta have something healthy on the list). We have also attended some great Christmas performances of our nephew Noah.

Yes, our Christmas tree is HUGE!!! Originally, we bought a living Christmas tree that we plan to plant on the property with all the other pine trees, but a live tree can only be inside for 5 days max. Andy and I were feeling very un-Christmas-y, with no tree in the house, so we caved and bought a tree. This was literally the smallest tree on the lot! I plan to decorate the living tree out on the deck and enjoy the two trees, since last year we had no tree.

Spring Photos

Spring is a lovely time in the orchard. Here are some pictures to enjoy what we get to see every day!

Things that go bump in the night

Here is one of our "tenants" who we see on a regular basis. Andy and I have a new evening routine that involves creeping around our property at dusk whispering and searching for owls. This is one of the several Great Horned Owl sightings we have made. We know...we're nerds.

Moving Day!!

I am currently sitting at the kitchen table writing this post from our new home!!!! It was six months of an incredible amount of work, but it is all worth it to sit in our house and be home. We still have minor projects to do, but we are here to stay. As boxes get unpacked, I will post some new pictures.

Some updated pictures

The breakfast nook bench is finished. The bottom beadboard is salvaged from the original porch wall to keep some of the original house history intact. The washer and dryer are in and working in the laundry room. And our first snow fall was on Saturday.

On the top of Andy's Christmas wish list

I caught a glimpse of this a while back at Barnes & Noble. Anyone who knows Andy knows how highly he thinks of Chuck Norris; and in light of the recent poll that came out ranking television's most "manly men" and Chuck Norris' absence from that list I feel that it is only right to remind all of you how great Chuck Norris is. Walk on Walker, Texas Ranger, walk on.

What we do in our spare time

I know that every post has been about the house and some of you may be thinking, "Do Andy and Kori ever get to do anything else?"
Allow me to introduce SAM (Smoking Anatomy Model). To go along with my tobacco unit at school Andy was kind enough to help me make SAM smoke some cigarettes last night. What a gross, smelly habit!
So yes, our lives have been reduced to work on the house, work in the orchard, and work for school.
Some day Andy and I will sit on our porch and enjoy the evening...someday.

My lovely cabinets

Is it wrong to be in love with cabinetry? I absolutely love my kitchen cabinets! We managed to squeeze every useable inch of storage space out of our tiny kitchen. If anyone living in the Nampa area ever is in need of amazing custom kitchen cabinets that are actually cheaper than boxed cabinets from Lowe's go to Kinsmen Cabinetry! They may not be the fastest, but their craftsmanship and quality is outstanding. Each slide on either side of every drawer can hold 100 pounds, that's some major silverware storage!

We took the picture at 9 o'clock at night after the 4 of us had just finished staining the hardwood floors (thus the mighty mess on Andy's shirt).

Floor Facts

We have stained the floor and the finishers came today to put the first coats of finish on. Crawling on hands and knees until 9 o'clock at night isn't the most fun job we have done, but the floor looks great. Toby and Noah were great help staining the floor. (Can you tell that our poor camera has been in a construction zone by all the sawdust stuck to the lens?) A look at the floor before we stained.

Home Sweet Home

We are getting closer to our move-in date! Flooring is next on the list. We have started to hang the doors, tiling in the bathroom is done I just need to grout the walls in the master bathroom shower. Here is the picture from the real estate flyer. As you can see, the yard is looking much healthier and the house is in much better condition, as for the deck...it will have to wait until next summer.

Uncovering History

The house continues to look more and more liveable. We have been working the past few days on refinishing the original (1920) hardwood floors. While pulling out some old patches from previous remodels we uncovered a newspaper under the floorboards from 1949. A Hudson Hornet could be purchased for $2,500 and Babe Ruth was the highest paid athlete; making $80,000 in a season! This is what the living room looked like the day we bought it, Pink floral wall paper, pink carpet and feeling like a tunnel.

Here is the most recent picture after Dad and Andy have been sanding away on the floor. The floor is amazing, there is not a knot in a single board throughout the entire house. It is all vertical grain heartwood fir. Tomorrow the kitchen cabinets are getting installed, you can guarantee that pictures will be coming soon!

The Laundry Room Before and After

Here is the current state of the laundry room. Much nicer and more inviting than previously. Here is what the laundry room used to look like. Both pictures were taken from exactly the same spot. It was a scary, musty, dirty, dark room.

Let's meet the work crew!

The project has definitely been a family affair. Without the help of Dad and Mom and yes, even Noah this house would have never come together. Andy and I are so incredibly blessed to have so many people willing to help us out.

Evolution of the Bathroom

As we approach our move-in day I am continually amazed at the transformations that have taken place. For instance the bathroom; what used to be a small fruited wallpaper room has become a much more user friendly bathroom for two. The before of the fruitiness.
The demolition. (Yes, we did cut the bathtub in half to get it out)
The final color. The sinks will be here where the bathtub used to be. A tiled stall shower is on the right and the toilet is in the corner.