September 2019

This was the month that we began preparing for winter - and just in time! The growing season came to a screeching halt as we faced this forecast for the last weekend of September:

YUCK. Snow in September is just WRONG.

Thankfully we had used the month to work on a few big projects:

1.  We finished rebuilding our greenhouse. 

As a reminder, this is what it used to look like (the enclosed balcony) when we built it last year:

And here it is all rebuilt:

Much more streamlined and sleek! :)


2. We stacked wood for the winter! 
We repurposed our storage shed next to the quonset and made it into a wood shed. There are several cords of wood here, dried and ready to be burnt for heat this winter.

3. We worked on preparations for the snow, which included three subprojects: snowblower, snowplow, and snow fencing.

Regarding the snowblower, we had purchased the warranty and were so glad we did! Even though it was as close to a commercial grade snowblower as we could buy, it was still consumer grade and we definitely put it through the ringer the last two years.

Basically all the components had failed by the end of March, so we finally got around to bringing it back to Sears for repair/replacement. Hopefully it will be returned to us soon.

Regarding the snowplow, we did tons of work to determine what might be best for us. We considered attached a blade to the firetruck, attaching a blower to the firetruck, attaching a blade to one of our pickup trucks, getting a 4-wheeler/ATV with a blade, or getting a UTV with a blade. After much research and debate, we finally took the plunge and bought a 4-wheeler.

The blade is en route and will be installed soon, but for now the 4-wheeler has already come in very handy for quick trips down to the garden, bringing laundry back and forth from the guest house, and working on projects in the yard.

And speaking of projects in the yard, the last winter-prepping subproject was building snowfencing. We targeted 3 main areas where the blowing and drifting have been particularly bad the past couple years. (Photos will be forthcoming at some point...)


4. Finally, while not a planned project, our washer unexpectedly bit the dust this month, so we replaced it with this amazing, life-changing,  super quiet, and fantastically energy-efficient one. I am madly in love with this thing!! It's incredible how much cleaner our clothes get with this machine.

In all, it was an incredibly expensive month! But all very necessary purchases. And everything helped us to prepare for this:

Happy September, everyone! Hopefully October is a bit milder.