A Little Round-Up of Lately

WELL.

After my last post chronicling the struggles of breastfeeding and weight gain with Baby GHM all I can say is THANK YOU to my community! Thank you for all the kind words, care packages and sweet messages of support! It does truly take a village to raise a child and Maple and myself are so very, very thankful of our village!

I’m happy to report that sweet Lu is on the up and up for weight gain and holding steady at the 5th percentile! We thank lactation consultants on a daily basis and sing their praises to anyone who will listen!

The arrival of Baby GHM has motivated Maple and myself in a unique way. We’re painting Trapsheds and chicken coops, building extensions, building greenhouses, doing dirtwork, stacking wood, planting trees – all the good stuff. The bees are industriously making honey, the meat birds are growing, the hens are laying and Maple might have just talked me into a rabbit hutch in the chicken coop for meat rabbits.

I’m enjoying the heck out of a well-timed glass of wine every night and slowly, slowly relearning how my life works with a baby. Blogging has definitely taken a back-seat for last few weeks but I’m definitely working on getting back up to once a week.

Here are a few photos of the last few weeks, of projects, of the land and of us.

Baby GHM at 3 Days Old. New parents. No sleep. Lots of love.

When my father and Maple’s sister were here for a few weeks we got all kinds of motivated and, in the course of two weekends, built a greenhouse, stacked a ton of wood and painted both the Trapshed and the Chicken Coop. It’s a lot easier to work outside when you have someone to help hold the baby!

I’ve been wanting a greenhouse for years so I’m super stoked to have one! We’ve reused our wedding pallets as bases for all the tomato and snap pea starts, I like the idea of all that love going up into the tomatoes.

As soon as the greenhouse was finished we put all our starts inside but then, two days later. they were all gone thanks to a sneaky vole! We searched and searched for the point of entry but we couldn’t find one. Maple embraced his inner 9 year old boy and set about twenty tiny mouse traps in the greenhouse, baited with cheese. The next day he woke me up at 6:30 to joyously inform me, “We got him! We got him!”.

I was pretty sad about losing my tomato starts, I feel like growing tomatoes is like therapy to me. So we took a little out of the egg money fund, went to Plant Kingdom (a local greenhouse), a bought about ten tomato starts. The snap peas seem to be recovering from Mr. Vole so the greenhouse is full of chaotic green love again.

Chicken Coop before.

What a difference, eh? I’m always amazed at the amount of new life a few coats of paint can breathe into a structure. The Trapshed turned out even sharper!

When our guests left we were still motivated to keep on keeping on. We added an extension to the Trapshed for hand tools, the second sets of tires and the snowmachine. We also started dirtwork! Right now we’re mostly pushing dirt around to finish clearing out the housepad but we hope to start on the driveway in the next little while or so.