Catching up

Its been a bit since we've posted and I didn't want anyone to think we'd been resting or anything.  ;-)

We officially listed our house on Friday.  That required an insane amount of cleaning, moving, packing and did I mention cleaning?  All of this in the same week we were getting ready to leave for our vacation in Colorado.  That would be why we haven't gotten much posted lately.

You can see our house listed here:  http://www.stephensre.idxco.com/idx/6117/details.php?idxID=392&listingID=128790   I would recommend looking now before we get back from vacation.  It won't stay this clean for long!  LOL

We left for vacation early Saturday morning and made it safely to Colorado Springs, CO, that afternoon.  While we've been gone, Aaron has been hard at work at the farm.  We marked off a contour line for our future grape trellises and marked spots for the trees we bought.  Aaron is planting the trees this week and may be digging the swales for the grape trellis before he leaves on Thursday.  He has also built and back filled the other half of the retaining wall.

If you look closely, you will see the flags marking the contour line

I managed to get a bunch of grape vine trimmings on Thursday and took them to the farm.  Aaron is going to put rooting powder on the cut ends and put them in a planting bed.  Hopefully a few of them will survive and we'll get a few more plants out of it.  If not, then at least Aaron now knows how to prep grape cuttings.  He has also done a ton of weeding and other great work around the farm.  We'll be sad to see him go and we'll hope we get to see him again!

Grape cuttings waiting to be rooted

Aaron weeded the herb area - it looks so much nicer now!

In other news (and if you've managed to read this far), today is Jeremy and I's 13th wedding anniversary.  We took an awesome hike in the Colorado mountains with Jacob and then enjoyed some quality time with Jeremy's grandparents.  Did I mention that the high was only 80 degrees today?  Perfect!

The cavalry has arrived!

Just when we were looking at the to-do list and coming to the sobering realization that we were either going to stop sleeping or delay some things until next year, an amazing thing happened.  A wonderful woman we met at the clay plaster workshop called to say that she had two friends participating in the Worldwide Opportunities in Organic Farming (or WOOF) program in the area and she was wondering if we needed help on our farm.  Seriously?  YES!  Of course we could use help on our farm!

So last weekend we met up with Aaron and Sara to look at the farm and talk about what we could offer in exchange for their time.  The WOOF program's normal arrangement is that the WOOF'er works for 4 hours a day in exchange for room and board at the farm and an education in the things the farm is doing.  For our part, we take the responsibility to feed and house them and to help them learn about everything we're doing. 

So now Aaron and Sara are camping at the farm with arrangements to be able to come to our house for laundry, hot meals and showering.  We're providing food either that they can prepare on the farm or that we have prepared ahead of time.  Aaron has already finished painting the north end of the greenhouse and finished priming the south end.  He did a fabulous job - much neater that I am with a paintbrush!  He's also taken over the daily goat care and regular garden watering which is a huge relief.

Aaron and Sara

Check out the awesome paint job!

Over the course of the 3 weeks they plan to stay, they'll have the chance to learn about how to do swales both on contour to retain water and off contour to move water, how to plant trees, how to create lasagna garden beds, how to plant a vineyard and probably a few other things.  For our part, we'll be able to get several garden beds built, create the vineyard for our grapes and get our new fruit trees planted.  Those were going to be a struggle for us amid all the other things we have to do so its fantastic news!

We can't express our gratitude and appreciation enough.  Sometimes the cavalry really does come riding in!