Mike & Gwens Story....

Mike & Gwen bought this 18 acres so they could raise horses. It was covered in oak trees and yopoun holly bushes so over the years , with the help of a Bobcat machine , they have cleared about 1/2 of the trees and transformed them into pastures. They are in the process of clearing the rest of their land so the horses have enough pasture to rotate and give the grass a chance to grow.
They bought a church and had it moved to the property and lived in this converted church for 8 years as is. Over the years they added a bedroom/bath, small kitchen to the sides of the house. This last year they made a major renovation and added on about 1000 square , which included a living room, a much larger kitchen and laundry room. It is a work in progress, not finished yet but they are at least living in the areas as is.


They really have a nice set-up; chickens, ducks,turkeys (they had one of them for Thanksgiving that weighed 52 lbs) an above ground pool, the horse barn and a soon to be very large nice house!

SNOW!!!!

WOW it never snows here...well almost never!

The snow was so wonderful to see, it reminded me of the snow we had in the mountains of New Mexico. It would always silence everything and bring a stillness to the day.

Another day of inside work!

Dead tree over the chicken coop...

A few months after we finished the chicken coop the tree hanging over the roof died of Fungal canker. We are told it was because of the extensive drought that oak trees get stressed and are susceptible to this disease . Here is some information on the internet http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/SUL11.pdf

We started cutting the tree down by cutting the small branches with aan Electric 6 amp pole saw (ours is a Homelite) we have had a gas pole saw but it was so top heavy it was difficult to maneuver and it would shut off when we tried to cut branches up high.
We then chained a short section to the next lower section of the tree so it would not fall on the roof. It took a long time to do this but we did not hurt the building or ourselves by going slow and cautious.