Muzzleloader deer

So Wednesday morning begins the season for muzzleloader deer in Utah and I have a tag this year. It's the first time that I will be trying it out. Not hunting, but hunting with a muzzleloader. It will seriously limit my range and I will most likely only get 1 shot at any one deer.

I decided after a number of years of hunting the general rifle deer season in Utah that unless I was going to either buy a large piece of private land, or spend a ridiculous amount of time and effort hiking, scouting and generally obsessing over deer that I needed to try a different hunt time. With any luck I should be able to see a few bucks this season as they haven't been hunted for two months straight yet and should hopefully not be overly gun shy.

I'll head up tomorrow and spend the night in my GI standard issue canvas pup tent that I have left from my ARMY days. It'll be cold but not terrible. The next few nights I have a friend that's coming up in his travel trailer and has room for me so... lucky me!

I'll be keeping my eyes out for a few blue Grouse as well. from what I've heard this is a bumper year for them. we'll see.

I'd be pretty happy to have some all natural venison to eat over the winter so wish me luck!
P~

I married a smart Ass!

 Yep, I married a smart ass. Well OK, to be fair, I probably CREATED a smart ass... but hey, the potential had to have been there right?
Today she was digging through the .50 cent bin at the store and found this gem that she of course felt I haaaaaddd to have for my evening relaxation... It is after all the "Ultimate in Relaxation".

 How could anyone in their right mind pass up a description like that anyways?!
"The crowing of the rooster welcomes the awakening of a brand new day... "
So cheezy!

You know what the funniest thing is though? We put it on to hear what it was and it is literally the sound of a farm. Cows bellowing, and roosters crowing... You can hear the farmer walking around digging grain out of a metal container and chicks clucking... And we knew exactly what all the sounds were.LOL
Oh man. You know some guy in New York City is listening to this baby and just eatin up every second of it. Not to bag on NY.
Watch for sounds for this baby to work their way in somewhere on this... or maybe some other site...
"Let the stress of modern living dissolve to the sounds of Farm Life"... still cracks me up!
Take care all~

New house progress (photo blitz)

Since we moved in on the first of June, there's been a ton of goings on around the new place. As you can tell the outside of the house, which was built in 1969, has had significant updating and doesn't look its age.

On the inside, besides the colors being kinda funky, the kitchen was pretty small. not very much counter space, and keep in mind, on the left side of this picture is where the fridge is supposed to be and would stick out two feet into the kitchen. It would have been tight.

That's why we decided to gut it and start from scratch. We intend to be in this home for the foreseeable future, like till we're too old to keep up with it, so we felt a total kitchen do over was warranted now rather than once we were living in it already.

Below you can see where the left side wall has been re-engineered into a recessed wall nook where cabinets and a fridge will now be INSIDE the walls rather than sticking out into the kitchen. Because of full span ceiling trusses we were able to really have some flexibility with design.

We loved out oak flooring so much in our last house that we went ahead and installed it in this new kitchen as well. The yellow hose you see in the middle of the floor is the new gas line drop that we had installed, the only contract work we hired out for by the way. This process had us moving gas lines, running new 220 outlets for the oven and new water lines for a fridge. It was a pretty comprehensive overhaul.

We were lucky because under the carpet was an original oak flooring that we could tie into. As coincidence would have it, it had been milled by the same millworks as the new flooring we found! weird huh?

After some serious sanding the differnce between the old and new had vanished!

As of last week. The kitchen is finished. We installed an IKEA kitchen and loved the results. The backsplash is tile, our first attempt at it and A~ is already making plans for a new bathtub surround.

The wall with the built in fridge, Oven and that top thing is a microwave.

We love our giant "Farm Sink"

The bar side of the kitchen with gas cook top.

In the living room, A~ painted and repurposed a credenza from a thrift store and matched it with great new buys for a pretty damn good looking room if I do say so. This is the view from the front door.

View from the dining area adjacent to the kitchen.

This is the view of our property from our bedroom window. The play house is gone now too. Our 2.6 acres goes pretty much all the way back to the treeline you can see on the horizon.

Here's the pasture. The barn on the right is the same small one from middle of the picture above.
The field is planted in a pasture grass that for this year at least I am letting my neighbor harvest for his horses. Building bridges!

This is our Russian olive that's at almose the back of the pasture. We want to make a nice get away sitting area out here at some point to just enjoy being away from stuff and to appreciate the great views.

And  speaking of great views. This is one of my favorite. Taken from our covered porch after a stormy day had cleared and the colors were intense! This is my new happy place!

Well, a picture says a thousand words so... there's about 18000 for you! Hope you like. Talk to you again soon!
P~

We're alive... ALIVE!!!

I have so much bringing up to date that needs to happen that it's absolutely ridiculous. If you're one of the few that follows me on facebook you might have some small idea of the chaos that we managed to insert ourselves into, otherwise... ugh.. where to start?!

Late last year, my wife A~ and I decided to put our house on the market when spring rolled around, and see what came of it. Well, what came of it was that we listed it on Feb 1st, and it managed to sell in exactly one month. Then we found ourselves contractually obligated to be out of the house by the end of March. During that time, we managed to find a wonderful house, that met 95% of everything we had identified as wanting in a new long-term home and made an offer. After some negotiations, we had an offer accepted and were scheduled to take ownership at the end of April, which left us in a temporary housing situation in an apartment. We would be able to be out of our temporary apartment and into the new home by the end of June. Because there were a number of small issues with the new house, crack in foundation that had a seasonal leak, outdated kitchen with really really funky countertops, leak in roof and just general outdatedness, we tackled a pretty significant remodel project on the inside of the place which left us pressed for time since I essentially gutted the entire kitchen down to studs and subfloor. We figured as long as I could have the kitchen completed, or close to completed by the time we moved in we would be alright. Well, we almost made it...

We did manage to have the majority of the kitchen framed and drywalled before we moved in and had started the process of building up our IKEA kitchen abinets. Let me take a moment to call BULLSHIT on anyone who says you can assemble an IKEA kitchen in a weekend! It did go together fairly easily, but took a ton of time and a number of calls to their service and support center before the kitchen was even functional, let alone completed. In the mean time, while I spent my nights working on a little project here or a little project there to finish the kitchen off, A~ busted her butt getting the rest of the main living areas functional and actually pretty damn nice looking. We still have a tone of work to do, but so far it still remains a labor of love.

As far as the yard and garden are concerned, I really have little to nothing to report other than it has been in my mind constantly. I plan to spend a lot of this upcoming winter plotting and planning the future iterations of the farm and how I hope to see it go forward. For now though, I have pretty regular discussions with myself as to what it is that I would like to see back there. It's fun to have enough land (2.6 ac) to really get to think about all the fun projects and long term goals that can be potentially accomplished.

Finally, the reason I can say definitively that I am back is because for the first time since March, we again have an internet connection in our home. Yes, you heard that right, the last nearly six months we managed to exist with no in house internet. It honestly wasn't too bad other than a few research problems I had when it came to some commisioned writing, but we managed to get by with phone data and local free wi-fi hotspots. Now though, now we're back on line and I have a TON of stuff going on and I'm excited again to be writing. I know there's still a few of you out there who drop by from time to time, and I still seem to pop up on the search pages so with any luck we can pick up where we left off and keep on growing the possibilities together.

Hope you are all well and have been much blessed since last we chatted.
Namaste.
Paul Gardener.
P~

The chaos that is our happy home

Well, as best as I can manage, I thought it was about time for an update.

Since last post, we have mostly gutted our basement and kitchen areas, have at least partially rebuilt the kitchen and have managed to move into the new house. Because half the house is not yet finished, that half of our stuff is piled basically on top of all of our other stuff. This lends to a general aire of chaos around the place. In addition to this, part of the house that is not yet finished is the kitchen, which makes it kind of hard to put all of your pots, pans and food away, so now add those items on top of the other stuff, you know so you can get to them easier, and you have a good idea of our living room decor. Of course I say this somewhat tongue in cheek, but quite honestly, it's not really an exaggeration. On the upside, tomorrow I will have completed half the counter top, and will have running water in the kitchen so that will make it immenently easier to cook and wash up which will do wonders for both our morale and our diets which have consisted of waaay to much eating out for the last month.

I have to take a moment to praise my two younger sons who have been the very best of sports about everything since we moved in. Did I mention that we have no A/C or swamp cooler? Yep, we've been pushing through the heat wave with just fans and passive cooling. There are a few miserable hours of the day, but overall we're getting by. I'll go more into how that's possible when I have more time and can more easily upload photos (I'm still updating via cell phone), but suffice it to say that the house was well built.

Despite all the trials so far, we all are very happy with our new home so far. Our neighbors are very nice and are happy to have new neighbors since the house had been vacant for nearly 18 months. One has a couple of old tractors and it looks like he's going to let be buy one from him for a good price.

It's the things like this evening, when I had driven the truck into the back field to unload a shed with the boys, then afterwards we just sat on the tailgate drinking some water, watched the sunset and talked about how this will always be our view.
Things are good... Chaotic yes, but good. Besides I was getting a little bored with everything being basically done....
Ha! You won't hear that complaint for along time to come.
Till next time...
P~

Bare minimum connection

Just a real quick note, mainly because it was pointed out to me that I had not been keeping up with my comment moderation - I know you didn't mean to call me out, thanks for keeping me honest though! - and I thought I should take two seconds to explain myself..

Since we are currently ”in transit” and living in a small apartment for a few months, we decided to simply put many of our services, such as tv and internet, on hold rather then paying to move them twice. As such, everything you see from me, whether it be a facebook post or a blog entry, is coming to you via Android phone. It's kind of a pain to do some things, moderation included, on the phone so I tend to fall as little behind. Also, I can't stand my blog formatting, but hey... some info is better than none right!?
Bear with me please... We'll get there!
Best to you all... Hope your spring (or fall for my Aussie friends) is going well.
P~

Update on remodel

Well, I figure it's about time for an update...

We closed on our new home, I like to call it our new ”farm” but since we're not really living there, nor growing anything there it's kind of premature I suppose. Anyway, we closed on it on the 25th of April, and started the process of gutting and remodeling the inside on the 30th. It's been one week since and we've made great progress!

The two main areas that we needed to focus on were the kitchen and the downstairs living area. The kitchen because it was just out of date (and had a horrendous clear acrylic with gravel inlaid countertop) and we needed/wanted more room. The downstairs living area because there had been some moisture damage, the walls were covered with circa 1969 wood paneling, and because the flow of the space was not very good in general.

To this point, all the tearing out has been completed and everything going forward is construction. I'll have to post more details as we go, but here are a couple of pre and post tear out photos.