The Beauty in Necessary Evils

There is never enough time to get things done on the homestead.  You wonder where the time went.  We spent all summer painting the outside of the house.  This meant power washing the exterior and watching pieces of paint and wood go flying all over the yard.  It looked like a ticker tape parade had gone through.

Next was spot scraping and repairing siding and molding from whence said pieces of wood went flying.  Then hitting bare wood with primer, and finally painting.  What we optimistically thought would take a couple of weekends (oh will we ever learn) took the entire summer.  That’s what happens when you're trying to get a major project done on weekends, and half the time you get rained out or some other commitment crops up.  You can only get so much done after work on the weekdays.

But we toughed it out.  It seemed like the never ending project, especially in the face of other things we wanted to do to get the house marketable.  We focused on getting the front done, so we could take pictures to put online.  Larry also put new metal on the porch roof, to match the rest of the house, which was done last year. 

It was a long, slow and sometimes painful haul, but we finally got it done.  We stood at the end of the driveway and thought, wow, the house looks fantastic!  Why did we wait so long to do this? 

Larry also built some sweet steps off the back door.  We’ve been using a variety of slippery, shifting cinder blocks for take-your-life-in-your-hands steps since he bought the house.  Getting the stairs built was a revelation.  It was a thrill to be able to open the back door and step out onto a platform.  It was awesome.  Again, we asked ourselves, why did we wait so long?

It wasn’t a matter of waiting.  It was a matter of prioritizing, of working on what we felt was the most pressing thing each season.  We’d spent almost ten years working on clearing pasture, dropping trees, fighting weeds and trying to get a good grass stand established, and working on gardens.  This year, with no horses and just five low-maintenance chickens, we let the pastures go, which was probably the best thing we could have done for them.  They grew in thick and lush, with not nearly as much weed action as we feared.

Larry also planted almost exclusively pumpkins in the gardens.  He wanted to do something low-maintenance, and they were just the ticket.  He also planted a few cabbage plants (which

the deer enjoyed immensely, thank you very much) and some basil, but the pumpkins became The Thing That Took Over Charley Hill.  They were a huge return on investment in volume.

It’s a sad truth that you get the home improvements and repairs done when you are getting ready to put the house on the market.  The whole thing is bittersweet.  But with no serious buyers at the moment, we get to enjoy our work for a little while.  It's a pleasure to pull into the driveway and see the fresh paint, the new lattice, the beautiful metal roof.  The house smiles.

And we'll take away the lesson - as we said to each other while enjoying cocktails on our newly painted porch – of not waiting so long next time.