Big news - lots of catching up

There is so much going on and it's so difficult to keep up! We've made a lot of progress lately. Our shed is fully roofed and has gravel. We are simply awaiting the siding (we are putting up cedar planks).

We have also made huge improvements to our driveway...very exciting!  We are hoping to have that finished sometime today.

Our biggest news so far, though, is that we met with a builder the other night and we really liked him. Everything just sort of 'clicked' with us. We met with him and his wife (they're a team) and they answered our questions with the answers we wanted before we even had a chance to ask them! The best part, though, is that at this point, their timeline aligns perfectly with ours. 

With no major issues (which, let's face it - there will be plenty), we should be in our new home within a year!

In other news, we now have water...sort of! Our well has been dug and we hit water without having to go too deep. We still have to have a pump installed, but this, too, was a huge step for us.

It's the little things

One of the things that has always bothered me about our beautiful property is the lack of a flushing potty. While this is not an issue for the men in the family, it is definitely an issue for me and for my daughter!

Our temporary remedy was to buy a chemical potty. While it was not the most pleasant thing, it did the job. Of course, it had to be cleaned and changed out regularly (a job that, of course, was assigned to me).

Last week we took a tremendous step forward. We had our septic system installed. Originally, our permit called for our septic system to be about 600 feet away from where we were building our house. The extremely rough estimate for installing the system was over $12,000. I told my husband I was not paying that much money for a flushing potty (even though we both knew I was lying and I would totally pay that for a flushing potty!). After much discussion and a new permit, we moved the house site and were able to put the septic system on the old house site, saving thousands of dollars.

Here is where the septic leaves our barn and heads toward the leach field. We once thought this pathway would be our driveway.

This was our original home site. It is now our leach field. We plan to put raised-bed gardens here, as well as house our chickens. I'm pretty excited about the chickens!

Now, we have an almost fully-functioning flushing potty. The only thing missing is water!  We are patiently awaiting our well. We are on schedule to have it drilled soon, but in the meantime, we have rain barrels full of water and we are using that water to flush the potty.

On a side note, we have begun construction on a storage shed.  We have our tractor in our barn; however, we need a place for the other implements when not in use. We are building this three-sided storage shed in one of our fields. It is 10 feet deep and 48 feet long and we believe we are going to use cedar planks to side it. Our friends just did that with their barn and we love how it looks, so we want to give it a try.

Blackberry Cobbler

One of the things I love about our place is that we have wild blackberries growing along an old log road that runs through the property. We haven't had as much rain as I'd have  hoped, though, so they are very slow in ripening.

That being said, I was able, over the course of two pickings, to gather enough berries to attempt a blackberry cobbler.  My husband LOVES blackberry cobbler. He often talks about his grandmother's cobbler and how good it was. The only complaint he had about it was that no one had the exact recipe. His mom tried many times to duplicate Grandma's recipe, but never quite got it right. 

Last summer, I decided to try to make a cobbler like my husband's grandmother's. Before I tried to make it, I looked at a lot of recipes. I chose one out of his mom's church cookbook that looked good. It was for a peach cobbler. I made it, and although it was good, there was one step at the end that I didn't understand; however, since it was my first time making a cobbler, I did it. The result was fine, but it the batter didn't cake up and crust up like we wanted it to.

This year, I took that same recipe and tried again, leaving out the final step of pouring a cup of water over the entire contents of the pan. The result was AMAZING. It was exactly what my husband remembered his grandma's cobbler tasting like, so I was excited to hear that.

We heated the cobbler and served it with vanilla ice cream, of course! It received rave reviews from everyone.

Here is the recipe as it was written. My changes are in italics.

AMISH PEACH BLACKBERRY COBBLER 
Debbie Hagemeyer

1 stick butter
1 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 c. milk
4 - 5 peaches  (I used 5 c blackberries) 
1 c.  hot water (I omitted this step)
sm. amount of sugar to sprinkle on top

Pour berries in an 8 x 11 pan and sprinkle with a teaspoon or two of sugar and let sit. Melt butter in 9 x 13 pan. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and milk. Pour into pan. **Pour my berries on top and bake at 350* for 50 - 60 minutes. Sprinkle with sugar.

**Actual directions read Slice peaches and put on top of batter. Mix water and sugar and pour on top of peaches.

In the beginning...

I'm going to have to go backward quite a bit in order for this to work, but this is a blog about our journey to Happily Ever After.

Happily Every After is more than just a place. It is a dream, a state of being, and the place we decided to call home. It is a piece of land we purchased about two years ago and I hope to use this format to document our journey from purchase to occupancy. It has already been quite a long time, and I know it will take a bit longer to get where we're going, but here's to recording the journey!