Forward!

The long-awaited post has arrived; we sold our farm. I waited until it actually closed to post this so I wouldn't curse it somehow, but I deposited the check of funds leftover from the sale today and all the paperwork is signed. The new owner is actually letting us rent our place back from him until December 1st, so we get some time to move slowly. We'll live in my parent's house in Ames while we build our new home.

I'll start posting views of the new place as we build, so here is our "blank slate" as it stands right now. We're basically looking where the front door will be, and we are facing East. Some more pictures taken from the same spot, from north to south:

I know it doesn't look like much right now, but starting next Friday I think we'll have a hole! Then we'll fill the hole with a house. Yes, we are building a house over the winter in Iowa. It's crazy, but I think we've already proved there is a lot of crazy going on here. I think we can get the shell of the house in place before winter really sets in, which means we can make progress over the winter. 
We also have a ton of work to do on fencing, wiring, water, etc. so we had a work day two weeks ago. Wonderful friends helped build fence:

And wire the building:

There is still a long way to go, but it felt good to get so much done. 

We're reaching the point in our farming season where we are taking birds to the locker, getting ready for winter, etc. This is a picture from (chicken) locker day, showing our turkeys and cows hanging out. I actually took it because Ryan is always asking me if I've seen cows, so I was sending him a picture that I had eyes on some cows. Recently they've been challenging fences like crazy, and one bull in particular seems to have lost all respect for electric fence. 

On the quilting front, I did a couple of mug rugs for a United Way fundraiser at work, which turned out well. Mug rugs are kind of fun because they're not very big (these are about 7 inches by 12 inches or so) and they sew up quickly. 

I also finished the quilt top for the one I've been working on, that in my last post I flipped the "sea" on. I got the borders on it during my quilt retreat last weekend.

It's 84 inches by 108 inches, and the border is intended to be the night version of the inside. This picture shows the colors closer than the last one I posted. 

The kids continue to do well, H still likes school and is a hair's breadth from being able to read. Here she is working on a puzzle.

And Z is definitely a toddler, with all the world-exploration tendencies that come with it. Here he checks out the chickens while they were still in the brooder a couple of weeks ago. 

 With that, I'm excited and relieved to finally be moving Forward.