I think we have decided that Maine is not going to happen for us, at least not for awhile (goodby snowy winters, goodby 125 acre field, sniff) and so we are moving ahead and planning on doing as much on this 2 acres as we can. We will continue the restoration of the house, but add into our work more research on solar panels (they have cool presss and stick solar panels now!) and other things to bring us more and more off grid, less and less dependent on what we must buy rather than procure for ourselves. In this is the restoration of the upstairs fireplace...and the installation of a (hopefully) field stone fireplace in the sun room area. That room, which has windows on the south, north and west, gets COLD in the winter...and a full fledged fireplace suits me better than a wood stove. With a fireplace in the den, and one in the kitchen/dining area (both areas can be closed off from the rest of the house) we can concentrate most of our living in those areas in the winter.
Marc hopes to get the office bathroom walls ready to be painted this next weekend and once the downstairs is done we can regroup as to what we want to do next.
Ethan harvested soem fresh cilantro out of his garden yesterday, and Shiloh's cukes seemt o be doing well. I told the kids this morning that for the summer we were going to concentrate on homesteading activities (plus math) rather than normal school days...
they were ecstatic. :)