The inspection of Grove House a couple of weeks ago revealed some fairly big repairs that are in order, including replacement of a section of the main floor joist and some large-ish pipes. Tomorrow the new addendum will be signed off on by the sellers and their attorney (in this state, attorneys are required for real estate transactions) and our closing is slated for the 15th. 11 days to go!
I just got home from 10 days in the Pacific Northwest and walked on to our front porch only to find that our chickens look like chickens now rather than the fuzzy babies I’d left behind. New accomodations are in order as I have no desire to make our house (and the neighbors’ yards) smell like a chicken farm. Working on that currently based on coop photos available on www.BackyardChickens.com
After my recent experiences with air travel, my strong preference for car travel has been reaffirmed (and that’s really all I need say about that).
Although my home brewing still stands some time away due to the price of equipment, I am all too happy to begin my adventures in home coffee roasting. Home coffee roasting, as it turns out, allows one to save 25% – 50% on coffee, to roast one’s beans exactly as one likes and to stockpile a “coffee cellar” from which one can formulate one’s own coffee blends or enjoy the distinct flavors of varietal coffees on a stand-alone basis.
As it happens, all one needs for this is a stovetop or electric popcorn popper (or even just an oven or a skillet or wok), some green coffee beans and a grinder. A book is also helpful; the one I have is titled, oddly enough, Home Coffee Roasting. Useful information abounded at CoffeeGeek.com and at SweetMarias.com, the latter being a vendor of many interesting coffees and coffee accoutrements in addition to offering a number of extremely helpful charts and guides for the aspiring home roaster and coffee geek. Green coffee is available through a local source, as well – AbsoluteCoffees.com, which seems to be based in Joliet (I have not been able to confirm this yet).
I was fortunate enough to be able to find beans from a finca (estate) in Boquéte, in the northwestern region of Panamá. Alas, I’ll have no maracuya (a purple passionfruit) ice cream to go with my coffee but homemade flán will suffice!
Our contract fell apart and I decided not to resubmit. The stress of trying to purchase Honeycomb House from a bank who wanted a sale on their terms, period, and would not negotiate was taking a toll on all of us. In fact, since my discovery of Cicero’s extensive and restrictive Zoning and Nuisance laws, I’ve rejected Cicero altogether. Larger lots started to look very appealing after I spent some time planning how to wedge bees, chickens, a pitbull, vegetables, herbs and flowers on to a 25′ x 125′ lot with room leftover for my daughter to play.
We’ve been looking in Joliet. I’ve retitled the blog as though we have already purchased the house we found, but who can guess what will happen next. I’m open to making the best of whichever house we finally end up with without prejudice. The main thing is to live in a safe neighborhood, although I would like to avoid houses that have been “updated” at the expense of retaining any of their original architectural character.
The chickens are growing quickly and (thank goodness) I got a wonderful deal on a huge rabbit hutch to use as intermediate housing; it’s currently situated on our front porch (thank you, Craig’s List).
We’ve had only one homesick letter from the Chicken Whisperer; she mainly spoke of the many marches that were part of the daily routine at camp and the raising and lowering of flags. It’s been over a week and I have to admit that I am missing her. I’ll be picking her up this Saturday, though, and surprising her with not only the hutch, which will one day house a bunny for her, but also an incubator. If we are able to keep our little rooster (I pray that he won’t be loud), then we’ll have fertile eggs from our little bantam Easter Egger, Henrietta (who has a face like Gonzo from the Muppets). If not, I’d like to try our hand at hatching regardless. I’d like to add a Welsummer or two and a couple of Ameraucanas to our little flock.
This summer seems so long and yet is flying by so quickly. I hope to post here in the near future that we actually HAVE successfully purchased a home. Wouldn’t THAT be nice!
Yesterday, my mother and I drove Miss Tibia up to Freeport to spend the night at a hotel before registering her at the Russian Orthodox summer camp nearby. She will be staying for the first two weeks of the month-long camp; this is her first time away from home and we are excited for her. The camp is beautiful and the young counselors are themselves “graduates” of the program. The property itself is lush with trees and has a very nice lake for canoeing and swimming.
There is only one such camp in the United States, as far as I am aware, and one in Canada, so it’s very special that we live so close and also know so many people who volunteer there throughout the year. I hope Miss Tibia will use the stationery we sent her with; sweet homesick letters from camp are one of those special sweet joys that punctuate the steady demands of parenthood.
The Triplets of Belleville followed us home from The Feed Store this afternoon. A shipment of Barred Plymouth Rock pullets came in and we were quick to secure our “egg futures.” The only way to distinguish between them is the size and configuration of the spot upon each of their fuzzy little heads. We’ll name them after the instruments played by the triplets of the above named film in due course; for now, they are the nameless, big, loud and bold new roommates of our poor bewildered bantams, Louisa and Henrietta.
When we put small crickets into the brooder two days ago, L. and H. were a bit frightened – but the new chicks didn’t hesitate to begin chasing and eating crickets within five minutes of their arrival. Hopefully, the bantams will learn by the example of their younger siblings (who are equal in size but still covered in chick fuzz).
I am a proud chicken mom.
You’d think a bank who wants to sell a house and a buyer who wants to buy a house with agreement on the price would have no problem seeing a transaction through – right? You’d be wrong. The seller has rejected our addendum and rather than saying why, has declared the deal to be dead. Our attorney’s take on this is that with banks laying off so many employees, the Loss Mitigation department staff are often swamped with transactions and not open to a lot of dialogue.
After consultation with everyone that there is to consult, we have a plan. We believe we can salvage this deal but it will mean a few more days and finding a different lender, as our lender needed a signed contract by the end of today’s business day due to our specific loan program being terminated (the so-called 203K program, if I’m not mistaken).
The town where the house is located requires buyers to put funds in escrow with the town to insure the completion of repairs. The fact that we’re getting a renovation loan should be enough, one would reason, to have this requirement waived by the township but it isn’t. We’re having a town inspector come through before resubmitting our offer with the original addendum (causing us to take a $4K loss) to insure that we can actually afford the required escrow.
This has been quite an educational process and it isn’t over yet.
I speak about the house as though it’s all wrapped up with a bow but, in reality, there are still a few hurdles to jump. Verbal acceptance of the contract was conveyed last Thursday with an intended closing date of July 11; it’s Tuesday night and we still haven’t ironed out some issues with the contract (as brought to our attention by our attorney). It’s likely that getting the contract adjusted and signed will take until next Monday or Tuesday, conditions being what they are.
All of that said, there’s a brooder with chicks in it in my living room and I’ve already come up with a plant list for the herb garden, so it may reasonably be ascertained that I have confidence in the eventuality of closing on the house. I may post the plant list here at some point in the near future for the plant geeks among my friends and family – you know who you are.
Miss Tibia’s new nickname around here is the Chicken Whisperer. We picked up two bantam mystery-breed chicks (whom we believe to be Easter Eggers) at The Feed Store in Summit-Argo last weekend and she has been working with them amazingly well. Today, one of them ate its first cricket, which Miss Tibia offered by hand.
Alas, we thought we were buying pullets but the chicks were actually straight run (i.e. unsexed) and so one or both of our little dearies may be cockerels. I suspect one (whom we call Louisa) to be a little roo but time will tell. We have a few months before it becomes an issue. We’ll be picking up two more chicks on Thursday – Barred Plymouth Rock pullets.
Here are Louisa and Henrietta, named for secondary characters in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Henrietta is the dark chick and Louisa the chipmunk-looking one.
With extensive home repairs in my future, I naturally began to think of the paramount importance of good beer. Good beer, of course, isn’t inexpensive – or maybe it could be? – and with my lingering interest in fermented foods and beverages, home brewing seems a natural fit. In typical fashion, within two days of this conclusion a stack of books appeared in the house. Of these, four stand out as books that I am likely to draw from heavily in the future. These are: How to Brew by John J. Palmer; Building Homebrew Equipment by Lutzen and Stevens; The Homebrewer’s Garden by Fisher & Fisher and, last but not least, Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher, which tenaciously exposes the history and lore of all of things beer.
I am not really a “beer person.” There are a few beers that I like but I am not an avid consumer. My motivation in brewing is to provide my friends with something a bit special in return for helping me with the house and, perhaps, to take some of the sting out of those long and arduous home repair tasks that lie ahead.
The Homebrewer’s Garden
features a number of herbs that hearken back to my years of dabbling with medicinal herbs and I hope to put in a garden of brewing and medicinal herbs (no accident that they overlap, but more about that later) next spring, when the most serious interior projects are well underway.
The most straightforward brewing tutorial I have found online is at Seven Bridges (they have some good tips there, too). I’m still pondering which recipe to tackle (as there are many in the aforementioned books) for my first brewing.
