The Yard Work No One Wants To Do

As you might imagine, there are a ton of projects to tackle here at our farmhouse cottage. The main focus so far in our renovation has been demo.We have taken down most of the walls inside but have put the interior on hold until we meet with a structural engineer. Hopefully in the next few days, fingers crossed. 

So, what have we been up to since pausing our progress on the inside of the house? Yard work! Taking down trees, clearing the back field (slowly), raking (so.much.raking), and burn piles to make it all disappear. And, that’s just a few of the tasks we have been managing. 

It seems starting a 10 acre homestead from scratch is more of a full scale operation then a casual project. Who would have thought?

All jokes aside, this weekend Justin and I were able to cross off a big project that was lurking on our list. We finally picked up all of the leaf piles that were sitting in our front yard!!

At first, we were bagging the leaves, and storing them in our barn. The thought was to use them for our compost bin once it was set up in its permanent location. With this method, we collected over 20 bags of leaves. And, these (20) bags were from one small section of our yard.

Ultimately, Justin and I decided that it would be best to burn this first round of leaves instead of using it for compost. We were finding so many interesting things throughout the yard – shards of glass, car parts, a steak knife, an old shoe. So yea, with safety in mind, our yard went through a bit of a cleansing.

If I’m being honest, this was a yard work project neither of us wanted to do. 

There’s also the unfortunate case of shiny object syndrome that Justin and I both suffer from. In other words, when we get inspired to take on a project, we put a less desirable one on hold. However, I must say Justin falls prey to this more often than I do. 

So, this weekend when he started to ask about building the greenhouse, I put my foot down and said “I am not talking about any other project until the leaves in the front yard are gone”, with the most serious look on my face. And finally, after what felt like a hundred dump carts later, we did just that. The leaves are gone, and now we are planning for our next project, building our greenhouse!