Mark and Melissa build stuff

Mark and Melissa build stuff We are rebuilding of our 1930’s era house and starting a farm. Come follow us.

With so much planning and working towards the future, finding moments like this are easy to miss. It’s nice to just sit ...
10/08/2023

With so much planning and working towards the future, finding moments like this are easy to miss. It’s nice to just sit down for a brief pause and enjoy the now (from time to time).

Planting rocks. Bandit let me know the gate was an escape/entrance hazard by digging me holes to put some big rocks in.
09/26/2023

Planting rocks. Bandit let me know the gate was an escape/entrance hazard by digging me holes to put some big rocks in.

The three Roos doing Roo stuff and looking cool.
09/25/2023

The three Roos doing Roo stuff and looking cool.

Working on a vanity project for the carriage house apartment. We’ve scaled our build plans back for that space significa...
09/24/2023

Working on a vanity project for the carriage house apartment. We’ve scaled our build plans back for that space significantly, but we were def struggling to find the right fixtures, so we’re making most of them now instead and doing as much up cycling during the process as possible.

Did you know a lot of items on Amazon can be purchased in “used” condition from their warehouse? This includes high dollar items (like faucets and bath fixtures) at reduced cost due to minor imperfections. We’re giving a few of these items a home in the carriage house and likely in the main house as well. Saves us some money and some usable items from ending up in a dumpster.

Bandit is our 7mo old lgd puppy, gifted to us by a homesteading friend and she’s awesome. Loves the goats and chickens a...
09/24/2023

Bandit is our 7mo old lgd puppy, gifted to us by a homesteading friend and she’s awesome. Loves the goats and chickens and even my chihuahuas too! Shes already barked at least one late night visitor away and we’ve stopped finding raccoon poo around the left over grains.

Went out today for a ride through the woods. Came accross some . Guess I know what we are having for lunch.
09/22/2023

Went out today for a ride through the woods. Came accross some . Guess I know what we are having for lunch.

08/07/2023

San Juan National Forest In Colorado, USA

Been a lot of ups and downs this past little while, so in the interest of keeping this short, I’ll break up my update!St...
07/21/2023

Been a lot of ups and downs this past little while, so in the interest of keeping this short, I’ll break up my update!

Starting with a sandwich of good/bad/good news.

Good news is we had some (greatly missed) out of town guests, my parents! Evelyn learned to knit from her Grandma and the kids Grandpa helped Mark build a pole barn for goats (hopefully a lgd or two 😬) and hay. The much needed rain has paused our completion of the barn’s roof, but it’s a fair trade off and the resulting greenery and rushing creeks have been a bonus.

Sad news, our old kitty (Yami) passed away suddenly and after a very fast decline. Multiple vet visits and treatment plans could not sort her out and in the end I know she went at the right time, but it’s been a tough loss on me. She was my sole companion through a lot of life, and it feels a little empty in the house without her easy presence.

Good news to wrap up is our birds have graduated to outdoor spaces (after a couple errors in our judgement on their size). In addition to our new little barn, we fenced out a chicken run off the coop with welded wire (wire gap too big for 2mo old birds) and then a layer of chicken wire (perfect). Birds have also adapted to their auto coop door and I absolutely LOVE that upgrade! I saves me a fair amount of 2am fox fear (a little at least). 3/17 chickens are roosters (although only 10 are straight runs, my hens all turned out hens, hooray!), 2/5 of the Egyptian Fayoumi and 1/5 of my Phoenix/jungle birds. Not a bad ratio at all, so we’ll see how they continue to mature.

Kids are well, animals are growing, pups are all thriving. Overall feeling joy against the loss and at peace with our movement forwards.

We finally lucked out and found an affordable used tractor. It even came with a few implements. I could have went out an...
06/23/2023

We finally lucked out and found an affordable used tractor. It even came with a few implements. I could have went out and financed a bigger tractor, but this one will get us by for a few years.

Todays update (since I have service)!We have 45 chicks (21 are keets) currently living in a stock tank in our sun room. ...
06/11/2023

Todays update (since I have service)!

We have 45 chicks (21 are keets) currently living in a stock tank in our sun room. Hoping not to feed too much of the local wildlife, so we’ve got a few wilder breeds and my fingers crossed their instincts work well. Also got 3 of possibly the most docile breed (Speckled Sussex) of hens I’ve ever had and instantly named all three, so I can probably prepare their headstones now. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Mark and I finished the demo (walls) and threw in a quick kitchen to last us the year (ish) of infrastructure work on the house. Loving having counters again! I’ll try and actually take some pictures of it and post those soon, as I find it to be quite pretty.

Goose get lots of special attention thanks to the burrs in some of our overgrown areas. He seems to try and collect as many as possible, probably in an effort to get as many special pets and as much snuggle time as possible.

Rooster is adorable and loves the farm.

Snapping turtle in our driveway this morning which Mark braved with a stick and a soft kick across the bridge while the kids and I sang the TMNT song out the car window at him. (Spike is fine, btw, the photo is post his kick and after he tried to bite Mark about 20 times.)

-Melissa

05/17/2023

These things happen.

03/09/2023

We recently ran an add campaign on FB to generate some new interest. Unfortunately, we’ve had quite a few people message us asking why “we” messaged them. I can assure you I didn’t send those messages to you. I think this was from the add campaign. I’ll be contacting FB to complain about this. Sorry for any inconvenience.

03/02/2023

Me and my wife often see other people in fancy cars and with fancy clothes. The conversations used to go something like “one day we will have money”, now they go more like “I wonder how much debt they are is”.

A Cadillac used to symbolize you “made it”, now it seems to symbolize how much debt your in.

03/01/2023

Riding the three wheeler accross the property. Sorry the video is a little bouncy and has wind noise.

02/27/2023

Yes, indeed.

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Dixon, MO

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