It always takes a while for the new to become the now.

Today marks a week since we moved into the barn. It is beginning to feel less like camping and more like being home.

The rooster still crows at inconvenient hours, but we are learning to sleep through it. Maggie still does parkour and chews loudly at 3am, but that is also becoming ignorable.

I am learning to use the stove, and to compensate for the terrible wood that we have with planning ahead for longer cooking times. It will take awhile before we don’t need to resort to the Coleman stove on occasion, but I am getting better.

The blackflies are terrible right now, but we have had fairly brisk wind this week and that has helped quite a lot. The wind also helps keep the heat down in the building while the stove is pumping.

Our sink drains into Home Depot buckets. We use all natural, biodegradable soaps, so the water is taken out for use on the garden plants. The rhubarb, in particular, which is a very high-water plant, has been benefitting. The orchard and plantings are beginning to bud up and leaf out. Some are slow, some might be dead. We shall see. A raccoon or skunk has been digging holes out there and dug up my newly-planted currant bush. Blessedly, it left the shrub and I was able to replant.

Yesterday, Dulcinea (7 wk old mini LaMancha) joined our homestead. She is intended to be company for Maggie, but so far, that has not gone well. Maggie doesn’t seem to be terribly keen on her and was being quite aggressive with both horns and teeth, so we have had to separate them. This may mean that Dulcie is a semi-house-goat for at least the cold nights, as she is quite small and unable to cuddle into another goat.