August 101 in 1001 Update

So, I need to complete about 5 or 6 of these tasks per month in order to finish, but I was not sure I actually did that this month.  So many plans, but I just could not get to things.  I was actually suprised to see that I DID in fact hit my 6 for the month!  WOO!

21. Create bike/walking trails on the farm  (DONE Aug 2025)

My husband mowed down a path with the tractor around the new fence, taking down some of the old fence to make that work.  I like it!  It's about an 8 minute walk total at my husband's pace.  I mowed it down even further using our regular mower.  It isn't ready for bikes.  That will take years of tramping it down and packing, and then hopefully some a-base can go on it.  I think if we keep using it this fall, and then even make paths with the snow blower in the same area (that should be easy enough considering it is right along the fence line), it should be packed much better next year.

24. Work out a budget/farm plan for the year (Done August 2025)

So I have a program that allows me to use info from previous years to create a budget.  I went through the entire year of 2025 and managed to input actual values, budgeted values, and some other things.  I was super happy to make it work so that the expenses were lower than the income!  SO happy!  I'm not sure how to work the cash flow section of this program yet, but it doesn't make sense to do for 2025 year.  I hope I can figure these things out for the 2026 year in advance.  I'm happy to finally have this done.  Now to try to continue doing this each year... and earlier, too.

31. Make Disney trip albums 1/3

I finally finished our 2011 Disney album!  It's 99 pages, and could be longer, but I'm calling it done right now, even though it isn't printed yet.  I'm going to just print them all around the same time.  It was such a lovely trip down memory lane.  I'm already 3 pages into my 2013 album.  I am not sure I'll finish this one in time, though.  I've devoted an awful lot of time to this project already and we will be starting school soon, so I'll have a lot less time for scrapbooking.  Plus, I'm staying up after putting the kids to bed to scrapbook right now, and it is honestly not something I can keep doing.  Midnight is too late to go to bed at my age... but I keep doing it.

39. Do a ‘drop and dash’ gift give for fun DONE August 2025

I saw this sign at Princess Auto that was PERFECT for someone, so we bought it and my husband brought it down there as a gift while in town running errands.  

44. Go on a weekend retreat  DONE Aug 2025

I kinda put the family weekend down as this.  That wasn't what my intent behind this was, but honestly, there hasn't been anything in the area that would qualify as what I intended to have, and the retreat I was going to do years ago was cancelled last minute, and I haven't been invited to anything since. 

47. Do ‘on farm’ work that saves us at least $20 000 from if we would have hired out.  (20000/20000)  DONE August 2025

I can honestly hardly believe how much we did this summer!  This is amazing!  I am so proud of my family!  Anyway, going from $12500 to over $20000 in one month is huge, so I'll break it down, especially considering a lot of things were small time numbers on their own, but added together became so much more!

Bull Barn:  We saved a lot of money doing the work ourselves in the old bull barn to turn it into a useable area... which isn't finished yet.  We still want to get a nanny cam, projector, work on the doors a bit, and get some fans and heaters.  We have some long term projects in the idea tank as well, like a sauna/hot tub area, toilet area, and zone for prepping for skating if we can make a skating rink nearby.  I also would love to paint the exterior for fun, but these are 'future' projects.  From what we have done so far, this is my breakdown:

- Hire someone to clear out the space and fixing a wall ~ $150 saved doing it ourselves
- Pressure washing prices vary from $0.10 to $1 per square foot, and we did 1500+ square feet.  Saved ~$200
- Paint - Bought a 5 gallon mis-tint with primer for $150.  Regularly would have been about $250.  Saved $100
- Painting - Looked it up and it is amazing how much people charge to just paint your walls!  Apparently the average price is from $2-6 per square foot, and we had about 1500 square feet when you include the ceiling!  I just can't see it being $3000!  I've been painting rooms for years and that is insane (especially since the time it took my daughter and I to do it would have been about 8-10 hours, not including drying time).  I think I'll just put it at $1000 saved.  Seems reasonable, right?

- Rubber floor matts (used what we had, washed them) saved about $1000 from buying rubber workout matts (granted, ours are cut poorly, probably need a carpet or something on them.  I'll say $750 saved)

- Concrete grinding.  Our brother on the farm did this, grinding down a number of concrete spots with a tool we have, as well as removing pipe that was sticking up out of the floor.  Google was giving me a cost of $5-12 per square foot, which I'm guessing is for a nice finished garage floor.  Meanwhile, this is a barn floor with some higher sections and pipe.  He spent a few hours on it.  So... $200?
- Lights - Got on sale from Costco for $50 total for 4.  They are regularly $40 each at home depot.  Saved $110
- Magazine shelves x6.  Purchase price about $17 each, cost to make $0.  Saved $100
- 12 foot countertop and brackets.  Purchase price approx. $200.  Cost to us $0.  Saved $200
- Slide was gifted.  Saved $150
- Play floor matt - Cost new is $30 plus tax.  Purchased for $1.  Saved $30
- Bed into play structure - Cost about $0.  Saved about $200

- Used a lot of furniture we already had in storage.  2 filing cabinets (~$1000 new), door countertop (~$100 new), desk (~$1000), sliding glass cabinet (old, missing legs, used purchase estimating at $50), doored cabinet (old, used purchase ~$30), bench press (missing a bar, but a new one is ~$200, so savings of $50?).  Approximately $2200 saved?

- Bulletin Board.  Gifted.  New is about $70

- Free used Wii, workout games, etc.  Savings of about $40.
TOTAL (so far) Saved $5500 in bull barn.

Coffee Station:  The coffee station area would have cost us to hire someone to do as well.  Not sure what.  I'm not even sure how to get an estimate for that!  However, we used an old countertop that I cut to size that I found laying around in the bull barn.  That was a cut end someone picked up for $40 it looks like (from a sale).  I also changed and fixed up the table that was in there (~$250), and we added some mail sorters and drawer units that we found (~$30), as well as the coffee maker that was upstairs (~$25) and a cookie jar (that looks like a cow... I found a similar one on amazon for $55).  If they wouldn't have been found, we likely wouldn't have done it.  Either way, doing it all ourselves saved about $400.

Other Labor:  My oldest two kids have been doing extra things on farm that were not being done before, especially this month, in between their normal tasks (lots of extra cleaning chores).  We pay them weekly (I aim to ramp this up yet again as they do so much), but I could easily see that the jobs they've done saving us $300+.  

My husband has done a number of modifications on the barn.  As an example, this week he put a bar across the feed trough to fix a situation with smaller animals jumping through.  Savings of about $300.  Also, I did not remember to put in the cost savings of building the fence for the cows last month!  We figure we probably saved over $1000 doing it ourselves with our wonderful hired hand who did SO much amazing work on it, too!  We are so grateful for her! 

48. Put $10 000 into TFSAs  (DONE Aug 2025)
Did it.  Done deal!  Yay!

49. Find a way to pay for a garage/expansion without a loan

If I change this to kitchen, I have saved up what I need to do this through Ikea (if I do the work myself).  I'm a little overwhelmed by this idea, to be honest.  I need to finalize my online kitchen plans, then buy the stuff!

55. Get back to pre-pregnancy weight

I'm back to what I weighed prior to my latest pregnancy.  My thoughts were more on the lines of when I got married, but I'm 12lbs away from that goal, and have not been there since having my 5th baby.  I do want to get to what I was prior to my 7th baby at least, as that was when I made this goal, so 4 lbs to go.  I don't think I'll ever get my waist back down, though.

That said, I've started working on this again.  I'll be doing a walk around the farmyard most days with my belly band on to try to heal my diastasis a bit better.  The chiropractor said that I need to work to heal that separation as most of my hip and back pain is coming from that.  In the process, I'm hoping to help meet this goal.  I need to work on limiting my snacks, though.  I really love my food.  I am still nursing 2x a day, too (morning and before bed).  I really need to up my water intake and actually take care of my health again.  I've been terrible at this.  Honestly, we are going through a family crisis right now (have been for a few months) that I'm not really willing to talk about here, and so I've not been caring about myself so much.  Is that just an excuse?  Kinda.  

90. Learn how to butcher chickens

I NEED to do this... asap!  I want to figure it out on our old birds and use them as soup chickens.  Just the males, though.  We have way too many roosters from our last batch purchased (got them unsexed).  SO many roos.  They keep fighting.  If I can get rid of our old roos, I can move a bunch of my big boys into that coop where they have more room and maybe when they are finally big enough to butcher, I can finally do that.

96. Build a greenhouse OR a summer kitchen

I have the sink and the pallets over by the area I want to build it.  But I haven't done it yet.

6 more done!  Yay!  75 total finished, 26 to go.  I'm already doing better than I did on my last 101 list!  WOO!

101 in 1001 July Update

July was a busy month here on the farm.  My oldest was so excited about finishing the workshop in June that she has made a new pet project or two, both of which were on my new upcoming 101 list which I started in June, and got over 101 items on this month.  Every time I get an idea, I add to it on my phone.  The hardest part with these lists is coming up with reasonable ideas, so I'm excited to have such a list made already!  Also, I figured out I'd need to complete 6 items a month (one every 5 days)  to be able to finish this list by the due date.  Not sure I can do that every month, but I did this time!  Anyway, on to the update!  (NOTE:  I'm publishing this now, but hoping to add some pictures once I get them on the computer from my phone).  Link to my 101 list.

12. Visit the dam, and the falls, DONE July 26 2025

We figured out when Chuck had his next weekend off, and so we decided to head over to the falls and the dam again this year as last time we went was 3 years ago, and we really enjoyed it.  The kids brought swimsuits this time so they could enjoy the water.  It was a really hot day!  We also managed to follow the path the correct way this time, following the information boards in order!

19. Clean out old bull barn DONE July 2025

The very beginning of the month we headed out there and pulled everything out.  I mean everything!  There are two sections to this barn.  One was made into a woodshop of sorts and we had rented it out to someone for a few years.  They left a huge bunch of wood laying around when they were done, and it took a few years of me slowly working at it to mostly clean it up.  We finished with that, cleaned up the floor, and then moved the keepable things into that section from the larger part of the barn, the part that became the laundry appliance cemetary.  We dragged 5 or 6 washers out of that thing, plus two broken toilets and an old fridge (the guys used the skidsteer for those).  She pulled out the pressure washer and got the walls cleaned of 30 year old manure, and then on Thursday we completed painting of the walls and ceiling (bought a 5 gallon pail of mistint and had barely enough... I calculated over 1500 square feet of space that we painted, the ceiling being half that).  There were sections of floor that needed grinding down due to poles that were in the concrete at some point that were removed, so her uncle did that, and M wants to wash some old cow matts that have been sitting in storage for years that are rubber and would be perfect to put in as flooring in places.  

23. Build cow fence DONE July 2025

It's done!  We let all the cows out of the barn!  They love being out in the evening, and the one section can often be found outside in the early morning, sleeping on the grass.  It was so fun watching them come out for the first time in years!  The giant cows bounding about like little calves is so cute!

26. Work on a plan to keep cats out of robot room  CHANGED to Make a coffee station in the entrance of the barn  DONE  July 2025

So, on my new 101 list we had the idea to make a coffee station.  My daughter really ramped that up this month, and so we finished the entrance to the barn by washing the old coffee maker, removing boards, adding some linoleum to the counter to make it easier to wash, adding a countertop, honestly we did a lot.  It looks so pretty, too.  We just used what we had, zero dollars spent on this little project.  So, I figured that since the cats were not interested in the robot room at all right now, I decided to swap this one out with that one from my new list.  

31. Make Disney trip albums 0/3

I'm not even done one of these, and I kind of wish I'd have just said to do one because I don't know if it is physically possible to complete all three by January!  I started working on my 2011 trip (the one with the least photos) two weeks ago, have 35 pages, but am only about 2 1/3 days into the 7 days we visited the parks (10 day trip with two travel days and a rest day).  I'm not sure how I'm going to fit this all in!  Even doing 1 page a day I likely won't have all three finished in time.  Maybe I'll get two done, and try getting the third done next list?  I'm loving the album so far, though.  I even bought some Disney kits to do this!

41. Volunteer some time to clean/mow/fix up the old Heritage Cemetery DONE July 2025

My oldest two and I spent a couple of hours pulling weeds and using the weed trimmer (took 3 batteries and drained them all) over at the cemetery where my husband's 3 greats grandparents are buried.  I think we need to get them a new headstone.  Their 'post' is broken so badly, the metal is still there but the wood is rotten and has become an anthill.  We really couldn't do anymore there, so we called it a day.  One of the letters (the 'F') on the sign was missing, and try as I might, I couldn't find it.  

101. Create another 101 in 1001 list DONE July 2025

So, I had a running list of things I would like to put on my next list, and it went over 101 (I think it's at 113 or something now).  It's on my phone, so I could pop new list items on it whenever I thought of them (I usually forget by the time I would get home to my computer otherwise).  I'm liking this new list, although I think the categories are going to be less balanced and changed up somewhat.  I haven't gone that far with it, which is fine.  I'll do that when I officially type it up for the blog.

So, that officially puts me at 69 done, 32 remaining!  Woo!  Oh, and to make things easier for me, I also have this 101 list on my phone that I regularly look at instead of once a week.  It definitely helps motivate me.