Twin Cities Farmhouse
Two twenty-somethings, 1.3 acres of land, 1 house built in 1890 in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, infinite new experiences, catastrophes and adventures. This blog documents our journey into homeownership and the decision to take a run-down property and turn it into our own urban hobby farm.
Exterior Update
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- Published on Tuesday, 09 October 2012
Authors: Leigh
It’s always good to look back and see where we’ve been. I figured I’d pull together some of the photos of the front of the house so you all can see the progress. I think it largely speaks for itself:
(Click picture to enlarge.)
So, after taking down the Christmas lights, we re-roofed the main house and painted the...
Close Encounters of the Mammalian Kind
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- Published on Saturday, 28 July 2012
Authors: Leigh
June and July have been intense months, filled with many projects that are bringing us closer to completion of the bathroom and 1st floor bedroom. Plumbing, electrical, more window replacements, fire blocking, drywall prep work have all been on Paul’s work list over the past several weeks, and I’m hoping to get some...
Photo of the Week: Postal Petunias
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- Published on Thursday, 24 May 2012
Authors: Leigh
A couple weeks ago, Paul and I decided to check out a nursery that had been overwhelmingly voted “best garden center in the South Metro” on the local Patch website, Gerten’s Farm Market. For those of you familiar with the area, this is not the enormous, sprawling Gerten’s you can see from I-494 in Inver Grove...
Radish Wrap Up
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- Published on Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Authors: Paul
[Leigh's note: Paul's back on the blog for what I guess we're going to call a guest post, so enjoy!]
Now that all of the radishes have been harvested and the bed has been cleaned out, I thought I would talk about our first crop.
This year we are doing variety testing where we test which varieties of different vegetables grow best in our...
Photo of The Week: First Harvest
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- Published on Sunday, 06 May 2012
Authors: Leigh
Here they are, the first vegetables from the garden for 2012! How can you not be excited?
This type of radish is the Early Scarlet Globe variety, which Paul got from Seed Savers Exchange and planted just six short weeks ago. He got a total about 21 bunches (a bunch is about 6-9) from the bed, as well as 5 bunches of another variety...
Farm Foliage
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- Published on Saturday, 28 April 2012
Authors: Leigh
Everything is greening up nicely at the house; we’ve been getting a lot of rain and a lot of warm, sunny weather that is exactly what our property’s plant population needs to just shoot up and leaf out. First off, the radishes are pretty much ready to harvest already! Here’s the photo I took on Thursday:
Rows of
...Photo of the Week: Radish
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- Published on Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Authors: Leigh
At some point, Paul will write a more expansive post about this, but until then I’ll break the news: we have a garden! Or at least, we have part of it. Paul has a season-long plan for planting over a dozen types of vegetables, and the plant he started with was radishes. He planted them a couple weeks ago in an area of the la...
Rainy Day Project (Bonus: TC Farmhouse I-Spy)
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- Published on Sunday, 08 April 2012
Authors: Leigh
This past Saturday, my parents came up to the cities to help us out. My dad has been working on refinishing our kitchen floor, and my mom was going to help me paint some soffit boards. Unfortunately, Saturday morning rolled around a wet, drizzling mess. Since we don’t currently have anywhere indoors that has both the space an...
Photo of the Week: Bultures
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- Published on Saturday, 24 March 2012
Authors: Leigh
We have been spending every minute at the house outdoors lately — painting, fixing things, doing lawn work, removing brush, etc., etc. One of our favorite things about working on the exterior/property is that we get to watch the wildlife go by. This past weekend, we saw a lovely group of turkey vultures lackadaisically c...
Window Treatment
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- Published on Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Authors: Leigh
One of the projects that has been on our list for a significant amount of time is the replacement of 11 of our windows, and the addition of two windows.
West kitchen window as of last year.
Last May, we bought all 13 windows, thinking we would get them installed in August or September. However, roofing ended up taking more than a...
