When your house is old – ours was built in 1846 – you expect to have some surprise encounters with the natural world from time to time. We were still shocked, though, when we renovated the bathroom years ago and discovered that we had unknowingly been cohabitating with a family of chipmunks!
We were similarly dumbfounded when we came home from a weekend away and our farmsitter informed us that we had carpenter ants. The evidence – little white eggs dropping from one of the old beams in the living room – was quite alarming!
There was also the time we discovered a bat flying around our living room, peeing on our floors. Not to mention some minor mishaps with mice, yellow jackets, and stink bugs, too…
To say that these incidents bolstered our desire to renovate this old farm house, would be an understatement. Over the past few years, we’ve now gutted almost every room in the house one by one.
Creating a home we can happily live in forever has been fun despite the challenges, and reducing our chances of such encounters has been absolutely necessary.
I was under the impression that we were making serious gains in this department. But all bets are off now, because while I was getting ready for bed the other night, I found myself face to face with a snake!
I’m generally not someone who freaks out around snakes.
In fact, after a little jolt to the nervous system, I usually I enjoy watching them sunbathe on a trail or slither off into the grass. But seeing a snake in our house, loosely draped over a small wall hanging in the stairway, was just too much.
Greg kept his cool and ended up catching the little bugger within a matter of minutes, without leaving so much as a mark on the wall. But just when you think the crisis was averted, it turned out we had a much larger problem.
It wasn’t just one lone snake in the house – a few days later, I watched two more slither into the basement through a tiny pea-sized crack in the foundation!
We called pest control, and they worked their magic, sealing up all of the holes they could find. No further snake sightings have been had. And sharing this whole story with you tonight is the very best silver lining that I could imagine!
Your Farmers,
Jenney & Greg
PS – It’s a FRESH pork week which means we have an amazing supply of our organic and pasture raised meats right now! Click HERE to check out our offerings and place an order for this week.