a table called faithful.

on my way to the feed store, i delightfully stumbled upon a garage sale. a real one! not one of those antique stores mascaraing as a garage sale, chuck full of overpriced sentimentality. but a real nickel and dime garage sale. with beautiful, old smelly books and boxes of aged wonders.

she said it was all her dad's old stuff, from a time long before hers. most of it from his old barn. it didn't suit her house anymore, she was going for more of a nautical theme.

i bought a dresser, an apple box, seven baskets, a whole box of salt and pepper shakers, a trunk, three pictures, an old window, a framed barn shingle, an antique hand warmer and an ink well for, wait for it... $80! i had overestimated the amount of car space my unexpected visit had demanded but squeezed every last trinket in with barely enough room to shift. and then i saw something i couldn't forget. not even after i pulled out of the driveway, not while i shopped at walmart and picked up the feed.

and so, i was forced to go back, with my fingers crossed that it hadn't been sold. and there it was, sitting at the back of their garage with a piece of green painters tape with $100 written on it. way out of our imaginary garage sale budget and against my garage sale code of ethics of never spending more than $50 on any piece for sale in someone's driveway. but it was absolutely extraordinary. it was nicked and dented, coffee cup stained and paint splattered, burn marks and a HUGE hole right in the middle. it was a table. a table that hadn't been manufactured or artificially distressed. it was purely a product of a long, unlavished life. i couldn't make a table like that any other way.

i bought it. i had to make an extra trip to pick it up, with seriously lacking space from my first visit. and on my way home from picking up my prized treasure, i was trying to justify the cost in my head to steve. and i was going over how you can't buy this kind of aged perfection in a store. think of all the things this table has seen and lived through. it's not a fake. it's just so real. and then it came to me. i'll name it faithful. a table called faithful.

because even through all the bumps and banging of life, it stayed together. it just reminded me so much of God's faithfulness. just an ever present unyielding. it never disintegrated. it's legs stood solid. it has a huge hole in them middle but never mind that. more than that... it's absolutely, exquisitely beautiful and completely unreproducible. that table holds a story that only that table lived. a product of time tested over and over again.

and so this table has become a remembrance alter to the Lord's faithfulness. He is and has and ever will be faithful, ever true. ol' faithful now sits in our entry way and everyone notices it. a living piece testifying, reminding, proving.

may the story of the Father's faithfulness to me be written on every door posts we have.  

antique curiosities

as we begin to clean out, renovate & explore the old barns we have found some pretty interesting antique trinkets.

when we bought the old farm we were told that the farm house was built in 1834 but the barns were built some time before that as was the old custom.  after celebrating canada day yesterday i realized that our house is older than canada & was actually built in the dominion. cool, eh?

most of the weird little bibs & bobs we have no idea what they are or were or if they have any value.  so i thought i'd post them on here to see if anyone of the world wide web knows what in the world they are or what to do with them.

it would be such a waste to just chuck 'em or leave them in the bottom of a disintegrated manger or delapitated hay loft. and they tell us the long story of the farm itself & what is was used for, the kind of people who worked it & how they worked it & the older ways of life. it would certainly enlighten some of our curiosities about different buildings & how we could restore them.

so here's number one:

i think i know what this might be but not super sure.

location found: the old chicken coop on top of some laying boxes

i'd say the old coop needs a little tlc before the chickens move
in at the end of the month

just a little sneak peak the partly renovated coop...
i painted the window sill & that's about all so far.
we still need to learn how to chink between the logs,
fix all the windows, cut a bigger window out for the top
for ventilation & make the outdoor run as well as tamper
proof the whole thing so nothing can mess with our chickens

and the item in question

the holes at the bottom are too big for feeding

what do you think it is??

also found this thingy ma-bob... and in it's original packaging too