Here’s just a quick update about some things!
Look how big our babies have gotten! (That’s kale, spinach, onions, and radishes).
Found this guy near our house. An Ornate box turtle, whose name is apparently Crazy Horse (or so he told R). Newest wildlife sighting have also been horny toads, a gopher snake, and we’ve been told of a bobcat nearby.
And, this was the best picture I could get of the lunar eclipse. We had a pretty rockin’ view.
It’s been a crazy month (not surprisingly), what with new jobs, having animals to care for, and trying to get ready for winter, that we’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed! We’re waiting… impatiently… for some big stuff to get delivered to our cabin (hopefully tomorrow!!), to finish some of the bigger projects, so for now we’ve been keeping busy with getting little projects done.
Fancy hardwood floors.
One of the things we’re waiting on is our walls, so since we already had our hardwood flooring, we went ahead and installed that. So nice not to be walking on plywood anymore. It’s that click-together flooring, so even a monkey could probably figure it out. If we can do it, anyone can. Underneath we put a vapor barrier-type paper for flooring, an insulation layer, then the floor. Our floors are so dark and pretty!
Smells of rich mahogany.
We also built a box for our propane tanks. We were given an 8-gallon and a 5-gallon tank, which should suffice us for now. Now we have a nice solid box on the outside of our cabin where they’ll sit and the flex line for the propane will feed through the wall.
Yay! Cooking!
Also started our firewood collection. There’s about a 1/3 of a cord there now, and we’ll need at least 2 cords to get us through the winter.
And of course we needed to mark our territory!
We live here.
There’s lots of wildlife up here. We see deer, fox, and even bears on a regular basis. There was even a painted box turtle down the road from us! Have yet to see a mountain lion but we know they’re near. Anyway, the one pest we’re encountering on a nightly basis are skunks. They think it’s pretty cool to come up onto our porch every night to rummage through everything.
R says, “he is not my friend.”
After about a week of this, I decided skunks really have the best defense system over any other animal. It’s not like we can go running out yelling at it, or worse, send the dog out to scare him off. I’ve already had my car sprayed twice. Trapping and relocating it? Means he needs to be INSIDE a vehicle. A pissed off skunk inside your car does not sound like a fun time.
Buddddddy.
Well one night we were still sitting outside with Loki, enjoying a beer, gazing at the stars, when our resident skunk came meandering up our driveway. Loki went tearing after it, he got sprayed, the skunk ran under our cabin, at which point R started throwing rocks at it and shining lights in its eyes. It wouldn’t budge from under the cabin, but we didn’t see it for a few days afterwards.
Fluffy tail.
He showed up again to rummage the other night. I guess we’ll just have to put up with him? Try to scare him off when we can? Skunks.
We have babies!
Kale babies!
Tiny sprout babies.
Several days ago we put two small garden plots together, one in a big tub and another small bed near our house. In the tub: onions, kale, spinach. In the bed: mint, radishes, kale, spinach.
Mint. Radish babies have since popped up too.
Protector of the garlic.
So far the kale and radishes have sprouted. Hoping to have a bit of fresh food in the next couple of months. Radishes grow quickly and should only take about 25 days. We’ve also planted 3 types of garlic in 3 big garden beds, to be ready to harvest next summer.
It’s like we’re farmers!
So excited!
The first week we were here we had so much to do, some things that were “priorities” got put off until other higher priorities were accomplished. Amelia’s enclosure was one of those “high priorities” that waited until the “higher priorities” were at least started. The higher priorities being insulation, mainly. She was staying outside during the day in a makeshift pen, inside the cabin while we were gone. Day 5 of us being moved here we finally tackled the duck enclosure.
“Well, it’s about time, guys.”
She is a little prey animal, and we now live in a place where A LOT of creatures would like to consume her, so safety is obviously a concern. I wanted her enclosure walls dug down a foot into the ground, but then we started digging (or attempting to dig, as it turned out). Rocks. Clay. For a couple of hours we dug and got barely a few inches down. At that point we took a step back and thought fresh. (As R said, “are animals really doing to try to dig through this shit to get to her?)
Digging.
We leveled out the area we had dug and attached hardware cloth to the bottoms of the panels, sticking out over a foot on all sides. Then we screwed everything together, patched the holes with leftover hardware cloth, covered the bottom of everything, and that was that! We’re in the process of setting up Loki’s run next to Amelia’s, so when we’re gone he will help deter animals away from her. And, since she’s a lone duck, she comes inside at night in her crate 🙂 My little indoor/outdoor duck.
The enclosure was basically leftover panels from my old job that I got for free, so it’s a little old, doesn’t fit together perfectly, and looks a little wonky, but it’s stable and it serves its purpose. Someday when we’re a little more established she’ll get something new and swanky! For now, she has lots of duff to dig through for bugs!
It’s been a whirlwind. In a week we’ve accomplished:
Peas in a pod.
Insulation and walls – beginnings.
More details to come. But we’re surviving the woods so far!
Loki loves our construction projects.
Amelia's Meadow 