Dear Everybody,
Here we are again. I started this blog almost three years ago, before I took over the house full time; I was struggling to grasp the scale of this endeavor, and trying hard to find a foothold to start with. (Check out the archive, if you want to look back on the journey so far.) A lot has changed, but not the overwhelming length of my to-do list… I’m more comfortable, and the house and I are both healthier, and I have some clear paths forward. But there’s still a long way to go.
The weather has been dreary, but not unusual this winter. I didn’t get buried in more than 20 inches of snow for over a month, as I did for the last two years; the snow stayed at about 8 inches, and melted by mid-February. No ice storms, no massive windstorms or blizzards, and while the creeks topped their banks briefly, I didn’t see two feet of rain in three weeks as I did last year. It remains to be seen whether this cold drizzle will persist until midsummer again, but I’ve had the usual 2-3 weeks of false spring already, and the weather forecast seems to be promising some warmth soon.
I am more than ready for a change. Each winter is better than the last, but I’m still ironing out the kinks and discovering various pitfalls (such as my unexpected firewood emergency last December). I find myself nearly as exhausted now as I was at the end of the season last year, a combination of the inevitable sedentary lifestyle of cold weather (temperatures below freezing kill my motivation quickly, and very little is as depressing as a misting drizzle at 40F), failing to eat enough to keep warm, a lack of light, and a lack of fresh air. I was rightfully proud of how many cold drafts I’ve managed to eliminate in the last year, and the house stayed much warmer, but the air quality suffered as a result. I’m very sensitive to combustion gases, and even with the woodstove chimney taped airtight, just opening the door to add wood can spill carbon dioxide and such into the room… without some exchange with the outside air, that builds up. I’m waiting on delivery of a CO2 monitor, to help me determine more accurately when I need to air the house, and I’ve made an effort to go outdoors more. Once again, however, these measures come after I’ve already run into a wall of fatigue and brain fog that saps my energy and motivation. I’ve switched over to electric heat now that the temperatures are more moderate, and I’m in the middle of the slow climb back to functionality. Sun and warmth, and the corresponding appeal of working outside, will help a lot.
The cats are impatient for spring as well. Cricket resigns herself to the rain every winter, and comes in sopping wet at intervals to report on the weather, but Artie still hates precipitation of all kinds. Even he has been coming in damp in recent days, unable to stand yet another day stuck indoors. I had to lock the cat door at night while snow was falling, and for many nights when it was on the ground, because otherwise he felt compelled to go out and patrol; snow spikes his anxiety, and when he came in at night howling his distress, I wasn’t on hand to calm him down. I had a lot of cleanup to do every morning from his nervous tummy when the cat door was left unlocked, and he needed more cuddling during the day until the snow melted. I’m sure he’s glad that it’s just rain this week.
I have been sewing a great deal, making pants that actually fit me (I can’t buy off the rack anymore, my dimensions are too far out of bounds even for basic tailoring) and some shirts to match. I managed to score a roll of 9oz navy cotton canvas at a thrift store for a song, so I’ve been using the treadle Singer to make basic sturdy cargo pants, but the shirts (tunics, almost) have been more elaborate, because when you’re sewing it yourself, why not? I have two full sets of clothing now, and I’m hoping to make a couple of sets of lightweight summer clothes as well, in whatever spare time I have. The outfits look good, and move with me no matter what I’m doing, and function exactly the way I want them to—case in point, the pants have specific pockets for my phone, my folding knife, my card wallet, and so on. I’m not following any specific patterns, so the clothing is shaped only by my taste, which is a bit unconventional. I’ve been accused of morphing into a magical mountain wizard, or a local cryptid. I guess that was inevitable, but as long as I’m comfortable, I find I don’t really care.
Jenny finally has a gas fireplace in her house. The test burn is scheduled for today, and after that she will have a source of warmth, a cheerful light, and something to heat her coffee and dinners during power failures. I know it’s been stressful for her not having some fallback, and while she acknowledged she no longer wanted to deal with firewood, she wanted something like the woodstove up here. So I ordered a gas line installation for her house, and a cute little stove slightly smaller than mine which had been piped for gas, and the installer put it in at the beginning of this week. I had wanted to get it by the end of last summer, but events conspired as usual. She’ll get some use out of it for the next couple of months, and then we can put it to bed until September, and she can be all set for next winter.
The new creekbed is performing as expected; the small amount of flooding at the foot of the pasture is far better than the vast sheet of water that greeted me last March, and I have had no trouble at all with the drains. I’ll want to fine-tune it when the water level subsides, but it’s good enough to be getting on with.
False spring, in February, allowed me to catch up on several garden tasks. I pulled the mulch off the strawberry bed, only to discover that I had created a vole hotel, full of warm burrows in the straw and lovely fat strawberry crowns to munch on. So I pulled out all the plants (too many, I wanted to multiply them but ended up with tons), dug out the bed, and lined it with hardware cloth like the rest. Then I planted the best-looking crowns that had survived (all smaller than the originals, sigh) and set aside the surplus plants to sell locally. I’ll have garlic and strawberries this year, if I have nothing else.
I put the leftover straw on the raspberry beds, after moving the ends of the rows a bit to accommodate my new fence lines. I extended them with a couple more stray raspberry plants, and sowed the newly cut path with grass seed. I used a lot more seed on the upper parking area, in the hope that I can establish grass there to discourage the less tractable weeds. I moved the monk’s hood from its place in front of the workroom—it’s a bad idea to have a deadly poison in the middle of the vegetable garden—to the bend in the driveway, hopefully out of the way of visiting pets and children. I finally planted the rose I got last summer, placing it carefully along the revised fence line between the garden and the Shippen. And I moved a couple of the evergreen huckleberry plants I placed last year, to ensure potential vehicle access to the garden across the front lawn.
I consulted with Jevon, the capable contractor who completed the new driveway bridge last year, about access routes for the eventual replacement of the septic tank and leach field. It’ll be another couple of decades, knock on wood, but that’s a couple of decades of opportunity for me to plant or build things which would cut off paths for heavy equipment. I’d rather plan ahead now than face choices about which established bushes (or roses, or fruit trees) to chop down, or whether to take a tool shed apart or re-grade some part of the yard to allow a tractor in. He gave me two potential routes and some good ideas about how to allow vehicles access to the Shippen, which has been a long-term goal. And I spoke to him a bit about dredging the pond and grading the now-dry beaver marsh to turn it back into meadow pasture. Sometimes heavy equipment is really the best solution.
One can often get by without it, though. One other thing I got done was to kill two birds with one stone: I traded the weedy, grassy slope on the southwest corner of the Annex, which was always a pain to mow because it was too steep for the push mower, for a terraced Mediterranean herb garden with stone retaining walls. It took a day of digging out blackberries and loose stones, during which I discovered some large blocks of stone under the dirt which were probably left over from the original Annex foundation. I used those as a base for my retaining walls, starting with the stones I had dug up, and supplementing with large rocks left over from the bridge project and the fire road reconstruction last fall. It took several trips with the wheelbarrow to the foot of the driveway, to collect a couple hundred pounds at a time and lug them back to the parking area; quite the full-body workout. But I enjoy placing rocks, and the dry-fit retaining walls were a nice challenge. It now has two stair-height terraces, planted with rosemary, lavender, thyme, yarrow, oregano, horehound, and cat germander… I hope to add sage once it comes into the nurseries this season. That is one of the sunniest, driest, warmest places I know of here, with a neutral sandy loam that should suit the dry-summer herbs very well. And I finally have a place to put them, so they aren’t languishing in pots forever. Best of all, it’s one of the first things people will see when they get to the end of the lower driveway, so I hope it makes a good impression. I still need to clean up the other side of the steps, but that’s a much smaller project.
I also started taking down the old fences. Most of them are rusting out, or at least crumpled under the weight of years of weeds, and they often fall apart under my hands. It’s giving me better access and clearer sight lines to plan the new fences—I want to simplify the way things are laid out, and put gates in sensible places. The worst part of this stage is going to be getting rid of the old fencing, which is light and springy and won’t pack well into the pickup without a lot of wrestling. It’s worth it for the sense of space and renewal, though.
I’ve made my garden plan, but I’ve barely looked at the calendar portion yet. It’s about time to sow the cabbages and broccoli, I think. I’m still eating fresh Jonathan apples from the fall harvest, they kept shockingly well. The dry kale I put away has been quite useful, and I have more garlic left than I expected. I took the tops off the parsnips and stored them in the fridge, where they have stayed quite sweet; I feel like I have learned a lot about handling those. And the potatoes are in better shape than they were last year. I’m sure I’ll get the itch to turn over the soil and fix up the beds as soon as the sun comes out again… I think I need to re-work the garden plan, though. I made 3-foot by 12-foot beds to save space and building materials, but shoring up the middle against the weight of the soil has proven too difficult. I think I may break them up into 3-foot by 6-foot beds instead, and possibly re-orient the ones south of the house to north-south. It’ll be some work, and probably span a couple of growing seasons (I’m not digging up the garlic at this time of year), but they should hold up much better.
I have dubbed this The Year Of The Yard, now that the essential repairs to the house and major infrastructure seem to be settled for the time being. I’m looking forward to doing fences and gates, at least for the garden, orchard, and chicken yard, if not the pastures (we’ll see how far I get). I want to start serious weed control measures for the upper driveway and the bank below it, the thicket behind the Shippen, and the tangle of old willow trees along the old east creek. I want to gut the Shippen itself, replace the floor, and fix it up for livestock. I want to grade, smooth, and generally restore sanity to the paths in the area between the workroom, the Shippen, and the Annex. Plus minor things like cleaning up the battered old rowan trees, clearing the thimbleberry out of the front lawn, building the driveway gate, and installing some much-needed gutters. I’m talking to someone about painting the house (a major project), and I still have hopes of getting a new electrical panel installed. We’ll have to see.
On top of that, I need to get the office done: replacing the floor, running new wiring, and painting. Plus getting the pipeline for clutter and rummage flowing again, sorting trash from treasure and sending each on its way. There are still boxes infesting various corners, mouse-molested dressers, and packed closets. One whole wall of the garage is piled four feet deep and six feet high with… goodness knows. And I’m still trying to get the workroom cleared and organized enough to use for all the projects I’m doing.
If this sounds like too much for one person… well, maybe. I do get professional help with a few things, and some projects get bumped to the next year. But I’ve spent my resting moments doing planning and logistics, and every one of these items has a plan of attack. I’m not afraid of hard work, as long as I can find the energy. And, knock on wood, I’ll spend a lot less time this year twiddling my thumbs while I wait for the gears to move behind the scenes. Most of what I’m planning is self-motivated, straight-ahead projects—right up my alley.
If you’d like to help, locals are welcome to visit and lend a hand; I’m about an hour and a half from Portland, which is not terrible for a day trip. If you’re not local, I can always use a little cash to help with buying seeds and tools, taking care of the cats, and paying for photo storage; check out my ko-fi page. Or spread the word about this newsletter, and the photo albums—I add another one each year, and I’ve just set up the 2025 photo album. I’ve also revived one of my blogs for occasional posts about the medicinal herbs and food plants growing here, if that’s of any interest. I’m busily building my stocks of herbs, and learning about how to use them, and you’re welcome to follow along.
I expect life will accelerate from here, and I’ll have more to report at the summer solstice in June. Until then, I hope your spring is full of light and warmth, and if you’re heading into fall, I hope it’s mild and colorful.
—Sam
