This project is beginning to change the way I think, work, eat, sleep and live. Each night as I walk down the driveway to the truck and head into town my mind is racing with ideas and my body is sore from labor. In many ways, I have never felt so alive.
Northern White Cedar planted on property
This has been a productive spring. The driveway, garage, cabin and tool shed sites are all cleared. Timbers have been sorted by species and stacked. One cord of mixed aspen and birch firewood is bucked. Another 3 cords are stacked in 8 foot lengths awaiting future bucking. 1,000 feet of single track bike/hiking trails criss-crossing the property are cleared and raked.
We have a 25 x 25 foot garden bed cleared. Our intention this year is to amend and cover crop the bed to grow vegetables next year. I need a mule. The process of grubbing the stumps without a big critter or equipment pulling is long and arduous; especially for one lone soul in a cold, early May sleety wind storm. It certainly provides one time to think long and deep about what you are doing.
The garden site. Note the stumps and rocks being dug.
A couple of weeks ago I had my first opportunity to help build a timber frame. Cutting timbers into a structural frame is an artful balance of engineering and craftsmanship. This experience only reinforced my intrigue with this simple, yet effective building design. I hope to build a small timber-framed structure (maybe a sauna or studio?) someday soon.
While the ideas are still racing: I'm in no hurry right now. It's great. I just work away on the garden, firewood and trails, and wait for the driveway to be built. Once the road is completed, we will finally be able to truck materials to the site: dimensional lumber and 3/4 inch spruce board decking for the tool shed, canvas tent and yurt platforms; compost, lime, buckwheat seed and a rear-tined tiller for the garden and most importantly, tools.
For the time being, I'm going to keep digging away at this stump, plant as many trees as I can and think of banging together the walls of the tool shed...
The canvas tent is located just shy of the north line at the base of Spruce Knob. It provides us a dry place to rest and store tools.
Red pine bark on a Seagull Lake island
Way to hang in there David! I remember trying to amend the soil on Ryan Road, ugh. I have a pile of black dirt and Grandpa's old canvas tent if need either.
ReplyDeleteGod, I remember trying to amend that soil. Those poor plants never stood a chance. We may need Gramp's tent after all, now that the bear crashed through ours!
ReplyDeleteDavid and Amy,
ReplyDeleteI am happy for your future children and grandchildren: to be able to know the history of the place they think of as home and to have the history of its beginning, written by their father and grandfather, including reflection on life, the land, lifelong learning and love, passion, and respect.
Your integrity, passion, and hard work are wonderful qualities for them to know. Friends just talked about how they wish for knowledge of their home and its history...but it is forever lost to them and their children. They, too, love their land and their home, but know nothing of its beginnings nor of the people who cleared it, built, and lived on it.
Your hard work and reflections are a wonderful legacy, David.
Warm regards and appreciation,
Joyce Yamamoto