The sounds and sights of summer are finally amongst us!  Whippoorwill chat at dusk, I picked off the first tick crawling up my leg, the trees have finally leafed, large leave aster sprouted throughout the upland soils of the forest, and sarsaparilla has begun to turn root beer brown.

Our garden is planted with beans, peas, parsnip, potato, carrot, onion, cucumber, zucchini, and tomato.  We added to our orchard with the planting of a cherry tree.  Our rhubarb is flourishing.  We've started a raspberry patch on the back edge of the vegetable garden and strawberries on the sandy hill in front of the house.  Lettuce is sprouting in lined up containers.

With long days helping the cause I had a birch splitting marathon and now have a pile of curing fuel for next winter's fires.

I often find myself wandering up to the main house site on top of the property during the last fleeting moments of light. I'll stumble there and simply look down over the homestead. Quite often I'm amazed at the sight. These quiet times serve as moments of reflection and inspiration. I've pounded nearly every single nail that holds those buildings together, cut every tree, lifted every rock and dug every hole.  Most of the time, however, I simply find myself standing there watching the wind whirl through forest thinking of nothing at all...

Trees bend, sway and flow across the windows as a stiff yet persistent gale drives a week-old low pressure system that has produced nearly three inches of rain out of the region.  Trunks bend in unison to the mounting wind giving the illusion that they are moving by as if through I'm staring out the window of a speeding automobile.

It's nearly the end of May and yet I'm still splitting firewood instead of planting my onion and potato sets.  We finally planted our new strawberry patch.  There are one hundred newly-planted red pine seedlings scattered throughout the property.  Large leave aster has just begun to poke it's stem out of the ground.  Signs of summer continue to emerge yet the temperatures are hard-pressed to breach 70.  Most nights are in the 40's- tonight it will freeze.

The last touch of light left me crouched over a small hole planting red pine samplings on the far corner of the land.  The woods were still when the gentle patter of a small foot on dried poplar leaves startled me.  I didn't have to search long to see the handsome male ruffed neck grouse ambling within an arm's reach.  He clearly wasn't aware of his surroundings.  Once he realized that I was there he abruptly flew up to the upper branches of a nearby tree where he proceeded to feed upon the budding poplar.  I watched for a few minutes in the diminishing light and then carried on planting the last couple of trees.

Warm weather and high winds have finally forced the winter ice off area lakes!

Snow storms, freezing rain and cold weather have finally given way to more moderate seasonal weather!  With that the spring bird migration is upon us.  Dozens of birds are routinely outside our window pecking away at the ground and bombarding our feeder.  At any given moment chickadees, junco, white-throated sparrow, white-crowned sparrow (migrating), common redpoll and house finch compete for sunflower seeds at our window.  The entire feeder is devoured daily!  This fact relieves me of the nightly ritual of taking down the window feeder so that we don't attract bears.  Bears too are out of hibernation.  We spotted our first fresh bear scat of the season on the trail.  I'll spare you the picture!

Male House Finch

 

Osprey Overlooking Lake Superior

 

Early in the morning we watched a pair of ruffed necked grouse perform their mating dance in the fir stand outside our kitchen window.  The male, in full regalia, acrobatically circled and danced and ruffled his ruff in hopes of wooing his prospective mate.

Inside I've been busy installing entry closet doors and trim work.  I've even dabbled a little bit in HVAC while installing a bathroom fan.  That job was great because it used so many disciplines- wiring, carpentry, duct work.  While working on the exhaust ducting for the bathroom fan I realized that I've cut 18 holes into the house to wire electricity, pipe out smoke, drain waste and pump water.  All this in order to accommodate the amenities that we used to take for granted.   Some of the holes were more hard-fought than others to accomplish than others.  Other holes were emotionally painful to cut (a one square foot hole in the new roof for the wood stove pipe).  18 later, the four inch hole saw bit that I was using for this task made mince meat out of our gorgeous and meticulously installed cedar siding.

Hole in the house #18

 

New favorite thing to do: playing with rocks (just like daddy)!

 

The mud princess herself!
 

The Raid

I was singing a new song to Penelope as we completed the "home stretch" of our nightly walk.  A short spell struggling to remember the words to the the second verse (which was different from the first) left a moment of silence in the forest.  That's when a stricken cry of a chicken penetrated the foggy air.  We immediately looked for our dog Luna (AKA the white wolf).  To our chagrin she was no where to be found.  

Silence continued.  Then, off in the distance, ruckus noise once again muffled it's way through the damp fir and spruce stands to our ears.  Something was wrong!  Here in the back edge of our neighbors land we knew our missing dog was either gleefully massacring their chickens or chasing a deer.  Taking no chances we made our way to their coop.  All we could see was Luna's pom-pom of a white husky mutt tail bobbing.  The rest was silence.  My heart sank as I approached the raided open-air coop.  Feathers still floating in the breeze; four dead chickens were strewn outside.  One carcass remained in the coop.  Luna sheepishly cowarded at the fence line.  She had effortlessly jumped the defenses and systematically snapped the necks of the entire brood.  We were speechless.  I had handed off Penelope before I had approached the scene so I scolded the mutt without inhibition and dragged her by the collar back over the fence and towards the house of the unsuspecting owners- and our good friends.  

"I've got some bad news" I said as the door opened.  "Luna killed your chickens."  "All of of them?"  For some reason the response startled me.  I didn't know what to say.  I had seen a number of dead birds but didn't exactly know.  "She did a number on them" I replied.  We walked back down to the crime scene and in shock gave our deepest, most heart-felt apologies.  After a few speechless moments and futile apoligetic attempts.  We made our way home.

As it turns out she didn't kill them all.  One had apparently flown up into a tree, survived a night of freezing temperatures and showed up the next day plucking the ground for bird seed outside the wood shed!  Even better our friends have been kind enough to forgive us (not sure about the dog though).

When we first moved out here I wasn't sure how I felt about having two families on each side of our land.  I guess that I figured that I was moving out into the woods to get away from folks and live this self-sufficient life.  Now, for many more reasons than I can explain to you in words, I couldn't imagine life out here without those companions.  We built at the same time.  We've struggled individually and together. We harvested at the same time.  Mainly we pass by in the truck on the way to town and give the Northern Minnesota salute.  Sometimes we stop and chat about the weather or wildlife encounters on the trail.  But more importantly, we are growing into a community.  It takes respect, good will and friendship to make that happen.  Even in horrible events like this you realize how much bigger our community is than the individual events that craft the episodes of the experiences we share.  I'm sad that those laying hens had to unmercifully die.  At the same time, I'm so glad that we have such great people to deal with those events together...