Arctic Freeze and looking ahead to end of Winter projects

 Well, we were on a good roll, and I am so glad that we made use of the nicer days we had in between the arctic freezes we've had this Winter. Right now it is just too cold for us to be working on the land. Day time temps are in the 20's and that doesn't include the windchill! I have today off, and am sick (allergies, not contagious) and want to see a friend, but I am not leaving this house unless it's an emergency.

On our latest trip out to the land, we used the milder temps to get out on to the watershed. We did better markings on property lines along the longer distances, using t-posts, no trespassing signs and survey tape. This will help Woodchuck when he decides when and how to make a path along the West and South boundaries!

 We also marked all of the non-native/invasive trees that need to come out. We estimated about 15 Autumn Olives, (AO), a few honeysuckle, and at least one monster multi-flora rose (MFR). Those are all marked with survey tape, and I did harvest a few more rose hips from the MFR, though the wildlife seemed to have enjoyed most of them-as it should be.

Woodchuck gets turned around easily on the watershed. He hasn't been there as much as I have, I know it like the back of my hand now, and he was WAY off on where he thought the property marker on the South side was. Unfortunately, a new owner a couple of places down has decided to place his many, many chickens along that border side of the watershed. While I am grateful that he's feeding the many wild animals that may be able to get them (sarcasm), he has two dogs on watch out there 24/7 and what was my ONLY prerequisite for buying that land? NO.BARKING.DOGS. I've listened to several of them within a couple of feet my current home for 23 years and I am SO done with it. I want to hear breezes in the trees and birds singing, or heaven willing, nothing at all!!!! But I cannot be that lucky. At the land, we will now have 5 barking dogs surrounding us, though admittedly not within inches of us like we do here. The whole time we were on the watershed, those doggies were doing their job of staying noisy.

But I guided him on where the property should be, and sure enough I was able to find it. We own farther over than he remembered, so that was a nice thing to be able to surprise him with! We'll get another taller marker like we've got on other corners out there, so it will be easier to see. Many of the watershed signs are also broken, so I got a hold of the NRCS and they have new ones for us. I sure wish they were made with a more eco-friendly material though! Same with the survey tape. It's visibility works well for Woodchuck, but after being exposed to the elements, it becomes brittle.

 We keep seeing something peeking out just above the surface of the watershed pond. It could be a thick reed from the phragmite, but it also looks curved like an antler. He never took the one boat over there, thinking that he was going to sell it, but I think that has fallen through and we are curious enough to want to see what that item is that we'll take it out on the water the next chance we get. It's not a big pond by any means, but we don't know how deep it is, and are sure that it's very mucky at the bottom no matter the depth. I would use my waders, but we don't need to place a call to the fire department to come pull me out of the muck. I wonder if Woodchuck's tractor would do that well? 😏

We walked around that pond, commenting on all of the antler rubs on the willow trees. He agreed that we should leave most of those stands, to provide shelter and a known pathway for the deer. No need to wipe them all out! There's only a couple that we need to remove to make the ingress/egress complete and I'd like to find a way to utilize that wood so it doesn't just get thrown in the massive burn pile that was never taken care of from the tree removal before. The NRCS will be out in the Spring to see the progress we've made, and work stops on April 1st due to ground nesting birds coming back to the area. So we only have a couple of months to get that stuff done. We still only have one day a week to work out there, and that's not promised every week with other stuff we need to get done and weather conditions. But when talking about the setback of building the house, we look at the brighter side and focus on the aspect that maybe we will be able to get a lot of the big stuff done before we move out there, that way when we are living there full-time, it will be more of an upkeep situation with the land, being able to rest and enjoy it, and less of the huge projects.

I also decided that I wanted to cut seed heads off of the phragmite. Woodchuck didn't seem all that enthused, but he followed me into the wilderness anyway. This was the first time I've ever had a chance to do this step with phragmite, having only ever taken seed heads off of teasel at a different public land place years ago as part of a volunteer program I participated in. I was SO excited to be doing this, this kind of thing is my jam. Originally Woodchuck was holding the garbage bag and I was cutting the seed heads with my favorite Fiskar cutters, but he wasn't content with that, and the bag kept getting caught on things and tearing holes in it--which of course defeats the purpose of having the seeds in the bag (so they don't spread). So I took over the bag and would set it down in as open a spot as I could find (there really weren't any), and then he leaned a few phragmite stems over (some were 12 foot tall!) to me and then I would cut the heads off and bag them. 

Phragmite seeds are like dandelion seeds. Cute, fluffy, but easy drop and blow away. And phragmite is not a plant that you want spreading (yes. I can hear those of you who don't like dandelions. They are NOT weeds and are a very critical food source for bees and the first arriving Spring insects). The whole idea with cutting seed heads off is to reduce anymore seeds from falling/blowing off, thus reducing the ground seed bank. Over time of continually going out and cutting off seed heads, and/or treating the phragmite, each year will see less and less growth until, eventually, they can be eradicated from our land. It has been really hard for me to not stop along roadside stands of these things and cut those heads off and bag them up. I don't see road crews making efforts with the phragmite or the teasel and I'm not sure why nothing has been done by them, or why they have not reached out to other agencies for help. 

While these that we cut are technically on land, they are on marshy land between the watershed pond and our blueberry bushes. The previous owner planted the blueberries RIGHT up to the watershed boundary. I can't blame him, there is very little land there not on government programs and that we can do whatever we want with. I can understand wanting to utilize and enjoy every inch of it! This land sits low, is muddy, holds water, and is ultimate fun for someone like me who likes being in those kind of wild places! I was climbing on downed trees to get to more phragmite, sinking in mud, and coo'ing over the vibrant greens of the mosses in this patch of my wilderness! I am one girl who's happiest when being covered in land stuff such as mud, dirt, etc. Not only do I get the healing of nature, but show that I have let nothing stand in my way of fighting for it. 💚

While I could have kept going, Woodchuck was ready to call it quits. He estimates that we cut off at least 40 seed heads, and that's good progress for our first time out there! While we intend on stopping out there tomorrow to take a leisurely walk around, we most likely won't work. Anything that had been wet and mushy before will now be icy and slippery. Maybe we will try and see what that thing is on the watershed pond though! Very soon we will be meeting our friends out there who haven't seen the land yet, and who secured some nice LED lights for us from a school gym that was upgrading. Woodchuck will use them in the barn. We also need to think about trimming the blueberry bushes, which we should be able to handle even in the mud and ice of the marshy land they are planted on.

We did also use our l day off last week, in the snow, to cut the front tree line here at home that people were complaining about. While we needed to cut close to 3 feet off to be in complete compliance with the ordinance, that would have taken the whole sides of the trees off. So we cut a foot and a half off and many of the highway department employees were driving past that day and saw us. So hopefully seeing the effort we made will be enough for everyone who had an issue. 🖕

Yet to be done: cutting down the black locust trees on the railroad property between our driveway and the train tracks, and then watch the Tree of Heaven to see if our efforts finally killed them. In the meantime, I have a burn pit full of white cedar cuttings that I am looking forward to burning and smudging the hell out of this place and anyone surrounding us. They will burn quickly, and will smell great, but it will be a show! 😇🔥

Woah 2023, calm the f- down!

 Those who know me well know that I enter a new year with many trepidations. As much as I would like all loose ends tied up by the end of one year, I know from past experience that bullshit from December will carry over. The past couple of months have been so full of bullshit in fact that my motto for the new year has been about matching energies and not caring as much about a situation than the person who is supposed to care about it does. 

While December saw the youngest of our boys home from college for nearly a month over Christmas break, he worked a total of two days while home on that break. The flu knocked him on his ass for two weeks, and our workplace was slow. So the last week he was home found him having to get in all of his appointments that he had to cancel prior, and got him also receiving his first (and hopefully last) speeding ticket. Hopefully that knocks the chip off of his shoulder a little while it puts a dent in his bank account.

Woodchucks brother was hospitalized with various medical issues, but the main one was cirrhosis of the liver. He was soon released to a nursing facility where his care was subpar and his health continued to decline. My big, burly husband went to visit his little brother and washed his hair, shaved him, trimmed his nails, took him treats. Woodchuck was working hard every day to find a better and closer place for him to be transferred to so he could see him more often and make sure he was being taken care of, but his brother caught Covid while in the nursing facility and was unable to have visitors or go anywhere for 10 days. Many places also did not have any beds open and he was quickly declining. His brother called him one evening saying that he couldn't breathe and his nurse wouldn't answer his calls (a constant issue). One thing led to another and an ambulance was called and he was transported back to the hospital, where he started receiving much better care and was diagnosed with pneumonia. 

His decline didn't stop though, and he was put into ICU soon after admission. Woodchuck went to see him, though nobody was allowed in the room and they had to watch him through a window. My heart goes out to anyone who has to watch someone die, and watch them die from the other side of a wall. Within a few days after that, he was gone. Woodchucks father died on New Years Day, his mother died around 6 years ago right before Christmas, and now his brother passed between the two holidays. I just couldn't imagine! Though I did jokingly tell him that I know now the time of year to expect his passing as well. 😬

While he had the week off from work to deal with the passing, he made an appointment at the bank to inquire about a construction loan to start building the house. This is nothing either one of us has dealt with before, though some friends were giving me some info about how theirs went. As it turns out, the bank quoted $350,000 and a 9 month time period to get the house built. Not only is that figure a pipe dream for us, that time frame doesn't work with the initial plan of building in phases over the next three years, moving into the house the third year and having Woodchuck commute the fourth year, which would be his last year before retiring. That is just too far of a commute to do for four years and really?! Have banks worked with contractors before?! Getting things done in 9 months seems a little unreasonable. But what the hell do I know.

So, we will not be starting to build this year and we are ok with that. There's no reason and no time for boo-hoo'ing about it. We are still blessed and it is not like building is off the table completely, it's just getting pushed back and it's not like we don't have plenty of work to do in the meantime! Woodchuck will be contacting another house design firm since we had some less than stellar moments with the one we used. That was to be expected since she came recommended by the contractor he used to clear the trees and make the ingress/egress road and you all remember the issues we had with him?

Well that has flared back up as well.

We received a letter last week from the stone company we used. The first loads were ordered by the contractor we used (who was a friend of Woodchucks. Notice I said WAS). Woodchuck paid him cash to pay the stone company, and he was also supposed to spread the stone out for our driveway. He did order the stone, he did spread the stone, but we found out that he never finished paying the stone company and they've been trying to collect from him for nearly a year now! They are also threatening a lien on our land.

I wasn't surprised. The guy was a dick to us for months trying to get that work done and Woodchuck wouldn't listen to me to square up and cut ties with him. So Woodchuck got a hold of him and the guy said he would have his secretary send a check out right away and that he was out of the state until this past weekend and would get a hold of us when he got back. Guess who's ghosting us now? So now we have to figure that situation out.

I also recently got my eyes checked, after waiting an extra year to do so because we have crappy vision insurance and even worse options of places that accept it. Keep in mind that Woodchuck was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration last year and goes once a month to get injections in his eye to try and stop the progression and save the eyesight that he has left. After my exam the eye doctor asked if I had ever been told that my pressures were high and I said yes, once before and he said that now I'm being told twice and need to see a specialist. So off I go to the place that Woodchuck goes to, which was the place I went to for years until we got the shitty insurance that they don't accept. I am what he called a "glaucoma suspect" and I will go in every few months initially for some baseline tests and then around twice a year after that. I told him that I can't have both us lose our sight! And ironically, it's the right eye for both of us. 

Early last week I got a knock on my door early one morning before leaving for work and it was an employee of the county garage here in town. Really nice guy, said that they got complaints that our tree line at the front is blocking the eyesight for people stopping at the stop sign on the corner and looking East. He said his boss was going to have them come out and just trim them without talking to us and I told him that they would have had a very, very, very angry little woman on their hands if they had done that. I mean, why even? Why interact with the homeowners that way when you can do what he did and  say no, we aren't going to just show up and cut them! I'll stop and talk with the homeowners first. We talked for a bit and I told him that those trees now cost $1000 each to replace and that's for a 12 inch sapling. Our trees are 22 years old, we planted them when we bought the house. I told him we'd talk with Arborists again (we did last year too when that drunk driver drove into them). He said he'd be back the next morning to talk with both Woodchuck and myself and see what we came up with.

Unfortunately, those trees aren't meant to be trimmed. If you trim them, it has to be minimal. All of their greenery is on the outer parts of the branches, so if you cut that away, you just have bare branches and what looks like a dead tree. And after talking again with the guy, he said that we needed to plant no closer than 20 feet from the center of the road. Which we did. But the growth of the trees came out about 3 foot, so there's only 17 feet of easement now. It didn't help that last Summer they widened the road when they repaved it and now the road is even closer to our trees, which makes it hard to mow. So now he was going to go back to his boss and see if they can get an arborist over to look at the trees and come up with a game plan. 

I have to say here that his boss said the complaints are all over Facebook and in the community group that was started for this town. I know the moderator for that group and she said there was literally TWO comments made about our trees, one of them from the crazy neighbors next door that we don't get along with. We've been here 22 years and it's been never ending with entitled hillbillies who constantly want to do what they want to do and infringe on us but wouldn't tolerate being infringed on themselves.

 We are so looking forward to becoming hermits on our land.

I have been working a lot to try and stay on top of tuition payments. There's just over one more year to go for that. Once the boy graduates I'll be having to think about shoulder surgery to fix the other shoulder! It's been so painful the past few months.

 My workplace recently made me keyholder again, with illnesses (Covid) having the majority of the staff out and the store closing here and there due to lack of staff and nobody to run it. I worked 45 hours last week to help cover and to get through a project I took on to revamp our used book section. That was one of the most satisfying things I've done there yet! And the customers are already loving it as well! Our volunteer that works on them has been out for a couple of months, calling only last week to let us know that she was injured during the last snowstorm. I'm glad I made the decision that I did to do them then, I always worry about taking work away from the volunteers but also finding enough to keep myself busy as well.

So Woodchuck and I went to the land recently for our first work day of the new year. With many options to choose from on where to begin, we decided to work on the West edge of the pond, clearing the invasive plants there and working slowly to get over to the phragmite that is land rooted. Again, and as usual, I don't feel like we made much progress. My shoulder was killing me, which left Woodchuck doing most of the grunt work, and since it's Winter and we haven't worked the land as much, we are "soft", lol. It didn't take much to wear us out!

We took down a lot of honeysuckle, some autumn olive, Woodchuck cut a dogwood of some sort before I could stop him, as well as some of my staghorn sumac (I swear he doesn't like that tree, he cuts them down all of the time!). We also cut many poison ivy and grapevines wrapping the oaks on that part of the pond. 

The above picture is looking between two oaks towards the pond. The goal was to clear between those two trees all the way to the pond before moving on to the next section. I thought we could get two sections done, but we only got one.

This picture is looking South towards where the phragmite are land rooted, though that land is very marshy and is part of the watershed preserve.

Progress shot! The front stuff between the two trees is down, now to move back towards the pond.

And done for the day! We didn't have the chemical needed to treat the stumps, so we cut them high so we can easily find them again and will go back another day to cut them low and treat them. Now that we were done cutting, it was time for a walk on the watershed! We found the corner markers again and made a note that we need to tie new survey tape to them. The winds out there tear that stuff apart easily. We tried to get a better idea of the path that will be mowed along two edges of the watershed. It will act as a fire break, property marker, and make it easier for us to walk it. We have lots of oaks out there, which I love. They don't lose all of their leaves and you can hear them rattling and rustling in the winds. I also love the sound of walking through them! 

We also have a very large rose bush by our property marker. This was the second rose I found on this day that was NOT a multi-flora rose and that was so refreshing to see! There were just a few rose hips left and I asked it for permission to take some. You know me, I always love leaving things for the wildlife! But it looks like they had a good snack of them.

I also took a gander at the blueberry bushes, and we will giving them their first trim in probably at least ten years very soon! 

So yeah, it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks for sure, but nothing that I can't handle with some strict boundaries, stern words for the assholes that show up to cause issues, and a good cry here and there. I hope your new year is faring well for you so far! Now get out there and grab the day by the balls!

Looking back, looking forward

 I have to admit that I didn't handle the new years eve crap well. It was a crazy busy week leading up to it, and the death of Woodchuck's brother just a couple of days ago, has saddened us all. I've been running myself into the ground lately, and getting exposed to illnesses at work, being in public, and our youngest son having the flu while home from college. I feel pretty damn rough, but I know it could be worse. What was supposed to be spent together, this first day of a new year, finds us apart yet again as Woodchucks work schedule was changed with only a few days notice. There were plans for a charcuterie board to be enjoyed throughout the day while I also baked some bacon crackers, and a Guinness Stew, and a trip to the land was also on the itinerary. But it is what it is and this day too shall pass like all of the others.

We got so much done on the land in 2022 and I am so proud of us! I'm a work horse and would like to see myself getting more done, but I know that with the weather and time we had, we made the best use of it that we could. It will be easier once we are living out there to work things into the schedule. Our last work trip out there had us filling in stone around the door bases, putting handles on the garage doors, finding Woodchuck a little white pine tree for his breakroom at work, and parking Ginny the Tractor in her new home.

 So what do we have to look forward to doing out there in this new year?

Our next work trip out there will be for starting to formulate a plan for working towards the watershed. We need to clear out the area between the blueberry bushes and phragmite and get an idea of the boundaries of where the watershed begins in that area. We also need to clean out around the NorthWest side of the pond. Lots of Autumn Olive there! And then also start the trek into the watershed to work on getting the invasive plants out of there, no trespassing signage up at all entry points, and eventually mow a firebreak path along two edges of it. We will also start the process of building the house this year! We anticipate lots of issues with contractors, so we are starting early. The time line is to start it this year and be able to move into it in three years.

Thank you so much for being on this magickal journey with us! Here's to an even more magickal, joyful and healthy 2023 for us all. 💚 )O(