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Cabin Life – #14

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A rusty screen door in the wind.  That was the sound I heard earlier outside.  But the sound was coming from the woods, far from any door, or even any human-built structure.  I wondered what it was, but the big MagLite didn’t provide any insight, and the most likely culprit was some tree creaking in the breeze.

The snow has started again, and it looks like the next couple of days will be spent shoveling and digging out.  I really don’t mind.  It’s good

Snowy Birch

exercise, outside, with tangible benefits.  I’ve always loved running the snow-blower and driving a plow truck, and shoveling is something that I’ve gained a renewed appreciation for.  Two storms ago, I shoveled an area big enough to park a few cars in.  The plow guy was impressed, and that’s a pretty big compliment.

One thing that I’ve always loved about living in the Adirondacks is that people come together when they really need to.  When there’s no emergency or major event going on, I’m sure that neighbors have their regular squabbles, but when the fit hits the shan, people here look out for each other.

A few weeks ago, my plow guy got stuck in the driveway and it took us a while to dig out his truck.  The next plow was on him as thanks.  The time after that, we had a big storm, and he hadn’t heard from me, so he came up to plow the driveway and make sure I wasn’t stuck in here.  He said he was glad when he didn’t see my truck.

It was the same thing last spring.  There were massive floods all over the North Country and my first three days of work were spent filling sand bags.  We dropped them off all over town, to the city hall, motels along the lake, and at people’s houses.  Most of the day, it was just a bunch of us state workers who had gotten corralled into the job.  But soon after school got out each day, a stream of parents and kids would come into the town garage and ask what needed to be done.  They brought us food and coffee, as well as fresh hands and arms.  Filling, tying and loading a couple hundred thousand sand bags gets tiring.

But you know what, it’s not just in times of hardship that the people come together up here.  Winter Carnival is one of the greatest parties you could imagine.  An entire town celebrating the successful fight against cabin fever with a parade, concerts, and yes, even a Women’s Frying Pan Toss.  Carnival is great.

The feeling this type of camaraderie creates is one of belonging to a community.  Whatever their petty differences, people do what they can to help each other out, and in the process forget about the nonsense that most of us consume our lives with.  If I had a neighbor and heard a creaky door sound day after day, I’d probably get upset after a while, and would eventually sneak over there and hit the hinges with WD-40.  But since the sound was coming from a tree, I’ll just let it go.  Having such a simple existence in this cabin has made letting the stupid things go a lot easier.

Snow’s going fast

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The snow is melting fast.  It’s been warm and sunny or warm and rainy for a couple of days.  Early spring this year apparently.

 

Cabin Life – #12

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Logging by hand has to be one of the most pointless and inefficient activities I have engaged in so far.  I have been “cleaning the woods” as it were, dragging out large limbs and cutting dead trees to get wood for next year’s fire wood supply.

This year’s supply is large, but the quality of the wood is not that good.  When we moved here in the fall, my then-roommate and I didn’t have the money to buy fire wood, and since we had fifty acres at our disposal, we figured we could cut, haul, and split our own wood.  Luckily, we found a pile of logs that had been cut three years ago, but the bark was left on, so they had started to rot.  Also, it was mostly soft woods like white pine, spruce, and poplar (aspen).  But it was free and dry.

He's not smiling. He's laughing at me.

We were able to mix in a lot of hardwood from scrounging and an existing supply of wood left by the previous owners.  Trust me, ten year old hard wood burns really, really nice.

I’m not sure if I’ll be living out here next year, but since I have lots of free time, I decided to comb the woods, finding nice pieces of downed or standing dead hardwoods.  I got lucky with some of the wind storms we’ve had this winter and I’ve dragged cherry, maple, beech, and a little birch out of the woods.

On nice days, I usually take Pico and go for a walk around just to check things out.  It’s on these rambles that I find the wood.  If it needs to be cut up into smaller, more manageable pieces, then I take Pico back to the cabin and grab my chainsaw stuff.  Some of what I cut is pretty dangerous, with dead limbs, lots of weight pressure, and pressure from other trees that the dead stuff is leaning against.  Luckily, I have lots of experience running a chainsaw in difficult conditions so I feel comfortable doing this kind of cutting.  I also always wear cutting boots (steel toe, Kevlar all around), Kevlar chaps, and a cutting helmet with face guard and ear muffs.

Once the logs are cut up into four or five foot lengths (depending on diameter, the skinny ones I leave longer), then the real grunt work begins.  I grab Pico again and start walking out to where the wood is.  Today, it was about a quarter mile away, and Pico and I made at least ten round-trips.  That’s about five miles of walking, half of it carrying logs that weigh anywhere from five to fifty pounds.  Even Pico was panting on our last couple of trips.  And other than moral support, he was no help at all.

After I get the logs back to the cabin yard, I block it up into firewood-length pieces (16” or so) and split any of the bigger pieces.  There are still some monster logs out in the woods that I’ll drag out once I can get the four-wheeler going.  Or maybe I’ll buy a horse.

My shoulders are bruised, and there’s no way I could lift my arms over my head right now, but at least I’ve got a start on a better wood supply for next year.  Yeah, dragging all those logs out by hand is dumb.  So I’m dumb.  Dumb like a fox.

Cabin Life – #11

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There’s a half dozen black capped chickadees hanging around the cabin now.  They finally found the birdfeeders, though the blue jays have been scarce.  One of the jays was hanging out in an apple tree this morning, but I haven’t seen them at the feeders in a few days.

I was recently asked why I decided to live off the grid.  Long story short:  It’s free and I can’t afford to pay rent.  But when I really think about it, this has been a long time coming.

            The idea of being self sufficient has always appealed to me.  I just couldn’t afford to buy a piece of land to do this on, and until this winter, I had never been lucky enough to have someone just offer to let me live in a place for free.  When Amy asked if I wanted to stay out here, I didn’t even think about it.  I just said yes.

I’ve usually moved around a lot, mainly because I get restless, and the grass is always greener somewhere else.  In 2006, when I moved to Florida, I was in desperate need of a change.  I had battled depression most of my life, and Jacksonville seemed like a good escape.  Eventually, I manned up and sought help for my depression.  And part of my therapist’s plan was to help me realize that I could do what I want with my life and not be afraid of the consequences.  After all, it was my life to screw up.

The more I thought about this new, happier phase, the more I knew that I couldn’t keep living in Florida.  I gave up two jobs, health insurance, vacation time, a pension, lots of friends, and agreed to a long-distance relationship all to move back to the mountains and work a seasonal job with no benefits so that I could hike and play with Pico.  I knew that I would be broke and I didn’t care.

I think that’s why I am adjusting so well to living off the grid; because I’ve been mentally preparing for it for years.  And now that I’m actually doing it, I couldn’t be happier.  Sure, I’m broke, single, and have to ask friends if I can take a quick shower at their houses (They always say yes!) but what could be better than having an adventure like this?  When I look back twenty years from now, I know that this time will have been a major turning point in my life.

The experience I’m having is already shaping the future me.  I’m making plans for a cabin of my own, looking for land, and reading and taking classes on farming, homesteading, food preservation and draft horse handling.  I’m not shy of hard work, and when I can afford some land, I plan on building a log cabin and living off the grid.  But, since I’m not the Unabomber, I will also have solar panels, running water and indoor plumbing.  Plus I’m pretty sure that he didn’t have a blog.

Cabin Life – #9

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I like sitting at the table in front of the big window and seeing the wood smoke drift out towards the driveway.  Sometimes the smoke catches the sunlight and throws a blast of light into the cabin, sometimes it casts a shadow.  The blue jays haven’t been around much lately, but the nut hatches are getting closer and closer.

I’ve seen some black-capped chickadees (yes, I’ve learned the difference) in the apple trees.  They always seem to hang out in the trees where there are no rotten apples still clinging to the branches, but in the barren trees.  I figured they would want to pick apart the apples and get the seeds, but I guess not.  Maybe they have enough food without going through all that work.  That’s what I love about nature, you never really know.

I’ve been hearing a moose near-by.  Not too far from hear, on Normans Ridge Rd., was where some of the first confirmed sightings of moose were back about ten years ago.  My “neighbors,” who have not been seen since hunting season, supposedly captured the moose on their game camera.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they were near the cabin.  They tend to like heavily wooded areas, and except for a few acres of cleared land right around my cabin, it’s pretty wooded up here.

The forest is really nice.  I like all forests, but the land here is just amazing.  There are tight clumps of evergreens amid huge, open stretches of hardwoods.  The rabbit tracks dart from evergreen to evergreen, and the birds hang out in the bare hardwoods until Pico and I walk by.  Then they scramble to hide themselves among the green boughs of the white pine, red spruce and eastern hemlock.

There’s definitely been some very cold snaps, even for this mild winter.  Twenty below zero hasn’t been all that uncommon so far, and when it’s that cold, even the trees have a hard time staying alive outside.  Maybe that’s something that most people don’t think about, that trees and plants are living things that are subject to the same survival scenarios as any wild animal.  Day after day and night after night, they stand against the cold, the wind, the weight of the snow.  And sometimes, just like people, they snap.  The weight of the world tears them down against all odds, and then some puny human like me comes along to cut up and split their remains for next year’s fire wood supply.

Cabin Life – #8

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My hands are beat up.  I guess that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but the combination of old scars and new wounds (fine, they’re more like boo-boos, but whatever) represent the bulk of the physical hardship of living out here.

The quarter-sized scar on the back of my right wrist is courtesy of the wood stove, as is the small scab on the back of my right thumb.  Next to the burn on my thumb are two little marks where large splinters were pulled out.  The back of my left thumb knuckle got skinned the other day while cleaning the chimney.  And my left middle finger got nailed grabbing wood out of the shed.

One of the apple trees

There are also the pre-cabin scars like the one on my index finger from where the first knife I owned folded up on me while I was up in the apple tree at my parent’s old house.  Plus the one on my right palm that ended with seven stitches after jamming my hand into a pile of broken glass at the bar during work.

There’s no doubt about it, my right hand takes the brunt of my abuse.  I just read “The Old Man and The Sea” and that had a similar theme, but the old man thought his left hand was weak and stupid.  He relied on his right hand and never had any doubts about its usefulness.  I don’t think my left hand is useless, and in fact I have to admit that if I was going to lose a finger, I would prefer that it came from my right hand.  I need all the fingers on my left hand to play guitar.

One nice thing about the mildness of this winter, so far anyway, is that my feet haven’t been as frost bitten as I thought they would be.  I developed frost bite on my feet years ago.  Cramming my feet into ill-fitting and stiff down hill ski boots and skiing over one hundred days per year pretty much sealed my fate.  I should have chosen boots that were comfortable, but I wanted racing boots even though I sucked at racing and was only on the team to get the free skiing.  The tables have turned now, and since I no longer get free skiing, I no longer get frostbite.  Truth is, I’d rather hit the slopes and deal with the frostbite.

Cabin Life – #7

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The shadows are getting long, and it’s only 4:00 in the afternoon.  There has been a noticeable difference in the amount of daylight from a month ago though.  In the beginning of January, I would have put my headlights on at this time.  But not today, because spring is coming.

It’s early February, and I can’t help but feel a certain amount of accomplishment.  When I moved into the cabin back in October, it seemed like winter was going to be a long, harsh struggle to survive.  I’ve had a good winter so far.

It’s been a remarkably mild winter though, and that has a lot to do with how it’s been going.  There have been lots of days with temperatures above freezing, and if all the rain we got had been snow, then I would guess that there would be about another three feet of snow on the ground.  Plus, the plow guy has only had to come twice, saving me a ton of money, and him a lot of veggie oil (his truck is a bio-diesel).  He did get stuck last time, and I mean way off the driveway stuck.  I helped him out and our efforts eventually took two hours, two shovels, my Jeep and his back-hoe.  But the effort was successful, and I get a free plow the next time it snows.

The wood is holding up really well too.  We cut, split and stacked about

The Old Plow

nine and a half cords of wood, which you can visualize as ten rows of split wood, each four feet high and twenty feet long.  I’ve only burned about two and a half cords so far, which means lots of dry wood for campfires this summer.

Analyzing my experience so far, I’m amazed at how long it took to get some of the little things down.  Like making sure the fire stays going all night instead of getting up three times to put wood in the stove.  Or making sure that I buy lamp oil for the kerosene lanterns.  Or planning ahead to make sure I have enough water for a few days.  My friends are remarkably generous with their drinking water, and for that I am very thankful.

It’s been a lot of work living out here, and the work is far from over.  But so many of the chores are enjoyable, that the days seem to go by kind of quickly.  I walk up to the other cabin out here a couple times a week to make sure that it’s still standing, no one has broken into it, and that there are no tree limbs sticking out of the roof.  Carrying a few arm loads of wood inside every day and splitting the bigger pieces gives me a little exercise, as does finding small logs in the woods and dragging them out to be cut up for next year’s fire wood.  I wish I could attach some sort of harness to Pico so that he would drag them, but I know that he would not want to do it.

The one thing that surprises me the most though, is the fact that I’m really enjoying living like this.  Sure, if it was my property I would invest in some upgrades like solar panels and a well, but I have really not been missing any of the things that we take for granted.  The transition to life off the grid really hasn’t been painful, and that’s really comforting to me.

Cabin Life – #6

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Why did I let myself fall asleep on the couch at six in the evening?  Now it’s two in the morning, and I’m wide awake.  I forgot how boring it is to be up in the middle of the night without any electricity.

A year ago, I was living in Florida, five blocks from the ocean, with a pretty good job (two of them, actually), and a nice place to live.  And the temperature never went below zero.  I was on a boat a lot of my work days, and got paid to hang out with my friends while working at the bar on weekends.

Wood smoke and sunrise

Occasionally, I would go hiking with Pico.  Our favorite place to go was Pumpkin Hill Creek Preserve State Park.  There were a few loops of trails out there, and I regularly worked with some of the people there on water quality stuff.  Although it wasn’t really hiking.  Sure, I was walking outside in the woods, but just kind of strolling along a sandy, single-lane road that was maintained not for recreation, but as a fire break in case of a forest fire.

When Pico and I would go hiking, I always looked for the eagle’s nest.  And there was a chance that we’d see deer or wild boar, and we were guaranteed a sight of the enormous gopher tortoise.  They can move really fast when they want to.

One time for work, I was driving a truck along the hiking trail, and a big fat black boar popped out of the undergrowth and started running away from the truck.  Perhaps instinctively, I started to chase the boar to see how fast it was running.  I backed off the gas when I hit 17 miles per hour, and the thing disappeared back into the brush a few seconds later.  I could see the tusks on that monster from about fifty feet, and they scared the crap out of me.  I just imagined Pico getting impaled by a tusk as he ran up to greet the boar.

Chasing the boar reminded me of a time when I was at Paul Smiths, some friends and I were out on a large, private property.  We had permission of course, and since it was fall and the height of berry season, we figured that we could probably find some black bears grazing out in the fields.  As we drove around the enormous expanses of blueberry fields, we saw 24 black bears.  Only one of them was out on the road, and when it took off running, we chased, just to see how fast it would run.  It was a small bear, probably a yearling, and we topped out at about 18 miles per hour.  Seeing that many bears was an incredible experience.

I’m glad now that it’s winter, there are not too many living things out in the woods that would pose a real threat to me or Pico.  I never take his leash on our outings, and he’s free to run and smell and pee all he likes.  The bears are hibernating, and the skunks and porcupines are not moving around much, though I have found some tracks and scat from porcupines.  So far, Pico has shown no interest in chasing the rabbits, but the red squirrels out back are now firm enemies.  It’s become apparent that he expects me to help him get the squirrels.  He trees them, then looks at me and barks.  The squirrels laugh and move to adjacent trees.  Luckily, they haven’t found the bird feeders, or Pico would probably have dove through the big window trying to get them, expecting me to follow.

 

Cabin Life – #5

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Bitter, bitter cold.  The HIGH temperature yesterday was 1.  About 8:00 this morning, the thermometer in my car read -18.  And that was after the sun had been up for a while.  It hurts to do anything outside when it’s that cold, and I’m pretty sure that I would rather die than go to the outhouse right now.

There’s really no difference to the feel of the air whether it’s twenty below or thirty below.  Both temperatures are equally hellish.  It’s not like when the temperature goes from thirty to forty above.  Forty degrees is a really warm day up here this time of year.  I would have my windows open, there’d be people walking around in t-shirts.  But trust me, when its more than ten degrees below zero, it is all terrible.

I’m chicken sitting, otherwise I wouldn’t go anywhere on a day like today.  The car gets started at least thirty minutes before I leave to let the engine and parts get warmed up as well as the heater.  She starts fine, but there are always

The front door hinge inside the cabin

horrible sounds when it’s this cold out.  The Jeep doesn’t want to go anywhere either and it makes its protestations known.  Too bad, I got chickens to take care of.

So much time and energy are devoted to dealing with the cold when it is like this.  Two nights ago, it was well below zero, and when I went to put the chickens away for the night, I noticed that there was no light coming from the coop.  I checked inside, and the heating lamp was not on.  It was a frantic scramble to check the extension cords and make sure they were plugged in.  Hands freeze and become useless very quickly when they have to be shoved into the snow searching for a little piece of wire.  And I have to be careful opening the door to go in.  The tiny bit of moisture on my hands from the snow freezes to the doorknob, and I have to exert a little extra effort to “let go” of the knob.

Once inside, my face and hands start stinging.  I was outside for maybe five minutes.  I check all the places where I think light bulbs could be: basement, garage, linen closet.  Finally in a back corner of the basement, I find the light bulbs.  I love compact fluorescent bulbs to save money, but in this case they’re useless.  I need a good old fashioned incandescent, one that sucks up the juice and spits out a ton of heat.  I don’t know enough about chickens to know how well they’d survive a winter up here with no shelter, but I do know that I don’t want to report a dead chicken to Amy.  Even if it would be a delicious tragedy.

Another option if I can’t get the lamp working is to bring them into the garage.  It’s warmer and sheltered, but then I would have to clean up all that chicken crap in the morning.  Plus, they probably wouldn’t want to leave the garage, meaning that I would have to catch each one and carry it outside.  If you’ve never hung out with any chickens, they’re kind of dumb.

Luckily, it was just a burned out bulb, and I found one halogen light that seemed to throw some heat.  The next morning, the chickens were all still alive, so the bulb must have at least helped.  After checking the coop for eggs and finding two frozen ones, I guess that chickens can survive pretty cold temperatures.

 

 

Cabin Life – #4

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Woke up normal time, between four and five in the morning.  I usually get up a few times a night to stoke the fire, but the stove has been burning well for the last couple of weeks.  I still like to get up and throw a couple of logs on, and to be sure the fire doesn’t go out, I set an alarm for 10:30pm, 12:30am, and 2:00am.

Got up, checked the fire, finished the book “Boomerang” that I got from the library and tried to fix my car window.  The driver’s window is stuck about halfway down, and since its winter, I really need to get it fixed.  But I don’t feel like going anywhere today, especially since I have to drive with the window down.  No, it’s better to put some plastic over it and wait a day or two to head to the mechanic.

Getting up so early and often generally requires that I take a nap during the day.  Since I get up so early, nap time is usually around 9:00am, which sounds weird, because most people have just gotten out of bed or are just getting to work.  But by nine, I’ve been up about five hours, and it’s nice to get a little more shut-eye.  When I lay down, the wind was blowing and the sky was overcast, but it was warm and there was a steady pat-pat-pat of water dripping off the roof.

When I woke up around noon, I glanced out the big window and could not see the trees on the other side of the yard.  They are maybe 150 yards away, but it was a white out.  The wind was raging, and snow was blowing everywhere.  The screened-in porch had about a half inch of accumulation despite the screens, there were a few inches on the ground while Pico turned white with snow after about a minute outside.

Since I had plenty of water in my brand new 5 gallon jug and lots of food, hunkering down didn’t seem like such a bad option.  It would be downright enjoyable if I had another little nine volt battery so I could listen to NPR once in a while, but I killed the last battery yesterday.  With all this indoor time on my hands, there’s really only one thing to do:  Clean.

I had a roommate for the last couple of months, but he’s gone now, so I set to making the cabin a little less like a weekend retreat and more like a home.  The biggest thing I have to do is the dishes.  There’s four knives, a bowl, a fork, and a small sauce pot to be washed.  It’s not that I don’t eat at home or cook, but I generally use paper plates and bowls, along with plastic silverware and cast-iron pans.  I know, I hate using the disposable stuff, but it’s really hard to do the dishes out here with no running water.  Plus, at least the paper dishes can go into the stove and produce some heat for the place.  Using the stuff twice, that’s my justification.

The propane stove is lit and the tea kettle is on.  There’s a big Tupperware in the sink to hold the hot water.  I have dish soap and a dish rag too.  Then the process begins.  I’ve put the five gallon jug on to two small pieces of 2×4 to raise it a little.  I wash in the hot water, rinse with the cold water.  It’s enough of a pain that I am still going to use mostly disposable stuff, but it only takes a few minutes to wash the dishes.  Trust me, this is a big step up in lifestyle.

I rearrange some other things so that I can sit on the couch in front of the big window and decide that that’s enough productivity for one day.  After all, I got all winter out here.  The storm is still blowing and the forecast now says that the high temperature tomorrow is going to be 1.  There’s about 6 inches of snow on the driveway, and I have to get it plowed for the first time this year.

But it’s nice to just sit inside by the fire once in a while.  There’s subtle pops from the woodstove and all three animals are snoring.  The sound of a fat cat snoring makes me want to crawl back into bed, but I have to head outside and get another arm load of wood.