Tag Archives: chickens

Cabin Life – #111

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Rainy and in the forties.  This is the worst type of weather I face all The New Girlsyear.  I know, the snow is just gone, and I had to have my chickens live in a tent in my kitchen for a few nights, but hiking in and saving the chickens from the bitter cold were easy decisions.  This weather presents a much tougher decision:  whether to burn the precious little dry wood I have left.

Even with a few weeks off from the cabin this winter, my wood supply is quite low now.  The wood I found over the winter isn’t quite dry enough to burn, and it’s a tough call to use up wood when it’s still above freezing.  If the temperature doesn’t dip too low, I’ll bundle up with a sleeping bag and run the little propane heater for a little while in the morning before it warms up outside.  But this cold damp calls for a fire.

I’ve got the glass doors wide open, and the fire is crackling away behind the grate that keeps the sparks in.  I didn’t realize how much of a difference the new stove really made until just the other day.  I had a fire going with the grate in place, and when I came back in I noticed a smell I hadn’t smelled in some time.  The cabin smelled like wood smoke, and it was actually pleasant.  That smell had been ruined for me by the old woodstove, which used to belch smoke inside with such regularity that I was sometimes called the Walking Woodstove.

I like being able to hear the pop and crackle and have an unobstructed view of the flames.  Sure, it’s not all that efficient to use the grate, but honestly, I don’t want it too hot in here.  The trouble with the temps in the forties is that it’s too cold not to have a fire, but too warm if I do have a fire.  And there’s the rub.

It’s just another one of life’s seasonal transitions out here.  I have to make calculated decisions on heating and the wood supply.  But I also have to be comfortable.  It can be a grueling choice to make.  There have been, however, several choices I’ve made recently that were considerably easier.

The first was to order more chickens.  Amy and I split an order, and I picked them up from the post office yesterday.  The little chicks were peeping like crazy in the seat next to me on the way from the post office.  With the weather being so damp and cold, the chicks will be staying at Amy’s for a couple of weeks.  Plus, I don’t want Midget to get too rough with the new girls.  They have to be big enough to put him in his place, even if judging by the behavior of Whitey, Brownie, and Blondie he is quite the charmer.

I’m excited to expand the group with a few new girls.  A silver laced wyandotte and three Auraucanas are going to be joining the flock in a couple of weeks, just when the weather gets nice.  In addition to these four new girls, I took a fertilized egg from each of my current girls to Amy’s.  She has a hen that’s very broody right now, and I thought it would be fun to see if she’ll hatch some of Midget’s offspring.  This hen was just sitting in an empty nesting box when I got there.  She’s so intent on sitting on eggs that she wouldn’t get up when I pushed her.  I had to lift her butt and put the eggs down underneath her.  She made a quiet noise and settled back in, so we’ll see how it goes.

And finally, as much as doubling my chicken flock may impact my life, this final decision will no doubt have a bigger impact.  I’m sorry to say, but I will in all likelihood not be living in this cabin at the end of the year.  I asked my girlfriend to marry me, and for some strange, unknown, and possibly unknowable reason, she said yes.  And fortunately or unfortunately, my little cabin is no place for us to start our lives together.

I give her a lot of credit for putting up with my living situation for so long.  For almost two years she has never once complained about the toilet paper being in the oven, or having to hike in, or being covered in dog fur when she leaves.  I guess I owe it to her for us to find a place that has indoor plumbing, electricity, TV, internet, a refrigerator, and an oven.  I can go either way on the electricity or TV, but my bride-to-be deserves nothing but the best.  And in my opinion, indoor plumbing is the best.  Jeez, I’ve been out here too long.

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Cabin Life – The Want-Ad

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Roommate Wanted!!

Experience the excitement of living off the grid, while enjoying the beautiful sights and sounds of Mother Nature right outside your door!

I’m looking for a roommate who isn’t afraid of roughing it and having some adventure!  You will get back to nature by having to venture outside to use the bathroom, regardless of the temperature.  Oh, and forgetting the warm toilet seat hanging over the stove when you go to the outhouse in the middle of winter should be the definition of adventure in the dictionary!  You will make faces and sounds you never knew were possible, but don’t worry, there won’t be anyone to see or hear you except the birds!  (I won’t be able to hear you because the outhouse is quite a walk from the cabin.  Privacy at its best right there!)

You’ll also become a lean, mean, healthy machine!  The quarter-mile walk from where you can park up to the cabin will ensure that you’re getting plenty of cardio!  It’s like a double bonus when you forget something small in the car and have to go back for it too!  You can walk almost a whole mile before you get to the cabin if you manage to just leave one important thing in your car!  Not only that, but you’ll be expected to carry a forty pound jug of water up the long, snowy hill to the cabin at least a couple of times per week, so your arms will be big around as tree trunks!

And speaking of tree trunks, you can really commune with nature by helping to cut down trees for our firewood!  Hippies rejoice!  You will literally be hugging trees every single day of the year!  You’ll help carrying the logs down to the cabin, get to gently caress them as you set them up for me to split with a huge metal maul, and then get to stack them in the most efficient and fast way possible.  You can then round out the beautiful circle of life when you bring the firewood in to burn in the woodstove!  Give your woodland buddies a little smooch before confining them to a slow, smoky, and brutal death!

And that’s only the beginning of the benefits!  Buy some books and get a library card because you will be the braniac your mom always knew you could be!  With no TV, movies, or internet, your brain will get to be as sharp as the chain on the chainsaw.  You can read about taking care of chickens or which type of lettuce will grow best in the garden or try to identify which type of snake just slithered in through the unscreened and open front door and other exciting things!  Gone will be the days of lying around on the couch rotting your brain on the boob tube.  You’ll be so starved for amusement that you won’t even be able to blink when there is a TV on near you due to the complete lack of visual stimulus that a completely unbroken white landscape provides.

As mentioned above, you’ll have complete and total privacy in the outhouse.  But living in the middle of the woods at the very end of a dead end road with a quarter mile of trees and hills separating you from the closest motor vehicle also provides a ton of solitude!  It’s so liberating being able to walk around naked inside the cabin with no fear of anyone just walking by and seeing your birthday suit!  Of course, since we’ll be roommates, we may have to figure out a birthday suit schedule.  The hours allotted to nakedness will depend on your facial hair and gender.

I’ll expect you to also do half of the household chores.  These won’t occupy more than fifteen or twenty hours a week, and really aren’t so bad.  You’ll have to help with the dishes, and as we have to carry water in to wash dishes, you will be tasked with making sure that you have enough water to actually wash the dishes.  Allowing my dog to simply lick the plates clean can only be done at my discretion.  Oh, and there is no indoor plumbing at all, so when washing the dishes, you will have to keep an eye on the bucket under the sink that catches all the water and waste from brushing our teeth and dishes and cooking.  When the bucket is full, just take it out and dump it on the compost pile, not so bad, right?!  But since you’re at the compost pile, go ahead and spend five or ten minutes stirring it.

There’s also carrying in firewood every single morning and night, and even sometimes in the middle of the night.  It’s a rare treat to see how clear the skies and how bright the stars are on a crystal clear, moonless winter night!  You’ll forget all about the bone crushing temperatures that would kill you in less than a half hour if you were to fall on the ice and knock yourself out!  Plus, you’ll get to know the cute girl at the hardware store because you’ll be there every week getting batteries for your headlamp.  In fact, you can probably get to know her well enough to ask her out!  Of course, convincing a member of the opposite sex to travel two miles down a dirt road to walk a quarter mile into the woods with you might be a tough sell.  But hey, weirder things have happened!

I’m not going to lie to you, it’s not all glory and sunshine and fun little jaunts to the outhouse.  There are a few downsides, too.  The cabin only has single-pane windows and no insulation.  But, this just means that you’ll get to snuggle up tight in your favorite sleeping bag with a rating of twenty below zero!  There is also no way for any sort of professional or volunteer help to get here.  That means that the cops, volunteer fire department, or ambulance will be around to help if you cut your leg with chainsaw or fall off the roof cleaning the chimney or break your ankle walking to the woodshed.  But you will become far more self-sufficient and your tolerance for pain will get to be much better!  Now that I think about it, it is all glory and sunshine!  Give me a call to schedule a meeting, I pinky swear I’m not a serial killer.

Rent is very cheap for females lacking facial hair and males with lots of facial hair.  The rent goes up depending on the combination of those two factors.

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Cabin Life – #109

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There’s a steady stream of water pouring off the roof in front of the big The Fox Trackswindow.  There are no more icicles, and the shingles are showing for the first time in months.  It finally feels like spring.

I sat outside most of the afternoon, relaxing in a lawn chair enjoying a good book.  As I sat there soaking up the sun, the snow melted around me.  The chicken coop roof is clear after being baked in the sun all day, and the snow fossils of old footprints are appearing and melting again in less than a day.

The chickens have been enjoying the warmer weather and longer days too.  For a couple of months, I hadn’t gotten more than an egg per day from the three girls, and sometimes not even that.  But in the last week, I’ve gotten more than a dozen eggs as they’ve been basking in the sunlight.

The chickens are eating better too, finding food in the melting snow that they missed the first time around.  Unfortunately, they are not the only ones scratching around for food by the chicken coop.

A few nights ago, we got a few inches of snow.  I woke up and let the girls out and fed them.  In my early morning haze, I failed to notice the set of tracks going from behind my cabin, around the coop and run, and then off into the woods via the left trail.

An hour or so later, after I had made some coffee, I looked out the big window and finally noticed the tracks.  I was looking at them puzzled, knowing that Pico often walked a similar route around the coop.  But then I noticed that the tracks came from my left, behind the cabin.  This is not an area that Pico frequents.

I grabbed my camera and went out to do some tracking.  I immediately noticed that the tracks were smaller than Pico’s.  Working backwards from the coop, I followed the tracks around the cabin to the window right next to my bed.  This sly little fox had walked on the snow right up to my window without ever waking up or arousing Pico.  What a lousy guard dog.

The fox had come from the direction of the Upper Camp, and even crossed paths with some rabbits over by the woodshed.  The previous night I hadn’t locked the chickens up because it was going to be warm, but from then on I have locked them up every night.

I’ve only seen the fox tracks one other time, but it still puts me on edge.  I know it won’t be able to get the girls at night when they’re locked in the coop.  I just hope that the fox isn’t desperate enough to come around during the day.

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Cabin Life – #106

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The wild winter weather has continued.  Tonight it’s so warm that even The Rock Voleseveral hours after the sun went down, there is still a steady drip-drip-drip coming off the roof.  In the forties tomorrow, the season just can’t seem to make up its mind.

That’s not to say that it has been an easy winter.  And to me, there has been a recurring theme out here at that cabin that demonstrates this better than anything else.  I have had a steady supply of small rodents around the house looking for food.

When I moved into the cabin a few years ago, Amy not so light heartily called it the “Mouse House.”  Since then, it has been cleaned up significantly.  With Ed and Herbie running nightly patrols, the mice moved out and other than a very occasional rustling in the walls, I have not had to deal with any other rodents inside the cabin.

That is not to say that there is a lack of small rodents at the cabin.  Red squirrels used to attack the bird feeders on a regular basis and there is a family of mice living in the outhouse.  There are certainly plenty of places for them to hole up for the winter out here.  Unfortunately, they seem to have decided to try and spend nights in a couple of buckets I have.  This has resulted in me finding more dead rodents in the last month than I’ve seen in well over two years.

The first one was a mole that for some reason climbed into the open bucket in the outhouse that holds the lime.  The lime is the off-grid version of a vanilla candle, and is essential to using the facilities.  I was not surprised to find the little bugger frozen solid in a bucket that offered no food or shelter even though I had no idea why it went in there.  I buried him… Unceremoniously.

About a week later, I spent a nice comfortable night watching TV and soaking up electric light and flushing toilets at my girlfriends, and when I got home in the morning, I found what I think is a rock vole frozen to death.  This was in another small bucket on the porch in which I keep some chicken food.

I use a combination of store-bought chicken feed and winter wheat, and when I was making a mix of the two, I had a small amount of the wheat left over.  This is a bucket that I can understand the rodents trying to get into at least.  It was frozen solid, and since there was only a little wheat left in it I just tossed the vole and wheat into the woods.  Hopefully something eats him before he thaws and smells and Pico eats him.

And even though there was only a little wheat frozen to the bottom of the bucket, the very next day there was a deer mouse in the bottom.  This was the first of the three rodents that was still alive when I found it, and since it hadn’t been living inside my house, I decided to let it take it chances back out in the wild.

As I laid the bucket down out front, the mouse scampered off.  It went a few yards down the trail towards the chicken coop, and then stopped.  I went inside to get the camera, and when I came out again, it was making a big loop over the snow back towards the woods.  I watched it run and leave a neat little trail across the snow.  I got cold and went inside, knowing that I wouldn’t get a good shot of the mouse now.

Later, as I made my way to the outhouse, I noticed that the mouse tracks went right under the shed.  I took a little solace in the fact that it’ll be around for the rest of the winter.  I like having the wildlife around, even if it does require me to perform funerals on occasion.

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Cabin Life – #105

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Winter is really upon us now, finally with some snow to go along with the The Drivewaybone and soul crushing cold.  It’s a mixed bag for me, us getting a bunch of snow.  With snow comes a lot of hardship, and also some benefits too.

One of the immediate benefits of the eight or so inches of snow is that my cabin is much better insulated.  The old pink fiberglass insulation in the attic is more for show at this point than actual insulating value, but the snow on the roof just bottles of the heat from the stove and makes the cabin much more comfortable.

However, I may think the cabin is more comfortable simply because I now have a third of a mile to hike up to it.  Not being able to drive right to the cabin raises a whole host of issues.  I can’t use the car as a generator to watch TV and keep the chickens warm.  I can’t warm up the car before I leave when it’s thirty below outside.  If I forget something in the car, it’s getting frozen and staying there overnight most likely.

But it is nice to be able to just step outside and go skiing.  Pico’s getting more exercise since I can actually enjoy the outdoors.  When it’s not thirty below.  And I like the way everything looks, and how the snow helps reflect the light of the late afternoon sun.  One thing that I have been keenly noticing, is the gain in daylight.

Even with the electric lights, it is still difficult to maintain a somewhat normal schedule due to the lack of sunlight.  But we’re up to almost eleven hours a day, and I have been literally basking in the added light.  Not outside of course, but while lying on the couch.

I’m happy that the chicken tent has not had to make a re-appearance, and that the girls and Midget have been content in the coop.  The additional snow makes the coop more insulated too, and even though they have no idea why, I’m sure they’ve been happy in the warmer digs.

So all in all, I guess I don’t mind the snow.  It’s the middle of February and won’t be here long.  I missed a lot of the winter not being able to ski or snowshoe, but I’m also looking forward to not having to drag my clean laundry up the driveway in a sled.

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Cabin Life – #104

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It’s been a couple of weeks packed with transition for all of us out here at the The final resting placecabin.  The chickens are out of the tent, Ed is buried and Herbie is acting like he never has before.  We’re all making adjustments and getting on with life, even though the bone-chilling temperatures haven’t always made it that easy.  The chickens are getting better about laying eggs again after their days in the tent.  It took a few days but Whitey finally started laying again and Blondie has dropped a couple of eggs too.  Brownie never really stopped.

Two days after Ed died, I decided that I needed to bury him.  It had been a long weekend, with Ed passing, then me being occupied in a weekend long task.  But that Sunday night I made the effort to bury Ed.

I was worried that with the lack of snow and cold temperatures that I would not have an easy time burying Ed.  I also needed to decide on a place to put him that would not be in danger of being torn up at some point in the future when Amy decides to build a house out here.

I decided on putting him the lower field, in full view of my cabin.  When he was out and about in the summer, he spent a lot of time in the lower field chasing butterflies and bugs.  That’s where the blueberries are, and where I had found the old horseshoe pit.  It seemed as good a place as any, and since I was going to have to do some heavy digging, I figured it was better if his grave wasn’t located too far from the cabin.

Even though the sun was down and I was exhausted from hiking all day, I grabbed the spade shovel and post-hole diggers and set out.  There’s a large cherry tree in the middle of the lower field and I decided to put him under that.  I should have grabbed the hatchet to work on roots, but needless to say, my mind was a little distracted.

I scraped the snow off down to the ground and made a big push with the shovel.  To my pleasant surprise, the ground was not frozen.  Turns out a full day of rain and forty degree temps made for some easy digging.  I also somehow miraculously managed to not hit any major roots of the tree.  It was easy going physically, tough going mentally.

After digging down a few feet, I walked back to the cabin and got Ed.  He was in a cardboard box, and I wanted to make sure the hole was deep enough.  The very last thing in the world I wanted to do was have to re-bury him after finding his body dug up by some scavenger.

The hole was deep enough, and I filled it back in with the loosed soil and some stones.  I decided to add a large rock to the top of the grave to help deter wild animals.  I knew that a small boulder about two feet across was loose and just sitting on top of the ground about twenty feet away.  I had checked this boulder during the summer, thinking I was going to move it to put the chicken coop there, so I knew it would move.

It may have been easy to move initially, but once it was out of its little hole, it was much harder to move.  It wouldn’t role across the snow, instead sliding a few inches at a time, even when I pried on it with the five foot rock bar.  Honestly, it took me longer to move the rock than it did to dig the hole.  All the while I was crying, not making this task any easier.

I finally got the rock into position, and felt a little better.  I stood there until my hands were numb and went back inside.  I had noticed Herbie walking around and looking over his shoulder a lot, probably looking for Ed, and didn’t want to leave him alone for too long.

I climbed into bed a little while later and Herbie came right up to my face for some petting.  He curled up next to my head for a few minutes, and then made his way under the sheets to snuggle.  This was the first time in a decade that Herbie had done this.  I guess he figured we could hang together and maybe it would be a little easier on both of us.  Or maybe he was just basking in the extra attention he was getting.

Pico, however, hasn’t seemed to notice.  He’s got me to jump and chew on, and I think he’ll be happy as long as that is an entertainment option for him.  I still miss Ed, but after a couple of weeks it has gotten easier.  I find myself looking out at the boulder and stones marking Ed’s grave, and miss him greatly, but between the chickens, Herbie, and Pico, I have plenty of other animals to keep me busy.

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Cabin Life – #103

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I can freely admit that I am not an expert in basically anything, but let me The Chickens Insidegive you some advice:  Don’t share your four-hundred square foot anything with a dog, a cat, three hens, and a rooster.  Now, nothing against the chickens, but they are noisy.  And stinky.  And no matter what, the rooster will crow whenever he feels like it, regardless of your sleep schedule.

With temperatures predicted to be about thirty below zero without the wind chill, I decided that the time had come to let the chickens have a nice warm night inside.  Now, keep in mind that the chickens had not ever been inside my cabin.  Nor had Pico ever been separated from them by nothing more than a blanket.  Needless to say, I did not get much sleep last night.

For instance, did you know that roosters crow all the time, not just in the morning?  I did, but I did not realize how often Midget would crow.  I did not realize that every time he crowed, Pico would answer with a round of barking.  I also did not realize the scope or variety of odd, obnoxious, and just plain weird sounds that the chickens would make when they spend the night just a few feet from my bed.

It has been an absurdly cold winter, and even though the chickens had made it this far with nothing more than a little frostbite, thirty below turned out to be the line I drew in the sand.  I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon trying to decide the best way to house them inside my cabin.  Not having a dog cage or anything of the sort, I had to improvise.

I grabbed the large black sled I use for hauling firewood and brought it inside.  I commandeered an old blanket and draped it from the sink down to the sled to create a chicken tent inside my cabin.  Then I spent the better part of half an hour rounding up and corralling the chickens so I could catch them.  Midget and Brownie were easy, and even though Blondie tried to hide, she was still relatively easy to get a hold of.  Whitey, on the other hand, is sketchy.  I mean seriously sketchy.  She reminds me of one of those movie characters who thinks the government is on to them, and goes to extreme lengths to avoid being caught.  Except in this case, I actually was trying to catch her.

I managed to get my numb hands on her after quite a while of trying.  She was not happy about it, but when I deposited her in the chicken tent she seemed to settle down.  There was food and an unfrozen bowl of water in the sled, along with her compatriots.  Midget however, was not so fond of the tent.  I could hear him clucking and occasionally crowing.  I could also see a small part of the blanket moving when he walked around inside.

Now, this tent was not set up to be a perfect place for them to live.  But it was a necessity, and managed to keep Pico and Herbie out, while somehow managing to keep the chickens in.  For a while.

This morning, I decided that I should put them outside, but not until the sun came up.  Unfortunately, even after the sun came up, it was still well below zero outside, like twenty below zero.  I had to run to town, and decided that Pico should come with me.  He’s not a killer per se, but I have no doubt that he would have found his way into the chicken tent and caused havoc.  Best case scenario if I left him home:  Chicken crap everywhere in my house.  It was not a risk I was willing to take.

So off we went, while the chickens camped out in the balmy interior of my cabin.  When we got home, I was torn on whether to put them outside.  It was sunny and deceivingly nice looking outside, but the temperature never really got above zero.  With Midget and Whitey showing frostbite on their combs, I decided that I would not subject them to the move from seventy degrees to ten below zero.  But that was before Blondie and Midget found an escape route.

I was sitting at the table chatting with my girlfriend when we heard some commotion and looked up only to see Blondie strutting around the carpet at the front door.  Midget popped out as I was watching, and Whitey was trying very hard to follow suit.  I shoved Whitey back into the tent and grabbed Midget and Blondie and put them back too.  The sounds that followed convinced me that they would benefit from some fresh air and freedom.  I may have also figured that I would benefit from them getting some fresh air.  I again grabbed Midget and Blondie and transferred them outside.  After an hour or so, I figured that I may as well put Brownie and Whitey out too.

Now, I wasn’t trying to torture them or cause harm, but the outside space seemed to do them some good.  They got a few hours out in the sun, and I managed to round them up with less effort than yesterday.  Now they’re back in the tent, making crazy sounds and stinking the place up.  Luckily, the weather should be getting warmer in a day or two, because honestly, they are not good roommates.  I’m not sure how this reflects on me, but they are also not the worst roommates I’ve ever had either.  I guess I’d rather listen to a rooster crow at five in the morning than listen to some guy scream at a video game at four in the morning.  You know what, this doesn’t reflect on me at all.  At least this time I’m in control of when the obnoxious roommates move out.

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Cabin Life – #102

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I’m sitting at my table writing because right now, this is the only thing that Edwill keep me from curling up in the fetal position on my bed and sobbing uncontrollably.  Ed, my little gray cat, the first pet I ever had, just died in my arms.  And I am not handling it well.

This is actually the second article I’ve written today, and even though it’s late and I have to be up early, I know that lying in bed will be worse for me psychologically than staying up and doing something productive.  I’m upset for the obvious reason that my cat and one of my best friends of eleven years just passed away, but that’s not the end of it.

He went quickly, deteriorating in just a week or so.  His strength was gone, he could barely breathe, and he had stopped eating.  He couldn’t make it to the litter box, and had to lie down to drink water.  That’s how weak he was, he couldn’t even stand up long enough to take a drink.

But my sorrow is so much more than just the thought that tomorrow I have to bury him and that he won’t be around anymore.  That cat saved my life countless times, and in the end, all I could do was sit with him in my lap as he took his last breath.

Most of the time that I lived in Jacksonville I was so depressed that I was Ed, a little olderfrequently suicidal.  I hated everything about my life, and quite frankly, if it wasn’t for my pets, I probably would have killed myself.  I had even gone so far a few times as to wonder who would take my animals.  And the thought of Pico being back in a shelter and Ed and Herbie being separated was enough to stop me.  The number of times that it got this far is scary.

But all along, Ed was there, all ten pounds of him, telling me in his own way that he loved me.  He was born in a barn outside of Malone, with no pedigree or anything.  There were three kittens in the litter, and Ed was the only short-hair.  I called dibs, and Amy took Ed’s brother while someone else took the only girl.  The farm was being rented by my friends, and we knew that the kittens were coming.  So Amy and I headed up there a day or two after they were born, and I got to hold Ed.  He was smaller than my palm, but opened his eyes for the first time while I was holding him.

A few weeks later I brought Ed home.  He was pretty wild, as kittens tend to be, but even then, he had some idiosyncrasies.  The house I lived in at the time was one main floor, with my bedroom upstairs.  Every day I would go to school or work and leave Ed in my room.  I didn’t want him chewing on wires or digging up house plants, so I gave him food, water, and litter to get by for the day.  However, each day when I got home, Ed would greet me at the door.

There were a few times when I figured that my roommate had let him out, but more often than not, Brendan hadn’t been home since before I left.  I could not figure out how Ed was getting out of the room.

Then one day after a few weeks, Brendan called in sick to work.  I got home from school, and he told me that he knew how Ed was getting out.  My room was the only thing upstairs, and so the stairs went straight from my room to a door at the bottom which led to the living room.  So Brendan was sitting on the couch (most likely watching The Simpsons) when he heard a racket coming down the stairs, then a loud thud, and then the door swung open.  Brendan stared in amazement as Ed came trotting out from my room.  The little kitten, maybe weighing a pound or two, was flying down the stairs and just doing a full-body slam against the door to pop it open.  After that I figured that if I found a way to keep the door shut tight, he would probably just hurt himself trying to get the door open.  He had earned the right to have full run of the house.

When the weather warmed up that spring, I would take Ed swimming in the lake or for short canoe rides.  I took him to work with me and let him wander around outside, pretending to be a hunter, though never catching anything other than dead leaves.  His hunting skills got better over the years, and he caught many mice.  He never killed them, just trotted around with them in his mouth, occasionally dropping one so he could catch it again.

This was a cat that learned how to turn on water faucets so he could play with the water.  He somehow managed to get on top of the pipes in my parent’s basement to crawl around and hang out.  He could hang upside down from the ceiling and jump to the top of a refrigerator from the floor.  He would go for hikes with me and Pico in the summer, following closely but sometimes sprinting ahead.  He had refined and discriminating taste in beer.  In short, Ed was the man.

I love that cat with all my heart, and to know that he’s in a box on the porch The Last Pictureis devastating.  I’m glad he went quickly though, and thinking back on all the times I just shook my head and laughed at my little man is making things a little better.  I feel bad for Herbie though.  Herbie was the fat lazy one, and now he’s got no one to play with.  Herbie just brushed up against my leg.  He gave my calf a little nip, which he does a lot.  But hearing him purr makes me realize one thing.  Ed died purring, warm and comfortable, held by someone who loved him and will never forget him.  He had a good life, and even though he’s gone, the little man will always be with me.

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Cabin Life – #101

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Well, the low temperature last night was still above zero for the first time in Fresh Eggsa week.  It’s not much, but it’s something to look forward to.  And then tomorrow they’re saying that the highs will be above freezing.  It has been a wild winter so far, weather-wise.

While the rest of the nation was experiencing record cold last week, we were watching the snow melt and the ruts in the driveway disappear.  Then we had bone chilling cold with nasty wind.  So much so that if I didn’t check the chicken coop every hour or so for eggs, the eggs I did find would be frozen and cracked.

One nice development out here at the cabin is that Brownie the chicken has started laying eggs too.  Nice light brown ones that make the egg carton look so pleasant.  With Whitey and Brownie laying now pretty much every day, I’m getting more eggs than I can eat.  At least when I find them unfrozen.

But back to the weather.  It was so windy the other night that I actually had to prop one of the chairs up against the door to keep it from blowing open.  The corner of the old woodshed roof lifted and had to be repaired (the people who built it only used about twenty screws for the eight sheets of metal, so no wonder it pulled away from the shed).  I’ll have to keep an eye on it the next time it gets windy like that.

The one upside of the wind is that I had several trees come down.  I could hear the popping and crunching of branches falling all night a few nights ago, and when I took Pico for a walk to check on the upper cabin, I found about a half dozen green ash trees down.

This was a huge bonus for several reasons.  First, they fell right across the road to upper camp, making them very easy to get to.  I can use the sled to bring firewood back or let it sit until spring and use the four-wheeler.  Either way, it’s a bunch of wood that I don’t have to work too hard for.  For once.

Second, and more importantly, with the ridiculous cold we’ve had, I am burning through wood faster than ever.  And it’s not the stove.  The new stove is far more efficient.  I get about eight hours of burn time with three big logs in there when I put it on the most efficient mode.  The old stove would have needed six or seven logs jammed into it to last that long.  But, it’s just been so cold that I can’t have the stove shut down all the way for the most efficient burn.  I need some air getting in there so that the temperature in the house stays comfortable.

With the wood shed about halfway empty, and three solid months of non-stop burning left in the winter, I’ll be dipping into next year’s firewood before the winter is out.  It’s a good thing I started working on that in the fall.  I already have about three cords tarped and split, so when the shed gets empty, I have a little safety net.  It’ll just mean more work and more money next winter, but I can’t stop burning wood and just turn on the furnace.

I have to admit, I kind of miss the days when the heat was just on.  It didn’t require any work or effort, just had to set the temperature and go about your day.  And sure, the wood stove keeps it steadily comfortable in here, but at what expense?  Year-round work trying to find and cut and haul and split and stack and carry and burn wood.  It’s a ton of work, and then add to it the unpredictable length of winter and it becomes a lot of stress too.  Luckily for me, one of my favorite ways to relieve stress is to cut trees up with my chainsaw.

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Cabin Life – #100

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As is my new custom, I’m sitting at the table looking out the big window at The Little Streamthe winter weather, and I’m sweating.  The new stove is amazing, but way too large for my little cabin.  A wealth of heat is not necessarily a bad thing in my circumstance, but knowing that the interior of the cabin is a temperature that in the summer I would deem too hot is a little disconcerting.

I open one of the windows a little more, since all four windows that open are already open.  I’m greeted with sounds that are both welcome and unwelcome at the same time.  The sound of snow and ice dripping off of the roof is nice, but the sound of freezing rain joining the melting is unpleasant.  I woke up to about a half-inch of ice covering everything, and while I by no means got the worst of this storm, it is not enjoyable to be living through another ice storm.  I can also hear the small stream out back, rushing like crazy.  The stream really only flows in the spring normally, and to hear it running now makes a constant sound of traffic.  It is eerily out of place here.

Around noon today I went out and started my car.  I wanted to get as much ice off of it as possible before the second round of rain/sleet/freezing rain began.  It was only a little below freezing, so the ice started to peel off, but because it was so thick, it took me most of an hour with the defroster and an ice scraper to get to the point where I could theoretically drive.  The radio playing in the car told me to stay off the roads for unnecessary travel.  But I was out of beer.

I had other reasons for making the four mile trip to the store.  I only had a little gas in the car, and just in case I needed to use it as a generator for a few days, I figured I better fill it up.  I also wanted to get the paper, and of course find out the gossip from whoever was working.  I quickly discovered that the most dangerous part of my journey was the driveway.  The main roads were fine, but I took it slow anyway.

I got back to the cabin and read the paper and did the crossword.  Well, most of the crossword.  Okay, some of the crossword.  I found out at the store that we didn’t get the brunt of the storm.  I’m glad for that, and that everyone around here seems to have power still.  Not that it affects me, but everyone else I know relies on the power and phone lines.

It’s not that I got off scott-free though.  My firewood is wet.  Not all of it, but a decent portion anyway.  The old metal roofing that I used had holes in it when I put it up over the summer, but during the summer and fall rains, very little water leaked through the roof and into the shed.  The problem this time is that the eight inches of snow on top of the shed got iced up and couldn’t drain fast enough.  Every little hole in the roofing started to leak, and that’s the end of that.  There’s nothing I can do at this point short of moving all nine face cords or so into another shed that now contains tools, an old woodstove and lots of other crap.  Not that I would move all that wood anyway, but that’s my only option.

I’ve been picking and choosing the dry pieces farther down in the wood stacks.  I’ve also brought a bunch of the wet wood inside and stacked it behind the stove.  That should dry it out pretty quickly.  The biggest problem is that this weather is supposed to continue through the night and into tomorrow.  After that it’s going to be bitter cold again.  The cold will freeze the water onto the wood, and I’ll be thawing firewood for the rest of the winter.  This is not something I’m looking forward to.

You’d think that after a full two years out here, I’d have all this figured out.  But I don’t, and I’m okay with that.  It’s a process, a learning experience.  I’ve made many, many things better out here, but there’s some things I just can’t control.  Like the ridiculous temperature swings.  It’s sixty degrees warmer than it was last weekend, and by the middle of the week, it’s supposed to be almost fifty degrees colder than it is now.  At least I don’t have to worry about the stove keeping it warm enough during the cold streaks.  I just have to worry about having dry wood to put in the stove.

 

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that this is the one-hundredth essay I’ve written in the Cabin Life series.  I never expected the amount of readers that have found my stories interesting.  Thank you for reading, I hope you get as much enjoyment out of these essays as I do.  Thank You.

Be sure to like Middle of the Trail on Facebook for more pictures and daily updates and follow @JustinALevine for whatever it is I do on Twitter.