Month: July 2020

I already felt guilty that we skipped a family tradition of celebrating the 4th of July with my husband’s family due to complicating factors of Covid-19 and various areas of civil unrest between our two locations. I felt even guiltier that our plans now included working from dawn till dusk on clearing out land to eventually put a shelter on. As I mentioned previously, we had been there a few days earleir, ink not yet dry on our e-docs, to clear out enough space for a tent and to bring up some supplies. By supplies I mean, tick spray, pruners, clippers, saws, gloves, eyewear all stored in a giant tupperware container.

As a side note, my husband very cleverly turned our harbor freight folding trailer into a mobile shed. The idea was to have a place to store our stuff until we have a space for a longer term shelter without having to haul it all back and forth. We had this trailer for years and have only used it a few times, by adding sides and a lockable top, it became a horizontal shed on wheels!

Our version of a “little red wagon”

There were some “hitches” and glitches but once the wiring was fixed, we were on our way! We took the very long way in order to avoid the highway, I followed behind in the Subaru.

Don’t want to get too close.

We got a later start then intended and when we arrived we needed to get camp set up.

  • Not very inviting, but a little weedwhacking and branch cutting helped!
  • Much better, almost justifies dragging the family to the woods over the 4th of July!

I would love to show you an instagram worthy photo of our first night at our homestead. But since I only have instagram so I can pretend I know how to use it in order to monitor my teenage son’s account, I won’t do that. I would love to show you a pintrest worthy montage complete with gingham tablecloth and picnic baskets. Instead, I will show you my left-over folding chair, plastic table hot mess that we rolled into town with.

Behold! Our luxury camp set up. I am an influencer for Tupperware and Igloo products.

We retired after a delicous feast, we even had a luxurious bathroom facility.

The master bath, there is even a wheelbarrow in case you really had to go.
The wet wipes in the photo are the last of their species, so rare that I hope to pass them down to my children’s children one day.
(Share on Pintrest)

I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that this first night I had some serious reservations. The first two visits to the lot we had many ticks on us, I was really worried about ticks heading into this camping adventure. I did find this spray at Tractor Supply (basically a hillbilly target and I mean that lovingly as a newly minted hillbilly.) It is made from some part of a chrysanthemum which, like baby oil to Jersey shore people, is beautiful but deadly (to ticks.) We had far fewer ticks, but there was still panic in the tent with one or both children bemoaning their fate of spending the night in our hot, possibly tick filled tent. We brought air mattresses as I knew the ground would be root laden and unlevel and the battery operated air pump we brought died midway through filling the first mattress. Que the whining about having to blow up air matresses by mouth and my husband and I attempt to put everything into our “mobile shed/ bear box.” Between the bickering, the heat, the fear of bears, the tiny battery operated fan which did nothing and the overwhelming prospect of clearing out acres of tick-filled trees Paul Bunyon style, I felt like I had made a huge mistake. I may have threatened to leave first thing in the morning and leave them with a babysitter if I ever darkened this forest again.

We all woke up in better spirits. I had not been eaten by a bear, our shed on wheels did not have claw marks all over it, there wasn’t a layer of ticks on my face by morning and it was actually cold at night. Too cold, and I hadn’t brought sleeping bags as it was close to 90 during the day. Live and learn, I did have one blanket that the kids shared. My husband and I froze. More on that later.

We set to work with chainsaw, loppers, clippers and started making piles. I am a worker and happiest when busy. The piles grew larger and so did our turning radius!

This is around the time we spotted the “murder hornet.”

During the tree trimming/cutting we upset some winged and angry insect which resembled a larger yellow-jacket. We named it the “murder hornet” after the Covid-19 trifecta. We may have put our tent tarp on top of their nest because in the morning, we all could hear a very loud buzzing.

After a day of work, we could finally see the mountain view we had fought through ticks and hornets and lots of thorns to get to. Did I mention the thorns?

We see you, mountain view!

We made a lot of progess this first day.

To reward us all for this hard work, I lightly seared and then mostly boiled steaks! Cast iron cooking on a tiny propane grill is a skill. A skill I do not have.

We missed the last stop to flavor town a few miles back. At least we have the fire extinguisher handy is case that steak boils over.

We will discuss more about my shower in the next post, because with all of this de-thorning, cutting, pushing and pulling, we were filthy. I will finish with this beautiful sunset walk, a reminder of why we fell in love with this area. A serene evening, just before we saw the bear.

Yes, I said bear.

Do you sometimes feel like we have lost touch with part of our humanity? Our modern life is so easy and we take so much for granted. I am not a luddite and I do believe that science and technology can create a better world for everyone but I sometimes wonder how much of our humanity we lose due to the technological world. How many “Bed Bath and Beyond” and “Applebees” do we need? For better or worse, the Covid-19 paradigm shift, hasn’t altered my social life much. We tend to be home bodies or forced family fun day trippers. We don’t dine out much, don’t engage in a lot of social activities but try to get outdoors and play or do yard work as much as possible.

My son is a teenager and with each passing day I am more aware of how short our time is as a family unit. Though we spend nearly all of our time together, I am always questioning if we are teaching him enough. During these last few months at home, I am trying to really get the point through to both of my children that the only constant is change and the ability to adapt to your situation is the most important thing to learn.

So back to the land, literally and figuratively. I am a real-estate junkie and follow all types of home and lands on the various websites, monitoring the sales and price changes. We spend a lot of time in the mountains, here in Virginia they aren’t as busy as in many places and hotels, cabins, campsites etc can be in short supply. I saw a large price drop on a 13 acre parcel of land bordering West Virginia, showed it to my husband. He also thought it sounded like a good deal and called the agent. The agent said they were considering an offer at the moment but were waiting to hear back on a counter-offer. I asked if we could also put in an offer, he said sure could and my crazy husband and son took off on a Sunday afternoon for a 3 hour drive to see the lot.

I think it was a good bonding experience for the two “men” to go and look at the land, it was a rough parcel with no clearing. They had to cut their way through and by standing on a stump, a mountain view could be seen in the distance. Though it wasn’t an area we have done much exploring in, it was within an hour of many hiking/biking/kayaking places we wanted to be near, the price couldn’t be beat and with Corona-Tine still in effect for most summer activities, it would be something to do as a family.

As a kid, I never went camping. The closest I ever came to camping as a child was the time I went to summer camp for a week and slept in a cabin. I didn’t really enjoy the communal living aspect and I became violently ill with food poisoning one night and thew up all over my bunk and the bunk below me. I spent a lot of time in the infirmary. I did not make life-long friends at this camp.

After I married my husband, we went tent camping once in South Dakota. I don’t remember much about this trip except we brought along our little shih-tzu mix and he barked at every noise he heard. It was a busy and noisy campground and we didn’t sleep much.

Now that my kids are older, we have taken them camping a few times. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I tend to be a control freak and I think having to let all of that go is actually quite relaxing for me. I actually prefer the remote campsites, no bathrooms or people right next to you. If you are going to the wilderness having a giant RV next to you running a generator isn’t my idea of fun. So while I actually like camping, I don’t particularly like camgrounds.

I have always wanted to own land. I joke about wanting to be the “landed” gentry.” My mother’s family comes from a long line of farmers and I like to think that I have land lust in my blood. I also have a deep doomsday prepper vein constantly running in the back of my head. The last few months have really brought this to a head and I had to check myself from going Mad Max. But recent events and shortages also showed how by being as prepared (and certainly there were lessons on things to improve upon) I was much less stressed than I might have been otherwise.

I like to consider myuself a minimalist, I like to keep the belongings I have for as long as possible, I try to keep life as simply as possible. I work to live not live to work. Recently, we found some acerage, priced very inexpensively, in the mountains about 3 hours from where we live. We made an offer on sight and closed a few weeks later. The day we signed our documents on-line, we headed to the property with a weed whacker, a chainsaw, tick spray and a dream. We cleared just enough to fit our tent so that the next time we came back, 4 days later over the 4th of July, we had a homebase!

I am going to chronicle our progress here, we have had a blast getting outside and getting very very dirty!