I paint in spurts. During the summer I don’t paint much. Between torturing my children at the “cabin” and working outside, I just can’t make myself sit still long enough to paint. I carry paint with me places but don’t usually do any real work.
As soon as there is a whiff of fall in the air, my brushes come out. I can feel the days getting shorter and the darkness starts to descend on me. Painting is a coping mechanism for me. I am used to having a day or two of quiet during the week but with this virtual school thing, I am never alone.
I painted a few of these wave painting as a way to practice some ocean watercolor techniques I picked up from you tube. Though they are technically not very difficult, they are fun to make and visually interesting. These paintings have been my only sellers on Etsy!
Had I thought of it, I would have “unmasked” this painting in a video. I will do that next time! Instead, I created an animation through Google photos, not quite the same thing!
Perhaps my favorite things about these type of watercolor paintings is that they don’t have to be perfect. Having a job that requires pretty much constant perfection, I appreciate the “happy accidents” that watercolor allows.
The mess behind the madness
Though I can’t quit my day job, I have enjoyed having an Etsy shop. It’s nice to share my artwork with people who don’t have to like it!
As I write this, our fall came early. I have heard of false spring but around here, there isn’t usually a false fall. The irony is not lost on me that this would have been the perfect temperature for a cross country season. My poor teenage son ran every cross country meet at 90 degrees or above last fall, this is perfect running weather.
I made a batch of chili, no I will not post a recipe or a photo (unless something disastrous happens) but my soup-based meals are usually ok. I will attempt to make cornbread, without any buttermilk substitutions. God willing, it will not taste like a 6th grade science experiment volcano.
44. Forty-four. As an age, it sounds distinctly middle-aged. We were at the cabin this weekend. As it was my birthday, my request was to spend a night at the cabin. As the leaves are changing, our view is opening up even more and it had been couple of weeks since we last visited. I knew it was going to be cold. We plan to install a wood stove, we weren’t expecting this false fall. We packed warm clothing and brought our infrared space heater. The plan was to use the generator to warm up the cabin a bit and then stay chilly but cozy overnight. When we woke up it was 42 degrees in the cabin. Warmer than outside, but not by much. The moral of this story, other than my children will have something to tell their therapists when they are older, is that I was cold. It was in the 40’s and I was cold. When the generator was fired back up and the temperature started rising to 44 degrees my husband said, “It’s 44, your are 44, if you were a temperature you would only be getting warmed up.”
That hit me. If I were 98 years old, that is pretty hot. Even 50 is cold, I probably won’t be comfortable until my mid 60’s. This weekend I will run an 8k, in my new Hokas!
Age, like temperature, is just a number and I am just getting warmed up!
We did more clearing and now Peaky Mountain has a friend!
This is a cross-over post, like when the Cosbys visited the Keatons (pretty sure that never happened but there were a lot of these type of cross-over episodes in the 80s.)
Our original interntion with the off-grid cabin was to provide our family with an active project in the midst of a global melt-down in order to maintain what little sanity my genetic code can provide for us. It was also meant to be a handy sleeping spot for the many hikes and bike trails we enjoy, typically 3 ish hours away from our home. Up until recently, my children felt like it was the equivalent of a North Korean work camp and not so much the idyllic escape or homestead I envisioned. Most of our road races were cancelled or “postponed” indefinitely this summer so I was pleased to find an in person 10k trail race in West Virginia.
This would be my second ever 10k, my family’s first even 10k race. None of us had ever run a trail race before, certainly not up a mountain in West Virginia. The start time was 10 am, leaving us ample time to use our “facilities” and drive the nearly 2 hours to the New River Gorge.
A beautiful drive! Islands in the stream, that is what we are.
We arrived at the race and filled out the Covid-19 required forms, we had our temperature checked and wore masks up to the start line.
I have never run in a trail race before and there was also a half-marathon race at the same time. They did not start us by expected finish time. I learned the hard way that you want to be in the front if you are actually planning on running up the mountain. My daughter and I “ran” the first uphill mile on a single track behind people carrying walking sticks. And walking with walking sticks. I wish I had video of the awkward running in place behind these people. I tried desperately to get around them and not fall off of a cliff. I was hopeful that my son and husband had made it past this walking stick wielding group because I know they would opt to go over the cliff rather than run in place behind this group. Death before dishonor.
My daughter is a warrior, she is only 10 but always ready to try anything! We finished strong, the trail widened up once we neared the top of the trail and we were able to actually run, finishing in the middle of the pack. My son placed 3rd overall, husband was 6th, an overall success for all of us!
Did I mention the view?
Most importantly, our worksite had become not only a cabin but a getaway!
As mentioned previously, I never camped as a child. While I have come to enjoy sleeping in the great outdoors, we realized the impracticality of spending multiple days/nights at the homestead without some sort of shelter. With the clever advent of my husband’s shed-trailer (discussed here), we eliminated much of our lugging back and forth of goods.
The anti-shaggin’ wagon
The summer of 2020 taught me many things; that I have a pretty non-existent social life as a matter of normal, daily, living, we use far too many paper towels, and my job can’t be done remotely. I also learned that when in self or state imposed isolation people buy these items in abundance: paper products, disinfecting products, wood chippers, fences and sheds. Interesting how many of the list above revolves around trees/pulp products. If you were cleaning with pine-sol, I guess it would come full circle. According to those in the business, sheds have been selling like hot cakes. Large, splintery hot cakes. I guess people are working from home and realize they can’t muzzle their children without many repercussions and are resorting to an adult wood-fort in the yard.
Shed Shopping in a Zombie Apocalypse
We considered buying a shed kit, but it was very hard to find one in stock. And it would need to delivered to the house and transported to the lot as our homestead has no delivery address. AND we would have to actually build the shed. I have been told that cost of building materials is rising sharply and doing out the numbers in my area, buying all of the lumber and hardware would be even more costly than the kit and not too far behind the “Amish” shed we eventually bought already assembled and delivered. I am a little hazy on where exactly the Amish fit in to all of this, but my son did some research and told me that all of the sheds you see for sale in the roadside shed patches come from a single factory in Louisiana. The lumber is then sent to the Mennonites where the sheds are assembled into one of several styles and distributed to their dealers. Apparently our shed was assembled by Mennonites in North Carolina, I was fact-checked by my son, so no Amish were involved in the process.
The Winning Shed
After visiting several road-side shed farms (I now see them everywhere, I assume they were always there) we were fortunate to find our dream shed close by the lot. Most of the shed places offer delivery within a 50 mile radius. We opted for a 12×20, double lofted, barn-style shed in a light color with a metal roof.
She’s a beaut, Clarke!
We had been told by multiple outlets that custom order sheds were backed up several months due to demand and the ones on the lot were being sold quickly. We purchased the shed despite not being quite sure if our site was adequately prepared or if the delivery truck could make it up the former logging road leading to our lot. My husband had had several phone conversation with the shed-manager, he was not there the day went to the shed ground, but his new trainee was there! I know she was new, we were very patient, she had no idea about how and when they could deliver our shed. The shed-lady got the shed-manager on the phone and he freaked us out by telling us they couldn’t deliver the shed if we had left any stumps. Would our hand-cleared lot pass muster? We tried showing pictures to the clueless but kind shed-lady. She agreed with us that it looked FINE. Shed manager was back-peddling. Eventually we had a verbal agreement that the dealer would refund our money if the delivery driver said they couldn’t get it up there, that’s good enough in our book! Most of our cleaning was by hand, the trees were relatively small but very dense, we had no idea how wide or flat the site would need to be for delivery of our shed.
We were told it would be about 2 weeks until delivery, we had plenty of time, or so we thought. Luckily, we are very impatient and immediately went back and cut down more trees. A neighbor stopped by and offered his backhoe services, we gladly accepted, he would return during the week to clear out the width and flatten the site a bit more. This is where my important dos and don’ts list in land clearing comes in. The dust, Ken Burns could have held off on making his Dust Bowl documentary and photographed our dusty and weary faces upon returning to our ravaged land. The wood chips and grass seed have given us hope once more.
After the 3 hour trip home, we got a call from the shed-man that they wanted to take a trial run up to the lot prior to the delivery truck making the trip. My husband talked to Roger, the backhoe man, he had returned the next day and done the additional clearing. The 3 hour trip was made again by my patient and bear-fearing husband and he led the shed-man up to the lot. We passed the shed-man test. I wasn’t there for the delivery, but my husband said it quite the production! There is a separate “rascal” type of pulling machine that places the shed on the site after it is delivered from the truck, they use concrete blocks to level the shed and Voila! No more tent camping with the bears!
Our new off-grid getaway!
At some point I will show you the treacherous, miles long, single lane gravel road we take to reach this glorious indoor/outdoor space, it is not for the faint of heart or weak-willed shed delivery people.
Avoiding bears and clearing land, tips and tidbits!
A beautiful sunrise at the homestead to start the 4th of July. It was this very clearing where I saw the bear!
Getting our Bearings
As much as one can mentally prepare to see such things, I had mentally prepared myself to see a few things, ticks, rattlesnakes and bears. With the amount of brush/thorn/possibly barbed wire we were clearing, I treated every stick like it was a snake. We had far fewer ticks than on our first day, we had sprayed the area ( I am sure this is in the environmentally incorrect way) but I can only handle so many ticks and weeks later we still seem to have bees, dragonflies and butterflies so maybe they hate ticks too. I had read much about the black bear, in Virginia it appears to be flourishing. In this reading, I found that, unlike vampires, bears do not need to be invited into your home. Black bears also like the smell of shampoo and soap, luckily we were filthy. I was brushing my teeth ( also an attractant) and attempting to spit far from our campsite when I saw something huge at the end of the clearing. Unlike thinking that every speck of dirt is a tick and that every stick is a snake, there is no mistaking a bear. The bear took one look (sniff) at my showered personage and ran swiftly into the woods. I have since seen a few tracks and dirty paw marks on my car, but no further sighting of the bear, at least not by us. The gentlemen with the backhoe who helped level a bit of our clearing to make way for the shed-cabin (a process accelerated by the bear-sighting) said the bear ran out at one point. Here is the best photo I could get of the paw prints.
I did buy bear spray in case I am unable to persuade a bear that I smell very un-soap like and my attempts to make myself noisy and larger fail.
In all seriousness, though I am still told by Google that I have zero readers, I will share my bear-minimum knowledge.
Don’t eat in your tent, this shouldn’t be hard for most people but if your have a kid who likes to hide food in her back-pack “just in case,” you may need to do a pat down before bed.
Don’t keep food or trash in or around your tent, nor in your car, we were told to sling a bag over a tree but that seemed crazy. I did not have a bear box but if you remember our shed-trailer, it made a good bear box.
3. Do your toothpasting/facewashing away from your tent, we walked down the driveway to spit out our paste. I am aware they sell some kind of camping toothpaste but I am winging it here.
4 Be noisy when you walk in the woods, we have two children with us most of the time, we never take a quiet walk in the woods, and that, my friend, has made all the difference.
During the great Pandemic of 20-ought, I have heard about kids withering away from lack of vitamen D. Determined to develop strong bones and immunity, I put those kids to work, we cut, we hauled. We had’t wised up to the neccesity of a wood chipper yet, or we would have chipped as well.
How many rattlesnakes do you see?
We had a mixed weather forecast over the 4th of July, we expected rain every day but wound up not having any. This was really lucky because when it did rain while we were tent camping a week or so later, we were grossly under-prepared.
My cast-iron cooking skills started to improve, my eggs weren’t so sad looking!
I have no explanation of the slingshot or the whipping cream.
To show that I am not entirely heart-less, we did take a day trip to a nearby waterfall. It was a nice hike and would have been refreshing has I thought to bring aqua socks!
We knew that we wanted to add a shed to use as a camping cabin, we also knew we had mountain views all around. Though we enjoyed our 4 nights of tent camping, we knew long term it would be more relaxing to have a dry place to stay. We picked a spot that looked relatively flat and worked our way out from there. The sheer volume and ferocity of the thorns really can’t be described, it was like something out of a fairy tale. The brambles wrapped around each tree, you had to clear them to get close to the trunk or to walk past the trees.
‘Barrow of fun!Spoiler alert! The wheelbarrow doesn’t make it to the sequel. Timber!
After the weeding and wacking and wanton destruction of wheelbarrows, we found our view!
Hello, view!
My advice when clearing raw land
Be prepared to be unimaginably dirty, I was obsessed before we left about making a camp shower, my husband thought I was crazy but I am telling you, it was a life-saver! I followed this guy’s youtube tutorial, super easy. I set it up on paver stones that I brought from my failed raised-bed garden.
You can never have too many tarps, they can be used to haul brush, cover equipment, create shower curtains for step one! They are the duct tape of the animal world.
Repel Tick Defense, I love this stuff! Made with Picardin, a synthetic derivative of a pepper plant, I find it very effective against ticks and chiggers. I am a bug magnet!
Heavy duty gloves, buy in bulk, you will need them.
We bought the “Last Woodchipper in Virginia” it seems, we had to drive to a store close to neither home nor homestead to find it. Country Pro 196-cc Kohler 3-in Steel Gas Wood Chipper isn’t cheap but when compared to renting a comparable until for any length of time, it was worth it to us. I consider Chippy to be a member of our family now, I know we would never have made the progress we made without him. In addition to eliminating our giant piles of rattle-snake den, it provides a much needed mulch layer around camp. I had no idea how important this would be until we had bare ground with no pine needles etc, the dust was unbelievably messy and when it rained, it was all mud. The mulch made a huge difference in not only our erosion control but in the cleanliness of camp.
Beware of sap, I have sap in places I didn’t know could have sap. Water will not help you, not that we had running water. Alcohol based cleaners, hand sanitizers, etc are the key here. I stepped in a hug mound of sap that took every bit of my 80’s kid stepping in bubblegum know-how to get off.
Bring something to relax/sit on. We had a tree- hammock (watch the sap mentioned above) and later added this crazy “inflatable hammock.” My kids describe it as sitting in a giant hot dog bun, but I like it! Sitting is a luxury when you are cleaning raw land.
I am racking up the miles, I recently had my Runkeeper odometer pass 999 miles, nothing exciting happened and it did indeed still carry over to 4 digits. No Y2k style meltdown (yes, I am a Gen Xer.) As there is no chance I will be racing against anyone anytime soon, I am focusing on running for distance, not speed.
I have also started listening to audio books while I am running, though I still have my spotify lists and tend to alternate. For some reason my bkue tooth automatically connects in my car to the last thing on my Spotify. I listen to an embarassing list of music, Poison’s, “Talk Dirty to Me” is likely to blare on the speaker, scarring my children for life.
I have also stepped up my Etsy shop during the quarantine, this gives me a lot of anxiety. I still have trouble putting my art out there and I am afraid of negative feedback. I have been called thin skinned, usually by my parents, for my whole life. I like to think I am overly sensitive, I even found a book about it once. It was very relatable to me but hilarious to think about announcing that ” I am a highly sensitive person, please keep the noise down!”
I did sell two painting, I liked them, I hope the buyers did! I just posted these two today:
currently listed on Etsymy saucony socks! And a painting, also listed on Etsy!
