Here we go again on getting this roof up! I can’t wait to have a kitchen with an oven and a kitchen aide and a stereo and a counter with a real table! The sun is out. The Flowers are blooming. All is well at Spider Spring. We also did some planting yesterday of Mock Orange, Service Berry, Oregon Grape, Knick Knick, Choke Cherry, Ocean Spray and a little Crab Apple tree. Hope renewed. Thank you, Spring.
Back up goes the kitchen. Back up go the tarps. A new delivery of dry wood. Remove some nails. Pound in new ones. Dash outside when the sun shines. Hole up with a warm fire and a movie when the rain pours and the wind blows. I can see spring just around the next bend.
Life feels much warmer these days.
“It’s only the regathering and going on
That lends substance to any magic
That might occur”
~Bukowski
The December storm took a huge toll on our trees, our screen from the road, and our little out-buildings we were progressing on. It’s discouraging to have to scrap all of that work and planning and start on something different, but exciting, too. Happy New Year and here’s to new beginnings!
Winter is definitely upon us. Fall fell a little more slowly this year and we are being eased in to this cold season. We decided we couldn’t live without a kitchen. The outdoor one was promptly taken over by deer mice. (As did our cars). I don’t want to contract the junta virus. So we’ve been cooking in the counter of the Hoosier cabinet, about a 3 foot wedge of the yurt.
Funny how the kitchen looks all catterwonky in this photo. I’m not sure why. It is now mostly sided and the windows and doors are being framed.
Next, after the cool french doors and the mismatching cedar siding we scrounged are done, we will find some boards for the interior walls and buy insulation.
We’ve got a little wood oven. Yes, oven! Cookies! Bread! Casseroles! Not to mention warmth and real burners to cook on.
The view from the Kitchen. You can see the posts and beam of the future cob home.
One side of the french doors we found at an awesome building resale warehouse in Sherwood, Oregon we found on Craigslist.
And here is the inside of The Thump. After the kitchen is finished, we will build a box enclosure to store the buckets and sawdust.
We got back from our trip, unpacked the car of bags and groceries, and plopped down in the yurt. We were chatting and I glanced over at Nathan. Behind him, just out of the window where we can see our building site, in the middle of it, sat a big ol’ black bear. Hello, bear. My eyes got wide and I think I got Nathan’s attention by repeating, “lookie lookie lookie lookie” in an urgent whisper. We stood up and the bear moved nonchalantly toward the forest. I opened the door to make noise to discourage the bear from coming back, (Don’t get me wrong: that bear was beautiful and I’m always half-hoping to see her again, but I don’t want her to get used to human food and get herself into trouble.) and a little cub literally rolled out from behind the big nurselog. I slammed the door and announced, “BABY!” to the entire coastal range. And they sauntered off. PIxie? What was the faithful hound doing? Eating. Walking around. Completely uninterested until they left. The worse part of the event is that the camera was still in the car. So I’ll post a black bear picture swiped from the World Wide Waste-of-time…
We’re back! Here are some highlights from our annual trek to Wisconsin. This year we took Hy 2 all the way there, then zipped home on the freeway.
We don’t have a great garden space yet, but here’s our little container garden. It grows much more slowly just here at the base of the coastal range than in the lush valley. We’ll see what happens. We also hauled some stumps in a circle and screened the bottom then added sand, compost and fill dirt. We planted nasturtiums, forget-me-nots, sunflowers, cucumbers, calendula and bachelor buttons. I know, weird mix, but they were found seeds. 
It’s like a paragraph in the books about cob. But if the site is not perfectly clear, this “clear and level the footprint of the house” takes chapters of time. But what are they going to say? Repeat ‘Keep Digging’ for pages and pages? It would at least give the real feel of the task. We are “getting there”, as they say, but we like to take breaks a lot. The root is is gruesome work. I wish I had a real, USFS quality Polaski.
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