living in the woods
May. 26th, 2005 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonMy morning started with a capsule summary of my world:
Walk, coffee cup in hand, to the end of my road with F to get him off to the school bus on time. Drizzly, and chilly (50 degrees) enough to toss on a good Irish wool sweater. Ah-yup, definitely very Irish weather this week so far, bringing naturally to mind sweetly melancholy trad. Irish tunes and WB Yeats poems in my head. Come back, find the cats playing with a mortally wounded, but not yet dead, mouse, probably driven inside by the wet weather. Go cats (mice in the house is *not* a good thing), but now I have to take said wounded beastie out into the woods and dispatch it humanely (vexing the cats, but being cats, and well-fed, their interest waned as it started to move less). Swing by the stream which is running very high from all the rain, thinking about how lovely it is, and also where best to put in a small microhydro turbine with minimal disruption to the brook trout and other wildlife. Hike to the part of the land over by the "dolmen" where such things (burials, offerings, etc) are done, apologize to the mouse, do the deed, head back towards the house. As I approach our road, I hear a vehicle, which means someone's coming down our drive (otherwise, all you hear is wind and stream), intercept FedEx truck half-way down our road, get a medium-sized package from him, feel unaccountably irritated as he drives off that this truck, bringing stuff I had in fact ordered, actually came down our road and disturbed the peace and quiet. Note that I haven't left my land since my drumming session last Monday night and wonder at how very easily I could become a serious hermit ;> Walk back to the house, note with some excitement that the box is from Bailey's -- some Kevlar chainsaw chaps, a dozen felling wedges, and a videotape on horse logging (using teams of 2-4 draft horses with Amish-style harnesses to pull logs out of the woods -- not for now, but maybe in a few years...). I think I have all the wood for building and heat that I'll ever need right here, just from the deadfall, but I have to get it from wherever it falls to where it needs to go. That's tractor work now, but tractors eat diesel and poop pollutants and used oil, while draft horses eat things I can grow, and poop good fertilizer. I notice with pleasure that the box was addressed to me at "CC Hermitage Farm" (CC is Casa Chaos). No, not a farm yet, unless you count trees, kids and cats as crops, but, perhaps not too far down the line... Dive into the day's writing work, so I can finish in time to install the new oven, take a walk up to the barn, and maybe build a nice fire in the fireplace before everyone starts coming home from work and school and the house gets full and noisy again ;>
Walk, coffee cup in hand, to the end of my road with F to get him off to the school bus on time. Drizzly, and chilly (50 degrees) enough to toss on a good Irish wool sweater. Ah-yup, definitely very Irish weather this week so far, bringing naturally to mind sweetly melancholy trad. Irish tunes and WB Yeats poems in my head. Come back, find the cats playing with a mortally wounded, but not yet dead, mouse, probably driven inside by the wet weather. Go cats (mice in the house is *not* a good thing), but now I have to take said wounded beastie out into the woods and dispatch it humanely (vexing the cats, but being cats, and well-fed, their interest waned as it started to move less). Swing by the stream which is running very high from all the rain, thinking about how lovely it is, and also where best to put in a small microhydro turbine with minimal disruption to the brook trout and other wildlife. Hike to the part of the land over by the "dolmen" where such things (burials, offerings, etc) are done, apologize to the mouse, do the deed, head back towards the house. As I approach our road, I hear a vehicle, which means someone's coming down our drive (otherwise, all you hear is wind and stream), intercept FedEx truck half-way down our road, get a medium-sized package from him, feel unaccountably irritated as he drives off that this truck, bringing stuff I had in fact ordered, actually came down our road and disturbed the peace and quiet. Note that I haven't left my land since my drumming session last Monday night and wonder at how very easily I could become a serious hermit ;> Walk back to the house, note with some excitement that the box is from Bailey's -- some Kevlar chainsaw chaps, a dozen felling wedges, and a videotape on horse logging (using teams of 2-4 draft horses with Amish-style harnesses to pull logs out of the woods -- not for now, but maybe in a few years...). I think I have all the wood for building and heat that I'll ever need right here, just from the deadfall, but I have to get it from wherever it falls to where it needs to go. That's tractor work now, but tractors eat diesel and poop pollutants and used oil, while draft horses eat things I can grow, and poop good fertilizer. I notice with pleasure that the box was addressed to me at "CC Hermitage Farm" (CC is Casa Chaos). No, not a farm yet, unless you count trees, kids and cats as crops, but, perhaps not too far down the line... Dive into the day's writing work, so I can finish in time to install the new oven, take a walk up to the barn, and maybe build a nice fire in the fireplace before everyone starts coming home from work and school and the house gets full and noisy again ;>
