Category Archives: Homesteading

Anything and everything that has to deal with living on the land – critters, 4 leggeds, flowers, gardens, canning, off-grid, solar, building our house, and making a home.

Early Spring Garden

Finally a bit of rain after some gloriously sunny and warm spring days.
Russel is doing a burn today, and hopefully this weekend..slash from tree cuttings that just seems to pile up so fast.

He is getting the fencing in place on the new flat, don’t think we will be able to get a greenhouse going this year though we will plan for next. I have some lettuce and salad greens in the garden, the beds are amended, the raised beds ready to plant. The mounded beds still need to be shaped.

I hope to plant most everything else out as soon as I get home. (another Michigan trip)
I will need Russel to look for specific veggie starts in early May.

Mountain Lion

Last night (23 September) I glanced out the window,
and what did I see???

First time to see a mountain lion here. We had been gone all day and Kaya had been out side. This lion seemed fairly young and Russel was sure it was a female. She was at the outside edge of the garden and about 10 feet from the bedroom window which is where I blindly stuck the camera up to get a shot.
I wish I had spent the brief amount of time she was here looking at her, instead of documenting it.

Very good looking cat. 🙂
She had a very long tail.

Homestead in spring

Very stressed about the Michigan trip coming up in June. Not writing much here.

This is spring time on the land before we leave:

Catching Up..

It would seem that the summer has been filled with concerts, not so really, they were just the high points to get me through the heat, work, and unsettled-ness of the move from town and all the projects we took on this summer that are not yet finished.

Check off the list: DirecTV with 2 DVR’s :), WildBlue Satellite Internet from GotSky.com. The internet connection we have is the slowest one offered for now.. I noticed a better download speed, but the upload is pitiful especially with ftp… even though it should be way faster than dial up it isn’t, so I will need to look into that.

The washer and dryer are waiting for the 8’x9′ foot porch to get enclosed. This wasn’t really my plan on getting machines here. I wanted to just throw a tarp over them in the winter and be done with it. But enclosing the porch was what came of that idea. I am ok with it, I think I will actually like it, but it got added to an already long list of stuff to do with little time and money .. so it isn’t yet done and I still haul laundry to town. Hopefully before the rains come it will get done.

We had to order a stove/oven. Non of those fancy beautiful ranges for us 🙁 They all use so much electricity, with their glow bars and all. We had to order one with little electric use, that we can light either with an electric start button OR with a match-clicker. It should be here in the next few weeks and then I will need to move stuff around in the kitchen area… remember we have no cabinets yet so it won’t be such a big deal..I hope. But it will be good to have a range, I have been cooking on a Primus 2 burner propane camp stove for a long time now.

We finally made it to the river one day just before the long heat wave hit.

Grizzly State Park on the Van Duzen river

A whole day just swimming and hanging on the river, this was in July, but it helped recharge my soul.

Now I am getting ready for yet another surgery, bunion this time …oh joy.. and soon school/ work for Russel starts up and rains and .. and.. there is never a good time to do this kind of thing.

Winter Wonderland in March

So a month later again and more on the weather.. last Thursday and Friday it snowed here. That’s unusual.. it hasn’t done that since 1992, not this much snow. And this Thursday it started again, and has been snowing or hailing or sleeting since then.

Yesterday driving home it was coming down in huge (half dollar size) flakes..it was really beautiful. I didn’t have my camera then, but later I did.

Standing on our porch looking toward the driveway:

Then looking toward the house from the top of the driveway:

Spring Garden

We have a small garden this year.. our peach trees in pots have peaches on them! The poppies are in full bloom, I’ll try and get a good picture of them. The sage and wild lilacs are fading.. but I planted a few marigolds and calendulas, as I just love the orange color:

Baby Bear

Last weekend late at night Russel heard a sound coming from the garden fence, using a big Mag Light he spotted a baby bear! I was so jealous that I wasn’t there to see it too… well look who strolled through our yard on Thursday:

We haven’t seen Mama Bear yet, but she must be close by. These were taken through the window, so they are not as clear as I had hoped.

We do live in the wilderness, it truly is a nature preserve 🙂

Living in the hills

It seems this has become a monthly blog of mostly pictures. I hope to some time soon update my gallery, EyeSee with more of them.

Not any real ‘news’ just juggling ‘town office’ and land home, trying to keep both stocked and clean in itself is a struggle.

We have started the process of putting in our solar-battery array-generator power system. Will have the first onsite consultation within a couple of weeks.

Here’s who’s been visiting lately:

All of these were taken through windows, so some contrasting and levels were used. I can’t seem to get a good picture of the raven pair — they are just to flightly, but I keep trying. There are about 3 more deer in this herd, who weren’t present. But there are always shots that got away…

On My Beat

Living in the hills of southern Humboldt