Tomorrow is the first day of April. We thought we’d be at the farm full-time by now, but nature had other plans. Plans that involved several feet of stubborn snow, primarily.
The long driveway up into the farm has been deeply buried & impassable by car, delaying & complicating our move-in.
(The snow has also made it impossible to get the greenhouse built, so we’re starting our seeds under lights at Kristin’s parents’ this year.)
Although we cannot get a car or a trailerload of stuff in, we can still park on the dirt road and hike in. Depending on the weather, our feet sink in with unpredictable & variable depth and frequency.
Fortunately, we had scavenged an oversize, heavy-duty plastic sled from an alley last year – and this sled has become our favorite homesteading tool during this snowy spring. In conditions where even a backpack’s additional weight means sinking deep into a frozen quagmire with every step, it’s a godsend.
Every trip to the farm, we pull it from the woods near the road to load it up with bags and boxes and water jugs and supplies to slide up the driveway.
starting the fire
We spent a rainy afternoon last Thursday chainsawing several standing dead oak trees from the woodlot – as Kristin bucked them down into woodstove-length logs, I stacked them onto the sled, up to three deep, and hauled them out of the woods to the woodpile. It would have taken several trips to carry the heavy logs by hand, and been almost impossible in the deep snow – but the sled, no matter how heavily loaded, slid easily across the surface, making for the easiest wood hauling possible.
While the seedlings are getting started indoors back in the cities, we’ve been out getting the trailer liveable, organizing the sheds and storage units, preparing tools, ordering supplies, and deeply enjoying being in the trailer and on the land!
… we were hanging out with our friends Jacque & Bob, doing some “Dead End Squadding” – cruising the outskirts, hunting abandoned houses, ruined shacks, burned barns, and other such dead ends, investigating the histories and appreciating the beauty and interest we find there.
And, scavenging.
Widget & Jacque in the appliance graveyard
We usually just enjoy the places and take photographs, but when necessary, we’ll rescue some stuff …
Bob in the ruins
This particular “shed spread” was literally falling apart, and it seemed the owner hadn’t been around for over a decade.
He’d been an interesting guy, judging by the half dozen giant blackboards that we found scrawled with diagrams and notes, buried in the collapsing trailer’s waist-deep piles of refuse. We sorted through moldy letters and notebooks, getting an understanding of who he had been and what he’d been up to out there.
Toward the end of our time exploring this dead end, we discovered an old woodstove – rusting, cracked & missing a couple of legs, but functional looking nonetheless.
pulled from the wreckage
The thick iron firebox was weighted down with firebricks: it was a tricky walk back out to the road through the rutted fields with the stove between us.
A couple of months later,
– we saw a post pop up in the Craigslist Free section that got us to get back out of bed, get back in our clothes, and go rolling through the alleys of South Minneapolis. It was for 16 Grolsch beer bottles, put out in the alley for whoever came by first to pick them up. Kristin brews beer, so those bottles were desirable – and we were both in the mood to go get them.
We were, indeed, the first vultures on the Grolsch scene, but as it turned out that other things we found along the way were the real treasures.
When we drive through the southside, we use the alleyways whenever possible, cruising for the wonderful free things that people often set out by their trash cans. On our way down toward the beer bottles, we scored a couple long sections of 6″ stove pipe, complete with elbows, a chimney cap, and a flue.
(And then, after we got the bottles, we found a shock-absorber-straining heap of landscaping bricks …)
Fast forward to today –
– we loaded up the car (with the dogs, Kristin’s dad Jim, and a bunch of tools) and headed to the Farm. It had snowed several more inches since our ‘Homecoming’ visit, so we still couldn’t get in with the car. We used the sled to haul our supplies up the hill, and got to work bringing heat to the trailer.
We didn’t know where exactly we wanted the stove to go. We weren’t sure if the stovepipes were the right size, or how they would work to meet our needs – we expected they might help some, but would require supplementation from purchased components – which we avoid whenever we can (both to save money and to avoid trips to the damn store).
In spite of all the uncertainty, the project flew along with grace and ease. The scavenged stovepipe pieces required only the slightest modifications to run where we wanted it to go – we merely cut one section down a few inches, and removed another short segment. Other than that, the already existing elbows all worked perfectly for where we wanted the stove to sit, and the window we wanted to run the chimney out of.
We took apart an old DIY trailer fender and used the sheet metal to seal in the window where the pipe ran out, and found a piece of thick plexiglass for the other side. Some old aluminum brackets I’d inherited from my dad’s basement junk hoard held the chimney in place, and a scrap of corrugated steel siding served as the heat-insulating spacer.
creating the insulating airspace between the cement board & the wall
The stove was nestled into its new fire resistant home, among a couple of pieces of cement backer board (alley), a limestone tabletop (Craigslist Free ads), a granite streetcar paver block (road construction on Nicollet & 38th), and a landscaping brick (same alley cruise that’d yielded the stovepipes).
the cementboard came from the alley pre-decorated, tastefully, with spraypaint designs
the chimney mounting bracket was already at just the right height to attach to an existing screw
We were done well before the sun went down; the project gone from zero to completed in a single day, thanks to a well-stocked junkpile, a lot of luck, and our shared love of scavenging.
Today we went out to the Farm for the first time since before we left town for our working honeymoon. The dirt road was packed with ice and slush, and the driveway up to the trailer was completely impassable to the vehicles at our disposal.
We can’t move in yet – need to wait a week or two until things thaw out a bit more – but we wanted to connect with the place, check on things, and get the place & ourselves a little more ready.
Widget following in Gabe’s footsteps
super duper sleeping bag legsGabe thought Cleo might prefer riding to struggling through the deep snow with her old joints … but she jumped out right away.
ahhh, Home Sweet Home.
the truck topper woodshed kept the firewood snug & dry
enjoying the view from atop the shipping container
our friend Mark and his boy wonder Denver came by to visit
the support beams we added before leaving succeeded in keeping the processing tent upright, despite the heavy snows.
After a few hours, we left with wet socks and chilly feet … incredibly excited to return to stay … !
February 22nd – March 1st
vacation!
Florida Keys, FL
Both of us had snowbird parents staying in rented houses in the Florida Keys during the same week, so we’d planned our WWOOFing route and timing to meet up with them, before we started heading back home …
the view from the dock of the abandoned resort next door – and the last photo Gabe would ever take with his camera. (It fell into the sea when he stepped out onto the slippery boat ramp just visible at the far left.)
Kristin’s parents enjoy the early morning view from the dock
iguanas & pelicans enjoy the abandoned resort next door
our friends Kari and Brian flew down to hang for the week … and rented a convertible
tropical urban exploration with our parents
on our way out to the abandoned island of Boot Key
harvesting coconuts!
trailer packed with coconuts and ready to head north
Saturday, February 22nd
Green Flamingo
Oak Hill, FL
We’d already packed up a lot of our stuff the evening before, predicting rain that would make it hard to get in and out of the trailer, so our last morning at the Green Flamingo was nice and relaxing.
muddy ruts created by WWOOFers going back and forth throughout the “dry season” monsoons
the GFO outdoor shower
picking oranges for the roada last walk through the orange grove
breakfast before hitting the road
The rain came with a fury just as we loaded into the car, dumping bathtubs of rain down as we bumped through the muddy rutted road out. The highway traffic was slow, with minor flash floods causing hydroplaning, and terrible visibility leading people to pull off onto the shoulder beneath bridges to wait out the storm.
We just muscled through toward the south, and it wasn’t long before we broke free from the weather system that would be deluging GFO for the next several days, and came back out into the sunny blue skies and waving palms.
We were headed for the Florida Keys, where we’d first be meeting Gabe’s dad and stepmom in Key Largo, at the house they’d rented to flee from the winter wasteland of northwestern Minnesota.
Kristin’s parents would be meeting us there as well, and then driving with us down further south to Marathon Key, where they had a dog-friendly house rented for a week, right on the ocean. They’d just flown in from the insanely frozen subzero hell that Minnesota had been all winter long … a day later than planned, due to a missed flight due to a blizzard that trapped them in their homes, with heavy wet snow up over their bumper in their unplowed street.
(Kristin and I had been missing one of the most unrelentingly brutal winters in Minnesota/Wisconsin history, with highs below zero and snows above waists.)
The last hour of the drive to the Keys was psychologically dangerous. We were fatigued, sick of driving, tired of being in the van … and stuck in stop and go traffic, just short of Key Largo. We bounced around and chanted and sang ridiculous songs in an effort to avoid losing our minds completely (“Om Shanti Shanti OMG” was a particularly fun one).
Eventually the traffic jam opened up, and we arrived.
It was 90 degrees warmer in the Florida Keys than it was back home on the Farm.
Instead of having to do farm chores, we had to drink delicious margaritas.
We’d have a week of vacation to float in the ocean, sleep in real beds, and sleep in late if we want to … with laundry machines, running water, electricity, air conditioning … all the conveniences of modern life, without any of the hassles of the real world.
