On a Little Bit of Property

I remember when we first looked over the house and the property here. I thought it was a bit oddly laid out but I thought the same thing about the house as well. Both have come to grow on me. My only true wish is for more and bigger out-buildings, a barn and especially a garage.

Something has grown on me here that I haven't felt since I was a teenager. At night if I take the compost out to the bins behind the red shed or go out to check on the goat I feel at peace. Sometimes its the stars in a clear cold sky or more often than not (now that winter is here) it's the mist rising up from the bog. If it's late at night there are no cars out and you can't even hear the freeway (miles away though it is). At times there is the hooting of owls and I've been startled more than once by a deer who likes to visit the compost bin. Her eyes reflect back blue just as those of the goats do.

I will often stop for a few minutes, turn off my light and smell the roses so to speak. Remember the names of some of the constellations and feel the night around me. In the snow it's especially peaceful.

Yet it's not like when I was growing up in the Bald Hills. There you couldn't hear anything besides the neighbors voices ringing across their pasture at times and the stars were brighter and clearer. You could see the milky way. I felt it too when we visited Dillon Montana years ago and saw whitetails bouncing away from our cabin at dawn.

Here we are now so close to the comfort of our little town, great friends, fishing, mountains and the sound. So to have a little piece of the peace I knew in the hills is a great gift.

This winter there is much to do. The deer fence must be built around the garden patch and a new chicken coop constructed to house multiple flocks away from the predators that keep nibbling away at our birds. I also am thinking about fencing the back acres so that our goats can run far away from their little pen that they periodically escape from now.

These chores will wait until after the holidays... Until then I'll wait, making beer and hard cider for the harder part of winter to come...