Little Green Things

My friend who helped me create my garden told me after all that work, now I'd better get some little green things growing, in nice strait rows. So I did. Below you can see how bright everything has been getting as we've had moisture and warmth. Those little leaves popped out almost overnight. There have been quite a few thunderstorms over the past week and one beautiful piece of a rainbow that I saw out across the valley.

The early morning light coming in my windows also lit up the new leaves right outside. And I got come bright little flowers planted around my front door at least.

And some neat and strait rows of little green things now exist in the garden. There will be lots more as more seeds get planted and start to pop out of the ground. For now though, these should provide me some early red and golden beets, garlic, onions, chard, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli. If they don't freeze or get eaten by something anyway...

And here all my little babies are tucked into bed for the night. Which was a good thing since after weeks of warmth and sun, the morning following planting, it snowed. Yeah, big white flakes were coming down. They didn't stay on the ground at my house, but just up the hill they did as you can see below. For now everything's made it, but maybe I'll loose all my early plants one of these days. And these are the joys of trying to garden in a short seasoned zone 3 area.

Adding a Garden and Trail

Here you can see Fy Nyth in her new home. Right beside my solar panels and new garden. She's in the process of getting a new stain to blend better into her surroundings, hence the currently different colored sides. More on that later.

That lovely smooth garden you can see to the left of the house took a lot of work. Below is me sitting on top of a rock pile that may be a little less than a third of the total rock pulled out of the aprox. 30 foot x 100 foot garden plot. 

Here you can see more rocks pulled out and stacked along the whole garden edge. All of these as well as the pile I was sitting on, and more, went into shoring up and widening the lane that allowed us to drag my house up the hill.

Above is the garden after many passes through it with a big harrow. Every pass tended to turn up multiple new large rocks. With the rocks gone, the remaining dirt is beautiful and rich! Then to get the smooth result you see below, many more passes were made with a tractor driven tiller. Which also tended to find new rocks on every pass. I am so thankful for a friend who has all that large equipment! I can only imagine how hard creating a little homestead like this would have been before tractors and such.

Now I just have to plant lots of things. And keep them all from freezing. Or drying up. Or being eaten by deer, moose, elk, squirrels, etc. You know, the joys of living in the middle of now where!

To get up here, there is a lane but it's still a little damp and torn up from moving the house (see this post) so I also built a foot path into the hillside. Above is the rough cut I made as I figured out the best location. Below is the finished result after two half days of work with a pick ax. I know this is surprising, but there was a lot of rock in this hillside too! I think it turned out pretty sweet and it's certainly easier than trying to scramble up the hillside without a trail.

Moving Fy Nyth

So when's the last time someone said, "we're ready to move now" and you had your whole house packed up and moved in an hour? I mean, moved the whole house, not just your stuff obviously. It's kinda cool to be able to do that! Fy Nyth moved up the hill to be in a slightly larger clearing, near the garden, and a little more secluded. This process, despite the speed of the actual move, took a good bit of work.

First many many many tractor buckets of rock were dumped into the little lane leading up there to make it wide enough to hold the house's wheel base. This rock was first acquired by prying it out of the ground that is now my garden. Everything from large pebbles to 200+ pound boulders. Then many many many loads of smaller rocks were added. And then many many many loads of dirt. Finally some trees were removed from the edges to further widen the surface. 

After all of this, I packed my house as you can see above. Moved all the glass stuff off of shelves, set plants down, taped drawers and doors shut, and generally set anything heavy down on the floor.

When we took her off the jacks and moved a few feet, we realized Fy Nyth had developed a flat over the winter. This was remedied after multiple trips to retrieve an air compressor and then find a generator that was large enough to run it.

Finally she was headed up the hill. It is steeper than it looks, I promise. And the dirt/new road surface was probably a bit too damp and soft still. My house is heavy, over 10,000 pounds dry, and probably more like 15,000 with all my stuff inside. 

So she decided to stop right here. Too much weight, sinking into the ground far enough to cause a lot of resistance to being pulled. I was having visions of having to live in a house at a slant forever. Thankfully my friend had the foresight to think that this might happen and already had a second tractor parked at the top. With one tractor towing the other, she started to move again. There are no photos of this as I was driving that second tractor, but let's just say they were both working hard.

When she finally crested the hill, I started to breath again. I hadn't even realized I was holding my breath. And at least ten minutes later I was still shaking a bit. Have you ever wondered if your house was going to tip over sideways and fall down a hill? It's kinda not cool to be able to do that. And thankfully that is not how this ended!

We moved her into her new home on the ridge and the only casualty she suffered was breaking a tail light. It hit the ground on that corner as she headed up hill. This is no big deal, especially as she should be staying right here for a very long time now so no tail lights will be needed.

Here you can see just how close the tires were to the edge of that lane. And the right hand track is at least two full feet past where the lane edge had existed earlier in the day. It also gives you some idea of how much her weight sank into the dirt.

But she did make it to her new home safe and sound and it is an even lovelier location that where I lived all winter!

Spring Is Springing!

Overnight little leaves are popping open, small flowers are in bloom, the creek is roaring with snowmelt, and even flowers that shouldn't be blooming around here till June are wide open. Crazy year! Also I was able to get a neat shot of one of the deer that lives around here as she hopped over the fence and of the sunset as you can see it through my reading nook windows and the trees.

Video Tour of Power System

Are you interested in more info on my off grid power system? I finally did a video tour of that aspect of my house. Here are links to the particular parts I used for this setup.

I bought most of the parts for the Solar System as a kit

Batteries, I have 5 of these now

Monitor

Generator (I love this one, and wrote a whole post about it here) 

Charger for the generator

 I'd be happy to try to answer any further questions you have as well!

Tiny Spring Chores

It was a lovely sunny day here at Fy Nyth. The snow is almost all gone with only a few patches left in the shadiest spots now. 

I was able to spend time washing the outside of the windows for the first time since I moved in right at the start of winter. I hate window washing personally, but it is certainly nice to have them all looking sparkly and free from the road dirt that was on some of them since delivery.

And then I worked on stripping off all the door to a bunch of reclaimed old lockers that are going to shortly be forming a ring of planters surrounding my house. They should also double as a skirting of sorts. I can't wait to get them filled up with dirt and get at least a few hardy flowers growing. Sadly, our last frost date here is still almost 10 weeks away. 

I was also able to work on several other projects since I still have a few days off before I go back to work. I painted my large propane tank black so it blends into my surroundings better. The white it originally was didn't really stand out until almost all the snow melted, but now it does. Then topped off my water tank, kicked the generator on the top off my batteries, and did a little work on my remodeling project on the interior of my camper van. Later I cooked up some dinner, washed a pile of dishes, and spent some time reading and writing. Having two full weeks off has been pretty nice after working almost every day all winter!

Turning old lockers into planters.

My now black propane tank.

And the sparkly outsides of my windows. I should have taken a shot before I washed them just for the impressive comparison!

More wildlife around Fy Nyth

As spring starts to show up here, I've got some new creatures wandering around my house. Here are some of the visitors that I have been able to get shots of.