Once the building pad was in place, the next step was to mark out and auger holes for concrete pilings. I reached out to the one person I knew who had the equipment to do the work. He assured me that even though he was busy, he wasn’t TOO busy to get it done. We emailed back and forth for several days, and settled on, I would buy and prepare the rebar rods. He would get the proper sonotubes and order the concrete. He would be out sometime soon.

The construction industry here is VASTLY overworked. As a result, there is very much an attitude of “I’ll get to it when I get to it” that is extremely frustrating for property and home owners. The worst parts of this entire process have been waiting for other people to show up and do their job. Wait times of several months are not uncommon. There isnt really such a thing as knowing what day a contractor will show up. If you’re very lucky, they call first.

Friends had made arrangements to spend a week camping here with us. The goal was to spend the week building. Unfortunately, neither the auger guy nor the wood showed up in time, so we had a more relaxed week than expected. The weather stayed fine, the men cut firewood for the winter, and us lady types decided to try a wattle-and-daub build just for fun and the experience of it. I have about 40 clearcut acres that are regrowing thickly with poplar saplings – which happen to be very pliable and perfect for weaving.

Wattle is an interesting project. It won’t last terribly long in this climate, but it is an absolutely free way to create walls or fencing that should last a year or two. This particular structure will house my flock of ducks once it is completed.

The daub part is labor intensive and messy, but who, if they have retained any childlike joy at all, does not enjoy playing in the mud? And mud is something we have in abundance here. Mix the mud with chopped marshgrass, stuff the holes with moss, and it is like frosting the world’s ugliest cake. It takes a good deal of time, but if the sun is shining and a nice breeze is blowing, the time passes pleasantly enough. There is something very satisfying about making a structure entirely with your own hands and resources that you have gathered from your own land. This was the first chance we’d had to make our mark on the property. Something more permanent than a tent, but also natural and ancient and beautiful in its crooked imperfections.

I look forward to seeing how things change over the years. One of our goals with any piece of property is increasing the biodiversity, both in plants and in animals. This is one of the things The King has set before us to do: to steward the land wisely and well, to take what is here and heal the broken places and bring blessing and growth and make His Kingdom shine here. This property, having been so rougly handled in the past, is in many ways a delightfully bare canvas to paint onto. And yet, compared to how we began with our last place (there weren’t even any earthworms at the beginning there), this place is bursting at the seams with life.

Given the wild nature of our land, it isnt surprising that we have a great deal of wildlife. But it is always a delightful surprise when we discover something new. For instance, I had never known that bald eagles sing, until one day we heard this beautiful birdsong and looked up to see three of them on a pleasure cruise over the field. We have frogs and snakes, newts and salamanders, birds of many varieties, raccoons and coyotes, bats and dragonflies. We have small scurrying things of many kinds, and a group (flock? Herd? Family? Pod?) of beavers in the back acreage causing no end of trouble.