Winter and a new greenhouse on the Farm

It's 9 degrees F and supposed to drop below 0 overnight. The ground is frozen hard, but unlike the past two years, no blanket of snow, no roofs to shovel, no broken snowblower(s). The garlic is planted, (some in wine barrels to protect it from those frigging pocket gophers), SeedSavers catalog has already come, and Steve has already circled a few varieties to try next year.

Earlier this fall, friends gave us 8 sheets of clear corrugated plastic roofing and 12 16' 2x4s. That gave me the idea of a pole "barn" greenhouse. We have never built anything like this before. At 2465 ft., our growing season tends to be shorter than we'd like, and gee it would be great to get tomatoes before September! Plus, a greenhouse would be nice for peppers, eggplant, and other tropical veggies that dislike our overnight lows in the summertime.

I drew up plans making it 8'x8', with a shed roof. The north posts are 10' high, and the south posts are 6', having dug four 2' deep postholes. (Actually, we hired a friend's 21 year old son to do the digging honors since both of us have joint problems rearing ugly symptoms). Once the 4"x4" treated posts were set in cement, we put down treated 2x4s for footers. A trip to Home Depot in the Grey Ghost netted the rest of the roofing, a new Ryobi drill driver and jigsaw, 2x2s and 2x3s for the doors, and hardware. That's all we bought since we had a bunch of 2x6s left over from moving the decks when we deconstructed the house to move it here. So we used mostly recycled 2x6s for the framing and building a catwalk to get up and reach that tall back wall. Our next door neighbor loaned us scaffolding when we found that we couldn't finish the outside of it safely. Thanks Neil!
Because the greenhouse has such a sturdy frame, we can furnish the inside with shelves all the way up the back wall and a table in the front. Two huge windstorms tested the structure, and it has proven rock solid.

Now we have all winter to plan our nursery!

Lovely springtime!

Birds galore on the farm with goldfinch, bluebirds, swallows, quail, pheasant, geese, owls, mourning doves, house finches, wrens, nuthatches, flickers, downy woodpeckers, and those stupid eurasian sparrows and starlings. They are deafening with their courting in the early morning.
















Last year's cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and bushbeans look really good about now, so have a look and think about whomping up a batch of chow mein. Somehow, an entire cabbage disappeared into the gopher's realm. Damn gophers. The misty sunset here is from a couple of weeks ago, where we are almost snow free. This year, it started snowing after Thanksgiving, and we had almost six feet by Christmas. Our backs were killing us from shoveling roofs over and over. Steve's arms ached from the vibration of the snow throwers. We have two, since one or the other is always in the shop.

It's spring finally. Although we had a really tough winter with tons of snow, we didn't lose any trees, buildings, or worse through it all. We saw some of our neighbors weren't so lucky. At least two pole barns collapsed under weight of snow, and a few little sheds here and there as well. Over 200 buildings collapsed in Spokane County, and even more over in Coeurd'Alene. We could see the strain on the barn from the inside--the huge 8x12 beams were sagging and doors were stuck shut. But now the the huge berms are almost gone, and the Americaunas finished molting and are laying huge weird eggs!

Steve is outside planting an apple and a cherry tree to replace ones that didn't look so good last year. The garlic has sprouted, and the strawberries are coming up. So are the tulips we planted between the raspberry bushes last fall. He planted potatoes yesterday, and decided to enlarge two areas to plant more. We went down into the pasture and started tilling and getting the rocks and sod out of a new area for corn and squash. Our soil is really nice and smells great. I splurged and bought four of the those half oak wine barrels for my kitchen garden. One for the horseradish, one for basil, rosemary, and cilantro, and two for flowers and such. A friend said these would hold up well for decades of container planting. They should, they weren't cheap!

The eggs in the incubator should pip next weekend. We'll buy some little girls to add to the brooder box with them. Steve wants to get some "meat birds" or Cornish chicks so we're not just eating skinny little cockerels like last year.

Four Mound 2005 Photos

Life at home without a house. "The Slab" looking north shows a squall brewing for the Indian Reservation.

Party time on the 4th of July with a lovely barbecue and picnic with friends.

Sheena and I haul water for the umteenth time.

Canning Kitchen and tent--home for almost four months.

Gains and Losses

In all this blitz of activity, we noticed our beloved chow, Sheena, stopped eating her dog food and lost weight. Once we had one free minute, we took her to the vet again. She had seemed a little puny in August, and the vet thought she had skin trouble or "hot spots" getting a bit infected, which was normal for the hot season, so we shaved her fluffy red fur off and forgot about it. Normally her fur grew back quickly, but after a month, it hadn't grown at all, and I put tee shirts on her to keep her warm at night. I was writing and submitting a quarter million grant, taking care of mom, unpacking and sorting our stuff, and the vet called and told us Sheena's blood test has revealed a terrible cancer in her liver. A huge mass had grown, and we took her to a specialist for surgery on the same day I bundled and submitted the grant, and we didn't know it then but my mom had been bitten by a hobo spider. Sheena died on the OR table, mom's leg swelled up and turned black, and the grant went in on time. I've never felt such a loss as losing my beautiful dog. Something in me just shut down. Steve and I couldn't stop crying, and mom was in terrible pain. She wouldn't let me take her to the emergency room, she just wanted to wait for Dad to come get her. She is very stubborn and too big to move without cooperation. I gave her some hydrocodone, and she was able to sleep through the night. Dad showed up the next day, and I told him something weird was up with mom's leg, and our dog had died. The doctor diagnosed mom's leg as a hobo spider bite, and she underwent "wound care" for two years to heal that awful injury. We think our hide a bed must have been the source of the spider, since I vacuumed the house after removing the carpets. All the furniture had been in the garage all summer, so the spider must have been in it somewhere. We never saw it, and neither did she. She can't remember being bitten either, but apparently the venom numbs the bite site and one doesn't feel it. I'm going to skip the ensuing winter and move on to spring. Suffice it to say we got a horrible flu during the holidays, rescued a Chow, (Griz) from the pound in Bonners Ferry, and managed to survive a very cold snap without losing the water.

Out of the tent and into the trailer

The concrete was supposed to cure for four or five days, but in three days the movers showed up with the first half. They pulled in the wrong way and I had to send their semi with half a house down to the fire station where they could turn around and pull in the right way. The living room windows had to face north where the view was spectacular, and the other end of the house is windowless to face south, keeping it cooler. This thing was designed to be at a lake or vacation property, perfect for our site. By noon they showed up with the other half and left them both "rough set" (or parked) close to where they would be set up. It was very strange to have a big house all of a sudden. Bush still hadn't sent anyone to help the Katrina victims, but the reporters were at the Superdome, interviewing panicked folks. Funny how reporters got in, but not any federal emergency response. I will always associate getting my house with Katrina victims losing theirs.

By mid September, the movers came back and "married" the halves, hooked up the plumbing, and tied it down to the foundation. The next hurdle was digging a trench for the power conduit through what seemed like solid rock. Clacy came out to inspect, and told me I had to put in a retaining wall, or we'd have a collapse next to the house. Not a problem. I picked up rocks and boulders and Steve and I had it done in two days, a perfect fieldstone retaining wall. Clacy was impressed and I had new callouses. The electricians got the power on, Clacy hooked up the septic line, and started to work on the skirting. Steve was busy doing the refinance so we could pay all these contractors, which were charging us plenty. Mobile homes are weird for finance. There's only one insurance company for them, and only certain ones qualify for lending. Luckily our 1979 Guerden Stattler did. Daryl came and built a "bridge" over the "moat", and we were moving in! Another friend, Chris, who was moving away stayed with us a few days and removed the front door and entryway, leaving the living room much bigger and nicer, and we weren't going to use that door anyway. He rigged up a temporary back porch with lumber and stairs from the old decks, left his pickup truck and Jag XJS with us, and I took him to the airport.

I tore out the shag carpets and the bare floors underneath were a hideous patchwork of chipboard and linoleum. Steve wrassled the huge chunks of carpet and padding into the van and took it all away to the dump. I painted the paneling with light colored latex, and painted the kitchen and bathrooms with oil base. It turned out great, and the dark interior became light and bright. We moved all the furniture in from the garage, couch, lazy boys, TV, stereo, bed, the whole enchilada. It was exhausting and my back was killing me. Daryl and Steve installed the woodstove and chimney next, and then Daryl built the back porch.

We were ready for inspection, to finish the loan process. But the skirting wasn't on yet, just the frame, so we again waited for Clacy. My Dad brought my Mom, old and frail, for me to take care of while he went to his ship's reunion in San Diego. Dad served in the Navy in WWII on the USS Collingsworth, a troop carrier that delivered Marines to fight in the Pacific. He was gone for a week, and Mom slept on the hide a bed in the living room sofa. Unfortunately, a hobo spider did too.

Finding a house

My husband is quite the shopper. Not only did he find the property and wing the deal, he found a good realtor to consult every step of the way. If you ever need a good realtor in North Spokane, look up Lee Anderson. He sold our house in less than 48 hours for over the asking price! He also helped us buy the property, making sure the infrastructure was all OK. Good people help make good things happen.

We still needed to find a mobile home. We looked at a few and they were all really small, with tiny rooms and crappy cheap fixtures. One of them even stunk. But our "mobile guy" found a private sale in Chattaroy, and we drove up there to check it out. It was out in the country, and had belonged to an elderly lady who had recently passed away. Her daughter inherited the double wide, and her son inherited the 10 acres under it. This was going to be problematic, but more on that later. The house was spacious, with a "retirement" floor plan of a big family room open to the kitchen with a breakfast bar, big L shaped living/dining room with a big hutch, two bathrooms, big and nice, and two big bedrooms with huge walk in closets. Despite the dark paneling and brown shag carpet, I knew this was it, and we made an offer immediately. It was priced at $18,000 and we offered $16,000 and she took it!

Now that we had the double wide, we had to arrange to have it moved and the site prepared. Here the learning curve steepened. Suffice it to say that the site prep turned out to be very expensive, and because of some mysterious black hole in China that was sucking up all the concrete, we had to wait for "our turn" to get our foundation poured. So we had all summer to start the teardown of the decks that came with the double wide. We planned to recycle as much of the original setup as possible--decks, stairs, and even a fence. Wood is wood, and wood was damn expensive.

We got our buddy Daryl, a very handy carpenter and jack of all trades to help us figure out how to take the decks apart and move them to our property. We had to get everything off the trailer before the movers could break the halves apart to move it. There were wasps in the metal roof which attacked and stung Daryl. Up on the peak of the roof, he just jumped back and said "I have violated the inner sanctum..." The job ended up taking three long days of denailing lumber, piling up scrap metal, and deconstructing the metal deck roof so we could use it again. The wooden roof on the other deck we gave up on, taking the good lumber and leaving the bad. It cost a fortune to hire a big truck haul away the debris.

The 80 year old "daughter" was having a feud with her brother over the sale of the mobile, and the jerk was threatening her if WE didn't get that thing moved by the end of July. She didn't own it anymore, we did. And we were scrambling to get the decks torn down and the lumber moved. Luckily, the brother was all bark and no bite, because it took us until mid August to finally finish that project, and until the end of August for the movers to get out there and get it apart and ready to tow over to our place. Trouble was, we were still waiting for Clacy and the concrete. So during Hurricane Katrina, I called Clacy and wailed my tale of woe. By midweek they came out with the bulldozers and got the forms done by noon. The next day, when people were treading water in New Orleans, we got concrete poured. It was getting pretty cold at night, and I was relieved, but slightly guilty about the Katrina thing, since I was high and dry with fresh water, power, phone, and family.

Gotta Start Somewhere

Four years ago, my husband and I rode the crest of the real estate wave, sold our three bedroom rancher in town for $107,000 in May and bought seven acres Northwest of Spokane, WA. I had sworn I would have no part of developing raw land. If everyone develops raw land, there won't be any left! So in essence our place was an existing organic farm, minus a house. For $68,000 we got a good well, septic system, as well as a huge shop/garage, small orchard, garden, goathouse/barn, big shed with chicken coop, big root cellar, and the 12'x10' canning kitchen", (which became home while we figured out what to do about the no house issue), plus two big pastures, gravel driveways, parking areas, and an incredible view. Since a single wide mobile had stood on the top of the knoll, with the panoramic view looking north towards Tum Tum and the mountains, a flat area stood ready for another mobile. A cement patio and sidewalk to the driveway remained, where we set up our outdoor dining porch.

The house sold so fast, we weren't quite ready for life without a hot water tank, so during the sale process, we moved our stuff into the big shop and outbuildings, sleeping in my four season tent beside the canning kitchen where we set up the phone, computer, fridge, and kitchen stuff. It had a little closet, cupboards, counters, and a sink. An extension cord from the garage plugged into the breaker box, and we hauled water from the hydrant by the garden. We moved a load every day in our huge Dodge van, taking showers and packing at the old house, and unloading and living "outside" at the new place. Before we could turn around, the grass was three feet high! To get the garden in, we had to rent a rototiller, but first we had to rent a brushmower and mow about four acres of three foot tall orchard grass just to be able to walk around. Did I mention we had a lot of rocks? We had a lot of rocks, granite, because the top of the knoll is actually an eroded outcrop. Wooded on one side, and opening up to prairie in the pastures, with the view to the north and west of virtually empty prairie, mountains, and stands of ponderosa, our friends were astounded when they first saw it. It was cold at night, so we made a firepit and had our chairs set up there at night before going to bed. The sky was really dark when there was no moon, with a bright swath of Milky Way. Steve set the telescope up by the garden, where a "security" light a quarter of a mile away didn't interfere. Why people have those stupid lights I'll never know.

When the house closed, we had to get the last of our stuff, take our last hot showers, and start life without a hot water tank. We had two cats which we had to situate in the canning kitchen. We put their "potty" in the entryway, a closed in porch with a big window and screen door. They settled in quickly, staking out favorite spots in the closet. The canning kitchen had a large covered area beside it, which was obviously for stacking and storing firewood, but we set up our table and outdoor kitchen there, with strings of colored lights in the rafters. The tent was next to that, and I had to rig up a tarp over it after a three day deluge of wind driven rain. We got one of those huge plastic storage containers and used it for a bathtub, putting it between three firs where we could see out, but nobody could see in. Taking baths outside as the sun went down was very relaxing, and even though it was a huge hassle to boil two big canning kettles of water then carry them outside and fill the tub, I loved it. We lived like we were camping, sleeping on the ground in a tent, hauling water, but with phone, internet, and power--a hippie dream come true.

It was awesome until June 21, when we had a little visit from Mother Nature in the form of a hurricane like storm, with 80 mph winds. The power went off immediately, (and so did the water), and suddenly the canning kitchen seemed terribly inadequate. The radio station, (our NPR affiliate, where my husband is the Morning Edition host, went off the air. We were cut off, and on our own, hunkered in the stifling hot canning kitchen, terrified of the roaring storm. Luckily, none of our trees fell, although our neighbor lost one that took his powerline with it. It took a couple of days to get the power and water restored, and we got a crash course in how to start the pump. The storm helped us get better acquainted with our next door neighbors, Neil and Judy, and their three daughters. They have a real house, and Neil is an artisan woodworker, making huge boardroom tables of solid hardwoods, with custom inlays. Neil told us the backstory of our place, who lived there before us, and so on, since he'd lived there since the mid '80s. Neil is quite a talker, and we knew right away we couldn't have had a better neighbor.