Porch

We learned some new skills! My husband built a deck. 20' x8'. My dad was pestering us to build a deck for a year and a half. We both thought it was going to be too much work and that we really didn't need a deck. You know what? It is actually very nice to have it now that it is completed. It took a few weeks of working on it in-between rain storms. The deck posts had to have holes dug 4 feet so the freezing and thawing would not buckle the deck. My son had a wonderful time being lowered into the holes and digging with a hand spade. He also built quit the construction road system for his trucks to haul the dirt away. Our soil is in layers of sand, rock and clay, which makes it pretty annoying when you are digging and you hit a rock.

This deck is more like a porch off of the front of the house. Its very nice to sit on in the morning and look at the trees and drink tea. Come evening the mosquitoes get so thick that the porch is no longer enjoyable without a thick spray down of bug spray. My husband was so desperate NOT to take my son to a birthday party, that he agreed to screw the deck boards on in a rain storm to get out of it. We came home from the party and the boards were on and our power was out.

Our power stayed out for 3 days. We were able to keep the house going with our battery inverter on our Jeep battery. It was not strong enough to run the fridge so when the power came on I ordered the larger size. We did keep everything charged up, had a fan running and the tv running for Netflix.I bought some blocks of ice and put them in the fridge and freezer to keep things cold. The only thing we lost was my son's beloved popsicles. My friend had me over to shower and I was able to give my son a bath. Other than that it was no big deal. I cooked all meals on the grill and we used our stored water supply to drink since the well pump was not working. We have a composting saw dust toilet so we did not need water for that. I did switch to paper plates while the power was out to save on water for doing dishes. I have been increasing my stored water supply since this last outage. I think I am up to about 15 gallons of water on hand.

Along the front of the porch I would like to plant herbs and some flowers for tea. We also found out there is a birds nest right above the chairs that the babies are pooping down on to our seating area. It's really cool watching the humming birds come to the feeder and fight each other over the food source. 

I'm enjoying stepping outside to use my grill, before I would have to walk down stairs and across the yard to cook anything. This came in very handy when our power was out for three days and the grill was our main source of cooking meals.

Here is the jerk bear that is getting in my trash and tore down and dragged my bird feeder away. Now we will have to wait to feed our bird friends until fall. If you look back at our finished deck photo you can see that the feeders are reachable now because of the deck and I do not want to promote the bear being that close to my house.

The 4th of July holiday we spent digging up rocks and hacking away at tree roots. One thing about moving to the woods that I was not expecting was that each year the frost pushes up rocks. Sometimes its whole rocks and sometimes its just the tops of humungous boulders. Then you hit these things with the mower and it breaks. We must keep our small plot around our house mowed to keep the ticks away. Nothing pisses my husband off more than spending money over and over again on lawn mower parts. Mower deck parts are very expensive too. I found out $300.00 was his limit. He spent 3 days digging and digging, hooking up straps to the jeep and dragging these huge boulders around and off to the side of the yard.

The smaller rocks he either carried by hand or used the wheel barrow. I chopped on some roots and some small stumps. I HATE that job and to me I would rather pay someone to do it than to sit out there in the heat and have a stroke hacking away. I also attempted to burn a stump out and I failed. The fire went out after 5 minutes. 

I even managed to set the gas can on fire which had to be put out with the fire extinguisher and dirty looks form my husband. Oh well live and learn.