Not on schedule

Though we really never had a solid start date, we had hoped to have broken ground by May. But life tends to roll itself in the way occasionally. Initially we planned to be able to hop into the van right after the kids got on the bus, work a few hours, then get home in time for them to get off the bus, but the oldest grandson started schooling at home, so someone had to be home with him to make sure he was logged in and working on school work. That's the first thing that slowed down progress.

Andrea was continuing her schooling, which won't be finished til August. When her catering job scheduled her 5 nights during the week and days on weekends, 7 days a week, 'on' a few weeks and 'off' a few, having only one vehicle with this kind of schedule makes building a house impossible.

There are good things about this. I've been apprehensive about the kind of roof I wanted to build. Having no carpentry experience, I didn't want to take on something I couldn't handle. Putting a roof on a round house isn't easy, especially doing so without planting a big ugly post in the middle of it. And my goal here is to build a house that anyone can build - with or without building skills. So this delay has given me more time to come up with a roof style I can work with, (to be posted here soon).

Most of our trips to Soulstice have included the kids, which means more time keeping them from hurting themselves in the woods, and less time measuring and observing. One thing we have observed is how windy it is there. This has advantages and disadvantages. We want to plant trees and sunflowers, but the wind can damage them while they're young, so windbreaks will need to be created. But if we can funnel the wind properly we can generate some kick-butt electricity from it, so wind turbines will need to be built to add to our solar panels. Drying clothes on the clothesline will be quicker too.

Another observation was that the soil is almost all clay where we want to build. Great for building, not for gardening. But sand is cheap, and the woods have plenty of material for hugel mounds, so we can compensate. But that soil test was only from the first foot of soil. Next trip I want to dig deeper to see what's under that.

We planted sunflowers and a blueberry bush last trip. I dug a small swale leading to the blueberry to make sure it gets well watered since we won't be there to water often enough. We just bought a peach tree the other day. Next trip down we'll leave the kids home with a babysitter and plant it - as well as do some measuring.

I discovered there's a lot more nice flat land on the west side of the creek. We'd failed to explore that area before. I like how it overlooks the creek. We discovered a lot of pawpaw trees along the west border also. An earlier romp at the beginning of spring revealed ramps also, lots of them. We'd like to cultivate more of those. That trip, we found Trilliums, bloodroot, dutchmans' britches, bigger maples, gobs of wild onion, blackberries and black raspberries.

We read that folks are harvesting sulphurous mushrooms (chicken of the woods) right now, so we may have to check on ours.

More soon.