Trains And Things

There is a definite learning curve involved where this adventure is concerned.

It's not a difficult learning curve. It hasn't been, for us so far, a difficult one. We were well prepped to begin with. We are also good at researching, brainstorming, and arriving at reasonable solutions to problems. We aren't, after all, the first modern-day couple to do what we are doing. There is a long growing list of examples of adventurers. Quite a few have successfully launched out on far more extreme adventures in far more extreme natural environments.

There are several common denominators to be discovered in the lives of people that get beyond the dreaming and theorizing and do the leg work involved in launching out on adventures such as this. Dreaming and theorizing are fine at first. Beginnings are born in dreams and theories. It takes determination and action to bring dreams and theories to life in the realm of reality.

I think the one common denominator that serves as the solid foundation for all the other denominators to stand upon is purely the determination to chart a course for a life that eliminates as much external control as possible.

The denominator sounds easy in theory. The doing of it is not so easy. Modern-day humans are conditioned to be dependent upon the system and all the system-providers that make the system work. Human dependency is what keeps the system alive and prospering. Simplicity, self-reliance, and personal independence are not cogs on the system-gears. The system is opposed to this lifestyle. You'll find more people discouraging it than encouraging it.

We had our One Month Full-Time Small Cabin Dweller Anniversary a few days ago.

It's all good.

There is a peaceful serenity that pervades these woods. We awake to it each morning and it wraps us in its embrace when we turn out the lights at night. The occasional yodeling of the neighbor's hounds, something that was a little annoying at first, has become more of something like a tune in the woods. We find the sound of the rail, a quarter mile away, to be pleasant and often stop to listen to the iron on iron sound.

Trains?

They each have their own tune that they play on the rails.

Now that the temperatures are on the cooler side of the scale, Shirli and I are putting her new knees through some paces … literal paces … by getting out and taking walks. We've really missed our walks the past few years. Her new titanium knees took her 7/10th of a mile this morning.

I'm 62 years old. After all my years of walking the woods I had to move to these woods to see my first one.

An American Woodcock flew in and landed about 50 feet from the cabin. Right on the cusp of dark. Its approach took it right by us. My daughter saw it fly in and land. She walked over to investigate. The Woodcock wasn't alarmed in the least. I got a light from the cabin. Several of us walked close to join the investigation. The bird, even when I lit it up with a light, never once acted alarmed.

Building the steps was a fun little project. Ascending and descending the narrow ladder-like make-do steps needed placing in the historical department before one of us slipped and took a fall. We went back and forth on the idea of building a small deck out front but let the idea go and just went with the steps. I'll do some kind of pad for a landing at the bottom as well as bottom rails and spindles.

The finishing work on the steps will have to rest for a while now that we can safely get on and off the porch.

Next?

I'm thinking screening on the porch and building the screen door will be the next project to work on.

Out Here

This has, for us, been a welcome and easy transition.

The years we spent thinking about, planning, and prepping for the Big Leap were as important an investment as finally securing the cabin itself. Probably more important of an investment. Those years … our own refining and defining processes … knocked the edges off of anything that could remotely resemble the cultural, geographical, or environmental shock associated with pulling ourselves out of the seething social cauldron of Down There and immersing ourselves in the temperate more natural climate that is Out Here.

Out Here is far more suiting to our personal nature's than Down There ever was. Down There was, for us all along, rather unnatural; though the time we lived Down There was something of a necessary thing, for the all time and energy spent, that allowed us to collect our better selves and do something better with them.

We are not completely finished with Down There. We have, however, managed to establish right at fifty miles of distance and create a definitive timeline that separates Out Here from Down There … a line that grows thinner and fades more with each passing week.

The transition is an ongoing one.

Of things to do … of projects to complete … of projects to begin … there are plenty of these.

At least now, after the initial crunch of getting the physical move behind us, there is time available to simply breathe and be. The breathing and being is a serious priority for us. Especially now that the temperatures are cooler, the natural environment is taking on our cooler season look, and the Lower Coast atmosphere has given up the density created by the high humidity of our hot season.

This cooler weather also means that it's meat making season!

This means, for the less savvy among us, that it is time to work the woods to fill the freezer with deer meat. It is, considering that I do all my own handling and processing, quite a bit of work to accomplish.

Putting a deer on the ground … the hunting part ... is the least laborious part of the process. Getting one from the ground to the freezer is something of a time consuming physical chore. Killing and processing one or two in a season is a cakewalk. Killing and processing six or seven (perfectly legal in this State) becomes work. Six or seven is the mark I aim for during our generous Alabama deer season. Less than that and we run out of freezer meat before the next season.

Yes. We eat a lot of deer meat. It is our primary source of protein from meat. Living Out Here puts us closer to Ma Nature's Meat Market.

They are beautiful creatures. I can almost understand why a certain segment of society views killing them with varying levels of disdain. The vast majority of modern society has never once depended upon the woods and the creatures of the woods for their sustenance and, unless something dire comes down the pike, the vast majority never will. Something dire, coupled with a terrible lack in knowledge, tools, and skills, makes for a really bad scenario.

People can think what they will about this matter. No reasonable discussion, at least in my opinion, is going to persuade any change in the minds of the anti-hunting naysayers. The simple truth of the matter is that we are comfortable with our chosen self-reliant lifestyle. Let me also mention that a freezer full of deer meat every season saves us a load of money every year.

We are perfectly comfortable in this little cabin.

We are not at all surprised by the fact and every trip we make Down There reminds us of how fortunate we are to have succeeded in our endeavor to relocate to these woods. We have absolutely everything we need here to live comfortably with far less maintenance and far less to worry about. Life is really good up here in these woods.

There is some tweaking yet to be done in our little camping cabin on steroids. Little things like minor rearrangements to make things fit better in the small space that is now our home.  

The Adventure Continues - Settling In

It is done.

We did it.

We pulled it off.

This thing that we've dreamed about ... this thing we've sought … this thing that we have tenaciously worked toward … has become a reality! We are, as of this blog post, full-time at The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill!

It is really a good feeling. There's nothing fleeting or superficial about the feeling. It is one of those feelings that reaches clean down into the marrow in our bones. There is a bit of bitterness mixed into the sweetness. There has to be. It is, compared to the sweetness, just a small bit of bitterness.

It is hard to live in a spot as long as we lived on the lane and not develop some fondness's for a place. It is hard to not set some roots. There is a comfortable familiarity that develops with a place over time.

There are people too.

Familiar faces. Neighbors. A few that you develop some level of relational closeness to. Most of them you simply see and recognize as part of the surrounding social fabric and the familiarity stops at that point of awareness. This is, after all, life in the busy 21^st Century where closeness in a community isn't what it was fifty years ago. There are also the familiar people that you do business with on a regular basis. You get to know a lot of their names over time. They get to know yours. Last names may never be known. That's ok. People have names. Faces have names. We have names.

We've had more than names.

We've had a living presence among other living presences and the likelihood of ever seeing the vast majority of the aforementioned again, or them seeing us, is slim to none. We have moved on in pursuit of our interests, and our own better well-being, in a fashion that would not have been possible had we continued where we were.

Our leaving, where certain of our neighbors are concerned, has left an open hole. Change in the neighborhood, though the extent of the change is yet to be fully comprehended, has occurred. Change that affects them. Change that none of them had an iota of control over. Change that the vast majority knew nothing about until they began to observe our obvious moving activity.

No one wants things to change. No one wants their familiarities upset. Change in a neighborhood, especially for those of clannish longstanding in a neighborhood, is hard to accept. Who, after all, is coming in to fill the vacancy … fill the hole … left by our leaving?

Living life is necessarily replete with dynamics. What we do … how we do … when we do … will always have an effect on others. Positively or negatively.

There are things that none of us have any control over and time will answer the question of who will occupy that little spot of earth in that neighborhood. It is not for us to choose. It is not for anyone in the neighborhood to choose. Folks will simply have to adjust to whatever, or whomever, change may bring into the neighborhood now that we have moved and are no longer part of it.

I have always admired Scott and Helen Nearing.

Mother Earth News introduced a lot of people to Scott and Helen back in the early days of the magazine. The magazine was my introduction to them. 

Scott and Helen were two pioneers in the modern self-reliance movement that knew who they were and did what they had to do to remain true to themselves. They looked at the world's systems, saw them for what they were then and still are today, and went about their lives in a way that brought themselves satisfaction even if it flew in the faces of the systems managers.

“Civilization,” said Mark Twain, “is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.” A market economy seeks by ballyhoo to bamboozle consumers into buying things they neither need nor want, thus compelling them to sell their labor power as a means of paying for their purchases. Since our aim was liberation from the exploitation accompanying the sale of labor power, we were as wary of market lures as a wise mouse is wary of other traps. Helen Nearing

I think the mice aren't as smart as they used to be. The cage built by the systems managers is crammed full of mice that, at this point in their dependency upon the systems, don't even realize they are caged.

The two of us?

Now our adventure continues.

The hard work of getting here is behind us. Our task now is to settle into this mode of living … this lifestyle of simplicity and self-reliance that we have chosen.

It Can Be Done

The past year and a half has been …

Interesting?

It has definitely been a project! It has been an interesting project.

The project, in some ways, is about complete. It is, in other ways, ongoing. In a matter of just a few short days we will be done here and pull out the lane for the last time. There is, though we have exercised a lot of forethought and care in getting things set up at the cabin, quite a lot yet to do at that end of the move. That's the ongoing part of the deal. The goal, in a project like this, is not the Finish Line.

None of the ongoing part is arduous. The arduous, if any of it can be called that, is behind us. The most arduous, I think, has been the many back and forth trips that involved a three hour chunk of time each time a trip has been made. At least one a week. Sometimes twice a week. Then, after the weekly once or twice, we'd go for the weekend to relax some and to work some. Relaxing work. We've always come back from those weekends feeling rested.

The number of trips that it has taken could have been greatly reduced had we moved things in bigger loads. We chose not to travel that bigger load road. Small logical loads instead. Slow and steady one logical and orderly step at a time. Things, this way, have been kept as manageable as possible without becoming overwhelmed. It would have been easy to get the cart ahead of the ox. Fortunately, the ox has stayed in front of the cart from the git-go.

Prioritizing and managing the logistics has been a bit challenging. The worst part of the whole deal, I think anyway, has been the issue of having our personal belongings … even drastically downsized as our belongings now are ... stored or stashed in three places in two counties. Simple things, like looking for a ball of string yesterday to tie up a bundle of Goldenrod … then finally realizing that it, and a good number of other convenient commodities, are in those totes in the cabin loft … can be a little aggravating.

We have previously mentioned that we would not recommend a project like this to the uninitiated.

That should not, however, be taken as something prohibitive. It certainly isn't intended to be anything more or less than a Caution Sign. Both eyes need to be open.

The simple truth of the matter is that it can be done!

Shirli and I … and The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill … are proof that it can be done. It can even be done after the sixty year age marker!

We are not the Original Model. There are a lot of models. There's honestly nothing original about what we are doing. It's been done before by a lot of people in a lot of places at a lot of different times. Not by anyone in our neighborhood, in our families, or by any of our close associates that we know of. We'll admit our uniqueness where these people-groups are concerned. We have simply followed the lead of other models and found a way to tailor the deed to our needs.

What was it Farragut was supposed to have said when he sailed into Mobile Bay … Damn the torpedos!

The next logical step, after we accomplish what we need to accomplish this weekend, is to build a proper set of steps.

The Final Push

It has taken some doing for us to get things to this point in our adventure.

Decisions … decisions … decisions.

Quite a lot of decisions over the course as we worked through the logistics involved in successfully accomplishing this major change in life after sixty. Decisions always have consequences of one sort or another. Decisions always have ramifications. Some of the ramifications are immediate. Some show up down the road a ways.

We have been careful in weighing a lot of ideas over this course before making decisions. We have done that back and forth dance a number of times on some things to insure making the best possible decisions and have, so far in the adventure, done a really good job of eliminating the unwanted effects of poorly thought through decisions.

This forty mile leap is a major change that involves a lot more than geographic distance.

It involves a major lifestyle change.

It is not, for us, one that is unexpected or unprepared for. It is more along the lines of finally being able to more fully put into practice and enjoy our personal lifestyle preferences … elements that we have been practicing all along yet never been quite able to invest ourselves in fully.

A lot of people move. A lot of people move great distances. We have both done it several times during our lives. Short distance moves. Great distance moves. The thing about moves is that people can move … across the street or across the country … and the only major change is geographic location. Other than the geography, and the faces that occupy the geography, nothing else changes. Lifestyles generally remain the same where most geographic moves are concerned.

We would not recommend what we are doing to the uninitiated … to those that haven't studied long on the subject, done their homework, acquired skills suited to the task, and greased their psychological bearings. Simply being fed up with the modern social disorder isn't enough. An infatuation with the involved romanticism isn't enough. Both of these are inherent elements. There is, however, a lot more to this than the combined motivation of these two elements.

We do recommend and encourage people to investigate and invest themselves in endeavors that lead to simplicity and self-reliance. Every step toward simplicity and self-reliance is an important step. Every step that lessens our dependency upon others and upon the system is a step in the right direction. Who knows where the steps will lead? Maybe to a small cabin the woods?

Want to and how to can become can do.

I don't remember the date that I first stumbled across the original Mother Earth News. That was a long time ago. Right after it first started rolling off the press. The original magazine was great. A lot of people were fed up. A lot of people were infatuated. A lot of people were launching out on great Green Acres adventures. The greatest number of these lots of people succumbed and returned to their former lifestyles for one reason or another. The want to was there. A lot of how to was there. Somewhere, along the way, the can do gave out. I think, in the end, social pressure was, and will likely always be, the meanest culprit that exhausts the can do and causes people to abandon their adventures.

Most of modern society simply can't get their minds wrapped around a Walden Lifestyle or any simplify, simplify semblance thereof. And too few of us lack the spinal iron to give the finger to social pressure, regardless who its source is, and walk away from it.

The winter food plot is looking great.

We added a few items to it over the weekend ... beds of salad makings. A bed sown with two types of leafy lettuce. A bed sown with Romaine. And a small bed sown with Mesclun Mix to spice up our winter salads.

We have, until now, taken a systematic gradual approach to getting things moved to and set up at the cabin. There have been a lot of up and back trips. It is now time to give this thing the final major push and wrap it up.

Our goal?

At some point, before the end of October, we will be full-timing it at The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill. 

Planting The Winter Food Plot

The Goldenrod is beginning to bloom.

The yellowing of the Goldenrod, and the blooms of what I call the early autumn bloomers, are always a pleasant and welcome sight. Their appearance means that the brutal lower coast summer season is behind us and that we are on the cusp of our long cooler season.

The daytime temperatures can still be plenty hot. We are still quite a ways yet from needing to pull out the thermals and hoodies. Mosquito dope is still needed.

The Cusp of Autumn, in this part of the world, means it is time to plant the winter garden … with a focus on vegetables that prefer cooler weather. It is a rare thing to have cold enough winter temperatures that will kill these.

One exception is broccoli. It doesn't take much frost to ruin broccoli when it is about ready to harvest. We've had that happen a few times. Another is cabbage. Freezing temperatures will ruin a crop of headed out cabbage. The heads freeze and split. The heads of ruined broccoli and cabbage can be removed to allow secondary heads to grow. I've done that but, since moving away from traditional rows and preferring raised beds and intensive methods in small spaces, I find it more practical and more productive to just pull the winter burned plants and start over with something else.

Building raised beds can be a bit labor intensive. 

Moving to the method was a leap for this traditional row gardener accustomed to disturbing the peace of nature while stirring the dirt with a tilling machine. The results of the leap and labor, where food production and manageability are concerned, are all on the positive side of the chart.

There is, like in anything else, a learning curve involved. Part of the curve is the reality that small well tended spaces will produce a lot of good food … food that is of much higher quality than anything bought at the stores and markets … food that costs only pennies to grow instead of multiple dollars to buy.

Kitchen gardens were once a norm. Growing one's own food was once a norm. This norm is gone and will likely, for most people, never be returned to. Abandoning this norm is, as I see it anyway, part of the sad disconnection from nature that characterizes this modern culture. We are forced by modern circumstances to live unnatural lives and we suffer a lot of assorted consequences on account of being disconnected from nature.

My son-in-law and daughter (our benevolent landlords at The Cabin On Huckleberry Hill) built this raised bed. There is a lot of horse manure beneath that layer of chipped mulch. The plan is to build a number of raised beds in this area, enough to provide for a lot of our fresh picked food needs.

The collard and kale plants that I planted Monday show just a bit of transplant shock. They'll do just fine.

It is work. It is hard to call it work. Call it pleasant work. A few sprinkles from the rain on its way. The rumbling of thunder. Some of it close. The not-too-distant sound of iron wheels on the track and train horns blowing at the RR Crossing. The sounds of acorns falling from the oaks. The sound of an occasional bird chirp that I'm not familiar with.

The little Satsuma tree was a gift from a friend on the occasion of my 62^nd birthday. Satsumas are a fairly cold hardy citrus that resembles Tangerines.

I raked back the mulch to expose the soil beneath, scratched it a little with the 4-pronged cultivator, sowed seed, scratched them in, and gave the planted areas a good watering.

In a few days the turnips will start sprouting and showing some green. It can take a week or two for the beets to begin emerging. The carrots can take up to three weeks to start showing up.

Turnips?

I buy two types … Japanese and Purple Top ... mix them in the pack, and sow them together. The Japanese greens are milder than the Purple Top and don't produce the nice roots. The blend makes for a nice pot of turnip greens and the Purple Top's give us a some nice roots.

Lettuce?

Gray Matter Episode. I forgot to get lettuce seed. I usually get a couple types and mix them as well.

Mental note: Get lettuce seed and don't forget the Arugula!

Tiny Cabin Motivation

What is it that motivates us to do what we are doing … to go from dreaming and theorizing about a thing to actually doing the thing dreamed of?

The closest thing to a one line answer would probably be something like … Our philosophy of life has evolved to the point that it is the only reasonable thing that we can do.

The italicized answer makes sense and is good enough for those that have already worked through all the issues and levels necessary to simmer things down to a life-philosophy answer. For those that haven't exercised themselves in working through the issues and levels, the italicized answer … the life-philosophy thing … is kind of out there in left field and doesn't provide much of an answer; though the life-philosophy thing is honestly the ultimate answer.

Our own points of personal evolution are the product of years, decades of years, of personal processing, establishing priorities, refining interests, and storing away volumes of useful retrospect as personal frames of reference. We have discovered, in the aforementioned processing, a lot of motivation.

The past few years, and especially the past year, we have refused to allow anything or anyone to cause our sights to drift off the target. It has required a great deal of discipline on our part. It has not been easy. It has been well worth it but not at all easy.

There are a few major issues that must be addressed where an adventure such as this is concerned. The primary issue ... a question that must be met with a satisfactory answer ... is, What do we prefer to be doing with our lives?

I use we in the question.

We, under this roof, happen to be a we ... there are two of us involved in this adventure. Single people have only an I to decide for. Anyone with a spouse or partner becomes a we situation with we challenges. A we situation with dependent children becomes another situation altogether … not an impossible one but one with other sets of challenges.

I mentioned earlier that, where something like this involves a we, there has to be a lot of agreement. Walking in agreement necessarily involves making compromises. One of the fortunate things, where this we is concerned, is that we share a lot of similar interests. Our personalities are different. We're a Pisces and a Scorpio. One is an Alabama Pisces boy and one is a Jersey Scorpio girl. We have, where two individuals are concerned, a good many differences.

Differences can be complementary provided there are shared life-interests that reach farther than the relational utilitarianism involved in keeping house, raising children, and going on an occasional vacation. Our necessary compromises have never centered upon relational matters. Their aim has been, and remains, always focused upon effectively placing shots within the ten-ring regardless the distance of the target downrange.

We prefer having the freedom to happily follow our dreams and interests. This is especially important to us now as we enter into what some have referred to as the autumn years of life.

Freedom isn't free.

There are costs involved. The associated costs aren't really sacrifices. They are more along the lines of trade-offs that have a way of forming sinew and muscle on the bare skeleton wired together in the coined phrase less is more. In architecture and in life. Less is more. This less is more thing is something that we have long embraced in theory. Only as we have actually invested ourselves in it have we honestly begun to realize the truth contained therein.

We prefer to be happy and at ease.

Not as an occasional thing snatched at with the leftovers of life and personal resources but, rather, as a lifestyle. Happiness and ease, for us, involves not only downsizing to this small cabin. It also involves the freedom to take Fred (our camping van) on long leisurely rides to who knows where for who knows how long. We have dear friends, family, and grandchildren that we'd like to visit. There are sights, sunrises, and sunsets to see while we are yet able.

We have, at this point in our adventure, begun part-timing at the cabin.

There are still a number of things to do to apply the finishing touches to things at both ends of the county. There are things to be done to finish closing down where we've lived and called home for the past 12 years. 12 years is a lot of accumulation. We have, despite all the variables and uncertainties involved in pulling this thing off within our desired time frame, managed to keep things either in the ten-ring or right on the edge of it.

There are still things to do to put the finishing touches on the cabin. Call it an inhabitable work in progress. Mostly interior cosmetic stuff and screening the small front porch to create a mosquito-free spot to sit. We'll be whittling on these as we go along.

There is a very definite learning curve involved in an adventure such as this.

Figured into this curve is a wide stretch that has to do with learning to relax after those decades of running pillar to post and back again. Relaxation. Honest to goodness relaxation. Not the weekend version of it or the annual off the clock version of it; even if the off the clock version comes as paid absence. We're all familiar with those versions of it, versions that always include a too soon Monday morning and a time clock.

This version?

This version is different. It is strange and unfamiliar. This version, at least what we have experienced of it in our part-timing, will take some acclimation. Life lived on the time clock, or constantly doing routines of time and energy demanding chores, doesn't incorporate this version into anyone's personal frame of reference.