The west edge of the property has a ~20 foot buffer zone between pasture and the industrial farming field adjacent. It's just messy. Trees, some of them fallen, branches, vines, shrubs. Also lots of moss and fungi.
The north and west fence is mostly crushed and probably more than 70 years old, according to my other uncle.
Large sections of the north fence have been removed and coiled up. The other side is a feral wood. It used to be a pasture and doesn't have the undergrowth of a wild wood.
They are way more spigots than I expected. I found five, but there could be more under overturned barrels or inside other items.
My dad and uncle are both junk hoarders. But my dad's junk is in disarray, while my uncle's junk is neatly stacked and arranged in rows.
The main property has lots of ditches. But the land doesn't slope toward them. It's flat. I don't really know how they are supposed to work.
The land really is boggy in places. Especially in front of the shop, which surprised me because I'd expect that to be closer to the highway's elevation.
We've got some truly gorgeous moss and fungi going on.
Nearly all the trees appear to be oaks, except the handfuls of pecans, magnolias, and whatever the conifers are.
The clover, dead nettle, and Carolina cranesbill are sprouting like crazy.
It is wildly frustrating trying to draw in Google Slides! Next time I'm making an analog map.
Apparently, my grandaddy may have been a jerk after all.
My uncle got on his bad side by majoring in education going on to coach football, a much lower paying job than the welding he was doing while in school and in the lag time before landing a job.
He became a coach because he and his cousin would have been football stars if the coaching staff at their high school hadn't curtailed their opportunities because they were poor rednecks. Read: embarrassing. He wanted to give the next generation a fair chance.
There used to be a shotgun house where the shop is now. My granny's family lived in it while her parents-in-law lived in the main house.
When they were kids, not only did they have horses, they had cows too! They each were different breeds, and his gave five times the milk of the others. So he usually gave up after two gallons and let the calf have the rest.
He knew somebody who found a fungus that was effective against Johnson grass, but was bought out by one of the pesticide companies and they squashed it.
One year they raised a lot of beans and harvested the bean straw. People told them nobody would want to feed their cattle bean straw, but that year there was some kind of famine on the Texas straw that people usually bought, so his family made a decent amount selling bean straw.
-The water table used to only be 8 feet down. Before the levee was built, the flood waters would get up to the floorboards of the house regularly. I think the house is three feet off the ground?
Down by the church in Eden there is going to be a community garden this year.
Eden used to have 7 substantial stores.
There used to be a Methodist Church next to Eden Baptist Church. Neither had a full time preacher so they alternated sharing their circuit preachers. One week both congregations would meet at one church, the next week the other.
He's pretty excited over a native tree species called the bluebell tree, royal paulownia, princess tree. He said it yields wood as soon as 7 years. ( Don't worry, while looking up how to spell paulownia, I found out it's not native and rather is an aggressive invasive. Now I wonder what else may be inaccurate.)
He's a huge proponent of composting! He's had compost piles everywhere he's stayed and doesn't hold with putting food on the garbage. Whatever isn't fit for compost, the dog can have.
I got all that while interviewing my uncle. The big surprise from my dad was that he's done with breathing Sevin Dust and that's why he won't garden anymore. I'm keeping it a surprise that my project is free of it.
So last year I got the wood stove about 80% installed. The inside stove pipe doesn't quite reach yet and I may need to get one more section of uninsulated pipe for that.
But while installing the outer pipe, I discovered that the roof was mushy.
Sigh.
The roof is a Structural Insulated Panel (actually five of them) that had been sealed with silicone roof coat. But I guess the wet got in anyway.
This has happened once before. I removed all the damaged wood, rebuilt and resealed it better. Or so I thought.
This time, once I got up a ladder and started removing damage, I reached a point where I feared further removal would cause the remaining roof to collapse. So I wrapped a tarp over it.
I need a whole new roof. And I pray that none of the water damage got deep enough into the roof to get down into the walls.
I also realized that the current location of the tiny house so close to the storage trailer is just not going to work out, for lack of space. Someone ran over my dog fence and bent it. Plus I can't add a porch or any other building additions. And it's really hard to get ladders between these structures.
I've asked my dad if I can move it to another location about 20 feet down the lot and he says that's fine.
Now I need someone to do a foundation for me. I'm not willing to do the amateur installation of piers that my dad has got. His bathroom is falling off the house and his ceiling is splitting, so maybe that's not the best way to go.
Oregon State University offers two Permaculture Design Certificate programs. There's a 10-week track for the basic education and 20-week track for those who want to become professionals. I'm in the second one.
It's an online course but it's intensive. It does actually kind of follow the lecture + lab format of other university programs. We have live “office hours” with our instructor via Zoom. Lectures are delivered via video. We can also get one-on-one help from instructors and peer support with each other.
The lab part I find interesting. We are given a template for a full-on design proposal. The course walks us through all the elements of the template. But to fill out the template, you have to research A LOT. Because you pick a piece of land and complete the template as though you've been hired to design for it.
So, for example, in the first two weeks you introduce yourself, the land, and the climate. That sounds simple but it goes really deep. You have to find out who the indigenous people were and how they lived. If it's been colonized, you have to describe that relationship too. You have to describe your personal relationship to it. You have to deep dive on the climate conditions.
The current assignments have to do with developing a base map and interviewing the clients. I am learning so much about this land! And about my family.
So that's why I feel prompted to start blogging here again even though the deer camp development is effectively at a standstill right now.
I haven't been updating because I haven't been doing things. Between a surgery, back problems, and an intensification in my autoimmune disorder causing my knees to dislocate a LOT, I did virtually nothing the rest of 2024.
I am now on a new therapy that restores some of my mobility. My house in town is finally completely rented out, so I can live full time out here on the land. And I'm currently in school!
I'm enrolled in Oregon State University's PDC Pro course. This is the Permaculture Design Certificate for people who plan to design professionally.
It's the middle of the fourth week of a 20-week program and I'm learning so much! Not just about permaculture but about the land itself and my family's relationship to it.
So, I want to record these things. This blog seems a pretty logical place to do that, for reasons I'll explain in the next post.
I forgot to post when we discovered that the big old train trestle beam had a whole bunch of hollow places in it. That makes it completely unsuitable for a foundation.
For now, the tiny house is on blocks. But I don't like it.
Oh noes! While I was gone, the Virginia creeper totally swallowed up my common violets! Guess I have to weed eat.
I know I'm not supposed to love Virginia creepier but I can't help it. It's native. And it fulfills the nightmare scenario that people attribute to kudzu.
Kudzu, after all, can't eat the South whole because it requires direct sunlight. If it could, it would have done so decades ago.
Virginia creeper is just fine in the shade. And prolific as hell.
I was upset when my workplace replaced my laptop because the new one would not charge from any of my three power stations via USB-C. I do not like converting electricity from DC to AC just to transfer it and then render it DC once more. Lossy!
Then, one time I plugged in my newer personal laptop, which had the same problem, to a phone charger. It actually told me the problem in its error message. It needs at least 27 watts. Phone chargers are like 5 watts. I guess my older power stations also don't go so high.
The new Bluettis, it turns out, can charge up to 100 watts on USB-C. Much better! It says the draw is 12 watts right now rather than 27, but I'm pleased not to lose precious converted sunlight going to AC and back.
