The Bluebird Bus

So, we're doing it. Homesteading that is. My ultimate dream since at least 4th grade, though probably long before, was to build a cabin in the woods and have my animals and gardens and all of that. When Tim and I started dating, I told him that was non-negotiable and it turns out he was also excited by the idea of making life hard on himself by camping while trying to build a house in the woods and producing our own food rather than taking the more normal choice and living in an apartment in the city with all utilities included and every fast food chain within walking distance. Tim is on board, but much more keen on having things like electricity and plumbing than I would opt for on my own. Who can blame an electrician for wanting power? It does make projects much faster and easier and doable to use power tools and I do like my dishwasher and laundry machine. I suppose a little power is okay.

We've got a good start on the farm here on Honeymoon Bay Point, but we're still lacking that experience of turning woods and brush into home. Across the street is about 10 acres for sale which we've put an offer on. With any luck, it will close by mid December, just in time to put the bus up there before going on our Christmas vacation.

1992 BlueBird Handy-Bus

Oh yeah, the bus. So we've moved into a bus, or more of we are in the process of moving into a bus. We're sleeping in a bus and occasionally cooking a pizza in our wood stove and have 5 gallons of water on board and some of our clothes. We're working on getting it set up to be The Ultimate Homesteading Machine. Our good friend from Alaska, Fritz Funk, used it as his moving van when he moved to Whidbey. He also used it as his camper traveling back and forth to Wisconsin and hosting music festivals on Whidbey. He converted it into a pretty comfortable living space with a table, kitchen, bed, and wood stove. He also converted it to run on bio-diesel.

In the back of the bus is an 800-lb lift for wheelchairs, barrels of used fry oil, tools, and all those other homestead-like necessities. The wood stove has an oven space that we got up to 400f to bake our pizza in. The clearance under the bus is enough for me to sit fully upright on the ground beneath her. Everything runs and works great.

Running water! It runs out of the jug, through the tubes, and out to the ground.

We've been trying to do something every day to get ready for When We Move (there's been a lot of talk about "when we move", it seems like it should be a proper title); we installed a drain in the sink with a trap and everything leading to under the bus where we can put a 5-gallon bucket or eventually dig a french drain (gravel-filled hole). On the property across the street we've been going on long walks in the woods; by which I mean crawling for an hour through thick brush and blackberry brambles and nettles with GPS in hand.

Tim wired up a home-made deep-cycle house-battery for the bus for When We Move (currently the bus is parked right outside our front door).

Putting wood on end inside an old tire to hold the wood while chopping into small kindling.

Chopping wood is one of those continual tasks for the rest of our lives if we're running on wood heat.

Well... That was an adventure. Introducing Mineral City!

Our first camping trip after moving to Washington was about a year ago. We set off for Monte Cristo and Silver Tip Peak. The trip was overall a success. Monte Cristo is a long-since abandoned mining town turned historical site which still hosts a rather well-maintained road-width trail all the way to the old town site, then beyond there is a trail to Silver Tip Peak but more of a "create your own adventure" style than the wide, flat road/trail to the town-site.

For our second trip, we thought we would head for the same approximate destination from the other direction - hiking from Index to Galena, then on to "Mineral City". That trip turned out to be far from what we expected with many river crossings through rapids in the dark, only to find a paved road and traffic in the middle of what we expected to be uninhabited wilderness on the other side.

After several trips to Troublesome Creek Campground in the small town of Galena by way of the trail around the washed-out section of the road, we finally took the long drive around through forest service roads to start our hike in Galena and aim again for Mineral City. We weren't sure what to expect in Mineral City but the allure of mystery had been calling to us for the last year. Would it be a historic site like Monte Cristo with an easy trail along the old road to it? Would it be like Galena - not abandoned, just harder to get to and still occupied as a rural cabin community? Would it be like our first trip down the Index-Galena highway with more adventures, challenges, and twists than we could expect? Yes.

Ready for adventure, we parked the car as far up the old Galena-Mineral City mining road as we dared and set off on foot with lighter-than-usual packs. (We aren't quite at the "ultra-light" camper status, but we are trying to at least stop being "ultra-heavy" campers. No canned food this time! ...well, maybe just one can of sardines and one of oysters, but we'll make up for it with ultra-light astronaut ice cream.) Even Tilly is pulling her weight and carries her own dog-supplies like her food and leash.

Me heading back for Tilly's pack (NOT Tilly. No carrying puppies this trip!)

We didn't go far before reaching the first major obstetrical and reason the road is no longer drive-able. A large rock slide took out a considerable length of road. We made our way down to the scree field by rope and picked our way across. Tilly didn't think it was such a good idea so I put my pack down on the far side and headed back for hers. With her pack off, she scampered merrily across until Tim caught her on the far side to get that pack back on.

Tim crossing the large slide area on our way back. A short ways had a foot bridge which has also collapsed.

Before heading across the slide, we looked long and hard for another way. By "long and hard" I mean climbing about a mile or more up another old, overgrown road of steep switchbacks up the mountain. When we finally decided there was one more switchback than we were willing to take and this was definitely not our road to the allusive Mineral City, we took the path of least resistance back: we checked the GPS and made a b-line for where we had forked off on that route, scrambling through the woods with no trail and no other footprints. 

There were a couple more hazards to cross to keep the casual day-hikers out. Parts of the trail had caved off into the steep ravine. One small spot eroded a bit too much and ropes had been strung up to hang on to while crossing the tricky bit. A few more small, less steep rock slides had taken out other sections of trail, and a few places bridges were missing, replaced by steep deer-trails down the hill to cross and climb back up the other side. Someone had kindly flagged these side routes over the years.

Contemplating crossing

Coming home after camping

One of the old bridges was still largely intact, while another only had one log still remaining and some very, very slanted, rotting boards to walk across. It was amazing to see five logs in a row, four feet in diameter, meant to span forty feet across a ravine completely rotted out and gone. Next to some of these tricky crossings were little memorial plaques or pictures... We assume because they loved hiking here so much and nothing to do with the missing trail.

Once across the hazards, much of the trail was more like we expected - an overgrown old logging road, barely distinguishable by the break in the trees and the dense underbrush, but with a bit of a foot path down one of the old tire ruts. We made some stops along the way to admire old mining adits (openings) lining the trail. 

Most of the adits we came across only extended a few feet into the rock or earth before stopping. We marveled at how much work went in to putting in the road and each prospector digging those test adits only to be disappointed with mediocre or no return.

An old bottle grown into the base of a tree - showing how long people have been in the area

Tim is very interested in mining history and looking for artifacts. I am more drawn to that piece of chocolate Tim hid in the bottom of his pack to give me once we get to our camp site. I think there was a promise of chocolate if I build the fire? 

The trail was beautiful, following Silver Creek all the way up. In the woods, we found many great camp sites but only one old cabin along the way. The cabin had a forewarning and fresh-looking sign saying "Caution: Wounded Bear" which was an effective deterrent to keep us a safe distance from their cabin until our way home when, feeling braver, we ventured up for a closer look. There was a note on the door with the families name and contact information and a spot for passers-by to leave notes. Only a few people a year passed by, with the last this summer being from July. We added our name and date to the list. Driving home we stopped at our favorite burger spot near Index and realized the same family owned the cabin and restaurant. 

After many miles, mostly up hill and through thick brush with quite a few detours in the name of exploration, we eventually reached the famed "Mineral City" town site - notable by the flat area just before crossing the river and birch trees showing newer growth. There wasn't much else of interest there to allude to any ideas of a mining "city". I wonder what it looked like at it's peak and if there was ever much more here.

Tim finally comfortable, curled up and taking up the entire tent once Tilly and I were out.

We pitched our incredibly tiny children's tent, had a lovely and filling dinner around the camp fire, then cuddled up with bent legs and wet heads and feet pressed up against either end, trying not to kick Tilly who took up a precious three square feet of our fifteen... Our next camping trip will be two pounds heavier as we will be bringing the real tent again from now on. 

It's hard to capture how incredibly tiny that tent is...

For the first time ever while camping, Tilly settled in at camp. While we sat around the fire roasting hot dogs and eating soup, Tilly curled up and went to sleep on our coats next to us. At bed time, we moved into the tent and she stepped over my inflatable mat and strait into her corner to lay down again (pressed up against the sides like the rest of us). In the morning, as we finished packing up, Tilly settled down with her pack by the fire, ready to go but patiently waiting. Perhaps she is finally getting older and more mature, or perhaps this is by far the warmest, driest, most comfortable camping spot we've ever taken her to and she finally could relax.

Overall... I don't think we will be heading back to Mineral City. The mystery is solved - there is no coffee shop hidden away in Mineral City unless you count the instant coffee with astronaut ice cream Tim made me for breakfast, and the trail leaves something to be desired. The area is still beautiful, but next time maybe we'll go for one of those nice retired fire towers only a couple miles down a kept up trail. 

Garden Mentor

At the Calyx outdoor school's garden where I am now the "Roots" (age 5-7) garden and math teacher.

At the South Whidbey School Garden, before our transformation efforts to create a special Kindergarten-garden space.

After a day of work, each kindergarten class has their own garden bed to work on with it's own color.

Teaching about "magic beans" (scarlet runner beans) in the bean tepee of "the big garden" at the South Whidbey School District.

The kids saw the transformation from young, white bean to plump pink bean to mature black and purple bean.

Mom and Dad have come down for a visit and brought Rowdy with them. He is a toy hog and took over the whole basket.

The barn got a new roof! The old roof leaked badly and had no tar paper under the shingles.

Tilly met another Airedale at the dog park while we were waiting to pick up a second chest freezer for our 100lbs of salmon. We should start charging for cold storage.

Apple Cider

Tim, the empty Fast Ferment, and the full bottles.

After visiting a commercial brewery in-progress over the weekend, Tim was newly inspired to get to work on his brewing project. Tim bottled his 5 gallons of extra-hoppy IPA for their final phase of fermentation, then got busy grinding up apples from Eastern Washington and our own property. 

Getting ready to make cider, Tim read complex plans for building your own wooden cider press, then read DIY alternatives using a like-new garbage disposal and some buckets and hoses... For a few dollars, Tim got a great juicer from the thrift store - surely a $100+ item someone was excited about in the '90's, used once, and has now finally cleaned out of the back of their pantry as was so popular. Maybe juicing is back in style and I'm out of the loop, but I do remember this trend when I was young of used-once juicers in the backs of pantries. It turns out juicers are totally rad! We chopped up rather hard apples from our trees and threw them down the feed tube where clear juice came out one side and dry pulp out the other. From many many apples we made nearly 4 gallons of juice and about a gallon of pulp which delighted the chickens and goats.

Immediately after collecting all the juice in our Fast Ferment, Tim added 4 tablets (one per gallon) of crushed campden to kill anything untoward in the juice. After 12 hours, I added about 3 teaspoons (3/4 per gallon) of

some time late tonight or tomorrow morning (24-48 hours after adding the campden), we will finally throw in the "Pasteur Champagne" active dry wine yeast. I'm not sure when the hops go in, but Tim also got an ounce of hops for the cider.

Jewel Creek Farm

Over the weekend we finally made the long drive over to Eastern Washington, then north to Canada to visit a farm we'd learned about before fishing. After eight hours of driving, leaving the house a 5pm after work, we found ourselves on an old logging road without cell service somewhere in British Columbia. After another hour of heavy off roading with are stoutly steed, Marcy the Mercedes, we found our way back to the gravel road we'd been on and went another mile, I mean kilometer down the road to be welcomed by a lovely sign pointing to Jewel Creek Farm and a comparatively excellent old logging road to the 'big house' on the property where we were met by our host, another visitor, and two friendly dogs at 2am.

 

After getting some much desired sleep, I woke early in the morning to take Tilly and our two new pack members for a long walk around the 160 acre homestead and surrounding "crown land" then came in to share our eggs and veggies with our hosts for breakfast.

We spent time harvesting hops, digging potatoes, swimming in the nearby lake, and staying up late around the campfire visiting with new friends.

Oliver, our host, is working on building a commercial brewery on part of the property, as well as hoping to set up an "eco village" of like-minded folks. Tim particularly enjoyed seeing all the brewing equipment, log mill, and the enormous shop.

We hope to get back again this fall for another visit with our new friends.

On our way home, we passed the fire camps of hard working fire fighters combating the raging wildfires of Eastern Washington and we saw blackened earth and trees along the road with a few plumes of smoke in the distance. The remains of the smoke from the peak of the fire still lingered over the towns we drove through and filled our car. 

At the top of the Cascade Highway pass, we stopped to get out for a run and stretch our legs down the Pacific Crest Trail. We passed a through-hiker just finishing his journey from Mexico to Canada. Some day I hope to hike the Washington portion of the trail. 

And then there's this...

I've been working on building long-term garden beds in the lower corner of our lot by my compost. The fence is in, the potatoes have broken down compost into good soil, and I've got a good start on building terraced retaining walls out of bricks for the beds. Here is one corner bed emerging from the ground with a level for a guide. Still a lot more work to do!

Also, the chickens have under-mined the nice patio I built in front of the barn and the low corner is beginning to fall away. I'll need to address this soon as well. The work never ends!

Between adventures

Life is good! Life is busy! Life is rich and full and sometimes that means the house doesn't get cleaned and pictures don't get posted and blogs don't get written. It's important to write this all down, to look through the pictures to remember how happy and blessed we are with so much good in our lives.

Tim's beer brewing has been going well. He's making an IPA which is a particularly long-process beer. We have an upside-down tear drop shaped plastic container called a "Fast Ferment" the yeast and beer "wart" went in after boiling the sugar, hops, and other ingredients like a tea. After letting it sit and bubble away in our dark closet for a week or so, the dead yeasts are removed from the bottom of the batch to keep them from affecting the flavor. Tim found some local hops to add in as a "dry hop" for extra hoppy flavor. The extra hops soaked a few days in a big tea bag before being taken out again. Early next week it will finally be time to bottle the beer! A little sugar candy will be added to each bottle to feed the yeasts and make the beer carbonated, so in another week we should have home brew to drink and share. While working on his brewing, Tim found a hops plant for sale and brought it home to add to our garden. Though it is a single hops plant so I feel it should be called our "hop", singular. (Hop hop hop!)

Tim and Mike watching the races from the beer garden.

Joe and Ronie made a quick stop through to check on their boat and decided to take it off the market to instead start gearing up for a comfort trolling trip through Southeast Alaska. While they were in town, our friends Mike and Holly came over from Port Angeles to join us watching speed boat racing in Oak Harbor.

When we first moved to the island two years ago, Dad gave us a membership to the local shooting range for Tim's birthday. Unfortunately, the week we signed up and went through the new member orientation class was also the week Tim had the terrible accident with his wrist and we never did get to go shooting. Finally, with Tim's hand back in working order, we renewed our membership and got to go have a day at the range! The bar/restaurant is busy but the range seems to be always empty despite being a really great shooting range with many different set ups. Tim tested out his newly rebuilt long gun and we had a shoot-off with our pistols, starting with close range targets and moving on to freehand shooting at metal targets the size of a playing card at the far end of the range (50 yards). I didn't think there was any possibility of hitting such small targets at such a distance with anything short of a sniper riffle but we both hit the targets multiple times and Tim even hit his standing unsupported with one hand. We found something we can both do together that isn't a project we fight over! ("No, it's MY turn to change the oil!! You can hand me tools.") 

The last weekend of August, we headed to the State Fair in Munro. Last year we went for the drift racing (Sunday), this year we decided on figure-8 racing (Saturday), but of course that's only one small part of a long day of greasy fair food, giant bunnies, baby pigs, deciding on our future duck breed of choice, and more greasy fair food. 

We were particularly inspired by a pair of boys who had rigged up an impressive cart for their goat and taught her to pull. Clearly, Esther and Petunia need a double rig and will surely be brilliant at trotting down trails with all our gear rolling behind.

That's an alligator. She was very mellow and had little tiny teeth. She's a particular kind of alligator that is mellow and friendly. There were also some giant tortoises cruising about, all from a teaching zoo or wildlife education center of some sort. Clearly the novelty, noise, and greasy fair food won out over remembering what the handlers said. 

Teamsters: 8 horses navigating an obstacle course and backing up a trailer - maadd impressive.

Though we went to the fair looking forward to car racing, the horse show turned out to be even more impressive. Before the draft horse show, three horses were in their arena with young girls instructing them on a variety of maneuvers. Aside from running and walking and switching directions on the lunge lead, one girl had her horse sit, lay down, and roll over. Another horse had two little girls on it's back, one standing and waving a flag while the other bounced a giant ball all around and under the horse. The third horse seemed to do everything without hardly a whisper from the girl directing and ended with a bow. As they left the arena, the announcer said all three horses were under 3 years old and had been caught from the wild in the last 90 days before being trained entirely by these children. I didn't believe him and asked the girls after the show. Evidently there is a whole program and they told me more horses would be doing demonstrations the next weekend.

While Tim stayed home and worked on changing out seals and fluids on the truck (see that shiny, newly painted red super charger? I hear the paint-job adds 25 horse power), I went back to the fair again the next weekend with my friend Bianca and her 2-year-old daughter, Lyla.

Heavy Labor Day traffic kept us from getting to the fair in time to see the mustangs-tamed-by-children, but we did have a pretty good time eating fair food (isn't that really what it's all about? Templeton from Charlotte's Web told me so) and seeing all the animals. 

Tim, Tilly, Mike, and Holly headed up into the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula for some car camping over the weekend. I hear Tilly was full of trouble, determined to eat everything in sight and got sick while Mike ate way too many hot dogs and Tim was cold and wet in a tiny tent. One of those "misery makes it more memorable and memorable = fun" trips, like most of our camping trips, though I hear the first night was pretty good with fun mellow time around the fire with good friends. 

Well, I can't very well show pictures of Amanda in the dress before the wedding! Gotta keep it a surprise, especially if Brother Daniel were to see. So there you go - she's in the dressing room there with the dress. Close enough.

I opted out of the camping trip this weekend to join my soon-to-be sister-in-law wedding dress shopping. We tried on many dresses at a few different stores ad learned you must have one of those professionals on hand to dress you. When her friend Katie and I tried to dress her, the dresses looked silly and stuck out in all the wrong places. Once an attendant came in and tied all the ribbons in just the right places, she looked stunning. Some of the dresses still stuck out in all the wrong places because people who make wedding dresses seem to think that's a good look, but the others were a mix of "nice", "pretty", and "stunning". The second place we went shopping, we had an appointment complete with complementary blue champagne (in case girls trying on wedding dresses need to be more giggly or have something blue to spill on all that white). There was an attendant assigned solely dressing Amanda while Katie and I sat on a couch sipping our champagne and practicing with our "no"/"yes" voting cards with the family and friends of a second bride-to-be. 

If you click on a picture it makes it bigger and gives you a slideshow of all the pictures in the post.

Okay, I can't not put a picture of Amanda in her dress - she was so beautiful! And it was so beautiful on her! And look how happy and glow-y she is!!! Clearly, something good is going on here. Well, I had to censor the photo a little - can't be giving anything away, but look at Amanda's face! Look at the woman in the background cheering and smiling! That was one of the women there to support the other bride, but everyone was so excited about seeing Amanda in her dress. There are still more dresses to try on, but we've set a high bar for finding a dress that makes Amanda feel even more wonderful and special and beautiful and to find a dress she's even more reluctant to take off. I didn't really expect wedding dress shopping to be so much fun, I don't think Amanda did either, but seeing her glowing like that was really really wonderful and we all were grinning. 

Wow! That got me so excited I nearly forgot about my last piece of news: jobs. Specifically me having some. I think I'm at 5 jobs. I am now listed as a substitute for the South Whidbey School District and the Whidbey Waldorf School, but I also have some really cool jobs starting this school year. 

I will be spending one day a week leading early elementary students in the Calyx school garden. Calyx is a really great new-ish program which acts as a sort of home-schooling supplement program, offering outdoor learning 4 days a week for elementary students.Calyx students learn math, science, reading, writing, and history through earth stewardship and outdoor hands-on learning at the South Whidbey State Park as well as in the art garden they have built together.

The Calyx garden is a sort of magical place with a mix of music, art, flowers and veggies. I am looking forward to meeting the kids in the coming week and watching them grow in the garden along with any other opportunities to grow in my involvement with Calyx.

At the South Whidbey school gardens, students had their first day of eating kale, tomatoes, and carrots as they explored the mystery of what was happening to the sunflowers. Sammy Squirrel was very cooperative with coming out at the end of the students' discovery time to reveal the answer. After the classes ended, we had a planning meeting to talk about the coming year and my involvement with the garden. The plan is for me to teach the kindergarten and special education classes in the garden. I am planning to reclaim a bit of unused space between one of the greenhouses and a playground to turn in to a sensory garden for the little ones. While the older students focus on commercial food production for the cafeteria, I want the young discoverers to be able to learn through play, touch, smells and colors, creating a safe place for them to experiment with what makes a seed grow and other  outdoor learning questions. 

Additionally I will be tutoring at Ryan's House, an organization supporting homeless youth. Some of the young people are working on GEDs, others are struggling to stay in school and earn that diploma. One needs some remedial help to be ready for community college, and others just need a little more support so they can catch up or get ahead in school. Hopefully I will be able to build good connections with students and provide valuable support to them academically and for life.