Homestead Chores and Animals

Laundry on the line, wood and compost, September 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

My mom is reliving her childhood sifting through the many woodpiles of predominantly rotted wood that the previous owner left. She’s moving the logs that still hold good BTUs to our good woodpile. We’re fast approaching three cords of wood: enough for a winter, only we don’t have a wood stove as yet, as this year’s budget can’t accommodate it. Neither do we have the money to get some sort of lawn/meadow started in that area. Next year: we’ve got time.

We’re drying laundry on the line and composting happily. In fact, we’ve got two of those Earth Machines and they’re nearly full, so my dad is making a larger compost area in a far corner of the property, made from the chain link fence we pulled out a while ago. Unfortunately I checked out the “compost” the landfill put aside for us and it’s full of trash! We’ll have to screen it ourselves and we’re not equipped for that, yet.

We also found the first dead animal on our property: a squirrel that was (very recently) bitten by what looks like a fox – the bite is too small for a dog, too large for a cat. Any other predators out there?

Dead squirrel (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

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