Light at the end of the tunnel

The Back 40 is well-nigh cleared!

Because you cannot appreciate the end of a thing unless you know its beginning, here's what we started with:

And here is after:

Oh my!

And Matthew cleaned his room. Like, with a vacuum cleaner and all. It's not perfect, but I can live with it.


In other news regarding the actual house where we're going to live, we've selected a contractor and should be beginning demo soon. I've also ordered cabinets from my buddy Nathan at Madison Cabinets, and I am SUPER excited about them! So much storage for my new kitchen!

Teenage boys on their own

I mentioned in an earlier post that one day I would show you Matthew's cool digs in the barn in the back.

The previous owner was using it as an office for his home business. It's set up with electricity, A/C, and DSL.

This seemed like a nice place for Matthew to hang out until he leaves for the Navy in March. So we moved his stuff over there. Every 19 year old kid wants some space.

When I went to check on the Back 40 this weekend, here is what I found.


This was after I'd put the lid back on the peanut butter. The doughnuts were hard like little powdered rocks.

I am reminded that the boys' dorms at college always smelled like urine and were always trashed. Le sigh. It is my fault for engaging in willful amnesia when I put him out there.

Back 40: Worse before it's better

Well, the two 19 year old boys quit after two days, so we hired one of Jon's buddies to do the rest. The place was so overgrown that it was impossible at first to tell what lay beneath.

Seriously? What kind of animals do this?

A long shot of the debris field. At least one super-annoyed giant rat has lost his home.

It's kind of hard to tell what this is, so I'll explain. It's a barbed wire fence, literally embedded into the ground after decades of leaves, debris, and other junk has been thrown on top of it. This is not going to be fun to extricate.

Suffice it to say that each day I've been more horrified than the day before when I go to check and see what flotsam and jetsam has been pulled from the Back 40.

The Back 40

There's a fenced-off swath of land at the back of our new property that Jon and I jokingly call "The Back 40". A long time ago, some previous owner of this home (probably the original owner) decided that it was just too much trouble to clear the last bit of the property, so they put up a chain link fence and called it a day.

They kept a swimming pool ladder slung over the chain link fence for the rare occasions when they might want to climb back there.


The actual property line is at the wood fence. But back when this house was built, the houses (and therefore the wood fence) didn't exist, so the property backed up to vacant land. Which was apparently used for illegal dumping. A lot of illegal dumping.

"Gol-dingit, Johnny Bob! We broke the weight bench! Howsabout we go throw it in that thar field?"

So yeah, that's it. Unimaginable piles of crap; barbed wire fences, garbage, and overgrown vines that look like they belong in the Fire Swamp with the R.O.U.S.'s. You can hardly even tell that there's a huge old native oak tree in there admist the crap and overgrowth.

Our contractor has stepped in and loaned us his dump trailer, but it's going to take many, many loads.


Matthew and his friend worked for 2 days to "clear" probably 1/5 of the area (where you can actually see fence).

We are excited to see what The Back 40 looks like when it's cleared. It's quite a large area, probably as big as our current yard in terms of square footage. There's a lot that can be done! It's just going to take some really unpleasant work to get it into a civilized condition. This is the time when having a teenage boy finally starts to pay off...

That Happy Feeling

You know that happy feeling? When everything clicks and you know you're on the right path? I had it this weekend.

A few days ago, this flyer appeared on the door of our "new" house.

Since some of the reasons we're moving are to be in a neighborhood that is more interested in, you know, BEING a neighborhood, and also being able to engage in some small type of urban farming, I made up my mind right away that we were going, even though we haven't officially moved yet!

The event was held at the property of a lovely man named Vincent. Vincent moved to the neighborhood about 11 years ago, and is essentially as happy as a pig in a pile of mud. He has a horse. He has gardens. He has a chicken coop as a special project for himself and his granddaughter.The horse was a jumper in his younger days, and is now living a peaceful retirement as a companion for Vincent and his granddaughter.

There's Vincent, in suspenders, talking to Jon about his cistern.

Cisterns are great, when it rains. This is what Vincent's cistern looks like this summer.

Then a lovely Welsh gentleman named Geoff Thomas gave a talk on sustainable gardening, good gardening practices, and other stuff. I wish I could have heard more of it, but I was off chasing my curious 3 year old around Vincent's property.

There was a pretty good sized crowd.

I was secretly a little worried that we'd all gather 'round, and then be ambushed with an Amway sales pitch, or something like that. Fortunately, there was nothing of the sort. The event was exactly what it was advertised to be.

This is my new neighborhood. Yes, the houses are 30 years old and a lot of them need work. Yes, SOME of the neighbors need to do a better job maintaining their lots. But what we found on Saturday was a group of friendly, like-minded people who are interested in knowing who their neighbors are, and in sharing what they know. We met more neighbors on Saturday than we've met in 10 years in our McMansion neighborhood; in fact, trying to imagine an event like this taking place in our current neighborhood is unfathomable.

Now I have a new resource for horse manure and fresh laid eggs. And Starbucks is still just down the road. :)