Swamplands

We have taken a couple more trips to the dams since my last post. In the first trip, most of our time was taken up trying to find the dam and make the shortest possible path to it from the driveway. Our second trip we brought along our friend Kayla, and the three of us explored further than the first time to try to figure out how things were laid out and to start to formulate a plan of attack. And although it's fun to muck about and swamps are beautiful places, we discovered that the construction was much more extensive than we first realized. Cue the sad trombone! There are actually three dams, though the westernmost one (closest to the bridge) is the largest. Once we came upon a dam, we would look over the edge to see yet another stagnant pool. I was imagining them going on forever, but after the third the creek was flowing, though it was wide and reedy and split into several smaller streams. I've drawn a little sketch for reference:

North is up in this picture. The blue lines represent where the creek should run, and the red lines represent the driveway, running along to pass by the cabin and cross the bridge. The squiggly cyan line represents the overflowing water, and of course the magenta curves are the dams. Dam 1 is the biggest and newest, and they get progressively smaller and older as you travel east in the direction of the water flow. We made some small holes in the dams at the yellow X's, both to try to drain away some water, and to see what would happen. Would they be fixed immediately by beavers in the night, or are these older dams not maintained like the big one is? The yellow line going perpendicularly through Dam 1 is where I think we should put the beaver pipe. That is the newest and largest area of construction, where the dam is built up at least as tall as me.

This time, I brought along the iPhone in the handy waterproof pocket on the front of my waders, and took some pictures. I find this whole area to be beautiful, even though it's not really "supposed" to look like this. To the beavers I guess it looks perfect, but they don't have to worry about a flooded driveway.

Anyway, a couple days later I came back by myself to see if the holes we had made had been patched up. It appeared as if they had not; though some new sticks and debris were crossing and blocking them somewhat, it seemed to just be due to the water flowing and not to beaver activity. I'm not an expert even a little bit, but from what I've read beavers will completely patch up a hole good as new in one night.

I have to tell a funny story about that morning. I was clearing out one of the holes and went to pick up what looked like a bundle of sticks, but when I touched it and saw it closer up IT WAS A DEAD BEAVER. I shrieked and gagged. I screamed aloud that I hated the country because I just kept finding and touching dead animals. Then I started to examine it (from afar); it was laying right on top of the hole I had made (there was still mud built up underneath, so it was right next to the surface of the water. I noted the back legs, sticking straight up with little feet and big claws. I saw the wide, flat tail, which looked rough and pitted from decomposition. I saw the clumpy, matted brown fur. I steeled myself, grabbed a stick, and tried to move it. It wouldn't budge, I imagined having to dig it out of the mud and gagged again. But as I continued to look. . . it turned back into the clump of sticks wrapped tightly together with dead grasses that it has always been! I kicked it a few times and it came apart and floated away down the stream, but now even though I'm not usually a mystical person I can't help but feel that it was a message of some kind. From the beavers, perhaps? I think if they could talk they would say to us, "you'll have to kill us to get us to leave. Otherwise, we're just going to stay here forever, breeding and eating bark and felling trees." Good thing they've never heard of beaver pipes!

Beavers and chickens

Big news! And I mean really big: we found the beaver dam yesterday morning. No pictures since we were mucking about, but it's located east of the creek a few hundred yards and it's huge! I guess, technically, it's two dams, but they are right next to each other in a line and work together to block the entire swamp and all the water. No wonder the driveway floods in the rainy season.

Now, of course, the real work starts. Our plan as of now is to breach the dam in a few places (where there are dry creek beds on the other side) and put in beaver deceivers or beaver pipes. Basically, we would run a long, wide, flexible pipe perpendicularly through the dam, held in place on the creek bed by tying it to short pieces of rebar sunk into the ground. This way even if/when the beavers rebuild the dam, water is still able to flow. That's the plan; we will have to see if it's possible. If not we may look into trapping. If anyone reading like to trap, we've got at least fifty beavers so come get them! Apparently they are quite tasty and make nice top hats, too.

The other bit of news is that after living here for a few weeks, I've decided that the chicken coop is located in the least convenient place possible. One reason to keep chickens is that they are very helpful in the garden; they weed, till, and eat insects, and you can compost their manure to make really good fertilizer. However, the chicken coop is on the complete opposite side of the house from the garden. I tried to herd them over there myself one day, which was such a slapstick comedy of errors that I decided NEVER AGAIN. In addition, the current coop is not quite right for our needs, and is too dark and unventilated for my liking. So after some thinking, I've decided to build a new coop inside the greenhouse. Having a greenhouse/coop is apparently an old permaculture idea which benefits birds and plants alike, and I figure building one wall in an existing structure will be easier and quicker than constructing an entire new building.

Above is the north end of our greenhouse. I just realized when I started thinking about this project that the greenhouse is shaped like an arrow that points south. So while the south end has some funny short walls and odd angles, the north end is nice and square, and has a big window.

I want to build the fourth coop wall at the second stud, so the coop will be about four feet deep and 9'-5" wide. These walls were insulated and then clad with Mylar film, which when peeled back revealed some horrifying things such as a DEAD SQUIRREL that I accidentally TOUCHED with my HAND. The insulation was all chewed up and full of sunflower seed husks. I bagged up all the film and insulation this morning and got a good look at the structure; unfortunately the northwest corner where the walls meet the floor is all rotten and full of insect holes, probably from carpenter ants. I'll be sure to blog along with all the fascinating/disgusting prep work, but for now I've made a little sketch to help visualize the coop:

Bok bok! (And whatever sound beavers make.)

Adventures in the Wilderness

Most of our property is wooded, but the top of the bluff was clear-cut illegally by the previous tenant. What this means is that just beyond the house, garden, and outbuildings, the whole area is dry and relatively barren, with large piles of logging debris placed randomly about. Of course, there's also lots of regular garbage left behind as well, including these large piles of rusty chicken wire and brush and bagged garbage right in front of the house.

 Lovely. This will all have to go somewhere eventually; we may reuse some of the chicken wire for fencing, but most of it is going to the dump.

Here's some pictures of the bluff:

 

 

You can see that the bare ground has become covered with the sorts of plants that first colonize the lunar-like surface of clearcut areas. Dandelions, vetch, thistles, stinging nettle, all sorts of grasses and vines and weeds. Our landlord is going to replant hundreds of trees to try to replace what was lost, and eventually it will look like the rest of the property again! Which you can see, as you travel down the steep part of the driveway away from the house, is a lot more verdant and beautiful.

This plant with the roundish leaves is called miner's lettuce and tastes like Boston bibb.

I ventured down into the valley on this particular occasion to take a walk along the creek. The water is stagnant all around the bridge where the driveway crosses it, therefore I needed to try to figure out which direction the water is coming from so I could know on which side of the bridge the dam or other blockage is located.

I chose to walk westward from the bridge, where the small (three to five feet wide, no deeper than my knee) creek winds through this reedy area. The dammed water has covered the entire flood plain, so reeds are everywhere. The dogs and I would be struggling through the five-foot-tall plants, supported on their sturdy root system (rhizome) and all of a sudden one of us would drop into the water. Thankfully it was usually Emmylou, our pit bull who loves to swim!

All I know is, if I knew how to weave baskets I would be set for LIFE.

As we continued west it became clear that the water is flowing from west to east, which makes sense as the Nisqually River is east of us. This means that the beaver dam or other blockage is also east of the bridge.

Eventually the reeds gave way to a real forest creek, and a very nice one at that:

At this point I didn't know where our property ended, so I turned back and forced my way back through the reeds. I did see something interesting though: a rotted-out stump covered in brambles with a small cache of empty shells sitting in it. So there are freshwater shellfish living in the creek, and someone - probably a raccoon - is eating them!

I didn't walk eastward from the bridge, but it's more of the same: reeds, reeds, rotten logs, reeds. The water is much deeper over there too, so we have a little rowboat, but what would be really useful is some fishing waders. We will have to walk or boat around in there until we find the blockage, and then we'll be able to work on unblocking it!

My other task that day was picking Oregon grapes, because I'm super stoked to make jelly but I need like four pints! I made an Oregon grape/blueberry/balsamic reduction for pork recently and I fell in love with those grapes. They are sour and have many big seeds, so you have to cook and strain them, and add some sort of sweetener or other fruits, but then they taste magical. 

I also found many other berry plants while foraging for grapes, which is very exciting!

 I think this is a bog blueberry. I also spotted raspberries, huckleberries, blackberries, and salal berries. They're everywhere, especially in the swamp and on the bluff. There's even a rotting stump in our garden with a big huckleberry bush and salal berries growing on it as epiphytes. I'm sure I'll take pictures of all of them as their fruit ripens.

I also took a few seed pods from a columbine with unusual red flowers. There are many growing along the driveway, as well as some cute little wild lilies, so I'm going to try to get seeds from both and grow them in the garden near the house.

Well that's all for now. I'll close with this toad:

The First Week. . . ish.

Oh hi there! I'm blogging at you from the Yelm Timberland Library, as we do not have Internet, cell phone reception, or a land line (yet) at our new home. It's actually been nice to disconnect, and I certainly have plenty to do, but at the same time it's hard to get used to for someone who is generally glued to their iPad.

RC, all our animals, and I have been settling in well despite a few hitches brought on by being off-the-grid newbies. But we got the pilot lights on the water heater and refrigerator lit successfully, the solar inverter is off of sleep mode and busily supplying electricity (gotta watch The Golden Girls!) and we have sprayed enough DEET on ourselves to kill a whole flock of birds. Sorry, birds.

We have been spending most of this time putting all our stuff away in our new home, and I thought this would be a good time to show a few pictures of the interior. As you may recall, the exterior of the house resembles a traditional Japanese dwelling, but once you get inside all bets are off and it's hippie construction central. There are pentagrams. There's sponge painting. There's strange custom cabinetry and lofts everywhere. It's great and terrible all at once.

I don't have pictures of the whole place yet, but I do want to start out showing off the main living area, which also includes the kitchen and a couple of lofted areas.

The main floor has four doors, two on the west side and two on the east side. When you enter the one near the northwest corner of the house, the kitchen is directly to your left. One lofted area is over the kitchen, and one is over the living area, as you can see, so the ceiling is shorter in both those places but the whole room is basically the height of the entire house.

You may notice that the kitchen counter is very tall! Compare it to the little rolling island we brought into the center of the room. They are 40" in height whereas most kitchen counters are 34" or so. There are no upper cabinets, instead two large windows. I will be getting shades and screens for the west-facing one (the left side one in the photo). It's one of the few windows that opens, which is nice but it lets in bugs, and it gets so sunny at around dinner-preparing time that I have to wear sunglasses to cook. The cabinets are pretty charming in a rustic way, and after I put contact paper on the shelves and fix a broken drawer, they will look very nice indeed I think.

 

 

Here's some pictures of the rest of the main area. Drink in the glorious sponge painting job on the walls. I plan to paint it all a nice pale solid color at some point in the future; I would feel guilty about painting over someone's hard work if it weren't so hideous. But honestly, the red part looks like someone smeared blood all over the walls. You can also see the door to the downstairs bedroom (which we are calling The Blue Room, of course), the stairs which lead up to the lofted area over the kitchen, and the big beams and curvy railing on the loft over the living area.

This picture was taken in the curvy loft, showing the square loft and the world's ugliest bookcase. There's a lot of very weird carpentry done in this place, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense or is just plain ugly, and I hope to get rid of a lot of it if we do end up buying the place. I've claimed the curvy loft as my work area, where I have my painting and crafting stuff, and RC will be using the Ugly Bookshelf Loft as his music-making area.

The room with the green walls and the telescope in it is the upstairs/master bedroom. It has a lofted bed area which I plan to get rid of, two skylights and windows with great views. We have been sleeping downstairs in The Blue Room since it's been so hot this week, so I've pretty much been ignoring this room for now, other than to give it a good dusting.

Some more pictures of my loft. The floor has this big wooden grate in it that totally sets off my vertigo! I'm not too sure of the history of this place, but it seems like this loft was original to the design of the house, and the other loft over the kitchen was added later, since it's a different style. But who knows. I'll have to take pictures of the other loft because it's even wackier than this one, in a totally different way.

The Blue Room! Here's where it really gets crazy. It's pretty hard to get a good picture in this room due to the giant, custom-made, copper colored headboard/closet in the center, but as you can see there's French doors leading outside, a big south-facing window, and three large closets with door murals featuring a topless turbaned swan herder, a celestial elephant, butterflies, and a dancing geisha. These murals have the distinction of being both imaginatively designed and poorly executed. There's also a pair of shoji screens leading to the bathroom, but that is a room for another post.

Okay so even if it was confusing, I hope you have a better idea of what this place looks like on the inside. At some point, I'm going to make a floor plan to share with you all. But for now, we've been doing most of our work outside. Pruning, weeding, transplanting, cleaning stuff. I spent a large portion of yesterday cleaning out the pond and removing the plants, since it's got some cracks in the concrete and the landlord will be getting a repair guy in soon to fix it up and get it running again.

  

This pond was only half-full of stagnant water, the edge is painted red with a Greek key pattern in black, and had some tiger lilies in weed-infested pots set in the center, but it seems to have a whole fountain system with two pond areas and could look really nice someday! Picture it: lilypads, the soothing gurgle of running water, maybe some goldfish or turtles someday? I can dig it.