writer « Robin Writes

I’ve kept you all entertained, or something, the last ten months, with the house remodel. I’m happy to say that we’ve reached the end!

Almost.

We’re still mulling over the bathroom, particularly the shower, which means we haven’t yet tiled the floor. Or finished the baseboards or doorframe in there. And the dungeon, aka the lean-to, still needs some work, mostly cleaning and some repairs.

Or knocking it over and starting from scratch.

Oh, and the kitchen backsplash. Well, there’s a giant PITA.

Fortunately, there’s an upside: if you don’t look up, you won’t notice. Much like the rest of the house, if you deliberately look anywhere besides the booboos, it’s all looks great! And that, my friends, is due to my husband—the booboos are mine, I admit it, I kinda stink at this stuff.

But truthfully, we’re move-in ready. And it’s starting to look more like a home and a lot less like a construction zone:

In fact, during this past work session, we’ve been out in the woods building a campsite:

See, I love to camp! Now, living in the woods is awesome, but sometimes I want to sleep in a tent and cook over a fire. So, the campsite. In fact, our third annual campout is in March—yes, sometimes it sleets—and we need to be ready.

The outhouse is in pieces in the barn yet, under construction, and the kitchen shelter itself is somewhat imaginary, although if you look closely at the picture, you can see the string outline. Those are both waiting for at least 55 degrees, and will be followed by a small shower house some time in late spring or early summer.

In the meantime, I’m searching for a smaller, more wintery tent . . .

The Farm Time started out this week mostly “as usual.” We drove a while, unloaded, put away the stuff we brought down. We ate a quick lunch and got to work on the end of the remodel.

Thank goodness.

The next day was gorgeous—the mercury hit almost 70 and that’s about when I realized the “annual campout” was going to be at the farm this year. And the campsite has been neglected in favor of the remodel, for reasons like weather, and well, we’re going to be moving in just about 109 days.

Okay, yes, I counted.

So we took a hike out to the middle of the property to see if we could finally finalize the location of the campsite. We’ve found several, but we marked at least one.

Maybe two. That Pepsi can was stuck to a tree for some reason, but I’ll be darned if I can remember why.

We also found Ed’s Famous Handkerchief. The one he tied to a tree last fall, or maybe last summer. Yep. Still there!

Now we had the spot, so we hiked out and got the Mule loaded up and set out to break the trail.

It wasn’t hard, especially this time of year. You can see where you’re going and the new growth is very small and easily clipped. Some of the older trees can literally be pushed right on over. But we had a couple axes, just in case . . .

We drove until we had to stop, then got out and cleared. Stop and go.

About two-thirds of the way down the hill, the go part stopped. That Mule was living up to its name, for sure. I cranked and cranked, choked it a few times, got nothing.

Then we checked the gas tank.

Oops.

Big oops.

Prepper fail.

So we hiked up again, and um, resupplied. Including a lunch break.

Fortunately for us, the chainsaw started right up this time. Also, the wagon broke.

But I’m happy to report that yes, the trail is ready for the Mule, with a full tank this time, and the campsite is waiting for the next nice day so we can clear it and build the firepit and outhouse.

Hopefully in the next six weeks!