2:30 pm - 83 degrees - blue sky...
Yesterday Tony was attempting to come down the mountain and go to town when he ran into a road block. There is one sharp hairpin corner on the gravel logging road to our house where accidents regularly occur. It's not the first time and it won't be the last time where this happens...
Once help showed up, it didn't take them long to get the flatbed pulled out and the culvert pieces reloaded.
Some people may not know what off-the-grid or off-grid means, so here it is --- The term off-the-grid or off-grid refers to living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities. Off-grid living is no longer a one room log cabin in the woods. It's energy independency. You don't have to rely on utility companies, you create your own power. Today, there are more than 180,000 off-grid homes in the US.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Living In Bear Country...
1:53 pm - 80 degrees - blue sky...
We live
in bear country. We know and understand the
fact that we moved into their territory.
We are living in their natural environment, and we respect that.
Seeing
a black bear is an exciting experience, one that happens often up here in the
mountains. We watch them walk through
the yard, or walk along the driveway, or hear them crashing through the thick
brush. Once they see us watching them,
they turn around and walk or run away. The
awe inspiring experience is over and we all go on about our own business.
The
presence of bears has never been a problem or a threat in the eight and a half
years that we have owned our property. They
have never tried to get into our trash cans, gotten into our compost bin, bothered
our bird feeder, or come sniffing around the barbeque – all of which can
attract bears. The vast majority of
bears want to avoid humans. Encounters
with aggressive bears or predatory attacks by bears are very rare, but do
occur.
Saturday
night we had our first negative encounter with a black bear...and it didn’t end
well.
Right
around 9 pm I heard noises downstairs. Tony
and the kids were asleep so I thought it was our cats or our neighbor’s
dog. I walked downstairs to see what all
the ruckus was about and that’s when I came upon a large black bear standing about
10’ feet away. It took a second for it
to register that there was an actual bear right in front of me, then the bear
and I took off running in opposite directions – me into the house yelling for
Tony and the bear running to the firepit area.
I thought that would have been the end of it, it usually would have been
– we both had scared each other off.
As
Tony and I were looking out the window in the direction the bear had run off,
we were both very surprised to see the him walking in a zig zag pattern back
towards the house. This had never
happened before. We’ve never had a bear
so close to house, and we’ve never had a bear run off only to immediately return. When a bear gets scared off it leaves – it doesn’t
come back!
Tony
went back downstairs and tried to scare the bear off several more times by trying
to run him off, yell at him and fire a warning shot with the loudest gun we
own. Each time the bear would retreat up
behind the firepit area, only to turn around and start stalking back towards
the house. This is not normal bear
behavior. The bear was showing
aggressive behavior, he kept trying to come back to the house while being hazed
off, pacing side to side, the bear had no fear.
Neither of us has ever encountered a bear like this before. Even though he didn’t want to, in the end, Tony
ended up shooting the bear.
Male black bear, 5'8", about 200 lbs. |
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Spring Projects...
1:17 pm - 48 degrees - windy and drizzling...
It is a cold, raining, windy, overcast, dreary day...and that means that we have
to stay inside for a change and it gives me a chance to write a blog post.
The
past three or four weeks have been gorgeous out, and that means we have been spending
a lot of time outside.
We've been going on hikes and Caitlyn found some extra love on this hike. |
Jack and I have been cutting down the small Alder trees that are within 10 feet of the driveway. |
Jack found a snail while I was weed whacking and was mesmerized for about half an hour before he was off and running again. |
These adorable babies are now out and about and oh so cute and fun to watch. |
Jack keeps catching and releasing Northern Alligator Lizards. |
The
area around our house is still too rocky to use an actual lawn mower so Tony
and I spent several days weed whacking the grass, raking up the clippings and
hauling them to the compost bin.
Tony
has also been working on concrete footings so we can start to frame and enclose
the space under the stairwell. This will
be the control room for the whole house where the inverter will be kept.
I acquired
a free table (I love free stuff!) that was the perfect size for our firepit
area. I wanted it to blend in, so I
spray painted it. I love our firepit
area, it is the perfect spot to sit back and relax after a long day.
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