Of late, we are often found working outside of the house from early morning till dark and truly enjoying every last minute of it. Unfortunately, tending to the numerous duties required if one is to attempt to live a "simple" life makes it pretty darn hard to keep up with blogging...but it is raining today, so I find myself with a bit of spare time this afternoon. We have been very busy with gardening, working on our long term goal of "financial self-sufficiency," and various other projects including gathering firewood in our spare time.
My wife, the dog, our old Ford pickup and I have to make about a 30 mile round trip, give or take a few miles, when we gather firewood. It doesn't sound like that far until you take into account that half of those miles are on heavily rutted winding mountain roads where the un-posted maximum speed is between 5-10 mph. On a good day we can cut and load over a cord of wood into our poor overloaded truck in about 4 hours, snake our way back down the mountain and be home before noon. This has been a great year for firewood as windstorms have blown over so many trees. That said, our goal is to take advantage of this and stockpile a couple years worth of wood.
And to think in days gone by, while living a much different lifestyle, I used to go to the gym and lift weights for exercise...silly me.I love cutting wood, splitting wood, and heating with wood. I might have been a logger in another life, there is just something about the sound of a saw and the smell of freshly split wood that brings a smile to my face...even on the days that I forget to bring the chainsaw gasoline and have the nasty taste of fuel in my mouth all day from siphoning it out of the truck...yuck.
For an excellent total body workout try hauling just over a cord of wood uphill, by hand. Good clean fun, I like to tell Mrs. H, although at times I think she might not agree. The best part of a day spent cutting and splitting wood and tending to all the necessary tasks that are involved in ones life when they attempt to live by their own hand is the utter exhaustion that comes at the end of each day. We eat good and sleep good....every day.
Last night we had with our meal the best loaf of bread, my new favorite, and so very easy to make in a snap. You can find a link to this most wonderful and Perfect German Bread at the Metamorphosis blog site. Thanks Silke! We loved it so much.:)
What else?
The garden is finally starting to grow, albeit very slowly as this has been an abnormally chilly spring with record breaking cold and frost. I don't have any pictures but will do a garden update soon. Also, my wife has recently completed her third race, a half marathon. I'm very proud of her and she did great, having advanced quite a bit from the previous year. I'm also very glad it is over so we can finally get back to our shorter more enjoyable runs.
Rowdy, the wonder dog, is adapting very well and thinks of our chickens as his 13 red headed step sisters whom he spends a good part of each day wandering about with while we garden.That's it for now, time for me to get out to the garden and pick a salad. I'll leave you with a video of our farm animals enjoying their breakfast.:)
