Mouse Damage

Phil was on such a roll designing that he stayed up till 2am. Then he suddenly realized that all his design efforts of the last week have been an exercise in futility. He did some rough calculations and realized he would have needed something like 18 beams, 20' long and 18" wide. And while I pointed out this morning that that shouldn't be too hard to source, the question of how to hoist them to their proper place on the roof certainly brought a halt to any design progress.

With all his time in the office lately, a few days ago Phil came face to face with a mouse there. He bought some mouse traps and caught four in two days. He hopes they are all gone now. I do, too. I went out to the barn and thought, for some reason, to look in one of the drawers.

The smell of mouse wafted strongly up, and I noticed that one of my pairs of "good" shoes had been thoroughly chewed by mouse. I shook mouse droppings out of the other three pairs, relieved to see neither babies nor apparent damage, and decided the barn is probably not a good place for personal goods. Seeds, tools, and freezers, fine. Shoes and clothes: no.

Phil checked the water filter he had installed at the pump house. It was so caked with silt, he had to scrape silt away with his finger before he could even pull it out. Then he brushed it off, not realizing I would like a photo of the half inch of silty buildup. The animals would have had that in their water: it's just as well we're filtering it out.

After that, Phil went and shoveled sodden hay for a few hours. I'm sure he'll be sore tomorrow, but he wanted to build a wind block for our six sheep. And the hay does need to move off our road at some point. I think he was just ready to do some manly labor, clear his mind, get away from the design board.

While I was doing dishes, I watched a movie about Rainbow Valley Farm, a permaculture farm in New Zealand. Although the original farmer passed away a few years ago, for the previous twenty years, he and his wife transformed the barren land into a paradise of 13,000 trees, a hand-made home, a self-sufficient system. They lived for two years without electricity or phone, and began with thorny gorse bushes which they removed by hand. But their system worked, and with enthusiasm and hard work, they created beauty.

Success stories inspire me!