DichotomyGSunday, January 10th, 2016 Our life tends to be very polar. Today was a good example: this morning, we left our homestead-in-the-woods and drove with Ian and Melissa to Manchester, a perfectly quaint town where New Yorkers come to ski and outlet shop. Vermonters joke that Ma...
Splitting WoodGSunday, October 20th, 2013 Over the last year we have harvested a huge amount of wood while clearing downed trees on our land. We've been dumping the collection near the top of our driveway—after eight months of off-and-on work, the pile has become something of a mountain....
Cleaning the DriveGSunday, May 12th, 2013 Today, we spent nearly ten hours clearing logs along the edge of our driveway. We've worked at this project on many occasions, but today we were armed with Rick's dump-trailer, and it made a world of difference. Once we had the wood chainsawed in...
Fixing Our Stihl MS-271 ChainsawGFriday, February 8th, 2013 Today, Allan over at Arlington's Stihl dealership called to let me know that the parts arrived to fix our chainsaw. It turns out that the handle I broke on our MS-271 is part of the same housing as the fuel tank, which makes the repair pretty exte...
Cleaning Our Woods: Part FourGThursday, February 7th, 2013 Today, while Tyler was busy programming, I was outside in my work jacket and chaps, tackling the massive cleanup operation in our woods. I spent most of the morning dragging smallish logs and dead treetops out of the woods with our truck. I ...
Cleaning Our Woods: Part ThreeGWednesday, February 6th, 2013 This morning, as I chat with Rick about what we want to accomplish with his excavator, I'm feeling overwhelmed by the scale of what Tara and I have set out to do with this homesteading project. When I look closely at our land, the work to be done ...
Clearing the ClearingGSaturday, January 19th, 2013 We had planned to spend the afternoon working at a coffeeshop in Bennington today, but we never made it off our land. Early in the morning, Tyler went outside to see if he could get a burn pile going to clear up some of the brush that's been litte...
Our Side of the MountainGThursday, January 17th, 2013 Tyler: Last night, as we pulled into our drive after a day of running errands, the snowpack was too slippery for us to make it in. Half-way up the steepest portion of our driveway, we lost traction and began drifting slowly backwards. Unable to...
Up the Drive We Go!GTuesday, January 15th, 2013 Now that Tim is gone, Tyler and I have a little chat to decide what we want to do next. Though we're touched by Rick's offer to let us park on his land, we're both eager to be settled, once and for all, in our very own woods. It was muddy here ye...
Clearing the DriveGFriday, October 5th, 2012 After a three day cross-country road-trip, we've finally arrived at our land! As we pull up the drive, I hop out of the passenger's seat to open the gate. There is a palpable gravity in the moment as part of me realizes, perhaps for the first tim...
