The sun is shining,
hummingbirds are flying around my window, I spent the morning
harvesting, washing and weighing veggies from the garden and I can
hear my friend Jon whistling and building something in the distance.
Yes, the road trip around the American west (which will be the
subject of the next blog post) was great, but it does feel good to be
home again. This is also my final 'catch-up' post' meaning I'll
finally be current again and try to keep it that way!
As I wrote about
last post, I was returning to Seattle to see my family. I am one of
four kids, and by this point it had been something like four years
since all of us had been together at the same time. My sister Holly
was coming from Alaska, my brother Brian was coming from southern
California and my sister Robin (who we were picking up from the train
station in this photo) was coming from Montana.
One of Holly's
friends has a place on Cannon Beach, Oregon, so after picking up
Robin I climbed in the Suburban with the parents and we headed south
to Oregon where we would meet Holly and spend a few days. The house
was about two blocks from the water near the iconic Haystack Rock and
although it was a bit gray and windy it was great to relax and spend
some quality family time.
My brother Brian
arrived a few days later in Seattle and finally we were all together
again. Part of the occasion was my grandmothers 90th
birthday, and a celebration was being held at my aunt and uncles
place.
The guest of honor,
my grandmother with an outfit my sisters bought for the event. The
celebration was wonderful, a number of old friends showed up and my
grandmother described it as one of the best days of her life.
Until now, none of
my siblings had seen where I live on Shaw Island beyond this blog, so
we loaded up the cars and headed north.
The ferry out of
Anacortes.
While I was away
Nick and Ellen received their order of 20 chickens, so naturally we
all had to go check them out. I grew up with chickens at our house
in Seattle and the few weeks when they go from a cute little chick to
a full grown chicken are always interesting to watch.
I wanted to give my
siblings a tour of the island, so the next morning we borrowed some
bikes from Nick to ride around Shaw.
Just us triplets at
Southbeach. From there we went to visit the nuns at Sisters of Mercy
and as luck would have it they had just made fresh cookies which they
were happy to share with us.
As usual, I'm picking up critters. We are trying to encourage snakes in the garden
to eat slugs, but I'm not sure if those efforts are working or not.
The space where Jon
is starting his edible mushroom garden.
Skinning rabbits. I
have to admit, after watching the process and eating some rabbit meat
I'm not really sure why anyone would raise rabbits over chicken, but
maybe I'm missing something there.
Watching the chicks
at Copper. They sure grow fast!
One of the big
focuses of recent fire drills has been learning the trucks for a new
state requirement, and all of them are pretty easy to drive with the
exception of Tanker 55. This truck has a non-synchronous 13-speed
split transmission and while it's certainly cool to learn, it is a
fair bit more complex than driving anything else.
With spring in full
force, berries are starting to form. I'm excited for later in the
season when they are actually ripe.
Ellen taking a snack
from the garden while we work. This is some kale that was
over-wintered and while at this point it had bolted we left it in for
a while since it was attracting a lot of good pollinators.
Carole and Brud,
some long time islanders and all around great people had all of us
over for dinner at their wonderful house. It was great to chat with
them and hear stories of island life from decades ago.
Nick and Ellen
wanted to grow some hops and we had the idea of growing them up the
side of two large firs in the middle of their meadow. Here I'm
installing some eye-bolts at around 35 feet and creating a system
that allows the whole thing to be lowered to the ground for harvest,
then pulled back up the tree; all from the ground.
One of the many
things I like about my job doing tree work is that it brings me to a
lot of different areas of the islands (primary Orcas though). This
was the view from one customers houses looking north towards
Eastsound and onto Canada.
Cooking dinner in my
cabin. Although I've found one or two small things I wish I'd done
differently when building the desk, all things considered it's
working out great and I'm happy with what I built.
Back on Orcas for
work. The job wasn't very exciting, just cleaning up downed branches
along the roads at a housing development but hey, work is work and I
can't complain.
Some people sit in
traffic on the freeway to commute home from work. I ride an awesome
boat between beautiful islands.
Learning about
Engine 52 at fire drill. It's our smallest truck, but is a 4x4 which
is very helpful in a rural setting like Shaw Island.
Another day of work.
This was just another clean-up kind of job, but the guy we were
working with was using his tractor with forks to pull apart the piles
and bring it to the chipper and was one of the better equipment
operators I've seen; and that is always fun to watch. Plus, it was
another gorgeous spot overlooking the water.
Brendan, who I've
been friends with since seventh grade finally moves to the island!
With this, my group of friends has three different houses on the same
road!
One of the annual
spring traditions at Ben Nevis is the Beltane party. We have a bunch
of friends over, get some work done, wear white and dance around a
may pole! It looks a bit like a cult, but it's a ton of fun. Here
we are making some task lists to help stay organized.
Weeding the garlic,
a weekly task that is made much more pleasant with a lot of friends!
As with any kind of
farming, water systems are critical to success. This water tank is I
think 2,800 gallons and was moved into place above the garden
expansion for watering the fruit trees and lower vegetable garden.
After completing a
few more jobs on the farm, everyone put on their white party clothes
and we all got ready to do the maypole.
Winding round and
around, laughs and smiles abound!
All done.
The group photo.
Any party must be
accompanied by a large feast and that is something we do very well up
on Shaw.
The bonfire that
night bringing an end to yet another wonderful event with our
friends.
Brendan hosting a
small housewarming dinner the next evening.
The hoop house
starts are looking great.
For my upcoming road
trip, I had a lot of work to do to my car in order to make it more
comfortable. I've had the thing for years but getting ready for the
trip was finally giving me the motivation to get some work done,
haha.
Here you can see the
garden expansion, this was all just meadow last year and now it's
growing veggies! This is the kind of progress we all love to see,
not to mention it was a necessary expansion for the farm. For an
idea of scale, the large beds in the photo are each 50 feet long, so
that gives you an idea how much we are growing right now.
My place, under
cover of the big leaf maple trees around it.
Although most people
have never heard of Shaw Island outside of the San Juan Islands
themselves (and why should they, its a small place) if someone has
heard about Shaw it is usually about the nuns on the island. There
are two groups on the island actually and I'm friends with the
Sisters of Mercy, but the other group, Our Lady of the Rock, is the
one people are similar with. On this day I dropped by for a tour of
the property and to learn about what they do, lead by Tari, one of
their interns.
They have a huge and
beautiful piece of property, believe things like farm work are a form
of prayer and raise heritage breeds of animals. As we were lead
around the property we stopped to feed some of their cows.
Curious sheep.
They have their own
chapel, which is a real piece of art.
Another project they
do is make and sell raw milk from the cows as well as cheese. This
is the inside of the cheese room where we got to learn a bit about
how its done and try some of the rich and complex tasting cheese.
Llamas and alpacas
also roam the fields of the monetary, as well as pigs, chickens.
After living on the island for something like 10 months, it was great
to finally meet some of the islands well known residents, learn about
what they are doing and see a bit of their very impressive property
and operations.
At this point it was
only two weeks or so until my friend Stefan was to arrive for our
road trip, so we had a little skype session to do some planning.
Boomer (the cat) was there to supervise.
Now it was really
crunch time and I still had a lot of work to do on the car. Here I
am installing some sound deadening material to make the ride quieter.
Nick and Ellen
getting ready for an afternoon kayak.
The upper garden
(which we refer to as zone one, the lower expansion is zone two) is
starting to come in well.
Stefan’s arrival
was only a few days away by now, so I packed up my car and headed
down to Seattle. As usual I went over Whidby and when I got out to
admire the Deception Pass bridge as I often do, I was there right in
time to see a tug boat pulling a log-boom under the bridge, very
cool!
Once in Seattle I
gathered all the necessary camping gear from my parents house
(thanks!) and washed the car. Nearly everything was ready now, and I
was looking forward to showing Stefan around Seattle, around Shaw and
around the entire American West.
Whew, after months
of slacking on the blog I'm almost, sort of, a little bit caught up!
You will certainly want to check back for my next post, as it will
cover our road trip around the west and will be a good one I promise.
We drove roughly 4,500 miles, passing through places like Mt
Rainier, the redwoods, Yosemite, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon,
Yellowstone and much more! I've sorted the photos already, it's just
time to sit down and write it. Thanks for reading and check back
soon.
