Welcome back to the
blog, continuing to document my life on tiny Shaw Island in the San
Juan Islands of Washington. As I've been sorting these photos from a
few months back, it's amazing to see how far things have come. The
birds are mature, there is now a tractor, a huge amount of tilled
area to expand the garden, a new crop of garlic in the ground, a
wedding and much more. Some areas of the Old Copper property my
friends own are almost unrecognizable from their state a few months
back thanks to chainsaws, shovels and hard work. But as usual I'm
getting ahead of myself and I need to write a brief report of the
time frame these photos cover, mid-July to the end of September,
probably the most active and picturesque time of year in the islands.
I don't leave the
island too often, but when I am in Seattle I do my best to make it a
worth while and multi-purpose trip. On this day it started with a
little roof-top fun and a football game at my friends house.
The three things
that tempt me back to the city are friends, family and supplies. On
this day my mom and I canoed across Lake Washington from Seattle to
the east side to visit my great aunt. My family has had a lot of
good adventures in this boat!
Returning to Shaw
and to work. This is a job site on Lopez Island, where my boss and I
did some removals and pruning. The island across the water is Shaw,
so from the top of the trees I could look over and see the coast
where I walk and a number of properties I'm familiar with.
Home from work and
crab season is in full effect. I think it was this day when both
customers I worked for tipped me in fresh caught crab, and I came
home to crab dinner over at the Copper property. No complaints here!
Ellen's new project,
four muscovy ducks. Raising animals is a goal for the property, and
starting with chickens and ducks is a good way to start learning.
These little fellas were awfully shy at first but have grown fast and
free range around the place like they own it now.
The always popular
camp fire hang out sessions, a regular feature of summer.
A weekend with a
bunch of Seattle friends coming up means putting them to work! This
is the rather tedious process of processing garlic from the harvest,
but with a few friends and a few beers can be a lot of fun.
Back at work, doing
a pine removal near a house.
We rarely take this
truck out of it's building, after all it's a 1958 Chevy, but for fire
drill this evening we were doing an exercise using nearly all of the
trucks. Since Nick and I live closes to Engine 54, we climbed in and
drove to the main fire station to check in.
Now here is a type
of tree work we never got to do back in Seattle. This particular job
was to clear out an entire hillside for a new house. Logging and
working with excavators is a little different than the small pruning
in tight back yards I used to be doing!
Summer means more
time hanging out on the water and today that meant another BBQ on the
'Blind Bay Yacht Club,' out friends free barge.
I know very, very
little about dragonflies but they sure are amazing to watch. Often
as we worked, we would be surrounded by seemingly hundreds of the
things, buzzing around in search of their own meal from the garden.
Speaking of the
garden, man it looked good this time of year! (and was tremendously
productive as well)
This part of the
property, which we call 'The Knob' is a rocky outcropping in the
middle of the meadow and has been a big project of mine. Like the
rest of the property, it had become extremely overgrown during the
time of the previous owners and I decided to clean it up. I removed
probably 40 trees smaller than 8”, saving the healthier and more
dominant trees, giving favor to ceder and maple since the area was
mostly fir, and cleaning up the downed brush on the ground. The end
goal is to turn it into a park-like space, with a solid bed of thick
moss on the ground, big leaf maple trees overhead and a trail leading
to a gazebo or something at the top.
The evening sun on
Blind Bay, taken from the roof of a fire truck while refilling the
tank after drill.
I used this photo in
my previous blog specifically about my tiny house, but here it is
again. Dan, a good friend from back in high school (blue shirt)
brought up two of his friends to the island to hang out. I ended up
playing host in my little space which was a lot of fun. On this
particular evening, we decided to test out having four people up on
my folding bed as I hadn't done it before. It's not a ton of space
(I guess 4 people in a bed never is...) but it felt rock solid and
something I certainly haven't seen in any other tiny home!
Another photo of my
cleaning up of 'The Knob'. This stage was to expose the stone that
was hiding beneath layers of brush, weeds and fir needles. I
actually swept every part of this stone with a wisk brush to expose
the stone, the moss and the roots from the fir above that are
cracking the stone as it grows. What was previously burred is now a
beautiful feature on the property, visible from the house and
something that really lights up in the setting sun.
Haha, the Post
Office meeting, I'd forgotten about this until now as I'm writing the
post. So this was a representative of the US Post Office coming to
'listen to the community' but it was really just about cutting
services on the island. Let me tell you, you haven’t seen angry
until you've seen half of Shaw Island showing up to fight cuts to our
little post office! I loved the enthusiasm we showed as a community,
but of course they reduced the hours anyways.
Ellen, packing CSA
boxes to be sent out. Every single week, the boxes of our veggies
looked simply amazing.
Garlic on racks and
continuing to cure.
Back in the garden
squash was in full swing and there seemed to be at least a wheel
barrow full coming out every single day.
Ellen up close and
personal with her lovelies.
Something I'm still
not very good at is making reasons (other than work) to spend time on
other islands to just explore and have fun. Today was just the day
for that and Brendan and I headed into Moran State Park on Orcas
Island. The park is huge, encompassing some wonderful lakes,
waterfalls, old growth trees and the highest point in the San Juan
Islands.
This is the view
from the top of Mt Constitution within Moran State Park, 2,399 feet
up and looking east towards the mainland and Mt Baker, one of
Washington’s many active volcanoes.
Keeping with the
theme of 'lets have fun on Orcas', I spent the night with my friends
Kelty and Sophie, then went for a walk the next morning on a day of
especially low tides. This is me walking through the water at North
Beach on another picture perfect day.
Exploring Crescent
Bay on the other side of the island (a few minutes walk in this
area), catching crabs and trying not to get sprayed by clams.
That afternoon we
met up with Kelty after work and headed back into Moran State Park
and the wonderful Cascade Lake, home to one of the best rope swings
I've done in a very, very long time. Yah, I need to do this more
often.
Hanging out in the
shallows.
Home on Shaw and
still playing with wildlife. These little tree frogs are everywhere
this time of year.
This was a fairly
interesting day of work, a house that had burned down on Orcas and
burned many of the surrounding trees. Here Jon is using a tractor to
help pull over this big cedar as my boss cuts it at the base.
The bush beans were
quire productive and it was easy to go out at nearly any time and
pick a good size box of different varieties.
Weekly farm stand at
the ferry dock.
Another fun little
summer jaunt away from Shaw was the San Juan County Fair, held in
Friday Harbor over on San Juan. We got to look at local crafts,
watch the 4H animal show, eat greasy fair-food and watch some
surprisingly good young circus performers. I've gone to agricultural
fairs frequently in my life and always enjoyed it, however it was
never as relevant to my life back then as it is now, so it's a lot of
fun to see.
This was a big day
on the Ben Nevis trail, the day Dan, Kevin and I finished building
the switch-backs and stone retaining walls. This was probably the
most difficult part of the trail and it was saved for last, the final
stretch connecting the heart of the property to the top of the
island. We worked all day digging dirt and stacking rocks to create
the section of trail and I have to say it has turned out wonderfully,
as it has a great sense of flow as you walk up and down.
Just a pretty
picture of the boats going between Shaw and Orcas one morning.
Brendan playing with
Jons ducks.
Harvesting in the
garden.
This is what counts
for a traffic jam on Shaw Island.
The flowers in the
Ben Nevis garden were looking great.
One of my other big
clearing projects was to clear around the pond at Copper. Here Nick
is taking out the last trees that were surrounding the pond, a group
of medium size alders. There is still more work on the pond that
needs to be done, but with the post finally exposed, we can move to
the next stage of cleanup.
Because of course I
do tree work, my boss has a 12” chipper and let me borrow it for
some brush chipping on the Ben Nevis and Copper properties. We had
brush piles staged and when the chipper came we chipped into and
filled the dump truck five and a half times in something like two and
a half hours of chipping. It was hard work, but it yielded two big
piles of wood chips to be used for various projects on the properties
and feels a lot better than just burning brush. A small chipper is
probably a reasonable investment.
Nick working the
ferry dock.
Wednesday fire drill
in the station, this was the first day Brendan joined us after
signing up. I have to say, I never really pictured myself on a
volunteer fire department, but I love doing it out here, both for the
community support aspect of it, as well as the fact it's just plain
fun.
The garden is full
of more varieties of tomato than I can keep track of and it's always
great to walk through and snack as you work.
One day I had a
surprise phone call from down at the ferry dock, I had unexpected
visitors on island! My friends Kevin and Jamie had sailed up to the
San Juans from Seattle, and for various reasons I didn't get the
message they were coming. When they arrived however, they asked the
person working at the little general store if he knew me. Of course
it was my friend Izzy working the store and of course he had my
number. Small island. So I stopped what I was doing, picked them up
at the dock and gave them the tour before rowing out to their sail
boat to watch the setting sun and be fed a delicious dinner made
partly with fresh veggies harvested that day. They are currently
taking a year long, round the world trip and having a great time from
the looks of it.
In the effort to
expand the planting area on the Copper property, Nick borrowed the
nuns tractor and tiller for a day. Being that it was summer, the
ground was pretty hard and the tiller wasn't able to get very deep,
but it was a good test for the equipment, to learn about the soil and
to get a head start on the next round of tilling.
Ellen working on the
pond clean up project. After all the trees and brush from the edge
of the pond was finally cleared, the next step was to pull out all of
the sticks, logs and other debris from the waterline. There is more
work to come, but the water is looking much healthier now and there
are even a group of ducks who fly in and sit on the pond regularly.
As usual, I'm
picking up weird creatures.
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As a thank you to my
boss for borrowing his truck and chipper, I gave him a box of produce
that we had grown. I wanted to try and give him a little of
everything we had coming out of the garden at that point, and by the
time I was done I had an overflowing box with nearly 30 different
crops that probably weighed over 40 pounds! I don't even want to
know that that kind of thing would cost at a grocery store...
My commute home from
work does not suck.
...and neither does
my job.
Yet another thing I
need to be taking advantage of out here but am still not doing,
enjoying the fabulous kayaking in the area. This was Brendan going
out for the day and Boomer was awfully curious what this weird thing
on the car was.
I can't help myself.
The ducks, about two
months old now. They were intended to be laying ducks, however
somehow they ALL turned out to be males! This of course leads to a
distinct lack of duck eggs and instead just a pack of dude-ducks who
are very aggressive towards each other. Oh well, they will taste
great at dinner I'm sure.
After many years of
service, Brud was finally stepping down as head of the fire
department, this was his retirement party at the community center and
the new chief presenting him with his old helmet as a parting gift.
The big weekend was
finally upon us, Jenn and Jon's wedding. The ceremony was going to
be held on the top of the hill, the reception was being held at the
community center and most of our friends were camping in the north
meadow. I offered to host Sazzy and Polly in my place, and they
clearly found it comfortable enough.
Polly heading over
to our camping friends early the next morning.
Our friend Shannon
made the wonderful wedding cake, this was the often scary task of
transporting such a thing from the house down to the reception.
Hangin' with the
boys before the ceremony.
The ceremony went
beautifully. Held at the top of Ben Nevis hill, the highest point on
the property and the entire island, we were all surrounded by clear
skies and the neighboring islands as the vows were read. From there,
it was down to the community center for the dinner and reception,
which went well into the night and only had one medical emergency!
After a lovely
post-wedding brunch, we got back to work. It was getting late in the
season by this point so we had to get into the garden and start
harvesting everything that was close enough to ripe, especially the
tomatoes. Thanks to many helpers it went fairly quickly, but we
still picked until it was dark. What we ended up with was more than
we could handle, and friends were encouraged to take as much as they
wanted.
Many great days end
with friends around a campfire and this day was no exception. By now
it was only the last few holdouts still on island from the wedding,
so we at the last of the food, drank the last of the beer and told
stories into the early hours.
Although I didn't do
any of the planning for the wedding, hosting a wedding on the
property and dealing with that many people is a lot of work for
everyone involved. I was in need of a break of some sort and that
meant going to Alaska. This wasn't a spur of the moment trip
however, it had been planned for some time. I'd be going up to help
my brother in law finish their cabin before winter set in. I was
really looking forward to it as a change of pace, some time with
family up there and a chance to learn some new skills in the process.
That trip will be the focus of my next blog post, so look for that
coming up shortly. Until then, thanks for reading.
