Homestead

It has been two years since we moved onto our current homestead. It was September 2005 when we moved in, and I had just found out I was pregnant.

When we claimed this land for our own we had to carve our yard out of thick, overgrown wilderness. That first year our entire yard was a sweeping scar of mud. It got so depressing for me that Chad went up to the front field and transplanted a small patch of its green grass outside the kitchen window. Now we have a huge yard bordered by a dry-stacked stone wall that Chad threw up in a few hours last summer. We also have a stone path leading from the driveway to the house that Chad made during that first September. It has since shifted and needs reworked, but I have fond memories of sitting on the porch steps and watching him heave the big flat rocks around in the dusky twilight.

Nature is encroaching on us now that our presence here has been established. We have a groundhog that lives under the shed and drives the dogs mad. We had a serious mouse problem over the winter, which I naively thought was kind of cute because even mice need a warm home for the winter. In spring, though, everything we had stored in the shed was stuffed with mouse nesting, and I found it in the corners of the closet, stuffed behind dressers and boxes. Maybe this year I'll get a cat and let the mice find different home.

Sometimes I get frustrated by all the things I still want to do around here, but I have to remind myself that only two years ago this was marshy, thorny, thick woods. We have come a long way since then, no matter what is still undone.