Categories

This week last year

Elk bait

As I was walking the excavator through my vision of where he would dig the trenches to get the pipes from the loop field to our house for the geothermal heat pump (not through the garden, through the fence at the gate), we started chatting. He is a local and was admiring the house location. [...]

Elk migration

The elk group that I’m involved with has started studying the local elk herds. We’re taking our $0 and the goodwill of the local community and translating that into scientific data.
the whole process has been very interesting. From writing and approving the plan (committees never do anything quickly) to gathering volunteers to implementing the data [...]

Preparing the ground

The fence is finally in. We hired people to come in and build the fence after it took us 3 months to dig 8 holes last year. The problem with living on the base of a mountain is that mountains are made of rock. Which then rolls downhill, making the yard one big rock pile. [...]

Growing my own

Phase Zero of the Great Gardening Project of 2009 has started.
My husband and I have decided that we should be growing some of our own food. Our decision to do this was motivated more by our desire to eat things grown closer to home, and it just doesn’t get much closer than in [...]

Dealing with the neighbors

A couple of months ago, my husband and I started going to community meetings about an animal that’s quickly gaining nuisance status – elk. We like them wandering through the yard, even when they’re eating the trees and trying to slay the evil wheelbarrow. We’ve only been in the house 2 years now, and the [...]

Elk vs. Wheelbarrow

The Herd wandered through the yard today. I wouldn’t have noticed except for the buck who decided that the wheelbarrow was his mortal enemy.
At first it sounded as though a truck was trying to load something in the driveway. I assumed that the meter reader was here, but no car when I went to check. [...]