September 7, 2021

Update Number 3: Yellow Jackets Suck. Between Josh and I we have been stung over 20 times in the last 30 days. Unfortunately, Josh received all of his in one day when a swarm attacked him up on the mountain. But for the most part we have been working on clearing land and just keep hitting ground nests. We’re learning to run fast and we are teaming up with the bears. It was neat to see we kicked up one hive, planned to light them on fire in the morning, and a bear had already taken care of most of the problem before we even woke up. Between us and our furry friends, we seem to be finally putting a hurting on them!

We got 450’ of 2’ ditches for power from the road to the current house/future shop. We will be digging about 200’ of 5’ deep ditches for our water line. We continue to clear for our cabin.

Our garden is winding down but even with the shortage of canning supplies, and our late start, we were able to scrounge up enough supplies between our parents and what we returned from Alaska with. We were able to put up lots of pickles for the winter thanks to the help of mom and gifts from the in-laws!Will be making homemade sauce, canning the rest of the squash, and finishing up our lettuce, pepper, beans, beats, corn, and carrot harvest.

My 32nd birthday came and went. We celebrated with a much needed day on the water fishing and swimming. Josh made phenomenal 2” thick ribeyes. We had a joint celebration with mom for her birthday and ate a home grown chicken dinner and ice cream cake.

The Tom turkeys are starting to strut and display for the hens. We named one Rocky after he was able to survive almost being picked off by a falcon during his 4th week of life. The hens are fighting each other as they learn the pecking order. But they are loving their new coop as our “Western Town” develops! All our chickens seem to have an attitude but are doing well!

Overall we are enjoying our property, the privacy and the abundance of critters that we are seeing.