Moving, part 2

I woke up this morning, today being my 27th birthday, having spent the first night in the house I now own. Each room features a small shrine of boxes and haphazardly placed furniture. I still feel exhausted, but am surprisingly only mildly sore.

The view out my kitchen window, of the sun coming up across a neighbor's fields and just to the left of my most decrepit barn, was a lovely way to start the day. It was all I could do to force myself into my truck and down the highway to work, away from the house, the rest of the day's usable daylight, and about a million projects that I can't wait to get started on.

Yesterday, after a long day spent moving the remainder of my possessions up to the farmhouse, my dad and I walked the property and spun plans and potential out of what sits there currently... how to best modify my long barn for keeping goats and rabbits, what I need to do to repair the in-ground drainage system around the drip-edge of the roof, where the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing garden paths should run, and what to do with the lousy excuse for a front porch I currently have. The act of walking around, seeing and touching each thing across such a large expanse and having to constantly remind myself, "this is mine" continues to be a surreal experience that I'm not quite used to.

I can only hope that visitors will be capable of seeing the tremendous potential of this place, that I can explain myself well enough to get across what I plan to do and how I hope it will all come out.

I explored the back woods and creek more thoroughly just before sunset last night. I found: tons of rocks that will soon see use as garden paths and accents, enough deadfall wood to last several cold seasons in the woodstove, half a dozen rusted out 55-gallon drums (very much hoping they were just discarded burn barrels and weren't home to some kind of chemical at the time they were discarded), a rusted apart old box spring, an ancient and rotted battery the size of a football (cringe), and two giant pieces of farm machinery mired in the creek near the south edge of my property line. Fortunately they appear to be the kind of thing that gets drug behind a tractor, and not the kind of thing that's been perpetually leaking engine chemicals into the creek since someone had the bright idea of running it into the creek as an efficient means of disposal... but all this is making me think I ought to get the creek water tested before I go using it for anything.

Spending the night in my gutted apartment tonight... after sitting stagnant in the well line for some six months, the water at the farmhouse still needs treated with bleach to be safe. I am in now past desperate need of a shower. While I'm here I figured I'd update the blog and pack a load from the odd and loose bits that always remain scattered about after a move. My bed now 50 miles away in my new house, I'll be sleeping on the floor