King Winter be gone now
soon cometh the spring!
Has winter gone though? Hard to say with perpetually chilly temps, and the persistent visit of atmospheric river downpours. Not much sign yet of the super bloom we anticipate. We trust, she’ll be late, but not absent. Superblooms are magnificent at Rivendell.
Funny how social media works. When an account goes quiet, our natural human tendency is to think there isn’t much going on. And our accounts have definitely been quiet lately! But the truth is the polar opposite of the perception. We have been eyebrows deep in jobs, and the time to document and write has been stretched thin. We hope that to resolve soon. It’s important to us that we document these early stages of our emerging dream.
Today’s blog post is really just an update on what’s been going on. Detailing where the hours have gone.
First off, weather has been a challenge. Rain is rarely fun, despite its tremendous benefit to the wilderness around us. But the rains we’ve had lately are nothing like normal winter storms for this area. These have been biblical downpours. Since we are still offgrid and living in the trailers, stormy weather produces an avalanche of chores at the sanctuary. The road needs work, plants get drowned, we need to run generators to make up for the AWOL sun to charge our panels. Propane gets thin, everything needs to be covered, and re-covered. Often, we have the dual challenge of rain and high winds, so things need to be covered AND weighed down.
This weekend’s storm was the worst of it, and we hope that more temperate climes will be the norm moving forward (hint: we’ve had that hope several times before).
We have been making great progress with the house. The foundation is done and signed off on. The house just needs to be lowered onto it, a bit of inside work, and then crews will come to build the septic system and trench out for the utilities. We’re getting close to living in a home again! The anticipation is palpable.
The chicken palace (now named The Feathered Realm) is almost complete, and we expect to be bringing in our first chickens next month. Really exciting after all this wait. Quite happy with how the coop came out. We’ll have a separate video detailing its construction.
We’ve also been clearing the pastures in the Shire and Bree. Things are looking ship shape. Trails are being cut and maintained. We have plants sprouting up from all corners. I’ve been harvesting some great baby kale, spinach, cilantro, and lettuces. The fresh produce makes every dish pop.
Every Friday we have a sanctuary planning meeting where we review our funds and expenses, build plans for the week, and any changes we wish to make. It’s been such a help at making the often-intimidating task list boil down to a conquerable size. We were talking about the film Into the Void last Friday. Much of the film details a wounded mountain climber making it down the tallest peak in the andes with a broken leg. “I’ll make it to that tree. Now I’ll make it to that rock” etc. One landmark at a time, it’s the only way.
Next week we will start work on our plans for the open house scheduled for August. What will Rivendell look like at that point? What do we want our visitors to see here? Our vision gets clearer every day. Like that wounded mountaineer, we build it one tree, one rock, and one step at a time…
Images provided by Kelly's mom, who is our documentarian.