Gary’s lifting the new wood-burning fireplace insert up to the second floor.

With the urgency of a farmer’s spring, we are in the midst of a multi-faceted move to our fixer-upper cabin. The farm’s infrastructure is limited to a barn inhabited by our tractor and the two barn cats we acquired, partial perimeter fencing, and not much else. Nothing else, actually. But we’re working on it. As for the cabin, it needs a new kitchen, new flooring downstairs, insulation, new windows, new wood stoves, a carport and — well, let’s call those the priorities.

A “before we bought the place” shot of the kitchen; the cupboards are now history.

Our cabin has been a summer retreat, mainly, so the kitchen isn’t suited for much. It had one drawer, a few dark log cupboards encroaching on my headspace, an odoriferous refrigerator, and an old electric range that kept setting off the smoke detector until I forced myself to clean out all the black gunk. When we first saw Blue Moon Stead and knew its potential for us, I cried; these were tears not of joy, but of despair, knowing that while I might have enough money to buy the place, I might not have enough to get rid of that kitchen. Gary reassured me that we could pull it off, meaning that he has to do a good deal of the work. He started by pulling off the squirrel-eaten old cupboards, making room for one of the two new windows he’s planning to cut.  We’re ordering new cabinets and countertops, bookshelves for my many cookbooks, and looking for a new range. Our little log cabin will never be fancy, but it does deserve a functional and cheerful place to cook and eat.

The move itself has been going on for over a month now. It’s not nearly so stressful as trying to get everything down from Alaska in one go, but we’re spending way too much time driving I-5. We hope we’re on our last load; we’re camping more than living at beautiful Chimney Rock. Spring is lovely here, making it that much harder to leave: the yellow orioles have added their melody to the mix, a cacophony of frogs strikes up a serenade when the evenings are warmer, and wildflowers are budding. But once we complete this trip we’ll be all moved in, except for my stuff in storage in San Francisco and the last of Gary’s things from Alaska. All moved in, almost.

Meanwhile, the animal farm is coming into being. Someone in the neighborhood was giving away neutered barn cats; we took a pair of seven-month old kittens. I caught a glimpse of black fur as they huddled in their crate on the way to the barn, but haven’t seen them since. The only way we know they’re still there is by checking to see that some of their food is gone each day. We hope they’ll help out with mice and moles, and have the decency to stay away from our chickens when we get them.

Bess, who will turn 11 in May, and her 9-year-old sister Duchess will be joining us in April.

Those who have known me the longest know I always wanted a pony for my birthday. I never did get one, but on my birthday this year Gary arranged to buy four ponies! Dales ponies Bess and Duchess, and a Norwegian Fjord draft team, Drader and Konal.  They’ll arrive in mid-April, so we’ll need to fence in their pasture by then.  Bess and Duchess can be ridden or driven; I have visions of riding or driving a little cart to our mailbox, which is on the road a mile and a half from our cabin.  Gary wants to use Drader and Konal to replace the tractor for some jobs, like pulling in wood. But they’ll need harnesses, so he’s back online shopping for those.

Meanwhile, I’ve been shopping for a high tunnel: an unheated greenhouse structure that will allow us to grow food year round. It might not be so urgent except that I chose as my first “cash crop” turmeric, which like ginger (which it greatly resembles) is accustomed to warmer climes. Turmeric is the main ingredient in curry, but I find I can use it almost any time I’m sautéing onions and garlic to add a warm and spicy flavor. Good thing, too, because I found ten pounds of the stuff sitting on my back porch waiting for me when we returned from our last trip to Chimney Rock. The turmeric was supposed to be delivered in late March, giving me time to set it up for pre-sprouting in the house, and to get the high tunnel set up and ready for it by the first of May. But it was shipped last week.  So I’ll be experimenting with turmeric in curries and slaws, as a tea, and maybe even pickling it while I wait for the replacement shipment that will serve as seed.

Another before-we-bought-it photo – this is the main entry downstairs.

We’re at the pinnacle of that jumbled heap called moving. Most of our things are gone from Chimney Rock; most of them are sitting in outbuildings at Blue Moon Stead while we figure out where they’ll go. We’ve torn up most of the carpet downstairs — we think it was the original — and temporarily housed our bed in a nook just big enough for it, Ella’s bed, a dresser and a nightstand. Gary plans to acid-stain the cement pad rather than replacing the carpet, and there’s no point in moving much into the house until that’s done.

The kitchen will get much worse before it gets better. We have tons of books and no bookshelves. We should be getting our washing machine next week, but we’ll make do with a wooden drying rack inside and a clothesline outside. We’ll be putting up fences, trying to build our high tunnel from a kit, cutting new windows, replacing crumbling chinking, sanding and staining and making the place our own.

We’re gearing up, and before long Blue Moon Stead will be home to Gary, Ella, me, Drader, Konal, Bess, Duchess, and two cats who wish to remain anonymous.

I’ve just come in from yet another two-hour stint armed with bucket and shovel, picking up after the five dogs who recently vacated Blue Moon Stead. The yard between our porch and the pond was a landmine. In something akin to “Where’s Waldo?,” I work to find poop hidden in the grass amidst pine needles, torpedo-shaped pinecones, autumn leaves, bits of yellow-brown foam insulation and pieces of bark, and to find it before it finds me. Eventually I spy a nice big flat one with a perfectly clear treadmark and logo of my Muck boots. Or maybe Gary’s Muck boots.

Where’s Waldo?

Not that I mind the job, really. In fact it’s a task I’ve chosen, three times now, rather than investigate the smell emanating from the aged refrigerator we’re using until we get ours moved in. I like being outdoors, working to the rush of the creek and the spring calls of the birds. At morning I wonder at the unseen bird issuing a rusty “tewee.” By the time evening puts an end to my work for the day, a mallard has begun his sharp, persistent plea.

A breeze picks up. I listen briefly for the whirr of the wind generator, pleased to think of the electricity it will bring on this cloudy day, before realizing I’m not at Brushkana. One of my last tasks there was to make a final round of the property with my bucket and shovel; I’m hoping the new owner will not even realize such a job needed doing. But we picked up after Ella every day or two or three, so it was a smaller job.

Ella earned her swim.

She keeps me company, Ella does, sitting at a distance with one of the tennis balls the dogs were good enough to leave behind. She knows I’m working and is content to wait, bringing me the ball only when I look like I need a break. Sometimes she places the ball pointedly next to one of the objects of my search. She brings it again once I’ve put my bucket and shovel away, knowing then that she’s earned a swim in the pond.

Meanwhile, I find myself appreciating the apt charm of expressions like “sicker than a dog,” “one sick puppy,” and “oh, crap!”.

As congenial as this work is, I’m ready to take on something new. Last week, Gary bought a used tractor in central Oregon, conveniently sold with its own trailer. I took the lead on the last leg of the trip so Gary could focus, hauling his heavy load, even as traffic grew impatient when we closed in on the greater Portland area. A narrow — very narrow — steel-grate bridge spans over the Columbia from Hood River, Oregon to Washington. As he passed a horse trailer coming the other direction, Gary felt his trailer scraping the side of the bridge.

If the bridge put him on edge, I nearly put him over it. I missed a turn on the final approach to our street. Gary followed. And followed, as I drove slowly up and down the steep hills along hairpin turns that make up our local byways here, a growing chain of cars impatient behind our little caravan. Determined not to make the same mistake twice, as I approached the juncture a second time I turned too early. This led to more sharp turns, a steep, narrow street or two, then success. Success in this case meant finding our road, which winds and climbs another fourteen miles to a logging road, which bumps along a mile before we reach our driveway, itself over a half-mile of dirt and potholes.

By the time we got home, it was nearly dark. But the next day, as soon as he backed the tractor off the trailer, Gary motioned for me to get in the driver’s seat: the only seat, actually. The tractor was running, set in low gear. On the pallet forks sat the front loader bucket, filled with augers and other implements.

“Drive it to the barn,” Gary shouted over the loud grumble of the machine.

My maiden voyage!

I dug the pedal with my heel. This is one of the great things about a tractor. The gas pedal is shaped like a narrow “C.” If you push the top end with your toe, the tractor moves forward; if you press the bottom with your heel, it goes in reverse. Very logical. To compensate for this lapse in obfuscation, the lever that manages the front implement (pallet fork at the moment) will it raise up when I push down, and lower it when I push up.

Still, it was fun. In our snowmachine, a falter of uncertainty led to sure disaster. In the tractor it’s much easier to stop to take stock. After I made my way to the barn, Gary waved me in on the right side of the barn’s center pole. The forks edged through, but the bucket sitting atop the forks got ever so close to the weight-bearing center pole. Gary halted me with his hand and motioned for me to back up. Too late. As I moved back, the bucket scraped the center pole, bringing it very nearly off the cement pad.

The barn (left) is still standing!

Forward. Right. Back, oh so carefully. I’ve been on the property fewer than four days, and I’ve nearly demolished my own barn. Unruffled, Gary had me drive the tractor back to his truck again twice, returning to the barn each time with a new load. Once I had deposited the equipment in the barn, he directed me to push on the center pole with the three-point hitch, essentially backing into the very thing I had almost pulled off its moorings. Amazingly, the pole is back where it belongs.

A few days later, Gary had taken the tractor out and was out cutting dead standing trees for firewood. Ella and I took a walk to check in on him. He filled the tractor’s bucket with wood.

“I was wondering where my helpers were. Take this load back and dump it on the porch,” he said, as though this was something I could do unsupervised.

Snow has covered my tracks, but there’s the wood I dumped on the porch!

So I did. When I reached the porch with that first load, it took no little experimentation to get the bucket to tip over and spill its contents onto the porch. Once I finally succeeded in emptying the bucket, in my excitement I brought the bucket within an inch or two of the second-floor deck above the porch.

Ella cringed. I keep half an eye on her when I’m in the tractor, though Gary tells me she has good sense around tractors. I am absolutely sure she cringed, making some slight motion in anticipation of the worst. Just in time, I stopped. I drove back twice for the rest of the wood like nothing happened.

She’ll never tell.