Back in town for a couple of days so time for an update. I spent 10 days in the swamp with two trips to town. Both trips were for material and ice. Oh, and a shower.

Greetings from the swamp. I brought my laptop out this time thinking that I would write some every day or so. Well, it’s been six days and here’s the first.

I bought the siding for about half the shack and started putting it up. I got two rows on one side nearly done and realized that this isn’t going to happen without an extension ladder. So as usual the plan has to evolve for now. So I’m doing the first two rows on three sides then when a ladder is available I’ll finish. Note: As usual I didn’t get much past the bottom two rows on the first side.  Best of intentions and all but events plus the sun took over. 

To do the back side I’ll have to take the rain barrel down so I might as well build a tower to mount it on while I’m at it. While I’m doing that I’ll do the tower for the hot water tank on the east side. Then I can go ahead and build a valve manifold and outdoor shower. Which will make the Boy happy. Not that he would ever get in a shower but he’s visibly happier after I have.

.It rained hard core for two days. I’ve been putting a grape/muscadine arbor in and had three of seven rows done. This morning I went out to start again. After digging about six inches I hit water. When you hit water like that here you might as well find something else to do since as fast as you dig the hole fills. All you are doing is creating a depression from the sand running into the hole. By afternoon it was dry enough I was able to finish the hole and get another plant in. Maybe tomorrow I can get the last three in and start something else. Or maybe not. I finished the arbor but forgot to take a pic. It turned out to be six plants since the seventh succumbed to extended abuse and expired. I cremated it’s spindly little body with appropriate honors in a very touching ceremony.

Time out here loses meaning. Today I started wondering what day it was then thought “Who cares?” Then I began wondering what month it was. You guessed it, “Who cares?”

Some neighbors to the north were up for a few days. I had a great
time visiting with them and watching them spoil the Boy even more. He seems to find a way of capturing every heart he encounters and reduces grown men to that time when they all wanted a big old ugly dog to love. For my part I got a bag of goodies when they left, two really nice trees and a bowl of most excellent stew.

The trees are an avacado and a mango both over three feet tall. I was very happy to get them. Now I have to find a good place to plant them. I know that with 30 acres to work with I should have no problem finding suitable planting sites but it’s not all that easy. For starters digging a hole around here isn’t as simple as just sticking a shovel in the ground. In the background you can see my wood burning stove sans legs patiently waiting to go inside. First I have to finish putting down backer board and tile. Add that to the list.

This is the swamp. Everything here is fighting tooth and nail to survive and uses every trick in the book to do so. The entire ground is a thick mat of roots that vary in size from a hair up to several inches thick. Until recently I had never thought of a sawzall as a gardening tool. Still, except for some bamboo, everything I’ve planted is thriving and shows a lot of promise. I’m hoping the location I find for the mango and avacado does well for them.

Plans for road repair are moving along. We now have three people willing to kick in cash and another willing to help with equipment. Since I made a trip to town for material yesterday I have ice for another three days so I might be able to finalize plans when I get back whatever day that is. Once I have a final price for delivery I can start lining up help to spread and set a date to kick things off.

I killed what I think was a copperhead about four feet long in front of the truck the other day. I heard the Boy carrying on and went over to see what was going on. When I got there Ziggy was running circles around the snake and trying to find an opening. Hollering at him was useless so I got a stick and waded in. Once I got the Boy off the snake it started booking and I started shooting. Ever try to shoot a running snake with a 45? I hit him on the third shot. By then the Boy was in the shack hiding since he’s scared to death of gunshots. I was using Oath Talon ammo which is some nasty stuff. It cut the snake nearly in half and he was still trying to get away. I went and got a 410 shotgun pistol and shot him again. That put him down for the long count finally. I put the 45 away and am carrying the 410 now.

I’m sure someone is going to look at the picture and say “That’s not a copperhead. It’s a gentle giant on the way to the 7-11 to get some Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea.” Yeah. I killed his ass. Live with it. His momma come around here bitching I’ll pop a cap in her ass as well. Since then someone knowledgeable in snakeology took a look and told me that it was in fact poisonous.

Slept in till nearly 8 this morning and did a bunch of porch sitting. It was just one of those days.

I did get the last of the muscadines planted and now have six rows of them. The water table was down to about a foot so I figured I had better get it done before the next rain. Once the plants are established I don’t anticipate ever having to water them. If anything it may be to wet for them and I’ve just wasted a decent amount of cash and labor. However, the wild muscadine vines are thriving in the same location so things could go well.

I’ve cut a couple of wild muscadines back to the ground and put in a stake for them to grow on. I want to see if they will produce grapes when pruned properly. If they do I’m living on 30 acres of muscadine plantation which could produce enough hooch to power a major city. If not I’ll have to buy more round up.

Once I start to see some grapes growing I’ll have to figure out how to keep the raccoons away. I saw a solar powered electric fence at another property today so that may be part of the solution. I really don’t want to go on a crusade and commit raccoonicide but that may end up being what I have to do. Maybe I could trap them and relocate them to somewhere they would be more welcome. Unfortunately most of the people I truly hate have Secret Service protection and I doubt I could get close enough to throw a very angry raccoon at them.

The Boy went off today, ran in front of the truck and began making
battle sounds. Thinking “snake” I ran over while drawing my pistol. “It’s a giant armored dinosaur!” he yelled. Not hardly. I put the Boy on lock down and went back to confront the monster. By the time I got there the turtle had covered nearly

two feet and was in high gear getting out of Dodge. I gave him an assist to the other side of the road then washed my hands twice since he pissed all over them. I kept the Boy on lock down for about an hour and sat on the porch with him just in case the giant armored dinosaur returned. See, I knew I had a good reason for sitting on the porch all day.

I began work on a double sink I got out of the trash pile at the campground I stay at. This mostly consisted of taking it out of the back of the truck and staring at it for awhile. Well, I sat on the porch and stared at it. I’m thinking of mounting it on the front porch and running a drain out to a gray water collection tank. Its uses will be many. I can wash dishes instead of hauling them back to town to do. I can put up a shower curtain and take a bath instead of using a bucket. OK, its uses will be two but it will be an improvement around here.

I hooked up with a guy who just got here today and we visited a couple of properties. I have to quit that. When I see what other people have done out here it makes coming back to the shack rather depressing. Of course they are years, dollars and manpower ahead of me but it’s still hard to see what can be versus what I’ve got done so far. Maybe more work and less porch time is in order.

But then I also get a lot of good ideas from seeing what others have figured out. One guy had faced regular lumber with wood cut out from dead trees. It was skillfully done so I had to look twice before I realized what he had done. It looked great. Once inside his steel metal building you had the impression that you were in a rough cut log cabin. But that’s an idea for another day and another building. I have my hands full with the shack.

I did borrow a 16 foot ladder so I may be able to finish the siding, seal the seams and paint. I have to figure out how to get a 26 pound piece of backer board about 14 feet in the air, set it in place and screw it down while on a ladder. I had an idea for a pulley, rope and a harness on Ziggy. Then I had a vision of him spotting a tree bear and what would happen after that. I might have to sit on the porch awhile and think about this. I did just that and came up with zip. More porch time needed maybe.

I hauled a bunch of brush today and put it in the driveway and parking area. An 8000 pound truck with big mud tires is hell on wet ground and I was becoming worried that I would turn the whole area into a giant mud bog. Then I looked at an area I had just cut the brush and drove over it. It is being damaged but nowhere near as bad as the areas with no brush. It’s a bit disconcerting the first few times you drive over it and hear the snapping and crunching. But after a few trips that stops so you just add more. I’m having to go further and further to get cut brush but at least I don’t have to wait on rain to burn it. And it’s not like there is a brush shortage going on around here. I could probably pave this area with four feet of crunched brush and still have enough to build a mountain.

Another day, another,,,,,,well, another day.

I was up before the crack of dawn today and sat on the porch sipping coffee and watching the sunrise. There’s a sudden quiet when I walk outside but after a few minutes things start to crank up again. As the sun comes up things really get cooking that sometimes you just feel this urge to shout “SHUT UP!!!!” at the top of your lungs.

I had the best of intentions this morning and quickly set about assembling all the tools and materials to put up siding. I had the generator gassed, extension cords laid out, skill saw and nail gun all primed and ready to go. Then I got a text about a culvert going in and would I help. So I put everything away (actually I just piled it up on the floor of the shack), loaded Ziggy and the cooler then set off for a culvert adventure. I loaded the cooler since I figured that if I was going to drive that far out I might as well go to town and get ice.

When I got there the culvert was in, water was flowing and the road graded. So I stood around with the rest of the group and watched water flow for about 20 minutes. We speculated on how much was flowing per minute, how fast the swamp would drain, what the benefit to us would be and other such weighty matters. All in all it was an entirely unproductive but enjoyable 20 minutes. Then I was off to the big city lights and the ice machine.

On the way back out I stopped again at the new culvert and spent another useless 5 minutes watching the water flow. After all I needed to be able to make an accurate report once I got back to the swamp.

It was 5:30 by the time I got back to the shack and 96 degrees. So I tended to the ice then sat on the porch and took a nap. Score for the day: got ice, watched water flow for 25 minutes. Not a bad day all in all. Tomorrow morning I plan on siding again but there’s talk of another culvert so who knows?

The next day I had early visitors and was invited to go for a ride. So we loaded the Boy (literally, had to pick him up and set him in the devil machine) and set off. After cruising various mud holes while looking for snakes to shoot we ended up back at his place. He then said he was going to bring his tractor down and bush hog some brush for me. I quickly said yes and we were off again.

Two hours later he had cut more brush than I could cut in over two weeks. He opened up all the trails I had previously cut as well as cut a couple of new ones. Walking it afterward I noticed that the ground appeared to be smoother and realized that I was walking on mulch deposited in the low areas while he was mowing.

One of the paths he extended for me was straight south to where I thought the swamp would be. He went about another 40 feet and hit a bog. Surveying it disclosed that it was a major super highway for hogs plus possibly an open air convention center. There must be at least 30 game trails in and out with more hog sign than I could count. This explains why I hear hogs all night long. In the picture, center frame, you’ll see a large brown area. This is the remains of a pile of logs about three feet high that he simply turned into dust nearly.  Going between the two trees you have several feet of relatively dry ground then the hog wallow. This is actually the second hog super highway I’ve found. This one was way to wet to wade through so I’m not sure about relative size. Besides I’m the worst at judging area and distance. It could be a hundred square feet or a hundred square miles. It’s all the same in my mind. It’s an area that is useless to me at this time so it might as well be on the moon. Still, once you get back to it, it is pretty. Except for the clouds of mosquitoes and yellow flies. If it wasn’t for the stench I would have dropped to the ground and rolled around in the mud just to get them off me.

I took a few pics from the road just to see how stealthy my construction has been. Though it seems that I stick out like a sore thumb I’m actually pleased with the results. In these pics you are seeing the second floor minus siding and camo paint. I also have bamboo planted between the road and the shack which will further hide it once established. Since the shack won’t be moving I can paint it to match the brush thus further hiding it. Not much I can do about the windows but I can attach some tree limbs with spanish moss to help disguise them. If I were starting to build today I would build 100 feet further in and about the same further south. But hey, I had to start somewhere.

Two nights ago I was invited to dinner at another neighbors place. Of everyone I’ve ever met he is undoubtedly the most self sufficient. I was given the nickle tour and was constantly impressed with the detail that he had went to in building his place. I didn’t want to appear to be to inquisitive so I restrained my curiosity and only asked about ten thousand questions. I’m hoping for another invitation sometime in the future so I can do a detailed examination of the hidden works and inner mechanisms of his systems.

I also had another most excellent meal.