I just watched (and listened to) a video capturing a chorus of “spring peepers” on Tuesday in Faulkner County, Arkansas — 60 miles from The Mountain, just outside the southern boundary of The Ozarks. We first heard the singing frogs up here last year on March 2nd, in the pasture land north of the county road.
That date is less than three weeks away. I’m tellin’ you, spring is comin’.
This time we’ll be here to experience it all. We won’t be uprooting in mid-March, as we did a year ago, to travel to Ohio. We’ll be building a new house instead of making repairs to an old one. We won’t spend four miserable months sorting and pitching and packing our worldly possessions into a storage unit.
At some point we’ll have to return to fetch that stuff, but we live here now. We’ll be stickin’ around for the whole show.
Last night I got to thinking about our shed on The Mountain. I had a sense that it’s been up now for about a year, so I scrolled back through my posts — sure enough, it was 12 months ago next week that it was finished.
It took two days to build, completed late on a Thursday night just hours before big wind arrived. We rolled the Ranger inside, shut the doors and congratulated ourselves on the decision to give ourselves a place to store a little stuff on The Mountain.
We had no idea how useful the 10-by-16 shed would turn out to be. More than just getting the buggy out of the elements (instead of covering it with a big ol’ shower cap), we had the ideal place to stow tools, along with the occasional purchase made for an American Life that we hadn’t yet revealed (to you).
Right now the shed still sits off the driveway at Deb’s cousin’s place, where he suggested we put it ’til construction of our house was farther along. A permanent spot at the homesite has been rough-cleared, awaiting fill and leveling before we arrange to have the portable structure moved a quarter-mile up the road.
That’ll be a great day.
We’re undecided about connecting the shed to the power grid. We may do that right away, if our funds allow, when power is run to the house. Or we might just start with a low-voltage setup — a portable power station, maybe a small solar panel, enough for interior lighting and a battery charger or two. We’d certainly make use of one of our inverter generators when we require higher-amperage 120VAC for extended periods.
I reserve the right to change my mind, but I’m leaning toward keeping the shed off-grid. That better suits its purpose, I think, and we’ll have a full (clean) workshop in the house anyway. The crawl space underneath the house may be roomy enough to accommodate a workspace of some sort, but we really won’t know what that’ll look like ’til the foundation’s done.
I’ll admit to being influenced some by what I’ve learned about managing life and work without conventional access to electric power. I’m not trying to wear a hair shirt here, but the challenge intrigues me. We’ll have to see how it goes.
I‘m pretty sure that some readers of Ubi Libertas Blog chafed at what I wrote yesterday about the State of The Union address, in particular my characterizations of Democrats and the current occupant of the Oval Office.
And I want you to know, from the bottom of my beating American heart, that I don’t give a rat’s ass if what I said offended you.
The man’s a liar. He always has been. (He’s also a nasty old bastard and a fucking idiot, but we can talk about that another time.) Now he’s the addled mouthpiece for the most un-American regime in the nation’s history. He showcased his inherent deceit and his hatred of the People on Tuesday for all the world to see.
You can flinch at what I say, and you don’t have to like it, but you know I’m right. Even if you vote Democrat, even if you voted for this misbegotten regime, unless you’re lying to yourself — and that’s certainly a possibility — you have to know that you’re being played.
I won’t play you. And I won’t lie to you.
I suppose the other possibility is that you actually believe this shit. You’re just as anti-American as he is. You’re just as woke as The Mob, another tool in the leftist machine destroying the country. You’re doing this quite intentionally.
And if that’s the case, dear heart, you can go straight to hell.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
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