For some reason, we always want to haul a lot of heavy things in and out in February, despite this being the time when the floodplain is muddiest.  In previous years, we've stressed over the transportation issue, but we've gotten a bit more creative this year.

B.J.'s cousin Dillon asked if he could come over and make some spending money for paintball on a couple of snow days, and we quickly turned him into a pack mule.  While I figure we'd save a little cash by running a motorized vehicle in and out, human power is actually pretty efficient monetarily, especially if you have a ninth grader on hand who wants to build his muscles for football.  He didn't grouse at all.

Meanwhile, we're embarking on a truck-share arrangement with B.J.  He needs a vehicle and we want to be able to haul things about once a month.  We figure if we get him a truck and he maintains it, we won't end up with the problem where a good truck goes bad from sitting around most of the time.  There's even a possiblity we might be able to borrow Dillon's four wheeler to haul the golf cart up to the trailer for some TLC.

All of this means more time for me to do the things I love most --- like raking leaves out of the woods and kill-mulching spots for new berries.  Mark talked me into going a little overboard with our perennial order this year, and I felt confident enough that we'd have time to dote on the new berries that I went ahead and ordered red currants, honeyberries, mulberries, and a Siberian pea shrub.  With berry bushes on their way and a cat in my lap, this is very blissful time of year.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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