2006: The Garage, Outhouse and "The Bear"

Our grandchildren,

Melanie and Conner,

checking out the vegetation

and picking a bouquet of flowers

for grandma and papa.

Spring of 2006 found us eager to continue our building projects. Uncovering our bedroom addition, we discovered it had wintered well. We had the bedroom addition to finish but we also needed a new outhouse. When we first purchased "the property" the outhouse was a hand dug hole with three half sides and a top of almost rotten plywood. We built a new seat, added tar paper to the roof and called it good. It seemed to suffice as we always had another project to complete and well, such as it was, we had an outhouse. When the excavator came in to build our driveway, thank goodness, the old hole just disappeared forcing us to consider a NEW outhouse. Upon request, the excavator dug a nice, deep hole in a new location and we proceeded to update our outhouse.

Now we had a big hole, a door and with a little paint a new outhouse. The roof was still makeshift and the window covered with boards but it would have to do for now.

Much to Jeff's dismay, our finished garage became our storage shed full of supplies, snow machines, and boxes.

Though our bedroom addition lacked windows, with some wafer board shutters, we gladly moved in mid-October.

The old cabin suddenly looked very forlorn setting next to our new addition. Hmmm....what to do about that!! A project for another year, I think.

On Sawbuck Acres we can also manage quite a bit of excitement.  One evening around 11 o'clock we came home to our dark little cabin in the woods.  The first thing we noticed was the back garage door ajar.  Jeff and I, looking at each other, said, "Did you leave the garage door open?"  "Not I!"  Continuing up the driveway we found various food items scattered about and a beat up cooler.  We had missed a visitor earlier in the evening.  Shame on me for leaving the cooler on the front porch.  I know better!  Our visitor had just wandered around the garage but finding the cooler, had proceeded to munch on the contents.  He seemed to really enjoy the coffee creamer and fruit cans as all had been punctured and drained of contents. 

Our visitor in the night was quite a large black bear.  After cleaning up the mess in the driveway, we went to bed but not before I positioned lawn chairs around the porch in case our visitor returned.  Sure enough, our 300 lb friend visited our home two more times in the night. I heard the lawn chairs scoot across the porch and woke Jeff.  As I waited inside our little cabin with only my imagination, my brave husband could be heard yelling.....Get! Get out of here!  The next day I swore I heard a groaning black bear below us in the woods as he dealt with his nighttime snacks and a missing pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco which we assume he had consumed. 

One last purchase......

Our old tractor....1954 Golden Jubilee w/leaky hydraulics and no brakes!

Our new tractor...better hydraulics and working brakes!

As 2006 came to a close we added one last touch to our place.....

Nest Sweet Nest