skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This morning, Jane, over at Hard Work Homestead, wrote of two stray dogs on her property that looked very much like wolves. Since wolves don't live in her area, she quickly realized they were indeed dogs and not wolves, but none the less, having stray dogs harassing your livestock is not a pleasant happening. Jane's post reminded me of a post I originally made in October of 2009 and decided to reprint below.
Here is "Meeting Mr. Wolf."
The tale I'm going to tell (and it is a true one) took place thirty-some years ago when we were homesteading on the first piece of property we bought here in Minnesota.
It was about this time of year, in the fall, and we had our milk goats housed in an old log barn that had originally been built on the land when it was first homesteaded in the early 1900s.
That particular late afternoon, my husband was about a mile down the road at a friend's house who was our closest neighbor and owned and operated a saw mill. Our daughter was three or four years old. As I got ready to do outside chores, I gave her the choice of coming with me or staying inside. She knew that when neither her dad nor I was in the house with her and she chose to stay inside, she had to gather together some books and stay in a designated comfy chair to "read" while we were outside. Fortunately, that day she chose to stay inside.
The barn was a ways away from the mobile home we were then living in, and I always had my hands full when I took the hike down to the barn to do the milking. That day I had the wash bucket, the milk pail, and another bucket of apple peelings to give the goats. The door to the barn was on one of the short ends. It was a dutch door, and I had closed the bottom part of it earlier in the afternoon because it was windy out and all the goats were snuggled down inside the barn. I had to walk along one long side of the barn and then take a left hand turn to get to the end the door was on.
As I turned that corner, I stopped in mid-step when I came within three feet of one very large, beautiful white and gray wolf sitting on his haunches in front of the closed bottom part of the barn door.
Silly me. My first inclination was that he was someone's AWOL sled dog. There was a family living about two miles away as the crow flies that had a small team for mushing, and I immediately thought of them as occasionally one of their dogs would get off his chain and the whole neighborhood would be alerted to be on the lookout for the escapee.
I said out loud, "Well, whose sled dog are you?" Other than to tilt his head and look at me inquisitively, the wolf didn't move a muscle. We looked at each other for a few seconds before it slowly dawned on me that this was no runaway domesticated dog. This was one honking, huge, healthy timber wolf.
Starting to talk to him in a very calm voice, I slowly backed up the way I had just come. "You shouldn't be here so close to the barn. We have big goats and little goats in there and you would really scare them if you were to jump over that door into the barn. You need to go back into the woods now and stay away from our buildings."
I walked backwards about halfway up to the house before I had the nerve to turn around and scurry the rest of the way up to our porch. When I reached the house, I saw the wolf trot up along the same path I had just taken. Gulp. He was a big one. About a third of the way up the path, there was a road going off to the right we had made by driving across one of our hay fields. This road eventually led to the thick woods where it became one of our ski trails.
Mr. Wolf ambled down the road until he disappeared from view. I got on the phone and called the house where Papa Pea was. The nine year old daughter answered the phone and I told her to go outside to find Papa Pea and tell him it was no emergency, but I'd like him to come home as soon as possible which he did.
I related my story to him. He took a gun (not to harm the wolf but rather to scare him away if need be) and went down the road to see if he could spot any evidence of the wolf. He was gone about ten minutes when we heard one shot fired.
Papa Pea had followed the road to where it crossed a small creek before going up into the woods. Near the creek bed he heard some rustling behind a huge boulder and then saw two big, fuzzy, pointed ears slowly showing over the top of the boulder, and then a forehead, and then a pair of healthy, sparkling eyes. (All the better to see you with, my dear. Hee-hee.)
He fired his gun into the ground, and shouted at the wolf that we'd appreciate it if he'd stay away from our animals. The wolf turned tail and loped off into the woods.
Papa Pea returned and told us what had happened and remarked, "That was one big, beautiful specimen of a wolf!"
When my heart rate finally returned to normal, I realized what a truly unique experience I had just had. The wolf didn't feel threatened by my presence nor was he in the least aggressive toward me. Because he was so calm, and inquisitive, and beautiful, I didn't think to panic when I came upon him.
That was the last time we ever had any problem with wolves being so close to our buildings or animals. Well, except for the time our ninety pound, bear-like Bouvier dog, Max, was lured out into the field by a female wolf in heat and her husband/boyfriend/significant other came charging out of the woods intent on having Max for lunch. But that's a story for another day.
I've used the sink all day today and am happy to report . . . I love it!
This is my first goose neck "high" faucet and it's working out great. The mixer handle is on the left of the faucet, then comes the spray first on the right. The thingie in the far right hole is a hand soap dispenser but that will be replaced with the faucet for our reverse osmosis water filter system when Papa Pea gets a chance to get that hooked back up.
The lower view . . . not so nice yet. The red bucket is for one small drip we had from one of the drains last night but it seems to have sealed itself. We need to lay a piece of vinyl on the floor which will be good if any water ever does drip or otherwise get under there. I need to paint the cabinet framing yellow (which you can see is still the old white) and get the new pine doors made, polyed and installed and that area will start to look much better.
We got the sink permanently installed today and the faucets on, too. But I'm saving a picture of them for tomorrow. The masking tape pattern and sealer oozing out from the edges of the sink will stay until tomorrow when I can remove them. Already I can tell I'm going to be very happy with this sink and faucet combination.
Today I also did more polying outside.
This storage unit needed one more coat on its top and doors. The doors had already been put on with the hinges to make sure they were a good fit so I just removed a few screws in order to take them outside. Same with the top; it wasn't yet fastened to the cabinet.
When finished, this cabinet gets smooshed up tight against the cabinet on the left in the picture. I put the first coat of poly on the end piece of that cabinet today also. It had to be done in the house so we've got ventilating fans going as I write. Phew-ey!
After they were about 98% dried outside, I decided to bring the top and doors inside tonight to finish drying as our temp is down to 45 degrees now at 8 p.m.
The center island is (temporarily) in the spot where it will go. We have to move it out to do the tile on the floor so we haven't permanently attached the counter top to it yet. The island itself weighs a ton as does the top so we wanted to be able to move it in the two pieces. I haven't made up my mind which pulls and knobs to use on this unit, but I think the decision is going to come soon 'cause I'm getting tired already of trying to open doors and drawers without them.
We also got the last of the pull-out shelves installed today. I'm sure I'm gonna love the four of them that are in the island unit.
Here's my good, ol' faithful spice rack wanting to be hung on that wall. I bought this rack in 1972, used it in Illinois and then in our kitchen in our first place up here in Minnesota. When we moved to this place and my teenie-tiny kitchen, I had absolutely no place for it. Of course, Chicken Mama remembered it being in our kitchen for as long as she could recall so asked if she could use it until I again had room for it. She did and there was a short time there when I was worried she wasn't going to give it back to me. I had to wrestle it away from her and now it's ready to be hung in my new kitchen.
A little history of the spice rack: It was in a gift shop in Illinois and I lusted after it for months! I would go to visit it regularly and was always afraid it would be gone the next time I went to look at it. Problem was it had a price tag of $20 and in 1972 that was a lot of money to spend on what my hubby said looked like it had been made of trash lumber. Finally, I made the decision that since I still really, really liked it after looking at it for so long, dang and drat, I was going to buy it. And I did.
The following Sunday morning, the two-story gift shop burned to the ground in a terrible fire. I don't know what made me buy the spice rack when I did, but I've always been very grateful something urged me on to do so.
If I get my new sink and new faucet permanently hooked up today, I'm more than willing to do the work on a holiday!
The last few days since my last post have been busy ones, but I've also been taking a little time to slow down a bit and let some things slide in an effort to recharge my leaking batteries. (Gee, sounds like a personal problem, doesn't it?)
Although I'm waking in the morning still feeling like I slept under the wheels of a cement truck and BEFORE the alarm goes off (what's with that?), I'm not currently lying awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night being unable to find the "off" switch for my monkey mind. That's progress in my book.
I'm starting to arrange kitchen stuff in the center island, pantry (limited because of the construction materials stashed in there) and kitchen cabinets. That feels really good but now I still can't find anything when I need it because of the rearrangement.
Hope to post some pictures later today if all goes well. And it WILL go well! Today's gonna be a good one.
Along with a lot of chatter to catch up in the last day or so, we got out for a beautiful hike yesterday. Our colors are just starting to turn and this un-retouched shot was taken from a foot bridge looking down into a beautiful river gorge.
More breath-taking scenery around each bend of the trail.
Even though younger brother is a wee bit (!) afraid of heights, he was game and went along with some of our mountain goatish trips out to some overhanging outlooks to peer down, down, down at the river. That is to say he volunteered to stay firmly planted on the designated trail (safely back from most overhangs) to be sure we could find our way back to it! Whadda guy.
