Things have been a little on the slow side lately, and the days just seem to blend one into the other. But every once in a while we have one of those days that puts a big grin on my face that sticks with me long after the sun has gone down. This was one of those days, and luckily we came out of it with some really great photos and even a few good video clips. It started with the arrival of TJ's good friend Tad, and ended with Lex's famous homemade pasta sauce, two gallons of wine and a rowdy game of rummy, not to mention a little free diving and hill bombing in the middle. Our destination for the day was the Blue hole at Ichetucknee state park. It is a forty five foot deep cave shaft at the end of a underground aquifer system that stretches on for miles. A few hundred thousand gallons of the freshest, clearest water flows from this spring everyday, and it is a truly breathtaking sight. Luckily for us, Tad had a camera in his hand all day...
Also, I built a thermal mass stove out of a recycled metal drum barrel and a kit I found online. It was very easy to build and install into my container, and even on the coldest nights out here it keeps us sweating. Thank you to my uncle Peter for all the information and help finding a green alternative heat source. Also thanks to Reggie for letting us use his cutting torch.
A great man once said, if you wanna make an omelette...you gotta crack a few eggs. Well, you can hear our cracking from miles around. Since we already had our ponds marked, we decided it was time to get to work clearing the forest and collecting firewood. We began cutting trees down with two chainsaws and an axe, and were at it for about a solid five days.
What would have taken us three a few months to do by hand, took a mere two days for the clearing crew. Things are starting to progress much quicker out here, and we could not be more stoaked.
The Suwannee river seems unreal to me sometimes. Miles of flat, spring fed freshwater, and not another boat in sight. This spots at little river springs, which also happens to be one of our favorite free diving spots. Cheers to a cloudy day in december on the river.
The time has come for the season to shift, and with it, a magnificent transformation unfolds. Fall is one of our favorite seasons of the year, and it has been amazing watching the changes that occur here on a day to day basis. But not only are the trees changing, we have also added two new members to our forest dwelling crew.
Everyday out here brings a new opportunity to do something different. Its been a little over a year since the inception of our idea, and I can already feel the potential energy of it shaking inside me. But this place is not just about one idea, it is about all of us, and our drive to shape our own future. This forest is not simply a patch of trees, it gives us freedom to create whatever it is that we may dream. So often the seasons change, a new year is on the horizon, and through it all, we must always remember to keep looking up.
You only live once, and that gets a lot shorter if you freeze to death. So we've built some walls to help us cope with the cool temperatures- reaching as low as 27 degrees. Often you can see your breath as you lay in bed at night, but we are hoping that the insulation and drywall will help keep us warm enough.
I began building a frame for our walls made with 2x4's and a box of screws.
I constructed a sliding, pocket door with a wooden window panel door Lex and I picked up at Habitat. It was fairly simple making a track for the door to slide in between and I screwed wheels in at the bottom of the door. Here is the view through our bedroom door.
After stuffing the frames with insulation and covering that with drywall, we spackled and primed the walls and finished them off with a yellow paint. We made moldings from 1x4's and stained them Red Oak, along with the trusses made from 2x4's. The trusses are actually supporting the walls greatly and holding them up. To cover our windows we purchased saddle blankets to keep the cold out.
Lex wanted a window seat, so we invented a window bed. Surrounded by three windows, our bed holds the best view of all (atleast until we move our container home into a different spot on the land and not park our cars out front).
