The Old Brown House and the Little Bridge in the Deep Woods

This weekend we went for a visit to "The Old Brown House."  The Old Brown House is a historic abandoned house deep in the woods on our property.  I believe it was built in the early 1800s.  The weather was nice so we thought we'd see how it was doing.  I also was looking for a black vulture nest.  The vultures have been flying around this area quite a bit. 

I think it's kind of large for such an old house.  It has 4 large rooms, 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs.  No bathroom, no kitchen, just rooms.  There are 2 fireplaces so all the rooms had heat back when people used to live in it.  I really like this old house.

Here's The Old Brown House from the side view.  It's skinny, isn't it?

The poor old house is falling apart.  When I look at it I imagine the hands that built it.  Someone put all those boards in place with care.  I imagine the woods were all fields back then, and this was a working farm house.

In the corner of one of the rooms is a pile of old doors and windows.

Wait - look there!  What's that behind the door?  

It's a black vulture nest!

Black vultures are weird birds.  They don't make any kind of nest, they just lay their eggs on the ground.  The vultures were flying around overheard as we walked around inside the old house.  They were not happy with our visit.

I'll keep an eye on the vulture babies as they hatch and grow up.  I love vultures - they are good birds.

We walked outside The Old Brown House looking for the outhouse.  

I know there was once an outhouse, but have not been able to find it.  We figure it must have been destroyed.  It would be neat to find remnants of it.  

While we were walking around we found a turkey feather...

...And a big bunny rabbit.   

The rabbit wasn't afraid of us at all.  She just sat there.  We didn't disturb her, but walked around her carefully.  Maybe she had babies under her, who knows.

We also saw an old teapot.  I don't think this was that old - it certainly doesn't look like it's 200 years old.  There's a lot of trash in the woods where people dumped back in the 1980's.  We're always cleaning up trash.

As we left The Old Brown House we went by The Little Bridge in the Deep Woods.  

It's so cool - it's a little bridge in the middle of the woods.

Again it makes me think of the people who built it.  The bridge is old and falling apart now.  It sits on a dirt road and covers a tiny creek.  Maybe the creek was a larger stream at one time.

Well, that's it for this trip into the woods.  I'll keep an eye on the vulture eggs.  I can't wait to see the babies!

Wild Asparagus

It's springtime, so yesterday I decided I'd better check the wild asparagus.  If you have asparagus, you know it grows super-fast and needs to be picked before the stalks get too large.

And so, I put on some shorts.

Our asparagus patch is way out back, in the middle of a field.  The field is high with grass, and I wanted to be able to see and remove any ticks that may get on me.  Every day I see deer out in that field; I know they carry deer ticks.  Luckily, I got no ticks on me.  I love my guineas (who eat ticks)!!!

Here I am - almost!  Hi everyone!

Ok, here we go, out into the backyard.  We have to go through that gate and off to the right.  See all the high grass?  We'll walk out of this photo range to the right.

Aww, thanks, Randy.  He's mowed a path through the high grass for us to get to the asparagus patch.  The sun was shining bright, but there are these odd white shadows in this photo below.  I guess it's just the light.  Many people say my historic house and property are haunted...  Could these be ghosts???

Here's the asparagus patch.  Yes, it's just part of the field, covered with grass.  We didn't choose this area, this asparagus has been growing here for many a decade before we came here.  We just found it growing wild.  We also planted some new asparagus in the same area, but it wont be ready to be eaten for many years.

 

Let's look closely.  Right in the center of this photo is an asparagus sprout.

Here's another.

And another.

All in all, there was quite a few asparagus sprouting, but none were ready yet.  A few more good sunny days and they'll be ready for picking.  They grow fast.  I couldn't even find the baby asparagus we planted last year.  The stalks are fine and look like grass.

While I was out in the back fields I couldn't help but notice the iris blooming.  My mother gave us some old dead iris roots.  Well, she thought they were dead.  We planted them all around the fields.  We didn't know if moles or squirrels or woodchucks would eat the roots, but figured we'd try.  Many flowers here are eaten by animals before they have a chance to grow.  But the iris are doing fine - the roots must be too bitter for the wild animal palates.

Out by the asparagus there's a huge active woodchuck hole.

Here's our old horse barn.  We're not using it.  It has a dirt floor, old wooden walls, and a roof that's barely hanging on.  We keep the door open in case any wild animals want to use it for shelter.  Sometimes Jerry, the outside cat, goes in, and once last winter some deer found shelter from the cold here.  Many birds live inside in the roof beams.

The vines just take over every year.  These vines are covering a fence and are moving to a nearby tree.  They need to be cut back again.  When time permits...

And now we're coming back to the house.  Here's the weather vane on the back side of the house.

Happy Easter!

I'll bring you along when I check the asparagus later in the week!

More Green Wine Bottles...

I'm still picking those green wine bottles out of the trash dump on the property.  

I took this video last week.

Cleanup Continues

Now that the weather's been warmer, I've been trying to clean up our famous trash dump on our property.  I noticed this area again when I started running outside and I promised myself I'd really try to get it all cleaned up by this summer.  The trash dump appears to be someone's personal landfill.  As if, 20 years ago or more, some family lived in our house, and they took all their household trash out and dumped it in the woods.  If only the house and trees could talk, they'd have lots of stories.

And so, when I have a spare hour or more after all the other chores are done, I sneak out to the woods and bag trash.  And when Randy has a spare hour after all his work is done, he takes all my trash off to the county landfill.  I've made it a game, I try to bag more trash than he's able to fit into the vehicle to take to the dump.  So far I've stayed ahead of him, and we always have a few bags sitting out in the woods ready to go to the dump.  He moans at me about me making more work for him.  I don't take the bags to the dump myself because I cannot lift them, they are too heavy.  I use contractor grade big black trash bags and fill them full.  I also try to separate recyclable items into separate bags and he takes them to a recycling facility.  Mostly I recycle glass bottles.  The people that lived here liked their wine, and there are many different types of wine bottles.  I've learned a lot about the former homeowners by going through their trash.

And speaking of wine, of course I am collecting more big green wine bottles.  I've pulled dozens and dozens more out of the trash dump and added them to my wine bottle collection out in the field.  One day I'm going to find a purpose for them, or maybe I'll find someone who wants them.  Today I am going to count the wine bottles - I've added some since I took these photos. 

PS - We have a new friend living here at Razzberry Corner!! I will be posting about him soon!!! 

Stayed tuned!

Wine Bottles and Lots of Deer

The other day I remembered all those old green wine bottles I pulled out of the woods a long, long time ago.   Someone threw them in a trash collection on our property.  We cleaned up the trash, but saved the bottles.  Someone liked their wine!  And there was lots more that we didn't pull out of the woods.  There seems to be alot of old trash dumps around in various locations on the property.

Wine bottle collection, April 2010

That was back in April, 2010.  Wow!  I have been busy since then.  I had meant to sell them online, but never did.  They've just been sitting out in the woods where I left them. 

So I decided now is the time for action.

Better late than never!

I put on my boots, heavy coat, gloves, scarf, and started the trek out to find where I left the old green wine bottles. 

I passed by the chicken coop, had to stop for a visit.  As always.  When I left the chickens I stopped and talked with the guineas and gave them some cracked corn.  They get so excited over the simple things like extra corn. 
Then off into the field I went.

I was thoughtful as I walked.  I am always amazed by the number of deer we seem to have on the property.  I don't see the deer up close, they aren't friendly.  I have a hard time telling them all apart, and so I do not get to know the deer individually.  I am amazed and impressed how Kritter Keeper over at Farm Tails blog knows her deer so well.  Maybe this summer I'll work with the deer more and maybe they'll get more friendly...  I notice lots and lots of deer footprints in the snow as I walk.

Lots of deer hoof prints

Deer hoof prints in snow up close

We find ALOT of deer antlers on this property.  When we lived in previous houses we always looked but never found any antlers.  Here we find so many we don't know what to do with them.  Here's our latest finds from the past couple weeks.  The left antler is huge and heavy.  And yes, that's a turtle shell.  The turtle was gone. 

Latest finds

We've found quite a few deer skulls recently, too.

One day I'll figure out what to do with all the antlers we have collected.  Today's mission was green wine bottles...  Stay focused...

I finally made it out to the wine bottle location.  There they were, in all their glory.  Of course, they are now covered in snow, so they don't look so neat as before.

And so I listed the bottles on Craigslist.  I'm thinking of listing them on Etsy, also, but I'll have to figure out how to ship them.  Hopefully I'll get some takers!

Cheers!



Wine, anyone?

Since the weather here was beautiful this past weekend, we decided to clean out some trash on our property.  It seems in the past people used to dump their trash right on the property, like it was a personal landfill.  We decided we to start the clean up on an area that's not too far away from our house - you cannot see this dumping area from our house, but it is a short walk.

After working on the dump cleanup for 3 days, we had 17 trash bags full.  We will have to continue on the trash pickup when we have time.  We have barely begun the cleanup.

We found hundreds of glass bottles in the "dump"!  Most of them are wine bottles.

And this is just the beginning of the bottle collection.  There's many, many more out there in the woods.  We didn't trash the bottles - we figured we'd save them and see how many we get! 

Who ever dumped here must have really liked their wine! 

Broken Trees and Little Deer

Following the Blizzard of 2010, many tree limbs around our house have broken off because of the weight of the snow.  This is just one of many trees in our backyard. 

Spring cleanup time will soon be here.  Meanwhile, the deer have enjoyed the cedar branches on the ground. 

Speaking of deer, I noticed today the deer herd that has been wintering in our backyard has left, at least for the day, but Little Deer stayed behind.  He stayed by our barn and in our backyard by himself.  He even came right up to the house to check the bird feeder area.  It's funny how he seems to always stay in our yard, even when the others leave.  There are other fawns in the herd who aren't much bigger than him, but Little Deer is not afraid to stay alone.  He's my Little Deer. 

Outhouse

Today we decided to cleanup a walkway to an old outhouse we have on the property.  Yes, an outhouse like they used to have before bathrooms were made inside houses!  The old outhouse is near a small, vacant, historic house on our property. 

It's pretty neat to see, but it appears someone has dumped all sorts of trash around the outhouse.  So much glass & other trash is out there that it was a true hazard to walk up to the outhouse.  I was afraid I was going to slice open my foot on broken glass, even though I had heavy boots on.  The glass bottles were at least a foot deep - and we never got to the bottom of the piles.  They were covered in dirt, vines, leaves, and more bottles on top.

This picture is of the outhouse in the distance through the trees and vines.  You can see just a little bit of trash in the foreground.

Here is some trash across the path from the outhouse.

Hundreds of glass bottles were covered in leaves & vines.  These pictures don't show how much glass was really there.  All this glass and other trash could not possibly be from one family!

We picked up 11 trash bags full of trash & broken glass.  And this is just the beginning of cleaning up this little area.  And we have many more trash piles like this to clean up...  A little bit at a time...

Now we can walk up to the outhouse...

Here's the back of the outhouse.  It has an old tin roof on it.

It has double doors with old skeleton locks.

Double seats in the outhouse!!