After twenty years in this house and twenty-nine years in Kirkland, it's time for a change.  So many thanks to Colleen McDaniel for agreeing to lease me five gorgeous acres in Stanwood, about forty miles north of my present home.  She's owned it for a while and before that it belonged to her father.  For the last seventeen years it was rented out.  My plan is to get it cleaned up and fenced then I'll be putting up a nice custom "mobile home" that will actually look like a small cabin, perfectly blending with the woods and hills.  It should be the perfect place for the dogs and I.  Plans include perimeter fencing and a secure "backyard" for the dogs off the mobile home.  I'll continue to work from home so that will mean bringing in satellite Internet access too.  Though Stanwood is developing like crazy, high bandwidth DSL or digital cable aren't available there quite yet.


Trash!

The new place is gorgeous but there are challenges to get it to the point where we can move in.  The biggest challenge is the former tenants.  For all seventeen years they lived here and must have worked in earnest the whole time dumping junk.  Can you tell me why there is a kid's bike up in a tree?  Take a look at some of the junk piles we need to get cleaned up.  Have no fear, it really is a gorgeous place.  Below the junk photos are some shots of the property that are pristine as Mother Nature intended.

Once the junk piles are gone, it will be easier to appreciate the old cedars, moss covered trees, and gorgeous ferns.	I think I've counted four wheelbarrows in various dump piles around the property.	For some reason this rather shaky shed is full of TVs.
Despite the junk all over the place, there are three sheds that are in good condition.  But I have no idea why there's a range sitting outside next to the shed.	Along with multiple wheelbarrows, there were a few ladders in various conditions.	Underneath the blackberry vines and trash is probably enough firewood for years.
Another wheelbarrow, a big swing set, and a very shabby metal dog house.  They had nice small houses for their dachshunds but their Rottweiler had this almost dangerous contraption.	That Rubbermaid bin looks big enough to hide a dead body!	Each of these dachshund-sized dog houses contained nice metal feeding dishes..  Go figure why they left things like this behind.
Plain old trash	Dog crates and kids' toys are everywhere.	More plain old junk piled back in the woods.

We haven't included photos here of the big packing crates, all big enough for me to walk into, that are full of things that seem to be packed in boxes and plastic bags.  I have no idea what's in them and I don't really want to know.  I just want it all to be gone.  I'm sure we'll have many bonfires too before we're done.


Natural Beauty

The property is roughly rectangular; 5.78 acres total.  The narrow west border is Fisher Creek.  To the north is my soon to be next door neighbors, the Larsons, who have just built a new house.  Neighbors to the south are all nice houses on what looks to be five acre lots and I don't know who is on the property to the east.  Just so you don't think I'm nuts for wanting to plant myself in the middle of all this junk, here's a few shots of the parts of the property that are not covered with trash.

As you come up the private drive from the main road, when you cross Fisher Creek, you're onto my new place.  This forms the eastern boundary of the property.  We're told that the stream is full of salmon spawning every fall and that a neighborhood black bear can be seen feeding on the carcasses of the spent fish.	this is the view up the drive as soon as you cross Fisher Creek.  The driveway runs along part of the northern boundary.  You can just barely see the trashed mobile home up ahead.  This will be torn out while the trash clean up is going on.	Also along the northern border and scattered all over the property are numerous large ferns.
More beautiful ferns	Though Douglas Firs are now the most common evergreen tree in the area, these old cedars were the original inhabitants.	As you walk east from the mobile home, you'll come to this grassy clearing.  Other than the meadow, this is the biggest clearing on the property.
Only about 30 feet from where the mobile home is, you'll see this dramatic old gnarled stump from which new cedar trees are growing.  Carie (with her Irish Water Spaniel pup Faith) are standing about six feet up from ground level.	I was able to convince pups Bucky (11 months old now) and Salishan (5 months old) to climb up the stump with me too.  What acts of Nature created this I'll never know but it will be great natural art work to have right next to where I park my car.	Just a short way away from the stump on the left is another huge stump.  I had Carie take the photo with me standing next to it in hopes to give it scale.  It's at least eight to ten feet diameter and more than 15 feet tall.  I'll have to clear the blackberry vines away so people can better see it's size.
Though there are many game trails, this is one of the only ones that is wide enough to easily get through without having to hack away at blackberry vines.	Common here in the Northwest are mother trees.  This is when a tree falls and young trees spring up from it.  In this case, three new Doug Firs are coming up and must be over 20 years old now.	Bucky and Salishan love cruising the trails.
A wider spot on the trail with black and tan Chinook Kila up ahead with Bucky and Salishan.	Why someone would build a shed and fill it with junked televisions on such a nice trail is beyond me but this will be one of the rubbish piles to go quickly.	Come summer I'll be fighting blackberry vines to keep the trails open.  Our hope is to clear out a lot of the weedy underbrush and leave what really should be here like the ferns.
Another pretty place on the trail.  This is all to the east of the mobile home.	Ferns and dramatic trees.	More ferns and trees.  this is what the landscape under the cedars and firs should look like rather than the invasive blackberry vines.

The one task I'm trying to get rolling right away is fencing.  The plan (pending the estimates from the fencing contractor) is for field fencing in the areas that are shielded by trees.  Where the public can see (or at least the neighbors) will be split rail on each side as you come up the drive and between my place and the Larsons to the north.  We agree that good fences and privacy makes for a good neighborly relationship.  Of course the dogs would laugh at plain split rail fencing so it will be backed up with wire mesh on the insides and a hot wire on the top and bottom as needed.


Before & Destruction

I'm lucky enough to have found the world's best contractors for tearing down the old mobile home on the property and putting up the fences.  Shawn and Aaron Cardin are absolute Energizer Bunnies when it comes to getting jobs done ahead of schedule and dead on budget.  I met Shawn through my friend Janet Maxwell; Shawn is married to Janet's daughter Danica.  I figured if ever I was to get a good critique of someone's work it would be from his mother-in-law and Janet raved about Shawn.  Many of these photos are also courtesy of Shawn and Aaron.

The previous tenants raised mini dachshunds so had small dog sized pens all around the m,obile home.	View of the old mobile home from the parking area	Another view of the mobile home from the driveway.
One more of the mobile home.  You can see the pile of "stuff" I've found that I think I can donate to a charity or just give away free.	Shawn and Aaron's job was to pull down the old mobile home and get rid of all the debris.  It was a daunting task from my perspective but from what I'm told, it practically disintegrated around them.  The roof was covered with tarps already since much of it had already given way.  hard to believe that people could live in this thing, much less that they were state-approved foster parents.	Our 30 cubic yard dumpster was filled three times just with the debris from the mobile home and that doesn't count what they were able to burn or sell for scrap.  You can also see the blue of our Honey Bucket just in front of my van.  What with the amount of time I've been spending there, it is a necessity.
There was enough scrap fencing that Shawn and Aaron built a temporary pen for the dogs to stay in while I work around the property.	Salishan (left) and Taataga (right) tell me how horrible it is to be fenced in while I'm doing such obviously fun things without them.  All the dogs are good at staying close while I'm working but there are moments when I just can't keep an eye on them.	Having contractors that love dogs is a big help.  Without my even asking, they took scrap fencing and built a temporary pen.  The dogs are very good at staying within eyeshot while we're there but there are times that I don't want them running all over, especially with the broken glass and nails that we had lying around during the tear down of the old mobile home.  Of course, Salishan promptly squeezed through a gap and Taaku will yelp and wail and sounds pitiful but it's for their best interests.  Now taht the mobile home is gone, Shawn and Aaron are starting the perimeter fencing.  Other than a strip along the creek, almost all of the five-plus acres will be enclosed in five-foot field fencing
Shawn and Aaron work like the Energizer Bunny.  Within a day or two, the siding was down.  We don't need to talk about all the trash they found inside but we can say that  the dumpster was emptied frequently.  Next to go were the walls, then the roof.  When it was down to nothing but the joists, they were able to sell them for scrap and reuse rather than adding any more than we had to into the landfill.
While the guys were working on the mobile home tear down, I occupied myself with getting rid of the other trash on the property.  Many thanks to the Wilmots, especially Edky and Roman.  Tim brought them up one afternoon and checked out what was lying around.  He and I figured out good jobs for the boys and they've been at a dead run ever since.  Heck, they're 11 and 13 so how do you think they would react when given sledge hammers and crow bars and told to destroy things?  I think they would have paid me for the fun they had tearing apart the old storage crates after dumping all the contents.
One clearing contained about a half dozen storage crates about eight feet tall (though now leaning) and a few other "structures" (and I use that term loosly) where the previous tenants had dumped everything they no longer needed.  Things were all stuffed in plastic bags that hadn't been sealed so everything was moldy and covered with mildew.  Sadly that meant we couldn't donate any of it to people who could have used it.
		Edyk started with a shed like structure made of all sorts of odds and ends.  Note I also have something that looks like an outhouse.  I'm thinking of keeping it to store yard tools. Roman set to work on one of the bigger crates, having a great time whacking away.  Tim was actually just out of the photo frame keeping an eye on both boys.  We were careful to do this as safely as possible and so far, after three weekends, no one has suffered as much as a splinter.

From Destruction to Construction

Now that the old mobile home is gone, Shawn and Aaron have started work on the fences.  First step is to run a perimeter fence of mesh.  It will run from after the driveway crosses the strem straight south.  About 50 yards of woods bordering the stream will be outside the fence line.  That way, when the salmon are spawning, I won't worry about the dogs if the neighborhood black bear wanders by.  And I know the wildlife use it for drinking.  Plus it's darned difficult to fence around streeams.    Once they hit the southern property line, they'll turn east.  Originally they thought they could make a straight run.  That idea ended when the bobcat they'd rented to clear a 5-foot wide swath through the woods, suddenly sunk into a hidden mud hole.  By the time another 'cat had been rented to pull out the first, they decided it was safer if the now-pond was on the outside of the fence line and stakes were pounded into more solid footing.  So the southern fence line has a bump roughly due south of the house site.  At the southeast corner of the property, the fence line turns north, then west again at the north border.  It will come about a third of the way down.  The remainder of fencing will be split rail since that's the part that people will see coming up the driveway to either my place or the next door neighbors' place.



The site contractor for the new cabin has applied for the building permits and we expect it to be approved roughly April 8th.  In the meantime, the engineering drawings of the new place are being put together.  The cabin should start its manufacturing in the factory within a week or so; that will take 30 days then it will take another 30 days to put it togehter on site.








Natural Beauty

The property is roughly rectangular; 5.78