Penance

It was painful to visit the farm after we were forced to move into town. And easier to avoid it, even though the old trailer sat there, rotting away, and needing to be cleared out.  The mess nagged at my conscience, but still we left it.  It remained a scourge upon the land, a hideous reminder of our failure.

Keith and I decided that the new trailer will go in the same location as the old one, since we already had a septic installed at that site the first time around, along with electricity.  That meant that the mess from the old trailer would need to be cleaned up before we could move the new one in.  Not a fun job by any standards, but it feels good to make reparations–to offer our penance to the forest and the hillside–for the damage we inflicted with our neglect.

We’ve been hard at work, offering atonement as a family, and looking forward to starting again, to moving forward with our plans for the expansion of our farm, to tending the land and the wildlife, and we’re especially looking forward to living more closely attuned with nature.

We’re careful to sort the refuse into various piles–one pile of garbage, one of wood debris–some of which will be salvaged and re-used for up-coming projects, a pile of scrap metal, and a pile of other salvageable materials like windows, PVC piping, and more.

The frame from this old trailer will be moved a couple hundred yards down the hill into what the family laughably refers to as “the field”, and we will repurpose it (waste not, want not, right?).  Keith plans to build a shed on top of it to house the tree trunks that we will later use to build our cordwood house.

And work begins next week to prep the site for our new trailer–she’s on her way folks!  I can’t tell you how excited we are to finally be going home.  So stay tuned for the latest details from Runamuk!