Weekend of the Bugs

Another wonderful, albeit short, trip.  R was gratefully let out of work early on the Friday after Independence Day so we were able to get on the road by 3:30pm and arrived to camp in good time at 8:30pm - just in time to see a young buck with a small rack jog in front of our car down the trail when we were less than half a mile away from camp!  

Willow has actually seemed to learn to time the trip so she doesn't have to use the litter box on the road.  When we stop for us and for Tyson, I offer her the litter box (a large tupperware container with a lid).  She used to use it at most every stop, but now she seems to wait until we get there if she can.  The day before we leave we usually start asking Tyson and Willow if they "want to go to camp in Maine for a couple days" and that we'll "take a ride in the truck to camp".  Repetition is key with training animals, and they seem to be learning what those phrases mean.  When we're almost there, we start saying, "almost to camp!" and they both get up and start looking out the windows with interest.  The same goes for when we're almost home.  It seems like they can smell the unique differences in each location and are growing familiar with them - that they're just not in some strange area.  Animals are so amazing.

Last time we left camp a couple of weeks ago I remembered to set up the trail cam.  Hooray!  We were fortunate enough to catch some wonderful images of two fawn frolicking in the clearing outside our camper!

Practicing for the reindeer games!

Mama doe must have been in the woods out of the camera's sight.  You can see in a couple of pictures where the fawn are looking into the woods, and sometimes you can see a slight shift in colors behind some of the leaves, maybe indicating Mama was there with her watchful eyes.  There are tons more images in the Black Birch Acres Photo Album, but here are a couple of animations Google Photos put together for me of the sequenced images.  Before we saw the pictures of the two fawn we thought there was only one fawn, but then noticed how the spots were different.  Then both came in to view!  Apparently, does give birth to between one and three fawns, and the babies keep their spots until they are about 4 months of age.

The mosquitoes and horseflies were not intolerable, but they seem to get consistently worse with every visit.  Probably I have at least a dozen or more mosquito bites covering my body.  I will gladly accept all of the bug bites so long as none of the itchies turn in to Poison Ivy.  PLEASE NO.

I try my best to steer clear of the plant with [sometimes] mitten-shaped leaves.  Unfortunately, all it takes is Tyson or Willow traipsing through some Poison Ivy, unknowingly getting slathered with the unseen urushiol (you-ROO-shee-all) oil from the plant, and then transferring it to our skin when we pet them or they rub against our bare leg.  Then if we were to wipe the sweat off our brow with the hand that just pet them.  It can turn into such a mess!  Heck, the oil can even adhere to firewood or gardening tools, so we need to be cognizant on where we place these items on the ground.  With the presence of Poison Ivy (I've gotten it once so far from camp but it wasn't bad at all fortunately), I'm very hesitant to mow the lawn.  It's getting tall, though.  I suppose one would wear long sleeves, a dust mask, pants, boots; then remove all of said items immediately afterwards.  Don't touch any of the clothing articles because the oil can stay on objects for weeks.  Wash them and you with water and soap afterwards immediately.  Say a little prayer..  Probably we'll take the mower next time.

Additionally, thankfully, what I thought may have been Poison Ivy may not be, and the rhyme "leaves of three, leave it be" is not always entirely accurate because many plants have groupings of three leaves.  What I thought was Poison Ivy may actually be blackberries(!), according to some people in a Native Plants Facebook group.  Apparently, identifying Poison Ivy is a learned skill because the plant has many forms.

The hairy/prickly stem is apparently an indicator that it is blackberries and not Poison Ivy. 
See the three-leaved wild strawberry in the left picture?

While "leaves of three, leave it be" may not be totally accurate, it does hold a bit of truth.  Some other rhymes I found for identifying poison ivy are:

• If butterflies land there, don't put your hand there.  Butterflies land on Poison Ivy because they aren't affected by it, and it sometimes keeps predators away from them.
• Hairy vine, no friend of mine.  Poison Ivy on trees has a furry raggy appearance.  If you see it, you may not want to touch or climb that tree.
• Red leaflets in the spring, it's a dangerous thing.  New Ivy leaflets can have a reddish appearance in the spring, but will eventually turn green, and become harder to identify as summer approaches.
• Side leaflets like mittens will itch like the dickens.  Watch for the little notches.  These can be a dead give away that you're messing with the wrong plant!

Keeping a keen...ahem...paranoid...eye out for poisonous plants, we took a little walk through the woods to see more of what beautiful nature has to offer.  It's awesomely amazing how you can see the clear division of wetlands versus forest as you get nearer to the river.

Forest/Wetland line

Do you see what I see?  A face in the formation?  Slightly creepy.

The canoe left behind by the former owner still...er...holds water.  I guess that means it should still float!  We will bring a bucket with us to empty it next time.  Can't wait to take the canoe out on the river!  The river flows in to the lake nearby, flowing east.  R and Tyson actually walked out through the tall grass to try and see the actual river.  R walked up to about his waist.  Tyson was literally swimming, the current almost taking him down river before he was able to recover and come back to shore.  R said it pretty much just dropped off at one point and was a good depth.  We look forward to fishing the small river eventually and wonder what types of fish are present.

After our explorations, we headed back to do some work solidifying the cabin shell that was put up by the former owner.  It's coming along slowly but surely.  Our plan is to make it safe and button it up the rest of the way so we can move from the tiny camper into the larger space of the cabin temporarily.  Once the coming winter passes, we'll begin plans to properly build our own cabin.  While we were in the cabin shell discussing plans for a bathroom with an indoor composting toilet, R noticed something on the wall.  Is that an eye shining in the camera flash?!?!  THE EYES OF A BIG FREAKING SPIDER.  NO THANK YOU AT ALL.

I still have trouble viewing this and avert my eyes quickly when I do.  <insert nervous laughter>  I just can't with spiders.  Can't.Even.  R and I agreed not to kill it.  I don't like killing any living things unnecessarily, and we haven't claimed this cabin as our own yet really, so technically the bugs and animals still "own" it until we put our mark on it and seal the building up.  This spider gets a second chance; just DON'T come back and you'll be ok.  I think we would need a goddamn sledge hammer to kill it anyways because surely a flip flop would NOT do the trick.  

I basically fled the scene and retreated to the camper.  I would have NO PART in capturing this...spider.  It's funny.  As I type this, I keep starting to refer to the spider as a monster, but alas, my rational side says no, it is not a monster.  However, I tell you what, my life nearly flashed before my eyes as I was standing there before this arachnid on the wall and pictured this...huge beast...going on the offensive and leaping off the wall at my face!  AAAAHHHH!  <throws arms up in front of face> Ok.  Getting ahold of myself.  Sorry.  Let's pull the rational thinking rope back in.  I'm sure this big spider just...just eats..the...bad..spiders.  I can't even bring myself to research spider pictures to identify it.  UGH.  R came in to the camper to get a cup and a paper plate to trap it.  BRAVE MAN.  I took a video and pictures before he deposited it far up the driveway.  Please stay away.  I don't want to have to hurt you Big Guy.

The Search

For months, my husband - we'll refer to him as "R" - and I perused sites like LandWatch.com and LandandFarm.com for raw, undeveloped land in Maine.  We viewed so many pieces of land online that our eyes were crossed.  I did so much research on town laws and ordinances to see if our plan would work.  Our intention was to stay within 300 miles of our home so we could easily travel there on the weekends.  We plan to visit a couple of times a month until my stepdaughter - we'll refer to her as "N" - graduates college in a couple of years, at which time we'll relocate permanently.  In the meantime, we'll build an off-grid cabin, establish a garden, build structures for small livestock like goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs, etc.  R works in the union construction field and may continue this path after we move.  I work behind a desk as a secretary and never want to work behind a desk again.  Our plan is to eventually trade in our mid-size truck for a full-size truck and get a plow, in addition to getting a skid steer for a potential plowing business.

October 7, 2017 - Burnham

The first place we visited was in Burnham, Waldo County, Maine (257 miles, 4.5 hours, same-day round trip).  The land was 20-some-odd acres with one border along a beautiful stream, and the road was an actual paved road (unlike those to follow), however there was no driveway, so that is a process in and of itself.

Burnham, Waldo County, Maine

Wanting to get the lay of the land a bit, we started bushwacking where we thought the land was situated (there were no boundary lines that we could locate from the street, and the realtor was not meeting us for the viewing).  After a short hike through pretty thick brush heading in the supposed direction of the known creek, we found a bit of a path that we followed for a ways until we ran into a nice man and his friend who informed us that we were, in fact, on his land (the second time it's happened to him since the land went up for sale).  We apologized and explained the situation, so he showed us the property marker at the edge of the creek and we explored a little more from there.  The land was low, and the neighbor told us it often floods out from the river and can be very wet.  We weren't really impressed with the land, despite the breathtaking autumn view, so we headed back to the car.

Burnham, Waldo County, Maine

October 21, 2017 - Bradford

The next property we visited was in Bradford, Penobscot County, Maine (299 miles, 5.25 hours, same-day round trip).  This land was located on a discontinued town road that had been converted into an ATV and snowmobile trail (which we were thrilled about given that our family already has a passion for riding).  A discontinued road is not plowed or maintained by the town, but the property was located a short distance from the road - less than 1/4 mile I think - so we weren't incredibly concerned.

Bradford, Penobscot County, Maine

The land was owned by a logging company at the time (which is common in Maine, we found).  They'd done all they'd wanted to with harvesting the trees from the land and really left a mark..  The cleared areas were rampant with raspberries and there was a beautiful babbling brook through one portion of the land, but there were also a lot of other wet areas which may potentially hinder our intentions of having a garden and small livestock.  We checked this place out twice because we really liked the location, but in the end it didn't feel quite *right* so we continued our search.

Bradford, Penobscot County, Maine

November 11-12, 2017 - Amity

The third piece of land we visited and deeply considered was 40+ acres situated all the way up off Route 95 Exit 302 in Amity, Aroostook County, Maine (426 miles, 7.5 hours, two day trip).  Since this land was so far away and we spent an extended period of time exploring, we decided to book a local hotel in a nearby town that accepts pets since Willow and Tyson accompanied us (as they had for the other land-seeking trips and a few other unrelated overnight camping trips).  This was going to be their land, too, and we felt it important for them to be involved in the search.  We are a family of adventurers! (Side note - we went on a 900 mile round trip journey to get Tyson when he was 12 weeks old, and years later when 9 week old Willow came in to our lives, we drove 530 round trip miles to scoop her up!)  It was their first experience in a hotel room, and they both behaved extraordinary.

Tyson and Willow at the motel in Houlton, Maine

This was the first property we looked at that had an existing structure.  The cabin was in very rough condition, but we try to see past the surface to the bones.  It had potential, despite the massive amounts of trash and animal excrement...  Plus, there was twice the amount of acreage as the previous pieces of land which was an incredibly big draw.  We even saw a moose print at the end of the driveway, and spoke to a local who said there was a moose who lived in the area that you had to watch out for - moose can be incredibly dangerous.

Amity, Aroostook County, Maine

There was a second structure used as a shed. We were intrigued, and very interested, but the property left us with questions which left us uneasy that could not be answered because it was a bank sale and the property is sold "as is" without disclosures.  Thankfully, I like to find answers to questions, and when browsing a forum, I came across information regarding the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service National Wetlands Inventory.  You can go to this site, plug in an address, and it will tell you if there are any wetlands present and if so, what kind of wetlands they are.  Thank all the gods that I came across this information because when I plugged in the Amity address, it turned out that 90% of the land is considered wetland.  I was blown away, and we were very discouraged, but onward we trod!

The cabin is in the bottom left corner; the only portion of the land not considered Wetlands

Found At Last

It was on Craigslist, of all places, that R found our gem in the rough located in southern Piscataquis County.

Piscataquis County, Maine

November 23, 2017

R and I first visited the land on Thanksgiving.  We decided to forego the standard Thanksgiving celebration with one a little less conventional, thinking of it as a celebration of dreams.  Tyson and Willow came along, as they had to our other land visiting adventures.  They fare well in the truck, and Willow has even learned to utilize pit stops like the rest of us.

There is a local motel up the road a mile that we rented a room at for the weekend a couple of times before we were situated at camp.  We were very pleased that it accepted pets.  Willow and Tyson were both very well behaved guests.

Willow waits for dinner at the motel.

We weren't exactly sure what we were looking for because we weren't provided with any pictures.  The land is located about 2 miles down an unmaintained town road (i.e. jeep trail) with a spattering of off-grid, nearly most appearing abandoned, camps along the way, so we narrowed it down to two of which we thought one were the right parcel...we just didn't know which at the time.  We initially ended up at the neighboring camp.  It had seen better days and had likely been uninhabited for a while, but had a killer view of the stream.

The neighboring property overlooking Bog Brook

Willow the Grey Ninja

Tyson looking handsome in his Weatherbeeta jacket

We checked out the second parcel which turned out to be the one.  The previous owner had, so far, just built the shell of a cabin, but completed a lot of culvert and water diversion work.  A Starcraft Satellite camper was left behind and is in pretty good condition.  It has some potential with a small fridge that runs on propane which will be helpful in the summer, in addition to a small apartment size stove that runs on propane, too.  We could hook up our generator to it, but we don't want to listen to the noise.  Candles, headlamps, and lanterns work just fine.

Driveway looking out to the trail

First view ever of our future homestead

It has some potential, but needs a lot of work obviously.

December 2, 2017

The next time we visited, we went there with a purpose.  We knew for sure which land we were viewing this time, and since we planned on bushwhacking through the woods to see the stream frontage and to get a better lay of some of the land, we decided to leave Tyson and Willow back home to hold down the fort.  Without them, while we missed their presence, we were able to cover much more ground and really absorb the beautiful, magical forest.

A snippet of the views we see driving in to camp on the unmaintained town road.

Looking out to the stream through the woods.

Black and white birch are abundant

Looking out towards Bog Brook

Facing west

Facing east

Looking back towards camp from the stream

Now that we knew for sure we were in the right place, we also inspected the cabin and the camper a little more, but both were locked so we just peeked in the windows.  The camper appeared to be in decent condition inside, like it was kept relatively clean, and we didn't see any glaring leaks or evidence of past leaks.

The cabin shell is a little bit of a let down. R has worked in construction for decades, and he's already built a garage at home, and I am a capable gal as well - so we were planning on starting from scratch when building our final cabin, but it would have been nice if the existing cabin shell were salvageable.  However, we're not too sure at this point, and venture it will at least be good for burning.

R and I are optimistic with what we've seen.   The land is beautiful.  We don't have much of a concern for the camper and cabin, and figure we'll find something useful to do with them in the least.  Time to contact the owner for negotiations!