We made it up again this past weekend after a two week ‘moving’ hiatus. Whew, glad to be done moving and able to visit our ranch once again. We arrived Friday evening, right after sunset. Not much we can do in the dark but enjoy the peace and quiet our property brings. The sky was a mix of clouds and stars, with more and more stars as the night moved on. I thought it would be a peaceful night’s sleep, but a nice storm rolling through had something to say about that. Not much in the way of rain, I think it just missed us, but more wind like a storm was coming. And then it just stopped.
Saturday morning we woke up and after a peaceful cup of coffee, we got started on bringing the loft skeleton down.
Our idea was to fix two ropes to the West and North sides headers and corner posts. Then, attach those to the back of the jeep, taking up the slack. Then we removed all of the big screws attaching the footers to the loft floor.
Then we slowly pulled away and with ease the loft skeleton came down. Just like that.
Next it was time to start claiming all of that lumber/materials. We ended up with a lot material, enough to construct our new storage shed just South of the containers. This will allow us to clear out all the tools/hardware we are storing in there and start the wood stove move process. We are truly happy the loft is down. Sorry John, but now we don’t stand out above the tree line and currently have material to move on to other ‘pre-winter’ projects.
While I was working on clearing out the lumber (screws and nails) Sheralee moved our kitchen items from our outside storage shed, which served is so well, to a rack inside the container. This will keep our stuff clean and easier to access each day. It is like another ‘baby step’ in this big process, but a nice one.
For us, this is huge….just nice to have our stuff inside! That was pretty much it for Saturday, although after we emptied that little plastic shed, I moved it over next to the container to hold our dry material for fire building. In doing so, I uncovered this little guy.
I have seen tarantulas in AZ before, and they were always bigger down near Yuma. This guy wasn’t huge, but he had a sweet spot under that shed. Well, it was eviction time and he had to move on.
One other thing happened on Saturday. With tearing down the left, we seemed to have disturbed a bee’s next somewhere, possibly either in the space between our loft floor and the container, or under the container…not sure yet. Anyways, at first it was a few here and there, and then more…and then more. hahahaha. Soon enough, both of us got stung. So, we laid a trap for some of them. We put out a bull of sugar water, and then a 1gal jug with some of the stuff in the bottom.
These pictures don’t do it justice. The bowl on the left was drained after about 20 minutes….and bees lined all sides. Then they moved to the water jug. We capped it and I believe we sacrificed close to 150 bees in there. Done! Yup, we disturbed them again Sunday morning, but something we found that ‘might’ work as a natural repellent, is mint. Who knows, but it coincidentally worked on Saturday.
Sunday, we were awaken by a pack of coyote’s really close to us. No, not moving illegals across the border, the four legged kind. I was hoping they would cross right in front of our patio door, but no such luck.
I continued reclaiming material from the loft, and Sheralee worked on bringing down our old chimney support with a goal to remove our wood stove from inside. She pulled the stove out and started the cleanup of it, which will lead to a new paint job. Sheralee also added an RV type vent that we purchased a long time ago, giving us a vent (with a DC fan) right above where the fridge will sit.
That will be where the fridge goes, as this will eventually be our kitchen. The RV vent fits perfectly. All we have to do is mount it with some self-tapping screws and then caulk the crap out of it. ha.
I also added a ‘temporary’ water catchment off of our material shed, so we catch some of the rain from this week.
I am not completely happy with this, so I am going to re-do it with PVC pipe and drain directly into the white 35 gallon tank that is there.
All in all, another great weekend, and the weather was actually really nice! The heavy rain was just settling in as we left. On our drive into Seligman, there was a lightning strike right off the road to our left and then the thunder from that scared us both…it was insane! There should be good rain up there this week, so we are excited to see what kind of water we have after this monsoon week.