Woods, Creeks, and Wild Turkeys calling, oh my!

You know it has been a great day, when you get home and your vehicle is totally muddy, there is mud between your toes, and splattered on your face! Spent the day running around in nature with one of my good buds, Ron. We met up out west of town and drove out to one of his buddy’s place, Tim. Now Tim has a great place he and his wife built and they live with nature. They have ponds that gravity feed to meet their water needs, have a cool greenhouse built out of windows and hay bales, gardens and fruit trees, root cellars, and critters.

The house is to the right and the pump house to the left in that pictures. There are barns with cattle, and some full of fire wood, as they heat and cook with woods.

Here is their greenhouse arrangement

These are amazing root cellars! They have a couple of these big metal tubes they bought. These folks make so much of what they need to. Notice the door pull. The one on the door leading into their house was made from half of a pair of pliers!

I didn’t have a flashlight with me and the inside of these cellars don’t have electricity, so no pics. I will be prepared next time as I want you to see how roomy, water and bug proof these were. My idea of a root cellar! They even had a friend stay in one of them until he finished his cabin.

We then headed for the 400 Acre Woods. There we just had a blast. Backpack full of books by Samuel Thayer, and good reference books on flowers, medicinal wild plants and trees. We found the cherry trees, sweet cicely, bloodroot, trilliums, spring beauties, wild strawberries, jack in the pulpit and more in bloom. We located slippery elm, paw paws, cottonwoods, cherry, sassafras, shagbark hickory, walnut, red and white acorn, basswood and many more trees. Ponds, creeks, and springs running down the hills, and seeps purcolating just up from the ground were all around us. Each hillside and creek side held different plants and it was so much fun to not hear a sound but the wild turkeys calling and be able to note as each area changed and revealed its own unique environ. We saw white tailed deer, opossum, and 1 snake.

We saw deer, raccoon, and turkey tracks and found spots where deer had been bedding down.

We stopped often and got out our field guides and other books and learned so much about how to use some of the things we found for medicine or food. Ron really got into grubbing out some spring beauty bulbs and we munched their flowers as we walked.

We waded creeks and walked barefoot till we could wash off the mud

I brought home a small sassafras sapling and some wild geranium to plant in the gardens. But best of all I brought home my wild heart full and at peace, and totally, and hopelessly reaffirmed in my love with nature.

Big hugs to all of you who visit Comfrey Cottages