My dad used to call people who he thought were dumb “squirrel-heads”. I think it had something to do with nuts – as in “he’s nuts”. Anyway, I’ve always thought squirrels were a very fun animal. Very resourceful, they seem to have a good time, and they are fluffy, and really – they are pretty cute. On the other hand, they go whereever they think they can get some food, and being rodents, food seems to be right at the top of their list of good times. I decided they had eaten enough of my bird food, and it was clear that what I needed was a way to discourage their daily food run. Besides, I needed something fun to do.
Jamie is really an amazing “hunter/gatherer”. Most weekends she gathers beads, and so when you gather beads, you want to get them ready to make new Bead People – what else??
Those of you that have been following my vlog know by now that we spent a month homesteading in Cass Lake Minnesota this summer. What most of you don’t know is that it never would have been possible without the amazing help of Rick and Jeff Baird. They are Jamie’s brother, and after twenty years in the family, they feel like my brothers too. The main person is this video is Rick, the older of the two. Jeff is the guy in the shorts.
These guys know more about creating stuff out of metal than I could even began to tell you. I am constantly amazed by the their skill, dexterity, and creativity. This particular day, Rick was creating a small piece to hold a tiller on the back of a tractor. In about 20 minutes it was done, and it worked perfectly.
We came back from Cass Lake to discover our garden had become quite overgrown with weeds. After 2 days of weeding – actually just a few hours divided over 2 days, we had a beautiful garden again, with lots of wonderful food growing away like crazy. We are pretty committed to organic gardening, so we never put anything on to kill the weeds, but we do use mulch and such. But you can’t leave a garden for month without touching it, and expect the weeds to take a vacation. We had a ton of tomatoes coming on and the peppers were going to be great. Jamie really loves to can, make jellies, pickles and varieties of tomato mix. Yummy!
I've been working on our original website 
