We’re finally moving the last pieces of furniture today. I do believe this has been the most drawn-out moves I’ve ever encountered! It’s been almost 2 months since the closing and we’re still hauling pick-up loads of items, the majority of which is from the machine shed—an accumulation of two households’ worth of garden and farm tools and other “treasures.”

There’s a lot of wildlife in these woods! Click photo to enlarge

The chickens are still hanging out at the old place and the garden there needs tending (what little it gets), so we have to head back a few times a week to take care of those chores. Thankfully it’s on my way to the Countryside office anyway.

We had planned on bringing the hens to the new place, however there are neighborhood reports of cougar and bear in the area, so we’re hesitant—we really don’t want to “feed” the wildlife! Bruce, our neighbor to the north, knocked on our door yesterday afternoon to warn us he had just seen a 300-400 lb. bear pass in between our houses. Another neighboring couple came to introduce themselves last night and reported seeing cougar and badgers in the area, too. And we’ve turned on the yard light to find a chubby little raccoon precariously perched in (not on) one of the homemade bird feeders in a tree a few nights in a row, so even though it was cute to watch, the feeders are now history. There are tons of wild blackcaps, berries, apples, acorns and corn in the area, so I don’t blame the critters for hanging around. (If the birds can’t find other nourishment around here besides feeders, they’re in trouble anyway!)

This sounds like a pretty busy place, and only 5 miles from a town of about 68,000! (It’s closer if you hike over the steep wooded hill and across the hay field behind the house.)

You can probably imagine why my heart was thumping in my chest this morning while I hung clothes on the line—and it wasn’t all due to my morning dose of caffeine either. The crunching underbrush noises I heard coming from the woods made me mighty nervous after the bear-talk. (It sounded like something “heavy” was in there. It couldn’t possibly have been a measly little rabbit, could it?) I’ve heard you should make a lot of noise to keep wildlife at bay, so I talked (loudly) about nothing-in-particular to no one except our half-deaf 11-year-old Black Lab/Husky mix Gina, who was doing what she does best these days—snoozing in the shade just a few yards away. At least now I have a reason to talk to myself!

Our zone 3 garden is planted and after 7 years the soil in the raised beds is finally the right consistency to make planting a pleasure (although it’s been too cold and wet to grow much the past few days). It’s not perfect soil, but much better than the clay and rock it contained a few Springs ago. Fruit trees planted three years ago survived another winter—and the hungry deer and rabbits. Blackberries transplanted from a friend’s garden are leafing out; the fickle blueberries even have a few leaves. (I never have had luck with them.) The asparagus is finally old enough to start to harvest, going through 2 years to reseed itself. The hens are frolicking outdoors after being cooped up in the barn all winter. Perennial flowers have begun to fill in the flower beds. It’s almost picture-perfect.

Of course all of this can only mean one thing… we’re moving.

Moving has always been exciting to me—well, maybe not the duct tape/box-packing/can’t-find-the-coffee-pot part. But it’s a chance to start over and create a new garden with a new personality, sometimes on a very blank slate.

While it’s still a wee bit early in the season here in Wisconsin (or at least unseasonably cold), we’ve found the new acreage about 80 miles to the southwest already has tiny apples forming (what kind is beyond me), asparagus (in the tiered, overgrown flower bed), and raspberries (in another flower bed—entangled in wild rose bushes, weeds, a small dead tree, and orange columbines, which are lovely at the moment).

We’ll be busy digging and transplanting whatever we can salvage from both places. The horseradish is sitting in a pot ready to be relocated “south” and we’ll have to salvage some rhubarb before we go, since the new place doesn’t have any. (Almost every farmstead in Wisconsin has a rhubarb bed generations old.) Hopefully we’ll be able to harvest some of the strawberries before a new occupant gleans the goodies.