Paint­ing by Crys­tal Scheibel Thomp­son 1993

It was never sup­posed to be a house. A fresh start, become a land­holder, love an old way of liv­ing. The cabin was to be home dur­ing con­struc­tion of the real house, then came the county. Turns out even here one must obtain a per­mit to pur­sue life and lib­erty. And so began the meta­mor­pho­sis. There is no pro­vi­sion in the build­ing code for sub-standard, just for the interim, hous­ing. The out­house — absolutely not, stump foun­da­tion — for­get about it! It was good for us and for the house, it put us on the fast track to being legal and even a lit­tle civ­i­lized. By our fifth year we had power and indoor plumping.

Fred’s mom painted this from a pho­to­graph. Miss­ing are the tell-tell sings of non-electric: a clothes line, and a Laun­dry Hand Washer.

Hot Wire to keep the crit­ters in place.

Some advice for the wanna-be ani­mal care­taker. Build your sheds, fenc­ing, pas­ture and so forth first, then and only then bring home the new dis­as­ter, or maybe not… The advan­tage of try­ing to con­fine or keep them out of the gar­den in the mid­dle of the night in your under­clothes is you tend to learn faster what works and what doesn’t. Suf­fice it to say, it is much eas­ier to keep an ani­mal out of some­thing than in it. Next time I’m going to fence in the gar­den and house and turn the darn ani­mals loose. Prob­a­bly not — they say the only thing dumber than a cow is a cow owner.

By the time Lulu arrived we had learned our les­son well. A stumped, fenced and grassed pas­ture, water trough, and a solar pow­ered hot wire. It was so beau­ti­ful and serene; cows enjoy­ing lus­cious grass. Only Lulu was a mon­ster. Only days it seemed and the once 30 inch tall grass was shorn to the ground and Lulu was hun­gry. The trusty solar pow­ered hot wire was no match for the half ton plague on hooves. Chas­ing her back into the pas­ture became a daily rou­tine. Life with­out power had become nor­mal. Laun­dry was a huge chore. When we were espe­cially flush with money we would splurge and go to the laun­dro­mat in Joyce. The bewil­der­ment of the would be laun­dry crew dropped off in down­town Joyce with moun­tains of grimy clothes and the power is out. Most cer­tainly a gov­ern­ment plot against hippies.

Cleared and stumped pasture

With power to the house no one remem­bers which came first, the 100 volt fence charger or the wash­ing machine. But it was a pre­cious sight. Lulu the invin­ci­ble waster of pas­ture and fence, approaches the same old elec­tric wire. She thinks she is going to walk right through it. The whole fam­ily has gath­ered at the kitchen win­dow for the bat­tle. The spark, right on the nose; she bel­lows a hor­ri­ble moan, and drops to her knees.

We won! Our joy was complete.