Cow repellant, redneck teenagers and the wife's quest for fire

Wow.  Our Wa was jacked up this weekend.  We had too many unwelcome and destructive visitors to our little oasis-in-progress and they set our progress back a good couple of days.  Grrrr...

First of were the critters: 
Rabbits.  Not at all afraid and running around all over the place.  Kinda cute, and not really a problem. 

Cute ground squirrels.  Also no problem. 

Cows.  Stupid cows.  Wyoming is a "Fence Out" state.  This means that until we can build a fence, the cows can come and go as they wish.  Most of our stuff is pretty damage proof, but the cows bend pickets and knock stuff over and trample the hell out of whatever is left out.  Stupid Cows. 

Mosquitos.  Nuff said.

Also, on Saturday night, just as we were settling in to sleep in the Subaru, we saw and heard a truck barreling down the road.  No big deal until they saw our driveway and decided to stop and drive across / over / through the culvert and completely gouge the hell out of the land-bridge.  Plus, it made us jump out all freaked out that they were coming out to where we were.  We don't have any firearms yet and our no tresspassing sign wasn't out on the entrance yet.  It is now.  They turned back when they realized they were going onto the property with pickets and a bit of fencing blocking the way, but not before tearing shit up with their big old truck.

One good thing about the desert, is that you can see and hear over great distances, and Husband watched and listened as they went up the road about 2 miles before stopping and pulling off into the brush and heading up into the hills.  They stopped up there and were shooting guns until about 11PM until they moved on deeper into the wasteland.

It was un-nerving and was a reality check as to how isolated we are out there with no electricity, no cellphone service and no way of defending ourselves from idiot rednecks looking for trouble.  That will change soon. 

We also tried out our solar cooker, but it didn't work very well due to the high winds of Wyoming.  It lowers the temp too much to be effective.  Plan B was to start a fire in the rocket stove to heat up dinner.  FALE.  Usually those work pretty well but not this time.  Plan C was to try a bigger version of a Hobo stove.  Fail again.  Plan D was to break out the smoker and the lamp oil and light the world on fire.  GREAT SUCCESS!  Big old conflagration.  Before long dinner was boiling away nicely.  Dinner: Rice cooked with V8, artichokes and shrimp.  Not sure if it was of how hungry we were, but it sure was yummy!

The perfect way to scare away cows who want to wreck your stuff.

From here you can see the berm progress, all the vegitation that we dug up, the dome roof for the bathroom and both botanical cells installed and ready for plants!

The pipe from the septic for the Blackwater botanical cell and bottom fill before the next layer of soil for planting.

Redneck tire tracks wrecking the sides of the culvert.  We could barely get the car across they tore up the sides so bad.  Jerks.

We moved one of the cages out and put up the No Tresspassing sign.  The next one will say "If You Can Read This, You Are In Range."

G.T.F.A.!!!
(Go The Heck Away, but with a different word.)


Next week we're out there for 6 days.  First item on the agenda: fix the culvert and install posts for a fence.