Seamusville

Our friend and sometimes hired man has had an eventfull summer. Seamus is one of the last homesteaders. For the past few years he had been living in the milkhouse of his old family farm, with cold running water and a cookstove which he used for cooking and which kept the milkhouse from freezing up. He has an old jersey milk cow which, in conjunction with his chickens and garden provide him with almost all of his sustainance. He has been able to sustain himself this way with only occasional outside work. This spring the word came down from his aunt and uncle who own the land that his milk house, garden and pasture are on, that they would be selling this property, so Seamus had to find other arrangements. Since we depend on Seamus for some part time help like butchering chickens and stacking hay, as well as doing chores so that we can go away once in a while, we decided that he could set up down by the barn until a better opportunity presented itself. He traded a neighbor a few pounds of butter for the camper in the picture. The shed that says "produce" on it was a building I built on skids to use as a scale shack back when we used to raise strawberries. Seamus has that set up as a kitchen.

Seamusville was settled June 8th, 2006.

Since then he has been offered a great opportunity at the other end of our road. A couple we have known for a few years bought a parcel of land that adjoins their other land. It happens to have a rundown house on it that would be considered uninhabitable by most people, but Seamus has lived in some rough conditions, so for him the place is loaded with potential. In exchange for his ridiculously low rent he is going to be making some improvements to the house. He also has access to a fair amount of land that goes with this property, so his cow will be able to graze and he should have enough land to be able to begin a market garden. He also got a full time job which is only a half mile from his new house, which is pretty amazing when you consider how remote of a location we are talking about.

He is moving in over there today.