Homesteading-Living Off Grid

Besides living out in the woods when my husband and I homesteaded, some of our best memories were of the animals.

I have a little yorkie and on the homestead we called him the "Lizard King." We called him that because that is how he spent 85 percent of his time, chasing lizards or waiting on them to come out from their hiding places. I have to tell you, I am not really sure what was funnier, my yorkie chasing the lizards or my husband chasing the lizards that ran up the trees. While I watched my husband do that, it looked just like he was playing ring around the rosy. It was so funny!

Once early in the morning while my husband and I were sitting outside drinking our morning coffee, we looked over and seen an amazing sight. The huge mama opossum was walking across our yard with her little babies riding on her back. Another morning while we were sitting outside, we watched this coyote running like a flash of lightening trying to get to its home before it became full daylight.

We use to put seed piles by all of this little chipmunks favorite spots so we could watch him stuff his mouth and then dash off in a flash; as if he was running home and emptying his mouth to stock pile his food! Within a short while, he would return and do the same thing again. As long as we placed those little piles of seeds out he would do that.

We use to have a lot of hummingbirds. It seemed like they sat on the tree limbs and watched for the coast to be clear, dash down get some food from the feeders and zip off again back to the tree limbs. These little hummingbirds were so competitive with the feeders. One of them got hurt and fell to the ground. My husband picked it up and we tried to nurse it back to health, but it ended up dying. It was so sad, because we watched the life force drain from this beautiful little creature. All I could do was cry while my husband buried it. That was the first time in my life I ever held a hummingbird.

At night there were these huge opossums that kept keeping into our compost pile. Oh, my goodness, everything we tried to do to keep them away never worked. So my husband stocked a pile of small stones on the deck and when the opossums came back, he would throw rocks off in the distance to scare them away. Oh, it only worked a couple of times, because they kept coming back and nothing was going to stop them.

A beautiful sight was morning we were outside drinking our coffee and we looked up the driveway and seen a doe with her baby fawn. It was such a beautiful thing to watch.

There use to be this deck that went a distance from the house to another small shower room. One night my husband yelled for me to stop! He said, do not move when guess what was sticking up from between the boards, yes, a copperhead snake and it was a baby one. Eeeekkk! A few days later my husband walks up behind me and says look what I found AND it was that snake! His mother warned me, she said when he was a boy; he would come home with worms in his pockets and other strange creatures and to this very day, he will still bring strange creatures in the house to show me. Oh, and no he does not come home with worms in his pockets anymore.

I think one of the most beautiful memories we shared was lying in bed one night and looking out the window to watch the deer. They were right under our window, and of course not having any electricity the only sounds you really heard was Nature at her best! We just sat very quietly and just enjoyed watching these beautiful creatures, thank goodness it was a full moon night!