The making of a refuge.

 

During most of our marriage, my husband has had jobs that required moving every few years. It was a hassle to move all the time, fixing up the house the way you wanted and then leaving. Wasting time and money fixing up a house for the next person to enjoy was getting old. This had to stop.

    

The last time it happened, I put my foot down. I advised my husband that he had better pick somewhere he wanted to stay for good. The choices were slim, finding an area we liked and having a good job close by was a difficult thing to do. Most of my husband’s work is centered around metropolitan areas, but we both love small towns and the rural life.

 

Even though Ohio is heavily populated, it also has a lot of farm country. My husband relocated to central Ohio, and I stayed behind to sell the house and pack up one more time. On weekends I would come up and we would go through as many houses as we could stand.

  

Then we found the one, it had everything we wanted. It wasn’t perfect; we had to take the good with the bad. It had everything we asked the realtor for: a fenced yard, a few acres of land, a fireplace, and a full basement. What we didn’t bargain for has a bathroom the size of a hallway closet and a very small second bedroom. Hey, nothing’s perfect. The best part of this place was that it was in our budget. Real estate in the mid-west seems like such a bargain compared to the prices we were use to.     

 

With less than a decade away from retirement, muddy mutts acres will be a big part of our retirement plan. The plan is to have our place paid off before retiring, making extra payments on the principle really add up fast. With a little discipline, we have been able to keep this extra payment up every month. With no rent or mortgage, paying only yearly property taxes will give our checkbook a break in our retirement years.

 

Now the fun part: painting, tearing out old carpet, and customizing. Five years later and I am still cutting out bushes around the front porch that hide the beautiful brick work. The place is slowly taking shape. It will always be a work in progress. Progress is coming along slower than I want; it seems like every project takes longer than I think it should. What takes us so long is, many projects require learning on the job. I am not saying we have become jack-of-all-trades, but we can play the part pretty well. 

 

One of our bigger projects was taking the building that was used for a commercial rabbitery for raising lab rabbits and turning it into a cage-free chicken coop. The first thing to go was the individual cages. The cages were gutted, so now it is a double-decker where they can run and stretch their wings. The chickens can easily hop from the lower deck to the upper deck. We added a fenced-in area that they can simply walk out the window and be outdoors and still be protected from predators.

 

Every once in awhile, we get a Redtail Hawk that perches itself on top of the roof of the fenced-in area and looks all around trying to find a way to get in. So far, it hasn’t. What is so funny is, the chickens don’t have a clue that the hawk is looking for dinner, them. Five chickens and one rooster give us enough eggs for us and a couple of friends.

 

The reason we call our place ‘muddy mutts acres’ is because we get a lot of rain in the spring and the back part of the property floods every year. Each year we have some geese and one lone crane that stop by on a layover for a few days. So we decided to make it a refuge for wildlife. Oh yeah, the dogs get covered in mud every spring too: “muddy mutts”.

 

It took some research but we found some native grasses and trees that would do well in wet areas. We needed something that would work as food and shelter for a variety of animals. It turned out to be harder to find a supplier for these plants than finding what would grow in wet soil. The local office for the state soil conservation service was a great place to find out what to grow and where to buy it. 

 

Sometimes we are slow to catch on. Several bushes and trees we planted didn’t take hold and the ones that did survive grew very little each year. After a couple of years of planting the same thing, we got the soil tested through the local agriculture co-op. They are more than happy to help you figure out what is wrong with your soil, because they have the products to sell you that make it better.

 

The soil needed to be replenished after years of growing the same crops. It is coming along better now that we added the right nutrients. Wish we had thought of testing the soil instead of wasting a couple of years trying to plant in poor soil. Now the plan moves forward. Adding a little bit each year, we have some serviceberry bushes and mulberry trees already going for the wildlife refuge area and we planted tall grasses and wildflowers last fall. Looking forward to seeing the wildflowers come up this spring.

 

What makes this a refuge for us personally is that we have taken a room and turned into our personal hideaway. The library is my personal area. My room includes my roll top desk and two walls lined with bookshelves filled with books of my personal choosing. To solve this dilemma of taking away the guestroom I put in a well-built futon, so now when we have guest it immediately becomes a comfortable bedroom.     

 

The place will always need work, but we will have the major work done in a few years. The basement is almost complete with a workshop/office for my husband. We still have more trees to plant and a greenhouse to finish, but it is slowly getting there. As time and money makes themselves available we keep working on our refuge from this crazy world.

 

The residents at muddy mutts acres are pure mix breeds. Our two dogs are happy, healthy mutts. Our two dogs and three cats were either abandoned or stray animals before coming to muddy mutts acres. Even my husband and I hold no pedigrees, a little of this and that. We are both from the great American melting pot.

       

Muddy mutts acres is consistently evolving to fit our needs and desires, but it is also a place where we can give back a little to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with. We have several bins that are used for recycling, all leftovers are given to the various animals to supplement their diet or put in the compost pile, and we have two motor scooters that we use for trips around town and to work. Of course it is work to haul the recycle bins to the recycle center and sometimes it is a little chilly to ride the scooter, but doing what is right isn’t always easy.  

 

In return for all work we have made a really is nice place that is our refuge. Somewhere you can replenish and recharge our soul; a place where we can work on the things that are important to us. When I come home, I am welcomed by my fellow mutts, this is where I belong. We would love to here from you, visit us at www.muddymuttsacres.com

 

C. Fern Cook is a free lance writer and author of “South Dakota Way”