New Year's Tradition At New Moon Ranch

Pam and I moved to the four acres we grandly titled New Moon Ranch in April of 2009. After a tough spring, desperate summer, and productive autumn, we've come like everyone else to New Year's Eve. Knowing most of the businesses will be closed tomorrow, I drove into Sierra Vista today to stock up on propane for the camp trailer, gasoline for the generators, drinking water, etc. By the time I'd made it back to New Moon with the Subaru loaded heavily with green lumber and gray concrete bricks for our homebuilding project, an actual idea had burrowed with great determination into the dense bone between my ears.

Well, it must be dense. My late father, who seldom if ever cursed, did call me bonehead on many an occasion during my growing-up years. Admittedly, he sometimes had reason.

The idea: Why not found a fresh tradition that would mark the passage of time during our years on the land? I'm retired, Pam is disabled, and despite having roamed through half a dozen states and even more places of residence during the past thirteen years, we're not moving again, thank you very much. Besides, I instantly knew just what the tradition would be.

On New Year's Day, beginning with 2010 and continuing each year thereafter, I would:

1. Build a birdhouse. We both love seeing our feathered friends hang out in our vicinity. Feeding them is both expensive and a hassle, but food is not a problem for them here. Secure housing in snake country is another matter.

2. Only scrap materials already on hand are allowed for use in construction. New nails and reinforcing hardware are okay, but no new lumber. Fortunately, we have a whole bunch of the latter on hand at this time since I'm in the middle of building a house for our eventual occupation.

3. Not one penny may be spent in the process. In other words, no going to Home Depot to buy new hardware. If we have it handy, fine. If not, straighten out some old nails or tie the thing together with old barbed wire or something, but no out-of-pocket anything.

4. The birdhouse will be marked with the year before being hung or otherwise mounted to invite avian apartment dwellers.

5. One birdhouse per year--no more, no less. Obviously, if we live here for another 40 years (when I'd be 106 and Pam would be 98), that's 40 birdhouses.

Okay, folks. By early afternoon tomorrow, I've got a birdhouse to build. Need to stop writing for now and do a little research....

 It's New Year's Day, all right, but it surely does look a lot like the old 2009.  Before I could tackle building a birdhouse, my wife, Pam, informed me that I'd need to run to town, buy a deadbolt lock, and then deliver that plus some cash to her son.  Not that I resent helping Zach; he's a straight-up young dude who honors his mother and is willing to help us out any way he can, any time we need the help. 

That done, it was time to get a-building.  Fortunately, there are several scrap piles from which to choose. 

Unfortunately, I forgot all about having set the camera lens as wide open as possible in an attempt to capture a few shots of last night's Blue Moon.  Some cameras can adjust automatically to things like that.  This one can't.

Which explains my apology here and now for the poor quality of these photos....

Things went smoothly for a while. The only plan was in my head, but that's the way I usually work, anyway, whether the house is for the birds or for my human family to occupy. Amazingly, the Skilsaw blade turned out to be one that can rip a board as smoothly as any rip saw ever made. Before long, every needed piece of board was cut to the appropriate size with the required angle. Despite the fact that this birdhouse is made of heavy 2" x 12" planking--because that's the size of the lumber producing all those scraps--even cutting the round entry hole was a simple enough process.

True, I did cut a two inch hole despite online research indicating a whole lot of birds prefer a slightly smaller diameter. Why? Because that's the size of the drill arbor that happened to be on hand. So maybe we just produced a home for a fat bird. Is that bad? Prejudiced against the pudgy peeps, are we?

When it came time to begin nailing the boards together, I soon wanted to throw my hands up in disgust and quit the project entirely. Who cared about starting a stupid new tradition? I was losing time that could have been used to nail down some of the final planks atop the walls of our house-in-progress. Every nail seemed determined to veer off at an angle and either split the board that was being attached or miss that board entirely. One beautifully sawn piece of wood split right in half, sort of spontaneous split-bustion...it would have to be either replaced or mended with metal plates. I opted to mend it, cursing myself for nine kinds of idiot the entire while. A freaking birdhouse? Who needs it! Argh-h-h-h!

In fact, much as it pains me to admit it, I finally had to stop, take a deep breath, get focused on doing the job more or less right, and then...proceed with caution.

Once everything was tacked together and hurricane ties were being applied, my attitude improved dramatically. Not only was it now obvious that the hard part was over, but I'd somehow managed to shift from trying to get done with the project to actually doing the project. Besides, the afternoon sun was dropping toward the horizon. There wasn't time to do anything else, anyway, so....

I'd begun to actually enjoy myself...but please don't tell anybody....

By the time all the hurricane ties had been installed, the BD-KRM birdhouse was looking mighty fine. (BD-HRM stands for "Bird Domicile--Katrina Resistant Model". It's so thoroughly reinforced, as well as being so well fastened to the water storage tank decking, that even a hurricane force wind wouldn't move it a centimeter.)

Admittedly, it's not really a birdhouse. It's a bird fortress. Now we simply have to wait and see what sort of feathered friends (if any) will choose to nest this coming spring in the mother of all bird sanctuaries. Hopefully, we'll be able to snap a picture or two of a new tenant before this year's nesting season has come and gone.

In the meantime, I've got another full year before I have to do that again. Whew!