Far From the Maddening Crowd

When I saw retirement on the horizon, I decided to pursue one of my lifelong dreams -- to have a place in the country that I could manage for sustainability and increased biodiversity, a sanctuary for wild things, many of which are persecuted and pushed aside by humanity in our headlong rush to "progress". I began searching for land in NE Iowa, not to far from Cedar Rapids, that wouldn't take me half and day and many gallons of gasoline to get to. The counties comprising NE Iowa are very unlike the rest of the state, much of which has been altered from its original state, and converted into a monoculture of endless fields of corn. NE Iowa, the so-called "driftless area", was never covered and eroded level by the last glacier, and is characterized by lovely rolling tree-covered and limestone out-croppings. After several months of searching I settled on 30 acres, 23 acres of which were woodland. I was able to make the purchase with money inherited from a very frugal person, my mother Dorothy, one of the finest mothers any man could hope for. One of the first things I did in 2003 was to purchase a log cabin, hand-crafted by the Amish. The bottom half of the cabin was built by Amish in Wisconsin and was delivered by a huge truck. I was taken aback when I saw the flatbed truck carrying the cabin coming down the road! The cabin was then lifted by a crane and carefully set on pilings. Then it was the turn of local Amish carpenters who constructed the top half of the cabin on site. Because I like to hear the sound of rain on a metal roof I opted for the slightly more expensive option of a metal roof. Once the cabin was in place, I could then think about my water and energy needs, and all the landscaping and tree planting that I knew would keep me busy for years to come.
I knew I wanted to be off-grid and to generate my own electricity, so one of my first decisions was to purchase 4 photovoltaic panels. I purchased an energy efficient DC refrigerator which runs directly off the batteries. For my lighting needs in the evening, I have an inverter which converts DC to AC to illuminate the compact flourescent bulbs in my lamps. At the same time I started a modest garden, which has grown bigger and bigger with every passing year. The photo below shows my PV panels and part of a bumper crop of butternut squash.

I considered the cost of putting in a well prohibitively expensive, and so I installed a 500-gallon tank which collects rainwater off the roof. I use this water to water the garden and to take bucket baths. My drinking water needs are met by water that I bring to the cabin from Cedar Rapids, less that 75 miles away. I enjoy long-distance hiking and when I am at the cabin I often hike the property, and so one of the first things I did was to establish several trails, many of which were already there thanks to the many deer that live on the property, and take more than their fair share of my garden and the young trees I plant. Below you see a photo of part of the Ridge Trail and some of the limestone bluffs on the property.

At the same time that I was exploring the woods I began an ambitious project of building rock walkways. Whenever I found flat rocks I would collect them. As I am a low-tech operation with my machinery, the rocks were hand-carried out of the woods. Other rocks, for either the walkways or for landscaping, were collected with my car from rockslides at the side of roads. As I was building the walkways I began planting trees, shrubs, and flowers. Every year I plant dozens of trees: pines, spruce, oaks, black walnut, chestnut, and many others. I planted dozens of serviceberries around the cabin: these produce lovely white flowers in the Spring, soon followed by berries which attract robins, cardinals, cedar waxwings, and other birds. One of my major tree-planting efforts involved hazelnuts. I have planted many hazelnut trees, located in a small grove next to my storage shed and very sturdy outhouse, and with others scattered around the property. The nuts are produced inside clusters which develop from small inconspicuous flowers. Because most of my hazelnut trees are hybrids they produce numerous clusters, some of which can contain up to as many as 10-12 nuts! I love flowers, especially lilies and lupines, and I planted many around the cabin. Some hazelnuts clusters from the hazelnut trees and some of the lupines I have planted by the porch of the cabin can be see in the photos below.

One of the features of the property that I found attractive when I first saw it was the fact that there was a small pond. The pond had no resident fish, so it was an ideal location for the breeding of amphibians. During the first year, as I went to bed at night, I could hear many different kinds of frogs calling from the pond. I also found a few Tiger salamanders near the cabin, so assume they are breeding in the pond as well. During the first year I installed a nest box for woodducks, and they soon began using it. I also saw a lone painted turtle, but over the years more turtles have miraculously made it to the pond from elsewhere, and now I have counted as many as 7 painted turtles sunning themselves on logs or on shore. Water attracts wildlife, and since my goal is to provide sanctuary and as much useful habitat for wild critters as possible, I also built a small Amphibian Pond next to the cabin, which collects some of the rainwater from off the roof of the cabin. Below is a photo of the pond and the small amphibian pond which I built, which is filled with American toad and Gray treefrog tadpoles each year.