To begin here, we are sitting on .96 of an acre. When the creek allows, that is.

With an average rainfall of twelve feet per year since we are but a stone’s throw from a real live “Rain Forest” we have some challenges, as well as benefits to living out here.

“Pressure treated” lumber laughs at us. We have slugs like you may have never seen most likely. The biggest one I have measured was a hair under one foot long. Hence us getting ducks to keep the garden in check.

To the guys out there…. married or who have a significant other… have you ever, for instance for Mother’s Day, slipped in a gift that YOU really wanted and just HOPED LIKE HELL that your wife would also…. love it?

Note…. the ducks were a good educated guess that my wife Christine would love them. I mean, the following year I bought “her” an AR-15 pistol with a green laser sight which she liked for the logic of home defense but it did not cause the warm fuzzies to the same level that adorable baby ducks did.

So anway, I came home with six Khaki Campbell Ducks about three or four years ago. It was a hit right off the bat and we went immediately back into Forks (our nearest “city”) and purchased the last four or six Khaki Campbell Ducks from the ONLY BUSINESS in Forks selling ducks at all. VISIT Rusty Gate Nursery.

Small world that it is…. (especially out here) I ended up knowing the guy (hi Jason) who originally supplied The Rusty Gate Nursery with our baby ducks. I recently sold him a dozen eggs which were descendants from his original ducks.

We have also grown fourteen varieties of Tobacco plants just to see which, if any, would do well here.

I have many many red wriggler composting worms all over the place now. Originally back when I first started with the “worm project” a dozen or so years ago there was NOBODY on Ebay, let alone Amazon selling these worms and I ended up getting my initial stock from a guy in Canada.

I did an experiment with Shitake and a bit of Oyster mushrooms in logs, also starting about a dozen years ago. The goats came along (because my wife wanted them) and I ended up putting the mushrooms down a couple notches on our priorties.

I wanted to take to take the mushroom project up to a much higher level. I figured that if I was diligent and studied how to make spawn and dowels myself indoors using a retrofitted “Grow Tent”, then we could really do much more to economically create an UNLIMITED AMOUNT of spawn and we live in an environment ideal for mushrooms. Seemed a no-brainer.

I decided to embrace the whole “hillbilly” and “insane acre” angle because, let’s face it, we were living paycheck to paycheck AND SO WERE OUR GOATS, CHICKENS AND RABBITS. And having to be frugal is where my thinking out of the box, sometimes called “Hillbilly” by my much more refined wife Christine was born.