Moving to Woodland in 2017. Personal Story. Part 4

Unregistered Household Inhabitants.

The Dog that tried his best
helping to deal with mice.

For those who are tired from the endless run in the city, moving to countryside might sound like the most romantic idea in the world – peace and silence, no crowds, just nature – and that’s how it is. It’s beautiful. But living with nature in natural environment means a bit more than just enjoying the beauty of nature and planting the garden. It also means that nature will come in your life in different forms not always in a pleasant way. 

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)
Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Part 3 here: The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where. (opens in new window)

Life happens outdoors and indoors with or without you willing it to happen. And endless love for nature won’t save you.  Not the most pleasant part of countryside life, especially if you are in an old house that requires looots of renovations that will last for years. That’s our case and we are dealing with it. So, this time about sharing living space with unpleasant household inhabitants. Identifying the first two „enemies” who love living with people was easy:  mice & fleas. So, first things first:

How to get rid of mice living in countryside?

Oh  boy, this was an adventure, and the short answer is you can’t get rid of them entirely. They will always be somewhere around, and that’s definitely not the worst thing that might happen. In natural environment they are food for big birds like eagles and owls, for bigger reptiles, and mammals like cats, foxes and others. Outdoors they will eat from your garden, roots and vegetables make great snacks for them, but that’s not the biggest issue. The biggest issue for us was getting them out of our home indoors. First months of living here I heard them dancing everywhere, especially at night and I have no doubt they were running over me while I  was asleep. I don’t want even imagine that. 

Our old dog was annoyed by the mice as much as we were. He was trying to catch mice, but his size and lack of agility didn't allow him to be a good helper with this. So, we had to go to the war. Against mice.

Block their ways

Firstly, you have to block their entrances into the house. In an old  building there might be more of mice  ways and tunnels than you could expect. Every crack in a wall or floor is their opportunity to get into warmth and to your food kept indoors. If the house is renovated before you move in, great! If not, seek for strong materials to fill those cracks and holes with until you can get to proper renovations. But, if you keep doors and/or windows open in summer (as we do) they will get in unnoticed.

Don’t leave food available for snacking

The second thing, do your best to store your food in containers that mice can’t get through. Leaving cookies overnight on a kitchen (or any other) table is a huge NO – they will feast on them. We also lived through a period where we were washing dishes not just after meals but also before – because the mice shit all around showed that they might love playing on our dishes as well.

The mythical powers of aluminum foil

I was digging internet for natural methods of getting rid of them – those little, cute looking fellas were really disturbing. One of those short-term methods I found online as great helpers where covering surfaces with aluminum foil. Of course, I  had to try, especially because internet told me it works. And it did help. For 2 days. Then the mice learnt that aluminum foil doesn’t do anything bad to them and returned to their old trails without caring for shine and noise aluminum foil makes. They didn’t eat their ways to food covered  with foil in our home, but I’ve heard it’s not a big deal for mice in other households – they just eat their way through aluminum foil. So, it’s a solution for a day.

Peppermint & Cloves

This comes from the depths of internet as well:  peppermint and clove aroma is way too strong for mice and they don’t go where these aromas rule. So, I brewed a strong infusion of peppermint herb and cloves to wash floors with. I generously added peppermint & clove essential oils to the water. The aroma was so strong it was too strong even for myself. It had to work.

That  was the night the mice moved from the floor to walls. And ate a few plants I had started indoors to plant outside later.

I heard them running on walls and from times to times falling down and that was worse than hearing them moving around on the floor.

I also scattered cloves around the places I’ve observed as their highways. Did that help? I don’t know. I was mixing different methods  on early spring because the presence of mice inside the house was pretty disturbing.

Heroes of this War

We won the war with mice through friendship with cats. We befriended an outdoor cat that already lived outside around our house. We really wanted to get him to live indoors with us, but he is such a wild creature that he panics every time he is indoor and the door is closed. Whole summer we were trying to the get that cat indoors. He entered only when he was sure the door won’t close, and those rare days when he came indoors, he was extremely fast bringing out of the house freshly caught mice. That helped. A little bit. This cat didn’t necessarily need our indoor mice as he had a wide world for hunting outdoors.

In  October we spotted another cat visiting our household and she moved indoors to live with us. Our new cat turned out to be the greates huntress ever. For the first few days she was catching mice and bringing them to us to show what she has caught for us. And, to be honest, we were tired enough from the war with mice, that we celebrated every victory our cat brought us. Since we live with one cat outdoors and one indoors, we haven’t heard from mice anymore.  We won the war with mice through friendship with cats. I don’t know any better method. The cat turned out to be the greatest weapon.

And as the cat doesn't care for cookies and mice are scared to from the cat we actually can leave a dish of cookies on a table and it will stay untouched :D 

Our heroic huntress

The mice lived around here in countryside and they will always live here, but I want to keep them outdoors. So, I sometimes leave veggies in the fields not too close to the house where they can easily find and feast on them.

Encounters with some especially unpleasant hitchhikers from insect realm are on the way in the next post of this „Moving to Woodland in 2017” series.

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)
Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Part 3 here: The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where. (opens in new window)

You are welcome to leave your questions, ideas & worries in the comments, and I will try to answer them in the next posts.

Moving to Woodlands in 2017. Personal story. Part 3.

The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where.

Living surrounded by the fields of buckwheat. 
This is June. 

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)

Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Moving to countryside at the age of a young adult is a pretty... giddy experience. You find a little wonder to be excited about every single day. After living 10 years in the walls of city apartment, totally dependent on money and directly affected by what others around are doing, countryside life for me feels like freedom. My home isn’t just indoors. My home is the whole old house, the frontyard, backyard, garden, fields around and forests. The sense of home has grately expanded together with the sense of responsibility. So, we had to define the main principles of our life here, we had to give ourselves the guidelines of building this life based on our values, on what feels right to us, on what we want and hope for. There are dozens of ways of doing the same thing while producing different side-effects. And those side-effects are what we care about because they define our health and happiness. After 9 months of life here we are still defining those rules, it’s not that everything is clearly understandable for us since we are here. Some days there are more questions than answers. Fortunately, the sense of life doesn’t disturb me anymore. I’ve got it.

So, the main rules of our countryside life, or just living in general.  I’m pretty sure more will clear out over time, but it will be easier for you later to follow and understand my story if you know our basic principles. Now we are trying our best to stick to these rules. You know, when the habit is settled in, sticking to it becomes effortless. What matters is the direction and healthy ways of getting there, with more or less of success  we are on this road (not necessarily in the exact order):

1) Proper healthcare is the basis of healthy, active life.

Oh boy, majority of what we do is for the sake of a good health, and for us it doesn’t mean limitless doctor appointments, tests, vitamin pills and amazingly rewarding healthcare plans. Since nobody is paying us for sick days and we have a lot to do here, we can’t afford the luxury of being sick and too weak. We really need to stay strong and capable of working productively.  

For us good healthcare means:

The pumpkin king grown in our garden this summer.

+ Eating good food. Organically grown, local, homegrown, foraged, homemade, fresh – food that is rich in vitamins & minerals, valuable for the whole body. First remedies for health issues have to come on a plate or in a cup. Of course, with exceptions of those issues we haven’t dealt with before and can’t take the pain :D . In all other cases – first, search for natural remedies, no, problem with that. Been on the track for quite some time, five years? Maybe more. I don’t know for sure.  

+ Moving. Staying active every day. If not in any other way than at least by hiking in forests around on lazy days. Usually, this isn’t a problem as countryside doesn’t let you sit on your ass for too long. Gardening and renovating keeps us moving every single day, and I'm really happy for that. 

+Boosting immunity. Getting stronger. Food, of course, is one of the greatest helpers, but hardening ourselves helps too. Getting used to climate contrasts indoors and outdoors, regularly heating up  in traditional steam-bath & cooling down outdoors, getting used to colder water and so on. Traditional steam-bath, by the way, is one of the greatest treasures of our countryside life, and every soul working for themselves in the coutryside deserves a good steam-bath. It’s therapeutic and healing on all levels of human being I can possibly imagine. I’m serious about this.

+ Slowing down. Having a good rest. If you feel the need to rest, do it. Quality healthcare includes as much of rest as needed. Resting and being lazy isn’t the same. For now, while we don’t have jobs outside of our home, we don’t have kids and work for ourselves, we have the luxury of being the bosses of ourselves and owning our own time. A really precious time in our lives.  So, if we want to enjoy it and use productively, we have to stay active and strong, and without proper rest we can’t do it.

+ Keeping balance. In everything mentioned above. Don’t eat too much, don’t underrate the doctor’s advice, don’t put all of your eggs in the same basket, don’t celebrate for too long, don’t jump twice your limits, enjoy beer for enjoying it not for getting drunk, don’t get overly negative, positive, attached, carelees or whatever else from the same page. I mean, trying things that are out of order is grately appreciated here, but coming back home to senses and realistic world-view is quitely celebrated as well.

2)    Caring for the health of the environment around is caring for ourselves in the long term.

It includes recycling, reducing waste and trash, choosing natural, degradable materials, taking care of the forest, planting & companion planting, natural fertilizers in the garden, natural cleaning detergents indoors (including those for personal hygiene and health & beauty care), long-lasting but human & environment health friendly building materials and methods. We are on a bit of a difficult mission with this, but on the way. While we are not millionaires and love researching and experimenting, we get to make many things on our own. It takes time, a lot of time and patience, but minimal financial resources. Sometimes the lack of easily available (or searchable) info slows us down with this.  

3)   Renovating with the respect to the past is keeping the cultural heritage, honoring those before us and keeping developing the work people did here before us.

Not living in the house that looks like in thirties, fourties or nineties (we have some renewable furniture pieces from these times), but respecting the heritage of the house indoors and outside, and in the garden around. One of the things here, we want to do it using our own hands – it’s a part of the heritage. Investing our time in the house and piece of land we are responsible for is the heritage of this place. And our choice as well. We are crafters. We can do this. We can learn.

The beauty of seasons you can observe and feel in all possible ways. 

4)  Limiting our dependence of commercial products and services is building a firm foundation for personal freedom.

For the sake of happiness. For the sake of healthy nervous system. For the sake of staying out of the run for money. It means we have to learn providing for ourselves a lot. It’s also a good way to sort out what isn’t that necesarry to feel comfortable and satisfied. We can’t go totally shopping-free at least not until the main parts of the house are renovated. For example, I can’t imagine how I could make a proper indoor’s toilet without spending money, as we are starting here with the toilet only outdoors. I will also keep buying a few things other things, for example, culinary oil – making it just for ourselves would cost more time and other resources than we are ready to invest in it. I could simply exclude it from the menu, but I kinda like it there. It suits our kitchen. And we are still willing to pay for the communications. I mean, c’mon, internet is an amazing place if we use it in amazing ways, and phone is pretty handy.

We are not that extreme, right? We are not craving for the most super-modern things, gadgets, services and so on, but we are not also denying their usability in our home. If something brings great value to help us move on with the rest in our lives, our door is open. The main thing is keeping it cool. Keeping the head cool evaluating what we need and don’t need. Breeding the greed is not acceptable, but I doesn't mean we are sitting here denying any kind of money - earning journeys. 

The little wonders from walks in the woods.

 5) If we don’t allow ourselves to enjoy ourselves and what we do, the life is not worth living.

We have seen many people in both sides of the ship – in city and at the countryside stuck in the run, unhappy, physically & mentally broken. There is never enough, never good enough, they breathe and breed greed that kills them in ugly ways. We are pretty aware of the fact that our time on this Earth is limited. We owe it to the evolution: we have to allow oursevles to enjoy all of this. It’s probably only the matter of attitude that we want to keep in the long run. Read books for enjoyment. Watch movies. Listen music – not keeping it as a background noise, but really listening to it. Laugh, experiment, learn, achieve, sleep, go for walks, stop and feel the world around with all of the senses you have. Don’t deny yourself pleasures. Don’t delay pleasures. In the name of love for sleeping I tend to delay alarm clock on mornings, and sometimes I don’t feel guilty about it. I just enjoy sleeping. Especially on mornings.

6)  Never stop learning.

For the sake of brain development, gaining new skills and improving our own lives that cross many roads of others around us. Read books, watch movies, listen music, experiment, try, train, discipline yourself & feel. Never stop learning, it will only expand and improve our knowledge, abilities, skills and ways of living the lives we want.

Our most valuable currency now is time, and, no, time, isn’t money. It’s a lot more than that. 

The part about unwanted & unplanned house guests & inhabitants is coming next. You know, even countryside life isn't just flowers and butterflies. :) 

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)

Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Moving to Woodlands in 2017. Personal story. Part 1.

Some call it the world awakening, others say those who seek happiness moving to countryside are crazy or simply following trends  and will run back to the comfort of cities soon. Some congratulate those who leave cities and others fear for them. The movement of moving away from big cities is real, it grows in heads of many people like mushrooms after rain. Me & my husband were longing for countryside life, so, here we are now –  after 10 years in city moved to woodlands in 2017, and not leaving it. We are staying here. This is our honest „moving to countryside” story & my thoughts from the house, garden and woodlands.

That's the house

Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around.

I started this blog living in a rented city apartment  in 2014 in the name of missing the things that from times to times appeared into my head as voices from the past, from the life in the countryside where I grew up. About a year later the idea of moving to countryside started to visit me and my husband (we weren’t married yet). We decided to move into my husbands childhood house in the woodlands  - 90+ years old wooden building that hasn’t experienced much of care for the past 15 years. 2 km to the closest bust stop. 15km to the closest town.  We knew what it would mean – a loooot of renovations and different kinds of physical work. So, we decided to approach this idea as adults. We started to plan.  We calculated that we will need about 5 years to get at least some financial savings to help us start the life in the woodlands. So, 5 years it was.
But we both haven't been very precise planning the future. 

The idea  in our heads grew stronger. We visited the house a lot more often, started  to clean, plant flowers, make minor improvements. We spent vacations in the old house with hopes that it will really happen and we will move in soon. Well, there was some kind of doubts, as we both had proven to ourselves that we are terrible at planning... Besides that we had lives in the city, friends, our routines, favorite bar. I was a ghostwriter , he had a good job, band and improvisation theater, concerts & improv-shows, I started to grow different plants on all 3 windowsills of our 2-room city apartment, including tomatoes. And all of that wasn’t making us happy. We wanted to get married, we wanted to travel, we wanted to move sooner, we were running after money every day, in a wheel where that money was never ours anyways.  We were breaking down  & burning out. 5 years felt way too much before we get to the woodlands.

In 2016 with an idea of moving to coutryside (and knowing that job market there is almost non-existent ), I started to look for some additional hobby-based income, so, I opened an Etsy shop. I’m a crafter by heart, I have always been crafting a bit too much for myself, now I decided to try putting it out in the world. As I’m the marketing dummy, the money didn’t exactly run to my bank account to become a part of the savings for „the new life”, but the time of city life started to run out much faster than expected. We trew out the idea of the 5 year plan & savings, quietly got married in 2016 without guests and parties (it felt right and still does).  We figured out the soonest possible option of getting there & instead of making savings we started to buy tools for renovations, gardening and other countryside needs – things we will need right from the beginning. And at the end of February in 2017 I already moved in. My husband stayed 2 more months in the city to catch a bit of better paying season at work, but I was already here. The future came faster than we thought at first, and here I am now already for  9 months.  With 90 % of my daily life totally different than a year ago around this time.

We didn’t change just a location. We changed our lives.  And we obviously needed emotional breakdown to make our moving to countryside possible sooner. 

My two months of early spring alone in the woodlands are on the way in the next post of this „Moving to Woodlands 2017” series. Part 2 coming soon!

You are welcome to leave your questions, ideas & worries in the comments, and I will try to answer them in the next posts