We Homestead An Island

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

And, of course, we do all this exploring and sailing in what can only be described as our own private wildlife sanctuary. McLeod's Island is always alive with thousands of sea birds. Gulls glide and circle above, Arctic terns dart and dive for minnows below, and ospreys and bald eagles ride the air currents high above the island's clay cliffs. Have you ever seen a cormorant basking on a buoy or manicuring its oilless, outstretched wings? Or heard loons serenade the woods at twilight while hundreds of blue herons-settling into their rookery-begin a raucous argument that you know will keep you awake far into the night? Or seen deer tiptoeing along gravel bars and nibbling salt hay in the misty mornings?

We have all these wonders at our command ... and?because our island is such a delicately balanced ecosystem-we refrain from using noisy power tools and rely, primarily, on our silent and nonpolluting kayak for transportation. In exchange for this thoughtfulness, the birds and animals of McLeod's Island have accepted us as part of the natural environment ... and reward us with daily shows that are far more entertaining than any TV special.

This "bonus" wealth that we enjoy on a day-to-day basis extends right down to our sparetime craft activities. We have an unlimited supply of driftwood, shells, sea urchins, starfish (dead, of course), and other scavenged material to work with. By nailing a chunk of the wood to a base, gluing on some pebbles and shells, adding?perhaps-a tin can covered with shell fragments, and giving the finished piece a coat of varnish ... beautiful centerpieces, flowerpots, and pencil holders can be created. Then too, lobster boats, fishing villages, and out-of-the-way coves make good subjects for photographs and paintings. In short, we have all the raw materials we need for more sparetime hobbies than we'll ever get around to ... and those hobbies are both absorbing and a source of extra money (tourists readily purchase the kinds of handicrafts I've just described).

IT'S EASY TO MEET OUR CASH MONEY NEEDS

By now it should be obvious that our way of life has made us largely self-sufficient and that we don't need much money to pay for the taxes on our island and the few groceries and other supplies we buy. It only takes about $10 a week, in fact, to cover our basic expenses ... and Cindy more than earns that with the $15 a week that a local paper pays her for her "Leisure Time" column. (The feature-kind of a mini-MOTHER -tells the newspaper's readers how to do everything from making potato prints to brewing up a batch of homemade wine.)

Everything else we earn is gravy: from our driftwood "objets d'art", from the sketches we do, from the quilted potholders we make on long winter evenings, and from the note cards we've designed (and which we have printed by mail by none other than MOTHER's Print Shop). So we always seem to have enough funds on hand to dip into when we suddenly need to make an emergency repair on a piece of equipment or we find ourselves suffering so severely from "cabin fever" that we simply must make a quick trip back to New Jersey to visit family and friends.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print