The Retreat
Work has a floor here, not a ceiling.
What a day looks like
Six in the morning: the dogs and a trail. Then a briefing, breakfast, and one three-hour block of work before noon.
After lunch nothing is compulsory. My own schedule says "optionally more work or free afternoon", "maybe shared dinner", "free weekend". That is not vagueness, it is the offer.
Monday, Friday and the weekend get the long walks. Midweek the walk shortens because the sprinkler rounds get added: Tuesday the Three Sisters at the creek, Wednesday the Garden of Idunn, Thursday Maria's Garden and the front yard.
In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book V
The work itself
Trails get cleared. Fuel ladders come off the trees. Dead branches come down and dead trees come out. Grass gets cut and then carried away rather than left where it fell, because fuel on the ground is still fuel. The steep north side is done by hand: the tractor cannot hold it.
The list is loosely prioritized and everything is available to move around so that it makes more sense. If you are curious about tractor repair or shed building, we move it up. If your RV is too hot, we do the carport first.
Some of the list is not work at all. "Repair the garden swing" has a step in the middle that reads, in my own handwriting: enjoy the swing.
Leave it better than you found it
Take only photos. Leave only footprints. If you find a piece of MOOP, pick it up.
MOOP is Matter Out Of Place, and it is more than trash: it is anything that does not belong where it is. A dead fish does not belong in the meadow. Compost does not belong in the creek. Citrus peel will never compost in this climate, so it goes in the bin with the cooked food and the meat scraps, which would draw scavengers.
And the exceptions, because a rule with no honest boundary is a rule nobody keeps. Allowed to be out of place here: sawdust, cold campfire ashes, infrastructure, and pet poop.
Visiting
Yggdrasil Springs is open by invitation only. There are four places to camp: Sunset Overlook, Maria's Garden, Moonbeam Hill, and Creek Homestead, which is walk-in, with a babbling creek and mosquitoes.
Firewood you do not need to bring. We are covered for the next hundred years.