Keep your mouth shut

For a week or so in late October and early November, the air near the apartment is filled with ladybugs. Well actually they are "multicolored Asian lady beetles," scientific name – Harmonia axyridis (Pallas). It seems they have virtually displaced our common ladybug, and these gals bite if you allow them to stay on you long enough.

Here's a picture of them on the outside wall, and then from the inside. They are often even more numerous. It is difficult to work near the barn when they are flying.




The foil and clothespin are used to keep the heat out of the barn on hot sunny days.

Here's just a brief idea of what it's like with them crawling around by the thousands looking for a place to hide for the winter.

Fall pictures

These speak for themselves...

This year's baby

Two years running the downy woodpeckers have raised a male baby, in this picture sitting in the persimmon tree by the window asking,"Where's the suet?"

Watch where you step

Almost exactly a year ago I posted some pictures of crayfish holes. I thought they were pretty big. Last week I found the granddaddy of them all almost at the highest point on the property. Here's what it looked like. I didn't leave the quarter there long for fear it would come out and take it.

Harvest

Though we did plant a vegetable garden this year, and some apple trees in the spring, we haven't done anything in the woods to increase wild food production - mast.

Wildlife biologists term variable seed crops as “mast” from "masticate." Hard mast includes seeds or nuts: acorns, beech nuts, maple seeds. Soft mast is fruit: wild strawberries, blueberries, grapes and apples.

Most of our mast comes in the form of shagbark hickory nuts, acorns, bitternut hickory nuts, walnuts, dogwood seeds, concord grapes and wild berries. We have not harvested any of these. Most are eaten only by wildlife.

We do harvest persimmons. They are noted in numerous earlier posts. Here's what we saw in October after the leaves had fall. Note the hundreds of ripe fruit still on the tree.



Another prolific crop, though one has to work harder to find it, is the hazelnut. Growing all over the Greene View Springs property as a shrub, our hazelnuts seem to fruit irregularly. By that I mean the same plant may have a heavy crop one year but not the next.

The hazelnut shrub - Corylus americana

The nuts grow in husked clusters of 2 or 3 up to about 10

This cluster had five nuts

This one, partially opened, had 3

These came from a single cluster

We probably have 4 dozen hazelnut shrubs on the site. Once one sees a few they are easy to spot from a distance.

Time flys ... Oops! make that "flies!"

It has been more than two months since my last entry. Frankly, I've been discouraged with our progress and have had little to say or show for most of that time.

I have worked with an engineer in New York to verify that the posts and beams we want to use are strong enough to support the living roof and to define the concrete requirements for the house to be sure it will both support the posts and hold back the hillside to the north.

While that exchange was going on I have been gathering cost information for electricity, water, septic system, excavation and various items we will need in the new building.

Then, with the engineer's specifications in hand, it was time to get estimates for the concrete work. This proved to be more difficult than I ever expected.

The concrete specs are not typical in the eyes of all the contractors I've contacted. There are very large piers under some of the most loaded posts. The walls' thicknesses change from south to north, as do the depths and thicknesses of footings. Part of the north wall will have nearly 9 feet of hillside against it, and it is mostly clay soil, about as unstable as any soil could be. Insufficient strength in the wall or the post supports, or the posts and beams themselves for that matter, could allow us to be found some day under a pile of dirt from the hill or the roof.

I contacted five concrete contractors. All but one were given all the specs, plans and pictures. One never got that far as he was offered a large commercial project before we met. One called back to ask more questions, then never contacted us again. Two presented quotes that didn't pick up correct wall and footing lengths from the drawings. Almost all said they would rather use a different rebar configuration than the specs called for.

I encouraged all of them to visit the site so they wouldn't be surprised later by the access restrictions (and be tempted to cut some corners to make up for any extra effort the site required that they hadn't considered when bidding).

I was careful to tell everyone that we would be lining the footings with insulated panels before the concrete was poured. One said, "I won't pour concrete footings on top of insulation." I replied, "Then I guess we're done talking." As you might guess, he stayed to get the specs and submitted a bid.

Each of these exchanges seemed to take a week or so, even the guy who backed out didn't do so until I had waited about 10 days to meet with him.

Finally, after decided that we would deal with the floor and piers separately, I asked for new bids and got one that we can live with. We'll check out some of their projects before we start, but it looks like we've finally got our concrete work lined up.

Yesterday I called our excavator and got on his schedule for next week. The weather has been good and is forecast to be nice for about a week more at least, so we're planning to get this project started.

I have tried to keep busy while waiting for a good concrete bid. Next I'll post a few pictures taken since August.