I feel the earth move under my feet...

We have finally started excavating for the new home. We've had a string of nice days and it looks like at worst we'll have just a bit of rain tomorrow and then some more nice days. If all goes well we'll have the site excavated and leveled for footing forms, and the ponds done by the end of the week.

Here are a few pictures showing the first day's progress. I tried to upload a video but it failed. I'll keep trying but it's getting late.


No, we aren't building another driveway. What you see is the track along which earth from the excavation is being pushed downhill to build two connected ponds.


Tomorrow we'll place corner stakes that include the extra 3 feet all the way around that the concrete guys need to get their forms in and out.

Fall colors panorama

This video was taken on October 24th, when the trees were showing their best colors. It was taken from the highest point on Greene View Springs and pans from north to south.



All of the low land to the east and south, most of it unseen over the hillside, is in the American Bottoms.

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.

Tadpole progress, snakes and eggs

Lots of little critters seem to be growing up this time of year. This little one is just growing legs in preparation for hopping away, before the first frost I hope.

There are still numerous tadpoles in the water trough. Not as many as we had last year, but they all seem to be thriving. Very few of the individuals in last year's brood were growing when I began taking them to the large pond. This year's siblings are on their own, and will probably do better. (No snapping turtles in the trough.)

Here's one of the frogs who seem quite happy that we built the pond near the new driveway. Each time I walk past it I see at least one, and up to five, frogs jump out.



The water's somewhat murky, but it seems to be algae rather than mud or clay that has washed in.

And finally, here's our big find of the week. Though these babies are at Green View Springs now, we found them and took this picture elsewhere. Since we quit the project at Raccoon Springs, and for some time before then, we have had lots of things stored there outside that we had moved from our old home in Indianapolis. This week we drove up with the trailer to remove some of them.

Inside a pile of paving bricks were a few old bricks with cylindrical holes in them, and inside those holes were snake eggs! (about 15) and baby snakes (2 of 3 shown here)!! Since we were taking the bricks away, and they would be very vulnerable just dumped out on the ground, I put all of them in a plastic cup and replaced them in the bricks after they were re-stacked at the end of our new driveway.


The three babies slithered away immediately. The eggs didn't move that fast and are still there, hopefully preparing to hatch. A property can always use more snakes.

An inquiry sent to the "Herp Center" at Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne late this afternoon (after hours) got a quick reply from the Center's Director Bruce Kingsbury which identified the babies as ring-necked snakes (Diadophis punctatus).

August plant pictures

There are so many plants blooming now at Greene View Springs that I could fill a dozen screens. Here are a few that just began blooming and one tree.

Just one of many goldenrod variations.

Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum)

Tick-Trefoil

Bald cyprus
One of two we were given at the county fairgrounds last spring. They were bare root and it took a long time for them to leaf out. Both were planted in the damp soil on the edge of the original pond.

One more water post

You've probably seen enough videos of water running all over the place, but here's one more anyway. This is interesting because of how much water flows here after a rainfall. Usually one can just walk right through this stream and not even find mud.



All this water continues across the property and falls into the ditch as was seen in the last clip in the immediately previous blog entry, "What a rainstorm".

What a rainstorm

We had a heavy rain storm the first week of August. Near the end of it, when it was just a drizzle, I took the camera into the woods to try to show where the water goes near the house site and elsewhere.

The this first video shows the large pond on the property just before the rain finally stopped.



(The narrative on this and the next few videos is clipped at the end. I took nine videos on this walk and didn't realize until I played them on the computer that my voice is clipped at the end of almost all of them. Apparently the audio track lags the video by a second or two. I'll stop talking sooner on future productions. Many of you will appreciate that, I'm sure.)

There are at least three places in the low parts of Green View Springs where a series of holes appears on the surface. Each hole can be up to two feet long as the water flows and about a foot across. In some places there are as many as eight of them in the series. All of them appear along the lowest part of a drainage and are from one to three feet deep. Until now I had not had a camera with me while water was running in them. This time I did and here's what they look like with the water flowing.



All of this water, and that from at least two other major drainages on the property, runs into the ditch along the county road. Combining that water with what comes down the roadside from the top of the road above Greene View Springs creates a formidable volume by the time it gets to the culvert under the road. It's going to take regular attention to stay ahead of the erosion.

(WARNING: Turn down your volume first. The water was so loud I thought I needed to talk louder.)



All the water from Greene View Springs flows farther into American Bottoms and finally into Mr Colling's cave.

Our hike to work

Here's another of the trails we've built on the Greene View Springs property. This one is used nearly every day for access to the new house site. It runs from near the current gardens just below the barn down into the wooded area below. Along the way you can see some cardboard on the trail. It will eventually be covered with wood chips like can be seen at the start of this clip.

This trail is rather steep once it enters the woods. It almost levels out as it turns nearly due east towards the trail in the earlier post.

Soon the house site can be seen up to the left. Farther along are stacks of trees that have been removed and saved for later use next to the end of the driveway. The clip ends where the earlier clip begins as found in the second video reference in an earlier post.

I'm embedding this video rather than linking to it. Let me know if you like this method better than the links.



One thing the camera can't show is how much cooler it is in the woods.

Examining our house plans

If you've been following us for long you know some months ago we were advised for a number of reasons to move our site about 100 feet uphill, so the original pictures of the site we staked do not show where we now are planning to build.

I don't want to post something else we will not use, but we are far enough along with our house plans to risk sharing them.

For those who just want a simple picture of the plans, here is a view from the front, southeast corner.This picture was produced with a program called SketchUp which is now a Google product. It is easy to use though it requires a short time to learn its many features.

For those readers who would like to understand the plans better you will want to use SketchUp so you can tilt and rotate the plans to see the house from various perspectives. Here is the link for the free SketchUp download http://sketchup.google.com/download/gsu.html.

Currently I am trying a free service called TeraDepot. To access the latest posted version of our plans, refer to the section in the left column near the top labeled "See our latest house plans". When you get to TeraDepot, select the "Free Download" option, enter the security code that will appear, and the file will download.

So, if you download and install SketchUp, and you download the latest version of the plans, you will be able to tilt and turn the 3D view around, hide parts of it to see other parts better (like hiding the outside walls, or the roof,) and even make changes to the plan for your own amusement.

The SketchUp "Tool" that will be most useful is called "Orbit." It appears in the tool bar at the top of the screen as two arrows sort of wrapped around each other, to the left of the "hand" icon. To turn parts of the plan off or on use the "Layers" feature found under the "Windows" pull-down menu.

I hope you take the time to try this out. SketchUp is a lot of fun, and once you install it you can use it for your own projects.

Send a note if you try and have problems along the way.

UPDATE: This post has been modified with new instructions for downloading the house plans. 9/8/09]

You lookin' at me?