Preparing a garden

Last year I tried to grow some vegetables but failed miserably. The soil near the apartment is mostly clay, and hard and dry. I planted tomatoes and grape tomatoes, peppers, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cucumbers. All were bought as starts.

Though we did get maybe twenty cherry tomatoes, the other tomatoes barely survived until late September when a few of them started to produce. I brought one that was in a pot inside for the winter and it is now blooming again. About 10 tomatoes that were on it when it came inside actually ripened, so we got maybe 25 altogether, all late in the season.

We got about 8 peppers and two plants that were in the same pot are now producing again inside.

We got zero cucumbers, no cabbage grew large enough to be worth bending over to pick, and the few brussel sprouts were about the size of peanuts.

This year I decided to do something serious. Using a few truckloads of soil dumped by the county from the ditching work along the property, and a bunch of lousy old wood from a nearby barn that is being taken down, I built some terraces and filled them in with real soil. Here's how it looks so far.



Look carefully, just below the large rocks, and you'll see the first plants that Sandy has transplanted. Transplanting sounds so easy. Not here. She had to use a pick axe to get through the hard clay and the gravel nearest the barn. Then she carried the clay away and replaced it with soil. Finally the plants could be set in place. Some we had in pots brought from Indianapolis, some came from along the county road on our property where the ditch was cleaned out, and some from a neighbor's overgrown iris plots.

Inside I've started spinach and a few other plants. Next time we go to town I'll get some peas which can be planted outdoors now. The archway has some new grape cuttings at its bottom. Finally, when I clear a path to them in the barn, I'll pull out the dozens of other seed varfieties we've saved from plants we've grown, seen or eaten and see if we can get the entire hillside growing.

We've been staking out

We've spent much of this week, except for the two coldest days and the afternoon of the fire, staking out the house site.



The strings mark the outside walls and the view is looking west, from inside the boundary of the living room. There is a window planned in the short wall in the foreground to allow a view of the stream below the spring. The diagonal string that runs the full width of the picture is our north-south reference line running downhill that was established by aligning the shadows of two thin sticks at solar noon a few days ago. By the way, solar noon on that day was just seconds before 1 PM EST. Next week, after Daylight Savings Time begins, it will be about 2 PM EDT.

The large fallen tree has probably been there for 10 years and will be removed to a garden area before excavation begins on the site.



This picture looks uphill from just south of the south-east corner of the house where the kitchen will be. The hill is not as steep here and the bedroom at the back sits where there is a depression through which water runs when it rains. You can tell where the damp places are by the very light brown dry grass there.

We've got to get some advice on whether we can safely route that water around the north-east corner before it continues down the hill. We'd like to have a small retaining pond behind the bedroom which would contain the flow from most rain events.

We ran out of yellow string so we used "CAUTION" tape for the back wall of the bedroom. It's much easier to see in the picture, but not as accurate as string.

If this location is OK for the house we will lose two large trees because the excavation will be too close to them to expect them to survive the amount of root loss. The top of the house will be about 2 feet above the current grade at the north-west corner and about 6 feet above grade at the north-east corner of the master bedroom. I hope we will excavate enough soil to berm the entire north side of the building.

The rest of the story

Here's the picture I said I needed to take before explaining how the fire started.



It's actually funny, after the fact.

My neighbor, and still friend, was trying to burn this pile of sticks and brush. Notice, though the fire seems to have burned right under the fire pile, the brush hasn't even been scorched. Amazing.

Our property begins in the background, just this side of the the four cedar trees. Look carefully and you can see the barn in the distance, just over the black ridge.

Not how we planned to spend the afternoon

Yesterday Sandy and I started working to lay out the house on the hillside using stakes and string. I had started the process earlier in the week, but realized after a few corners were set that I had forgotten to account for the slope of the hill when measuring uphill distances. So I bought some 2X2s, cut them to 2- or 3-foot lengths and sawed points on one end using my miter saw - four cuts per board to get a good point. I also got some third-rate fence boards to cut and use as batter boards.

We had set about three of the twelve lines for outside walls when Sandy said, "Oh my God!" I turned around to see a wall of flames coming up the south side of the hill on the south side of the dam. Flames were 10 to 20 feet high and stretched from the county road on the east at least 50 yards onto our property.

My first thought was that it would burn right around the dam and right into the woods to our backs. At about the same time we realized that the fire trucks we heard a minute before were now coming down the county road to our property. (More about how the fire started and who called the fire department later after I get one more picture to help tell the story.)

The first truck on the scene was a pumper with over 1000 gallons of water on board. It stopped at the culvert that had just been put in place a few days ago. I took the hose and started running it up the hill toward the dam. A second fireman caught up with me and took the hose, calling for the pressure to be turned on. He started wetting down the hillsides east and north of the pond. By this time the fire was burning northward across the small dam.

The fire was halted on these two hillsides, and stopped just about halfway across the dam, though I don't know what stopped it.

While this was going on the fire turned its sights on the hillside to the west and started climbing. I saw all the green on a few red cedars all but disappear as the fire passed under them. The concern now was that it would get to our woods to the northwest or, worse, go over the hill to the west and take on the neighbor's outbuildings.

By now the fire department had help from another township, and there were three small trucks on the property that could climb right up the hillsides. Two were pick-up trucks and one was a smaller four-wheel drive that was fitted for brushfires with a large water tank on the back. That small truck was able to run all over the hillside with hardly any regard for the direction it was going and the contour of the hill. The pickup stayed mostly along the top of the hill.

After about 30 minutes, the fire was under control with just small puffs of white smoke spotted here and there. The firemen took the backpack tanks to them as they left the property, and within an hour from start to finish, it was all over.

The hillsides are black today as the pictures show. But there are bright sides to all of this.

o All of the multi-flora rose bushes are very visible, as are the grape vines. This will allow us to cut many many more of them in the next few days than we would have been able to even find with all the dried grass hiding them.

o We can easy see all of the little dips and bumps that were invisible when covered with grasses and shrubs. There are lots of small places we can change the contour a bit to help encourage water to sink into the hillside rather than run down it.

o The hillsides should be beautiful when the grass and wildflowers start growing. It will be green on a black background instead of green mixed with last year's dead brown grass.

o The fire never got to our two stands of persimmon trees. I learned that for a low-wind brush fire, the narrow trails I had mowed on the hillsides served as fire stops.

Here're the pictures so far. I'll post more soon. The gray areas in the burned sections are piles of ash.

This is the view from the apartment. You can see the far hillside that was burned.

This picture and the next are taken from approximately where the house will be. The old fallen tree will be removed.

I would like to have "stitched" them together, but the service doesn't seem to be working.

This and the next three are a view over the pond, from left to right, facing south.

Contrast these pictures with the snow scene at the top of the page.

Notice how the fire just quit before it came all the way across the dam.

Sandy is cutting vines and rosebushes among the trees that are getting started on the hillside. This area had been mowed every so often prior to our purchasing the property.

This is one of the red cedars that sort of just disappeared as the fire passed.

You can see the tracks of the fire departments little vehicle. Everywhere it went it flattened the ash and exposed the dried grass at the surface that didn't burn.

And before I forget, ...

today, March 4th, is the only day of the year that gives a command.

Corny, I know, but I learned this many, many years ago and haven't had anyone to tell it too for a long time. Plus this time I don't have to listen to any groaning.

The "falls"

Last week it rained heavily on and off for a day or two. It was still raining when I took these pictures. That explains the watery look caused by rain on the lens. I think it makes the pictures even better.

They show water flowing over the large tree root from under which the spring emerges when it hasn't been raining. The lower picture is from a bit lower. Along the length of the stream, starting at the spring, and before it levels out into a year-around damp area, there are a series of small pools. I am enlarging them a little at a time. This whole series of ponds, as well as the spring, will be visible from the west end of the house.

Usually the water flows under my little dams. After it rains, though, it just gushes over them.

A few views from last month

These pictures were taken about a month ago. I forgot I had them. They're just too pretty to spend the rest of their lives in an unseen album. Both were taken from the apartment window looking east-southeast on the same very cold morning just as the sun was coming up.

At last, visible progress

After months of investigation, discussion, drawings, more discussion, and a few decisions, we finally had some action.

A few weeks ago the county highway department began cleaning out the ditch along the county road. Then we had a string of snow falls and some really cold weather that halted the progress. Monday, while I was outside, a county dump truck stopped on the state road and backed down the driveway. It was one of the guys coming to say they would like to install our culverts the next day. The ditch was ready on our side of the road.

"Great. Go ahead," I said.

So yesterday the county installed two 18" double-walled plastic culverts. One is at the bottom of the hill where almost all of the surface water drains through as it leaves the property. We had already decided that we would not use the existing opening in the fence there for our primary access because of all the water that is often there. It's too wet and slippery for a few days after it's rained, and it would sometimes be impassible in frozen winter weather, especially with the added problem of having to climb the hill almost immediately after entering the property.

The second culvert was placed about halfway up the hill where we can come onto the property at almost the exact same altitude that we plan to place the parking area. Though the driveway will meander to get there, it will not run up- nor downhill more than a foot or so all the way across to the parking spot.

The county crew was great. They cut down some of the trees that we would have had to cut ourselves and dragged them down the road and onto the property where I can cut them for various uses. The culverts were covered with a gravel-dirt mix and limestone blocks were stacked to protect the ends from erosion. The flow down the ditch along the road can be very strong sometimes.

Here are a few pictures of the installation.


Covering the lower culvert


Removing trees at the driveway


Covering the driveway culvert


Placing limestone end wall

Hawk eye

Yesterday afternoon as I was using the laptop in the living room, something moved outside in the trees that caught my eyes. One of the hawks that usually just soars overhead took up residence in a tree outside for about an hour. I suspect he was hoping he'd have a shot at some of the birds at our feeders below the window. No luck. Yesterday, and almost every day, the birds had cleaned out the feeders by mid-afternoon, and that's after the second filling.

Sandy checked to be sure. It was a red-tailed hawk. There is a tell-tale speckled band of brown across the white breast that is visible in the picture.

And the survey says...

A few weeks ago we surveyed, on foot, the general area of the Greene View Springs property where we hope to build our home. The remainder was also surveyed by using the surveyor's GPS equipment and downloading data at two of the four corners of the property.

The final product, since it includes more than 16 acres, was scaled at 1" = 100'. That's useful for overall site planning, but we had to blow it up quite a bit for our house-siting purpose. Here's a part of the plan at a larger scale, though I realize the scale is a relative thing when displayed on your computer screen.


This view represents about 1/6th of the total area of Greene View Springs. The large irregular polygon that surrounds the core of the plan shows the area surveyed by actual "shots" on the ground. The remainder is data from satellite surveys of the whole area. This level of information is available for the entire country.

The odd pentagon near the top represents a very large collection of large rocks that encircle an area that could be an interesting feature when we have time to exploit it. There are many rocks on the hillside. We're hoping they will be an asset and not a problem when we start to excavate.

The numbers on the numbered tree symbols each represent a size and species of tree. The two "14's", for example, are 12" popular trees; the "9" is a 30" poplar. We shot about 25 of the larger trees to help us orient the plan when we're walking around the site.

Through the middle is a "flow-line" that begins at the spring and flows to the southeast. We hope to place the house so that the spring can been seen from the west end of the building. We also hope to have a deck on the south and west sides that will overlook the stream below the spring, along the flow-line.

Though we have not determined the exact site for the house, we know where we would like it to be. Imagine a building, 60' long, more or less, running west to east from just east of the tree symbol numbered "6" and between the trees numbered "6" (above) and "14" (below).

It would be placed into the hillside with the south side just above the existing level (approx. 693') and the north side barely extending above grade in some places. The roof will start near grade at the north and rise as it runs south to allow winter sun to enter at the top of the south interior rooms.

The building may be deeper north to south in some places. If so, the deeper sections will likely protrude north into the hillside more than the rest, rather than extend to the south which would block all but midday sunlight to other south-side rooms and areas.

The view to the south from the site takes in the large hillside that is shown in the winter panorama in the blog header.

The two trees along the fence row at the county road show where we would like to bring a driveway onto the site. Cutting to the road at this point, where the grade is just a few feet above the roadway, will avoid building the driveway uphill from the wettest spot on the whole property. This will avoid a climb of about 20 feet which could become a problem in bad weather.

None of these plans are final, of course, because we haven't done any core sampling to see what's under the house site and the driveway route.

Survey Day

A week ago, four days before the big snow storm, we had a surveyor and his helper come to the property to survey the hoped-for building site and the area surrounding it. The final product will be a contour map of Greene View Springs with more detail in the area we walked. The rest of the property will also be shown using data from aerial photos.

The most important tool of a surveyor is called a "total station," named as such because it incorporates both a distance meter for measuring distances and a "theodolite" for measuring angles. Here Andy has set up his station on the hill north of the pond looking back toward our hoped for home site.

 

It sends a beam of infrared light toward a prism, shown here supported by an extendable pole held by the surveyor, Eric. The light reflects off the prism directly back to the total station, and, by measuring the time it takes to return, the station calculates the distance, direction and vertical angle between the two.

 

The information from the total station is recorded in a data collector for later downloading into a computer in the office.

Eric also directed me as we tried to get "shots" at representative spots on the property. I'm not running in the first picture; I'm tripping over one of our %&#$! grape vines! The second picture shows the prism a little better. The last picture shows just a few of the many large trees we marked so they would be shot and shown on the topographic map, our final product.

   

And while we were having fun thrashing through the woods, Sandy was working so hard she didn't need her jacket, cutting rose bushes I had cut off earlier in the week into small pieces so they can be more easily removed when the weather allows.



Behind that mass of brush is the mouth of our small spring. If the house will fit close enough we'll be able to see the spring from the house's west side.

Birds in the snow

OK, here's the truth. Earlier this year I lost my camera. I think I owned up to that a month or so ago. (I found it in the pocket of a coat I hadn't worn since spring a few weeks after my sister bought me another one as a gift.)

In December I lost the cable used to download pictures from the new camera. I found it today, pretty much where it was supposed to be. (Too darn many pockets in the carrier I use for the laptop and its accessories.)

I've been taking pictures all along, though, so I'll post many of them now, not necessarily in the order they have been taken.

I'll start with some of the birds that are emptying ours feeders a few times a day.

	One can see all of our feeders from the apartment windows. This shows three of them at the first floor level. The thistle feeder is not shown, but it is rarely used by the goldfinches when sunflower seed is available. There are at least 20 shown here but we have counted between forty and fifty at times.
	We usually have two suet feeders hanging at the upstairs windows. Here's a little Carolina wren that has been visiting occasionally.
	This red bellied woodpecker is a new visitor. He seems the least skittish of our moving near the window.
	And finally, a male downy woodpecker. There are also a female downy and a male and a female hairy woodpecker who are coming each day. One can really tell the downy from the hairy by their sizes after seeing them both on the same nearby feeder.

NOTE: Apparently it's not as easy as I said. Sandy tells me the last picture is the hairy woodpecker, not the downy.

I'm melting... oops!

Today it's about 50 degrees here at the ranch.

Overdue update

Once again I have allowed more than a month to elapse since the last entry. We have been far from idle during that time.

The most visible effort has been the completion of the outside trim on the building. Here's the finished view of the west side.



You can see we got our first snow. Though it was only an inch or so, it did make for some pretty views.

Brandon and Matthew built the property's first snowman. Not a bad effort since the only help they got was finding the hat and scarf. The grape vine hair was their idea.



Also this week, with advice from a local soils scientist, we have abandoned the idea of adding a large pond due to the unlikelihood that it would hold water long enough to justify the investment. In addition to those I was already aware of, with all the annual vegetation dead for the season, we found dozens of significant holes in the area where the pond was hoped to go. Some of the holes were rather large. One accommodated two of us standing in it. With no way to determine where these might lead, it is highly unlikely we could build a keyway for the dam that would be both deep enough and wide enough to intercept all the underground channels that might exist. To find all of them, if that is even possible, would require excavating many times the area otherwise necessary, and to a greater depth.

Instead, in the spring, I'll begin to clean up the swale through which the main spring falls after it emerges from under a giant tree root to make a series of small ponds where water already stands. Each would overflow into the next, at least three of them, before the swale exits the wooded area.

5 days to go

We have been working on getting outside tasks finished before it gets too cold to work outside. It has frozen two or three nights so far but we're mostly ready for the cold. Days are warming up a bit for the immediate future, so it should all get done.

All of our indoor plants are back inside from their summer vacation and one large pot with a pepper and a few large tomato plants is now upstairs in the living area. We had one of the ripe tomatoes with lunch.

I am a few hours away from finally getting a small roof over the sliding barn door. It took me a long time to decide how to do this. The solution I'm trying looks like it will work. The problem has been how to support a 16-foot span only from the ends. If it works I'll take a picture. If not, pretend you didn't read this.

Also, just before the trip to Albuquerque, we got all but one corner of the barn and all the windows trimmed with white boards. It looks pretty good but there is still the corner at the sliding door to finish. When the small roof is done, that corner will be the last to do on the building outside for this season.

And we've been doing what we can to change America's direction with the current election. My precinct has been "targeted" for extra support by the Obama campaign. I'll be doing what I can to get every last voter to the polls on Tuesday.

Finally, we had a visitor on Tuesday who didn't stay long. These two pictures were taken through a window which caused the auto focus to miscalculate the distance, so the focus isn't great, but it was nice to see him in any case.