Thoughts from the Woods

Interior Storm Windows

2011-11-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

As I continued to research ways to keep the heat from our woodstove "in" our home, I ran across something really cool to share. The best part is that it comes from a local Mainer. I'm posting the link to his page because he has covered everything in terrific detail. Well done Guy!

In a previous post, I stated that there is a huge heat loss from windows. Building these interior, "double-pane" storms was very easy. I build a few a week and can feel the difference immediately after installation. They cost between $10-15 each to construct and the materials are readily available. They even look nice! So, if you are the least bit mechanically inclined, think about these as one of the first things you do to reduce heat loss from your home (like even before adding additional insulation). These will give you the most "bang for the buck"!

http://www.arttec.net/Thermal-Windows/index.html

Corduroy Road Update

2011-11-12T13:40:00.001-05:00

One of my long-term goals in working our 45 acres is to create access to most all areas of our property. We are fortunate to have some amazing and diverse habitats on our land. We have the headwaters of a fairly major stream. You can trace many of the drainage plains and see the formation of rivulets of water that combine into wet areas, then into actual flowing bodies of water. We have upland pine forest and swamp. We have several vernal pools. We have rocky ridges and huge boulders and the beginnings of a hard maple stand that would make an excellent sugar bush in about 5 years.

Our property was harvested several times in the last 25 years by an absentee landlord (a recipe for disaster in my book). There are areas with huge ruts from large skidder tires. There isn't anyplace they didn't go. I'm constantly finding empty 1 qt. oil cans, soda bottles and broken pieces of 3/4 inch steel cable.

If I was creating access roads from scratch, I would have avoided some of the wet and swampy areas that had obviously been traversed before. I decided to use these previously established routes for a few reasons. One, I didn't have to clear trees and roots. Two, the damage had already been done. Three, it gave me a chance to do some repair work. How many of these areas are there? Only about three. The worst of these "roads" turned into mush the few times I tried to first access it. Between the wet and the clay and the soil, it became a perfect mud pie road with muck over a foot deep. I first tried to remove all of the mud-like material, down to the clay, but it got no better.

I was clearing some young balsam fir when I thought of corduroy roads. The fir were nice and straight and would be easy to clean up and lay down tightly next to one another. Fir gets punky and rots fairly quickly if it gets damp. I read somewhere that the secret is keeping it wet. There's a big difference between damp and wet.

Five years ago, I began my corduroy road experiment. I had no intentions of continuing the road if it rotted after the first year or two which, I fully expected, it would. Read my first "Corduroy Road" Post HERE. After two years, the first ten feet remained intact and solid. So, with interest, I've added to the corduroy every year.

The poles I cut are about 12 feet long and the base of the pole must be at least 4-6" in diameter. I cut them green, don't allow them to dry much at all, and place them in the road bed. I alternate skinny with thick and place them as close to each other as I can. If I have a corner, I use 6' poles on the wide corner-side of the road only and alternate these with the long poles. Once the poles are in place, I gently run over them with the front tires of the tractor to squish them into the soft ground. I make sure I run over the poles, covering the whole road, moving from one side to the other.

Then I bring down some gravel and shovel it onto the poles, raking it into the spaces between the poles. Larger rocks from the gravel are removed and used elsewhere.

I then run over the road again with the front tractor tires going from side to side. I then add another thin layer of gravel, run over the road again and that's about it. I've been meaning to add more gravel but I don't use the road that frequently and I haven't had to worry about too much wear and tear.

Each year, when I clear more. I add to the road as the trees become available. If I don't have enough, I'll leave them standing until I have enough to do another 20 feet, then harvest them and add to the road.

Heating Our Home With Wood, Part 3

2011-10-18T05:21:00.000-04:00

This will be a blog of updates.

Mid-October: It's been a wonderful fall with only two nights of frost so far. We've used the wood stove sporadically to "take the chill off". It's so nice to have a place to go in our home to warm up. It's nice to have wireless so I can start the stove in the morning with a cup of coffee and sit in front of the stove.
Much of the wood I am burning is smaller stuff; standing dead wood and small maple mostly.The stove starts easily and heats up quickly.

With all the posted negative press about catalytic converters, so far I am impressed with the Vermont Castings Defiant and its ability to heat well. Once the burn is established and the stove top temp is 600-650 degrees, I close the damper to force the exhaust through the catalytic converter and the stove just hums along belting out a consistent heat.

It takes a while for the first floor of our house to heat up; about 2-3 hours if not longer (the stove is in our basement). I'm certain this is due to all of the construction materials in the basement absorbing heat. If we start the stove in the evening and I fire it to last the night (more on this later), I wake up in the morning and the floors are warm and comfortable to walk on barefoot! Even after the stove has been out for over a day, the house still radiates warmth. This is something that we never felt with hot water baseboard heat.

Early November: The stove runs day and night now. I've been keeping an eye on thermometers located on the 1st floor and 2nd floor thermostats. Early this morning (4:30 am), the stove had used up all the wood I had packed into it the night before. There were some coals left and the stove top temp had cooled to about 150 degrees (normal operating temp on the stove top ranges between 500-650 degrees). Outside, the temperature was 21 degrees. The second floor temp had dropped to 64 degrees (from 68) and the first floor temp was about 69 degrees (from 74 the evening before). We are still not using any oil to heat our home. I am in the process of adding more insulation to our attic (previous post). I'm also building some really cool interior storm windows (for the second floor) that look great, still allow you to see outdoors and feel as though they will do a great job of helping to curb heat migration. More on these later.

Late November: Still loving wood heat; not really feeling the love about our Vermont Castings Non-catalytic/Catalytic Woodstove Model 1975. When you buy the mac-daddy of woodstoves from a premier wood stove manufacturer; you expect to get something that not only works, but works well. The day before Thanksgiving, I opened the top to add wood and was surprised to find that the ceramic backplate had cracked into two pieces and fallen into the firebox. I've learned in my lifetime to give the benefit of doubt. So, I went to the dealer and they gave me a new backplate. Two days later, I was adding small wood (1.5 in diameter) to a small fire. A stick of wood bumped the backplate and the backplate broke again. I'm on my third plate and I'm beginning to be wary. The night before last, I awoke startled and very freaked out (I sleep deeply) to a very strong odor of smoke. It was so strong, my wife became extremely nauseous. Thankfully the house wasn't on fire and I spent the next two hours sitting in front of our stove trying to figure out what happened. The next morning when the stove had cooled, I opened up the catalytic converter housing to find that the converter was cracked. So, we're in the process now of contacting VC and will be talking to the dealer again. Sent an email to VC and 24 hours later they still have not responded. Will update as the story progresses.

Late January: I should have updated this a while ago as our issues appear to be resolved. VC finally responded (albeit over 10 days after my email). In a nutshell, they drop the responsibility back on their stove vendor. So, if you are buying a VC woodstove; make sure you feel good about who you a re buying it from! Mazzeo's in Rockport, Maine, has been very good about providing me with parts during this frustrating period. They put their heads together and came up with a very reasonable explanation for what was happening in our situation.

It was my fault for reading the directions. Yes, it's true. The manual that came with our VC Defiant said to clean out the ash pan whenever it was full. So, every morning, when the stove was filled with just coals, I'd clean out the firebox, filling the ash pan, which I would empty. This situation coupled with 3 floors of chimney created a very strong draft through the stove causing too much heat, too quickly. The stove didn't get over temperature, there was just too much heat moving through the firebox causing the backplate to become too hot and brittle.

Solution. Let the ashes accumulate to 3-4" deep in the bottom of the stove and empty them only once every three days to a week. Apparently anyone who has been using a woodstove for a while knows this. Yet, it wasn't important enough to add this to the instruction manual. Chalk this up to a rookie mistake; how was I to know? Since making this change, the woodstove has been working even better, I have been using less wood and the backplate hasn't broken since.

The issue with the smoke also had to do with the tall chimney and the weight of the air in the chimney on warmer days. I'm not going to get into the details but this issue too is resolved now that we understand this nuance.

Our Defiant keeps our over 2000 sqft home comfortable down into the teens. Below 10, the house cools off at night when the stove gets throttled back. Still, we've only used our oil heat once this winter (so far). Note: I have built these really cool interior storm windows for our upstairs windows. These have had a HUGE impact on heat loss!

I have also installed two fan units experimentally as the convection thing was working but not well enough to keep our home comfortable. One fan (an inexpensive bathroom vent fan) pushes warm air up to a second floor register in the hallway in the middle of the house. The second fan (an Airflow Breeze Ultra made by Airflow Technologies), sits in a first floor wall register I put in and pulls warm air from above the woodstove in the basement through a 4x10 opening out into the middle of the first floor. The Airflow breeze works very well (it has 3 speed settings and two fans) and at about $100 was a bit expensive but worth it. It's fairly quiet on it's medium setting where it runs most all the time. As soon as we have a bit more $, I plan on replacing the bathroom fan with something quieter and a tad more powerful to get more heat to the second floor.

This will end the updates to this post as I feel the story is complete.

I do have to comment on the feeling I have knowing we don't have to invest money in purchasing home heating oil every year.

Yes, it's labor intensive cutting, splitting and stacking firewood for a winter's worth of heat.
Yes, it takes time to bring wood into the house every few days.
Yes, you have to monitor the woodstove regularly throughout the day.

It's definitely more work.

However, there is a great feeling of complete satisfaction inside that I don't feel often.
I think it comes from taking one big step away from the large dark shadow of big oil. Inside, I'm glowing with the feeling that I have regained some of my freedom.

Heating our home with wood, Part 2

2011-09-14T05:58:00.001-04:00

We are moving into fall here in Maine. A few of the maples have begun to change color, the nights are cooler and the days relatively insect-free. So, we are approaching the home heating season with curiosity. How much will our investment in wood heat pay off? I'll post an update in May when all is said and done. I'll summarize where we are and the associated costs.

As stated in the last post, we purchased a Vermont Castings Defiant (model 1975) with a catalytic converter. There is quite a bit of negative press about catalytic converters but it's important to note that there are many stoves with these out there with happy users. This particular stove can be operated with a damper open, bypassing the converter, or closed, utilizing the converter. The stove came with two EPA energy efficiency tags for each of the above. The tag for the open damper gives an approximate efficiency of 77%; the tag for the converter gives an efficiency of 84% (a 7% increase). This may not seem like much but consider that this is 7% less wood needed to heat. As I get older, I'm sure I'll appreciate that 7% less cutting and splitting!

I investigated all sorts of chimney options. Stainless steel or a regular masonry flue; inside the house or outside the house. All the advice I received regarding location told me to put the flue inside the house for two reasons. One, the chimney stays warmer and this is better for draft. Two, the chimney itself heats up and that heat contributes to keeping your home warmer. The stainless chimney was going to cost upwards of $2500. and the masonry chimney we installed cost about the same when all was said and done.

I chose masonry because I felt more comfortable putting something made of concrete inside my home. I also liked the idea of having the thermal mass of a concrete block chimney to absorb and radiate heat energy. I feel metal will eventually corrode (though this may take years) and because the flue has to be enclosed inside sheetrock, I felt there was no way to monitor this. Metal would have been quicker but helping to build the masonry chimney was much more enjoyable for me personally. Plus, I like learning how to build things, I got to know one of my neighbors much better over the course of the few weeks it took to construct the chimney and it looks better on the house.

The cost of the chimney was approximately $1000. in materials for three floors; from the basement to the new brickwork around the whole chimney above the roofline. Labor was also $1000. This probably cost less than usual as I used the masons discount and went to the masonry supplier myself to purchase supplies (they delivered). And, one of my neighbors who is a mason by trade, built our chimney over a few weekends as I played laborer and did all the grunt work. I also removed and replaced the walls inside our house and did all the associated structural work to create a chase next to the existing chimney. Then, there was the plumbing and wiring that needed to be relocated....yeah.

An expense I didn't account for was the cost of connecting the stove to the chimney. The heavy gauge, single wall stove pipe and insulated double-wall stove pipe (by code for thru the wall into the chimney) cost close to $800.

I decided to build a brick heat-stop behind our new wood stove. The mason had a large pile of used brick he said I could scrounge for free. With a bit more sweat-equity and a rudimentary knowledge of masonry, I built a pretty decent looking brick wall.

To date, we have only test fired the stove a few times as suggested to season the stove and burn off the organic components of the stove pipe paint. This involves starting a fire, regulating the temperature to let the stove get no hotter than 500 degrees and then letting the fire go out. Based on the instruction manual, this is a low temp fire. I can't wait to crank this baby to see what it will do!

Burning wood for home heating.

2011-04-17T07:02:00.000-04:00

Reducing our home heating oil bill has become a top priority. As we end our heating season and total up the expense for heating our home this past winter, the cost exceeded $4000. Included in this is an insurance "budget cap" that guaranteed we paid no more than $3.85 (I think) per gallon of fuel oil this year. We can't afford to pay by the fill so we sign up for a budget plan that estimates our usage, the cost of oil and splits it all into 12 monthly payments. When you sign up for one of these budget plans, in the small print, it tells you that the insurance costs an extra $149. per year. And this cost doesn't even include yearly service on our oil burner.

In an area with abundant wood, it makes sense to investigate burning wood (in multiple forms). The ideal situation would be to burn cord wood. Living in Maine, we have an abundance of wood and good folks that make their living from cutting and selling firewood. We ourselves have 55 acres of woods. So, for the cost of my labor, we ideally pay little for the wood we burn. For each of the options I investigated, it's important to calculate the payback period. This is the time it takes to "pay ourselves back" in savings vs. our initial investment. Any of these options requires operator addition of fuel. So, yes there's a bit more effort involved in burning wood but eliminating most of $4000. to heat our home (2010-11 costs) is worth the trade off.

Option #1: Pellet stove.
Pros- Easy to use. Minimal install (one, 3-4 inch hole through the wall).
Cons- Need to pay for pellets at $250/ton. Uses electricity. Weekly take apart and clean. Pellet stove can't heat whole home; maybe basement & 1st floor at most. Still have to burn oil. "Space heater".

Option #2: Wood Gasification Boiler
Pros- Would use existing hot water baseboard plumbing to distribute heat to whole house. Burns cord wood that we could cut off our lot = little cost for fuel.
Cons- Price tag starts at $7500. not including install & chimney. Requires electricity. Would have to build small addition to our home to keep boiler inside heating envelope. Couldn't afford water storage system that would increase efficiency of boiler.

Option #3: Wood Stove
Pros- No electricity required. Burns cord wood we can get ourselves.
Cons- Would have to install $2000. chimney which requires some interior remodeling and loss of closet space. May not heat whole home. May still have to burn some oil. "Space heater".

We've chosen option #3. Our financial resources are not unlimited and this was the most affordable option with the quickest payback. We've purchased a Vermont Castings Defiant. It was the end of the heating season and we received $280. off. This list price of this stove was about $2800. We have yet to get a quote on chimney costs and are comparing steel double wall vs. traditional masonry. We're estimating about $2000. for the chimney.

At our annual cost in 2010-11 of $4200 year, here are estimated payback figures.

Option 1: Pellet Stove (incl. vent kit) $2800. = 0.67 years*
     (BUT then subtract 5 tons pellets at $250. per year, $1250. per year and the cost of fuel oil, $2100.)
     (*this option may only reduce our heating oil expenses 50%)

Option 2: Wood Boiler (incl. chimney, install) $12,000. = 2.86 years
     (may still have to burn some oil early in the morning and if it gets real cold)

Option 3: Large wood stove. $2660. + chimney $2000. = $4660. = 1.1 yr payback
     (may still have to burn some oil early in the morning and if it gets real cold)

While none of the options are ideal (what is ideal?) We feel investing in a large wood stove (this is the biggest they make) has the potential to reduce our heating cost the most.

A consideration. Both a pellet stove and wood stove are space heaters. They will be warmest closet to the appliance leaving cool spots towards the walls. So, we will add some vents between floors to take advantage of natural convection and also install a duct over the stove to take heat to the second floor.

I'll add more as things progress.

Reducing home heating costs.

2011-04-01T08:23:00.004-04:00

Living in an area where winter is and the ground freezes solid for 4 plus months a year, heating our home is a major expense. According to my calculations, we spend approximately $4000. per year just for fuel oil to heat our 2000 sqft home and hot water (values have been rounded for simplicity). Next to our mortgage, this is our largest single expense. As fuel oil prices will most certainly continue to rise (and my income most likely will not), I've been doing a bit of research and thinking about options to reduce our heating costs.

By far the most important, least expensive option when it comes to saving heat energy in the winter is insulation. Obviously, the most prudent thing one can do is to find ways to hold on to the heat one has. Insulation is a one-time expense and saves you money whenever you move into the heating (or cooling) season. Insulation can be done progressively so the outlay of funds doesn't have to happen all at once. Insulation is something that can be done relatively easily by most homeowners. For all these reasons (and more), this is the most sensible place to start.

There are a few fundamental principles to consider when it comes to thinking about how to insulate (here comes the science teacher part). Heat energy always moves from an area of high concentration to low concentration. So, in the winter, if the temperature in your home is 70 and the temperature outside is 20, the heat in your home wants to escape to heat the outdoors. Insulation doesn't prevent the heat energy from doing this, it only slows it down. A second, less thought of consideration, is that the same principle holds for moisture. Moisture will also move from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. Water molecules are dissolved in the air and, as you know, water as a gas will turn into water as a liquid when it gets cold. This is something you obviously don't want to happen inside your walls. This is why vapor barriers are included as part of most fiberglass insulation.

The second principle is simply that heat rises. So, if your heat source is downstairs, the heat will rise gradually to the upstairs. Subsequently, cool air is more "dense" and will sink to the lowest part of your home. The combination of these two processes is called convection. There's many good images out there to convey the idea. Click here for one.

So, to best way to figure out how to approach adding insulation to your home is to think of these two concepts together and decide how the heat energy is escaping your home during the heating season.

One of the most obvious places heat energy leaves your home is through the windows. If your walls are 6 inches thick and your windows are 3/4 of an inch thick, this is a no-brainer. As much as 30% of a homes heat in winter may leave through the windows. Nice Fine Homebuilding article on windows here. Windows are rated in U-values. Insulation is rated in R-value. R-value = 1/U-value. So, even the most energy efficient windows with a U-value of 0.25 means that the R-value is 4. No matter how well they insulate, they are still holes in your wall that lose heat because they have less insulating value than standard wall insulation.

Consider that heat rises. So, even if you are conscientious, turn your upstairs thermostat down during the day (if you have one), the heat from the downstairs is going to migrate upstairs and leave through the windows. One of the most prudent things to do to your windows is, when it gets cold, add a layer of clothing to keep more of the heat in. For me, light is a necessity, especially in winter. So, while using a rigid insulation insert might work well for filling this "hole in the wall", it blocks out light. Not an option for us but may be for you.

Visit your local hardware or bigbox store in the fall and you'll see kits for seasonal window sealing. Frost King is the one I see most often. This stuff is nothing more than shrink wrap attached to inside window frames with double-sided tape. This is fine if you don't plan on using your window, accessing blinds, etc. and it is designed to be seasonal. I have found that the double-sided tape degrades and the plastic comes unstuck by the next heating season. A 3-pack can be found for as little as $4.00. So, if you have 12 windows to cover, it might cost you $16.00 to experiment next winter. Not a bad investment to investigate this option.

One of the things I've decided to do this summer is build light frames that will friction fit into many of our windows. These will be covered with shrink film on both sides. The idea is that they will act as an additional double layer of insulation. They will create a layer of dead air space between the two layers of plastic within the frame and a thicker layer of dead air space between the window and this inside "storm window". I'm not sure how long the film will last, how well they will store over the summer months and what mischief our cats might make but I feel it's an inexpensive solution and worth the experiment. I plan to use rough-cut lumber as we have a local sawmill in our area and buy a roll of industrial shrink with a heavier weight. I haven't found a low-priced source for this yet. Visit this post for an update!

The second thing I am doing is adding to and modifying the insulation in the ceiling above our second floor. R-30 insulation was used but wasn't installed correctly and was just loosely stuffed in to the spaces between joists.

We also have recessed light cans in the ceiling. Once in the attic, I discovered that these cans each acted as little chimneys that sucked the heat out of our upstairs into the unheated attic space. I have just completed building "boxes" out of 1.5 inch thick blue foam board. These surround and cover each light in the attic space. I caulked each joint with 30 yr caulk and "pinned" the boxes together with nails.

[On high density insulation board. Now, I'm not an advocate for using more fossil fuel products but, if their one-time use saves regular fossil fuel use in the long run, it makes sense to me in terms of cost-benefit.]

I'm also in the process of ripping blue board into strips that snugly fit in between the joists in the attic. This high-density insulation is getting placed closest to our living space as it acts almost as a vapor barrier (technically its not) and, in a heating climate, this is where you want your vapor barrier. I'm also caulking these into place as the fit between the joists isn't perfect and I want to limit the heat/vapor permeation to the foam board.

On top of the blue board and between the joists, I'm adding R-13 fiberglass insulation (no vapor barrier) to fill in the remaining space to the top of the joists (white insulation in photo). The existing R-38 insulation will have its vapor barrier removed and will be placed in the opposite direction, over the top of the joists (pink insulation in photo). I'm hoping this will almost completely eliminate the gaps that exist in the insulation now and add to the R-value of this uninsulated space substantially. In total, the R-value of the attic will be almost R-60.

There are areas of the ceiling I am unable to get to without ripping something apart. But, I think that if you are approaching this kind of project, a certain type of philosophy has to prevail. "It's not about what you can't do, it's about what you can do that makes a difference".

More later as I complete this project and investigate interesting options for heating our home.

The leaves have fallen...

2010-10-09T06:45:00.007-04:00

With the days noticeably shorter and cooler and, with the insects gone, one of my annual fall projects is to work on one or two of the numerous woods roads that transect our land. Most of these are old skid roads and have been left with occasional deep ruts; the scars of logging too late in the winter. This fall, I tended to finishing a road I'd started two years ago. It's part of my cross-country ski loop which placed it on the top of my priority list. Two deep ruts were filled with rock, the road leveled, graded and seeded. Another 250' of woods road completed. With a few warm days left, I'm hoping the seed I spread germinates. I use a conservation mix which includes a variety of grasses and clover.

The fill rock came from an old farmers rock pile originally left from clearing land over 100 years ago. For some reason, this pile was placed in the middle of a field. Tearing the pile apart was fun. The kids spent several afternoons digging to find "treasures" which included old cow bones and fragments from both china plates and earthenware.

Much of the rock from this pile went to leveling yet another portion of road I am working on which provides access to the back corner of our property. Part of this road is corduroy I placed two years ago. I'm not sure how long the corduroy (wood) portion of this road will last. It's fairly quick to build but the wood eventually will decay. Rock lasts forever and, while it may take a bit longer to move and set, is inevitably much more durable. Big rock goes on the bottom, smaller rock gets placed on top. Finally, the road gets a coating of gravel to fill in all the gaps. In Maine, we have plenty of rock....

The larger stones went to rebuilding a stone wall but that's a story for another day.

Wow, What a Summer!

2010-08-14T06:23:00.016-04:00

This was a summer for the books. An early and warm spring allowed us to plant our garden almost three weeks earlier than usual. Clear, sunny days with maybe three weeks of real heat sporadically appearing in June then July. August has begun to feel like fall with the nights cooling off for pleasant sleeping. Having taught for the 2009-10 school year, I was glad of summer vacation. It was an intense first year back after a lengthy sabbatical, especially with trying to fit my Chemistry curriculum into a one term teaching model.

I had to shift my summer work expectations as well; knowing that I would get less done in our forest than I had in the past. The logging was completed last October. Sadly, there was more habitat destruction than I would have liked. After clear instructions to leave specific trees for deer habitat, they were cut down. Since then, I have seen very little evidence of deer in our woods. But, with time, I know the habitat will regrow and the deer will return this fall in search of apples. On a positive note, the areas that were selectively cut were cut well. Brush from the logging was spread out and cut small enough to lie close to the ground. After one year, the brush has settled down. In a few years, the brush should begin to decay well and the forested areas look better than before they were worked. When you bring someone to work on your land, they bring their knowledge and ways of looking at things with them. Finding compromise and being comfortable with the outcome is important. While I'm upset that some areas weren't cut as I would have liked, I'm grateful to have had an experienced logger work my land and leave it looking as nice as though it were his own. Life, after all, is about appreciating balance and accepting compromise.

Clearing the land ends up being both a blessing and a curse. As more land is cleared to field, there is more to mow. The popples, raspberries and other invasives tend to want to plant roots and grow. Keeping these in check the first few years is important to allow the native grasses to recolonize. Mowing stole a good amount of my free time this spring and summer.

With my remaining time, I continued to clean up the corridor along our access road. There is a band of white pine that runs diagonally through our property and which crosses the road. This is where I focused my efforts this summer. Slowly, I made my way through each small portion of pine and pruned the branches up to about 10-12 feet. I continue to embrace my method of dissecting branches. The largest pieces of wood are cut into 3' lengths and taken to an area I want to fill. Branches between 1-3 inches thick are stacked to be chipped later on and the smaller branches are piled in a flat area and shredded with my field mower.

I continue to experiment with the wood decay process in what I affectionately call the "You Rot" pile. These have taken on several incarnations. One area is a large steep hill side on the edge of a field that I want to temper to a gentler slope. There are also regular small depressions within wooded areas I want to fill. The method remains similar regardless.

The larger pieces of wood are laid flat, all in the same direction, filling in a depression or creating a slope.

The mulch left from mower shredding is raked up, piled in my tractor bucket, dumped and spread over the top of the wood. I'm hoping this creates an ideal habitat for all the microorganisms that cause wood decay. The layer of mulch will allow the wood to remain moist while allowing some air to get in to the pile. Time, of course, will tell how successful my method is.

The remaining 1-3" branches will be run through my chipper and the chips used for mulch around fruit trees, raspberry bushes or newly planted concord grape vines. The remaining chips will be broadcast over the area they have come from. My hope is that the extra time I spend now cleaning up these areas will be time I won't have to spend in the future maintaining them.

The edge of a forest is a transition zone and I am sensitive to keeping most all of these areas intact. Most I will completely leave alone. The ones closest to our road though I tend by thinning and pruning the balsam fir that grow there naturally. There are plenty for us to selectively cut for Christmas trees and every year, we also offer trees to those in our area that can't afford or don't have access to a tree for the Holidays.

The burnable wood that comes out of cleaning up these areas (there is always standing dead hardwood) gets bartered. Lucky for me, I have a wonderful neighbor who is a massage therapist. She likes the small diameter wood that comes from selective cutting for the wood cook stove in her kitchen and I'm certainly not going to argue with the offer of an occasional massage.

Economic Reality

2010-01-09T05:55:00.004-05:00

Once in my life on the "other" coast, I used to occasionally climb big mountains. Quite a few of the people I used to climb with had this need to get to the top. Many times this need overwhelmed their rational brain and perhaps that's why I was asked to join the climbing party. Getting to the top was nice and all but I really enjoyed just being out there, enjoying nature and the kindred spirits of the other people in the climbing party. I mean, you get to the top and what happens? You look around for a few moments, give a few high fives and then turn around and go back down. I guess that I'm the type of guy that enjoys the journey much more than the destination.

The economic downturn had it's effects in our family just as it did many others. The funds that we saved to build went instead to supporting our family. I returned to the classroom this fall to teach Chemistry. It was time. My wife and I were very lucky to have been able to spend lots of quality time with our two kids before they started school.

I have weathered a few of these life-changing, course-changing experiences. They are not without their angst. But, they teach us if we are willing to listen. And, if you care most about the journey, then the experiences aren't so devastating. Life is full of different roads, each one with something special to teach us about ourselves.

So, my "Thoughts from the Woods" may be more infrequent. Being a good teacher is time consuming. We have had about half of our acreage "cleaned-up" by our neighbor and his tractor. He has done an excellent job of not only harvesting wood that needed to go but in grooming the forest-land as he went. I don't agree with all that he has done but, by and large, the harvested areas look great.

This summer and fall, I have focused my efforts on cleaning up specific areas of debris left after tree removal. These areas surround the "core" of the property and these areas we will ultimately use when we do build. Branches were cut off of limbs with a machete, piled in rows and mowed with my field mower. Limbs were stacked in piles and are slowly being chipped as I get to them. Wood that is too big for my chipper is moved to low areas and packed into "you rot!" piles. The idea here is to get this wood all together so that the wood decaying organisms can have a field day. Wood chips then brush is piled on top to keep the area from drying out in the summer.

What is left in the core area, now that all the pine and fir have been removed, is a hardwood (mostly maple) forest. My next goal is to thin this to all but the larger trees and to sell the gleanings as firewood. In a few years, once the ground litter (the shredded brush and chips) has decayed, I'll plant clover and grass.

One of my other goals is to slowly create a forest garden. The concept is simple. You add food producing trees & plants to the understory of your forest. I add a few trees each year. In the last three years, I have added 6 hearty nut trees, 3 apple trees, rasperries and concord grapes. There's no telling how well they will survive in the long run; that's part of the experiment. Some of what I plant is free. The rasperries were grabbed from the outskirts of someones raspberry patch as raspberry roots will "run". The grapes came as rooted pieces from an old grape arbor that had fallen and the shoots had rooted themselves. This year I will add a few pear trees and perhaps some blueberries.

Though I can't get into our woods as often as I did (or as I would like), I've adapted to this course correction. I'm glad to be back teaching high school. I'd forgotten how much fun it is (and how much work is involved). After grading a few quizzes this morning, I'll be puttin' on my snowshoes and heading in to our woods to begin pruning wild apple trees.

Our Summer Pine Harvest Continued

2009-08-02T06:24:00.003-04:00

It's the beginning of August and so far, it's been the summer that wasn't. Our weather has been peculiar this year; LOTS of precipitation, overcast skies and cool. It truly felt like fall a few days ago. They say that farmers garden vegetable sales are off by 30% this year due to the weather. I know that many of my vegetables have been languishing due to lack of heat and sunlight. With these conditions, harvesting wood has been a challenge. I'm glad the person harvesting our wood is sensitive to our needs; I have asked him not to cut when the ground would get ruined and he hasn't.

We have removed about all the pine I have flagged with tape; there is one more truckload to be picked up. We will begin to harvest fir next hoping for at least a load or two. Fir is worth more for pulp wood I guess.

I have been slowly cleaning up brush piles, using a machete of all things to remove the pine boughs from the branches. It is efficient, quicker than a chainsaw and gives me a nice workout. I spend a few hours each day doing clean up. I pile the brush in a row on newly cleared areas. At the end of my few hours, I run it over with the bushhog leaving me a nice smooth mulched area and with a nice sense of accomplishment for the day.

I've finished up around our second field and am now finishing up around the back field. I still have yet to finish the cleared hillside but this is next. I have left a legacy of pine poles stacked in piles around the property. I will chip these when all the brush has been taken care of.

Our First Harvest of Old Field Pine

2009-06-14T07:40:00.000-04:00

We had planned to remove some of our old field pine this past winter. In our neck of the woods, forest products are pretty big. The downturn in the economy caused the mills in our area to slow down and subsequently the bottom fell out of the softwood pulp market. So, our plans for harvesting this winter came to an abrupt halt.

Our neighbor and part-time logger flagged me down about two weeks ago and said that the market had opened up a bit and that his hauler could take a load a week out of our woods. We decided to start at the back field and remove all the field pine on one side. There is a nice slope here and I thought it might be a good spot to eventually plant some blueberries. At the bottom of the slope, there is a hollow that may eventually become a small pond.

A brief aside about field pine. Field pine is white pine that has naturally colonized on old farm field areas. On our property, in most cases, this pine has been attacked by weevils. Pine weevils destroy the tip of the tree (the apical meristem for you biology types). Without a leader, one of the side shoots (which would normally become a branch) takes over as lead and you get a jog in an otherwise straight tree. Weevils will continue to attack these trees and you can end up with pine trees with multiple trunks and multiple jogs. Needless to say, there is no straight board that can be cut from these trees. They are usually not very healthy and at between 15 and 20 years, they begin to die and fall down or get blown over.

Harvesting field pine doesn't put much change in the landowner's pocket by the time your logger has taken his cut for taking the trees down and cutting them up and the person loading and hauling your twisted trees to the mill gets his. But, it will help put a few more loads of gravel on our road at least.

It's truly amazing to watch a skilled logger take down trees and cut them up. As just one person with a chainsaw and tractor with an old logging winch, ours is a one-man marvel. I am very pleased that there is so very little damage to the ground where the trees have been taken from and to where they have been dragged. In my opinon, there is little need for the type of heavy equipment that has been created to support the logging industry if you use selective cutting with small equipment. Yes, it's hard work. But, it is good work made easier by the use of a tractor which does minimal damage to the forest floor.

What's left when the wood has been taken? Therein lies the rub. Some folks would burn the branches, others would leave them to decay. If I had a large industrial chipper, it would be easy to just pitch in the remains and watch the chips come out the other end. But, I don't have an industrial chipper, just the one that attaches to my tractor. Running whole pine branches full of pine needles full of pine pitch doesn't work well as the pitch gets all over everything inside and the exhaust chute continuously clogs with needles. So, I will slog my way through all the brush, cutting the small branches off from the larger. The smaller branches with pine needles will get piled and run over with my field mower, the larger pine-needle less branches will get chipped. Yup, it's pretty tedious. However, the remains are fully usable as mulch and this mulch also decays much more rapidly than the larger branches due to the smaller pieces. Much will be spread over the cleared area and left to decay naturally adding to the tilth of the soil.

What will be left? A nicely sloping hillside populated with red maple and wild apple trees. The thin, smaller maples will be removed, the clumps of larger maples thinned and what remains will be a nice partially shaded hillside.

Next, we will move on to some selective cutting. We have a nice 7 acre strip of white pine that runs from one side of our property to the other. Some of this pine is in fairly decent shape, some is not. This thinning will open up the pine stand allowing the better trees to stay and perhaps allowing us to plant some pine seedlings next spring.

OOPS!! Looking for the Appleton Basket Company Blog??

2009-06-06T17:39:00.002-04:00

Ah, the marvels of technology! If you are looking for the Appleton Basket Company Blog, click here. Seems I inadvertently pasted the wrong link in our Company newsletter. You are more than welcome to browse my personal blog if you'd like!

Spring in the Woods

2009-05-18T05:12:00.005-04:00

I've been very preoccupied with our business since January. Trying to grow a business in this economy is very much a challenge. I've also been doing a bit of restoration work on an old (circa 1800's) farmhouse down the road. Another past life skill brought to the present by necessity. So, my time out "in the woods" has been much less than I would like, but necessary.

When we last visited my folks, I managed to glean some raspberries from the edge of the row where they were creeping into the rest of the garden. I also clipped and dug some rooted concord grape vines whose arbor had long ago fallen. The vines had partially rooted under the tangle of grass. These I brought back to Maine, nestled in soil, waiting for me to figure out where to put them.

I've been clearing more of the back field. Above the mostly flat grassy area, the ground slopes upward to ledge. The popple and fir have been removed here leaving a large maple, a clump of two white birch and 5 or so wild apple trees. The trees themselves have been cut into 4' lengths and stacked for firewood. The branches chipped into a pile for mulch and the brush and small branches shredded via field mower. This time, I raked the shredded brush, leaves, etc into piles and relocated them to the top of a decay pile at the lower edge of the field. The area I've cleared looks very garden-like; but that's kind of the idea.

I admire the concepts underlying permaculture. If you like to garden, it's very much worth reading about. They advocate working "with" nature and the "lay of the land" to grow things (like edible crops). So, that's kind of what I am after. Last year, I planted some hearty walnut and pecan trees in some clearer areas of forest (admittedly, they aren't looking so good right now but there's hope). I also planted some edible/cider apple trees that look much better than the nut trees.

This year, the raspberries and grapes are being planted as sort of a replacement understory in the latest area I've cleared. The raspberries were planted a week ago in soil mixed with rotten horse manure (they supposedly like this). The grapes were planted in compost two days ago before the latest rain. Both are planted in rows awaiting the setting of support poles and trellis wire. With luck, they will both grow and we'll have a few red raspberries and concord grapes by next summer.

It's mid-spring for us and the blackflies are a nuisance. They like to swarm around my head and inhaling one isn't uncommon (ick!). They seem to bother me less each year but I still get bitten up and down my arms. I've placed bird houses hoping that the inhabitants will consume the little buggers. I really need to get my bat house up! Bats are supposed to be the best at natural insect control.

The wild apple trees are beginning to bloom. The flowers don't smell yet but the bees have found them and the buzz from the trees is very audible. I also noticed a hummingbird the other day. I hadn't thought about it before but it makes sense that they would be working the trees also as apple blossoms would be one of the first sources of nectar in spring.

My chipper is fixed. It fell apart after three years of use. Not only did one of the hopper hinges break clean off but there were a myriad of cracks where the bottom of the feed chute meets the chipper housing. I'm glad I can weld and that my neighbor up the hill has a welder. 6 rods later and my chipper is better than new. Reinforced hinges and filled cracks will hopefully last another three years (it better!).

With things the way they are, I can't help thinking (alot) about Scott and Helen Nearing. They were interesting folk, back to the land-ers and considered themselves "living the good life" (read the book of the same name). They lived on a farm here in Maine not too far from us. From reading their book, it was obvious that they thought and planned their life very logically. They had a daily schedule of work. I was fascinated that, as they worked around their farm, they would come upon rock (in Maine, there is more rock than soil). Over the years, they would gather the rock they deemed usable and place it in specific piles.

It was piled by size. It was also piled by how many good "faces" the rock had. One pile for one "good" (flat) face. Another pile for two adjoining faces. Down the road, when the time would come to build a foundation for another building, they could go to a particular pile of rock and fill a cart with it, knowing that it was already sorted as rock that would be used in the face of a wall or that it would make good corner pieces. When you are building a wall, there is a science to it and the shape of the rock you use does make a signficant difference.

For me, this story advocates for an interesting and sensible way to approach life. We as a society have become so entrenched in thinking about the present and the short term, we neglect to view life (in the future sense) as an accumulation of years. Perhaps if we re-adopted this "colonial" approach to life, our view and manner of life would take shape much differently.

For example, what if you froze all your "credit card" purchases until their debt was paid off and at the same time you paid into a "savings" account that was to receive the same amount as your credit card payment? This would pay down your debt at the same time it allowed you to create savings. You would also benefit as it would force you to think about how you spend much differently.

What would our roads look like if we had to "save" to buy a car with cash instead of using "credit" to get what we want now? I'm willing to bet that the focus we place on what matters in a vehicle would change as would the focus of the business of making and selling the vehicles.

There seems to be to be a mindset that exists about how we consume and that this mindset is driven by credit. Where did credit come from? I hope you can figure that one out!

Ah, Spring in Maine....

2009-04-17T05:23:00.003-04:00

Ah, these first glorious days of spring in Maine! The snow is gone, the ice has left the lakes, the ground has un-frozen and the bugs have not yet hatched. We have a few weeks yet till the blackflies begin their month-long search for blood. Unlike mosquitos (which come after the peak of blackfly season), blackflies are gone by the time you realize you've been bitten. Best not to dwell until the season officially arrives though.

The weather this past week or more has been unusually beautiful. There's been no rain at all and the days have been warm and sunny. Tilling the garden last fall gave me a jump on spring. I was able to put compost on a few rows and turn them in using just a fork. It's still early to garden but I've been experimenting with season extension to get more our of our garden. It's not too early for peas, so they are planted as are carrots and beets and chard. I've covered the rows with remay this year to keep more of the days heat in the soil, we'll see what happens. Every year, I try something new.

Last year, I had such great success with lettuce in a simple raised bed covered with a tunnel that I'm doing it again. The "bed" is bordered with a box made of 2x8" boards, screwed together at the corners. U-shaped electrical clamps hold 1" pvc pipe sections to the inside of the box. 1/2" pvc "hoops" slips into the larger pipe sections when needed and plastic is clipped to this with garden clips. These cool clips snap over the pipe to secure the plastic to the pipe. With the plastic on and the hoop house closed up; it gets real hot inside during the day. So, in the morning I undo the top of each end piece to let the heat out and close it back up at the end of the afternoon to keep the heat in overnight. The theory is that this gets the soil warmer than it would be at this time of year and allows whatever is inside to germinate and grow. When my lettuce gets going and the weather gets yet warmer, I will replace the plastic with remay to reduce the heat and keep the bugs out. I am contemplating the construction of a larger hoop house to extend the fall season. We will have to see if I have the time (and funds) this year to construct one.

To my wife's delight, I have removed the plant starts from our bedroom window and brought them down to the walk-in cold frame I built last spring. The thermometer I placed there for the last week has shown that it gets no colder than 40 degrees in there at night (and about 60-65 during the days), perfect temps to get the starts hearty before garden planting later. It's about time to transplant the tomatoes into larger pots anyway. This year I've started broccoli and eggplant in peat pots so I will see how transplanting them pot and all, compares to removing them from plastic trays and transplanting. I'm also going to start melons and a first planting of cukes in peat pots to see what happens.

I've been spending less time over at the forest since January of this year. We've been trying to grow our business (with success) and I've been spending much of my time sitting at the computer, reworking things, reading and learning about marketing. I have managed to clear another portion of encroaching forest, turning it back to field. I've left and pruned the apple trees in this portion as well as left a few larger maples and an oak. So, it's not quite 100% field space but it's been opened up significantly. The soil has dried out enough that I was able to put the field mower on the back of the tractor and shred the many brush piles created from de-branching popple and balsam fir. Once I weld my chipper back together again, I will chip the poles. I'm more than a bit annoyed that a $5000.00, 3-year old chipper, used infrequently is falling apart. I would not recommend a Wallenstein chipper for anyone out there looking for one. I'm glad I learned to weld last year.

I have a few stacks of popple firewood to move, more poles to add to my corduroy road and a few larger trees to remove and I will be done clearing this area. The shredded and chipped tree material will be left as erosion control and to decay for a year or two. As the natural grasses start to grow, this will be my hint to seed. I use Conservation Mix from Agway that is a clover/grass seed mix. I also have yellow clover that I seed with. According to what I have read, this clover is deep rooted, bringing minerals to the surface, is loved by bees and increases the biomass (organic material) significantly. I'm glad to be done with most of this major work before the blackflies come; maybe they won't be bad this year.......

Spring, at last!

2009-04-04T06:43:00.002-04:00

I was hoping that Spring had arrived on the first technical day of Spring. I heard (and saw) one lone Red-wing Blackbird in the treetops next to our driveway. We still had a bunch of snow and we were well into mud season; that most wonderful of times when the frozen ground thaws but has not yet dried out. It takes a while for mud season to abate. But here we are, freshly into April. The snow is about gone, the treetops are filled with a flock of squabbling Red-wing Blackbirds, the Robins have lazily returned as have additional small birds like Chickadees, Goldfinches (not yet gold) and Sparrows. I even heard a Killdeer yesterday. Maple syrup season is waning if not done as the temps during the night have been above freezing for a few days now. I've even seen a few flying insects and also pulled my first tick of the season off my shirt. Of course, it is still early and we could see snow yet again. A cruel yet not unheard of trick played by Mother Nature.

Over in our forest, the creek is full and happily bubbling under the new bridge. The small pond constructed a year ago last fall is full and the snow has melted off of the access road. I've been working lots less there this year as most of my time has been spent trying to hone our little company into a sustainable business. But, I have managed to clear back a bit more of the encroaching forest in the back field. The balsam fir poles are stacked in piles, ready to add more length to the corduroy road. Popple has been taken down, cut into four-foot lengths and stacked to dry for firewood. Branches have been piled together ready to be ground up by the bushhog and the smaller poles stacked for chipping.

We were hoping to get much of our field pine removed this winter but the sagging economy took most of the profit out of harvesting for pulp. The trees will wait till next winter. I will continue to prune and clear branches out of our harvestable pine stands as well as working on clearing a path that allows us to walk the perimeter of our land. Soon, the blackflies will hatch reminding me once again how bittersweet spring can be here. They too are a part of our landscape and a small concession we make to be able to live here.

Fierce Sledding and Snowplay

2009-03-04T13:20:00.002-05:00

When you live in someplace like Maine, you just gotta like winter. It's usually about this time of year when I get the itch for spring and warmer weather but on days like today, I don't mind winter. Two days ago, we got nailed. Again.

The kids stayed home from school as we watched over 16 inches of the fluffy white stuff accumulate. It tapered off during the late afternoon and I had enough time before dark to fire up the tractor and clear the drive. Again.

Having a tractor is nice. I can pile the snow up really high. Kids love snowbanks! Before I even started clearing the driveway, there were small bootprints all over our snowbanks. With the latest bit of snow, our snowbanks are about 7 feet tall. Again.

Kids also like sledding. Fast sledding. Fierce sledding. We have a small hill next to our house and, after it snows, I slog out there in my Sorels and my snowpants and stomp out a good sled run down the hill. Again.

It takes me a while but its worth it for the 20 minutes of fierce sledding we do. Of course the kids are 5 & 7 and I am sure that their expectations for fierce sledding will grow as they do. But, for right now, our little hill is just fine. I love seeing their small red cheeks and noses, peeking out from under their snow covered hats as they trudge up the hill, through the snow, ready for another run. Again.

When the novelty of sledding wears off, we retire to the snow forts and tunnels. Seven foot snow banks are great for building things. I shovel out the fort I have been building since January and dig out a little more of the snow cave. The kids either help me or each find their own thing to do. When they finally tire, get wet or get cold, we go in to warm up and drink hot chocolate topped with whipped cream. Again.

I strapped my cross country boards onto my feet this morning and went for a ski on our 55 acres. The fields and forest were pristine and the new snow twinkled in the brilliant sunlight. The air was a crisp, fresh 16 degrees and the only other tracks besides mine were that of 2 to 3 deer, wandering and looking for eats. It's been a nice winter for cross-country skiing. Again.

I know winter can't last too much longer. The likelihood is that it will begin to disappear in the next few weeks. It is the beginning of March after all and time for the sap to run and the snow to melt. I've begun to start the garden plants in our bedroom window; the onions are up, the second round of seeds planted and I need to start the tomatoes soon. Before we know it, they will post the roads and mud season (our prelude to spring) will be here. Again.

Solstice Thoughts On Gardening

2008-12-21T10:06:00.003-05:00

I've been sitting here watching the doppler radar as they've been saying we're about to get walloped by a nor'easter. These are always fun storms... If you look at a map, most of Maine sort of hangs out over the rest of the east coast and occasionally the weather runs up along the coast from south to north, picking up moisture from the ocean as it moves along. Then, it runs into Maine. If it's winter, we get a bunch of snow and gusty winds. If it's warmer, we get a deluge and gusty winds. So, I've got this cool widget called Radar in Motion (don't know if there's a PC version) which lets me watch progressive doppler radar images. I'm a watchin' it come our way.....

On this, the 21st day of December, the shortest day of the year and the Winter Solstice, my thoughts turn towards spring and, with spring, the annual summer-long ritual I call garden. I don't mind winter; I actually love having four distinct seasons, each with it's own natural paint scheme, emotional state and sense of being. However today it seems fitting that I hunker down, play card games with the kids and peruse my seed catalog(s) for ideas on what to plant in our small garden this year.

I'd heard that last year was an unusually robust season for seed companies marked by a large increase in sales of plant seeds. I personally hope this is a benchmark change in consciousness towards a more sustainable future. In my eyes, nothing is more rewarding that reaping the fruits of your own labor.

I'm lucky that gardening is in my blood. When we were kids, my parents had a wonderful garden that produced vegetables all summer long. To this day, my mom still tends a small garden. Either mom and/or dad would go out before dinner and pick fresh veggies to have with our meal. They worked together in the kitchen to both freeze and can the excess and we enjoyed our own home-grown veggies most of the winter. Dad built a small, plastic-enclosed "greenhouse" in the basement where mom could start plants in the dead of winter. I can still remember the earthy smell of damp potting soil and the un-natural fluorescent bulbs providing artifical light for the seedlings.

Both sets of grandparents also gardened. My mom's mom was a master landscape gardener in the Boston area. My dad's father and step-grandmother had a wonderfully landscaped home in Connecticut built on a ledge-y area with pockets of plants everywhere and a beautiful rose garden for a yard. It's no surprise then that I find immense pleasure in both landscaping and in planting an annual food garden.

To the uninitiated, planting a garden may seem like a daunting task. I will tell you that once you enjoy something you have grown yourself, your view of food, especially the supermarket vegetable section, will change. There are a few choices to be made; organic or not; to start your own from seed or buy plants; to till the soil or plant in pots on your deck. Wherever you are, whatever you decide to try; the bottom line is the same. Growing your own food is a metaphor for life. A wise gardener will realize that you will always get out more than what you put in. What matters most is that you try.

Seeds contain little plants all scrunched up in the fetal position and encapsulated in a container. Yes, a seed is very similar to the womb of a mammal. While a mammal infant lives comfortably and grows inside it's maternal parent and is fed by the same, a seed lives but lies dormant until it's stimulated to grow by water. Once stimulated, it relies on a food source within the seed to provided it nourishment until it can get it's own naturally. So, perhaps a seed is more like animals that hatch from eggs. Yeah, I'm hinting at a whole bunch of cool, evolutionary biological similarities but I'm gonna stop here. Take a biology course if your intrigued. I'll stick to the metaphorical implications because I feel they are more powerful personally. When you garden, you are more of a part of life than you realize. And, if you garden each year, you get to experience and be a part of this miracle of rebirth each and every year of your life. It's no wonder gardening has such mass appeal!

Treat yourself to the classic, basic biology experiment. Go to your local hardware store and find an inexpensive package of bean or pea seeds. Get a clear plastic cup or similar container. Carefully poke a few holes for drainage into the bottom of the cup with a hot paper clip. Grab a handful of dirt (or potting soil), throw it into a clear plastic cup. Saturate the soil. Push a few seeds into the soil about an inch next to the side of the cup (so you can watch your plant grow) and cover the seeds. Place the cup onto a plastic can lid to catch excess water and put in the window sill over your kitchen sink. Water to keep your seed damp, maybe every third to fifth day or so depending on the soil you used. Watch your seeds eventually sprout and the roots and plant grow. If you have success here, you too can plant a real garden.

Where do you start? My advice is to start with just a little garden. Cherry tomato's are one of the perfect plants to start with. You can grow them in the ground; you can grow them in a pot on your deck. You can easily start them from seed or you can find plant starts easily once the weather warms. Try the seeds and if those don't work for you, buy plant starts. They grow up, so they need little in the way of horizontal growing space. Plan on some kind of support; metal tomato cages are cheap and work well enough.

Plants from seeds. I'd suggest strongly supporting your local mom & pop hardware store. Folks that work there usually have an abundance of real knowledge. Ask them, again and again if need be. They are biased, as are we all, and if you don't like what you hear, seek out a second or even a third information source. There is a difference in bagged soil types; look for a seed starting mix if you are starting seeds. This mix is mostly peat moss and many contain fertilizer. If you are motivated to be a purist (I am), there are mixes out there for those wishing to start plants organically. These may be harder to find and may still contain fertilizer from organic sources. Non-organic fertilizer comes mostly from the petroleum industry. Potting soil per se, contains more soil-like amendments but still has peat moss in it. Most all of these mixes have vermiculite, perlite or some substance that absorbs and retains moisture as container grown seeds/plants tend to dry out quickly. My favorite type of organic or natural fertilizer comes from the sea. It's liquid and may be fish emulsion or seaweed based. Caution: this stuff usually stinks. When you are using fertilizer, more is not better. Read the directions.

Contrary to what's in the seed starting mixes, seeds don't really need fertilizer till they are up and growing (a few weeks or so) and then they don't need much. Most folks I know start twice as many seeds as they need plants, then transplant the best looking seedlings to larger pots prior to planting them into the garden. This is when plants will need a boost from fertilizer, to help them through transplant shock. This is a natural lag that occurs when a seedling is ripped out of it's old environment and placed in a new one. If you've ever switched jobs or moved a residence, you know what I mean.

Plants from starts. You can avoid all of this by buying plants someone else has started. Yup, these are called "starts". You don't really have much of a choice in what you get (as compared to ordering from a seed catalog) but then if you are just starting out, this resolves a whole host of issues. You can completely ignore the previous two paragraphs and just prepare a place to put your plants.

Container gardening. If you are gardening on a patio or deck, you will want to get some containers. You can spend money on pots or be resourceful and find someone with a cat who buys litter in plastic buckets. If you choose to do the latter, make sure you drill or otherwise get holes in the bottom of your bucket for water to drain. Plants can drown if they stay too wet. Fill the containers with potting soil, if you can find soil mix made with composted manure, your plants will thank you. (PS. avoid bagged chicken manure, it's really high in nitrogen and will kill your plants). If you are not a purist, they sell potting soil with time release fertilizer. (I'm still a fan of using dilute dissolved fish or seaweed based fertilizers when you water.) Fill the container with potting soil which should come out of the bag damp. Using your hands, gently pat down the soil. Open up a hole to set the plant start in.

Garden in your yard. If you are planting in a new space in your yard, your soil probably needs some preparation. Make sure you will be planting in a space that gets at least half a day of sun; the more morning sun , the better your garden will grow. If it's a new garden and you are removing grass, it's a good idea to remove the sod completely. I've used sod chunks to fill holes in my lawn elsewhere. Turn the soil left from under the sod using a shovel and remove any larger rocks and roots. You may want to add some peat moss and some composted manure and a handful of lime as you turn and mix the top 10" of soil. This will usually be enough to get a nice mix of garden soil for your plant starts. If you find you like gardening, you will want to research composting your kitchen and yard waste. It's really the best way to "complete the circle", recycle and feed your plants (which feed you). Once you have your garden bed prepared, planting your starts is the same as planting in pots.

Transplanting. Take the pack containing the plant start, squeeze the sides to loosen the root ball. Gently invert the pack and the start should slide out of the pack. It's ok to gently pull the stem. Once the start comes out of the pack, look at the root ball. If the root ball is thick (you can see a white, thick tangle of roots) and the start is "rootbound" then take a knife and vertically score the root mass on all four sides. Pull the roots out of the ball a bit before setting your plant in the hole you made. Gently scoring the roots and pulling them gently apart will stumulate root growth. Tomatoes are different from all other veggies in that you can plant them deeply; up to their first leaves. The planted stem will grow new roots. There aren't any other veggies I know of that you can do this to, jut tomatoes. Other transplants need to be set no deeper than where their stem contacts the soil.

Gently and firmly, pack soil around your transplants roots and give each a drink of fertilizer water to saturate the root ball. If you make a circular dam around your plant start out of dirt, this will retain water and direct it right to where you want it to go. Give them at least three glugs, allowing the water to sink into the soil between glugs. Reusing a quart or one gallon milk jug is a great way to add fertilizer water to your plants. Space your plant starts at least 10-12" apart. The roots of your starts are set deep in the soil. Even though the ground may look dry, the roots of your starts are plenty damp. You shouldn't have to water more than twice a week, much less if it rains.

Directly sowing seeds. Lots of veggie seeds can go right into the ground once the gound is warm enough. Directions on the package will usually tell you when to plant. Green beans are an easy plant to grow from seed. Once you prepare your soil, take a stick, scratch a line and plant bean seeds according to the directions on the package. Note that bean seeds can be either bush beans or pole beans. The bush variety grows (obviously) as a bush while the pole variety will need something vertical to grow up (at least 8' tall). When I lived in the city, I put a hook into the side of my house and ran twine from the hook to stakes in the ground around which I planted pole beans. I was amazed at how tall they grew!

Weeds. If you have a garden in your yard and water the soil around your plants, weeds will grow. As it will inevitably rain, you will be faced with this issue anyway. My favorite deterrent to weed growth is mulch. Mulch is a layer of material over the soil which helps retain moisture and keep light from reaching the ground where seeds sprout. My favorite mulch is lawn clippings (as long as there is no chemical fertilizer or weed killer or pesticide on them). An inch thick layer of green grass clippings, spread on the ground between plants, keeps most weeds from sprouting. It's also a nice way to add organic material to your garden as it will decay during the garden season. So, whenever you mow, rake the clippings up and add them your garden. Otherwise, plan on getting out once a week to pull your weeds lest they take over your garden.

Plants that die. There's lots to learn about gardening and it takes time. You will have plants that die. Damping off is a disease where seedlings wilt and die for no apparent reason. If it happens, read up on it then and figure out what conditions you need to change. You can always replant! Overwatering is another common mistake. Count your successes rather than focusing on what doesn't make it. Tend your garden at least once a week.

Garden pests. There are an abundance of these. From cats that like to use your nicely tilled soil as a litter box to little red ants, earwigs, japanese beetles and slugs, your garden is a war zone! There are also as many beneficial insects that populate your garden zone (like bees). No matter how bad it gets, don't use pesticides! As a biochemist by training, I could tell you that these toxics are derivitives of things like mustard gas and nerve poisons used in early wars and that, if used in your garden, will get absorbed by the very plants you want to consume. Um, okay. Enough said. Wait to see what pests find your plants, then find a nice way to deal with them. There are lots of non-nasty ways of dealing with the critters that want to share your food. If I was a bug and saw a nicely cultivated garden with lots of my favorite foods together in one place, I'd want to tie on the old feed bag too.

Last thoughts. Obviously, I could go on for days or perhaps even write a book about gardening and there is still so much I personally have to learn and want to try. Once upon a time, folks planted food gardens called Victory Gardens. The sentiment captured in these words still rings true today in so many different ways. Start small, don't be disappointed, learn, have fun, eat and enjoy.

Getting ready for our first timber harvest.

2008-11-25T06:37:00.001-05:00

We have two main stands of white pine mixed with some very large balsam fir. Much of this pine is what is called field pine here and has been damaged repeatedly by pine weevils. Weevils kill the leading stem (apical meristem) of the tree creating jogs in the trunk where a side shoot has taken over and grown. In severe cases, the upper branches can look like a basket. Many of these trees are at the end of their lives, some have already died and fallen. Within this tangle of wood, there are some decent, straight young pine trees and it is these we hope to nurture. This winter, once the ground freezes, one of our neighbors who cuts trees for a living, will come and harvest those trees I have marked. He will use a tractor to remove the wood. Unfortunately, he has just sold his oxen which he used to use. I was looking for as low as an environmental impact as I could get for our harvest. In the hierarchy of choices we make, I can accept a tractor for skidding wood. I'm hoping to remove about 40% of the canopy, leaving an open floored forest for new pine trees to start. The wood will be sold for pulp or biomass.

I will be the first to admit that I have no experience when it comes to marking trees for a harvest but I do have some "common sense" goals for harvesting our pine stands. I want to eliminate the most diseased trees that are slowly dying anyway. I also want to keep the straightest trees even if they have multiple trunks. This is for two reasons. The first is for potential lumber. The second is for forest canopy structure. By canopy structure I mean that I want the branches of these older trees around to support the younger trees as they grow. These two goals create my "marking" strategy. I'm also trying to leave "clumps" of trees within close proximity to each other, grouping as much as I can in three's in a triangular pattern. My feeling is that if I were to harvest leaving trees somewhat more evenly spaced, they'd be more prone to being blown over in the wind. I have no evidence to support this but I feel this type of spacing is more natural both for the trees and also for animal habitat.

In one old field area, I was having a difficult time seeing the trees thru the forest, so to speak. Our pine stands have never been managed (pruned) so, looking into this stand of pine trees, you would see just a tangle of dead branches. So, I have decided to prune the stand before we harvest. This is no small undertaking but makes determining which trees to take much easier.

The smaller branches are being pruned by hand with a razor saw and broken up by hand into small pieces. The larger branches are being pruned with a chainsaw and run through my chipper. I'm only pruning as high as I can reach but this gets most of the heaviest dead wood out of the way. There is also standing dead wood and the smaller of these are being taken down, cut into 4-6' lengths and will be used to create wildlife brush piles (see previous post). There are also some smaller hardwoods, some of which are being removed to keep this a predominantly pine forest.

As tree harvesting this winter will create a mountain of brush, it sounds silly for me to pre-clear and chip but I do have some well thought out reasons for doing so aside from being able to see what's what. One reason is safety. By removing and shredding branches, I feel there will be less obstacles for the person harvesting to deal with. Secondly, I view the brush from harvesting as "fertilizer". Once wood dies, it is mostly degraded by wood fungi. By leaving different sizes of wood pieces to decay, I am essentially creating "time-release" fertilizer.

I assume this is the same basic premis of leaving the unusable tree parts on the ground during a timber harvest. Heavy equipment drives over the brush and crushes it. Crushed debris would aid in protecting the forest floor from erosion and decays over time. Of course, the crushed and dried brush also provides great tinder for a fire. This may be why many choose to pile the brush and burn it.

I'm hoping the dead wood I am clearing and hand-breaking or chipping now will provide lots of food material for wood fungi. Once the trees I have marked have been removed and the green brush left on the ground, the already decaying material will have an abundance of fungi which will migrate to the newly placed material. This is purely speculation mind you, but as a scientist, it's my nature to treat pretty much everything as an experiment. I may decide to chip some of the leftovers from harvesting but I will see when I get there.

Mid-November Update: It looks as if winter weather has finally come to stay! Nights are in the low 20's and our days barely move above freezing if at all. I have finished cleaning up an area bordered by a stone wall that was probably once garden space. Farmers tended to "fence in" their garden area leaving the outside area for livestock. This area is nice and flat and looks good now that it's been cleaned up. I've been careful to leave one wooded area that is in thick early forest growth alone as it's prime habitat for small animals. This week, I've moved out side the stone wall where the terrain is sloped, strewn with large rocky outcroppings and much more rugged terrain-wise. I bring only my chainsaw to this area as most of the trees are either huge or dead and my goals here are different. I move much quicker as I'm pruning large trees spaced farther apart. I'm also taking down some of the smaller standing deadwood. I'm careful to leave many of the larger dead trees as they provide habitat for woodpeckers, owls and other tree cavity-dwelling critters. There are many "pockets" or shallow depressions in the forest floor and it is in these scattered pockets that I place the debris from pruning and cutting.

One of our neighbors makes wreaths for all of her friends (including us) and for the past few years, she's been coming over to our land to "tip" the balsam fir trees. As I've been clearing some of the smaller of these in an area that will become our yard, I leave her neat piles of brush to gather her tips from. Once she's done with her wreaths, I'll mow the branches with my field mower. The smell of balsam is wonderful in the cold, crisp air!

Forest Road Work

2008-11-03T04:58:00.006-05:00

Halloween has come and gone and the kids have recovered from their annual overdose of sugar. We have begun November with nights getting down into the low 20's; some of our days haven't migrated beyond the mid-40's. The ground is starting to freeze but is still thawing during the day. It's just a matter of time before the ground will be frozen till spring. I have yet to till the garden under for fall (again) and it may just have to wait till next year.

With the bridge complete, my efforts have turned to the repair of some of the forest roads (ie. skidder trails) that traverse our woods. Our property was severely cut about 12 years ago with little regard to much of anything except getting as much wood out as possible. Deep skidder ruts are frequent as harvesting took place on unfrozen ground. I have spent some time pruning the trees on the sides of these roads, making brush piles for the critters and leveling and grading the trails so they drain water. It's too cold for seed but come next spring, I will put conservation mix (basically grass seed and clover) down where there is now bare soil so that I can keep these roads mowed and looking nice. Saving this work for spring is not an option. The ground here freezes deep and in the spring, it takes a long time for the ground to thaw and to become dry enough to be workable. I have found that trying to work in the mud just makes more mud. So, my options are limited to dryer times which means typically summer and fall. Some of my trail are through naturally wet areas which narrows my work time even further.

All of the birds have migrated save the chickadees who twitter about the branches and give me advice while I'm out working. I've seen lots of deer tracks on our land but hunting season started this past weekend and I have a suspicion that a few of our "neighbors" have walked right by the POSTED signs onto our land with their guns. I'm neither for nor against hunting but I do feel that animals should have pockets of land that are a safe haven against human predation. I'm also an advocate for property owners rights which includes the right to decide who can access your land. For me, it's all about respect. Unfortunately, this basic value seems to get displaced by a certain amount of senselessness which coincides with the arrival of deer season. 'Nuff said.

The roads (skidder trails) on our property were at least placed with some sensibility. My goal is to repair and maintain some of these roads which will allow tractor access to most of our property. On our 55 acres, we have a centrally located developed gravel road that runs pretty much up the middle of our rectangle-shaped plot. This road has stone wall bordered field on much of either side of it.

Out of the far corners of the fields, there are secondary roads and it is these which I am repairing. There are breaks in the walls where skidders have broken through leaving scattered piles of rock. These walls are being rebuilt to create nicer looking breaks and the trails repaired and graded. These secondary roads will allow access for sensible timber harvesting for both the hardwood and softwood on our land (read: firewood and lumber).

One stretch of particularly wet road is getting a layer of corduroy (see previous blog). This is an ongoing experiment as I have no idea how long the poles I am setting as corduroy will last. The road continues to get filled with fir poles and topped with a layer of fine gravel. The "paving" of the road progresses as I get to clearing more of the fir trees from old field areas.

Update: October has ended with an unusually warm spell and a bunch of rain. I've fixed two of the worst roads but still need to harvest more fir poles to finish about 25' of corduroy in my wettest area. I've spent my budget of gravel for the year and still need to top the newest 25' of corduroy. I may also need to purchase a culvert to complete drainage of this area. This will wait till next spring at least. I will be able to place the rest of the poles this winter as I'll be clearing more land once things get colder.

In anticipation of a snowy winter, I have also begun creating and opening up some trails for cross country skiing. These are low on the priority list but they are part of the grand scheme of things as well. I'm hoping for a nice window of opportunity, with cold weather and frozen ground, before the snow flies.

Building a Forest Bridge-Bridge Deck

2008-09-23T06:27:00.003-04:00

With the steel superstructure nicely in place (whew!), it's time to finish the bridge. Half of the hemlock beams I ordered from a local sawmill arrived yesterday. The beams are 8" x 8" x 14' long. The ends are not cut square and they will have to each be drilled with 5 holes to accomodate the galvanized carriage bolts that will attach them to the steel superstructure. Each beam will be cut to length and temporarily set in place. The bottom of the beams will be marked through each bolt hole (in the steel beam), rolled and drilled. The beam will then be rolled back (top up), the bolts pounded through the beam, then the bolt tails will be set into the holes and the beam bolted into place. There are 26 beams.....

One week later...
The first half of the beams are in place..whew! They are too heavy to pick up alone (they are WET). They are almost too heavy to move at all. I placed them on the bridge steel with the tractor and then rolled them into place by hand. To get the overhang even on both ends, I have to bump the beams with my chest... The rest of the wood should be here at the beginning of this week.

Two weeks later....
The bridge deck is finished! The running boards were cut and nailed in place yesterday. The side rails were cut and placed but I need to locate 20" long carriage bolts to secure them to the bridge deck.

At the beginning of last week, I cut and stacked old railroad ties against the closer end of the steel and wood of the bridge so that I could backfill against them to raise the road grade to bridge level. I had to stack three ties on top of one another so the ties were drilled and 1/2" rebar pounded through them to keep the ties aligned.

To contain the fill on the sides of the ramp, I moved and stacked some very large rocks on either side leading up to the bridge. About 6 yards of gravel brought the road level about up to bridge level so that I could drive my tractor onto the bridge. With a bit of careful engineering, I placed two ramps at the other, yet to be filled, side of the bridge and got my tractor to the other side of the creek where I had to repeat the same operation to bring it to deck level.

Add a few loads of gravel to bring the road up to bridge grade and the bridge is done! I'm very happy with the way everything turned out. I was worried that a 20 ft. long, 14 ft wide bridge would look massive in this space but it ended up looking just fine. I have yet to find reasonably priced 20 inch long galvanized carriage bolts to secure the side rails to the deck. It's not a real high priority as I don't expect too much wild driving on our forest road.

There's a tinge of fall in the air...

2008-09-08T06:36:00.001-04:00

I love the end of summer (okay, Jeff, which season don't you love?). I'll admit I enjoy the passing of the seasons.

The kids started school last week. Our youngest climbed on the bus for the first time with his sister and I'll admit I shed a few tears.

It's been an odd summer. What was supposed to be summer was wet. What was supposed to be spring was hot. Despite the strange weather, the tomatoes are coming in by the pound (I planted 6 different varieties) and the kids and I made a first batch of spagetti sauce using the Squeezo that I inherited from my folks. It seems to be missing the tomato screen which I will have to get. The first batch of sauce had a fair number of seeds in it which I re-screened through the pasta colander. The sauce was made with some of the last Walla Walla Sweets that I grew from seed for the first time and dried basil and thyme, also from our garden.

The garden was prolific this year and I managed to freeze some produce for a taste of garden fresh in the midst of winter. I'm getting better at it. Grass mulch keeps the weeds down pretty well but they still managed to get ahead of me late August. I also managed to get a second planting in of beans and lettuce. My goals this year were to both freeze and can stuff from the garden which I have done. There isn't much to show for my efforts but it is a start. We're up to our ears in tomatoes and cucumbers and I have made one batch of fresh gazpacho and will make another for the school's welcome back dinner next week. I'm contemplating pickles for next week as well as some stewed tomatoes for winter soup stock.

There's a tinge of fall in the air; there has been since the third week of August. Some of the soft maples have started turning and losing their leaves and there's a hint of yellow in many of the other tree species we have here in our area. Folks round here are saying that we're going to have an early winter. I'm not quite sure what that means, whether its just the cold temps or if it includes snow. I guess we'll see.

I've made a verbal commitment with a local farmer to harvest some of our poorer pine this winter. He uses oxen to haul the wood which is nice due to its minimal impact on the forest floor. After fixing skidder damage on our land, I'm leery of large equipment though if wood is properly harvested over frozen ground, there should be none of that type of damage. Given my choice, I'd much rather use this sustainable option. The farmer lives around the corner so he and his oxen will walk to work each day. Little fuel will be used to harvest and buck the wood. The logs will be yarded by the oxen to a point where they can be picked up and taken to a local mill by truck. Given the price of fuel, everyone here is looking to minimize fuel expenses which is fine by me as this means that folks are being forced to be a bit more sensible.

Quietly and quickly it seems, most of the birds have disappeared; heading south for the winter. I first noticed that our hummingbird feeder wasn't getting drained the last week in August and I didn't hear their high pitched squabbling. We had hummingbird babies for the first time since moving here. There have been a few flocks of Canadian geese heading off that way as well. We don't see too many as we are pretty far east and out of the flyway. There are still a few Mourning Doves around and of course the sparrows are still here too. Most all the others are gone and, if you listen, the crickets of late summer rule the airwaves.

The nights are good for sleeping. Open up the window, add an extra layer and sleep well in the coolness of the night. We almost had an early frost. One of my neighbors reported a frozen layer on her car. We didn't get it but soon it will be time to put the garden to bed.

Building a Forest Bridge-Steel Superstructure

2008-09-06T06:59:00.001-04:00

With the footings in place and the stream bed re-finished, the 5 - 20 foot long, 1 foot tall steel I-beams could be set. You can see that the rebuilt stream bed has filled in and looks nice.

When the footing blocks were poured, 14" long steel anchor bolts were set into the blocks at locations that would secure 4 of the 5 beams. My intention was not that these bolts would rigidly secure the bridge to the footing blocks but hold the beams "in place" allowing some deck flexibility. Though I provided detailed drawings of bolt locations, the bolts ended up in different places than I'd anticipated. I had to cut the existing bolts off and drill about 12" into the blocks to epoxy half-inch threaded rod where I needed it to secure the beams.

Things don't always (don't ever?) go as expected and I like to have at least one alternative plan brewing. Initially, the beams were going to be set in place and the 3 sets of cross braces welded as the beams were placed in position. After rehashing this idea, I decided to move on to the more laborious and costly "plan B".

I rented a generator/welder (as opposed to hiring someone with a portable welder). Renting a portable stick welder was less expensive and, based on my limited welding experience from two welding classes, I figured I could do what I needed to. Plan B called for welding angle iron onto the beams (these would be pre-drilled to accept three bolts); then the cross braces would then be bolted to the angle iron as the bridge superstructure was assembled. This allowed me to weld the braces on to the beams while they were flat on the ground; a much easier task for one person to tackle by themselves.

Making the angle iron brackets took a while as I don't have any real metal working equipment in my workshop. 24 pieces of angle iron were cut with a sawzall. In each of these pieces then had to be drilled 3 - 5/8" holes.... yup, thats 72 holes in all (whew!). I have a small table top drill press for woodworking projects and I had to coax this little machine to drill through 1/4" steel. I wasn't finished drilling once these holes were done, I still had to drill (coax) an additional 72 matching holes through the cross braces. This approach added a bunch of time onto this project but in the long run it did help ease things on the assembly end. Keep in mind, I'm doing all this work by myself. The beams weigh in at over 500 lbs each and each of the cross-braces weigh about 20 lbs. So the strategy was to make the assembly job as easy for one person as I could and bolting was easier than vertical welding for me.

I decided to paint the I-beams instead of leaving them to rust (which they were already doing). A gallon of Rust-Oleum Rusty was about $30. at a local retailer. I put our generator in the back of my truck and used an orbital disk sander to clean the surfaces prior to painting on two coats of primer. One coat of brown topcoat applied with a small (4") disposable paint roller kit finished the beams. I don't know if the time I invested was worth it and this paint job will last or if it will inevitably make the steel last any longer but it satisfied my perfection-ist side and the bridge superstructure sure looks nice!

The I-beams were set, one by one, on top of the cement blocks, starting with the middle one and moving out to the sides. Sandwiched between the bottom of the beams and footing blocks were strips of tire tread cut from used radial tires (cut with a Sawzall). I figured this small bit of rubber would help absorb miscellaneous bridge flexing from traffic.

The top of each I-beam needed to be drilled with 26 bolt holes (130 holes in total). The bottom of each beam also needed to be drilled with two holes on each end to bolt to the footing block. The easiest way to do this was with a mag drill. A mag (magnetic) drill is a small (but heavy!) portable drill press that electro-magnetically secures itself to metal. I used a regular metal cutting 5/8" drill bit to bore through the beams. These holes will secure the bolts that hold the hemlock beams which create the bridge deck.

Steel is not as forgiving to work with as wood. All of my holes were precise to 1/16" of an inch and even then, I had to finesse the beams to get the bolts through the cross-ties and angle iron. First, the center three, drilled and painted beams were placed in position using the cross-ties as guides to precise placement. A shot of spray paint was squirted through the bottom holes to identify placement of the anchor bolts on the concrete blocks. The outside two beams were moved, holes drilled, threaded rod cut to fit and epoxyed in place. The center beam was not attached to the blocks because it sits over the joint between the two and the holed would have been too close to the edge of the block. The rubber tire pieces were similarly marked, holes drilled and placed over the rods. The beams were then placed and loosely bolted. The cross ties were also placed and bolted loosely.

The last two, outside beams were similarly placed and attached. When the entire bridge superstructure was assembled, all bolts were tightened. Scratches and hardware were touched up/painted to complete the superstructure. Though is was more costly (by about $500.00) and consumed more time than I had planned on spending, I am very pleased with the results. The first load of hemlock beams was delivered yesterday and it's on to finishing the bridge deck!

Building a Forest Bridge-Groundwork & Footing

2008-07-02T06:51:00.010-04:00

Our stream crossing to date was wide enough to get my tractor and truck across. However, our finished bridge will be 14' wide and this necessitated removal of some trees and widening of the road. It also left me with one big-ass root to remove from a 7 trunk swamp maple which was right next to the stream inlet. Even with my backhoe, it took me 4 days of surgical digging and root cutting with a hand axe to get that bugger out. I also needed to reconstruct the stream inlet with large rocks and regrade the road bank. We had a bit of a drought going and I was lucky to be able to work while there was very little flow.

Prior to placing the first two blocks on the far side of the stream, I used my back hoe to excavate a trench to set the cement blocks in.

I placed a 4" slotted drain pipe the length of the trench (sloped downhill) which will drain to daylight on the down stream side.

Around the drain pipe and under the blocks is 3/4" crushed stone. This is all wrapped in water permeable filter fabric.

On top of the fabric is a thin layer of gravel which was raked and packed to level. It may be overkill but this drainage layer under the blocks will avoid any chance of frost heaving (which at 3500 lbs each probably won't happen but I'd rather be safe than sorry). This also allowed me to provide a level surface to set the blocks on. A logging truck with a grapple was used to pick up the blocks at the cement plant and to set them in place once we got back to our bridge site. Due to the reach of the arm on the logging truck, I am unable to do both sides of the stream at the same time. So, I'll have to get the truck to come back to set the second two blocks when I am ready with my second hole. Final tweaking of block position was done with my backhoe.

Once the first two cement blocks were in position, the down hill (stream) side was bermed with rock. Large rocks were carefully placed against the blocks and packed as tightly as possible, wedging them into and against the soil left from excavation. These were topped with smaller rock. This area will be covered by bridgework and will be much less accessible after the beams go on so now was the time to do this.

The uphill side of the blocks was backfilled first with one-man rocks (an old expression meaning those that can be managed by "one man") again packed tightly, then a layer of crushed stone which filled the voids between the large rock nicely, then gravel spread in thin layers and hand tamped till level with the top of the blocks.

The area around the first two blocks will not be tractor-accessible once the second hole has been dug so now was the best time to do this "finish" work. I was lucky enough to have a pile of rocks close by left by the farmer who originally cleared this area years ago. In Maine, we have no shortage of stone...

The second set of blocks was set and finished like the first. I ordered a load of small 1-2" round stone and used this to re-finish the stream bed which I had gently smoothed with my backhoe prior to digging the second trench. We're having a bit of a dry spell and the stream has been dry for two weeks now so I was able to work this area easily. With the blocks now set, I can place the 5 steel beam on them to create the framework for our bridge.

Building a Forest Bridge-Design & Planning

2008-07-01T05:49:00.009-04:00

We have a small creek which crosses our road. I am able to get over with both my truck and tractor but most vehicles couldn't get across due to steep banks. The creek runs most of the time but does dry up occasionally (it dried up last summer but not the previous two). If we hope to get any other type of traffic across, we needed to build a bridge. Thinking off into the future, this small bridge will need to be able to support: logging trucks and associated equipment, cement trucks and (hopefully not) a fire truck. A little bit of research defined the heaviest of these to be the logging truck so the bridge will need to be designed to carry in excess of 70,000 lbs (it's been designed for 90).

Our other option was a culvert which we chose not to use for a few reasons. First, it would have required digging up most of the streambed which did not excite me. Second, our state (Maine) dictates that a culvert must go from the streambed on the upstream side to the streambed on the downstream side. For us, this meant a very steep incline as the levels of the stream are different by about three feet. Our little stream lies in the headwaters of the Medomak River Watershed which is one of the few in our area that hasn't had much fish habitat restoration done on it. If we placed a culvert at this steep angle, it might preclude fish migration in the future if there is any chance of it happening at all. Of course this assumes that funds will support barrier removal on this body of water in the future. The third reason was aesthetics. A small bridge is certainly more appealing than a culvert (tho it is a bit more expensive).

When I started planning to build our bridge, cost sharing from our local Forest Service was an option. That was two years ago and those state funds have dried up. Our local state forester directed me to the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) which is under the larger arm of the USDA (yup, the US Dept of Agriculture). I wasn't real excited about dealing with the federal government and had to sign lots of paperwork. Of course, I had just missed the deadline to get any funding at the beginning of the year and, while congress has approved the most recent Farm Bill this spring, the bureaucratic wheels grind slowly and I wouldn't see any funding till this fall which is when I plan to start harvesting some trees (more on this later on). They were kind enough to arrange for an engineer to visit our stream and he provided me with the necessary size and load details so that I could finish designing the bridge.

Realizing that we'd have to pay for all of this ourselves, I began the process of researching design options as compared to cost options. The easiest and most reasonably priced structure sinks retaining wall blocks halfway into the ground, five steel I-beams sit on top of the blocks spanning the stream and hemlock beams cross atop the I-beams forming a bridge deck. I could have used wooden timbers to cross the stream but these have a more limited life-span and I would have had to rebuild the bridge every 10 years (this is according to NRCS guidelines, realistically, it probably would have lasted much longer than this). My wife has a hard time visualizing things so I used Google SketchUp (sketchup.google.com) to design a 3D model.

As we will be harvesting timber this fall, I filed a Permit By Rule with the State. The details are submitted to our DEP (Dept. Environmental Protection) and only if they find fault with them do they contact you. So, if you don't hear anything within two weeks, you can go and build. I had done my research and provided them with all the details and I had assumed there wouldn't be an issue. They do ask that you send before and after pictures once your project has been completed.

The Ingredients:

Retaining wall blocks will provide the base for the bridge and our local cement company (State Sand and Gravel) makes these at $50 per. These blocks are 2' x 2' x 6' long and weigh in at about 3500 lbs. They were willing to pour in anchor bolts for me so that I can physically secure the I-beams to the blocks. These blocks are a bit heavy for my pickup truck and they do not deliver. So, the good folks at State Sand and Gravel suggested finding a local logging truck with a grapple arm. This way, I could pick up the blocks at the plant, transport them to my bridge site and place them exactly where I needed them to be. Being a state with plenty of logging activity, it was pretty easy to find somebody local willing to do this for me.

On top of the blocks are 5-20' long steel I-beams spaced equidistantly. These are the most expensive part of the bridge at $500 a piece. They are 12" high, weigh about 500lbs each and are easily managed with my tractor. I requested quotes for my steel at three local establishments. I looked at prices for just the steel and for steel + fabrication. Each steel beam needs 26-5/8" holes drilled in the top plate to bolt the hemlock cross beams to as well as a few holes in the bottom plate to bolt the bridge to the cement blocks. The specifications also call for 3 sets of 8" tall x 33" long steel braces welded between each I-beam. One of the companies wouldn't do fabrication but had the best price. The second wanted to charge me over $2000. and their beams were also two hundred more than the first. The third wouldn't get back to me even after I called them twice (nertz to them!). To save two grand, I decided to drill my own holes and do my own welding. I have a neighbor who works for a marine contracting company. He suggested using an annular cutter which cuts plugs in steel instead of boring holes and should be faster. My local rental shop can get a Mag drill (a vertical drill press that attaches to steel with a magnetic base) for $50. for the weekend, the bits cost about $25. each over the internet and I have a generator that will supply electricity for the drill.

We have a local sawmill that mills hemlock. The design calls for 8" x 8" x 14' long beams spaced 1 1/2" apart. I need 26 of these cross beams as well as 2" (x 10") running boards to sit atop the deck. They also carry old rail ties that I will put horizontally in front of the steel I-beams to transition from gravel road to bridge. Mills usually charge by the board foot for their lumber and the wood deck will run about $1200. although (over the phone) they said they'd give me a bit of a break due to the volume.

Hardware, mostly in the form of galvanized 10" carriage bolts will come from my local mom & pop hardware store. Buying in bulk from them was much less expensive than buying from the local big box stores (I checked prices at both). It does pay to shop around.

The Goodness of Spring and a Corduroy Road Begins

2008-06-03T05:57:00.015-04:00

I've always been passionate about the outdoors but I'm not really quite sure why I've become so enchanted with the passing of time this spring. I've truly been enjoying the transition of our dormant landscape to one that is awake and alive.

The leaves on our trees are changing from the bright neon green of newness to that darker shade that means serious photosynthesis is going on. The apple trees I trudged through the snow to so diligently prune responded marvelously with full crowns of wonderfully fragrant blossoms. I could hear the hum of many thousands of bees as they too enjoyed the fruit (pun intended) of my labors. The 3 apple trees and 4 walnut trees I purchased and transplanted have leafed out; the two hearty pecans weren't so hearty. The weather changed overnight and the days warmed into the upper 60's even low 70's. The blackfly swarms are gone but a few of the buggers persist to occasionally fly into my mouth, nose or eye. They have been replaced by mosquitos which, at least, respond some to liberally applied bug spray. The honeysuckle is almost in full bloom and I am anxiously awaiting my last favorite spring smell; the week of wild rose bloom which fills the air with its amazing fragrance.

At home, the garden is mostly in. I couldn't wait until after the full moon to plant which is what most folks around here swear by. As usual, I have more to plant in an already full garden. This is the first year since we moved over three years ago where I feel I am finally "gardening".

Over the winter, I built a small coldframe/greenhouse out of old storm windows someone had left by the side of the road. This was assembled outside in the garden just after the ground thawed. It's designed to be taken apart and moved so that it can be reincarnated as (perhaps) part of a larger structure (read: chicken coop) at a later time.

My garden compost pile took two years to get going and I have compost to use for the first time this year. I added a second bin this spring. The many pickup truck loads of horse barn gleanings that I used to mulch between my rows of plants in the last two years has successfully improved the body of most of my soil (it was pretty sandy when I started).

I have been faithfully organic with my garden believing it to be the only way to grow your own. Ever the scientist, I've decided to try seeding between my rows with a low-growing crimson clover to suppress weeds and provide a green manure crop during the garden season. I've also added greensand (potassium and other minerals) and Calphos (calcium and phosphorus) when I transplant and will also side dress with these as my plants bloom. After many (many) years of experimenting with various incarnations of drip irrigation, I now swear by T-tape as the most cost effective way of watering row crops when the soils dry. With increasing food prices, my goal this year is to put by as many of our veggies as I can come harvest time.

On our 55 acres, I've been continuing to clear the windfall of dead trees around our extended yard area. The dead wood is cut into 16-36" lengths and moved, with my big orange wheelbarrow (aka the tractor), to low places in the woods where I can stack the wood to decay. I decided I needed a break from the tedium of this chore and went to work on rebuilding a corduroy section of access trail which goes through a perpetually wet area.

My first attempt at "fixing" this section of trail two years ago was a disaster and I'm fixing the mess I made back then. I had moved the soil layer out of the road bed into piles alongside the trail. I scraped down to clay thinking the road would be solid underneath (wrong!). They wet clay gets real soft and squishy after being driven through by lugged tractor tires. This would be fun to play in if I were a kid or weren't trying to make something useful out of it.

I'm removing the piles of scraped topsoil from beside the trail, taking it out to our back field bucket by bucket and spreading it out. I'm adding this good rich soil to an otherwise ledge-y and uneven area. It'll get raked and seeded with a grass/clover mix.

The extensive back-and-forth, heavy tractor traffic, from wet trail to field, has packed down the soil so much in some places that I've had to find small rock to fill hollows that have become dangerous to drive over with a full bucket (read: tip over). The small rock comes from being picked out of the fresh damp topsoil that I have spread over the field. Hand raking levels the newly placed soil to get it ready for seed and finds me my rocks. Yup. It's labor intensive but it's also pretty cool the way all these tasks can be connected to create more than a "whole" if you kind of follow me.

On my soon-to-be corduroy roadbed, I've removed old wood of varying lengths and states of decay from a previous attempt at corduroy, flattened out a section as much as I could in the muck and mire and trenched the uphill side of the road to intercept some of the surface water that is ultimately the issue.

I've started placing 10' long balsam fir poles in the trail bed and also started to place gravel to cover the poles. I've put so many down that I 'm going to have to start driving on top of them to gain access to the other side (to remove more soil, etc.). The gravel gets raked out to get it between the poles then driven over to set everything. I'll add another layer of gravel as things settle in and to keep the poles from getting chewed up by the tractor tires.

I'm on to another round of tree harvesting as I've used up my stockpile of poles. All the smaller diameter trees have been removed and now I'm on to the larger (and heavier) ones. This is probably good as the next area to corduroy is also the muckiest.

Spring Comes Slowly

2008-05-05T05:24:00.003-04:00

Spring comes slowly in Maine. As I take my son to preschool, we drive along a bit of ridge that goes by Sennebec Lake. This gives us a panoramic view of the hills and fields and, if I look over the treetops, I can watch the color change almost daily. It's like someone has taken a paintbrush and, ever so gently, tipped the tree branches with color.

The Swamp Maple are usually the first to show color with their branch tips then flowers hinting of a burgundy color against the sky. The next are the Popple perhaps as much as a month later with a flourish of iridescent lime on their tree tops closely followed by the rest of the Maples with more burgundy. One or two of the trees together would be hardly noticeable but acres of trees together on a hillside create a spring patchwork of color.

Mother's Day comes next weekend. An event we, in the midcoast region relish not for celebrating mom, but for the official arrival of the blackfly season. According to Wikipedia, there are over 1800 different species of blackfly and I'm willing to bet we have most of them here. Many of the blackfly species rely on blood as do mosquitos. Blackflies being smaller and sneakier than mosquitos are harder to squash; they are often gone when you feel their bite. So, the semi-enjoyable tradeoff of being bitten and splattering their little blood-filled bodies against your extremeties just isn't there.

The people that blackflies are attracted to often fall into two categories; those that are bothered and those that react. I am a member of the former. While the little buggers often annoy me by occasionally biting, they pose more of a nuisance by flying up my nose or into my eyes. My 6 year old daughter, poor kid, is a member of the latter. They come looking for her in droves, bite her everywhere and she reacts to their bites. These bites end up looking like chicken pox as the bites swell into welts and make her itch like crazy for over a week. We easily go through a bottle of calamine lotion for her each spring. They say you build a tolerance to their bites and for her sake I certainly hope so.

As spring progresses, so does the migration of the birds. The first noticeable spring visitors are the red-wing blackbirds. A few arrive early, followed by the hoards that sit in tree tops noisily chattering to each other. The robins trickle in slowly as do the blue jays. As I work out in our forest, I can follow the migration of spring by listening to the increasing diversity of their songs. Each spring, I am treated to visits by a mating pair of cardinals. I'm also acutely aware of the woodpeckers that bounce from tree to tree. We are lucky enough to have a pair of pileated woodpeckers that I hear and even see from time to time. The most annoying winged songsters by far are the killdeer. They lay their eggs in field areas on the ground and then spend the next 6-8 weeks squalking and fluttering on the ground everytime they sense a threat (which seems to be almost 24 hours of the day). Our only reprieve comes when their hatchlings leave the nest or their eggs get squished by the horses in the pasture next door.

The ground thawed early this year, it really never had a chance to freeze deeply. So, the ground dried out and I tilled the garden earlier this year. I've inherited my dad's old Troy Bilt rototiller that has got to be at least 30 years old. It had been left by my folks garden, right where it quit, a few years ago. I've been tinkering with it for almost two years now; they built those original tillers to last forever. This poor thing needs a bit of rescue work done. I seem to get it going just long enough each year to till the garden once each spring and then it stops, waiting for me to take it completely apart once again. Lately, it's been the ignition system. I can't seem to find a way to keep the condenser wire from eventually getting sucked into the flywheel. This is a big problem because they don't make condensers for this engine anymore and there are only so many times I can rescue this tiny little device with shrink tubing and electrical tape. I will put off the expense of a new engine as long as I am able to tinker.

Our first planting of peas are up. The kids and I have planted a few varieties this year. We're opting for mostly shelling peas this go round and even trying some tall pole peas this year. Our pole beans last year were prolific and I'm hoping this pole pea variety follows suit. I built a small green house this year, nothing fancy but more space to work and set out plants to harden in the spring. It's take-a-part-able so I can maybe move it and add a chicken coop to the backside later on.

The garden has been rearranged this year into mostly straight rows. Initially I was artsy fartsy with my garden layout but it was impractical when it came to laying out the irrigation. We are lucky enough to get regular rain in the summer here where we live. There are occasional times when a bit of extra water helps. I am a big fan of drip irrigation and mulch. I've experimented with just about everything over the years and I've settled on T-tape as being the most cost-effective solution for getting the right amount of water where it's needed. That and grass clippings (fertilizer and pesticide-free) for mulch around my plants. This year, I'll be planting a green manure crop (red clover) between my rows to both squelch weeds and add nitrogen and biomass to the soil.

We're still getting the occasional night below freezing which is ok by me. The cold nights tend to squelch the blackfly population and I can get work done early in the day out in our forest. The cool nights also favor the plants that enjoy cooler weather (like peas this time of year). The days are warm enough without becoming hot and uncomfortable. As much as I'm looking forward to summer, I do enjoy the cooler days of spring.

The "You Rot!" Pile

2008-04-22T05:27:00.003-04:00

I am a thinker. I will wake up in the wee hours of the morning and will not be able to get back to sleep because I start to ponder. (You will note the hour of many of my posts is early AM.) This "thinking thing" also happens when I'm out working in our woods. Sometimes those thoughts get kind of weird; thus the title of this post.

Learning about and following Mother Nature's paradigm for decay has become something of a, well, I hesitate to call it a passion, perhaps obsession is a better choice of words. Decay is nothing more than a feeding frenzy of microorganisms and fungi that find their "niche". In biological terms, a niche is an environment where a particular organism thrives. Create that environment "and they will come". I've realized that in clearing land naturally, what I've really been trying to do is create mini habitats for particular species of organisms.

In areas that I want to reclaim quickly, I have been using the biology of surface area. This means that by shredding and chipping, I am increasing the amount of surface area that microorgansims and fungi have to work on. As long as these areas of chipped/shredded brush/wood stay predominantly damp, I will have created an environment conducive to rapid decay.

My brush piles are more like time release fertilizer. Initially, they provide habitat for both ground dwelling animals and for small birds. As time goes by and the lower logs decay, they become habitat for the organisms of decay.

There is a third modality that I am using and this leads me to the "You Rot!" pile. Too many hours alone in the woods Jeff? Perhaps... Both from previous logging and blowdown, I have an abundance of fallen wood in varying states of decay. The newer blowdown (2 yrs old) has peeling bark where insects have colonized between the bark and the wood. The bark keeps the inner wood damp and the insects thrive even if there is little contact with the ground. The wood, pine, fir and popple, shows the initial stages of decay as the wood is beginning to get soft and punky. The older pieces of downed wool on our property go from this initial stage to being completely rotten. All of this wood is too big to chip.

I started taking some of this wood to a low spot (a skidder rut) that I eventually wanted to level. I cut the logs into shorter lengths, moved them to this low spot and then lined all the logs up in the same direction, packing them together as tightly as I could. I did this one year ago as an experiment.

I noticed a few weeks ago that my pile of logs was just about completely decayed! Cool! I knew this would happen but I didn't know it would happen so quickly. I was careful to mix younger (less decayed) logs with more decayed pieces thinking that the decay organisms would spread and apparently they did with vigor. I was careful to place this rot pile in an area of partial shade as I knew being damp was a criteria for decay. At any rate, I've now put two more layers of partially decaying logs on top of the first wanting to keep a good thing going.

I'm in a bit of a quandary as this pile is now in an area I want to level this spring and I have a feeling that if I cover the pile with soil, decay will slow down or even stop. What I will do for now is cover the pile with a layer of shredded brush in an attempt to better keep the moisture contained as I have a feeling we may be in for a dry summer.

Bottom line. The "You Rot!" Pile rocked and is a great technique for getting rid of large pieces of useless wood you wouldn't otherwise know what to do with. The wood decay organisms thrive and multiply in a frenzy of activity as long as you provide them with the environment they need. Depressions in the ground provide an ideal location for this process for their natural ability to retain moisture throughout the year.

(Gee, this almost sounds scientific!)

Corduroy Roads

2008-04-11T05:08:00.000-04:00

I'd learned about corduroy roads long ago in high school as part of a course in colonial technology (Thank You Mr. Holmes!). In colonial America, well travelled roads could get quite muddy after rain and especially during winter thaw in areas where the ground froze. Wagon wheels were narrow with little surface area and were prone to sinking quite deeply into the mud. One of the solutions to this issue was to "corduroy" a road. Small tree poles were laid down, across the road, side by side. The good news was that this would keep the wheels from sinking into the mud and getting stuck. The bad news was that this provided both a bone-shaking ride for wagon or carriage occupants and it could also rattle a wooden wagon or carriage to bits if one wasn't careful. A solution to this was to cover the corduroy road with gravel.

I just happen to have a few wet spots where this simple technology is going to be put to trial. I'm a bit wary as I'm going to use Balsam Fir poles for my corduroy and fir seems to decay fairly quickly out in the woods. However, from what I have heard, if I cover the poles with gravel, this corduroy road will last indefinitely. I've an educated suspicion that the fungi responsible for decay require a certain set of optimal conditions to grow, reproduce and perform the process of wood digestion. Change the balance of these conditions and you slow, perhaps even stop the process of decay.

I personally do not know if the decay process is anaerobic, aerobic or both. That is, if decay organisms (mostly fungi) require air or if the process will continue on without air. So, if I bury the logs thus removing much of the exposure to air, will there be little decay? There is also the issue of moisture. Being in a wet environment, the logs will be very wet most of the time and this may also aid to retard decay as fungi seem to favor damp conditions.

I've also read recently two books by Rob Roy (http://www.cordwoodmasonry.com) on Cordwood Masonry. He feels that, in order for decay organisms (fungi) to gain a foothold in wood, the wood needs to remain damp. If wood can breathe and dry out after getting wet, decay is not an issue. Suprising to me was that he recommends Balsam Fir as one of the species that works best in cordwood construction. Apparently it can last as long as cedar (the most preferred wood for cordwood construction) in this type of construction method and does not shrink much when it dries as compared to other wood species.

So, while my smaller diameter trees are going to corduroy some of my wet access roads, I'm now thinking of harvesting my larger Balsam Firs for a cordwood construction project. Perhaps a Cordwood Sauna is in our future.....

And as far as my corduroy road experiment goes? I guess time will tell.... I'll update here of course.

The Winter That Was....

2008-03-31T03:46:00.002-04:00

Well, here it is the last day of March and there is still snow 2+ feet deep in much of our woods. Granted there are many spots that are bare and the size of these areas is increasing daily but the fact remains that this has been a long and snowy winter (they are forecasting more snow yet again for tomorrow night).

My cross country skiis are still leaning against the wall on the front porch hoping for one last trek into decent snow but all of the tell-tale signs are here that spring is about to push old man winter out of the way; at least until next fall.

One of my goals this late winter was to prune all of our wild apple trees (at least as many as I could in the areas I've cleared). I tend to become a bit possessed when it comes to pruning and I will prune everything I find with branches on it. I guess I figure I won't have to come back and do it again soon if I do it while I'm there. Well, I was pruning some maples about 3-4 weeks ago (when the snow was over 3 feet deep in some places and there was no bare ground) and I noticed that the fresh cuts were beginning to weep sap. Sure enough, the maple sugar buckets began to appear on the maple trees shortly thereafter. Last Sunday was Maple Syrup Sunday in Maine. Many of the Sugar Houses open their doors to visitors and it's a spring ritual that my kids and I wouldn't miss! At the very least, we have to get our dish of vanilla ice cream covered in fresh maple syrup. We sit at a picnic table or on a woodpile and savor this tasty treat that marks the official transition from winter into spring. Last year, pretty much all the fresh maple syrup we bought and took home went into topping ice cream as a daily treat for weeks after!

Two weeks ago, in the morning, I was waiting for the school bus at the end of our driveway with my kindergarten-age daughter when I heard a bird song that made me turn my head up towards the top of a pocket of popple trees. Woop-woop-a-dee. Woop-woop-a-dee. It was the first red-wing blackbird of spring; singing solo in what would soon be a chorus of voices two weeks later. Sure enough, yesterday saw the same tree tops covered in noisy voices; chattering to each other in the squawky commoners voices they use in groups intermixed with the "woop-woop-a-dee" they use to announce their location. We have other birds that migrate through and repopulate our trees and shrubs in the spring but none so dramatically announce their presence like the red-wing blackbirds.

Yesterday, my daughter and I went for a walk in our woods to see what we could see. We stumbled upon three sets of huge wild turkey tracks and made a game of following the tracks from bare spot to bare spot. I can imagine them poking about in the warm soft soil, looking for the first bugs of spring or some tasty new shoots of greenery. For them, a nice change from pecking at frozen ground. Sometimes, when I am out working, I can hear their warbling calls coming out of the woods from a distance. It's a hauntingly unusual sound that makes the woods intimidating and inviting both at the same time.

When I drive, I like to look around (a bit too much for my wife's taste). This time of year, if you look carefully from a distance, you can see the buds on the treetops changing color. The swamp maples are usually the first buds to turn to a burgundy red that will later develop into flowers and leaves.

The plant starts in our bedroom window are doing fine this year. I've managed to position the table just far enough away from the window sill so that the cats find it awkward to jump there. Of course, it might also be that they got a taste of the hot peppers that were started first and have decided not to take a chance with the eggplants, tomatoes and onions. I do seem to recall a few chili pepper starts missing their top leaves. I'm sure to give the seedlings their daily exercise as I go through my morning ritual of turning the flats so that the younguns have to stretch their necks in a different direction each day to catch the suns rays. Their first leaves are slowly giving way to their first set of true leaves and I look forward to the day when it's warm enough at night to put them out in the cold frame and then, finally, when the kids and I plant their feet in the garden soil for the summer. This annual ritual is a necessary labor of love for me and helps to sustain me when the warm day of spring still seem far away.

My thoughts also have shifted. From winter chores to spring chores. I've about finished pruning all the apple, maple and choke cherry trees that I'm going to prune. I've decided to start taking down some of the larger fir and popple trees around our house site. The fir will be cut into 10 foot poles to use later as corduroy on some wet trail areas. The popple will be cut into four foot sections and picked up by a friend for firewood for next winter. In exchange, he will put a bee hive on our property next year. Some of the removed trees will be replaced by the beginnings of an orchard; to compliment the wild apple trees already there. Once the ground is free of snow and the soil has dried, I will mow the now abundant rows of tree prunings and chip the piles of brush. For now though, my excitement for spring must be tempered by patience as mud season is upon us and we must all wait for the waterlogged spongy soil to thoroughly melt, drain and dry. We can only hope that mud season will not be as long-winded as winter.

What to do with all that brush..

2008-02-01T06:17:00.003-05:00

In clearing land and in pruning trees, there is a significant amount of brush that gets generated. The old school of thought was to burn it to get rid of it. Burning results in a significant shift in carbon; from where it is useful in your ecosystem to where is disappears from your land as a byproduct of combustion (carbon dioxide). The best bet is to keep the brush around and maximize its use as both habitat and as a "time-release" fertilizer.

I have two different ways of dealing with brush depending on the location of my work. In an area that will be used as yard or extended garden, I will shred and chip. In areas of mostly forest, I will cut the logs into managable lengths and construct brush piles.

Shred and Chip.
I've tried to send whole fir/pine trees through my little tractor powered chipper. If it's any warmer than 20 degrees, the needles release their pitch and the result is a constantly gummed up exhaust chute. So, on trees that will be left standing, I prune branches with loppers or a pruning saw. On trees that will be taken down, I will use my chainsaw to remove the branches by skimming the surface of the tree. The branches, up to about an inch thick, are cut into 3-4 ft lengths and placed in rows. Once I have a number of rows, I will use my field mower to shred the branches into mulch. Running over the branches does a very nice job of shredding them into mulch. The mulch can either be left in place or moved to an area, such as a trail or low spot. I usually stack my branches in an area where they can be mulched and left. I then trade the mower for my chipper and chip the poles (up to 4 ") over the top of the mulched branches. I feel these shredded and chipped trees, in a few years, will decay and add to the soil layer. By increasing the surface area (through shredding and chipping) of your plant matter, you have provided more opportunity for the insects and microorganizms that cause decay to do work and do their thing.

Logs and Brush Piles
Brush Piles
In areas that are "managed forest", I will make brush piles. Well built brush piles not only provide a slow-release fertilizer as they decay over time; they also can provide habitat for a number of different animals. According to several sources, a well built, habitat-oriented brush pile begins with some 6-10" logs placed parallel to each other on the ground. There should be about 12-16" between the logs and the rows should be about 6-8' long. A second perpendicular row of logs is placed on top of the first. Heavy brush goes on next, then lighter brush. The logs provide habitat for ground dwelling animals and the brush on top provides habitat for birds. Ideally, the brush piles should be located at the edge of a field area, in the transition area between field and forest, as this is where the animals that live in your brush pile would feed. Most small bird species feed in field areas. I've built several variations of brush piles and will be interested to see which ones are the most preferred.

Logs
This is the tricky part as I have lots of trees blown down by some recent strong winds. It would have been nice if these trees were hardwood and usable as fuel but they are mostly balsam fir which is not a good fuel source or source of lumber. Balsam fir does decay relatively quickly and I will take advantage of this. After the branches are removed, the remaining trees are cut into manageable lengths (about 3' feet for me). These are stacked close to the brush piles for later use. I plan to lay these logs in low, moist spots where they will decay. As it is the middle of winter and we have almost two feet of snow on the ground, placing them in these areas will have to wait till we are snow free.

One of Life's Gifts

2008-01-12T05:43:00.000-05:00

I can't not write about our family's latest adventure. It always amazes me how life brings you magical opportunities if you are open to receiving them.

My wife is an animal nut. She has a bleeding heart for animals that no one else wants (as evidenced by the array of critters in our home). I'm sure she gets some of this from her dad who, by the way, once drove from Arizona to California and back to adopt a dog he heard needed a home. Cathy works at a local vet clinic part-time and somehow heard about a family of 6 horses that had been pulled off of a truck headed for a Canadian slaughter house (www.freewebs.com/sixhorsessaved). She contacted Carole (the woman who saved the six horses) and volunteered to help fundraise (horses are expensive animals to keep). Their idea was to get celebrities to sign T-shirts and then sell them on their web site to raise funds for food, etc. So, having lived and worked in the Hollywood area for a bit, Cathy sent out shirts to celebrity-type folks she knew were animal lovers.

One afternoon, the phone rang. It was Priscilla Presley (yep, as in Elvis). She had signed and put one of Cathy's shirts back in the mail to us a few days before and the shirt and horse story got her to thinking. Elvis had loved horses. They had always been one of his favorite parts of Graceland. He would get up every morning and look out his bedroom window to see what was going on in the horse pasture. Horses, like people, age and die. Elvis bought horses for everyone he cared for and there was only one of those left; one having passed just a few months ago. Priscilla felt that horses were part of the fabric of Graceland and that there should always be horses there. She offered to adopt two of the six horses to Graceland.

This story is full of the drama, excitement and disappointment that make life real. One of the two horses (Max) left Maine one cold, wintry day. Eighteen hours later, the trip stopped in Virginia as Max had to be cared for. Standing for that length of time in a moving horse trailer was a bit much for him. So, he was stuck in Virginia trying to rest and get better but in the meantime, the horse carrier bailed and left Carole without any way of getting Max to Graceland.

Back to us. The plans had been made to announce Max as the newest family member of Graceland during Elvis' birthday celebration. We had booked plane fare, made hotel (we just had to stay at the Heartbreak Hotel!) and car arrangements. In fact, we were pretty much on our way the day the trailer stopped in Virginia for a veterinary exam. We arrived in Memphis with the knowledge that Max would probably not make it to Graceland for Elvis' birthday celebration.

To my knowledge, Priscilla had not been back to Graceland for Elvis' birthday celebration ever. So, this was a very special occasion indeed. According to what I have heard, there are two places no one ever gets to go in Graceland. The second floor of the Mansion is one place, the horse barn is the other. We were welcomed into the horse barn by the barn manager and her staff. It is very apparent that Max will be well taken care of and will be very happy in his new home. His stall is waiting and his name is even on the door to his stall.

For Elvis' birthday event, 10-20 (I'm unsure of the exact number) members of Elvis' Insiders, drawn at random, were invited to visit the barn with Priscilla. The event was videotaped, Priscilla shared some of her fondest memories of Elvis and of having horses. She also told the insiders about adopting both Max and Merlin to repopulate the Graceland stables. Merlin is Max's brother who will later be moved to Graceland when they and he are ready. Priscilla is a wonderful storyteller! It is apparent to me that her memories of Elvis and of those years of their life at Graceland are still very much alive within her. The details she shared were wonderful, full of love and conveyed much about life at Graceland and about the special place horses held in Elvis' heart.

I've never really been a huge fan of Elvis. I respect him for who he was and his impact on not only the music industry but on the people who love his music. I went to Graceland mostly to support my wife, her part in the story and to take care of our two kids (ages 4 & 6) while she did her thing. We felt we needed to go and to bring them as this was a "once in a lifetime" thing; ie. one of life's gift's that you sacrifice whatever you need to to go and experience. Yes, we paid our own way; flights, hotel, rental car, meals, etc. We did participate in a few events gratis (Thank You EPE!) but we were there to celebrate Max's adoption and arrival at Graceland. It was a bummer Max didn't make it on time but we celebrated none the less (he has subsequently arrived!).

Priscilla. Wow! What a wonderful, sweet, sincere, caring person she is! After the "barn event", she hung out with us for almost two hours. We enjoyed an absolutely delicious home-cooked buffet prepared by one of the barn staff's moms. Priscilla talked with the girls for a long time (Our sister-in-law Colleen came with us. Jackie, who's farm currently houses the other 4 horses from the family and her sister Sandy also make the trip). I didn't get much of a chance to chat as the kids and I were out playing and visiting with the other horses. When it was time to leave, we took a few pictures (we promised we would not post them). One will be on our next years Christmas card. Priscilla insisted on taking pictures with our kids. She picked them up and put them on Elvis' saddle (which was on a sawhorse) and stood with them for pictures.
How cool is that?

When we were there, I sort of took everything in stride. Every now and then, now that we are home, I get a little shiver when I realize what we experienced this past week. I smile a little smile and savor the memory of seeing my little ones, sitting in Elvis' saddle being hugged by Priscilla Presley. Thank you so much Priscilla for sharing yourself and your passion for life with us and our kids. Our meeting you has truly been "One of Life's Gifts".

A Winter to remember...

2008-01-05T05:50:00.000-05:00

The snow fell before the ground froze this year. At this point, I don't really remember when we had our first snowfall. It's the beginning of January (08) and the snow has been on the ground for a while. It was a white Christmas. It may have been a white Thanksgiving. I do know that I have been cross-country skiing pretty much every day in wonderful powdery snow for forever. This is a rare treat!

This past week, the kids were home from school as it was the end of their Christmas/New Years break. It snowed twice this week. I had just cleared the driveway of about a foot of new snow with the tractor and the next day there was another foot of snow! I made a nice snow mountain for the kids and they've been enjoying the vertical drop (and subsequent youthful rush) to the hard, snowpacked driveway. They land with a thunk and slide into the snowbank on the opposite side laughing. I'm sure their plastic sleds will end up getting busted up but then that's what makes it so fun. They looks so cute (I despise this word!) in all their snow gear. We have one pink and one black marshmallow. The only skin you see are their faces, aglow with that winter blush, colored by the fresh Maine air and the excitement that comes with playing a dozen different ways in the snow.

This winter has brought with it a classic, timeless beauty. The pines and firs green boughs painted white with snow. Packed snowy roads that force you to drive slower and see winter's magnificence. Significant snow banks to catch you if you do slip while driving. Ten inches of snow, carefully balancing on top of rail fences and on the railing of our deck.

The hearty little chickadees that flit to and from our feeder for sunflower seeds. On the branches of the fir trees they sit all puffed up to keep warm and twitter to each other, probably about the weather.

I love to cross country ski. I hadn't done it in over 15 years as I was living in a place where it rained a bit. Last year, I bought new cross country skis and I went out once. There really wasn't much snow last winter. This year, I have been out most every day. On most occasions, I am skiing in wonderful powdery snow; the days and nights being cold enough to preserve the texture.

Sometimes, I follow deer footprints. At first, there were three of them wandering about and now I really only see one set of tracks. They paw down through the snow to nuzzle green grass and clover that I planted a year ago. They also know the one apple tree that holds it fruit through winter and dig through the snow looking for downed apples. The snow around the base of this tree is trampled with all the animal feet that visit. I regularly knock a few brown, shriveled apples off the tree with my skipole. The deer aren't the only ones to visit this apple tree. It's a regular watering hole for most of the animals that don't hibernate. I see tracks for Snowshoe Hare, Chipmunks and/or Squirrel too I think. The deep snow has made it difficult for lots of the critters to get food but they somehow manage. It's easier for the smaller ones as they can move across the surface of the snow or underneath it. The deer have a harder time postholing thorough over two feet of it. It amazes me that in the heart of winter, one tree can help support so much life, even as it sits deep asleep waiting for spring to arrive.

I marvel at the quiet that I hear sometimes. I like to listen. There's a skidder clearing somebodys trees in the distance or sometimes begins the hum of the milking machine at a close by dairy farm that tells me it's four o'clock and time to begin wrapping up my adventures before dark comes. I ski mostly in the afternoon. At times there is no noise. I am careful to stop and listen a few times so I can savor the quiet when it comes. How often do we hear complete silence? It is another rare treat. Cold winter air carries the sounds of activity. Just as easily, the snow can silence; especially falling snow. Millions of little flakes to absorb noise. If there is no wind, you can hear the flakes hit the ground. How cool is that?

Yep.... this IS a winter both to remember and to savor. How delicious!

Clearing of Land Around Our Home Site

2007-12-24T18:12:00.000-05:00

I view our 60 or so acres (1st diagram) from more of a Permaculture standpoint. The most well-managed portions of our land will be around the corridor that we travel and live. The least-managed portions will be at our property's borders. It is with these thoughts that I have been working our land. If you'd like to investigate the concept of Permaculture, one of my fave books is by Toby Hemenway and called "Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture".

I think of our land as arranged into concentric ovals or Zones (2nd figure). Our access road and home represent the center of the oval and the center of the most intensely managed land (identified in the above Permaculture book as "Zone 1". This Zone will be the most gardened and landscaped.

In the next oval (Zone 2) is the “stewarded” land. In wooded areas, the understory is fairly clear and populated with hardwood saplings (predominantly maple and oak) and is where trees may be harvested for fruit, nuts or firewood. In field areas, grass is mowed or fenced and populated with critters. Brush has been cleared back to stone walls. It is in these two areas where I currently spend most all of my time working. (note: Zone 2 was supposed to be orange and the color is apparently not picked up by my scanner. it's the obvious blank areas located around Zone 1.)

Outside of that is the soon-to-be somewhat tended forest. Outside of that is untended land. Through all layers of this land, trails will be made for recreational enjoyment and access. The first of those trails to be developed will radiate from Zone 1 out to property boundaries. Ultimately, a perimeter trail will follow the property boundary.

My first notions were to create vehicle access to an area that we will build upon. With the development of a road, this task is almost complete. Along with creating an access road, came the creation of a drainage plane for water (ie. a path for water to take)(more on this later) and restoration of the landscape on either side of the road.

Traditionally, when houses are built, the clearing of land happens quickly. In forested areas, the area is harvested using logging equipment or by using chainsaws to fell and cut up trees. Heavy equipment, such as an excavator, pulls the remaining stumps. Often, the pulled stumps are buried and the remaining brush is also buried or burned.

My tendencies lean strongly towards stewardship of the land and the above approach reminds me too much of the ancient “rape and pillage” philosophy. As I clear our land to prepare for a yard and house site, I do so with more of a minimalist approach. Time isn’t as much of an issue for me and the quality of our cleared space is. I am sure that I am doing significant habitat destruction but compared to the usual techniques that completely raze an acre or two of trees and obliterate the soil structure, I feel that my approach is a bit better.

The area I am clearing was once a New England farm field. This means that my clearing involves the removal of small trees, most less than 4" in diameter and brush. I am doing all the work by myself. My most often used hand tool for clearing is a long-handled pruner and sometimes I use a curved razor-tooth saw.

I have a chainsaw but I use it as sparingly as I can. I also have a 30 HP 4WD tractor with front bucket and backhoe, a field and brush mower and 4 inch wood chipper as attachments.

In the area I am clearing, plant succession is in full swing. Most of the small shrubs have been overtaken by popple (quaking aspen) and balsam fir. Maples saplings are small (finger sized) but beginning to sprout everywhere. While both the fir and popple have some commercial value as more mature (read: larger) trees, as 2-4 inch saplings, they don’t warrant commercial harvesting. I have decided that burning the cleared trees is a waste for two reasons. First, because of the carbon dioxide that will escape into the atmosphere (contributing in some small way to global warming) and second, because of the many nutrients that would also be lost to the soil. I have observed from working in my forest, that both downed popple and balsam fir decay quite rapidly. So by shredding and chipping these small trees (and thus increasing the surface area for the decay organisms to work) I will be giving them back to the soil quite quickly (within a year I figure).

I begin with the youngest trees and shrubs and clear these using long-handled pruners. These pruners work well for a few reasons. They can cut at or even a bit below ground level leaving stumps that you won’t trip over and they can reach under low branches so you don’t have to get a face full of needles and leaves. The trees that are too big for the pruners but small enough to chip are cut down with a chain saw. Trees that will eventually be cut but are too big for my chipper are left in place and pruned up as high as I can reach with the pruners or hand saw. Trees that will not be cut (mostly deciduous) are also pruned. By clearing in this fashion, chainsaw noise is limited to about 10 minutes an hour. This allows me to enjoy the sounds of the environment of which I feel I am a part.

The process I use has evolved over a two year period into something fairly efficient for the way I am doing it. I use the long-handled pruners to clear all of the smaller material growing on the ground. I also use the pruner to clear the branches off trees that will not yet be cut down. On trees small enough for me to chip, I will use my chainsaw to remove the branches. I skim the trunk of these trees with the bar removing the branches quickly. All of this "brush" is removed and placed in rows on relatively flat ground (pic below).

Trees less than 4" are cut down getting as close to the ground as I can without sucking too much dirt into my saw bar and chain. I have an old bar and chain I save for this purpose. I am bound to get some dirt and debris in the chain, bar and sprocket and once every two hours or so, I strip down my chainsaw and give it and the bar a thorough cleaning. The blade also gets sharpened frequently. I do go through blades and even bars but I look at this as an equitable trade for what I am getting in return.

A brief word on safety. I can not emphasize enough how important it is to wear safety equipment during this clearing process with a chainsaw. This is not normal chainsaw work. I wear heavy, tall boots, kevlar chaps, heavy gloves and a helmet with mask and ear protection. You are just plain stupid if you don't invest in chaps and a helmet. I am not careless with a chainsaw and have an immense amount of respect for the damage one can do. In the last two years, I have grazed my leg twice. The chaps saved my knee and thigh from what could have been some pretty nasty injuries. Enough said.

The felled trees are de-branched using the chainsaw and again the brush moved to the brush row. Once the area is clear of all small brush, I cut each tree pole into manageable lengths (8-10' for me) and stack it in piles for chipping. I will tackle 10-20 trees at a time. Obviously, you don't want to fell them on top of one another as it would make branch removal that much more difficult. The area I clear is a semi-circle and I move forward in this fashion. Ideally, the brush row grows in length behind me in the middle of the semi-circle and the stacks of poles on the outside edges every 10 feet or so.

Once every day or two, I will run over the brush row with the brush mower on my tractor. This shreds the branches into nothingness (ie. a nice layer of mulch) if your blades are fairly sharp. I'll then trade the mower for the chipper and chip the poles out over the top of the shredded branches. The chute on my chipper moves 360 degrees and makes it easy to do this.The picture below is the mulched branches with wood chips on top.

As I remove the brush and trees, I open up the topology of the land, I can see what the ground structure looks like and get a clearer idea of the “lay of the land”. What is left after I clear is: deciduous trees (mostly maple, apple, oak) I may keep and white pine, balsam fir and popple I will clear once I figure out what to do with it. The deciduous trees which I have left standing, if we choose, can be harvested for firewood or kept as shade trees.

Some necessary details for those wanting to follow this methodology. Your ability to work well in the forest depends on both the quality of your tools and how well you take care of them. I routinely clean and sharpen my tools. The cutting edge of my pruners are file sharpened and the bolts tightened when needed. A light coating of oil is also applied to the working areas to both lubricate and protect. My hand saw gets cleaned of pitch with turpentine (as well as I can). My chainsaw gets taken apart every two hours. The chain housing is cleaned of debris, the track in the chain bar is cleaned of soil debris and the chain is hand sharpened with a rat tail file.
There is a good article on file sharpening chainsaw blades at: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/brewer57.html.

The above methodology is one I am using on land that we will enjoy as extended yard and garden. Most all of the forest products left on the ground are no larger than ½ to 1 inch chips of rapidly decaying wood. I may even spread a thin layer of topsoil on top of all this to level and provide a seedbed for a conservation mix of grasses and clover. In essence, I am nuturing habitat that is to be shared by humans and our animal friends. I want this area to be easy to maintain and to flourish while I am building our home, a process I envision taking at least a year.

Recipe: Applewood Smoked Roast Turkey on the Grill

2007-12-20T04:45:00.000-05:00

I absolutely love the fall Holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas), especially the eating with family and friends part. My neighbors think I'm nuts for getting out my Weber kettle grill in the cold and (sometimes) snow but the result is worth it. If you have a Weber kettle grill and haven't read the instructions, you should. Somewhere in there are instructions on cooking using indirect heat. With the cover on, the kettle keeps wood in a state where it will burn without flame. This is terrific if you want to add a smokey flavor to whatever it is you are cooking.

Grill Set-Up
The charcoal is started (I use a charcoal chimney, ACE hardware carrys them), allowed to turn to white hot coals and then spread into two piles (rows) against the outside wall of the grill. A disposable aluminum roasting pan is used to catch drippings and is placed between the two rows of briquettes on the bottom rack (nice cookware will get ruined if you use it; never use anything non-stick as it gives off toxic fumes at high heat).

According to the grill instructions, it is important to locate the coals on each side of the grill, perpendicular to the grill handle on the outside of the kettle. The grill leg below the handle should point into the wind and one of the bottom three vents is thus positioned into the wind. This puts the two rows of coals parallel to the incoming air flow from this vent allowing for equal combustion on both sides of the grill. The round grill top is placed so that the one vent faces away from the wind (and away from the leg that faces into the wind). If all this is set up correctly, with all vents open, you get heat equivalent to a 350-375 degree oven. Once the white hot briquettes are in place on the outside of the roasting pan, I add 5-7 pieces of fresh charcoal. Then, I place the top rack on the grill with the handles over each row of coals. This allows me to add fresh charcoal and applewood through the holes under each handle.

I usually start the charcoal in the chimney then go in and prep the turkey. By the time the coals are ready, so is the bird.

I place the turkey on the top rack, cavity opening facing the kettle handle. This way, both sides of the bird are parallel with the rows of briquettes. The last thing I add are chunks of freshly cut (green) applewood. It's cut by saw into 3-4 inch lengths and then split into finger sized chunks with a hatchet. Dry wood can be used but must be soaked for a while (at least 4 hours) before using. Woodchips disappear too quickly for my taste which is why I use larger pieces. Other woods can be used (hickory, mesquite) but I really like the nice, sweet taste of applewood.

I check on the bird every half hour or so. If the coals are burning unevenly (which they do most of the time), I poke them a bit and add fresh briquettes to keep both sides loaded with about the same amount. I will move the front leg of the grill to a better spot for wind flow. I'll use a small branch to poke up through the bottom vent holes to keep them free of ash. I'll rotate the top rack 180 degrees, switching the handle placement to opposite of what it was every hour till the birds is done. I use a small professional, pocket thermometer to test doneness. They fit in your pocket and are more accurate (I find) than the big supermarket ones.

Depending on your coals, your bird will be done in about the same time as it will if cooked in the oven. In most cases, mine is done 15-30 min. less.

The Turkey
I remove the neck, giblets, etc. from the cavity and rinse and dry the bird as thoroughly as I can. I don't stuff the cavity. The few times I tried, I found the flavor of the wood didn't get into the meat and did get into the stuffing. It was also harder to predict when the bird would be done.

Into a mixing bowl I add, one or two chopped apples (dime to nickel-sized pieces) depending on the size of the bird, olive oil to thoroughly wet, flavored salt and spices. I use mostly celery salt, some Bells Seasoning, Jane's Crazy Mixed-Up Salt; enough so that you can see it on the apple chunks. This mixture goes into the cavity.

Onto the exterior of the bird, after it is sewn-up, trussed, legs pinned or what have you, I rub more olive oil or sesame oil. Then I sprinkle whatever I have used for the cavity onto the skin and pat it in. I would say I "liberally" add the salt's and spices. The skin will be too smokey and salty to eat for most when the bird is done (however, this helps give turkey soup an outstanding flavor).

My theory is that the apples steam when cooking in the cavity and this keeps the turkey moist from the inside. The oil on the outside browns and seals the skin from losing moisture. The oil on both inside and outside traps some of the smoke flavor from the wood. As the turkey cooks, the skin will darken to deep brown. If this looks too much like a burned turkey for you, cover the bird with foil just before your desired color is reached. You will have to experiment with the amount of wood to add ontop of the coals. Some folks overdose on smokey flavor easily and one or two additions of wood will be enough. I add wood all through the cooking every time I add charcoal (30 min-1 hr).

A note on "done". If your coals are kept fed and smoke comes out of the top vent consistantly, then your bird will be done in about the same time as it takes to cook it inside in the oven. USE A THERMOMETER to test for done. Oil frequently gets onto that little poppy thing and will stick it together so it doesn't work. Let the bird sit covered with foil before carving, yada, yada, yada (all other instructions for working with a turkey are the same).

If you use the drippings for gravy, thin them with other gravy as they are pretty salty and smokey.

Turkey Soup
I don't know about you, but this is actually my favorite part of the dinner. After the meal is over and you have totally gorged yourself and enjoyed rave compliments, the hardest part is to move beyond your full stomach to clean the turkey. It's easiest to separate the meat from all the other stuff while the bird is warm. I take the skin off before I carve so I can add it to the soup relatively intact.

I remove all the larger pieces of meat from the bones and save for turkey sandwiches, etc. The smaller pieces I separate and save for soup. The remaining bits of meat can be harvested after the soup base (stock) is made. Break the carcass down and put it, skin, juices and pan drippings (if you have saved them) all into a pot. Cover with water and simmer for 2-3 hours. Pour through a colander to separate the liquid from the solids. I then pick through the still draining solids to get other bits of meat. Some folks crack the bones to get the marrow into the soup base; I don't. At this point, you can save and freeze the broth or make soup. Choose any chicken/turkey soup recipe you like diluting the final product to your taste and enjoy!

On Road Construction-(4) Epilogue

2007-12-18T06:34:00.000-05:00

As of Fall '07, our 1/2 mile roadbed is about 98% complete. The first section of roadbed, from paved surface, is complete. My neighbor across the street came over with an excavator and removed the few large, remaining rocks from my roadbed. A drainage swale was excavated on the uphill side of our road bed, the thick sod and soil placed on the downhill side of the road (the sod went down first, soil on top). The purpose of an uphill swale is not to drain the road but to intercept the subsoil flow of water and give it a place to go other than under my road.

The front field, which our driveway borders, is pasture and was fairly uneven. The old access road went through the middle of this pasture. As a good portion of this area had already been dug up, I decided to renovate the rest of it as well. High spots were scraped of sod which was placed in low spots. Soil removed from high spots and swales was placed on top of the sod and used to level other uneven areas. After I placed the sod, I'd run it over with the wheels of the tractor to flatten it, place soil on top of that and run it over again. I was lucky enough to find an old manure bed on the other side of the pasture. I guess barn waste had been dumped against a large rock many years ago. I scraped off the top layer of sod and harvested the nice, almost peat-like soil and used it as a top layer for starting grass seed. This I dumped and hand raked to about 1/2-1" thick, seeded with a mix of grass seed, clover and timothy and covered with mulch hay. As I was raking, I found small pieces of hard coal, some old soda (orange crush) bottles, a bit of barbed wire and other odd bits of history.

I managed to get grass seed growing well before cold weather arrived and the restored field area looks very nice. This front field mostly covers ledge. In the spring, water seeps into the soil, hits the ledge and moves slowly down hill (the whole area is sort of a hilltop). By adding drainage swales, the flow of water is intercepted and directed to drain more directly into a watershed. Previously, it would drain and sit, keeping this field too wet to use till mid-summer. I am very mindful of the environment. This area has always been used as pasture and had always drained the way it still does. I only enhanced the ability of the subsurface water to move to the place it always had.

The only obstacle left to deal with is a stream crossing. Our choices were culvert or bridge. After discussions with our local state forester and also someone from the forest service who deals with water issues, I decided upon a bridge. Firstly, I would not be disturbing the stream bed. Secondly, a culvert would have to be set at an extreme angle due to the location of uphill vs. downhill stream beds. My wife wants something that looks like a bridge. A culvert would have necessitated creating abutments made of stone and I got hung up on creating footings in a wet area. Seemed like using a culvert would be a project that could grow in complexity quite quickly. On the other hand, a bridge might cost more up front for the steel I-beams, but would be easier and quicker to install. More on this later.

There are still a few places I need to widen our road but I can do this as I need to. There is still one last bumpy spot that is still just rock. This last bit is about 20 feet long and will be finished this next spring. We are beginning to discuss house plans and the remainder of the drive closest to the house will be tackled prior to home construction once we decide on the location of the house.

As it stands now, Fall '07, we have a nice winding, half-mile driveway that traverses field and forest and looks very nice. Water drains to the sides of the roadbed nicely, flowing away, downhill through designed swales. The road stays firm throughout the spring as the ground thaws; this being the major issue in our area where the ground can freeze to 4 feet and we can get feet of snow in winter. Much of the roadside is grass and gets mowed throughout the summer. You can see across field and through forest as you drive into our future homesite. The deer frequent the field, the birds are abundant and include a mating pair of pileated woodpeckers and there are an abundance of other small mammals that we see constantly.

There is also now a small pond down-field of the first restored field. More on this in another post. We are having an early winter this year so there is little I can do in over a foot of snow. I will be catching up in my blog postings.

On Road Construction-(3) Finishing Up

2007-06-04T06:23:00.000-04:00

Spring #2.
After our spring thaw, I found I needed to scoop out and fill one more 20' section of road (big sigh). With last summers unpleasant memory of moving tons of rock almost out of my thoughts, I took another 20 buckets of slop (mud) out of a last wet spot. I was lucky to find a mother lode rock pile at the end of the stone wall I'd been harvesting, under a pile of charcoal that was a brush pile I'd burned this past winter. I had to negotiate half a dozen large boulders that I could barely move with my tractor. I can only imagine how the farmer that originally cleared this land must have managed these. I have taken most all the small rock and am left wondering what to do with the large boulders. Perhaps some sort of modern stonehenge to make folks think I've gone off the deep end? That might be fun!

The last hole was filled and a few more damp spots had one-man rock placed in them. I ordered two trucks (20+ yards) of small rock and carefully layered this on the remaining roadbed that was still just soil. The ground was still wet enough so that this layer of small rock quickly got driven into the top layer of soil which was my hope. The areas in which the rock was pressed in deepest got a second layer of small rock. I plan on leaving these areas as they are, filling with small rock if necessary, until summer 3. My goal is to make sure that the small rock is packed in well enough so that there will be a solid road base. Of course, freezing and thawing here can (and will probably) wreak havoc on my road but I'd like to think I have done a decent job and that my road will last a long time and require little yearly maintainance.

My last task on building our road was closest to the paved road. Beyond our driveway entrance and wet area that had been filled with rock and a culvert summer previous, there was a small hill and large, sharp bend in the road that went around the small hill. I felt that this bend was a pain to negotiate and decided to remove part of the small hill, fill in the approaching valley and thus remove most of the curve. The only potential obstacle was (can you guess?) rock. There were tops of boulders (or so I thought) peeking out from the grassy hill I wanted to remove. As my neighbor across the street wanted to pasture his horses in our field again this summer and he brought home heavy equipment from his workplace often, I figured I had an out if I ran into anything I couldn't handle with my tractor.

In order to fill in the valley approaching the small hill, I needed (of course) more large rock. This gave me the opportunity to cleanup quite a few miscellaneous rock that were on either side of the roadway leading to our creek. These had been left by a skidder clearing through a stone wall. The remaining large rock came from the mother-lode rock pile described above. The largest rocks were placed on the downhill side of the road. Once the outline of the road bed was in place, I could start to fill the uphill side of the roadbed with more rock and the downhill side with debris. The downhill side would ultimately be filled and graded as a gentle slope.

I first removed the layer of grass from the hill and placed the sod on the downhill side of the outlined roadbed. As I dug to remove the topsoil below the sod, I was pleased and surprised to find clean gravel (no rocks). This gravel was a mixture of coarse sand and tiny (1/4") crushed stone. I used this as a top layer for the most finished parts of my road. It was a wonderful find and looks great as a road topping! I'm not quite done but already I've removed about 3-4 truckloads (and saved myself about $500.). Most of the small hill has been removed and, as I suspected, there are a few large rocks I am unable to deal with. So, I will wait for my neighbor to come home one weekend with his excavator. My other option is to drill a series of holes in the rock and fill them with a material that expands when it dries (after it's mixed with water). I have yet to track down where to obtain this stuff; I do know it exists. Our ledge rock breaks (and drills) fairly easily so this seems like it might be a viable option if necessary. This last section of road is about 20 feet long. As of late spring 07, my roadbed is about 99% done.

I have trenched a drainage swale on the uphill side of this newest finished portion of road and used the soil to fill and grade the downhill slope. The uphill sod was removed first, packed in place (downhill) and then topped with the remaining soil from the excavated swale. The swale was raked and then seeded with a grass/clover mix and covered with burlap which is staked down. I've tried to use straw or hay but with our occasional windy days, it usually blows away. The grass gets a nice start under the burlap; then I remove the burlap so I can reuse it somewhere else. It will last me 2-3 seasons if I buy the heavier stuff. After a week without burlap, I will overseed if I need to. In spring, we usually get regular wet days so I don't have to worry about watering and the grass gets a good start.

On Road Construction-(2) Road Base

2007-04-05T08:14:00.000-04:00

I had already decided to tackle the worst part of the road first as I knew this would consume the most time and present the biggest challenge.

Building a long road can get expensive. The cost comes from using large equipment and from the fill (rock and gravel). Last year, around us, gravel was going for around $10/yard. I'd pay $120 per 12 yard dump truck of gravel; a bit more for 2-4" rock. If you have a low spot to fill in, that doesn't go very far. My goal was to build a road as inexpensively as possible. I didn't have heavy equipment and there were resources on my land I could use. The tradeoff was (as usual) the amount of time it would take. I figured that in one summer I could get a roadbase in that would be passable for vehicles most of the year. Then I could add to it to make it better as time went on.

It would have been easy (and costly) to have rock trucked in to fill the low spots but our small stream with steep banks presents an obstacle to all but small, high suspension vehicles (like a tractor or small truck). We are strongly considering a bridge but this is yet another topic for a later date. For now, we drive across the stream (it has a rock base so there is little to no damage to the waterway). As it is now, I have gravel delivered to the back of the first field. I then have to transport it, tractor bucket by tractor bucket, across the stream, to where I want it.

Once upon a time, our land was farmed. In New England, this means stone walls and often piles of stone. There is certainly no shortage of stone in Maine. A farmer would pick up the stones brought to the surface by spring plowing and dump them in one location. The result was either a stone wall or rock pile. Wooden posts supporting wire fences often separated farmed crop land from grazing animals. Often, rocks were placed under those wire fences. The largest rocks would be cleared first and stacked under the fence. As time went on, the smaller rocks from the crop side of the fence would accumulate next to the larger rocks. Nowadays, the wooden posts are long gone but you can still find the wire running along the top of the stone wall. Note the larger rocks on the left side of the picture below and the smaller rocks on the field or farmed side of the larger rocks.

Rock piles are found in places where it was too far to go to add rocks to a stone wall. Rocks from spring plowed fields were picked up and dumped in a pile often on the downside of a slope in an area considered out of the way but convenient enough to a field. I mention this in detail because these rocks have been a terrific resource for me in building our road.

I am a purist at heart and I wouldn’t dream of destroying a stone wall which I feel has historical value as described above. Most of the stones I needed were fist sized to some almost one-man stones (a one-man stone is a stone the can be moved by one man). These rocks were harvested from a rock pile or taken from the side of a stone wall. In many cases, the stone wall was more of a pile of rocks and in harvesting, I also rebuilt the stone walls. I figure that if the farmer who originally moved these rocks knew I was using his stones to build a road, he would be happy that I was doing something practical with them. Below left is the area I am harvesting the rocks from, below right is the beginnings of a rebuilt stone wall (it's the same wall).

The worst part of the road was furthest back from the road. It was the "v" shaped area where two stands of white pine drained (see previous post for a description of the roadway). There was a natural clear space, between two stands of white pine, where the skidder tracks went and this, so I thought would make a good place for a road. I knew this would be the most difficult as it was the wettest area after the field I had just finished. First, I dug drainage ditches on either side of the roadbed. The diggings I placed on the roadbed to build up the road base (as I had done previously). Now I had a raised road with drainage ditches on either side. I was surprised (and dismayed) to find that the road remained wet and muddy. I had noticed earlier, when excavating for the drainage, that I hit clay. I also noticed that the excavated earth above the clay smelled very manure-ish. Whether it was just rich in organic matter or was a respository for manure I'll never know. What I do know is that it would never make it as a road. So much for an easy time.

I ended up removing all of the organic topsoil, some 12-16 inches of it, for the width of the road plus the drainage ditches. Underground, water sits on top of and travels on top of clay as clay is relatively impervious to water. This is why my roadbed remained wet. My excavation cut a 16 foot wide trench up through the middle of these two pine groves. As you can imagine, I ended up with quite a bit of topsoil. I hesitate to use the word "nice" in front of topsoil because this is Maine and anything you do with your land implies "rocks". So, I had a pile of topsoil with lots of rocks mixed in. You can always use topsoil so this was in fact a good thing that I had a few small mountains of decent soil. Aside from being fun places for the kids to get dirty, I have used the soil for filling and leveling many areas, from field that I am restoring to the sides of the road I am building. It grows grass well (after you rake out the rocks of course).

So, now I have this 120 foot long swath of excavated future road. What next? Rocks.... lots of rocks. Serious, serious rock. Even after I thought I was done after summer one, I had to re-excavate and fill with (you guessed it) more rock during spring two.

On top of the clay left behind after scooping off the topsoil, there were clearly some areas that were much wetter than others. The only way to create a dry road bed was to create a raised road bed. I had plenty of rocks. I had big rocks from where skidders had gone through stone walls to boulders to rubble. My plan was simple. Big rocks on the bottom, smaller rocks on the top. Some of the rocks were so big, I could only push them or roll them into place with the tractor's bucket. Others I could manage to get in the bucket using leverage. Yet others I could pick up with my backhoe. It has an attachment called a thumb which allows you to "pinch" rocks between it and the bucket. The big rocks were a challenge, the small rocks have become a pain. These smaller rocks came from harvesting rock piles and stone walls. I'd free the rocks from years of soil accumulation with a hand held grub hoe, fill up a plastic bucket and then pour them into the tractor bucket. Once that was full, I'd drive to where I needed the rock, sometimes teetering because I was at capacity and empty the bucket. Most of the time, I emptied the tractor bucket by hand. There is a difference between just dumping mostly round rock and placing it by hand. Placing it by hand allows you to fit the rocks into place. This makes a big difference in the stability and quality of your road. Dumped rock will squish around and make more of a soupy mix. It relies on being driven on to pack it down. Placed rock fits together and doesn't have anywhere to go when driven on and thus provides a better base.

There were three distinct areas where the road was very wet. The above left picture shows the fill for the wettest area of road. Subsequently, this area received the largest rock. This area was at the very top end of the "v". The roadbed is about 14 ft wide leaving the outside margins as drainage swales. The banks on the outside edges of the swales were sloped and seeded. I still need to finish topping this area with small rock.

The middle photo was the second wettest area and located at the bottom of the "v". I built the roadbed with one-man rock on the bottom. When it thawed a bit in early winter, it got a bit soupy. Later on, as spring progressed, this section became much worse. So, I scooped out more soil and filled with more rock.

The last photo is a low spot right before the stone wall. It too needs more rock. Things came to a halt once the ground froze this fall. It's a bit hard to free the rock from frozen ground.

The areas of road that didn't need rock have received a topping of 3-4 inches of gravel. My thought was to get most all the roadbed covered in this much gravel so that driving on it would pack it in. I purchased about $1000. of gravel during summer 1 which covered most all of the roadbed. Next spring, I will invest in some more gravel and resurface the road with a few more inches. I figure that a few seasons of doing this should build a nice packed surface for us to travel on.

I'd mentioned that we had to move our driveway entrance because the state deemed it unsafe due to sight distances and travel speed. Whoever came out to mark the position of the entrance didn't look at the obstacles to road creation beyond that entrance. Perhaps he did and chuckled. There was a large rock pile and stone wall to move and a wet area of field drainage to cross. I cleared the roadway of brush and trees (and pulled out the roots). I moved most all the rock to low, soft areas for fill. Then I hit an obstacle. Ledge. Right in the middle of our driveway. It was a bit too tall to drive over and needed to be removed. I thought we would have to hire someone to blast.

Here is where good neighbors come in handy. Our neighbor across the street has 3 horses on a small lot. His pasture has been grazed out (no more grass) . When we first bought the land, he had asked if he could pasture his horses in our field across from his house. I thought it would be a nice gesture to agree and as a plus, it would help manage the field. At the time, I didn't know he worked for a heavy equipment contractor. He saw our situation and asked if he could fix our driveway in exchange for letting him use our pasture. One weekend, a HUGE excavator appeared, the ledge in our driveway disappeared and the wet drainage area was filled with large rock. I have since excavated a trench and placed a culvert, filled low spots with two truckloads of rock (it was too far to haul rock from my rock piles) and topped with a layer of gravel. As our front field remains wet, I have also exaggerated the existing drainage swales leading to the culvert. Here I had to stop due to wet weather this fall. In the spring, I will finish grading and seed.

The first photo is the driveway entrance, the second is the culvert where once there was a very wet area. This is where most of the large rock fill ended up. The last photo is the drainage swale between the driveway and field. You can see that it collects water nicely.

So far, a one-half mile driveway has cost me a bit over $1000. in fill. This does not include my labor, tractor hours or fuel. I have heard estimates of around $30,000. to create something on this scale. I'm not sure if this is accurate but for the same cost and my labor, I got a tractor out of the deal and I'm much more satisfied with the product.

Forest Stewardship

2007-04-01T05:02:00.000-04:00

After spending a few months working on our acreage and road building, I started thinking about how best to manage our forest woods. It was clear that some of the white pine were getting on in years. It was also clear that many of these white pine trees were disfigured and didn't have much in the way of usable timber. This disfiguration is due to a pest called a pine weevil which destroys the dominant stem of a pine tree leaving one or more of the remaining side shoots (branches) to take over as the dominant trunk. Weevils can attack one tree many times leaving a tree with few to many "yanks" or bends in the trunk leaving little in the way of straight wood for lumber. My options were to leave the trees to age and fall or selectively remove some of them. Pine is not very good wood to burn for heat due to it's high creosote levels and low heat output (as compared to the favored harwood to burn in our neck of the woods-oak). As far as I know, this leaves one option which is to chip the trees for either pulp or biomass. As these last options bring in little revenue, getting someone to harvest for these options will be difficult.

But I digress. I want to focus on the stewardship aspect of forest management which is where the above thoughts led me. Last fall, I had taken a 5 week extension course sponsored by the Maine State Forestry folks. This course touched on many different aspects of forest management but advocated strongly the development of a Forest Management Plan (FMP). Briefly, an FMP is a document, written by a state certified Forester, that describes your land, the tree stands present, their overall quality and potential and provides a 10 year prescription for managing timber. If desired by the landowner, the FMP can be much more than a prescription for trees. More later on that. For a bit more information visit these web sites: (http://www.maine.gov/doc/mfs/certification/) (http://www.umext.maine.edu/piscataquis/Forestry/forestryassistance.htm).

In our state, having an FMP also opens the door to government cost sharing for timber/land management. Two expenses I will be looking to obtain partial reimbursement for in the next year will be the development of a permanent stream crossing and for mast tree (food for animals) release. So, not only do I get a professional prescription for managing our forested area but there is some financial benefit as well. Of course, the management is labor intensive (and cost intensive if you choose to hire someone else to do it).

First, I took advantage of a free visit by our local State Forester and then another free visit by a private forester who works for a local lumber mill. I wanted to hear a few different opinions before choosing a forester to write our FMP. I ended up contracting with the forester for the local mill for a number of reasons. First, I felt good about his knowledge base and felt that he would represent our interests. In my book, feeling good about who you are working with ranks at the top of the list. Intuition usually always rules my judgement (In one significant instance where I decided against it, I ended up getting screwed.). I also felt that his connection to the mill would have exposed him to many different loggers and he would be able to find a match between us and a good logger when it came to harvesting.

Development of our FMP began with a walk around our acreage with our forester Mark. We walked and talked for a few hours, he entered waypoints on his GPS unit and made notes. This time was well spent as I could direct Mark to the different types of stands we had, ask questions, talk about our plans for building in a certain area and identify the location of a future farm pond. He was able to get a feel for our needs and a good FMP is taylored to the needs of the landowner as much as the needs of the forest. Managing our forestland for timber was a priority for us but managing for wildlife was equally as important. This second aspect became clear later on.

Mark created a first draft and sent it to me for perusal and feedback. I read and re-read the draft and it didn't feel quite right. This document was called a Forest Management Plan and yet it was really only a "tree" management plan. I felt that managing a forest using what had been written was only partially right but I wasn't sure what to do about it. This was when I stumbled upon a document about a program called "Focus Species Forestry". This program was developed a number of years ago by Maine Audubon, the State Forestry Folks, the Master Loggers Certification Program and SWOAM, the Small Woodlot Owners Association in Maine. These are all the key players in forestry in our state so I became interested.

The Focus Species Forestry program differs from traditional harvesting (http://www.maineaudubon.org/conserve/forest/focusspecies.shtml) only in that it first identifies the Focus Species on a piece of land, then seeks to sustain the habitat of those species before harvesting. Harvesting can actually create needed habitat. Many folks think harvesting destroys habitat (and they are correct) but, it's also really the only way to create an early-successional forest. These beginning forest areas are important in our region for creating habitat for small animals that provide many larger predatory animals with food. So, in this case, we trade one habitat for another. Managing for one Focus Species means that you are managing for many other species that live within the same habitat and have similar needs. For instance, one of our Focus Species is the Snowshoe Hare. By providing an early successional forest with clumps of young fir trees, we are giving the Snowshoe Hare protective cover in which it likes to hide. This area is also important to other small mammals like squirrels and chipmunks as well as specific birds for nesting and protection. On a very simple level, if all our forest were mature hardwoods, these species would be absent and so would the animals that prey on them. Realistically this is not true, but the picture is a complex one full of many habitat and animal interrelationships .

This program provided the information I needed to fill in the missing piece of our FMP. It was easy for me to provide the animal information on Focus Species after having been out in our forest daily for almost a year. I had seen one Snowshoe Hare but I was surprised, come winter, the evidence of a significant population (tracks and turds). In the spring and summer, I regularly hear woodpeckers and occasionally see a large Pileated flying about. In warmer months, we have regular Whitetail Deer visitors that love the newly planted grasses in the field I have restored. They do not winter on our land as evidenced by the lack of tracks that are clearly present in the soft soil other times of the year. These three different Focus Species provided enough information to define specific habitat to create, manage and protect. It doesn't seem like alot of information but remember that by managing forest for these three species, we will be managing for a much larger spectrum of other critters. We were lucky in that our forester was familiar with Focus Species Forestry and could add the missing content to our Forest Management Plan.

After adding Focus Species information to our plan, the final draft arrived. A few typos were corrected and off it went to our local State Forester for approval. Once we receive approval, we will be eligible for cost-sharing. The downside of this is that I have to pay our forester to come identify what is to be done and pay him to come back and say that it's been done. In many cases, this will negate some of the funds I receive for doing the small work. I do understand why this has to occur. I wouldn't think of not having him present come harvest time.

All in all, I am glad we paid to have a Plan developed. It reflects our desire to be good stewards to the forest we plan to call home sometime in the future. In Maine, we get reimbursed for some of the costs associated with developing a plan, both directly from the State as cash and later, as a state income tax deduction. Our plan was initially quoted at about $400. We ended up paying $650., probably because of the addition of the animal component. The State will reimburse us up to 50% of the cost at a maximum of $120. and give us a $200. credit on our taxes. In theory, our outlay will be $330. for our plan. We will be purchasing an $800. culvert for a stream crossing this summer and cost-sharing will reimburse us $500. In essence, this savings will offset the remaining monies we will have spent.

On Road Construction-(1) Drainage

2007-01-30T18:01:00.000-05:00

After purchasing our 55+ acres in the spring of 2006, I decided that my first task was to construct an access road. A crude road (path) was already there, most likely left from logging, but it was overgrown with weeds and briars and not at all negotiable by even a four-wheel drive truck. There were pockets that were clearly wet; water had no place to drain. My proposed roadbed also went between two slightly raised areas of forest; the roadbed sat at the bottom of a shallow "v". I didn't pay much attention to this discreet topography until I actually started trying to constuct a solid bed for an access road. The process has been very educational and reinforced several principals I had read about in a few books on Permaculture.

I will try to describe what I started with. After leaving a paved road, a crude car path ran through a 2 acre field. The state told us we had to move our driveway entrance due to safety issues (sight distances and travel speed). We had to move this access point to a much more inaccessible area which I will describe later. At the back side of the field the path entered woods and a clear stream crossing with steep banks was evident from a logging operation 10-12 years previous. Beyond that lies a second overgrown field transected by a stone wall. This field was in the early process of being taken over by trees and covered with briars and weeds. Deep skidder ruts criss-crossed this field and went up a shallow grade between two stands of white pine to the edge of a third field. Here the ruts ended when the path opened onto what was once another (fourth) field, now covered in 10 year old popple (quaking aspen) and balsam fir poles mostly. The second field and the shallow upward grade were very soggy. Initially I thought there was a small stream that crossed the path and went through the second field; this was not so. The path in its entirety was about a half mile long.

Shortly after purchasing the land, I bought a 30HP Kubota tractor with both a loader and backhoe. My goal for the first summer was to create a solid, dry access road. We decided to use the existing path as our access road This minimized the felling of trees and removal of roots plus this path was already compacted from previous logging access. At first, I thought that constructing a road would be easy and quick with my nice new tractor. A few days of work tempered my eagerness with reality. I realized that in order to build a good road, I needed to first focus on water movement, both above and below grade. If you read any good book on Permaculture (Permaculture: A Designers Manual by Bill Mollison is one of the biggies in this area of thought), it will talk about exploiting subsurface water movement to grow things. I wasn't yet thinking of growing things but I did need to think about moving water out from under my roadbed and away from it (see the next posting).

So, my first task was to manage the movement of water. Basic physics dictates that gravity rules. I needed to give water someplace to go downhill before I even started constructing a road. It was obvious to me that I needed to construct a drainage swale at the bottom of the shallow "v" grade and through part of the second (wet) field. A swale is basically a shallow ditch with graded sides. It provides just enough of a channel to both catch water and guide it away. A wet spring, followed by a wet summer (and then a wet fall) quickly turned my first task into a mud bath. Tractor tires, while nice and knobby for good traction can just as quickly make a puree out of a wet field. I found myself working the field until it rained again, waiting a week for the ground to dry out (if I was lucky), and then working it again. Yeah, I got stuck more than a few times.
Above is a shot of what the fields look like before their makeover. The weeds and briars were scraped from the field with the tractor blade and were buried. The larger brush was stacked to be burned later. I then used the back hoe to dig a one/two foot deep trench where I wanted the swale to be. The soil from the trench was used to fill in skidder ruts in the field. I then used the loader bucket to create gentle, sloping banks away from the trench. Most of the grading was done by back-blading with the front lip of the bucket. The soil was transported around the field in this manner, filling in the low spots and creating areas which sloped towards the swale. At this point, what had been an overgrown, briar filled field was now all soil. I’ll be the first to admit that I am somewhat of a perfectionist. Once the field was graded, I used an iron rake to hand rake the field. I collected and removed the rocks by hand and seeded with a conservation mix of grasses and clover (the deer love to graze here now). The field was covered with straw to keep the soil from drying out and the seed from disappearing. I now have a beautifully restored meadow. I even threw in some native wildflower seeds to see what would happen (http://www.americanmeadows.com).

Above are midway and after shots of one corner of the field to the left of the road. Note the swale running downhill in the second pic.

I should point out that I didn't resurface the field all at once. I'd get one part graded but another would be too wet to work. I'd rake an area and get fatigued so I'd seed and straw that and move on. So, I did it as I could, in about 6 pieces altogether. The finished section to the right of the road is shown below. Note the drainage swale that starts at the front of the pic and winds down through the field. I have only restored the upper half of this meadow. The rest will be restored next summer assuming things dry out enough. The meadow grew tall after I planted it. I left it this way till fall and then mowed it.

Now that the water had a place to go, I could begin the business of constructing a road.

On Looking for Country Acreage

2007-01-26T14:13:00.000-05:00

My wife and I wanted to invest in a larger parcel of land; somewhere between 40 and 100 acres. We both still have no idea exactly of how much an acre really is, but our goal was space. Cost was also obviously an issue. I was very surprised at how two towns next door to each other could have such very different real estate values. I mean, this is the country and land is land, right? The simple answer is no.

In our current town, anything larger than 10 acres is difficult to find and surprisingly costly. We are very close (less than half a mile) to the next town and what a difference that makes in real estate values. This difference seems to have to do with perception. The first perception is the school district. Nuff said here. The second has to do with the proximity to grocery stores and urban centers. On our property half a mile away from our current home and in the next town (with the same driving time to shopping, etc), we paid much less per acre (and got much more land) than we could have in our current town. It really pays to do your research and compare land based on cost per acre of land (both listed and sold).

As I said above, my criteria for buying land was fairly specific. Most land in Maine has been harvested for timber at one time or another. I didn’t mind so much if the land had been cut. I was looking for land that had not been cut recently. The land we purchased was last harvested approximately 10-12 years ago. We purchased it from a logger who dabbles more now in real estate than logging. He was going to do some harvesting but we were able to get to him before that happened. As it is, there is not much standing on our property currently that can be harvested for marketable timber. There is, however, lots of potential with what is there as small tree stock for the future. Of course, when you are talking about trees, the future is much more than a few years away.

I was also looking for land that was of mixed habitat. Ideally, it would have some open space, preferably some field, and mostly forest. I was looking for diversity of tree species; both softwoods and hardwoods. Wood is a renewable resource harvested here in Maine; both for lumber and for a winter heat source. We are intending to build and creating a home heated by wood which is "home-grown" is appealing. It would certainly save on home heating oil purchases. We may also build a barn and other outbuildings after construction of our home. Having a source of timber that can be locally milled also makes sense to me.

I wanted land that was predominantly higher and dry although I don’t mind some wetland or swamp as these areas are important for aquifer recharge and animal habitat. As all of us in the country are dependent on wells for our drinking water, these areas are vitally important. I was also hoping there would be an area close to our house site that might be excavatable for a small pond for irrigation, fire suppression and again wildlife habitat.

Land that had multiple places to build on would allow options. I always like having at least one backup plan for anything I do. Having extra land that can be sold for house lots is a nice option to have if emergency cash is needed, especially if those lots are at the other end of your property and far away from your house. As the population density increases, land will become more valuable. Buildable land is always a good investment.

As we’d like to build a home with passive solar gain in mind, a south facing hillside would be nice. I also wanted land where there would be minimal habitat destruction around our house site during construction.

All of this sounds like a lot but we were very lucky to find a parcel of land within a half mile of where we live with all the above attributes.

There were concessions; there always are. Once we build we will be moving our kids to a different school district and all of us to a different county. The folks in our “new” school district have just voted to build a new high school. By the time our kids are old enough to go, they will be attending a recently built high school. As I said above, our travel time to go shopping or out to dinner will not vary. Our taxes should go down dramatically. I’m sure there will be other surprises but, right now, the trade-offs seem to be worth it.

Goals in Relocating to Maine

2007-01-14T17:59:00.001-05:00

Our goals for moving here were several. First, we wanted a place in the country. Second, we wanted to be able to spend time with our two kids before they began going to school. Third, we wanted to acquire at least 50 acres. Fourth, we (okay, I) have always dreamed of building my own house. Fifth, we wanted to avoid working for “the man” if we could until we reached retirement age (10 years for me).

In one year, we have managed to fulfill almost all of our goals. We managed to save enough from the sale of our west coast property to buy a home here and invest the rest. The investments have been keeping the funds from slipping away quickly; they are, however, slipping away slowly. After losing 60% of my retirement savings by using an investment broker at Mass Mutual, I decided to do my own investing. Once my investment balance recovered, I removed everything and placed the funds at Vanguard (www.vanguard.com). Both my retirement and non-retirement funds are there. I earn at least 20% on my investments by choosing my own mutual funds and stocks.

My wife and I split our time equally; each of us spends 50% of our time with our kids. There is also time set aside as “family time” where all of us do stuff together.

The other half of my time is spent working on our land or doing miscellaneous carpentry. I started bartering my skills for my daughters riding lessons and a deck for the Horse Farm owners has turned into a job repairing two neglected barns. I am able to work when I want for lessons or cash and there have been other inquiries for my time as well from stable clients.

My wife has turned a hobby into a business. She started out making gift baskets for family birthdays, Mother’s Day, etc. and, with encouragement from family members, decided to turn it into an internet business (www.appletonbasketcompany.com).

I take the pictures of the baskets and do the internet marketing. Her sister does our web site and she creates and makes the baskets. We started slowly in October and received a few orders during the Holidays that paid the marketing bills. With that behind us, we are looking forward to a successful new year.

Owning a small business is a good way to establish some legal write-offs. Our cell phone bills and our internet bills are now business expenses. At $65/month and $47/month respectively, this adds up to $1344/year we can deduct. We will need a new computer soon and because we are using our basement as our company store, there are also some deductions there. Mileage is another deduction. One of my kids favorite parks is a few miles from my favorite lumber yard. Making sure those trips coincide isn’t a big deal and I can write off the mileage. Because we will be managing the timber and harvesting some of our forest land, there are deductions there I haven’t yet investigated. Maine also has a cost-sharing program where they will reimburse landowner expenses for pruning trees, etc. If you have something you can do for a small amount of extra income, the deductions you can take make this even more worthwhile.

As a former scientist, I like to evaluate and over analyze just about EVERYTHING I do (ask my wife). As a former educator, I enjoy sharing my knowledge and experiences so that others may benefit. Through this blog, I hope to chronicle my thoughts and my adventures as a modern homesteader and rock farmer.

Why Maine?

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I had come to Maine many times as a child camping with our family. My brother went to college in Maine, worked here for a time after college, left for a while and came back. Maine folk are wonderfully good folk. I’m not saying they are better or worse than others. There is just something attractive about who they are and how they are. In many ways this is the final frontier of our country in the northeast. It’s still rural America. Maine is beautiful country with plenty to explore. It’s peaceful here. I won’t belabor the point further except to say that it feels right for us.

• I started with an AAA map, looked at metropolitan areas and drew mileage circles with a compass around each.

• I perched on the internet, mostly on www.realtor.com, and watched house and land prices for over two years.

• I flew out for a two and a half day power house hunting trip. I had a list of over 40 potential homes to look at in 10 different towns. We bought the first house I looked at.

• The house was still under construction. I walked in and met the builder and liked him immediately. He was building it himself.

• The area was beautiful. Rolling hills, small rivers, nice lakes… everywhere.

• The older I get, the more I trust my intuition. It works and so here we are.

History

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I find it very helpful to reflect often and appreciate the paths I have chosen to take. Of course, I should take very little credit for those decisions as I feel they are mostly a combination of luck, intuition and my outlook at the time; all embraced by some sort of cosmic guidance.

I grew up in what was a small, quiet farm town in southeastern Massachusetts. Since the commuter train that connects Providence, Rhode Island to Boston went in, my small town has become a bedroom community of cul-de-sacs and half million dollar McMansions. The whole corridor between Boston and Providence has changed that way.

While I was growing up, I was blind to my parents desire to raise us in the country. They spent many years saving to get us there. It was their dream to live in an old house with a few acres in a small town. The three kids in our family are still drawn back to this place, this “home”. We come back for the smell of the old house during the summer’s humidity (this comes mostly from the ashes in the fireplace), the ever-burning small fire in the kitchen fireplace in the winter, , the creaky floors, the tick-tock of moms antique wooden clock on the kitchen wall, the pond in the backyard full of frogs…

My high school years were remarkably uneventful although I developed three wonderful friendships through a local church youth group. Together we became very good at being mischevious. I never learned how to study in high school; good grades came easily.

After finishing high school, I took a year off before heading off to college. It was the right thing for me to do. I had a job working at the local hospital as an orderly and that year helped me by allowing me to mature, play a bit (okay, play a lot) and save some money. I decided to go to a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin (Beloit College) (www.Beloit.edu). I started college with interests in art and science. I left with a degree in Biochemistry. As a New England boy, Wisconsin was a serious bit of driving from home. I ended up there at the suggestion of a private guidance counselor as the one assigned to me in high school was lame even on his good days.

Moving 1200 miles away to college helped me grow up and appreciate my intellect, especially at the college rathskellar. I almost flunked out my sophomore year because I never learned how to learn. I could listen and remember things but I could not integrate the pieces into the whole. It was demoralizing to have friends come to me for help and then get better scores on exams. I found it difficult to develop understanding from textbooks and instead learned to enjoy tinkering in a science lab. I found I was very good at explaining stuff if I could understand how to take it apart and put it back together again. I wrote an undergraduate thesis and graduated.

After graduating, I spent the beginning of a summer helping to restore an old playwrights house outside of Chicago and wondering what to do with my life. I had papered my office wall in college with rejection letters from all the biotech companies I had applied to. In late summer I received a call from my college mentor. He was going on sabattical to work in a research lab at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and needed a lab technician. Little did I know that this was the beginning of my career as a professional scientist. After my professors sabbatical ended I looked for other positions at the UW but none looked the least bit interesting. I ended up moving back to my folks house and taking a job, again as a lab technician, at Brown University in Providence, RI. I worked there for a bit over a year and, to my surprise, received a call from Bristol-Myers asking if I’d come for an interview in upstate New York. I took the job in Syracuse and within 14 years, I had relocated to Connecticut and then again to Seattle. Then the big BM asked me to relocate again to New Jersey. I looked out the window to the west, across the waters of Puget Sound at the snow covered Olympic Mountains and decided that I wasn’t ready to move again on a corporate whim. I really hadn't "sold my soul".

I stayed in Seattle and became a high school science teacher. This was more than a 50% reduction in salary. I must say that I have never worked so hard in my life for so little (in terms of my pay). How sad that our priorities as a country aren't where they should be. Switching careers was fairly easy for me because somewhere along the way (while living in Connecticut), I picked up a Masters in Science and Environmental Education and certified to teach. Call me crazy but I thoroughly enjoy high school age kids. My first teaching gig was teaching both regular Chemistry and super-duper advanced Biology in the International Baccalaureate Program in a northern suburb of Seattle. This curriculum is kind of like college in high school. It was intense for the kids but probably more intense for me. I gave up my life for the next two years until I had all the lessons developed. An opportunity arose to teach in the Seattle Public Schools in the neighborhood where I lived so that’s where I spent the last three years of my west coast teaching career. I really enjoyed my stint at Ballard High the most because of the ethnic diversity that existed. I was impressed at the quality and professionalism of the faculty and the kids were fun, lively and enjoyable to teach to.

Somewhere in between switching high schools, I met my wife. Next I knew, we had two beautiful children. My view of our city home and life changed. The buses on the street became louder and dirtier. The police and fire sirens became more frequent. The graffiti on our garage door spoke of gang turf issues. I wondered if the pop-pop-pop in the alley behind our house was fireworks or gunshots. My wife shared these concerns. We had both grown up in relatively rural areas and wanted our kids to do the same.

Our new home had to be on one coast or the other; I needed ocean nearby. 9-11 changed most all of us in some way; I felt I needed to be closer to my kin. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s, Seattle was a mecca for fun and I could always fly home if I wanted to. Now at 40, with children and having a choice, I wanted them to have the opportunity to grow up with space to run, night skies full of stars and woods to enjoy; probably most of the same things that my parents wanted for us as kids.

We sold everything before we moved. What we couldn’t sell we gave away. I camped out on Craig’s List (www.craigslist.org) and Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) for months getting rid of what I could. Craig’sList allows you to post things for sale on the internet, Freecycle allows you to post things you have to offer for free. We donated the rest to local charities. We sold our vehicles and our property. Our house went on the market the day after we left. With wet paint still on my hands, we boarded a shuttle for the airport.