The Morning After the Storm

The sun came out the morning after our snowstorm.  I suspect the snow will melt quickly and we will be back in business soon enough.  The stuff is quite pretty to be sure.

Persephone Leaves Early - Snow in October

It seems the weather just won't give us a break.  Torrential rains in September continued into October.  We were starting to get some good runs of excellent digging weather and were finally starting to make some rapid progress when this strange snowstorm descended on us.  By the time it was over 8 inches of snow blanketed our site.

The heavy wet snow bent branches to the ground.

Our equipment sits idle as do we.

Our camper provides refuge.

The excavation site is frosted like a dirt cake.

These branches on the ground broke out of the trees due to the weight of the snow.

Slowly, Steadily, Excavation Continues

Progress on excavating the build site has been slow.  The frequent Autumn rains has made it impossible to dig for days on end.  One of the challenges is that we are not only trying to remove dirt from the build site, but to construct roads with the excavated material.  A professional excavation company would generally have the simpler mandate of simply removing material from the build site and piling it in a huge mound somewhere else on the property or hauling it away in dump trucks.  We, however, wish to construct raised, crowned roads leading through the property.  This requires that the dirt be removed from the build site bucketful by bucketful and deposited in an organized pattern somewhere else.  This, of course, takes time.  Also, the dirt has to have the right moisture content.  If it is too wet, it becomes flowing mud which will not pack down and consolidate quickly.  (It will eventually dry out but until it does, it is a slippery flowing mass which cannot be driven on.)  We are surely making our task more difficult than others would consider but we feel the end result will, eventually, be worth it.

We have so far excavated this flat area
 but it has to be much larger before we are done.

Here, I pick up a load of newly excavated dirt with the tractor.

Elsewhere, I deposit it, spread it around, and compact it to form new road bed.

A New Storage Tent Eleven Years in the Making

With the onset of less than dry weather this Autumn we realized that we needed someplace to keep some of our building supplies and equipment out of the elements.  We built a level platform on the hillside above our building site and erected a 12 x 20 foot vinyl tent shed on top of it.  It's nice and big with plenty of storage room inside and being on a wooden platform above ground level it is nice and dry inside.  I had actually bought this tent in 2000 with the intent of setting it up in the backyard of my house in northern Virginia.  My wife thought that it was too big for that location (She's right, it is) so I have been storing it for 11 years waiting for something useful to do with it.  At our build site in West Virginia it is not too big and it is very nice to see it finally put to productive use.

Mohawk Moth

We found this guy clinging sleepily to a bucket outside our trailer one cool morning.  Now there are a lot of interesting and curious creatures here in West Virginia but this member of the order Lepidoptera surely is one of the more unexpected.

 

Storybook Mushrooms

Nick spotted these mushrooms growing out of knots in a small tree near our campsite.  It has been a great year for fungus in West Virginia.  The record rains have been manna for mycelium of all sorts this Autumn.

Foul Weather Fashion

Sometimes we feel resolute enough to want to work even when it is cold and rainy.  It is preferable, however, not to get too wet at such times.  To facilitate our foolishness we decided some plastic rain gear would be in order.  We went to a local purveyor of outdoor supplies in Winchester called Gander Mountain in search of such garments.  This being the "country" and also hunting season, the only style they had were in camo.  So thus outfitted, you can see that we blend into the background of the forest and perhaps into West Virginia as a whole.

Nick in plastic camo

If I were not standing next to an orange tractor I would surely be invisible.