Birds in the Excavator

I don't know what it is with the birds in West Virginia.  There are acres of wooded hills full of hollow trees and craggy branches which, one would think, would provide irresistible shelter for an expectant mother bird to make a nest in.  For millions of years, birds have been, through subtle genetic mutation, honing their behavior patterns to be in perfect survival synchrony with their natural environment.  So, I wonder, what sort of dumb-ass, bird-brained, idiotic feathered creature would ignore millennia of adaptive behavioral success and decide to make its nest in a giant, hot, bright orange painted, metal box which stinks of diesel fuel and hydraulic fluid?  Apparently such a bird lives in Morgan County, West Virginia.

The engine compartment (and bird house) of the Kubota excavator 

Baby birds waiting to be fed.  At least mom made the nest on the radiator side rather than the exhaust side.

New Wood Crib and More Logging

We are continuing to clear out the forest area where the new leach field will go.  Some time ago we decided to save the large straight trunks of the trees for future timber milling.  Meanwhile we need a space to store them.  A large part of the motivation for making the flat area that we completed on 25 June was to have room enough for at least two 10 foot by 12 foot wood cribs to store the logs.  We built the first one today and proceeded immediately to load it up with logs starting with the ones we had loaded into the trailer on 26 July.  We will have a lot more logs to store before we are done.

This is the first of the new wood cribs.
It is simple but effective at keeping the logs in a neat stack off the wet ground.

The first of the logs to go on the new crib are the ones that we dumped out of the trailer we loaded a few days ago.

The first log is maneuvered into place with the excavator acting as a crane. 

The last log for the first layer.  We have room for plenty more.

That's all for today.

Surveying for Footers

Now that we have the basic cut completed, the next step is to lay out the position of the footers.  Kathryn came and helped Nick and I set the stakes and lines to locate exactly where our first 50 by 20 foot building will be located.

Looking from the southeast corner of the site.
Note the layout stakes and some of our equipment in the background.

Left to right: John, Kathryn, Nick

R&R Berryville Steam Show

We spent the day at the Berryville Steam Show.  The show has been going every year for the past 45.  We have been going for the past 25 years or so.  We are planning to obtain some sort of antique machine to exhibit there once we get our facility up and running.

1990 Toyota Pickup - Reanimation

We have a bit of a vehicle problem at the moment.  Nick's 1999 Toyota Rav4 blew a transmission seal recently and is out of commission until we decide how we will fit it.  Meanwhile we are one vehicle short.  We have this 1990 Toyota Pickup which has been in storage for the past 6 years.  We decided it might be a little cheaper and faster to get the pickup working than the Rav4.  The pickup only needs new front brakes, new rear brakes, a tailpipe, cat, windshield, carburetor, gas tank, battery, radiator, and tires.  Other  than that it is good as new.  Nick hopes to have it back on the road by the end of August working in his spare time.

For two years the old Toyota has waited patiently in the woods.
Today is the day it will move again - although not under its own power.

Gravity is sufficient to get it onto the road.

We used the tractor to pull it to a level spot where it can be worked on.

Logging

Taking a break from activities directly related to erecting buildings, we are engaged of late in clearing an area of forest where our septic system will be installed.  We have developed a system for processing trees which is reasonably efficient as well as producing useful materials.  After we fell the trees we first remove all the small branches and brush.  Anything less than about two inches in diameter or so we put through our chipper to make nice wood chips which is useful for paths and landscaping.  Branches in the 2 to 6 inch range we cut into sections for firewood.  Finally the large trunks are cut into 12 foot lengths which we are currently storing for future processing into timber.  We use all our machinery to accomplish this but there is still a considerable amount of manual labor involved.

A 12 foot length of trunk is dragged out of the forest with a chain and the tractor.

The logs are loaded onto our "Big Red" dump trailer for transport to a storage area.  We use the excavator to lift these; the larger logs can weigh 800 pounds.

We have about 2 tons of log on the trailer and it is ready to roll.

Crème Brûlée Mushrooms

It has been a somewhat different year for the forest mushrooms.  We had very little snow last winter and the spring was relatively dry.  The summer, however, has been unusually wet so the mushrooms came in later and in different proportions.  In particular, we are having a boom in this type of mushroom which I have been calling the "Crème Brûlée Mushroom" since, at least to me, it resembles the French dessert.  I do not know what it is really called and I do not know if it is edible.  Actually, I don't care if it is edible because when it gets a few days old it rots rapidly and stinks like dead rodents.

Another New Chain Saw

Now that we have completed the excavation for the first building we are taking some time to deal with other areas of the site.  For the next few weeks we will concentrate on clearing an area of land to the northwest of the buildings where the leach field for the septic system will go.  We are having a contractor put in the septic system but we wanted to harvest the trees from the area beforehand.  To facilitate this effort we purchased a second Stihl chainsaw.  We bought a smaller, lighter companion to the first saw.  The big saw is great for the felling of the trees and cutting the large trunks, but it gets very heavy after a couple of hours and is more than is needed to cut up the smaller branches once the tree is down.

Big and little - older and newer.  We get a lot of good use out of these chainsaws.

The Cut is Completed

Exactly 10 months to the day since we began we have completed the cut for the first building.  We still have to dig down for the building footers but the bulk overburden is removed, including the rock we had to break through with a jackhammer.

Sighting along the back edge of the cut.
In the background can be seen the KX-91 excavator that did most of the digging.

Nick and I standing in the cut.  Directly behind us can be seen the rock layer which had to be extracted with demolition tools.

Lightning Stikes a Tree

There was a huge thunderstorm in the first week of July which knocked out power over a wide area of Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland.  The power outage did not affect us too much since we do not have utility service on the land but the storm did blow down a very large tree near our build site.  The downed tree was of no particular concern either since it was diseased and we were going to extract it anyway.  We thought that this tree was the extent of our storm damage until today when I was hiking into the southeast corner of our property in an area where I do not often go.  Here I found a tree that clearly was the victim of a recent lightning strike.  The strike produced what was essentially a high pressure steam explosion in the tree.  The bark was blown off nearly half the diameter of the trunk and the wood underneath had splintered and some was thrown may meters from the tree.  I would have loved to see it happen - from a safe distance. 

A once healthy oak is splintered by the effects of lightning.

Looking up the tree the extent of the damage is evident.

Shards of wood littered the forest floor.

Pieces of the struck tree were festooned on neighboring trees.

Saw Bird

I have this chop saw which I use occasionally.  It sometimes sits idle for weeks, but when I need it, I need it.  I went to use it the other day only to discover that a local small mother bird had re-purposed it to her own requirements.  I guess it seemed like a nice safe place to make a nest.  It was under cover, out of the rain and had this nice pocketed shape to hold a nest.  When I discovered her efforts, she had already laid four small eggs in the nest.  I hate when stuff like this happens.  I like the birds and I am happy to share my 25 acres of forest with them.  Of all the many, many places she could have made her nest, she chose one of the few places which intersected with my activities.  I really had no choice.  I needed to use the saw.  So I carefully extracted the nest from the saw and placed it, eggs and all, on a nice protected shelf not 4 feet from its original location.  My hope was that the little bird-brain would find that acceptable and continue her reproductive activity from this new place.  Unfortunately, this was apparently too much for her and she abandoned the nest, eggs and all.

The mother bird peers at me as I approach her nest.

The nest is nicely tucked into my saw.

Four little eggs.

Rosy Maple Moth

Nick found this striking moth today.  We looked it up and identified it as a Rosy Maple Moth (Dryocampa rubicunda).  I guess they are not particularly rare but they are rather spectacular and I had never seen one before.

Moving the Trailer

We have this 30 foot trailer which we use as a field office and kitchen.  Nick also sleeps in it - I prefer my tent (at least when the weather is not too cold).  It takes up a lot of space and in fact has been sitting in the road for the past two years.  I have wanted to move it for some time, primarily so that I could use the road more easily rather than having to squeeze around the trailer.  The problem was there was no better area large enough to put it in until recently.  We recently (see 25 June) dug out more flat ground and now have a place for it where it will be out of the way but still readily accessible.  In actuality, the new spot is only about 300 feet from the old spot.  Not a long move, but a useful one.

We hooked the trailer up to our F250 Super Duty for the initial move.

300 feet down the road is all the further we needed to go.   We wanted to pull it between the trees but we didn't quite have enough room to maneuver.

So we unhooked the truck...

... and finished the job with the tractor.

We were able to put it exactly where we wanted it.

The pickup truck is sitting where the trailer used to be.
The trailer can be seen in its new location down the road.

The Well Pump is Installed

The well company returned today to finish the installation of our well.  In particular we needed to have a pump installed along with the requisite hardware such as a bladder tank and an all weather spigot.  We elected to have the bladder tank installed in an underground chamber outside.  Often, the tank is placed inside the building that the well is serving but since we have as yet no building and we need to use the water now, we had everything placed outside.  There is no problem with this, it will not freeze underground and in the future when the building goes up we can run an underground pipe to the inside of the building and just leave everything else outside where it is.  It only took about two hours for the well guys to get everything installed.  We hooked up the power to our generator and we have, at long last, plenty of water on our land.

This is the completed installation.  The large black tube holds the bladder tank.  The frost proof hydrant is in the middle.  The well itself can be seen in the foreground.  The pump is in the well shaft, 170 feet down.

We backfilled the installation.  We will have to dig it up again when we are ready to install a line to the building.

We attached a hose to the hydrant and powered up the pump with our new diesel generator.

We have plenty of water pressure.
The water comes out of the ground quite cold - about 13 C 

This is how we test for the potability of water here in West Virginia.
The water tastes a bit of minerals but is quite safe to drink.

On Level Ground

Our primary goal here in West Virginia is to complete our buildings and start using them.  We need, however, to also develop some of the basic infrastructure around the property.  One of the most useful things we do in that department is creating level spots to store equipment, vehicles, and materials.  When you are working on a hillside, the importance of this cannot be overstated.  To that end we spent some time this month digging in an area below our build site, expanding a flat area where we have the trailer.

We dug out this area next to the current location of the trailer to obtain more level storage area.  In this photo we have started to gravel the area.

The first thing we moved into the new space was our derelict F450.

Further down the road we have another new flat area where we plan to move the trailer.

Big fat salamander

Nick was clearing a section of land in preparation for digging with the excavator when he found a large orange salamander under some leaves.  He scooped it up into a plastic container and after a few photos we set him free out of harm's way near the stream.  He swam off into the water and did not even turn around to wave goodbye.

Bambi under a truck

Over the past few days a fawn has been hanging around our land.  I think that it is a little unusual for such a young deer to be on its own but that seems to be the case.  Maybe its mother has been eaten by one of the local West Virginians.  One afternoon Nick spotted it just a few yards away from where he was working in the road.  It saw Nick but rather than running away like any sensible deer would it crawled under a truck and just hung out there for a while in the shade.  I got quite close to it to take some pictures.  It eventually decided to move on and walked off into the forest.  I am not optimistic for its long term (or even short term) survival.  Unless it develops some sort of "forest smarts" it is going to be an easy meal for even a relatively unambitious coyote.

"Herpe-flage"

I spotted this little lizard on an oak tree.  As you can tell, it is quite hard to see.  It was about 6 cm long.