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.

A New Diesel Generator

When we had our well installed the well company told us that they normally use 240 volt pumps in the wells they install.  This makes sense since a well pump is a power hungry device and the higher voltage reduces the current which permits the use of thinner power cables.  We bought this diesel powered generator from Tractor Supply in Winchester.  It produces 240 as well as 120 volt electricity and is big enough to handle the well pump as well as power any tools we will need to run when we erect the buildings.

It's big and powerful but not any noisier than our smaller gasoline powered generators.

Curiously, this "7000 Watt" generator has a rated output of 4600 Watts.  I guess "7000 Watts" is just the name of the generator - maybe they just should have called it something like "Fred the Generator".

Still Seeking Cell Signal Strength

I pursue an ongoing effort to get cell phone reception on my isolated patch of Morgan County, West Virginia.  My latest effort is to erect a high gain Yagi antenna tuned to the 800 MHz band on a 20 foot pole up the hill above the build site.  Results have been pretty good.  I have an old-fashioned cell phone that still has a socket for an external antenna.  I plug it in and point it in the right direction and can get a call out 90 percent of the time.  My next plan is to put the antenna on a higher pole and use an electric antenna rotor.  In the meantime this saves me from having to drive a half mile up the hill to get a call out.

The 800 MHz Yagi on a PVC pole. 

I am sure that I could get even better results with a taller pole.

We finally get our well drilled

We have been working on our land for over a year now and until this week the only source of water we had was either brought in from home in a tank or pumped out of our stream.  Now the stream water is actually quite clean.  The source of the stream is rain runoff from the forest land uphill of us.  There are no houses or farms up there so aside from a bit of frog and crawdad pee the water is pretty clean.  Unfortunately, the stream stops flowing in the dry of the summer so July and August can be a bit of a problem.  This summer, however, we will have water in abundance since we are having our well drilled.  It would have been nice to have the well drilled months ago but getting a well on a hillside in West Virginia requires a bit of preparation.  A well drilling truck is a 35 ton monster which requires a solid access road and a large flat area to work from.  In addition to the drill truck a second supply truck needs to be deployed alongside of the first truck.  After months of earth moving we finally had adequate roads and a large enough flat zone to bring in the well drilling crew.  We used B.W.Smith Well Drilling out of Springfield, WV on the recommendation of a neighbor.  They arrived at about noon and within an hour were busy drilling into the hillside.  Remarkably, they hit a flow of ground water at only about 120 feet and a much larger one at 170 feet.  They continued to 200 feet to ensure that the well had plenty of capacity for our needs.  They told us that a typical well in the area is closer to 400 feet.  It is quite an excellent well with a flow rate of about 30 gallons a minute.  They put a steel casing down to 100 feet and were done and out by five o'clock that afternoon.  The well is not quite ready for action, however.  Another crew has to come next week to install the pump, bladder tank, and outdoor hydrant so we can access our new source of water.  We are looking forward to being wet in the wild.

The drill truck rumbles up to our build site.

Raising the drill turret.  Each section of drill rod is 20 feet long.  By the time they are done 10 of these sections will be used.  The support truck next to the drill truck carries casing pipe, extra drill rod, water for lubricating the drill bit, and other supplies.

The first 100 feet were drilled with this 6 inch bit.

After the first 100 feet the drill bit is extracted and this 6 inch diameter steel casing is welded together and inserted down the hole.

The last 100 feet is drilled with a smaller 4 inch diameter bit. 

A view from the road of the drilling operation.

 This is what 30 gallons per minute of well water looks like.  This water is being blown out of the well by the huge air compressor on the well truck.  We will have to get a pump installed to access our water once the drillers leave.