September 2007 – Into the Woods

Thoughts on exterior colors

Notice the color scheme on the house in the background. The roof appears to be tile, the exterior appears to be brick — natural colors. But the windows are stark white. The house is in Germany. Love that steep, flared roof.

The stark white window frames gave me a new idea for the exterior of my gothic cottage. The roof will be metal shingles, the color of an old galvanized washtub. For the wooden siding, I plan to use a gray, weathered stain — tree trunk color. Andersen windows come in only four exterior colors — a light brown sand color, a darker brown, a dark green, and white. None of those colors seemed quite right, but I was thinking of going with dark green.

But I wonder, since the bay window on the first floor and the gothic window on the second floor are such an important part of the character of the house, if they wouldn’t look quite striking with white frames. If you’ve got a gothic window, flaunt it!

Use your imagination on the grayscale image:

A bit of Stokes history

The Winston-Salem Journal has an article today on the restoration of Davis Chapel near Danbury. This was a community project by people who wanted to save a charming piece of Stokes County history. I believe the plan is that the church will now function as a historic site and a place rentable for community events.

I believe this reaffirms my view that Stokes County people have a strong interest in preserving the best of their past.

By the way, notice the carpenter gothic windows.

Sustainable living in Stokes County

Butterfly hunting in Stokes, Carolina Butteryfly Society

I noticed in the reader statistics for this web site that someone recently found the web site with the search “sustainable living, Stokes County, N.C.” What a great idea for a post.

Sustainable living means frugality and low consumption, with minimum disturbance to land and wildlife.

First of all, Stokes County cannot sustain a sustainable living for too many people. Just as the woods can support only so many squirrels (in direct proportion to the nut supply), a rural setting can support only so many humans in a sustainable way. Stokes County does not need more commuters. Already, 71 percent of Stokes workers commute to other counties for their jobs. That’s not a trend that needs to be made worse. But for those few people like retirees who have an outside income, or for those lucky enough to make their living within the Stokes County economy, there are many reasons why Stokes County is a good place for a sustainable lifestyle.

Stokes’ population density — 99 people per square mile — is lower than the surrounding counties. According to the Census Bureau, for comparison, here are statistics for people per square mile: Forsyth 747, Surry 133, Rockingham 162, Yadkin 108, Henry County, Va., 152. You have to go to west to Ashe County, N.C., bordering on the Tennessee line, to get an impressively low population density — 57 people per square mile.

In Stokes, much of the population is concentrated in King and a couple of other small towns, so in rural areas the population density is considerably lower. From aerial photos, I estimate that fewer than 20 people live on the square mile around my land.

In 2003, Stokes County commissioned an economic survey by a research company, Angelou Economics. That survey contains some interesting information. Stokes County has 110,000 acres of farmland, or 38 percent of the county. From about 1995 to about 2000, Stokes actually lost some population as manufacturing jobs were lost. During this time, there was good growth in tourism. Stokes has a jobs-to-residents ratio of 1:5, way below the “desirable” ratio of 1:2. If you need a job, Stokes County is the wrong place to go.

Economic statistics aside, in my opinion one of the biggest factors favoring a sustainable lifestyle in Stokes is cultural. Many people in Stokes are farmers, and many of the longtime residents of Stokes still have the skills that their grandparents and great-grandparents needed to live close to the land. Many Stokes residents still have their farms, their crops, their outbuildings, and their tractors, and they know how to use them. People who live simply and close to the land get respect. Stokes County values its past and wants to preserve it.

Horne Creek Living Historical Farm is in Pinnacle, and I believe it may be across the Surry County line. But it’s all about how our forebears lived sustainably on the same land we live on today:

Horne Creek Living Historical Farm

Of course, no one is an island. Sustainable living is a community concern. Farmer’s markets, pick-your-own berry farms, and sharing of produce with neighbors are already strong in Stokes and surrounding counties, and getting stronger.

We all consume too much energy. Duke Energy’s low rates don’t encourage conservation, and Duke’s environmental record is not good. Linda Brinson has written in the Winston-Salem Journal about why Duke has such low rates. It’s from the coal dug gracelessly out of the mountains in West Virginia and hauled in by train to places like the Belews Creek Steam Station.

We all have different situations, so we each have to figure out the best way to manage our energy consumption. I’ll write more about my own plan for minimizing energy consumption in the future, but the fundamentals are:

— Drive less. Leave the car at home for days in a row. One’s home should be so interesting that one doesn’t need to go out for entertainment. Shopping trips need to be minimized.

— Live in a small, efficient house. My house will be 1200 square feet. I plan to splurge on a reflective metal roof and maximize insulation. I plan to have a whole-house attic fan that will pull in cool air from the woods and push hot air out through the attic, leaving the air conditioning off except during the hottest of weather. The building site also is well positioned. It’s on a south slope, with a large stand of hardwoods to the south. Thus the house will be shaded in summer but will get sunlight in winter.

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and North Carolina State University Extension web sites are excellent sources of information on living well, and efficiently, with articles on everything from farmers markets to growing shitake mushrooms as a cash crop.

A partnership between people who remember, or want to revive, a simple and traditional lifestyle with people who’ve made it a science, like the Department of Agriculture and N.C. State, is a powerful partnership.

The N.C. State Extension has a presence in Stokes. Take note of their workshops and classes.

See also the Stokes Center of Regional Economics, which seems to take a particular interest in Stokes County’s most promising crop, sweet potatoes:

Stokes Center of Regional Economics

My neighborhood in San Francisco

Let’s take a little walk around my neighborhood in San Francisco — partly because it’s an interesting neighborhood, and partly because there are some architectural and landscaping elements that will work in the country.

I live at Park Hill on Buena Vista Avenue East, facing Buena Vista Park.

The house in the photo below is one block up the street from me. A friend and I call it “Fancy House” and use it as a rendezvous place when we’re out walking. The house seems to capture everyone’s imagination. At Halloween, Christmas, and Easter, its owners put up decorations that are WAY over the top. The house is noted for that, and people drive through just to see it.

Fancy House:

It’s not gothic, but it has a lot of the same elements as the gothic revival cottage that I plan to build.

For example, the steep roof with flared eaves:

Dormers and bay windows:

But look what’s missing from the bay windows, a terrible omission!:

There’s no corbelling under the bay windows!

But one block in the other direction, check out the fine corbelling and brackets on this Spanish mansion across the street from Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Luxembourg:

Most bay windows would have an extremely unfinished look without some corbelling. The corbelling above is masonry, but something similar could be executed in wood and would make a good corbel for my gothic revival cottage.

Here’s one other neat detail for a house with a dramatic façade and steep roof. A finial at the peak of the roof. This house is nextdoor to Danny Glover’s house and the Crosby, Stills, and Nash house. In the Southeast, the finial could be executed in copper and double as a lightning rod:

A couple of other things while we’re walking around. What a nice way to treat a stump — put some sod on it. The stump is in Buena Vista Park:

Attaching climbing roses to tree trunks could never be a bad idea. The roses and the palm trees below are recently planted and don’t yet looked very established, but give them time:

And if you can afford a fancy dog waterer, go for it!

Here’s where I live. Park Hill. It used to be a hospital run by an order of nuns — St. Joseph’s Hospital. It appears in the Hitchcock film “Vertigo,” and the building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was converted to condos in the mid-1980s.

The lions in the photo below are on the fourth floor. My apartment is just above the lions on the fifth floor. Note the four-story-tall magnolia grandiflora — always in good taste! And by the way, there’s even some honeysuckle across the street in Buena Vista Park.

Some people might now be thinking, can I take the shock of moving from a fancy neighborhood in San Francisco to the end of a gravel road in Stokes County? Consider the French. There is Paris, and everything else is la province. The French esteem la province, love farms and farming, and les parisiens have a place in la province if they can possibly afford it. In France, there is no huge political and cultural gap between Paris and la province. We urban Americans look down on our provinces. That’s dumb. Or, en français, quel dommage — what a pity. If we Americans loved our provinces the way we ought to we’d stop paving over our remaining farmland. We’d have a great deal more respect for, and knowledge of, the people who grow our food. And most important, city people and country people would have some common cause, and would be more at home on each other’s turf. I say let the country people learn to love San Francisco, and let San Franciscans learn to love the country.