Month: February 2008

Pulling the wire to the power post

Energy United came out today and lit up my power post. I now have electricity! Which means that I can get a pump in the well and have water soon.

The finished power post

The newly installed electric meter reads 0000 kilowatt hours. There are two 220-volt outlets, a special outlet for the trailer, and four 110-volt outlets.

The trailer will be parked where the Jeep is sitting. It’s a pretty nice campsite if I do say so myself.

I had the tree guys, with their chainsaws and chipper machine, back for a second day. Things look much better, but I still have a lot of brush to deal with. Still, all the chainsaw work is done. The “downer” logs are sawed up and ready to cart off, and all the little injured trees that were sticking up in the air and looking pathetic have been cut down. We used some of the wood chips to pave an area for the trailer and Jeep.

The mystery magnolia now has room to grow.

I have no idea how there came to be a magnolia tree in the middle of the pine woods. It was crowded by brush and honeysuckle, and it wasn’t getting much light because of the pine trees overhead, so it’s a bit spindly. Still, it appears healthy and absolutely determined to grow. We cleaned out all the competition. I’ll feed it. It’s got lots of light and space now, so we’ll see if it will fill out and take off.

Chipping away at the brush pile

To the loggers there were three grades of wood: good logs for the sawmill, sorry logs for pulpwood (but hauled away, at least), and the sorriest logs of all which were left behind for me to saw into firewood.

Two guys and a chipping machine (with a little help from me) spent seven hours today cleaning up after the loggers. We made a dent in it, but much work remains. We’ll spend another day at it tomorrow and see how things look.

The electrician has finished the temporary power post. The county inspector has approved it. As soon as Energy United lights it up, I’ll have electricity. Once I have electricity, I’ll get a pump in the well — and have water! — as soon as possible. Energy United, by the way, is an electric co-op. I haven’t had a chance to look into how their service and rates compare with their competitor, Duke Energy.

This is a 6″x6″x16′ post. It supports 100 amps of service, with lots of outlets, both 110-volt and 200-volt. It wasn’t cheap.

Evan, my great-nephew, helps me gather brush.

Cleaning up after the loggers is the next priority. I hope the tree guy will be able to bring the brush-chipping machine this week, but I’ve got to work around his other jobs, and the weather. Rain is forecast for Tuesday. I also need to find out if the septic tank man can go ahead and install the septic tank, or whether he needs some stumps removed first. I’d like to get the septic tank done right away, if possible.

The Jeep has become a beast of burden.

The loggers are gone. They left behind a big pile of brush, plus tree-limb litter all over my top acre. There also are a bunch of “spikes,” small trees they ran over that are too injured to live and that look really bad. Fortunately the loggers didn’t disturb much topsoil. There’s an exposed area of soil of about 2,000 square feet where the skidder ran back and forth to the loader, and there’s a spot on the lower end where the skidder got stuck and spun its wheels to get out. It could be worse. They did almost no damage to the road. That’s good, because it means the neighbors won’t be mad at me.

I hauled 12 bales of straw and put straw over the exposed soil. I got a 50-pound bag of annual rye grass seed and spread the seed with an old-fashioned hand-cranked seed spreader, which I bought at the hardware store in Germanton. Next steps: Get a guy with a chipper to give me an estimate on how much it will cost to turn the brush pile into mulch, and get my great-nephew to help me gather up the downed limbs and trim out the spikes. When the litter is picked up and some rye grass is growing, things will look much better.

I’ve been thinking hard about how best to heal and use the upper acre. Right now the plan is to get some wildflower seed in bulk and fling the wildflower seed in April after the danger of frost has passed. Then, at tree-planting time in the fall, I start a little hillside orchard. The area looks bad now, but it would make a beautiful little hillside orchard. The slope and light are perfect for that.

Also yesterday, the electrician brought the temporary power post out, and I helped him put it up. It’s ready for inspection by the county. As soon as the inspection is done, the power company will light up the post, and I’ll have electricity. Once I have electricity, I can put the pump in the well. I think I’ve got to get rid of some stumps before the septic tank can go in, but I’ll talk with the septic guy next week.

The skidder pulls logs to the loader. (Until today I didn’t know what a skidder is.)

Off to the sawmill.

The view opens up: Behind the pines, beautiful hardwood trees that I won’t touch. The hardwoods will look really nice when the leaves grow out in a couple of months. Californians: the oak, hickory, beech, poplar, and maple trees are de-cid-u-ous, meaning that they grow leaves in the spring and lose them in the fall. Not much of that in coastal California. The tree to the right is called, locally, a cedar, but I believe it technically is a juniper. Junipers, like oak and hickory, are untouchable to a tree-hugger like me and must be left alone.

It’s scary for a tree-hugger to condemn a bunch of pines to the sawmill and see heavy equipment arriving. The loader, they say, weighs 50,000 pounds. The skidder has huge tires filled with fluid. The logger guys have been great, though. They worked very hard to honor my request not to disturb the topsoil any more than absolutely necessary and to avoid damaging the non-pine trees that I want to keep.

By the end of the day today, almost all the pines were down. I’m sure they’ll finish tomorrow. The soil is exposed in the area where the skidder had to run back and forth dragging logs to the loader, but the soil was pretty dry today, and having spent several hours watching them I don’t see how they could have done it any neater than they did. These machines are not exactly small and delicate.

I met with a timber guy today. He’s going to buy pretty much all my pine trees and get them out of my way. I’ll even make a little money off the deal — a few hundred dollars. I explained that I’m not trying to make money off the trees, that I only want to get the pines off the upper acre so that I can build there and so the young poplars and maples underneath the pines can have light and room to grow.

The aerial photo above is a winter shot. The lower end of the triangle is all hardwood. The green in the upper corner is pine. I’ll be getting rid of most of the pine in the upper corner.

The timber guy agreed to minimize the mess and to disturb the topsoil as little as possible. He’ll strip the limbs off the trees and leave the limbs in a single pile. I’ll need to get a chipper to come in and make a big pile of mulch out of the brush.

The tree work may start next week if we don’t get too much rain.

The woods looked mighty fine in the snow this morning.

I met with an electrician from Madison and signed a contract for bringing in the temporary power. That was a tad over budget (by $100 — total cost, $750), but no big deal. I should have temporary power ready to use within the next two weeks.

I also met with a septic tank contractor this morning. His quote also was a tad over budget (by $100, total cost, $2600), but again, no big deal, and I probably won’t bother with any more quotes for the septic tank.

The septic tank guy did say, however, that he can’t get a backhoe in there for the septic tank until some trees are gone. All the trees that have to go are pines, and he said I can sell them for lumber. I liked the sound of that — revenue off the trees, which I don’t want anyway. I’d like to get rid of pretty much all the pines and give the entire five acres over to hardwood. The septic tank guy recommended a timber guy, and I’m hoping to meet with the timber guy tomorrow. I’m not expecting to get much for the trees — maybe a few hundred dollars. But at least I won’t have to pay somebody to take them away. Now the stumps, that’s a different story. Getting rid of the stumps will cost me, but if getting ridding of the trees is actually revenue rather than cost, I should still be well within budget for clearing trees for the house and septic tank.