Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
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.
I got quite a lot done in Stokes County on Thursday. The people in the building permits office in Danbury were delightful to work with. I explained my intentions and showed them the blueprints for the house and wellhouse. In no time at all I had permits for the wellhouse and for the temporary electrical hookup (the cost for the two permits was $90). It’s a little too early to get the permit for the house itself, but at this point that’s the only permit I still need. All the other permits — wellhouse, temporary power, the well, and the septic tank — are taken care of.
Then I went out to the land and put in some stakes (around here we call them “stobs”) and flags to mark approximate locations of the house, the wellhouse, and the driveway. On Sunday, I’ll go back with my brother and sister to let them have a look at the location of everything. Once that’s all settled, the next step will be to get the tree guy to come take a look. I’ll only need to take out pine trees — no need to take out any of the mature hardwood trees. Among the pines there are many young hardwoods, mainly poplar and maple, eager to have room to grow. I hope we can take out the pine trees with minimum damage to the young hardwoods. They should grow quickly once the pines are gone and they have light and space.
The big rock is surprisingly difficult to photograph. But I tried.
I arrived in North Carolina on Monday (Feb. 4), and not until today (Feb. 6) have I had a chance to get at a computer.
The land is looking good. There’s been a fair amount of rain recently, and the little stream across my land was trickling over the rocks.
Next steps: I need to stake out the exact location of the house and wellhouse, mark the driveway, and tag trees for the tree man. Luckily I have to take down only low-value pines. I won’t have to disturb any of my hardwood trees.
I’ll have a real post, and some photos, in a day or two.
I’d been waiting for something like two years for Google Earth to get high-resolution images of Stokes County. Finally they do!
Here’s a Google Earth view of my land. The property line is the white triangle in the lower left foreground. That’s Hanging Rock State Park looming high in the background. The elevation of the park is exaggerated a bit by Google Earth (the park’s actual altitude is over 3,000 feet, compared with 910 feet for the highest part of my land).
For scale, my road frontage along that gravel road is 763 feet. As you can see, I’m on the south-facing side of a little valley. A small stream runs across my property and intersects with another small stream at the lower end. The conjoined streams then run to the Dan River about 1.5 miles farther down.
I’ll have periodic updates as I continue to carry out my three year plan. As of July 2007, this has been done:
— Land search commenced, summer 2004
— Made offer on land, January 2005
— Closed on land, March 2005
— Bought blueprints for house, November 2005
— Bought trailer, October 2005
— Drilled well, May 2006
Here is the timeline for the remaining work:
— February 2008: rough-clear driveway and clear access to septic area. Install septic tank. Bring in temporary power. Build wellhouse. Install pump in well.
— March 2008: Bring trailer out to the land and hook it up to water and septic. Clear garden area and build garden fence for deer protection. Improve driveway and culvert.
— Spring of 2008: Negotiate contracts for foundation, framing, roofing, and exterior. Begin construction May or June of 2008.