Archive for September 2024
Wintervale Big Trees 5
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The fifth tree is an oak that is not that far from the first two I measured but on the other side of the trail, closer toward the house. It is referenced as “leaner” because the trunk is growing in a distinct lean away from the trail.
Measuring a circumference of 122 inches, this oak is calculated to be approximately 175 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 4
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The fourth tree I measured is a stone’s throw from the chicken manure spot, toward the middle of this section of woods, away from the trails.
It is also a maple tree. I referenced it as “swing arm” because of a massive lower limb that stretches out and absolutely begs to have a swing hung from it. I would need to clear out a bunch of small trees in the vicinity to make a swing viable. Maybe someday?
Measuring a circumference of 117 inches, this maple calculates to approximately 167 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 3
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The third tree I measured is just down the trail a bit from the first two and I referenced it in my notes as “chicken compost” because we used to dump the chicken manure beside it.
It is another maple tree. There are five maples in total in my survey.
Measuring a circumference of 101 inches, this maple calculates to approximately 145 years old.
I wonder what it was like in Iceland when this tree first sprouted from the ground…
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Wintervale Big Trees 2
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The second tree I measured was chosen because it was right next to the first tree.
Based on the leaves that are hard to see because they are so high up, I believe it is an elm.
Measuring a circumference of 95 inches, this big elm calculates to approximately 120 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 1
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The first tree I measured was chosen for its prominent location and because it was the tree that first caught my eye when we initially visited the property with the intent of purchasing these 20 acres.
It is a Maple with a big burl knot growing on it.
Measuring a circumference of 98 inches, this precious specimen calculates to approximately 140 years old.
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Prime Condition
This is departure day for our Iceland adventure. After we take care of walking and feeding animals this morning, we are off duty for a couple of weeks. When all the work of preparing the property for our extended absence was completed yesterday, I experienced a profound sense of appreciation for this place we are able to call home.
September is the best month of the fall season and the weather the last few days has been glorious. With the property freshly mowed and fence lines trimmed, it looks like a picture postcard around here.
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I am grateful for all the trees. In all the photos I’ve seen of Iceland lately, I don’t recall seeing trees. That will be part of the adventure for me. I am going to a place that is dramatically unlike the forests of my favorite places in the world.
While we are away on vacation, I’ve scheduled a celebration of the big trees I logged (get it?) a couple of weeks ago with a daily salute to each one. A forest with 200-year-old trees is practically the opposite of being in Iceland. For some reason, I like the contradiction of that.
Take care of yourselves while I’m gone. I’ll tell ya all about it when we get back.
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Final Details
We are at that point in the story where the main characters are working multiple lists simultaneously in preparation for their adventure vacation as tourists visiting Iceland. Test packing happened Monday night. All systems are a go.
Now I am in the second-guessing mode. I packed once, but now I’ve been into the bag a few times to get toiletries or grab something out of my carry-on bag. I also thought of a couple of things to add. Will I remember to put everything back? Will I remember where I packed everything? No. No, I won’t. Based on past experience, I have a terrible time recalling what nifty little pocket I’ve stashed certain things, thinking it’s such a clever location.
Meanwhile, I’m ticking away at the property work I want to finish before we go.
One valuable task that is less visible than others is the management of manure composting. It has been so wet this year, I’ve had a tough time keeping the piles active. As a result, I can’t move them out as often as I’d like to make room to create a new pile for the never-ending supply of fresh manure. Since we are going to be gone for almost two weeks, I wanted to provide ample space for our horse sitters to dump the manure they will be cleaning up every day.
Yesterday, I crossed that goal off my list. New space is achieved.
That was much more rewarding than my fruitless attempt to dig again in search of the buried power cable. That project will be waiting for me when we return.
I did successfully complete the trimming of grass beneath the back pasture fence line with enough gas left over to also clean up a portion of our trails. Then I mowed the front and backyard around the house.
This morning, I need to drive to Hudson for a windshield replacement before returning home to finish off the last of the grass cutting. If there is something unfinished after that, it will need to wait until we return stateside.
For the record, last night Cyndie was very busy finding new things to bring and rethinking what was going into her suitcase. It served to heighten my second-guessing about what I “test packed” the other night.
In my opinion, managing the manure composting area is a lot easier than packing for a trip to visit Iceland.
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Thrice Foiled
I’m not afraid to admit when my methods fall short of success. I’m feeling a little sheepish that three different attempts have failed to locate the buried power line between the barn and the shop. My low-cost DIY method is lacking the technology of underground cable locators.
I have an eleven-year-old photo of the power cables coming out of the ground when they were accidentally cut. I know where the cables come out of the barn. What I am unsure of is how deep they are buried. I would be a lot more zealous about digging deeper if I was more confident I was in the right location.
My assumption that the cables –there are three– aren’t buried too deep is based on where they were cut in 2013. However, I didn’t witness the repair and reburying that occurred afterward.
First, I started a trench across the direction of the cables. The soil is heavy clay which makes the going difficult. Cyndie came to help and we discovered the ground on the slope above where I was digging was more forgiving dirt. We switched to probing the hill, meeting with several false alarms in the form of rocks.
After spending too much time getting nowhere, I gave in and decided to dig down at the spot where the cables come out of the barn so I could then trench along the cables to the location of the failed repair. I had hoped to avoid trenching across the lane behind the barn until we find out when an electrician can do a professional repair.
Doesn’t matter now because yesterday my digging beside the barn also proved futile. I got as deep as my arm could reach, which is the depth I know it should be from digging on the inside, but didn’t find the cables.
At this point, I’m thinking I should have spent money to rent a cable locator long ago because that’s probably what I’m going to end up doing if I can’t find those dang wires after one last try later this morning.
I can’t spend much time on it because we have two days left before our Iceland adventure vacation and there is grass to be mowed and compost piles to be moved among other miscellaneous things deserving my attention.
On the bright side, the weather for such projects has been glorious of late!
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Wild Plums
We hadn’t put much focus on the wild plum trees growing on our property until last year when the yield of fruit was so high we couldn’t help but gather bowls full for making jam. This year the yield looks as good or better. Maybe that’s because we are more focused on it now.
It seems like the plums turned red really fast and the trees near our trails started dropping fruit over a week ago.
Cyndie has demonstrated great interest in gathering this year’s crop so we have been making frequent visits to shake trees and bag what comes loose.
Some of the plums look pretty big but after biting into one, I quickly discovered the pit takes up about half the size.
When making jam out of wild plums, removing pits ends up being the majority of the work.
The few that I ate while collecting the best-looking specimens weren’t as sweet as what I remember from last year, but they weren’t sour or bitter either, so they should still make for good jam.
Collecting plums provided a nice diversion from another project I was toiling away at for a second day in a row. In addition to spending an hour a day trimming portions of fence line, I started digging a trench in search of the AC power lines feeding the barn.
We still need to fix the break in one phase line that was discovered last winter. I suspect there is a failure at the point where the wires were reattached back in 2013 after they were accidentally cut by a skid-steer tractor. We have been reviewing photos from that time to determine roughly where the broken cable is routed but it is still a bit of a guessing game. We don’t have the luxury of a device to precisely locate buried cable.
I’m also not sure about how deeply the cable is buried. I wish I had paid more attention to what was going on when they fixed it over ten years ago.
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Webs Spectacle
On our walk Friday morning, emerging from the woods with Asher on our way to feed the horses, we witnessed a spectacle I don’t remember ever seeing before. Spider webs. Lots of them. Admittedly, spider webs in the morning are not that special. I posted a picture of a dewy web just a few days ago.
Two things made this display of webs stand out more than ever: the location and the incredible number of them.
Like so many times before, I immediately decided that the glorious display couldn’t be adequately captured in a photo. Thankfully, Cyndie does not share my perception and fearlessly points her phone camera at any and all attractions that catch her eye.
She graciously shared them with me.
I tried zooming in on one of the images to provide a better view.
We have often been greeted by a vast number of funnel webs in the grass on our morning walks but these webs were completely different. These were the classic orb webs standing vertically above the grass in the back pasture.
They show up as white-ish smudges in the image and there are at least 14 visible in that shot. It really was a spectacle to see with our eyes. The low angle of the morning sunshine illuminated the webs so that they stood out dramatically as we stepped into the open from the woods.
It’s nice to see webs in the grass instead of strung invisibly across the trails in the woods. It is a regular occurrence that whoever is leading on our morning walks will offer many utterances of “you’re welcome” when breaking imperceptible strands of webs across our faces, saving the other person from such a fate.
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Relative Something 