Internet Problems,,,,Again

Another tractor trailer drove down our road and ripped the phone line off of the pole yesterday. For a change the line wasn't ripped off the house. I was at work all day long, but my daughter said the line was hanging in the road and cars were driving under it. Then a school bus came along and someone lifted the line up so the bus could drive underneath. The fire police came and cut the line and coiled it up in our front yard, much to the chagrin of the tech who came today to fix the line. He said the police could have called it in as an emergency then Verizon would have dispatched someone right away (yeah right.) 

The tech who came out today was the same one who fixed the line in August. He only comes to Berks County 12-15 times a year so he was surprised to be back at our place. He was able to move the wire up the pole about a foot and that also tightened up the wire so hopefully it won't get snagged again. The only good part about having the phone line disconnected was the lack of internet on election night. It was nice to not be able to get caught up in all the political drama.

Falling Trees

The state game lands surrounding our property routinely drop trees onto our property. Thursday night when I got home from work Alan told me about his near brush with having a dead tree drop on top of him. He was mowing the lawn and had just finished the little strip between a large clump of lilacs and the garden fence. He did a loop through the next portion of lawn and when he drove by that little strip, about a minute later, there was a large dead tree.

The tree missed the garden fencing and the lilacs and fell exactly in between. It crossed our barn access road:

And went up into the woods.

Alan thinks its ash and has been dead a while. The wood is ready for burning this season.

A few weeks ago another tree, a locust this time, fell out of the game lands and missed the barn and fencing.

This tree fell right between the barn and a jog in our pasture fence, damaging nothing. Once seasoned this tree will provide close to a cord of wood.

Cicada Killer Wasp

Saturday morning there was a pile of sand on our patio (our patio is slate pavers laid on a bed of sand.) By Sunday afternoon the pile of sand was quite large and a paver was starting to sink.

We thought the culprit was a mole or vole, but late Sunday night we saw it.

It is a Cicada Killer Wasp. Alan saw it pushing about 1cc of sand behind it as it backed out of the hole. Apparently these wasps are solitary, do not sting unless provoked, and dig tunnels, then catch a cicada and drag it into the tunnel. The female lays one egg in the cicada and then buries it in the tunnel. I also found a picture of the wasp taking a stink bug down it's tunnel.
This is a very good article on the wasp from The Atlantic magazine. So we will let this one do it's thing and move the table away. I'm not sure we will be able to wait a year (for the new wasp to emerge) to fix the sinking paver though.

Stream Work

Now that the 4 older ewes have lambed we have a little break to get something else done. (Well, around giving supplemental bottles to Beyla's twins and making Mama Sadie stand still so her ram lamb can nurse.) We finally got the arborvitae out of the stream. The big overgrown branches of arborvitae fell into the stream a year before we bought this place and they really needed to be removed.

The leaves and rocks collected by the branches were starting to divert the stream and erode the bank. Most of the branches were so big and weighed down with debris we needed to haul them out of the stream with the tractor.

We overfilled our trailer three times with all the branches.
The pipe that takes the stream under the road was getting blocked too.

But is now looking much better.

We could have used the nice warm weather we have been having, but this day was blustery, cold and had intermittent snow flurries. But what an improvement!

Odds and Ends

We've been on a push to get a lot of landscaping projects finished up. I finally got the last of the grass seed and straw down...

and the grass is starting to come up around the front/side of the garage. A week and a half ago we had four inches of rain in three days and nothing since. But that was enough to get the first grass planting off to a decent start. We had a scant shower this afternoon and maybe more to come later today but nothing in any measurable amount is predicted.

Liming is coming along. I have the largest, and highest elevation, pasture to go. Pushing heavy lime up our hills is not fun.  And since we haven't gotten any rain yet, all the sheep are in small paddocks waiting for the lime to get watered into the grass. They seem to be liking the hay I've been giving them in lieu of grazing though.

Alan was able to get a little framing of the gable end wall over the garage. Next up siding.

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away, and Come Again Next Week Too!

Finally, we have rain. While it was a good thing it was dry while we were digging up everywhere, it was getting really dry. It got so dry we couldn't work on the landscaping because the soil was pure dust.

With rain in the forecast I got the area next to the garage raked, seeded, and spread straw to hopefully keep the erosion down. But we still have the backyard up to the barn to take care of before we can plant there.

Alan hooked up the down spouts to the drain system which also drains the ground next to the new block wall to keep the water from building up, freezing, and pushing out the wall again. It all comes out here.

I hope we are into a better rain pattern so the grass will grow, but not so wet we can't work the rest of the yard to plant more grass.

And Down Came the Tower

In our little valley there is very little reception for the radio, tv, and cell phone. There is no cable out here either. The prior owners of our house had a satellite dish but we just don't watch that much television. I wish we had better radio reception and you have to go outside to use your cell phone. Years ago, before satellite dishes and the internet, the prior owners put up an antenna tower in the side/front yard. We don't need/want/use it and it was in the way of the excavation for the garage end wall and expanded parking area. So down it came.

The tower was attached to a concrete pad by three bolts. Two of the bolts were hinged.

By unbolting the third bolt the tower could, theoretically, fold on the remaining two hinges. But we didn't want the tower to fall. So in came the winch (coming off the red Defender in the picture above.)

The Defender held the tower up, while Alan on his tractor pulled the tower out of the tree limb it was stuck in.

The tower unbolts into three sections. In total it is 28 feet tall. Anyone want to buy a tower? After all that work we had a nice roast turkey dinner with friends.

Scything

I have wanted a scythe for a long time. I have a real aversion to loud equipment, especially if it vibrates a lot too. I like the idea of a gas powered trimmer but the noise and the vibration tire me out and just listening to it is annoying. Same goes for vacuum cleaners, dish washers, snow blowers, etc. If there is a hand tool to do the job I would rather use it. My husband is the exact opposite. He loves his power tools and motors!

Enter the scythe and snath. So you can't just use a scythe, that is only the blade. The snath is the wooden part you hold. This is the european snath from Lehman's. It is much lighter than it looks and is not tiring to use at all.

It makes a lovely quiet "swish" when it cuts. And no vibration! The rhythmic motion of scything is almost relaxing. My daughter likes using it too.

She scythed almost the whole orchard. Now we need to learn how to sharpen and peen it. There are great videos of the sharpening and peening processes on-line. This video is very informative on peening.  Scythe Supply appears to have the best selection of sharpening and peening supplies.

My Own Heron

The gift shop at work sells some very nice items. I spotted two heron sculptures a few weeks ago when all the spring merchandise began arriving. Unfortunately, they were pretty pricey. Wednesdays are usually special sale days and this past Wednesday was 20% of all Spring merchandise. So I asked if the heron (by this time my favorite one had sold) would count as spring merchandise and the ladies running the shop said "Of course!"  So he came home with me!

I couldn't get him to stand next to the stream since the ground is still frozen and the spike to hold the heron upright wouldn't go into the ground. But the leafy debris under the Rhododendron would accept the spike, for a little while, so I could see how the heron would look.  We are wondering if he will attract more herons or scare them away!

The Melt is On!

The last few days of 40s and 50s for highs have done wonders for our stream. Three days ago the stream was still completely covered by ice and snow; you could hear the water rushing underneath, but no water was visible. All that changed yesterday. This morning when I went out to feed just about the entire stream is free of ice and snow. What is left is very dirty ice from when the higher waters yesterday during the rain washed over parts of the ice.

That's dirty ice to the left of the bridge in the above picture.

It's nice to see and hear the stream again.

The upper stream is fairly straight, but the lower portion is quite twisty.

We need to work on straightening out this part of the stream since all the sharp bends get worn away and then the banks collapse. It's easy to see how the stream has changed course over the years and we would like to lessen the erosion.

And maybe this year we can get some ducks to swim in our stream.

2015...in with a BANG, Literally

As I was sitting at the computer planning a great post on goals for 2015 Alan came in to tell me that the game lands gave us another tree last night.

We were fortunate in two ways. First, the tree was dead and had lost all of its upper limbs already. Second, the tree barely grazed the roof eave edge of the new barn causing minimal damage.

The tree is an ash and seems to be seasoned so we will be able to burn it this year.

Unfortunately, the ash tree took the top 15 feet or so off an oak tree. It now stands about 20 feet tall. We'll let it go and see if it is able to recover.

The Finished Fence

It always amazes me how fast a crew of guys who do something all the time can be. Our fence took less than two full days. Unfortunately, the snow that fell on the first day make for a muddy mess that probably won't be repaired until spring. But the fence looks great!

They even put in supports for a livestock bridge that Alan will build next year so we can access the pasture on the other side of the stream.

We spent Saturday rebuilding the sheep paddock outside the barn. The sheep were very happy to be able to go outside again. They did not seem to appreciate being stuck in the barn for two days.

New Fence!

Today the fencing crew came to start the new fence. Despite the snow, forecasted as snow showers but in reality became 3-4 inches, the crew got all of the posts in and a little over half of the fencing up. Tomorrow they will finish putting up the wire fencing, add the electrified wire along the top of the fence and install five gates. They think they may be done by noon.

These pictures were taken early in the day so the snow fall is minimal.
The crew was interesting to watch. They brought quite a bit of equipment and supplies with them.

This is the post pounder. I wonder how many fingers the guy at the post has lost. He kept putting his hand on the post as it was being pounded into the ground.

Of course the sheep were stuck in the barn all day, but the lambs kept active.

Working on More Firewood

We still have a big ash tree that came down in Sandy that we hadn't cut up. This was the one tree that was ours that fell onto the game land. Most of the other trees that fell down were game land trees that fell onto our property.

Sunday we went a little bit into the game land and got out the easiest to harvest rounds. We cut about 24 large rounds, each one must weigh close to 80 pounds.

We also moved some other logs to where they will be easier to get to once the new fence is up.  The tractor sure did help with moving some of the larger logs.

All this work is for next winter. Hopefully, we already have enough for this winter.

Stream, part II

What a difference a change in the weather makes.  Since the last post about the stream we have had about 2 inches of rain and a 20 degree temperature rise.  This is a picture of approximately the same location as the second picture in the last post:

And here is approximately the same location as the first picture in the last post:

And here is our sluice from the frozen pictures, then today:

Once again our little valley is creating its own microclimate.  It is about 10 degrees warmer in town.  We came home from shopping in Kutztown, which was in the low 50s, to find a car stuck in the ice on the road along side our property.  It took four guys to push it off the bank on which it was stuck.
Now it is still sprinkling and very foggy.  Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

The Stream

I have long dreamt of having a stream and the stream on our new property has been a joy.
It is especially interesting in winter.  And the frigid temps we have been having have created some interesting ice on the stream.

Brrrrr

According to Accuweather tomorrow, January 7, will the coldest day since Feb 5, 1996.  We have been spoiled in recent years with mild winters.  The worst part of this cold day is the high today of 54 degrees at 6AM.  Tomorrow morning's low will be 1 degree, with a high of 9 degrees.  I can't remember the last time we dropped more than 50 degrees in 24 hours in the winter.

The goats and chickens have new straw to help keep them cozy, but the stupid turkey won't go in the chicken coop and when you try to catch her she flies out of the pen and into the woods.  We'll see if we have a "turkey-sicle" in the morning.

There is a bit of snow cover so hopefully the perennials will survive.

Now to keep the house warm.  We are trying to run out of oil so we can get rid of the old oil furnace and oil tank.  Fingers crossed we will have enough oil to get through this cold spell.  When I am not working I keep the wood stove going which keeps things toasty, but I work 16 hours tomorrow and my daughter doesn't do well with the wood stove.  There is an auxiliary electric heater and lots of blankets.  But what will the cats do without the wood stove!

Fog

The weather says it is 63 degrees in Kutztown right now.  Except in our little valley it is 50 degrees by the house and along the stream.  Then when you walk up any hill you hit a wall of 60+ degree temperatures. And the fog is incredible. Of course, the weather only says it is cloudy out.

From the upper pasture you can see the fog in the valley. Our house is down there somewhere.