Virid Views

emerging from winter hibernation

2010-02-21T16:02:00.001-08:00

that's my story and I'm sticking to it. No other reason I hanve't posted since November. Here are a couple shots from our trip up in January. Herbs in the sunroom doing well, even with no regular watering and no heat in there. Enough sun during the day gets them through the night. Basil died of course, but the rosemary, sage and thyme were ok .

The photos didn't do it justice of course, but the hoarfrost was very heavy and very beautiful.

the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind

2009-11-15T19:08:00.000-08:00

Driving back from Indianapolis to Chicago, we went past this brand spinning new wind farm right next to I65. It was still under construction just a couple months ago. This is the closest I've seen wind turbines next to a freeway. I have a closer photo I'll post later. Anyway, once they figure out the storage issue to make it more dispatchable, and work out the mechanical kinks with gear failure, we will see wind grow. Any new technology goes through learning curve. Back when, people were getting killed by steam boilers blowing up all the time on steamships till they set up design codes and improved their understanding of the design limitations.

Hard to beat free fuel, so wind will be part of the mix for a while.

Biomass burial

2009-11-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

So we raked the leaves this weekend. Small yard, several big trees, lots of raking. Because of the artificial construct of the suburban yard, we need to move the leaves so they don't choke out the grass. I doubt if the "normal" vegetation balance between tress and grass would look anything like this if we left them alone. I don't want to use chemicals on the yard, but I wonder what is happening to the soil since we ship out hundreds of pounds of leaves each year, and they must be taking minerals with them.

harvest time

2009-10-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

OK. we tried several experiments this season, and I planted a strip of sunflowers out in the barley field where the planter had missed. These guys did very well. Huge heads, lots of seeds, now I just need to figure out how to hull them quickly. We did some oil seed sunflowers and some confection sunflowers. I think I will plant more next year if we are able to put these to use. Any suggestions for hulling easily?

one more for the road

2009-10-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

On our last hike out from trail work, we decided to get one more down tree out of the trail. Barry took this shot of me wielding the Pulaski with great effect.

yooper sports

2009-09-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Unless you are a competitive cross country skier, or live in the upper peninsula, this photo might seem odd.

These guys are getting ready for the upcoming winter by skiing with wheels on thier skis. In the rain. This is in Houghton, and I've seen the same thing in Marquette. So what was I doing out in the rain? Our gang was heading to a cozy brewpub downtown, thats what. I recommend the http://www.keweenawbrewing.com/

The place is nice, the beer is good, and I took this photo from the liftbridge featured on thier liftbridge brown ale.

big equipment

2009-09-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Isle Royale got delayed a day because of severe weather on the Lake. So we did sight seeing in the U.P. We did a mine tour of an old copper mine. Turned out to have a unique mine hoist in very good condition.

Not a great photo to capture the size of this thing, but it is quite impressive.

Google quincy mine and read the wikipedia article. Pretty interesting stuff.

water taxi

2009-09-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a shot of the gang getting ready to load our gear back on the Park Rangers shuttle boat to take us back to the main dock for our trip back to the mainland. We work on trails the first part of the week, then get about a day and a half of free time to hike around or canoe Tobin Harbor before riding the big boat back to Houghton.

Isle Royale- the hidden national park

2009-09-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

Here is a shot from my trip to Isle Royale. Weather was good during the week, and we got our trail reroute finished with time to spare. I left some fresh food in the rangers office freezer for when we got back to the dock and campground. This was the last chicken breast just finishing up on the grill. It was a nice change of pace from foil pack tuna, noodles, rice, soup mix, and so on.

A cold beer was pretty good also. I didn't take too many nature photos, we had many better photographers in the group than I, I'll wait till they post theirs.

The great north woods

2009-09-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

So busy lately, very busy at work, projects at home, that's why no posts, blah, blah, blah. Nobody wants to hear about that.

I went to Isle Royale for my annual Sierra Club trail work trip. We had rough weather at the start and at the finish, the boat had to wait a day before bringing us back. Gale force winds and 10 foot waves on Superior are to be taken seriously. Our overall week was good, and our trail reroute looked very nice when finished.

I used two different camping ovens, and the crew really liked fresh warm brownies for desert.

Of course, when we arrived in Houghton, we had to do a little window shopping while waiting for the boat to make way. Here is a shot from the outdoor store we browsed.

It was a relief to see such a well stocked store up in the UP, as I only had one set of nunchaku in my backpack. Several of us stocked up.

More photos from the actual island coming soon.

busy summer

2009-08-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

Gotta keep up with this! Very busy at work, and running up to Wisconsin every chance we get.

Above shot is of the wood chips we made. Last trip up was for a week, and we did a lot of working and playing. One day we rented a chipper and chipped up the prickly ash we cut and piled this spring. We'll use this for mulch to suppress weeds and retain moisture.

Hiking in the Prairie state

2009-06-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo from a Sierra Club hike a while back. This is from Starved Rock park, less than a couple hours from Chicago. There are a lot of ravines and formations in this area, where creeks feed in to the Illinois river. Admittedly, much of the state is flat cornfields, but there are a few places with interesting scenery.

summer like the good old days

2009-06-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

Here is a shot of the ice cream stand in downtown West Chicago. It is a sure enough Tastee Freeze, and since it was renovated, repaired, and reopened, has become quite popular. It is a short walk from our house, so the net caloric results of my evening walks are somtimes in the wrong direction.

rough rider

2009-06-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

I've been getting on the bike a lot more lately, usually sections of the prairie path bike trail system. Some sections are in better repair than others, so you really have to keep an eye on the trail to be ready to dodge gopher holes, or ruts or whatever.

Here is a photo of a snapper who was crossing the path when I came by. He was around a foot long. These old railroad right of ways that are now trails have altered development, so there is a good bit of wetland and "wilderness" along them. Today I also saw a fox, a deer, and lots of rabbits.

air drying

2009-06-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

You might have caught a glimpse of the clothes line in that photo of our rain barrel. Here is a more direct shot. This side yard is about the only place we get sun, unless of course, we aired our undies in the front yard. ( that is our neighbors house in the background. They are pretty laid back and cool with it, but there are some communities that do not allow clothes lines.

I only bought one clothes line post, and used some pipe, soil screw anchors and odds and ends of chain and wire rope I had been hanging on to for years. The advantage of the odd looking arrangement is that I didn't have to do any concrete anchors, and it is quite stable. I could break it down in just a few minutes if needed.

So how many of you have a clothes line?

cool June

2009-06-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple photos of our rain barrel, for catching rainwater and using it to water plants. Most people in the suburbs water their lawns. We do not water the grass at all, but we do water some potted flowers. Since it has been such a cool May, we have not used any rain out of the barrel yet. June proving to be pretty cool so far also.

Patsy heard a talk by an organic lawn care expert in which he said you could collect all the dandelions you chop out and soak them in a bucket of water. After they get all nasty, you can use this water for fertilizing. I did it, and luckily no one saw me, cause the neighbors would not be thrilled because of the smell. They are probably wondering who's porch has a dead skunk under it. FYI, the overflow has an internal riser, so it is not just saving half a barrel of water!

a bear in the woods

2009-06-05T21:23:00.000-07:00

Well, actually, there are no bears in our area. This old outhouse, just a few steps from the old deerstand in our woods, has recently only been used by racoons who don't know how to raise the seat.

the magic of seeds

2009-06-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

We got our garden all planted a couple weeks ago, but haven't been back to see how things are doing. Bri called and said the peas and potaotes we planted earlier look fine, the brocolli is not looking much different, and none of the seeds we put in the ground are up yet. They've had rain, but it's been cool, so I guess they aren't really late yet.

When we were there, we helped Jake, our farmer who is working the 25 acre field, pick rocks out of the barley field. After seeing them, and the size of some, I'm surprised his seed drill is still in one piece. Later after the barley is harvested, I think we will go out and gather some of the bigger ones to use for landscaping. We would just haul them to the edge of the field, so they are scattered all along the fencerow.

For supper on Sunday, we had chicken sate and big leafy mounds of Harmony Valley salad, and s'mores.

I also should mention that Bri invited some neighbors and interns from one of the organic farms over for dinner Saturday night. She made pizzas for all, and we had a good time getting to know each other. Lots of diferent toppings, and I liked them all.

We went ahead and bought the brush mower attachment for our tiller, and this made clearing our garden area in the hay field much easier. In fact, as hard as it was for the tiller to dig through the roots and hay stubble that was left, there is no way I could have got the soil ready without the mower.

Here are the chives that are growing just outside the sliding doors. We were snipping them and using in the kitchen earlier, but this is the first time I'd seen the blooms. We saw our first hummingbird come by to take a taste of chive (pollen, nectar?). I wonder how the different plants taste to them?

blooming

2009-05-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

Kind of hard to tell, but this is a big old shagbark hickory tree in the woodsy part of our farm. If the apples don't attract the deer, the hickory nuts will.

The apples trees are blooming. I'd say we have 40-50 trees scatered around, but don't know how good they are yet. Here are a couple along the driveway.

Next weekend, we will be tilling and planting, as well as getting rocks out of the field. Our neighbor planted barley in the field, and noted a lot of rocks, so we are going to try to thin them out. Might end up with some landscaping materials.

first harvest

2009-05-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

Well, we were lucky enough to be at the farm when morels were popping. So, along with the chives that were growing by the back door, we harvested our first "crop". This bowl of morels is just some of the mushrooms we found. We fried some , put some in omelets, made some soup, and dehydrated some.

We have several dead elms on the hillside, and that is one of the best places to find morels. We cut out a lot more prickly ash this past weekend, and plan to chip them up and use as mulch.

Memorial day weekend will be the big garden planting day, when we put in all the seeds and plants that can't take frost. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Area 51 relic?

2009-05-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

This was left in the yard of our house in Wisconsin by the former owner. It's a bird bath, and kind of looks serene, but overall, it's just weird looking.

2009-05-05T19:51:00.000-07:00

Some of the neglected raised beds we are spading over and will be repairing. The tiller won't fit in these smaller ones, so it took a while to till, and the sod mat is still rather chunky.

More toys

2009-04-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

We bought a trailer to haul stuff, especially firewood. This past weekend, we finally fired up the Russian stove, and got the brick mass heated up. It took a while for the heat to soak out to the surface, but stayed warm a very long time as advertised. After we tighten up the house and add some perimeter foundation insulation, this should be a warm efficient house to heat this next winter. Our farmer neighbor Bob says he has plenty of down wood he'd be happy to have me clear out, to improve his pasture.

prickly ash

2009-04-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Another photo of the farm. This past trip, I cut down a lot of prickly ash, a native tree that can take over an area if allowed to. It is nasty stuff to handle, as the name would imply. The Stihl brushcutter works quite well, and I'm amazed at how the drive shaft stands up to abrupt changes in speed and torque without flying apart.

We have a lot of random scattered clumps of backberry also. While I like blackberries, Walking through them is no fun, and we will have to try to trim back and keep them in reasonable patches that are easy to harvest. They call them blackcaps up here, but they taste the same.

I did a quick scan for morels, but its too early. After the rain, and with some warm weather, they may start popping up. We're not even sure if there are any on our land, but I sure hope so.

on the road

2009-04-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

Mentally, the trip to Wisconsin gets a bit shorter with repetition, but my back still feels the long restriction. We did brush clearing, some odds and ends of straightening, and we finally got a real mattress. Off and on a rainy or drizzly weekend, but it was clear long enough to get plenty of work done outside.

Met with a solar installer, and talked about future improvements on the house. No soalr panels this year, but maytbe in a year or two.

Here's a shot of our first rows in the hayfield/soon to be garden. This is the potatores and peas. After last frost, we will plant a lot more. We're hoping we can just keep the hay mowed around and between the rows to minimize erosion and weeds.