Tag: soil-production

Happy December 25th!

by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Site Preparation

PN is grateful that TS is recovering so well post knee-surgery. TS is becoming an Fe-womyn with all of those various (borderline sadistic) physiotherapeutic exercises (Gus [from the clinic], if you’re reading this, I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you).

While I want to spend a week at the site (during our break), that will have to wait until TS’s knee heals more. Sure, I’m all gung-ho about trudging into the lot — solo. That’s a bit too risky. I cannot rely on my neighbours to bail me out if I do something stupid (they ARE called widowmakers for a reason, eh).

In the meantime, TS is making ~600-900 wolf biscuits for our wolfman & his pack (MS, we’re looking forward to our next visit; it’s possible we can meet you 1/2 way for a dawg-treat exchange).

Last item: when Evolve Builders visited our site earlier this month, they took additional images of our roughed in build-site. I’ve sprinkled those images in on our website. The annotations are my own and does NOT represent the views of our contractor, eh.

I’m hoping the frozen ground will allow our well driller opportunities to do exploratory testing. And our wastewater system installer to test the strata’s percolation performance. TBA = to be announced.
As our home gets built, PN will try to get additional images from this vantage point.
If you’d like a graffitti-free image, please contact PN.
Image of future BCB&B site.

4 weeks of harvesting, logging, and chipping…

Featured by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Site Preparation

…leads to a roughed-in build site! See the attached images, eh.

Revision: Ah. So THAT’S how one inserts images. Oy.

Image of future BCB&B site.
After 4 weeks of forestry, TS & PN roughed out the future build-site.
An image of the future back yard.
PN & TS’s build-site is on the other side of the rock outcrop (that is on the left side of the image).
This image is from the gravel road’s terminus, looking South (forest garden on other side of the ridge [to the right]).

Juvenile rattlesnake said…

Featured by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Current (?!) Events

…hey! Back off. So we did. 4 hummingbirds found our forest feeder and are now having a turf war over the bloody thing.

A humourus 12 minute description of our feathered fiends (not friends).

And a safety PSA for Mountain Trout Camp. 🤨

Lumber update: I’m chopping straight lengths of oak & maple (~5-6’ blocks) so that I can dry them out and possibly mill them. It’s too nice to burn!

TS – 1 … Black Bear – 0

by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Current (?!) Events

TS had her first black bear encounter this afternoon (at about 3 p.m.). I was splitting firewood up at the parking lot. TS was shredding branches (~150-200m away from me). While I was banging logs apart, I heard someone swear(?) and started blasting on our canned-air horn. A lot. I hopped on the ATV and tore on over. The stupid thing was watching TS on a nearby rock outcrop, staring down at TS. The bear took off. It was close to TS… perhaps 10-20m away.

She later said that she had this feeling that she was being watched. That there was something nearby snapping twigs. TS did EVERYTHING RIGHT and I am VERY PROUD OF HER. We both know people who would never set foot in the forest again after a close encounter with a black bear.

I had to be reminded…

by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Site Preparation

…that green branches and fresh leaves play holy hell with small chippers & shredders. I blocked up the mechanism 3 times before I walked away from it in disgust (TS is more savvy than me about the unit… I end up jamming branches and stuff into the hopper… and look like Wile E. Coyote on top of one of his spinning-blade ACME contraptions [sorry TS… do as I say, not as I do]). After de-energizing the system and pulling the hopper apart 3 times… I gave up.

I try not to pile branches like this. I was getting tired.

We crawled back to MTC and are recovering from the grind. This is fun. Right? RIGHT?! Ow, sore.

I ended up fishtailing up and down the driveway, as a way to avoid chipping. Those logs will be processed in the Fall.

Tomorrow… we chip!

by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Site Preparation

TS & I were able to get back into the zone while clearing the build-site. Yesterday, TS was able to rough-out the new ATV trail from the build-site to her soil-operation. Me? I just smashed and crashed my way hither-and-dither using our Polaris! I strung a trail-line from our starting point to the soil-operation.

This morning, I was far more confident with my chainsaw and was able to safely bring down more trees (without huffing & puffing & tripping-stumbling). My Stihl’s MS261’s chain didn’t skip off the bar (as I’m properly tensioning it). Safe, sane, and productive work with a high-performance saw? Nailed it.

TS, the super-ant (AKA ‘The Mad Lopper’), has piled up a stack of branches that will be processed tomorrow. She’s also filling in the rock fissures (exposed after removing the juniper) with punky logs. Now that we are spending more time in the future back yard/garden, we can chip and shred deadfall and material in situ. I’m just not butch enough to haul the bush buggy over rocks & crevices to the soil-operation (despite using an ATV to haul it).

Preparing to return…

by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Site Preparation

…to the bush. I’m optimistic we learned a few lessons from our last session. We’ll have to DIY our own bush-buggy-platform for the wood chipper. King City Trailers gave us good advice, had SOME stock, but couldn’t sell us a ready-made option. Still, I’d recommend them to you.

Meh… we’re planning on pushing another ATV trail around the buildsite so that we can easily move green-matter to the soil operation. SR told TS that we can grab our wheelbarrow from the school shipping container.

We’re finishing up our 1st work-session…

by NapsWithCats-ScubaMan, posted in Current (?!) Events, Site Preparation

…on the future build site, septic field, and (hopefully before the new year), a well. Let’s harvest the biomass before the bulldozers clear this area. Evolve Builders is our contractor, so we are able to reduce our overall woodlot impact.

Our foundations will be going in where the clearing is – about 15-20 paces from the wood chip pile.
TS has become very adept at preparing green & brown matter for chipping/shredding. When added to our soil operation, and using other permaculture techniques, we will have soil by the time YOU arrive!