A Bit of Weather

We’re closing the year (2017) with a period of cold weather, as is a large portion of the northern US. The temperature when we woke this morning was 14 degrees. The ground was covered with a light dusting of very fine snow and everything was covered in hoar frost (frozen fog). High temperatures for much of the past week were in the 20s and forecasts for the next week show highs in single digits or teens for most days and lows in single digits or lower. Many people think since we live in North Carolina we don’t have cold winters; this is the South after all. But we live in the northwest corner of North Carolina where our state meets Tennessee and Virginia and we live in the mountains, the Appalachians. The closest peaks which surround us range from about 4800 feet to 5600 feet and we nestle on the slope at 4200 feet. We’ve read that each thousand feet of increase in elevation above sea level is equivalent to moving 300 miles farther north. That calculation would put us well up in the upper tier of the US states. Comparing some of our winter temps with relatives and friends in Michigan and Minnesota, our extremes are not very different.

Of course weather depends on much more than just elevation. We get a good bit of snow most years, usually beginning during October and ending as late as May. The year we moved here we actually got about 3 inches on the Memorial Day weekend. The average annual snowfall at our house is probably around 50 inches, but one recent year recorded about 110 inches. The snow usually comes in spurts; we get several inches and then the weather warms and the snow goes away. But some years the ground has been covered from December through March. Our biggest single snowfall was about 30 inches; that required lots of shoveling to get in and out again.

Temperatures can also vary widely. We can usually expect at least a few winter nights when temperatures will drop below zero. Our all time low here at our house was a very chilly 32 degrees below zero. That was cold! But in summers a hot day is in the upper 80s; I don’t recall any days when the high got into the 90s. Average year-round temperature is about 40 degrees, which is the constant temperature of our spring water. We can live with no air conditioning in the house and still be comfortable most summer days. I’ll take that kind of summer heat anytime.

Winds are also a factor in our weather and can be quite a dramatic factor as you move higher up the mountains, particularly in more exposed locations. We are somewhat protected by the mountains to our north and west, but we can still get buffeted. It’s not unusual to have forecasts calling for gusts in the 50 to 60 mph range. We can hear the winds roaring across the ridges and coming down the slopes through the surrounding woods. And we can feel the house shaking during extremes, especially when a hurricane decides to come this far inland as several have during our time here.

So the weather here is interesting, changing frequently enough for our taste. We knew the winters would be cold and we hoped the summers would not be too hot. We have four good seasons, all of which we enjoy. What more could we want?

The Garden

When we moved to our new homeplace, one of the things we especially wanted to do was to plant a garden. We had a compact garden in the backyard of a previous home, but it was very small and we had only maintained it for a couple of years. Now that we had more land to work with, we wanted to go all out with a real garden. Since we moved here at the beginning of July, it was too late to start a garden plus we were much too busy preparing plans for our new house and beginning construction. But we definitely wanted to get the garden underway during the next growing season. I had been reading ads for years about the virtues of TroyBilt tillers, especially the ease of using one to prepare new ground for planting. We ordered our new tiller for the next spring.

When spring and the new tiller arrived, we eagerly fired up the TroyBilt and began converting part of our meadow into a garden. We quickly realized there were a few problems we had not anticipated. The primary difficulty was that hardly any space on our nearly ten acres was even close to level. The most suitable spot for our garden was on a slope that dropped about thirty feet within a distance of one hundred feet. Even going across the slope, the tiller kept wanting to curve its path downhill, resulting in a constant struggle to maneuver the heavy machine back onto the intended path. The other problem was that the years of cultivation by the farmers who preceded us had stirred up a multitude of small and not-so-small rocks. Those rocks had not quite made their way to the surface, but instead lay hidden a few inches beneath the soil. Every time the tiller encountered one of those rocks there would be a sudden lurch to one side or the other; this necessitated more struggling to get back on track as well as pausing to move to stones to avoid hitting them again on the next pass. It was an arduous task, but eventually the space was prepared and planting was completed.

We finally had our garden, but alas we had no water readily available for our plants. All the water we were using during the first two years on our land had to be hauled in five-gallon containers from a public spring about a half mile from our homeplace. It would still be more than a year before we would have the reservoir in place at our own mountain spring (about one hundred yards downhill from our house) with a pump installed and electricity connected to power it. As luck would have it, that turned out to be a very dry spring and summer. We may have gotten a few homegrown treats from the garden, but for the most part everything just withered and died.

It had not been the greatest start ever. We tried again the next year with a bit better success, but then other demands of life intruded. Most times that we were not at our for-pay jobs were occupied with ongoing house construction, school and recreational activities with our children, maintenance and other chores around our homeplace, and all the other necessities for a busy family. It would be another twenty years or so before we would return to the dream of having a garden.

When we did get back to gardening, it was on a more modest scale. The children were now off on their own, so it was just Cece and me. I dug up a small patch close to the house and we planted some potatoes for a couple of years. The tiller which had sat out in our field during the intervening years had been overtaken by a locust tree which had grown up through the rear tines and bonded it seemingly permanently to the earth; all garden preparation now had to be done with manual labor. Another year or two we tried some cucumbers and summer squash, once with good success, the next year not so great. We read about straw bale gardening (no digging!) and gave it a try for tomatoes with pretty good results. The second year the tomatoes succumbed to blight and the straw bales went on to produce hundreds of tiny and not edible mushrooms. A strawberry patch planted in our little spot gave us a delightful small crop of fresh strawberries, but eventually the chipmunks got more of them than we did.

Retirement finally came for me about eight years ago, aided by the big recession that led to the necessity of closing the business I was operating. Cece’s retirement followed about three years later. There was finally more time available for all the things we wanted to do and one item definitely on the list was to expand our gardening. I dug beds across the slope where our first garden had been located. There were still plenty of rocks to be dealt with, still hard work but not as jolting with shovel and spading fork as it had been with the tiller. And now we had water, so even when the weather did not cooperate by giving us rain, we could provide the necessary moisture ourselves. The expanded effort was a success. We had the pleasure of eating lots of homegrown vegetables; the deer and raccoons got some, but not too much. We also had the satisfaction of knowing that we had been able to do this for ourselves. We were determined to continue.

We spent time during the fall and winter researching to learn more about the best ways to grow things and the best things to grow, an ongoing process. Each year we added more beds and tried some new crops and varieties. We tried various various fencing methods in an effort to keep deer from coming into the garden: old video tapes strung around the perimeter to blow in the breeze and startle them with reflections and noise, strands of electric fence wire, lightweight plastic mesh which the deer broke through, and for the past four years a seven-foot-high deer fence with 4 x 4 posts every fifteen feet, heavyweight mesh deer fencing, and two strands of electric fence wire to deter raccoons from climbing over the fence. The enclosed area now measures ninety feet by sixty feet, giving us more than enough space for our anticipated needs. We improved our planting beds, adding locust logs and then 1 x 6 boards to the downhill sides to help keep the soil from washing away in heavy downpours. When that proved insufficient, we upgraded; most of the beds are now boxed in with downhill walls of 2 x 8 lumber sixteen to twenty inches high and uphill walls eight inches high. These latest measures have all worked well, but we continue to find areas that can use improvement.

I won’t go into all the crops we have raised, but it is an ever-changing selection, many old standards and usually at least a couple of new experiments or just fun things to try (kiwano melons and peanuts, for example). By canning and freezing and storing some of our harvest in our root cellar (mesh-enclosed metal shelving in the dug-out crawl space under our house) we manage to eat regularly (though not completely) from one year’s harvest until the next year’s bounty begins. We kept a record of all we harvested in 2016, a whopping total of more than 1200 pounds of edibles. Not such a bad accomplishment after our faltering start thirty seven years ago. We’re pleased!

Visits from Our Closest Friends and Neighbors

Living here at the end of the road, we can’t see any other houses, except one a few hundred feet away which is only visible in winter when the trees are totally bare. That house is occupied during its owners’ occasional visits, but most of the time we’re the only people around. If a vehicle is coming down our road, either family members are coming for an expected visit, a package is being delivered, or someone is very lost. But we do have plenty of friends and neighbors who come for visits every day.

The first visitors of the morning are the juncos, chickadees, tufted titmice, and nuthatches. No doubt they are close by each night for they are here almost immediately when I replenish their supply of cracked corn first thing each day. Who can tell how many there are; it’s impossible to count them with all the coming and going.

Downy woodpeckers and the larger hairy woodpeckers are soon attracted by the activity and come to join in breakfast at the suet feeder. The red-bellied woodpeckers do not appear quite as early nor do they show up every day (perhaps they have other stops on their rounds to add more variety to their diet), but they are reliable enough that we know there are two pairs.

Usually by now there will be at least one grey squirrel, if not all eight of the nearby clan. Frequently the lovable and less skittish little red squirrels will beat them to the food. The few fox squirrels we’ve seen in the past year have made it to our driveway a time or two, but haven’t come up yet to see what’s available to eat. We look forward to getting a closer view of those rare creatures; most live nearer the coast with smaller populations here and in a couple of adjacent counties.

Bluejays swoop in usually by mid-morning, one whole family of six and sometimes their relatives. They can be a greedy and fussy crowd, trying to dominate the available food. The squirrels are pretty good at holding their places though and the smaller birds are fast enough to dart in to grab a bit and fly off to a quieter spot to eat.

The bluejays stir up enough commotion to capture the attention of our wonderful crows if these smartest of birds haven’t spotted the spread earlier while flying over or surveying the scene from one of their nearby perches in the treetops. We love to hear their varied calls announcing to the family that it’s time to dine. At least one crow always sits apart to watch for danger while the others strut around or hop over each other to get to what is perceived as a better spot to get at the food.

Each group takes its turn at the table, some staying all day, others coming and going as their appetites dictate. In the past year 2 to 24 doves have joined in the gathering, though they are much more gentle and definitely less pushy than many of the others. They tend to wait until things clear out a bit and then cautiously come to pick through the remnants for their part of the feast.

Depending on the time of year, the year-round crowd is joined on the deck by Carolina wrens, warblers of various sorts, eastern phoebes, goldfinches, purple finches, evening grosbeaks, rose-breasted grosbeaks, catbirds, thrushes, towhees, song sparrows, cowbirds, starlings, indigo buntings, grackles, and hummingbirds. We’ve even had hawks sit on the corner of the deck or in a tree a few feet away to see if a squirrel was foolish enough to venture out at the same time, but they have always flown away after a few minutes when no one showed up.

In winter the birds have always been our main feeding population. The healthy chipmunk tribe we have around in all other seasons is no doubt snuggled away in their numerous underground burrows, enjoying the sunflower seeds and corn they hauled away in preparation for the cold weather. When they were out gathering, there were usually three or four at once at the food bowls stuffing their cheeks to maximum capacity, then running off to sequester their supplies in their winter homes. They are also thoughtful enough to plant some of the seeds (especially sunflowers) in lots of spots in our garden for us to enjoy the beautiful golden blooms in the summer and fall and for the birds to have some extra sunflower seed heads as well.

Raccoon families have joined us on our deck since we first built it many years ago, usually coming after dark, though one young raccoon mama and her kids started coming as early as 1:00 pm this past year to avoid the rush and the bigger, grumpier older raccoons. They would even dine on one end of the deck while we sat fifteen feet away on the other end and enjoyed watching their antics. Over the years we’ve had as many as thirteen eating at once. Younger generations appear to come back in subsequent years, bringing along their kids to a favorite place to eat out.

Possums also come to visit with their unexpectedly charming pink ear tips, noses, and tiny little feet and toes. They enjoy most foods that they find waiting for them, but are especially fond of leftover baked sweet potatoes and baked butternut squash or pumpkin with remnants of butter and brown sugar.

This past summer at least three different adult skunks also started checking us out. Each had different coloration and markings: one black with a few white markings vertical on its sides, one white with black stripe down its back, and one black with a white stripe down each side of its back. One of these was kind enough to grace us with bringing her two babies for visits. All were some of the most beautiful animals you could imagine.

We see plenty of rabbits around, but only one ventures onto the deck from time to time to get a little snack. Less frequently seen, but ever present and often heard moving through the meadow and woods are wild turkeys; if we are very fortunate, we get to see two or three adults leading up to a dozen young ones on a foraging expedition. As might be expected, there are also lots of deer hereabouts, but they are so stealthy and so well camouflaged that we don’t catch sight of them very often. However, a few years ago during a particularly difficult winter when lots of lingering snow made it hard for the deer to find food, we saw nine searching to the east of the house and nine more on the west side of the house. We put corn out overnight and the next day at least eight came again, ate the corn, then lay down in the sun and rested for several hours about fifty to seventy-five feet from the house, a treat for them and us. And while we have made no effort to feed the black bears, on at least two occasions we had a bear enjoying the contents of a bird feeder in the front yard about fifteen feet from the house. Then there was the time a bear was on the deck while I was in the living room about ten feet away separated only by the sliding glass doors; needless to say the bear and I were both startled.

So while we may not have many people coming by the house daily or stopping in for a visit, we have lots of company. We could enjoy watching them for hours and do whenever other things don’t keep us from doing so. We absolutely love being able to share this place with our delightful friends and neighbors. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Hopefully they wouldn’t either.

We Can Do It – And We Did

When we first determined to seek out and move to this place at the end of the road, we were committing to a leap into the unknown. We would be moving to a new place where we knew no one, with no jobs or income, with no house or shelter other than two small tents. We intended to build our own house completely by ourselves even though we had never built anything larger than a small wardrobe unit for an early apartment that had very minimal closet space. We had the limited proceeds from the sale of the small house we had sold, planning very optimistically to use those funds for living and building expenses.

Were we crazy? Many of our friends and family definitely thought so. Many people, maybe most, don’t even consider the possibility of doing many tasks for themselves, by themselves. They feel they must rely on an expert, a professional to do almost everything for them. But we have discovered over the years since that time that some friends inwardly envied us, wishing they could break away from where they were in life, from unsatisfying jobs or living conditions, to pursue their own special dreams.

I had always been a bit of a crazy dreamer. One of my favorite activities from elementary school years onward was to be dropped at the public library where I would spend hours randomly browsing the shelves for books that caught my fancy. I read about explorers, inventors, philosophers, poets, architects, artists, and other exciting people. I consumed books about nature, science, construction, Native American culture, boats, foreign lands, and much more. At home I would pick a volume of our old encyclopedias and leaf through, reading whatever article I chanced upon, information tucked away somewhere in my young mind, perhaps to be recalled years later at some relevant moment. So many things were of interest to me and I had found the key to learning about all of them: libraries and all the books they contained.

That early experience of mine set the stage for a lifetime of learning and doing. I knew that information about everything was readily available. I could find details on any subject, study it, absorb it, think about it, and make it a part of me. I came to see that I could learn about anything and to believe that I could learn to do anything I really wanted to do. I didn’t necessarily think I could do everything as well as an expert or professional could do, but I did believe I could do the things I wanted adequately and satisfactorily for my purposes and needs. I also knew that doing things for myself would bring great satisfaction, the joy of seeing the finished project and knowing I had accomplished that.

So we came to this place at the end of the road over 38 years ago now. We struggled, we worked hard (very hard at times), we made mistakes, we changed plans, we re-did what had been done (sometimes more than once), we put projects on hold (sometimes for years) while other more pressing matters (like earning some income to pay for life’s necessities) had to be dealt with, we persevered. We’re still at it. We still rely on the library and books and now the internet for information and inspiration. We still work hard, doing and sometimes undoing and re-doing. And we still have the joy of the process and the satisfaction of seeing the end result. Hopefully this will continue for the rest of our lives which we expect to spend here at the end of this road.

Were we crazy? Yes, absolutely, with crazy wisdom. I highly recommend it.

So Much To See

Our quiet place here at the end of the road first greeted us with a meadow covered in a profusion of daisies, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s Lace, and wild strawberries. But it had not always been that way. Not many years before we came here the land had been cleared and farmed. The son of a nearby neighbor whose family had once owned this land told us of helping his family clear the land and then grow cabbage, a common crop throughout the area even for some years after we arrived. The decaying remnants of split rail fences they had built bordered part of the property and locust posts remained where barbed wire fences had been placed. The woods still covering two-thirds of our homeplace even now contain stumps and moss-covered logs of the chestnut trees killed by blight in the early part of last century. Since chestnut trees made up an estimated one-fourth of all hardwood trees in the Appalachians before the blight, no doubt this mountainside was once covered with chestnuts.

The land continues to change. Obviously our presence here has had a large impact on the land closest around the house and garden, but that is a small part of our homeplace. The woods have retaken naturally part of the meadow that we were not using otherwise. An abandoned project of ours to raise Christmas trees in part of the meadow now gives us a sizable patch of 50-75 foot tall trees, mainly Norway Spruce, loved by deer and birds and who knows which of our other animal friends. Were we to stop maintaining the yard and garden areas, this would all quickly revert to woodland through the natural progression of an Appalachian hardwood forest.

We came here wanting to be in a place in the mountains, surrounded by nature, and we certainly are. To name a few of the things we have found here:

Trees: oaks, maples, cherries, black birches, hickories, elms, beeches, black locusts, tulip poplars, mountain magnolias (cucumber tree), ashes, hemlocks, cedars, white pines, sourwoods, serviceberries, hawthorns

Flowering plants: rhododendrons, flame azaleas, mountain laurels, dog hobbles, daisies, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s Lace, wild strawberries, blueberries

Birds: chickadees, house finches, purple finches, tufted titmice, nuthatches, pileated woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, eastern phoebes, evening grosbeaks, rose-breasted grosbeaks, bluejays, crows, barred owls, screech owls, barn owls, starlings, barn swallows, Carolina wrens, red-tailed hawks, sharp-shinned hawks

Mammals: red squirrels, grey squirrels, fox squirrels, flying squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, skunks, possums, rabbits, grey foxes, red foxes, black bears, coyotes, mice, voles, bats

Reptiles: black snakes, corn snakes, garter snakes, ring-neck snakes

Amphibians: red-spotted newts, black salamanders, spade-foot toads, wood frogs, spring peepers

Grasses, “weeds”, and other small/low-growing plants: too numerous to begin listing

There are so many fascinating things to be observed even in this small patch of the world where we live. I get the feeling that many people never even see some of the most obvious things around them, too busy with the affairs of their everyday lives or perhaps thinking the natural world not important or not interesting enough to merit their attention. Many don’t know the names of the most common birds, trees, or flowers that surround them every day and are amazed when we recognize a wildflower from a distance or identify a bird by its flight pattern or call. So much is there to be seen by merely taking the time to notice. So much delight is there to be missed when we don’t pay attention to our natural surroundings.

A Place To Be

I longed for a place away from the city, away from crowds of people rushing about, away from traffic, away from noise and pollution, just away. It wasn’t that I didn’t like cities and people. I just wanted to be able to interact with them on my own terms, how and when I wanted to be with them. I wanted time apart from them, time to be on my own, time to interact with myself.

I’ve always loved being out in the woods by myself. During my pre-teen years, back in the time when kids were allowed go out and play, finding their own entertainment and activities, I would spend hours wandering in the wooded areas near our home that had not yet been replaced by subdivisions. I could explore and think and observe and create. It was wonderful.

So when we decided to make our big move, to leave the city and jobs and friends and family, we moved to the country, to a place set apart from the things we wanted to leave, to a place with open spaces and woods, a quiet place at the end of a yet-to-be-built road. We listened often to the lyrics of the song sung by Helen Reddy with their special meaning just for us:

What would they say
If we up and ran away
From the roaring crowds
And the worn out city faces
Would they carry on and on
When they found out we were gone
Or would they let us go
Would they tag along
Or would they know to

Leave us alone
We’d live in the country
Leave us alone
We’d make it just fine
Happy in a one room shack
And we’d not look back
Now would we

To some family and friends it was a strange and unexpected move. Their questions reflected their puzzlement. What was there that we were going to? As far as they could see there was not much to draw us to this piece of land seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Why go there? What will you do with 9+ acres of land with nothing on it except fields and woods? Some of them eventually came to understand what we saw here. Some unfortunately never realized why we came. But we knew all along. It was and is a place to live simply but well, a place to learn and grow, a place to be the people we wanted to be.