My mom, siblings, and I largely expanded our knowledge of Sequatchie Valley's plants and flowers on an awesome hike at the Sequatchie Valley Institute which offers research and educational opportunities for sustainable living. John, a botanist who formally lived at SVI, gave us and a few other home-school families a tour through some of their property, naming and describing several wildflowers, small trees, vines, shrubs, and other plants.
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We left TN on Wednesday, stayed in KS on Thursday, and got back to CO that night. We spent this weekend at a family reunion in Estes Park. Now I can finally load all the pictures I took with my camera over the last 2 months!
Yesterday we caught a baby snake. At first we thought it was our first encounter with a rattler but it was probably another copperhead. We took some pictures I'll try to post later.
Today after church I shot some revolvers and a semi-auto handgun with Teresa and her boyfriend and his 2 grandkids who are 9 and 11. Then Papa and I drove north to Dunlap and looped back through the Sequatchie Valley. We saw a wild turkey, had dinner at the Huddle Hut, and stopped by the Marion County airport and watched some skydivers. The sunset in the valley was beautiful. The time after finding the newt was spent by Dad and Dan picking through to the other side of the house and one especially obnoxious, rocky corner. Or they would jack-hammer on this 10 by 6 by who-knows-what boulder (in case you didn't catch that, it's 10 feet across the long way and 6 the short; we don't know how far deep it goes), and I would clear the chipped pieces out of their way and throw some of the large ones over the side to use in the trenches, but others we smashed with a sledge hammer to make gravel to fill in smaller spaces in the trench. Dad rented a demolition saw to attempt to score the boulder so it chips easier, but the $100+ blade after running only a couple hours was too thin and worn down to use. That boulder is still there. All proud of itself. Stupid boulder. I think Dan's gonna make part of it his furnace. But the rest we will have to break off later. It is so hard. The weirdest and toughest sandstone ever. While Dad ran the saw, I would spray it with water, but like I said, it didn't help too much. On normal rock, spraying the blade will make it last 3x longer. Stupid boulder. So we kinda forgot that for a while and dug around it. I think it was Friday that we finished that. Saturday and Monday, we sifted our fill. We still have a bit left to do. Also on Thursday, I found a couple snake eggs. I put those up by the tent out of the way, but I forgot to take them to the cabin that night, but Friday morning, they were still there and didn't change. Dad told me to put them in a bucket with some dirt in it. Saturday, I checked on them, and they were softer and had a few slightly translucent spots, but we couldn't see anything in there, only the glow of sunlight. Monday, checked them again, but no change. I will run up soon today to see what's happened. Oh, the eggs are very large, so they might be rattlers or copperheads or something, so I don't know what to do with them if they hatch. But they're still cool. Sunday afternoon, we went to the river down the rode to fish, but had no luck. We're gonna try to stock up on crickets for next time, because we tried a grasshopper Dan found, and a big trout immediately slurped off before I could get the hook set. So that's about it.
The second half of this week has been pretty much picking and sifting. Yesterday Raymond brought 140 of the strawbales (for Dan's house) to our property, so we spent the day hauling them up to the building site. My calves are sore.
We went to the Nazarene church for morning and evening service. John, who pastors the PCA church, and Harold, one of the elders, took us to lunch at Shony's. We talked about poop composting, strawbale building, and of course theology. Then we went to Lowe's to try to find connectors for the new Guzzler water pump, but ended up just having to siphon some water from the filtered collector into another container to prepare for a big storm that's supposed to come in tonight. We're almost through clearing, grading, sifting, and tamping the footprint of Dan's house. We have one very large rock left that will need to be jackhammered. Our water barrel has collected about 47 gallons of rainwater (from the shed roof, random bucket, wheelbarrow, and campsite tarp). Last Sunday we got to attend the Decoration Day Sacred Harp singing at Liberty Church in Henagar, AL. The sound was so intense that my book was vibrating in my lap. The altos were overwhelming - my mom will never get lost on her part. They had the biggest potluck ever. There was awesome homemade peanut butter ice cream, and brownies, cakes, and sweet rolls like I've never seen. Southerners can make even the most boring-seeming foods taste incredible. We've been working on the excavation which is kind of monotonous when you're sifting all day. We take turns shoveling and we actually look forward to our turns 'cause the sifting and screen make you lose you mind after a little while. That is about it. Oh, I got a salamander thing to crawl around my arm. Got a couple pics of that. He was very cute. I hugged him and kissed
him and called him George. :) |
IsaacI'm 13 years old, building our new house with my dad and Dan. I like to bike, play the guitar, piano, and banjo, build with LEGOs, compose music, and creating games. Archives
April 2013
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