A few weeks back it rained from about two in the morning until three that afternoon. My Aunt Linda and I stayed in. We did not allow The Cat in the Hat inside. That agent of chaos is one of the most frightening fictional characters of my childhood. I was always afraid the fish’s bowl would break.
Aunt Linda is feeding a coterie of nicer cats on her front porch. There is a mother and father and kitten. There were two kittens but the other stopped showing up after a few weeks. I don’t like to think of its probable fate. Linda intended for me to help capture those cats and take them to be neutered or spade. She has a trap. We just never found the time.
The raccoons still show up for meals. On a day the male cat was eating he stepped aside and allowed an arriving bandit to take his place. She ate neatly (efficiently) with two hands and didn’t leave any leftovers.
On the day the rain finally stopped I hopped in the truck and went to see what the land looked like after such an inundation of water.
I filmed short videos of the wet-weather-creek that runs between two knobs on the north side. I followed it uphill until going further would have required major bushwhacking.
Here is a montage video. The last five clips are of another wet weather stream near the shed on the south side of the land.
The first creek doesn’t run when it’s dry but holds pools of water near the driveway. Thirty feet away, a year-round creek goes the opposite way coming off Clinch Mountain. It is spring fed and runs under the road bisecting the corner of my property. If I get so far as to caring about having water with my dream cabin I may end up pumping it from there. This would probably be less expensive than drilling a well.
I found two pipes coming out of the ground near the memorial stones but I’ve no idea if they are just markers or something actually related to water. It’s worthy of investigation. Next time.
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Without working too hard this trip I made some major progress in deepening my knowledge around chainsaw milling. Trees fall all the time in these woods and I’d like to make use of them and start stockpiling lumber in case I do build a structure.
I’m imagining a stick-frame cabin as opposed to a log one. There is also a post and beam type of building, but for now I’m making 2x4s.
My current focus is a large pine that came down a year and a half ago near the shed. An even bigger oak fell around the same time, but the oak will last longer on the ground. Making it into lumber can wait. Besides, the softer wood of the pine is a better tree for me to learn chainsaw milling on.
I removed all the bark several weeks ago. It was like peeling a clementine. The bark fell away in chunks. It barely held to the wood and was sweet smelling and slimy underneath.
Near the tip end of the tree it revealed a colony of termites with their eggs and along the entire length were white grubs with accordion-like bodies and copper-colored heads. These are the larval stage of the sawyer beetle an important forest decomposer and one of 35,000 species in the longhorn beetle family.
Bark removal is recommended for chainsaw milling because bark rapidly dulls the blades. In this regard the sawyer beetles did me a favor. Those grubs introduced the water and space that made the bark fall away easily without the hard chore of using a drawknife. However, where they’d been at work the longest—in the top third of the log—the wood was no longer viable as structural lumber because of the finger-sized holes made by the beetles.
I made some slab passes through the most eaten up piece just to see how deep the holes went. The answer was deep—- to the center.
Information about these beetles said they go into the wood as larvae and come out as adults, but I imagine there are times when they do second or third dives. I found this one that seemed pretty grown and it was headed into the log, not out of it.
Headed may not be the best word to describe these beetles. For the longest time I studied it and couldn’t see the head. In fact I wondered if I’d cut it off when passing over it with the chainsaw. All I was seeing was a neck. Then I realized their heads point down at a right angle which from the top side make them look like the headless horse…beetle.
At all stages, these insects have body qualities that I imagine help them dig in. It’s all theory to me, but as grubs, it looks like they can squish up their accordions to get some extra push and as adults their long legs with spiked tarsi appear like a rowing team pretty much oaring their way into the wood. (You can’t hardly peel them off your finger when they attach and I didn’t want those wood-eating mandibles anywhere near my flesh.)
The big win in material and educating myself in chainsaw milling came with the next log. I finally found a way to get a level, even surface from my first cut. This cut is the most difficult. If you look on YouTube you will find people making this cut fifty different ways—using ladders, rails or planks, over simplifying how they measure or under simplifying to the degree that it feels like you need a flow chart to understand. Finally I was able to synthesize enough information to get a decent result. The planks I cut will still need additional squaring to become 2x4s but at least I’ve got slabs with consistent thickness and length.
from one log.
Another big win during this trip was learning to use the battery powered chainsaw sharpener. I had a hang up about digging in to this. I knew it would be time-consuming (and it was), but after sharpening one of the cross-cut chains I feel confident I’ll be able to sharpen those and, more importantly, the ripping chains which dull quickly due to the amount of time they spend in the wood. I will have three of these waiting for me when I return in the fall.
To continue with the wins, I found a good use for the four-ton farm jack I bought on a whim a few years ago. I knew it might come in handy for positioning logs for milling, but I hadn’t been able to figure how until the need arose. Until that happened, the cant hook is a tool that’s served me well.
I can roll very large logs with the cant hook and isolate the end I don’t want moved by wedging it. I can also raise a log off the ground by rolling it up a ramp onto another log or makeshift pedestal.
However, it doesn’t work if I want to get a log higher than my strength will allow or where building or cutting a longer ramp would be extra time-consuming.
A cant also can’t help with lifting the end of a log still attached to the stump. In these scenarios the farm jack comes in handy.
I successfully raised this log still attached to the stump to get it out of the dirt of another stump and protect it from rot. I will still need to figure out how to safely cut it free, but this is a temporary solution until then.
The last thing I’ll mention isn’t exactly a win, but I’ve stepped into the arena of learning more about rocks with the purchase of this rock hammer. I played with hitting it on some different rocks.
A boxy piece of sandstone broke out to make this sort of fox-shaped head. Similar blows on a darker colored rock would not separate it, but revealed it’s heartiness and tendency to create sparks
It’s been a week now since I’ve been back in California—back to life surrounded by all the responsibilities and possibilities that come with one’s home. It has taken some getting used to. In Tennessee I have something closer to a singular purpose: to work, explore and be on the land.
I have a friend who used to have a bumpersticker on a truck she owned. It was a simple statement in all caps: TREES ROCK. I’m already missing those trees and rocks.
After the rain stopped the day I took videos of water, I used the softened conditions to dig up stumps on the ground of the proposed cabin site. At one point I reached down and collected a handful of the soaked, white-clay that lies beneath the green moss. The clay topsoil there is unique to any other spot on my land.
I walked through the woods and worked it into a ball that I placed on one of the abutments of the bridge span I’d taken out.
On my last day I made a driveway pole gate.
I sorted tools, straightened up the shed and painted the ends of the logs I want to protect for milling when I return.
Before I closed the gate and left, I picked up that clay ball again. It was hard and dry now. It felt good in my hands, almost a perfect sphere—solid and fine-sandpaper-smooth, all the more satisfying because I made it myself and because it came from this land that I love.