Category Archives: WV

Solved: The Case of the mystery prints

Cabin, Land, Nature, WV, , ,

Awhile back, I mentioned that we discovered some large hoof prints in our field and we couldn’t figure out for sure what they were.  People have animals in our area but all of them are well fenced.  I had suspicions that we had a cow on the loose but there was no evidence beyond the prints.  If you know much about cows, you know that they leave evidence.

The mystery footprint

We went up to the property both Saturday and Sunday this weekend.  On Saturday, we found the evidence.  Only one marker turned up so I figured we had a single wild cow on the loose that was roaming the wilderness looking for greener grass to eat, living the life of a free bovine.

Ahem...ladies...

On Sunday morning, we pulled up and noticed a small herd of cows.  So much for the single renegade cow.  It was a herd that was on the loose!  I figure one got loose a few weeks ago and tasted the sweet grass over our way and finally, on Sunday, convinced all of her girlfriends to bust out and enjoy a wild day away from the field…on another field.  Anyhow, the group of them left many markers so I am certain that this was the first day they had all come.

The girls...

Tails in the air means big fun is about to erupt!

We drove up slowly thinking that the girls would spook but they were calm standing under our cabin-to-be.  Isaac wasn’t too interested in petting them but he was interested in figuring out how to claim them for his own.  He said, “why don’t we just build a fence around them?  Possession means everything, right?”  I suppose we could have rustled some cattle but I don’t think it would have lasted long.  Their owner came riding by on a 4-wheeler and tried to herd them home.  Having no luck, she ran back home for a bucket of feed and the ladies traded their freedom for the elusive pail-of-promises.

Until next time...

I am sure they will always remember fondly that day they all made a break for it and lived the life of care-free cows, not a care in the world, the wind on their udders and sun on their hairy backs.  Ah, yes, those were the days!

We were framed

Cabin, Family, Land, Nature, WV, , ,

We only got a chance to work on the cabin on Windday…I mean Sunday.  We framed a lot of the walls when my family was here last weekend so we started putting them in place this weekend.  Our plan was to attach the OSB sheeting and then set up the walls already covered.  We sized the walls so we could lift them with OSB already in place.  The wind, however, said differently.  We started to set up the first wall and nearly flew off the back of the platform.  I don’t know what the wind-speed was officially, but it was ridiculous-miles-per-hour by my reading.

So, Plan B…We decided to set up the walls sans OSB just so we can say we made progress.  There is a fair chance we will regret that later when we have to go back and hang the OSB, but doggone it, we have walls up!  Emily’s granddad came up to help us.  He’s been around the sun 86 times but you would never know it.  He was a huge help in getting these walls in place and we couldn’t have done it without him!

Poppaw...86 years old and we couldn't have gotten the walls up without him!

You may notice that these walls look a little different than most walls.  Good eye!  We are roughly following the Advanced Framing Technique.  What that means for us is that we are building with 2×6 boards rather than 2x4s.  We are also building on 24 inch centers (the space between boards) rather than the more typical 16 inch centers.  You can read the details on the link, but we are excited about the potential savings in materials costs and the potential for improved energy efficiency.  That and we like the weird looks people give us.  It sort of flies in the face of traditional house framing which makes it all the more appealing.

 

Building a wall…and the view out the front door!

 

Abigail surveying the scene…that’s as far as we got!

So, anyhow, we got the hardest walls set and plan to work more this weekend on getting the remaining walls up.  We will need to get the OSB started too.  I figure we will set up some elaborate pulley system to get the wood in place so we can start on the roof.  If we get wind again this weekend, I am going sailing.  Let’s see, I will need to get that old washtub and some sheets…what else do I need to build a sailboat?

 

See all of the progress on the cabin

Product placements

Cabin, Family, Fun, Land, Nature, WV, , , ,

My parents and brother and sister-in-law came into town this weekend to watch the kids play soccer and to help us work some on the deluxe shed.  We pretty much finished up the sub-floor before the visit so my goal for this weekend was to get some walls built…and that we did!

As we always do, we loaded up the van with the generator and all of our tools, drove to our place and unload them once again (I can’t wait to be able to leave some stuff up there!)  I didn’t notice it at the time but in looking over the pics, many of which my Mom took, I noticed that we were like a product placement extravaganza!  See how many different brand name/logo shots you see in these pics…it is like we were setting it up!

 

 

 

Anyhow, my brother brought a propane framing nailer and it was amazing!  I have never used such a beast before, but basically, it is a cordless nail-driving machine.  With a regular hammer, it takes, I don’t know, 5 seconds to drive a nail, another few to get the next nail and set it, etc  Each nail and swing of a hammer takes a lot of energy so things go slower with each nail one drives.  This nailer drives maybe 5 nails a second and I never got tired.  Incredible!

So, we discovered another crazy thing as we all worked away.  It looks like a cow must have gotten loose in the neighborhood.  The prints were from a hooved animal but they were far too big to be a deer.  It looked more along the lines of what I expect an elk print would be, size-wise but I don’t think there are any elk around here.

In addition to getting a lot of work done, we got to goof around together which was nice too.  We talked about a little bit of everything and nothing is better than working on a common goal!    We also got to see, once again, just how beautiful our WV mountains really are.  The leaves are coming along nicely and will probably be at their peak next weekend.  I couldn’t take a picture that did it justice but it’s just amazing!

See all of the progress on the cabin

We are Falling

Nature, Thoughts, WV

We were cruising along pretty well with the summer bit.  The sun was hot and the leaves were green.  Each morning we could pretty much count on wearing short sleeves and shorts.  We were in Summer until Friday.  Rains came and wind came and Isaac had a soccer game.  The temperature got down to somewhere in the 40s and that’s about how many inches of rain we got too…40.  Not really of course.  Isaac ended up being ball-boy for the second game after the game he played.  He was soaked through to the bone after the second hour in the rain wearing only his uniform.  Emily and I were only slightly better.  I was shivering like a 5th grade boy at a Sadie Hawkins dance.

Well, all of that is to say the Fall is here.  Some parts of Fall suit me well.   I love the colors and cider and finishing up the garden.  I hate cold and all things cold related though.

 

I thought it was probably good for my own mental well-being to find some pics of the awesome things of Fall…you know, so I don’t drink my sorrows away in a vat of apple cider (which by the way, is almost ready to be made!).

I have been collecting pics of our travels out to the bee farm and some of them really feel like Fall to me (minus the cold and misery).  I am not sure what makes them feel like Fall.  Anyone else have things that just seem like Fall?

Building our cabin

Cabin, Land, Tinkering, WV, , , ,

We like going up to our land to hang out and enjoy mother nature on the weekends.  If you ask the kids, of course, all we do up there is slave away moving piles of dirt.  Emily and I finally decided to show the kids what it meant to move piles of dirt so we broke ground last weekend on a building to house a toilet.  That’s all that really matters to the kids – a bathroom.  Well, that and air conditioning.  Anyhow, as all ground-breaking parties go, it was more symbolic than anything.  The real work began on Thursday evening.  A buddy of mine came with us and we have abused him all weekend…you know, strong back, weak mind.  So, we mixed somewhere around 4500 pounds of concrete and filled 9 12-inch tubes (that’s just to brag, it isn’t meant to really have any real meaning to you, dear friends) on which to build this place.

 

This saves lives but also shortens lives. Post hole digging is faster and easier with this auger but it beat me to death!
Isaac hiding from work in one of our holes. We are building a post-and-pier foundation.

 

Post and pier foundation

Emily and I are building a house, really.  It will have more than a toilet.  Emily calls it our “deluxe shed” as it will be more of a small cabin than a house.   I have been fascinated by the small house movement (see Tumbleweed Houses for example) for a while now.  The idea is put forth as an alternative to the trend of increasingly larger houses over the last 30+ years.  I don’t care what size house people live in but the small house philosophy suits me.  In a way then, we are sort of participating in the small house movement…except it is going to be our second house.  I think that must somehow be against the point of the small house philosophy.  Still, we really like the idea of simplifying and someday, the first house will be sold and we will fit the bill.

It needs skin and lots of details, but this is the cabin we are planning to build

We are off from work Friday, Monday and Tuesday so we are plowing forward for 5 days straight to see how far we can get on this place.  I have been working on plans in Google Sketchup (you gotta learn to use this program).  My model is pretty rough but it allows me to know exactly how many boards I need and how everything needs to go together.  It will be around 400 sq ft and have one of the coolest views anywhere.

The view from the cabin spot

Emily took some pics today and they are just incredible.  Anyhow, I will keep posting as we make progress on this place.  Anyone else out there have a strong back and a weak mind?  Have I got a job for you!

See all of the progress on the cabin

Change of address

Bees, Land, Nature, WV, , , ,

Etched in my back…er mind…is a picture of a bad interaction with the bees last year.  It was shortly after that episode that I decided that if I was to continue to have bees, they had to be away from people.  We bought property out in the country early this Spring and one of its main purposes was to be a bee yard.  After this weekend of labor, I am happy to report that the majority of the bees have been relocated to the new bee yard and seem to be doing quite well.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?  As you might have guessed, it was anything but.  Of course, any test of one’s mettle always makes for a good story if nothing else.  To ease the move, I decided we would mostly enclose the bees with screen and other stuff the night before.  To enclose the bees the morning of the move would only stir them up and make the process miserable.  Each hive got the screen treatment except for a small access ares for the bees to come and go.  The plan was to screen that final access point, throw the bees in a truck and go.

My father-in-law and I started before sunrise to carry the bees from his back hillside to the truck.  So, we grabbed ahold of 150 or so pounds of bees+hive+honey and prepared to stumble down the hill, guided solely by the sweet glow of the…yeah, it was dark.  We tried to carry a heavy bunch of bees down a hillside in the dark.  FAIL.  Oh don’t get me wrong, gravity works and we got the bees down the hill and into the truck but it wasn’t fun.  Luckily, the first one took us so long that it was daylight before we got to the next ones and they all went pretty smoothly.

 

We finished the electric fence of doom a week or so ago so hopefully any bears, raccoons, or bee-lovin’ dinosaurs will find that my bees are not on the menu.  I still have 4 more hives to move but it was such a relief to get the first batch moved to their new address in the country!

A little help

Nature, WV

So, we are already crazy cat people.  Since we have lived in WV, we have adopted 3 cats that have ended up on our doorstep (we already had one when we moved here).  Four cats is all we can handle along with our dog, Ginny.  The cats continue to pour in though and “Momma cat”,  who is involved in a great love affair with Ginny, decided to go and get pregnant a few months ago to some gigolo-cat passing through.  She birthed 5 kittens under our shed and they are adorable.  She is tame but her kittens initially appeared to be completely wild.  I have been hanging outside some at night as they come in to eat the food we give them.

 

One kitten has made up with me in a big way.  She is cute as can be and is now completely tame.  I cannot bear to take her to the shelter (which is where the others are headed as soon as I trap them), but I cannot take any more into the house.  Does anyone have interest in a sweet little kitten?  I will pay to have her de-clawed, fixed, whatever if someone will take her.  Please…I need a little help!

Green beans. That is all

Canning, Food, Garden, WV

We love to plant a garden and watch as everything shoots up through the ground.  I don’t think much is any prettier than a recently plowed garden with loads of young plants poking up all around.  We eat a lot of our meals out of the garden in a typical summer.  I am a fairly new vegetarian of the year-round sort but we are all pretty much vegetarians in the summer.  Well, most summers.  Not this summer.  We got off to a rocky start with the near constant rainfall that we had during the planting season.  Stuff was late going into the ground…everything but the weeds.  They thrive no matter what.  Couple all of that with the incredible heat and dryness now and we have found the garden to be pretty pitiful.

Just part of the haul

I guess if I had to pick one thing that would succeed in the garden though, it would be green beans.  I love green beans and could almost live on them and mountain dew.  Luckily, the green beans and corn are doing exceptionally well this year.  We picked and canned 34 pounds of green beans last weekend.  It was a marathon canning session ending somewhere around 2 am…a mere 4 hours before the kids usually get up.  Anyhow, we are in the beans this year for sure.  There are tons more following the ones we picked so it will be another busy weekend.  Of course, it can’t all be smooth and easy.  We planted a bag full of bean seed clearly marked tenderette bush beans.  I have no doubt that some of the seeds were in fact tenderettes.  The majority of the beans, however, are some other sort of runners.

Ain't they purdy?

Bush beans grow in a somewhat compact bush where all of the beans can be picked from individual plants.  Folks usually do not have to manage the plants in particular which is one of the reasons we like them.  Runners, on the other hand, send out vines and are meant to be trellised or otherwise tied up.  Thinking we only had bush beans, we didn’t pay any attention to the beans growing like mad in the garden until it was too late.  So, instead of having nice individual rows, we have a freakin’ blob of bean plants chocked full of beans.  With machete in hand, one can venture into the bean jungle and harvest, but it isn’t easy or fun.

They are prettiest in the jars waiting to go into the canner

There is still plenty of growing time left so we may yet be surprised with what the old garden will produce.  It’s all good though.  Even on my deserted island of a garden, I have to one thing I could not bear to do without…Jack Sparrow needed rum…I need green beans, savvy?

 

Our honeymoon…the crow edition

Adventure, Fun, WV,

Emily and I were at a party for grown-ups (it rarely happens) when we got to telling stories.  Emily is a champion story-teller and she decided to spring our honeymoon story on folks.  It goes something like this…

We had just graduated college and were preparing for graduate school.  In translation, that means we were beyond poor when we got married.  We had just plunked down our security deposit on our 350 sq ft apartment and had moved what stuff we had a week before.  Our wedding was excellent and it was a super great occasion.  I cried when I saw Emily come down the aisle.  I am not opposed to crying, but I rarely do it.  Anyhow, it was a beautiful wedding.

After the wedding, we greeted guests and ended up with perma-grins on our faces from all of the smiling we did in the photo shoots.  We were definitely ready to head off on our honeymoon.  I planned it all and didn’t tell Emily where we were going.  I, uh, figured it didn’t really matter as just needed some time to get used to the idea of being married.  I booked us a room at the Mountain Creek Lodge at Pipestem Resort in southern West Virginia.

Little did I know, that my brother and one of our friends had filled our luggage and car with a ton of birdseed while we were cutting cake and smiling.  Honestly, it had to be close to a ton.  So, we got to the room and were exhausted.  We ate and half unpacked our stuff.  Without thinking, I just dumped the ton of birdseed from our suitcases outside in the yard just beyond the edge of our first story patio.  We went straight to bed, dead-tired and desperate for rest and calm.

Around daylight, let’s say 6 am the following day, we were startled from bed by the cawing of a family of crows.  That is, crows, right outside our window.  Crows cawing a mere 4 feet or so from our bed.  Yeah, crows.  I scared them off a few times but it was hopeless.  Sleeping in was not to be on our honeymoon.

There are a few more tails from that week of adventure but I’ll leave Emily to tell them another time.  But before I go, I have to tell you that the crows were not the end of the birdseed story.  Oh no, dear friends, there is more.   I will tell the rest of the story in my next post.

 

Coopers Rock

Adventure, Awesome, Family, Fun, Nature, WV, , , , ,

A few weekends ago, we went on a little getaway vacation to Coopers Rock State Park in Bruceton Mills, WV.  I was mainly excited for the cabin in which we were staying and the hot tub it advertised on the back deck.  Never did I imagine how cool the park would be.  More about that later.

So, we got to the cabin after navigating the Grand Canyon road back to the place.  The cabin itself was nice and did in fact have a hot tub.  The kids jumped right in as Emily and I unpacked and prepared for supper.  I am not sure why, but the power went out and we were without water or AC.  When you are not prepared, both are pretty important.  Anyhow, several hours later, it came back on and all was well…even the well.  We could shower and do dishes, etc.

On Saturday morning, we gorged on cheap powdered sugar donuts and Doritos then headed to Coopers Rock (it seems like there should be an apostrophe in there but there isn’t).  Little did we know, but there was a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the park.  The place was teeming with things to do as all sorts of groups offered nature talks, projects,  and hikes.

The kids built cool birdhouses and painted rocks.  We played on the play ground (where I tried my best to dislocate my shoulder).  We saw rescued birds of prey from the West Virginia Raptor Rescue Center and even got to touch a red tailed hawk who was very friendly.  It turns out, she was essentially raised in captivity so was not bothered by people.  The other rescued hawk and owl were not so friendly.  Still, they were awesome!

I think the best part of the park though, was walking the trails under the rocks.  We explored some and saw great rock formations.  The kids and I walked into a cave/tunnel and went all “Dora the Explorer”.  Abigail fell in the dirt and got muddy.  It was perfect and cool and a great time to be together as a family.

If you ever pass through the northern part of WV, stop in at Coopers Rock.  Its views are breathtaking and there is all sorts of fun to be had there.  It turns out that the hot tub was very popular, but it paled in comparison (for me at least) to the beauty of our state, just as it is!