Rants from the Hollow

The crafty ladies from ICC brought along a bunch of different craft projects for the kids at the Enduduzweni Care Centre.

Most of these crafts were in the nature of tabula rasa–blank tablets to be filled in by the kids. Besides the picture frames and wooden stick photo frames (in the previous blog post), they also brought along hats that the kids could paint.

The younger kids were given bright white floppy hats (think Gilligan’s Island), and they did an OK job of decorating them to taste.

The older kids were given white baseball caps, and most of them were loath to allow a drop of paint to touch their pristine new headgear.

Fortunately, the younger kids had no such concept of purity of form when it came to the toy elephants. Handed a stark white fabric elephant, a pallet of bright colored paint, and a couple of brushes (most of which were longer than the kid’s arms), they dug right into the task.

This had to be one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.  The inhibitions which maintained the integrity of the ballcaps were not a factor when it came to preschoolers, paint and plush pachyderms.  The intensity and enthusiasm of these little kids was just a joy to see. Paint flew, as the elephants sucked up color.

My favorite was the little boy (above) in the (unpainted) ball cap with the heart on his chest. No matter what those kids were doing–crafts, hand washing, eating a snack or lunch–he could reliably be expected to have a totally worried look on his face.

Kirk, my parents, and I, arrived at the Hollow on July 3–Elizabeth couldn’t make it this year.

We spent some time the first couple days doing some maintenance. Before setting up the tent on top of the dam, we used the tractor to yank the willow bushes from the front of the dam.

Between the chain saw, the tractor, a lot of sweat, and a bit of poison ivy, we managed to open up some of the trails that were blocked by fallen trees during last summer’s mini-nado and the big ice storm a few years earlier. The one we call the Ridge Trail, along the eastern edge of our property, had been blocked by a number of large birch branches for at least 4 years.

We cleared several downed maples between The Valley and the Ridge Trail (shown at left) and then tackled the big birch. After all those years, the branches had shrunk a bit, and were somewhat rotted, making it a lot easier to trim them and then push the logs out of the way with the tractor.

The trail on the western edge of The Hollow, leading up to the Upper Meadow, has been blocked for a number of years by a large tree, and its half-uprooted stump, that blocked the trail just before a very sharp hairpin. In the past, I’d been able to drive the tractor around that spot, but it was too wet last year, and I wasn’t able to mow the grass in the upper meadow, the highest spot in The Hollow.

It took about an hour to saw the end off this big log, and to attack the tree stump with a shovel, cleaning off much of the clay that was still stuck to the roots. Figuring we’d have to saw the trunk off right next to the stump, I dug a hole under it saw that we could saw it without dulling the blade. As it turned out, we were able to pop it right out of the ground with the tractor’s front end loader.

The biggest project involved the felling of a 28-year old, 40 foot high pine tree. After the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the power companies have been a lot more aggressive in preventing trees from interfering with power lines. They finally reached The Hollow last year, spraying some sort of herbicide on everything within site of the incoming electric wires. Whether or not this pine tree would ever recover, it would always be horribly scarred by the loss of most of its branches, and it would always represent a threat to the power line, so we decided to take it out.

Felling a tree uphill is a bit of a trick, especially when it is bigger than a telephone pole. If we failed, the falling tree would take the power lines down with it, so I climbed up the side of the tree with a ladder, attached a chain to it, and attached the chain to a come along winch tied to the base of another tree. Taking a big notch out of the uphill side of the tree, Dad tightened up the winch, and the tree started to lean uphill. I finished sawing the other side of the trunk, while Dad continued to winch, and we managed to drop it exactly where we’d planned, without loss of human limb, or power.

The English revere their industrial heritage and glory in their eccentricity, two traits that indulged to the nth degree at what is reputedly the largest event of its kind, The Great Dorset Steam Fair. I’ve been to steam fairs before, but nothing on this grand scale. where else can you go to see a couple dozen steam rollers, all merrily driving around a couple miles of pasture land? A veritable orgy of steam and rivets, the air thick with the acrid coal smoke of hundreds of fireboxes, the air rent with the shrill sound of steam whistles, the rattling of chains and gears, and the cloying sound of colliopes, the overall effect of the thing is beyond words. 200,000 people were expected to visit this year’s 40th anniversary event. [see my full photo gallery]

Central stage at GDSF is the Heavy Haulage Area. All day long, steam engines of various sorts, along with the occaisional Diesel interloper, circle around about a 2 mile loop, the far end of which is relatively steep. Although there are some steam rollers (see the two at the far left), the real stars are the transport engines, the road locomotives that hauled heavy wagons, or short trains of lighter wagons, on public roads. Loads being pulled in the Heavy Haulage Area included a large generator, a huge tree, and big bulldozer on a trailer. Shown coming up the steepest part of the hill in the picture at the top, a train of 3 traction engines, 2 in the front and 1 in the back, chuffed out huge clouds of dense black smoke hauling this load.

Other traction engines, although they could haul themselves and their attachments to the job site, were used primarily as stationary power, running threshers, balers, and saw mills. Steam rollers were demonstrated not only smoothing down a road being constructed at the site, but were also used to pull grader blades and tar wagons, and were demonstrated powering a rock crusher. The most powerful steam engines working at the fair were the plough engines. Even as late as the 1950s, traction machines were used to plow large fields in the UK. A matched set of engines, right handed and left handed, with huge winches located under the boiler, alternated pulling a multi-gang plow.

Most of the engines, and their owners, were eager to get their hands dirty, but one class of engines are in a class apart. A showman’s tractor has an electrical generator and is traditionally used to power the rides and calliopes at fairs, carnivals and other events. Decked out in gleaming paint, with ornate twisted brass brackets, they were also used as tractors to haul fairground equipment between events. Many of these were in evidence at Dorset, powering calliopes big and small, and fair ground rides.

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Before they become truly amorous, fish need a certain amount of breathing room, so to speak, which varies by species. Common wisdom has it that Micropterus salmoides, otherwise known as the largemouth bass, needs more legroom than is offered by a 1/2 acre pond. I’d suspected that perhaps ours were becoming a bit less circumspect. For several years, I’d noticed some pretty small bass swimming around, which meant that the fingerlings we stocked were either not growing, or the bass were stocking themselves.

It was Elizabeth who figured it out. Before we’d even pitched our tent on the dam this summer, she’d identified a big fish and claimed first right of catch. It was the biggest largemouth I’ve ever seen in our pond, and I’ll bet it goes 2 pounds. Its got some meat on it, which is more than unusual for anything coming out of our little body of water.

Every time we saw old man bass, he seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of minnows. The funny thing was, he didn’t seem to be eating any of them. The first, and mistaken assumption, was that he was saving them for later. I dragged multiple lures right across his nose, but he evinced no interest in them at all.

He just cruised around in tight circles, always within a foot or two of the cloud of minnies. Most of them time, his territory was right around the large pipe that serves as the overflow, but sometimes he’d be 5 feet on one side, and maybe up to 15 feet on the other. His habits were predictable and he was easy to find.

It was Elizabeth who finally figured out that this was a parent, protecting its young. We did a little research and found out that the male is responsible for childcare.

Whenever the school of bass fry was disturbed, the fishlets would leap out of the water, making a series of popping sounds, like a handful of tiny pebbles landing in the water. Fun. We’d seen that effect for several years now, but never knew what kind of little minnow it was, and we thought maybe some new kind of aquatic critter had hitched a ride on a duck’s foot.

Certainly the pan fish have always bred in the pond. Within a few years of stocking it, there were fish nests all over the shallow parts. I don’t what the things are–blue gills and others. I think we had once stocked something called red eared sunfish, too, which Fenders now calls shellcracker. Maybe hybrid blue gills, too. All I know is that we’ve got more than enough of those. I don’t see any reason that our bass shouldn’t be well fed. The rule is, if you catch a pan fish, you do not throw it back.

All activity in Heiser Hollow revolves around our half acre pond. Its a constant source of aesthetic pleasure and entertainment, hosting countless fish and frogs, and playing guesthouse to an ever-changing variety of visitors (turtles, herons, otters, ducks). You can fish in it, you can swim in it, you can float in an inner tube drinking beer, or you can just stand and look at it. However you choose to enjoy it, the pond remains by far the most interesting part of the Hollow. My parents park their motor home next to it, we pitch our tent on the dam, and if we build something permanent, it will be within site and sound of the pond. There are at least two different varieties of frog–bass and tenor.

We built the pond in 1976. After extensive consultation with the state ag agent, and a series of disappointing test holes, it was decided that the only practical place to put a pond would be several hundred yards up the Hollow, towards the small and intermittent water fall. Although it would have resulted in a much larger pond, the lower meadow where we’d been parking a travel trailer just wouldn’t hold water. As it turned out, the smaller site would be an inspired one. Its only looking back at the pictures from 30 years ago that I can truly appreciate the significance of the engineering effort to build our little body of water. The dam stands 40 feet above the original ground level. It was once a big sterile pit of mud, and now it is thousands of gallons of life It took a number of months to fill with water, and it wasn’t ready to be stocked with fish the first year. That first summer, before stocking it, the pond magically became a haven for tiny tadpoles. Once we’d stocked the pond, these became become bluegill fodder.

Nasty clumps of algae were a problem during the first few years, requiring regular treatment with copper sulfate. Cattails grew up around the edges, which were scenic, but not necessarily healthy for a small pond like ours. However, after a few years, the water became increasingly cloudy, eventually reaching a balance that keeps most of the weeds down, so the pond requires very little maintenance. Willows have been a chronic problem along the face of the dam, but we haven’t seen any for several years.

The pond does leak, and dad had somebody bring in some clay once to try to fix it. It didn’t make any difference, and I’ve decided that the leak is a blessing in disguise. Although it can look pretty sad by the end of a dry summer, a large puddle surrounded by a brown layer of dried mud, the pond is deep enough that the fish are not inconvenienced at all. My pet theory is that the fluctuating water level cuts down on weed growth and the bluegill population. Most years, the dry parts of the pond include numerous depressions that had been created by the panfish for nests.

Unlike most ponds, ours is not surrounded by grass–its in the middle of the woods, which gives it a totally different sort of feel. Although the center of the pond is in the bright sun during most of the day, the sides are shaded by trees which come right down to the water. The elm trees, which are always opportunistic where light is involved, seem OK with getting their feet wet.

A few years ago, the overflow pipe finally rusted through, and dad hired someone to repair it. As long as we were performing surgery on the pond, we decided that we might as well enlargen it a bit. Some Amish guy spent 3 days with a large backhoe, scooping 30 years worth of sediment out of the back of the pond, and continuing a couple feet deeper. One side of the rear of the pond has a very steep hill, but our heavy equipment artist was able to stretch the back and eastern edges out farther, carefully arranging some sandstone boulders around the edges. He also dug a 20 foot long sediment pit behind the pond to catch most of the sand.

Unfortunately, the guy who dug up the dam to patch the pipe wasn’t quite so skilled, and he didn’t do a very good job of compacting the clay when he replaced it. Not only do we have a depression on top of the dam, but the base of the dam has sprung a small but obvious leak. It has been dribbling in this new, visible spot for two years now, and the pond is fuller then ever. I assume that it should be repaired, but how do you know the next guy won’t make it worse? You could drain the pond, spend thousands on lining it with clay, rubber, or some newfangled spray stuff–all of which kills the fish and sets you back 5-10 years–and you still might have a leaky pond. I guess lots of healthy natural things leak. All in all, its a beautiful little pond, leaks and all.

Yesterday, I circumnavigated the 55 almost square acres of Heiser Hollow. I like to walk the bounds every year (at least since the neighbor had the southern property line surveyed), but this summer, I was especially curious about the storm damage, which cut two narrow swathes of trees across the entire width of the property.

The storm damage started on the western edge, parallel to the drive, topping a couple of maple trees, one of which the guys from the power company helped us clear last week. A couple hundred feet further south, 3-4 tall white pines were topped, about 30-40′ in the air. A sort of sickly looking cherry tree was down next to them, not topped, but with the root ball pulled out of the ground.

Several trees came down alongside the road leading down into the valley, and they’ll have to be chainsawed if we want to use the road any time soon. One tree was down in the valley, and then there was no damage for several hundred feet. Along the path we call the Ridge Trail, which parallels the eastern property line, a group of 5 trees were all snapped off at about 40 feet in the air. This is the strangest storm damage I’ve ever seen at the Hollow. It looks like a rotary blade descended from the sky, chopped off some trees, and then retracted.

A couple hundred yards to the north, the damage was very different, but more extensive. Instead of topping the trees, it toppled them. The combination of wet soil and high winds resulted in at least a dozen trees pulling up roots and falling over. Mostly leaving the useless aspen and poplar untouched, the freak wind concentrated on valuable hardwoods

In this picture, Elizabeth is standing next to a 20″ cherry tree which has fallen on the root ball of a 2nd cherry, which itself is lying on top of the roots of a 3rd tree. In addition to the cherries, at least one ash came down, which is especially sad given that ash in other parts of the state are struggling with borer.

There are probably enough timber grade trees down to make it worth having a small lumber operator coming in and harvesting them.

The map below shows a simplified view of the damaged (red) and downed (yellow) trees. It looks very much like two separate wind cells, several hundred feet apart, cut parallel paths. We heard that a funnel cloud was sighted about a mile to the east.

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For someone who thinks that suburban lawns are a silly and wastefully affectation, I take far too much pleasure in nuking brush with a tractor. It comes down to this: as far as woods are concerned, I like that freshly grazed look. Lacking cows, goats, horses, or sheep, the only remaining choice is diesel.

When we first bought Heiser Hollow in ‘71, it hadn’t been lived in for a couple decades, and most of the flat parts were jungle like. We could get part way up the drive, but beyond that, it was a wall of weeds. My folks bought a scythe at the hardware store in Killbuck (another victim of Walmart), and started at it. They actually made quite a bit of progress, getting as far as the woods, where we camped in pup tents the first time we stayed overnight.

Then my dad either got smart, or totally frustrated, hiring a young farmer up the valley to come in with a vintage Fordson and a bush hog. Bush hog is a generic name for a heavy-duty mower that attaches to a 3-point hitch, allowing you to power it, and raise & lower it. It doesn’t mow lawn flat–for that you need an attachment that sits under the center of the tractor. What it does is mow hard, chopping up grass, weeds, saplings, ant hills, and anything else that gets in its way. Tractors are heavy and have sturdy wheels that crunch up bushes and sticks. Small trees fall prey to the loader bucket, or the chassis, and get chopped up by the bush hog. Logs and even downed trees can often be pushed aside with the front end loader.

Eventually, Dad bought his own tractor, a Kubota. It’s only 15 HP or so, but with 4 wheel drive, a 3-point hitch pulling a bush hog, and a front end loader, its amazing how much work can be done on a gallon of diesel oil. One pass down a trail makes it grandmother-friendly, whacking down all the weeds, chopping up loose sticks, and even flattening some of the humps in the ground. There are a lot of places here you just wouldn’t go if Dad or I hadn’t bush hogged it first. I especially enjoy mowing down multiflora rose, an especially annoying introduced species.

Kubotas are pretty handy, but they can’t do everything. Tractors tend to be tippy, so they don’t work laterally on hills. Ours has the front wheels mounted as far out as possible, and the back wheels were mounted in reverse, increasing the wheel base, but it still has a relatively high center of gravity, and you need to be careful to avoid an accident. Big stumps are a problem, and need to be avoided.

Big trees are down on trails in several places, and only a bulldozer would be able to flatten out those root balls and fill in the holes. Or time. If you wait long enough, whatever falls on the trail will decay to the point where the Kubota can break it up, push it out of the way, chop it up, or drive over it. I was able to get to the upper meadow last year for the first time since the ice storm 3-4 years ago, crunching through a tree that was downed over the trail. The trail makes a switchback and begins a steep ascent up to the end of the trail, which was the worst possible spot for a large tree to fall, filling the trail with a trunk too big to drive over, a large ball of dirt and root, and a Kubota-eating hole. Last year, I was very carefully able to detour by taking an even steeper route straight up, but this week, it was too wet, and I couldn’t get enough traction.

Today: singing milkweed beetles, scarlet tananger, ruby throated hummingbird

Dad and I drove down to the Hollow today to make sure that everything would be ready for next week’s stay. We arrived to find two pickups from the power company parked in the drive ahead of us–we don’t get a lot of visitors, although we’re never sure what happens when we aren’t there.

They were there to spray the plants underneath our power lines, and their trucks were full of all kinds of maintenance equipment. Its always useful to have a friend with a chain saw. It turned out that there had been a big storm a couple of days ago, and a maple tree had come down on the drive. They offered to clear it out for us, and 5 minutes later, the road was open again.

We were planning on weedeating and bushhogging, but the drive was rutted from the heavy rains this week, so we decided to pull the bushog off the back of the Kubota and mount the blade. To make a long story short, it turned out that the tractor wasn’t broken, it only had a loose battery cable. This was successfully diagnosed remotely by the farmer across the valley, who still came over to supervise our wrenchwork.

There’s a reason that road graders have such long chassis with the blade mounted in the center, instead of at the end of a long lever hanging off the back. When you use a blade on a tractor, every little bump in the road surface causes a wild fluctuation in the height of the blade. It goes better with one person standing on blade, sometimes leaning towards the high side, yelling height instructions to the tractor driver. Inside of 15 minutes, we’d made a pretty good work out of the road, neatly filling in the ruts.

We put the bushhog back on tractor, and Dad mowed the meadow while I went over the drive with a rake. Dad bought a new Stihl weedeater, and I gotta tell ya, a new Stihl chops up a lot more weeds, a lot faster, than its 25 year old predecessor. I did the face of the dam, and some of the surrounding areas.

The pond was more full than I’ve ever seen it. A couple years ago, when the standpipe rusted out, we enlarged the pond by setting the outlet of the new pipe a couple feet higher. Also, we had 30 years worth of silt pulled out of the back of the pond, and also had it dug out a bit wider and longer in the back. After the big storm, the crick was still running into the back of the pond. The water is usually a couple feet below the outlet by July, so its pretty unusual to see it full up at this time of year.

The guys from the power company said that someone had sighted a funnel cloud nearby during the recent storm. There musta been some funky winds, because there were an unusual number of trees down–mostly at the top half. Besides the one on the drive, there were three down on the drive to the meadow. Two big branches came down with a thump, a few hundred yards from me while I was working. I haven’t seen this many trees and branches down since the big ice storm a few years ago.

Sighting: great blue heron