A few more years of growth...

It always takes me a little while to get used to darkness each winter.  At first, just after daylight savings in the late fall I try to beat the sunset.  I find myself hurrying in the late day to finish up just one more thing before complete darkness.  But as winter settles in and your eyes adjust, the darkness simply becomes reality for a greater part of your time.

At the same time, Lake Superior's famed "Gales of November" have stayed true to it's name this year.  High winds, snow, and ice storms have battered the North Shore over the past few weeks.  The property has lost a number of trees due to these events.  It makes me think about the forest around the garage site.  Apart from the cleared area immediately around the garage, I have been eyeing up the taller trees and cutting them if they could hit the garage.  It's better to cut them now rather than when the structure is there!

At first it's easy to guess which trees will hit the garage site.  But the further away you get , the bigger the trees are.  The farther away and the taller the trees, the  more difficult it is to judge if they are tall enough to hit the structure.  This adds an entirely new element of simply dropping big trees.  It's fun.  Sometimes you right and every once in a while, you aren't.

This afternoon I found a big old poplar that I thought was tall enough to hit the garage.  There's a distinct climaxing moment while cutting a big tree when the game changes.  You go from cutting a tree to dropping one.  It's the point at which the saw cuts through a critical mass.  At that moment, the tree cracks, gravity officially takes hold and the hardwood leans and falls along the line I predicted.  The outcome is just as I envisioned except for one thing.  The tallest branches are a yard short of the garage!

Give the tree a few more years of growth and it would be an entirely new equation.  However, the fact is that I didn't guess it right.  On the other side of the coin, when the tree lands dead center in the middle of the garage pad I cringe.  At least it proves why I am doing this.  I think that I'd rather be wrong every once and a while...

Snow flakes in the air...

Activity on the homestead is at an all-time high right now.  Our shed is built, the driveway is complete, the garage site is prepped and a slab for the garage will be poured in a matter of days.  On top of that we just completing drilling a 340' water well!  The progress explains my absence from this writing project.  

Here's how things have been going:

Once leveled, I built a platform out of treated lumber and framed up the walls.

Walls raised, I then hoisted the 2x6" rafters and nailed tongue and groove for the roofing.

Sheathing and asphalt paper on.  All the shed now needs is a metal roof, siding and a door.

There is always something else that requires my immediate attention.  For example, the other day I realized that the well drillers were in the area and could make it to our place within a couple of days.  The catch was that the route up to the well site hadn't been cleared.  I cleared a 16x80' lane with a turnaround in 4 hours.  It's no wonder why my shed doesn't have a door. 

The total depth of the well is 340'.  It is situated just above 890 ft in elevation, just above the Washburn shoreline which was deposited when the lake was almost 300' higher than today (just over 10,000 years ago).  

Within a couple of feet the drill bit hit bedrock.  The first 180' is the classic red porphyritic rhyolite.  At about 220' the hole found a softer dark ophitic gabbro unit followed by a basalt flow full of amygdules of the pink mineral (calcium alluminum silicate) prehnite.  The hole soon then goes back into the rhyolite where we hit water.  Although the flow is relatively low (it is likely to increase as water is drawn from it), the water isn't salty nor does it have a mineral-rich flavor of which is common in the Duluth Complex.  

Another shot of the driveway.  This time with a 4" lift of class 1 gravel!

We're covering the garden site with a 4mm thick plastic.  At the end of the growing season next year we will pull this, cover crop with legumes and start planning the vegetable patch.

The leveled garage site awaiting the 5" concrete slab.

The interface that exists between trying to tell my story of beating a path through the wilderness of northern Minnesota and writing this blog creates a conflict.  I work on the property everyday.  Everyday I walk home from work, put on my field clothes, dress the dog with her blaze orange hankerchief and drive east just past the Devil's Track River gorge to our land.  There I work until I can't see my hand in front of my face.  I drive back home to eat some food and sleep.  The next day I get up and do it all again.  My body is tired.  The hard part is when I try to sit down and explain how things are coming along.  The truth is that I can't.  

These words are the culmanation of hours upon hours of cutting, hauling, digging, building and thinking.  There's no way to clearly express the thought and emotion that is going into this.  Pictures show the physical changes that are going on.  Nothing except my words can describe the personal growth that is continually evolving.  I try but I must admit that I am conflicted.  I started this project to learn what it takes to work a piece of property.  I began writing to share this experience and document the steps along the way.  I can write and take photographs about the physical changes occurring on the property.  However, I struggle in my attempt to share true effort and emotion that I am putting into this project.  This isn't a disclaimer.  I'm just being honest.   

This land is my lifestyle.  It's amazing to think that we haven't even owned this property for one year.  The progress is what keeps me going.  As I peck away at projects slowly but surely I can see the outcome of my efforts.  

Watching a giant iron ore freighter hugging the North Shore while sailing the safer "northern route" I realized that the warm season has passed.  Snowflakes have been in the air all week.