Let me preface this by first saying that I honestly like to work with a shovel. I actually like moving earth around. Some may say that I need an implement. Someday I will. However, while I'm young, I do not mind digging into a mound of material and hauling it away.
The "castle mout" is no more. Over the past few days I've buried drain tile in the ditch upslope from the cabin. It took me about 8 hours of wheel burrowing eight cubic yards of three quarter inch crushed rock to fill void. The drain tile will allow the spring melt and rain water to travel unabated around the structure.
I don't mind this hard labor every once in a while. As daunting of a thing it appears to look at a pile of rock 5 feet tall and think that you are going to move it all is; the reality is actually much easier than it first seems. Focus on completing steps along the way, keep good posture and with a little time you will see results. Those results can keep the mental momentum going until the task is complete. In the end, you feel stronger and know that you can move that hill.
Besides moving rock I've hung an interior door for the bathroom, installed cans on the recessed light fixtures, put wall plates on all the switches and outlets and placed our bathtub into position for installation.
A new materials list is in my pocket for next week's worth of projects...
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Cool Autumn Rain
A steady rain has fallen all day. This is even better news to folks working and living around the Pagami Wildfire. The burn has consumed around 100,000 wilderness acres. With luck, this relatively constant rain will aid in suppressing the fronts of the fire that have crept outside of the wilderness and could potentially threaten private properties. Fall colors are getting more colorful as the poplar yellows are becoming more prevalent.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Snowflakes & Fire
First snowflakes in the air for the year. The sloshy mess fell on me at McFarland Lake and all the way down the Arrowhead Trail into Hovland. Canadian Geese are heard headed south in the windy skies. Lows tonight forecasted into the 20's. Last of the tomatoes are able to fruit. Sunflowers are still in full bloom.
Colder temperatures and mixed precipitation have held back the progress of the Pagami Creek wild fire. The fire has grown to over 100,000 acres. This makes it the largest wildfire in Minnesota since the 1918 Cloquet/Moose Lake fire. It is larger than the 2007 Ham Lake fire that destroyed over 160 structures on the Gunflint Trail.
Colder temperatures and mixed precipitation have held back the progress of the Pagami Creek wild fire. The fire has grown to over 100,000 acres. This makes it the largest wildfire in Minnesota since the 1918 Cloquet/Moose Lake fire. It is larger than the 2007 Ham Lake fire that destroyed over 160 structures on the Gunflint Trail.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Phenology
Thick wildfire smoke still engulfs the upper North Shore. The Pagami Creek fire has now burned over 16,000 acres. The town of Isabella has been evacuated. A strong thunderstorm yesterday brought hail, wind, rain and ash from the fire. The sky has been a deep red for a couple of days now. Spotted a Black Bear on the Gunflint Trail. Freeze warning tonight.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Smell of wild fire smoke
The Northwoods are in a drought. Unseasonal warm winds blow. A large high pressure system has dominated the upper North American continent for weeks now.
Because of this dry hot weather the surrounding forests are burning. Several significant wildfires are burning to the west inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. For the most part the fires have been able to burn out their course.
Wildfires are an important function of a healthy conifer forest. Some species of trees like the Jack Pine only open their cones in fires. Although the fires will burn a kill many of the large trees, it is the only way that the seeds of the pines are able to spread, germinate and survive.
Winds from the west are blowing blankets of smoke towards Lake Superior. When the walls of smoke dance over the hills of the Gunflint territory sun pierces light rays through them and projects the beams of light down to the forest floor.
The smoke is soon pushed down into the cold, dense air of the Lake Superior basin. Along the vast coast of Superior the smoke's eastern journey creeps to a halt before slowly dispersing itself over the largest freshwater lake in the world.
The clouds of wild fire smoke smell like nothing else. The odor is a combination of thick wood smoke and a faint twist of garbage. Banks of smoke randomly jet from over the hill and saturate the air. Yesterday morning I awoke to this smell. The sun was just waking world. I was reminder of the constant energy of the many natural forces of the earth. These forces dominate the end of another summer in the Northwoods: Wildfire smoke in the air, Aurora Borealis in the full moon sky, golden yellow ferns, cluster flies and black bears.
Because of this dry hot weather the surrounding forests are burning. Several significant wildfires are burning to the west inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. For the most part the fires have been able to burn out their course.
Wildfires are an important function of a healthy conifer forest. Some species of trees like the Jack Pine only open their cones in fires. Although the fires will burn a kill many of the large trees, it is the only way that the seeds of the pines are able to spread, germinate and survive.
Winds from the west are blowing blankets of smoke towards Lake Superior. When the walls of smoke dance over the hills of the Gunflint territory sun pierces light rays through them and projects the beams of light down to the forest floor.
The smoke is soon pushed down into the cold, dense air of the Lake Superior basin. Along the vast coast of Superior the smoke's eastern journey creeps to a halt before slowly dispersing itself over the largest freshwater lake in the world.
The clouds of wild fire smoke smell like nothing else. The odor is a combination of thick wood smoke and a faint twist of garbage. Banks of smoke randomly jet from over the hill and saturate the air. Yesterday morning I awoke to this smell. The sun was just waking world. I was reminder of the constant energy of the many natural forces of the earth. These forces dominate the end of another summer in the Northwoods: Wildfire smoke in the air, Aurora Borealis in the full moon sky, golden yellow ferns, cluster flies and black bears.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Phenology
Cool, blustery autumn day on the North Shore. Cloud bursts of rain rolled across the northwoods all weekend. The leaves of moose maple have begun to turn red. Birch, poplar and various ferns have begun to turn yellow. The Mountain Ash berries are fully ripe. These red berries provide an important food source for small mammals and birds in the lean months of the long winter. With lows in the high 40's at night and the days getting shorter it definitely is beginning to feel like fall is coming. We've begun to burn the stove most evenings...
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Phenology
Warm breezes float off Lake Superior. Highs in the mid 70's, lows in the 50's. Ate our first tomatoes of the season. Planted buckwheat to cover crop the garden until next spring. Bucking and splitting birch firewood. Plenty of bear signs in the surrounding hills.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Churning the Garden
The nights have been a little chilly. It's hard to imagine that summer is already slowly giving way to fall.
We've had black plastic covering our garden site for about one year now. Our hope is that this would kill a vast majority of the native seed bank. Last week we uncovered the plot and with the help of our friend Jim we deep-tilled the area. Tearing into a garden bed for the first time is full of surprises. For one, you never really know what the quality of the soil will be until you dig into it. It's the other surprises; like all the rocks and roots and other "artifacts" that make your first day tilling interesting!
The soil will work. We have a manageable mix of silt and clay loam to work with. The work we have ahead of planting is soil amending. Amending soil is simply feeding the dirt the food that it wants in order to be at the optimal chemistry to grow plants in. While most loam soils in the midwest are fertile enough to grow native species of plants, growing vegetables is another story.
We know that our soil is mineral rich and a little acidic. As a result we are planning on amending the soil by adding compost and manure to put some organics into the mix as well as a little lime (a base) to help neutralize the acidic clay-rich soil.
Another important element in healthy soil is nitrogen. Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere. Plants need nitrogen to grow as nitrogen is an important building block of many molecules that are essential to life. Soil, however, is not always a good source of nitrogen. To best way to get nitrogen into the soil is to plant legumes. Legumes are a family of plants that fix nitrogen into the soil. Roots of these plants contain bacteria that allow the plants to convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into ammonia. Ammonia in the soil is then used by the garden plants as building blocks for growth. With only a couple months before our first freeze we are planting buckwheat, a legume. We will till this in next year before we plant our crops.
We know that our soil is mineral rich and a little acidic. As a result we are planning on amending the soil by adding compost and manure to put some organics into the mix as well as a little lime (a base) to help neutralize the acidic clay-rich soil.
Another important element in healthy soil is nitrogen. Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere. Plants need nitrogen to grow as nitrogen is an important building block of many molecules that are essential to life. Soil, however, is not always a good source of nitrogen. To best way to get nitrogen into the soil is to plant legumes. Legumes are a family of plants that fix nitrogen into the soil. Roots of these plants contain bacteria that allow the plants to convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into ammonia. Ammonia in the soil is then used by the garden plants as building blocks for growth. With only a couple months before our first freeze we are planting buckwheat, a legume. We will till this in next year before we plant our crops.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Height of the Land Route
The berries are ripe. The fish are moving to colder water. It' August. To us this means the beginning of the paddling season. Last weekend we paddled a classic border route through Gunflint-Little Gunflint-Little North-North-South-Rat-Rose-Duncan-West Bearskin Lakes.
In our ongoing quest to paddle all of the major canoe routes in the eastern Boundary Waters we've been marking our routes through the years on a regional map. This winter we noticed something major was missing from the map: we haven't paddled a substantial amount of the Canadian border lakes.
These border lakes have a great historical significance. Traversing the waterways from the Northern depths of Canada to Lake Superior, the "Voyageur Highway" was the route that Voyageurs traveled during the Fur Trade era of the 1630-1760's. During this time fleets of birch bark canoes carrying beaver, moose, bear, caribou, fox and wolf pelts paddled and portaged the ancient trail.
The furs were trapped in the winter by Natives. They were then traded to representatives of the Hudson Bay and Northwest Companies for commodities like guns, traps and other supplies. French Voyageurs packed up the furs into their canoes and made their way down the Voyageur Highway to the Lake Superior. At Lake Superior, the "hivernants" (voyageurs who wintered in the north) rendezvoused with the "pork eaters" (voyageurs traveling in 30-40 foot canoes from Montreal). It was here, on the shores of Superior at the Grand Portage outpost that the two groups swapped their cargo loads. After a couple weeks of celebrating the voyageurs turned around and headed back to complete the trade. The Northerners carried their supplies North to spend the winter and trade with Natives for the next season of furs. The large canoes carried the furs back to Montreal to be felted and made into hats for the robust European markets.
I call the route that we took the "Height of the Land route" after the portage between North and South Lakes that straddles the Laurentian Divide. Geographically speaking, it's a major watershed divide (rivaled only be the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains): all of the water in North Lake flows to the Hudson Bay via the Rainy River watershed. The water in South Lake flows to the Atlantic via Lake Superior and the rest of the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence seaway.
Significant as this divide might be portaging it is actually very anticlimactic. I've seen artistic renditions of this point being some great, steep and rugged ridge in the Northwoods. The reality is that most of the portage is a flat wetland with balsam, cedar, various sedges and thimble berry. No, we did not stop at the "top" of the divide and smoke a ceremonial pipe. I couldn't even really tell where the watershed break was. Nonetheless, it was one of those places where you could almost still the see the moccasin prints and hear the music of the countless french voyageurs who trotted that trail long before us.
These border lakes have a great historical significance. Traversing the waterways from the Northern depths of Canada to Lake Superior, the "Voyageur Highway" was the route that Voyageurs traveled during the Fur Trade era of the 1630-1760's. During this time fleets of birch bark canoes carrying beaver, moose, bear, caribou, fox and wolf pelts paddled and portaged the ancient trail.
The furs were trapped in the winter by Natives. They were then traded to representatives of the Hudson Bay and Northwest Companies for commodities like guns, traps and other supplies. French Voyageurs packed up the furs into their canoes and made their way down the Voyageur Highway to the Lake Superior. At Lake Superior, the "hivernants" (voyageurs who wintered in the north) rendezvoused with the "pork eaters" (voyageurs traveling in 30-40 foot canoes from Montreal). It was here, on the shores of Superior at the Grand Portage outpost that the two groups swapped their cargo loads. After a couple weeks of celebrating the voyageurs turned around and headed back to complete the trade. The Northerners carried their supplies North to spend the winter and trade with Natives for the next season of furs. The large canoes carried the furs back to Montreal to be felted and made into hats for the robust European markets.
I call the route that we took the "Height of the Land route" after the portage between North and South Lakes that straddles the Laurentian Divide. Geographically speaking, it's a major watershed divide (rivaled only be the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains): all of the water in North Lake flows to the Hudson Bay via the Rainy River watershed. The water in South Lake flows to the Atlantic via Lake Superior and the rest of the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence seaway.
Significant as this divide might be portaging it is actually very anticlimactic. I've seen artistic renditions of this point being some great, steep and rugged ridge in the Northwoods. The reality is that most of the portage is a flat wetland with balsam, cedar, various sedges and thimble berry. No, we did not stop at the "top" of the divide and smoke a ceremonial pipe. I couldn't even really tell where the watershed break was. Nonetheless, it was one of those places where you could almost still the see the moccasin prints and hear the music of the countless french voyageurs who trotted that trail long before us.
Looking east across Rose Lake into Canada
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Phenology
Height of the berry season. Blueberries, rasberries, strawberries and thimbleberries are all out in full fruit. A broad-wing hawk has been spotted for the past few mornings hunting on our road. The broad-wing is one of the most common hawks on the shore. Inhabiting the forests of most of eastern North America, the broad-wing are famous for the large flocks or "kettles" that they form during migration. In 2003, over 100,000 broad-wings were spotted in a single day flying past Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN!
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