The Boy on the Burning Deck

 

No, I don't mean the Victorian-Era poem by Felicia Hemans. I doubt many of you have ever heard of "Casabiana," but it was once very popular. It's maudlin stuff today, dreadfully melodramatic to modern ears, or perhaps we are simply too jaded and declined as a culture to appreciate the poet's sentiments. Maybe I'm a barbarian, but I begin to see where Mark Twain got his "Ode to Stepehen Dowling Botts, Dec'd." I stand with Sam Clemens when it comes to hating Victorian verse of the popular sort.

In any case, for Hemans' tale of the doomed lad, I had never been forced to memorize it in school, as had earlier generations. We instead learned the much more durable "Ozymandias" and a few of Poe's poems by heart. For that kid on the flaming ship, I simply knew the line I've used as my title because these past few weeks, I've lived it. The heat broke, for which I'm thankful, but so did a wooden deck in several places.

The past several days have been consumed with removing rotten boards from our rental property's deck. Buried nails, likely from the 1990s, prove hard to exhume, and then I must plane some of the replacement boards down to fit into the empty spots. Of course installation proves a snap, as I use a screw-gun and star-headed screws I can back out later with ease, when--not if--more repairs need doing. I like these new coated screws; while they are not cheap, they hold up. I've backed out and reused several that still look new and do not round off like Philips-head screws can do. I stain all sides of the board too. Rot creeps in from any angle.

At the end of each session, sore to the bone, I am reminded why I despise wooden decks. Why did they get so damned popular? I share a theory espoused by, among others, Western Doughty, that Americans retreated from their front porches after the 1960s. I was lucky enough to grow up in the last years when, on a blue-collar block in Richmond before AC was common, all the neighbors would sit on the porches on hot nights. When you strolled down the street, greetings got exchanged.

It was no utopia; the dark side was that everyone knew your business. Still, the nation could have done better than treated wood, when we retreated to our back yards. 

Wooden decks require the constant maintenance that a sailing-ship needs, lest someone fall through the deck and into oblivion. I've found that heavy, solid penetrating stain works well enough, as it has for a fence I rehabilitated at our rental property, but decks, by their nature, get a lot of traffic. The one at our rental house, for now at least, bakes in the sun. I plan to change that with a strategically planted Willow Oak this Fall.

 The issue with decks of treated wood (were I forced to build from scratch, I'd use the new composite decking) is dry rot. We know that term, but I began to think about what it means on a deck. Here's an explanation for boats, from the Wikipedia page on dry rot (yes, they have a page for everything):

An explanation of the term "dry rot" circles around boatyards periodically. In the age of wooden ships, boats were sometimes hauled for the winter and placed in sheds or dry dock for repair. The boats already had some amount of rot occurring in the wood members, but the wood cellular structure was full of water making it still function structurally. As the wood dried out, the cell walls would crumble. In other words, the wood was already rotten and as the boat dried, the wood collapsed and crumbled, causing the workers in the yard to determine it was "dry rot", when in fact, the wood had been rotten all along.  

Even with good penetrating stain, dry rot happens to decking in time, because water will find a way into a crevice and sit. Cycles of drying and wetting just give dry rot more chances to begin; fungus follows, invisibly, into the hearts of each board. Think of how cavities form on your own teeth. For decks, what may look great may leave your leg broken when you fall through a big, new hole in a seemingly intact board.

I do like one aspect of repairing decks: Whenever I do a rehab, I clog around in my "Jed Clampett" Redwing boots to see which boards are bad. Breaking a board or two is great fun. Replacing them? Not so much. 

Save yourself. Use composite boards or build a damned patio! 

As with horses, sailboats, swimming pools, or lots of vices I cannot name here, it's better if a friend has a wooden deck.  No, that is NOT my deck up top. It's from the Wikipedia page.

Semi-Sufficent? Is that Enough?

I've written here about the folly of trying to be self-sufficient, instead turning to the notion of self-reliance, an Emersonian virtue I embrace.

Recently I read a fine post from Kirsten Lie-Nielsen, a homesteader, that she and her spouse have left farming largely behind, at least as a full-time, rural venture. This experience, one where she attempted to become an influencer but met hostility for her left-wing political views, gave me pause about how I approach rural life. 

These words in particular strike me as wisdom: 

We have no aspirations towards self-sufficiency, but a desire to experience varied aspects of life while remaining connected to our food sources. I now have a set of skills I can draw on if I find myself in the kind of calamitous situation that sections of the homesteader community are prepping for. I feel a deep appreciation for the labor of food production. I’ve also learned to embrace the freedom of progress.

When this blog began, I thought that I might use my writing skills to follow the path of a farmer like Joel Salatin. Now I've my doubts, and not because Salatin and I are very different animals when it comes to politics and religion. I deeply respect the way he manages the property at Polyface Farms, and I've had two nice chats with him about how one can run a farm sustainably. I no longer follow his blog, however, because of right-wing extremism and Doomerism, mostly by his readers, a similar pattern that led me away from another writer who once used to visit my classes to discuss his work. 

In case of a national disaster, no one is an island, no matter how many generators, solar panels, firearms, or cans of food on hand. Only community and self-reliance might ease the troubles, though I'd prefer we search for ways to avoid them altogether.  

I'll employ a simple example of semi-sufficiency here: the other day, my brother-in-law and I skidded two 12' long poplar logs out of the woods. A huge twin-trunked tree had split in a storm; we wanted to save part of it for his sawmill. Poplar is a delightful wood to work. I've made a good bit of weatherboard for our farmhouse from trees we cut, milled, and planed in years past.

I could never handled that sort of job alone. We used two saws to cut the logs (for when one saw gets pinched and stuck; it happened once to me). We then used a long cable and electric winch to skid the logs across a wet-weather stream at the back of our property, with me walking beside the skidway with a Peavey Tool to roll the logs around when they got caught on something. Finally, I got on my tractor and hauled the logs the final distance to a trailer.

No one person I know could do this. With my spouse still recovering from a broken leg, she couldn't help. So in hard times, who can you count on to help with rural work? My other best helper, who lives nearby, voted for the other side, but we get on well.

Community, despite adversity and personal differences, keeps the Amish on the land, but influencers have followers, not co-workers.

That's the mistake too many misty-eyed homesteaders make who want to be famous. 

Be Careful With That "Seasoned" Firewood

Buying any wood this year?

We are going through a lot of wood in our stove this seasonably cold winter. I am reminded of all the poor quality or under-seasoned firewood (always promised to be "seasoned") that I purchased back before I cut my own wood. No, my pile does not look as nice as the header photo.

Nearly all of the wood I purchased before moving to the country went for ambiance in a fireplace. Now we need it for heating, saving over $1000 each year compared to running our heat pump. If you too heat with wood and are new to it, however, here's a cautionary tale.

You see every expensive bag of supermarket logs marked "seasoned," but a study from the University of Tennessee's extension service finds that claim laughable. The UT folks tested batches of store-bought logs; they found moisture content at 50% to 90% the rule. That's far too wet to burn when firewood needs to be under 20%. For most wood not kiln-dried, that means at least 9 months split and stacked dry. Many types of wood require a year or more.

What do I mean by "wet"? It's not the wetness one finds from a log sitting in the rain; instead, it's the internal moisture of green, growing wood lost as a dead log dries naturally.

For a load of maple that fell in a storm this year, mostly big branches, I chainsawed some into small logs yesterday and hauled them to the shed. Wood from the same stormfall maple that I'd cut in late spring is barely safe to burn now, but it had been split and stacked in a sunny shelter. The remaining wood left in the forest comes in at 30% moisture. I might hazard burning a bit of it in April, after checking with my moisture meter again.

I've written about this magical device before here. They run under $30 at Amazon or you can "go pro" but that's best for a wood buyer or firewood dealer.

Today I checked some seasoned wood I split and stacked a year ago. I placed the meter at the end of a white-oak log and also into its split side. Both gave low moisture. 

 

Likewise some very old pine that I mix in with my hardwoods.

 

I don't like to burn a lot of really dry wood but it's good in a mix and to start the fire.

If you buy firewood, do yourself a favor. Get a meter and be Type-A so you don't ruin your chimney. And post to your community-living groups if you find very wet "seasoned" firewood.

Stay warm and feed that stove!

From "Tree of No Use" to Useful Tree

 

I've written here many times about the Stinking Sumac / Tree of Paradise / Alianthus. I've yet to find a use for it, but there's another tree that many of us dislike that I've come to appreciate, the Sweet Gum. It has those sticky balls that sadistic children would throw at each other or (slowly raises hand) would shoot out of a slingshot.

I don't bean anyone with the tree's seed pods any longer, but I do burn the wood. Yes, I use a tree that many folks who heat with wood toss into the ravine. The wood is hard to split when green, and not much better when seasoned; the grain is crazy, the fibers clingy. It's not a wood to split by hand. But then I have 27 tons worth of splitting power in our gasoline-powered Trobilt.

Gum is supposed to stink when burned. True, if not seasoned. I spoke to my chimney-cleaner, a Good Ol' Boy who knows his wood. Cut it in the winter when the sap is not flowing, then split it right away gum can be burned in 9 months. In other seasons, one needs to wait a year and yes, that wood will give off an aroma. Use a moisture meter to be sure the wood is ready, to avoid creosote in your chimneys.

 I have been burning some of it lately, from a tree that fell in a summer storm in 2023. It gives off a woodsy smell that I get outdoors. Our stove is too efficient to let that scent into the house.

Numbers like the ones from the University of Kentucky do not lie. There's something to be said for Gum. It has a heating value in BTUs higher than pine. We don't all have a ready supply of Hickory or Osage Orange or White Oak. I get a good amount of Oak, but Sweet Gum is so plentiful here! The tree shrugs off urban pollution and drought, though on the down side it does like to shed limbs in storms.

Why does Gum have such a bad rep? I think it's the pain-in-the-butt nature of splitting it, if done by hand.

So don't toss that gum. Find someone who heats with wood and offer it. I'm reminded of "The Tree of No Use" from the writings of one of my old-school influencers, Zhuang Zhou the Taoist philosopher. That tree yielded nothing but shade: no fruit, no wood good for burning. And it lived a long time.

So will our gums, in the era of climate change.

The Forgotten(?) Art of Pollarding Trees

Topping trees to encourage growth has a bad name among tree fanciers like me. The conventional wisdom that it shortens the life of a shade tree has a lot of merit, but then again, don't we prune trees constantly?

As I do most of my heavy pruning in winter, especially late winter, I wanted to talk about a time-honored way of harvesting firewood without cutting down an entire tree. I've begun to practice it in my own woodlot. 

The photo above, from the Wikipedia entry on pollarding, shows a beech in Epping Forest, England. In the old world, where ancient forests long vanished, second-growth trees needed careful management to avoid vanishing. Legal rights to pollard a certain amount of wood were granted to locals.

Pollarding provides a safe and sustainable method, and carefully pollarded trees can live a very long time. The beech above has not been cut in a many decades, whereas a regularly pollarded tree will not produce the huge side branches shown.  For those working with willow for crafts, pollarding leads to a nigh-endless supply of material.

I use pollarding on our fence-lines, where gums, poplars, and other shade trees occur. Some I cut down to a stub 3  or 4 feet in height. The trunks get cut into small rounds for the woodstove, after seasoning a  year. The branches and twig I drag away to make brush-piles at the edge of the woods, to shelter wildlife. Sometimes I pollard very long stems to make beanpoles.

Pines, of course, cannot be pollarded, and once cut, do not return. I knew that but didn't know it as an ancient threat by Croesus from the Persian/Greek wars. Thanks, Herodotus.

If you burn wood in  your fire-pit, fireplace, or wood stove but live where you don't have a ready supply of large logs, you may want to begin pollarding trees. You might find it most handy for trees under power-lines as well. Keeping them short avoids the sort of awful slash/pruning power-companies often do to protect infrastructure. Pollarding provides a way to keep a tree like that gracefully shaped.

 

Image courtesy Wikipedia

A Woodpile Essential

I love heating with wood, and I love managing a woodlot. We cut out crooked saplings, fell a few leaners, and cut up fallen trees from thunderstorms and ice-storms. I burn it all, soft or hardwood.

That can get some woodstove owners into real trouble, if they burn too much green wood. Creosote will build up, increasing the chances of a chimney fire.

Most hardwoods take a year to be ready, if you keep them dry. Pine can be ready sooner. That said, I'd not burn a stick if I didn't check it first for moisture content.

Enter the inexpensive moisture meter I picked up from Amazon or eBay (I forget) for under $50.

To burn well, the wood should have less than 20% moisture. I trust Cornell University's advice on this. A reading on a newly cut log of 100%, this site claims, means that a log's weight is half water!

Their information contends that indefinite storage can be managed, but in my experience, wood that is too dry may as well be cardboard. It goes up fast and bright without generating too many BTUs. I discovered that with an estate-sale load of firewood, mostly white oak, that I got at $20 for a full cord. It burned but the lightness of the wood told me it had been stored for many years. I was happy to be rid of it.  The R value was less than year-old pine.

Conversely, a few years back we bought half a cord of red oak that was under-seasoned. It was the first heating season in 10 where I had to buy some wood. We did not have our meter then, so I mixed the oak with seasoned wood and waited for spring, rather anxiously, since we didn't want to run our furnace and spend money that way.

The following fall, the remaining red oak burned bright and hot, and it warmed our house well. Still, I don't want to buy from that seller of "seasoned" wood again. He haphazardly covered his piles, and that's not enough to properly season wood, without air circulation.

So I recommend something like our Tavtool. I use it in the woodpile and check several sticks on the sides and the ends. The ranges vary considerably, and the values on the scope tend too rise as one goes deeper into the log. At first, this reading was 13% but it dropped fast as the tool wiggled. Still, it's in the right range to burn.

The images show a log from a small tree that came down a year ago in an ice storm. We cut and stacked it in March, in a south-facing shelter that holds about 1/4 cord of wood (4' high by 2' deep by 8' long). Here's the end of the same log.

I have never seen readings vary more than a per-cent or two, unless one part of the log had been rained on. If you are unsure, split a piece and measure inside one of the pieces. That will give you a heartwood reading.

Finally, keep your wood dry. We build wood-boxes out of construction scraps. Shelter is key to good firewood, as is stacking for air circulation. Piles on the ground can molder even if covered with tarps and around here, harbor Copperheads in the warm months. No thank you.

 

May your woodpiles stay dry until Spring. And it's not too early to start stacking wood for 2023-24. We've burned about 2 cords, down from last year, but I need to replace them and one more to have the barn and wood-boxes full.

A Beginner's Tool Box, Part I

 

Some time back, I focused on four (+1) essential shop tools. Today I'll go out to the lumber-yard with my tool bag (or box) to focus on the hand tools for woodworking that every beginner needs. I use a lot of cordless and some corded saws and drills; more on these later. Lately, for a lot of simple jobs, I forego power tools. In fact, for a big job I went hybrid: I used a cordless drill to make pilot holes in 200 or so pieces of weather-board siding, fearing that my new nail gun would split the wood. Then I hand-nailed about 600 siding nails. Worked like a charm. The hardest part of finding the right ringshank nails!

With some luck, a beginner could score all of these tools and a decent tool bag for under $300. A good box may cost more. I won't go into brands in most cases. For saws and hammers, however, some work better than others. Buy the best you can. Check Facebook Marketplace, estate and yard sales, too. Some fantastic tools from the 50s-70s can be had for pennies on the dollar.

Do not let your box look like that! Now here goes for picks:

A Toolbox Saw: A small crosscut saw can do a lot of serious work. I've got two by Stanley called "Fat Max" that I love.

A Hand Plane: These can cost big money, but a savvy DIYer can find excellent antique planes for under $50 that need some refurbishment. I sold a pile of them for $20 each at a farm-swap this year. I've kept several others in good shape for my own use, having seen new planes that run $100-$200. I use planes occasionally for a final fit on a piece of wood, when only a little bit needs shaving off. You'll find many other uses for these versatile tools. Here's a beauty from the article "Unlocking the Mystery of Hand Planes" at Wood News Online.

A Level (or two): Spirit levels come in many lengths, but for the toolbox, get a shorty of 2' or less. Get a vintage one at a yard sale or FB marketplace. They can be had cheaply.

A Framing Hammer: I love Estwing's hammers. I think mine is a 22 oz, which my friend Jeff Warren recommended for it's power but also because a heavier hammer simply wears you out. That's my brand-plug. I've used Stanley claw hammers for years, but a framing hammer that is well made does all a claw hammer can plus has better ergonomics. The  longer handles let a framing hammer do more of the work, at least to a point. 

On a Habitat build once, since the nonprofit will not let volunteers bring nail guns, they issued claw hammers to a bunch of unskilled folk on a framing job. I joined in but I quickly got found out: I drive nails well. Me and the Estwing then got a hell of a workout, since the other volunteers were bending more nails than driving them. They got other tasks while I ended up sore for days. I must have driven 300 nails that day but we stood all the walls before sunset. I felt suddenly Amish.

A Dead-Blow Hammer: This works great for lots of tasks where you did not wish to leave a Mark. The modern plastic version is full of shot. I find it great for tapping in a board when building. The one pictured is 10 bucks at Harbor Freight. I find a cheap one like this works as well as fancy ones. It's an occasional tool. I'd aim for a weight of 3 or 4 pounds. They can scale up to sledge-hammer size!

 

A Nail Puller (or three): I use these often, sometimes in partnership with the puller on the framing hammer to remove nails. I like having a big and little one handy. 

Carpenters Clamps: I have some favorites and will recommend them: Irwin bar clamps. I have dozens of clamps, from antique C-clamps to some beautiful wooden clamps, but the Irwins are a delight: they snug down with hand pressure and release fast. I've used them for holding things during auto repair, too: the plastic jaws, if clean, will not scratch metal. Start small for the tool box, with a pair of shorter ones, but you'll end up with huge ones soon enough, hanging on the wall of the shop.

Wood Chisels: You'll need this for many small jobs to shave off a tiny bit of wood when joining things. Get a set.

A Magnet: Nails and screws and essential parts fall into the grass. Get a magnet on a handle to find them. It saves money and keeps you and others safe later. I once kept half a dozen bored college students occupied on a Habitat for Humanity build, when the crew had no more work for unskilled helpers, by asking the kids to walk the site with two buckets: one for nails, another for screws. We found a gallon or so of each. The one pictured is 8 bucks at Harbor Freight. I have some that are long bars scavenged from machinery, and put on cords to drag over the ground. Sure beats a flat tire on the pickup truck!

Roll of Masking Tape: Tape? Sometimes I need to hold a small piece of trim and don't have a helper. Sometimes I've used tape to mark a spot I'm going to cut, or to keep a piece of wood from splintering when I saw it. It's a cheap companion. And if you want to write measurements on wood without writing on the wood itself, tape to the rescue.

A Speed Square & a Try Square: I managed to finally use a Speed Square to measure angle when we made rafters for a run-in built over an old shipping container. It's the first time I've done that. I then used the square to check the angle on other rafters from a chicken-coop kit. The second tool I love is my try square. These tools often have a small level built in, but for me the magic of the try square is its ability to mark a straight line on a piece of wood that needs to be cut with a circular saw. I use a Sharpie or a pencil.

I found a page on measuring pitch with a speed square, a page with other uses for that tool, as well as a nice resource with all sorts of neat marking tools and advice on measuring here.

A Pair of Rules: I love retractable tape-measures, but I have also begun to carry a folding wooden rule. Why? When you are measuring a long distance without a partner to hold a tape, the old-school wooden rule lets you work solo. Otherwise, I always use a tape.

 So that's my list. What did I forget?  I'll do another post on tools for working with metal and, just maybe, rudiments for my favorite haunt, the auto-shop.

The Silence of The Roosters and Other Fall Traditions

Sad to do it, but we get to the point every year when a few formerly cute little chicks morph into nightmarish teenage boys who fight each other and roughly molest hens. One nearly blinded our former Alpha rooster, Big Daddy. BD now is our Beta, and we'd be sorry to lose him. As Roger our "chicken whisperer" tells us, older males mating with young hens result in fewer male chicks.

Win win.

And the aggressor? That punk teenager went into a dutch oven today. Young roos "taste just like chicken." Only older birds prove too tough to eat, good only for the stockpot.

Culling roosters we cannot re-home with Roger is, thankfully, only one of the annual rituals that begin about the time of the Autumnal Equinox. The heat and humidity have broken, so I get entire days for physical labor of splitting firewood and stacking it, pruning trees ahead of hurricanes, baling a bit of late-cut hay, planting garlic and onions, putting in kale and lettuce, picking figs and last tomatoes for last batches of jam and sauce.

As my full-time professional career nears its end, I'm ever more in love with this perfect time of year. I cannot sit still for long or look at screens except to write or study more about my hobbies. At night I read books, but while there's enough light in the evenings I get a bit more work done. There's also enough cool, dry air to make sweating fun. It's not hunting season yet, but the lakes are good for fishing for quite a while longer.  We even suddenly, after my wife's retirement, have time now for short vacations. It requires a farm-sitter, but the "shoulder months" are good for that, without fretting about animals needing constant attention to water and shade in summer or well-prepared shelter and fresh dry bedding in winter.

With Fall in mind, I went to the movie theater and sat in front of a big screen for the first time since COVID-19. I was deeply moved by Brett Morgen's film Moonage Daydream, about my favorite musician, David Bowie. I've missed his music terribly since his passing; he never seemed to run out of good ideas, even late in life.

Bowie's passing may have left a hole, but the film provided closure appropriately connected to my thoughts about Autumn.

 Fall can seem sad to some folks I know, yet to others "the veil is thin" between us and eternity. Our ancestors seem near. It was a good time to see that film. Bowie left this coda in the film, expressed as a prose-poem, and it fits well with any meditation about Fall:

You're aware of a deeper existence
Maybe a temporary reassurance that indeed there is no beginning, no end
And all at once, the outward appearance of meaning is transcended
And you find yourself struggling to comprehend a deep  and formidable mystery
I'm dying
You are dying
Second by second
All is transient
Does it matter?
Do I bother?
Yes, I do
Life is fantastic, it never ends, it only changes
Flesh to stone to flesh
And 'round and 'round
Bеst keep walking. 

Yes, keep walking. I'm walking outside now to cut up some limbs that fell in the last storm, before what is left of Hurricane Ian arrives.

Chainsaw Logic, Part II

In January, I wrote of my feelings concerning Stihl and Husqvarna saws. Now I'm ready for a farm-yard necessity: a second saw.  

It's a good idea to have two chainsaws handy when you cut as much wood as we do, and of course trees fall across roads regularly in hurricanes and ice storms. If one saw fails, the other can be brought right out. We did this for years, and in winter, when our Stihl saws could act up, I loved having a backup chainsaw.

2022 brought down at least 20 trees on our Buckingham County Property, across all the farm roads. Those are the ones I can see. I suspect more than 50 will have fallen, by the time we re-open the back road to our upper field.

Sadly for my wood stove but luckily for the forest, most are pines. I'll cut, season, and burn the pine mixed with hardwood to maintain a good burn temperature and avoid creosote.

Wood cutting with my current "Husky" is just not going to do this job. So several of their larger saws, ranging in price from $800 to $1400, are in contention.

First off, for most home-owners and casual sawyers, a small saw like my current one will be more than anyone needs. You can see other tips at my earlier post. And for your safety, please read this guide for using a saw from The University of Missouri's extension service. With hurricane season coming, there will be many emergency-room trips for new saw-owners. Do not become one of them.

Yet there comes a point when only a bigger saw can do the trick.  I'm still not ready to buck and fell large trees, a job best left to a professional. But our situation in Buckingham remains in my realm of experience, with the right tool in hand (both hands).

What is "bigger"? In a saw, it does not mean a longer bar but a more powerful engine. With that power, however, comes weight. Let's consider stats for two saws I may purchase as soon as next week:

• Husquvarna 572 XP: 5.3 hp, max torque 8200 rpm, 14.5 lbs.
• Husquvarna  372 XP X-Torq: 5.5 hp, max torque 6600 rpm, 14.6 lbs.
  

Both feature a 20" bar though longer ones can be had (and are not of interest to me). My current saw, a 440, has an 18" bar and gets categorized as a "residential" rather than professional model. It weighs 9.7 pounds and has 2.4 hp. It suffices for cutting limbs and firewood, as well as felling small trees (a foot or less in diameter and perhaps 30' tall). 

Both of the contenders are a LOT heavier than my current saw, which means no lifting the saw high. It's unwise to use a saw by reaching up above one's shoulder, in any case. 

Most of my heavy-duty cutting involves keeping the saw's center of gravity below belly height. I learned early to "let the saw do the work" by never pushing on a saw; that's a recipe to get the bar pinched or worse, have it kick back right at your face. Keeping the saw low avoids exhaustion, in any case. Gravity becomes friend.

Of one thing I'm certain: I want their pre-computer models. I've already had a long telephone conversation with one of my dealer's salespeople. Their newest saws promise smoother power and lower emissions but are not user-friendly to a DIY mechanic like me. That means I cannot replace key parts like a carburetor. I'd depend upon service, likely expensive service, at the shop.  If the X-Torq system (which does lower emissions and fuel consumption) can be had without too many electronics, one of these saws will be coming home with me.

If I were to go the really high-tech route, I'd consider their professional-grade electric saws, but I need to learn a lot more about Husqvarna's battery tech first. I dislike being what I call a "Dewalt orphan" with a bunch of 18V cordless tools for which the maker no long makes replacement batteries. In consequence I have to source re-manufactured battery packs from China. These replacements work until they don't.

I will continue this series as I get a new saw and put it to work stacking logs. As noted in my first post, the old saw is not going to be idle. It already got its annual tune up: new fuel pickup, spark plug, and air filter. Now is the time for a second chain in the case and maybe a new bar. I'll have my dealer look at the old 440 when I go shopping.

Stay safe in the woods. The dealer does not stock new arms or legs.

Where Have All The Ringshanks Gone?

A bout of COVID, and it was not fun, kept me occupied for far too long last month, so this blog, as well as my DIY projects slipped their schedules. Now that I'm finally putting homemade weatherboard siding up on our addition, in place of hideous, unsustainable vinyl or expensive cement-board, I have a problem.

Nails.

Before the chronic shortages and inflation of our recent past hit, I purchased a Cadillac of nail-guns: a Paslode cordless that uses gas cartridges for framing. It's perfect for doing work from ladders where a long cord to a compressor could prove deadly. My old framing gun blew its seals years ago. 

First, I found that the gas cartridges are in short supply, and I want to save what I have for a Fall 2022 project to expand our hen-yard with a new coop. Second, nail guns can split thin weatherboard at the ends, so I planned to hand-nail every nail after drilling a pilot-hole. We did an entire house that way once; it's slow, meditative, Amish-style work, especially when a family member cut down the trees, ran the logs through a sawmill, helped you strap down and "sticker" the lumber to season, before you planed the boards.

That type of work makes one not waste a single scrap of wood. Not one. I even use the chips from the planer in our hen houses and in muddy spots during the winter.

In times past, I would go to the big-box or local DIY place and find lots of galvanized nails with "ring shanks." These little rings make it hard to remove a nail. That's a pain when taking down siding, but it also slows down the way in which a board exposed to the elements will pull away from the building, warp, twist, and do all sorts of non-linear things after just a few years in heat and cold.

So to Lowes, Home Depot, Pleasants, Lacy's Hardware, and the gem of Crozet VA, Crozet Hardware I went. 

At the small stores they knew what I wanted. At the big ones? Crickets. The problem has been that for years, because of the omnipresence of nail guns, shops no longer carry the variety of hand nails they once did. I scored a few tiny boxes at Pleasants, enough to keep the siding job going. 

No one carries my favored brand, Stormguard, that are USA-made and very reliable. Even I rarely bend any. 

So what did I do? Amazon had Stormguards, of course with free shipping for a five-pound box at a price that did not make me scream. I did not check the amazing lumber-yard Siewers, but I will and buy a few pounds of nails if they have them in stock. 

 For some reason, this situation scared me more than seeing empty grocery shelves and expensive gasoline. When we forget how to hand-nail things, it seems a moment in a slow descent into barbarism.  Machines break. Hammers, rarely.

 My father-in-law, who weathered the Great Depression, never ran short of fasteners: he kept pounds and pounds. Now, I will, too.

 So far, 2022 has had many bad omens. Add this particular shortage to my worry-list.

Image courtesy of QC Supply: stock up! 

Chainsaw Logic, Part I

 

So it's winter. We get ice storms and heavy, wet snow that brings down limbs, entire trees. As in hurricane season, this weather sends people who have never owned a chainsaw to big-box stores to buy them.

For many, the next stop becomes an emergency room. Or a graveyard.

But this post is not about safety with saws; it's about the saw to buy if you really think you need one. I've been using a chain saw regularly for over 15 years, a blink of any eye by the standards of my wife's family. I'm still too much a novice to fell any tree bigger around than my leg and 30' tall. After that, I call my brother-in-law. Larger trees that fall I do cut up, even making them roll where I want them. That trick for the experienced sawyer is not something to be handled in this post, either.

No, I want to discuss a topic as sensitive as Ford v. Chevy for pickup owners or Deere v. International when it comes to tractors. I'm thinking Stihl v. Husqvarna.

Why these two?

These two brands are considered premium saws; so is Echo, but I've no experience with the brand, though it's been highly recommended to me.  Down-market brands might be fine for occasional use, and much of what I recommend would still apply.

Three years back, I switched brands to a "Husky" after I found my Stihls hard to operate in cold weather and fiddly to service. Briefly, there are some strengths and weaknesses for either saw:

• Stihls tend to cost a bit less, and have a larger dealer network in my part of the country.
• Stihls have a reputation for more power in the same size saw.
• Husvarnas are simpler machines, especially the starting method and electrics. I found myself constantly needing to remove the carb cover on my Stihls to adjust things.
• My Stihls were harder to start, and I run all my saws on ethanol-free 93 octane, mixed properly with 2-cycle oil. I run about 3 gallons of gas through my saws and weed whackers each year (operating on average a couple of times monthly for the saws, weekly for the other tools in warm weather).
  
• Stihls have really weak gas caps that break easily and two bolts to hold the bar that are easily stripped if you over-torque them. Husqvarnas have a single bolt that goes into metal, not plastic.
• My Husqvarna needs more attention to keep the chain tight than did my Stihl. Since it's wise to check the chain regularly, this seems not much of a bother. I stop the saw occasionally, check the chain tension, then adjust as needed.
  
• The Husqvarna chain-brake system is as safe as Stihl's, but it will break if you try to remove the saw cover with the brake set (I did just that and ordered a new cover).

Much of what I've found has been seconded by another writer.  In the end, and despite its caveats, I'll buy another Husky. I'm going to get a slightly larger saw for "bucking and felling" medium trees.  

So what about an electric saw? Stihl has a really nice line of light-duty tools that run on batteries. We have one of the weed-whackers. 

I'm not sure such a saw would work for me, but they do offer the advantage of not fiddling with gasoline, carbs, or cold-weather starting problems.  They can still maim or kill you.

When you use a saw...

Other things I have learned about running chainsaws: 

•  Most homeowners can do just fine with a 16" bar and a light duty saw for cutting limbs up or fallen logs for firewood. I've only recently moved up to a slightly more powerful saw.
• If you have NEVER used a saw, find out if the extension service offers classes. Here's a sample from New Hampshire. And buy from a dealer, not a big-box. Stihl only sells from dealers. Dealers will start the machine to check function and may give you some free lessons.
  
• Stop working as soon as you get tired. Otherwise, you may not live to saw another log.
• Invest in sawyer's chaps and a forestry helmet, for God's sake. Spending another $200 may save you from serious injury or worse. 
  
• One cold-weather tip: bring the saw inside the night before use, though not into the house. A garage or shed above freezing should do.
  
• A sharp chain is safer than than a dull one. I bought a bench-top electric sharpener for under $300, and I touch up my saw's chain regularly. I also own a spare chain and swamp them out when one gets dull. If you don't cut as much wood as I do, your dealer will sharpen a chain for a few dollars.
  
• 93 octane no-ethanol fuel should be the choice, and if it cannot be found, go with 93 and remove all the gas when done sawing. Ethanol forms crystals in the fuel lines of small engines, and its best to run the saw dry to be sure not a drop remains. I run my mowers and weed-whackers on Ethanol-free 93 as well.
• For the very occasional user, Stihl makes this fuel premixed in metal cans. It's pricey but will keep a while. Most folks would not need more than a gallon per year.  
• Every year, change the spark plug, filter in the gas tank, and the air filter. These tune-up kits can be found at a dealer or ordered online. Never scrimp on this annual chore.  
• When the saw's bar gets worn it's time to replace it. I can find them for around $40. A good bar will ensure better operation and safety. You don't want a chain to jump off a running saw, even with a chain brake to save you.
  
• Your saw may prove an exception, but don't expect a modern chainsaw to last more than a decade. These modern machines are cleaner and more complex than the 1950s and 60s Pollans my father-in-law used. Those saws had no safety features and scared the hell out of me.

Final word: the next time some old-timer, actual or wannabe, says that old saws were superior, just remind him (it's always a guy) that the hardware store sells new saws but does not stock arms and legs.

Local is Not Always Good.

Readers, can you believe I wrote that? Recently I’ve had an experience with a store I praised here before, Pleasants hardware. In several cases they have stopped carrying items that I need for the farm and I’ve had to resort to Amazon, Home Depot, or Lowe’s.

What’s up? I would pay a buck or two more to support a local business, but when, in three cases, Amazon or a big box had what I needed that day and at a competitive price, I did not hesitate to buy there, especially when shipping is free via my Prime account.

Luckily, we have more than a few local options still in business.  A little hardware store called Lacy‘s in Goochland County had some security system batteries Pleasants no longer carries, and these cost half what Amazon charges. So I drove up there and got them today. We also bought a Speed Queen washer from Lacy’s during the pandemic, when all our other options were out of stock. 

Check before you buy, too. An amazing lumber yard called Siewers (pictured above) provided high quality beaded-board ceiling and paneling for a new project here, and every employee, from the counter guy to the loader, was knowledgeable and courteous. The product is superior to any millwork from a chain store. 

 I think if local places want to stay in business, they need to really provide the best customer service around, something that may not be easy to do during the pandemic. The woman who answered the phone at Pleasants today said “hello Kroger‘s.“ That greeting spoke volumes; Pleasants is now hiring anyone with a pulse.

What is to be done? Tell the local place. I told the manager at Pleasants, as politely as I could, “what you don’t carry now I ordered on my iPhone from Amazon,  while standing in aisle 7.”  

I got the item the next day. That manager is gone now. 

If it Burns...BURN IT

Thank you, farmer-friend Dominic, for the title of this post. He puts on his fake Western Hanover County accent and declares this whenever I'm a bit short of firewood.

Which, at present, I am. It's my own damned fault.  If you heat with wood as I do, you may still want a backup for those cold nights when you don't want to go downstairs to fill the stove at 4am.  Of course, you may have to get up anyhow for other reasons, a consequence of reaching middle age.

That said, it's good to have backup. Our new Trane furnace had a manufacturing defect, a bent connection in the heat-exchanger, so it was blowing only cold air. This happened, of course, in the middle of a Polar Vortex. Our installer was on the job quickly, but his firm had to fight Trane for replacement parts. And the thermometer dropped.

The woodpile dropped, fast, too. My four full cords (a stack that would measure 32' x 4' x 4', stacked closely) was getting to it's final stages. I've been cutting and splitting white oak for 2019-20 since I plan to keep not four, but six cords on hand at all times. We already have plenty of green wood for next season but what to do until then?

I recalled an old run-in back in the woods, a haunt of snakes, full of really old firewood. So off I went to get it.

Surprisingly, a lot of wood was still hefty and not paperlike. I found at least one more useable cord, part of which I've pictured here. Yeah, yeah, I know that the firewood geeks (they do exist) caution against burning old wood. They also caution against pine. One imagines millions of Scandinavians freezing to death, every winter, because they don't have hardwood to burn.

The trick to any wood is to have a thermometer on the stove, to avoid two linked catastrophes that can cost you your house, maybe your life. We make sure that no matter what we burn, we avoid creosote build-up in the chimney or an overly hot stove. It's not hard, and despite popular stories about pine or cedar gumming up a flue, they won't in a hot stove. We've never had, in our annual cleanings of the chimney, reports of excess creosote.

Having seen a chimney fire once at a neighbor's house, I don't ever want to see one again. But if you are careful, if it burns, burn it!

Old-School Tools: Hatchets and Axes

To a novice like me,  not long ago all hatchets and axes looked alike. yes, I use both, as well as a maul, to split a lot of smaller logs that don't merit the hydraulic log-splitter with its 27 tons of force. All of my modern tools, as well as a 1930 Keen Kutter "Half Hatchet" inherited from my father-in-law, work wonderfully.  As I began to auction off his collection of tools, however, I found out a lot more than I ever guessed about wood-cutting technology.

There's a great deal of pre-mechanized history here.  We often think of hatchets looking something like one of the two pictured below. Axes might have one blade or, more rarely today in the States, two. There is also the famous fireman's axe, a tool unlikely to ever vanish from regular use.

In fact, a study of a 1930s tool catalog reveals specialized hatchets for shingling, for flooring, and even a "produce" hatchet whose use may be lost to time.  A favorite I no longer see as what is called a "broad axe" head.

Hammers, wrenches, and pliers, other hand tools that survived the coming of power tools, at least has several examples for sale in any modern hardware store, but modern hatchets seem to have dwindled in purpose to the sorts just pictured. So few of us split our own wood in the age of gas logs.

For those who want to know more about the terminology of axes and hatches, I found a Swedish toolmaker's site with an excellent page on the subject. You may find yourself spending more hours there than you should, when you should be out splitting wood!

Wood Stoves Safe in Virginia

Sitting by my wood stove and typing this, I'm actually delighted with Conservatives I usually find rather insane. We know the sort, who tend to block any environmental laws, deny climate change, and take behind-the-back payola, I mean campaign contributions, from corporate polluters.

Usually, I want to pour that sort a toxic-waste Martini. But today, I will reluctantly raise a glass to them. I actually believe they led a worthwhile effort, by protecting citizens' right to heat their homes with wood. I have been using this source of heat since December 2012, and in the coldest weather it saves me $200-$300 per month.

That's not big money for me, and I do have to cut, transport, and season my wood. For poor citizens in my part of the state, however, wood is the only source they can afford. In a cold winter, my neighbors and I each need about four full cords: a stack 32 feet long by four high by four deep.

Wood stoves may well contribute to local air pollution, especially in areas subject to temperature inversions that trap smoke. We've a newer stove that is efficient and burns hot with good seasoned oak. I burn other stuff in a pinch or as kindling, of course.

If Virginia lawmakers had not acted, we might have EPA regulations that would affect new stove installations, not a ban but regulations about the types of stoves that could be used. In theory, I do not oppose that. The poor with older stoves would be grandfathered in, including my current stove that cost us about $3000 for the stove and installing a stainless steel chimney liner. It has paid for itself now, even with an annual chimney and stove cleaning that runs me $250.

My fear is, however, rather like those of some gun owners. Over time, initial regulations would tighten and threaten my right to burn wood.

Government has a role in protecting public health and insuring the natural world is not damaged. I'd like stronger and faster action on climate change, but burning coal is a far worse threat to our planet than tens of millions of wood stoves in colder parts of the nation. Coal ash spills into rivers when containment fails, and mountain-top removal is a great evil of our age. Unlike coal fields, commercial forests can be managed in a way that is sustainable for fuel and the environment; my stove consumes about two matures oaks per year.

We have made progress with new cars that are more fuel efficient, thanks to CAFE standards recently adopted, and that initiative too reduces pollutants. For wood stoves, EPA might work with industry and provide tax incentives for innovations that reduce emissions.  If the car makers manage to do it, so can Dutch West, who built my stove.

Just don't come for my stove, ever, let alone those of my less affluent neighbors. For now, my state officials have "got our backs" on this issue.

The Hungry Stove

From now until April, the wood-stove will gobble up cord after cord of seasoned firewood. A cord measures 8' x 4' x 4' and we may well use FOUR of them this winter, if the cold endures as it did in 2013-14.  If I load it right, the stove will burn nearly all night and keeps the entire house warm. Last night was a cold one for November, and I came downstairs at about 3am and added logs. I was up anyway. When I woke again at 6, the fire was still burning a bit. Add more wood and the house responded.

All that burning brings to mind a few things, and that's not bad when one spends so much evening time by the hungry stove, sipping a good whisky and writing.  I think there is a time-suck called television, but ignoring it for the stove's show is one reason I get so many things done, including learning about what matters to me.

First, there is the notion of burning wood itself. I plan to do so until I am physically unable, but already I've outlasted a few contemporaries who find wood too much trouble. They want to come home flip a switch, and warm up by the simulacrum of a wood fire. That's their choice to make, but to me the entire point of a wood stove is to make you work for heat. The effort to split wood is great, even with a hydraulic-ram splitter such as the one I use for twisted or large logs. Increasingly I hand-split just to get some exercise, a trip to the gym being my idea of hell. Thus the old adage that wood warms you three times: splitting, toting, and burning. 

Gas logs do not add a thing to the garden, and between Dominic's market-garden and mine, we went through 100 gallons of wood ash to raise the PH of our acidic top soil. I will barely replenish that in a season of burning, but it is good to know that ash goes back into the cycle of planting and harvesting out here, not into the landfill. My gas-log acquaintances tend to go to gyms and gripe about the ash-removal part, as they do about raking (or for them, blowing) leaves. I take away leaves and actually bring them here to compost, to add leaf-mold to our garden.

The earth is as hungry like the stove, after all, as are our bellies. Now, after nearly two years of rural life, nearly every meal we fix includes a home-grown ingredient. Some meals are nearly all from the garden, a life-long goal of mine. All that ash and compost is doing the job well.

The biggest lesson of having a stove is spiritual. The second half of life should be a time of letting go, gently. Dylan Thomas was wrong: we should go gentle. So tending stove becomes a ritual of personal and even metaphysical import: I'm reminded of the Busk, a Native-American tradition that Thoreau discusses in Walden, after he encountered it in the travel narratives of William Bartram (a writer I wish we remembers more).  We refer to "busking" today as a way to sell things, but the old word was quite the opposite: it was an act of creative and cleansing destruction.  Tribes would burn old and broken possessions, worn-out furniture, and other items to make way for the new.

My stove is doing exactly that, by trading old wood and kindling (the latter from a hundred carpentry projects) for a Spring garden. The fire-pit outside burns other less seasoned and softer woods, but also outdated paperwork and such. It's a wonderful tradition we might revive in our consumerist present.

And thus, be a bit thankful about letting things go. Happy Thanksgiving and stay warm!

Looking for Mama Tree: Tree of "Heaven" Update

Not 32,000 seeds, almost all viable. 325,000 seeds, every year. Ah, Ailanthus altissima.

If you are managing--eradication being impossible--this invasive species in a time of climate change, you face an uphill battle. This plant, like poison ivy and other plants that don't serve our needs, is here to stay as Carbon-Dioxide levels continue to rise in the atmosphere.

Without resorting to clear-cutting, a practice that actually propagates the plant, or chemicals noxious to us and our bees, there are some ways to reduce the presence of this tree.

I found a great article from Phil Pannill, Regional Watershed Forester with the Forest Service at Maryland's Department of Natural Resources (link to Mr. Pannill's PDF here). It seems that the practices described last year in this blog will help, but I did find two huge "Mother trees" in the woods or near the roadside that need to be destroyed.

Thanks to the article, I now know I can do this without too many chemicals or even a chainsaw. I'm going to make hatchet-cuts around the trunks and brush in Roundup, as I do on the small trees I've been cutting. Last year's culling only yielded one tree that re-sprouted, so the method for smaller trees is about 90% successful for me. Next I'm going to put on my snakeproof chaps and wade into the thickets to get the rest, including the two "mamas" that make more seeds than there are people around here.

The key to controlling the trees in wooded areas is to keep them from reaching the canopy. If one keeps at the seedlings, they'll decline and die in the shade. Mama, however, is going to take a bit more effort. I'm still investigating what to do with the logs and brush. If they are safe to take to the county landfill to compost, off they go. The trunks are pretty and used in China for cabinetry, so I may keep them around to see how they weather for outdoor use in the garden or field.

An Unplanned Road Trip: "The Day of the Tractors"

As I get my English 216 students to consider their own required road trips for the course, as irony would have it, I had to make my own.

Thus, I get to kill two birds with one stone: giving them a model for their project as well as writing both for the class blog and my Tractorpunk blog.  The impetus for the trip was simple. Our used but "new to us" Allis-Chalmers 6410 would be delivered by rollback to Buckingham County, then a John Deere 1250, the same tractor/backhoe that nearly killed my father-in-law, would come to Goochland where much work awaits it.  For more than a decade, I've worked on my in-law's old homestead to renovate an 1850 farmhouse and clear old fields and roads.  This trip to the farmhouse (shown above) would be a turning point. We no longer needed a backhoe to move mountains of dirt.

Plans like that rarely go smoothly. That mine did turn out well says a bit about the virtue of advance planning in spite of heavy weather. Driving up from Richmond on VA 6 and US 15, I'd made it as far as the little town of Dillwyn, VA, to await the truck carrying my tractor. As I made progress, the clouds thickened and the radio issued warnings with assuring words such as "horizontal rain" and "damaging winds."

Ignoring such loomings, down the road I went. I turned up my road-trip music, Gillian Welch's "Time (The Revelator)." Yes, take time enough, or just wait and pay enough attention, and all things will be revealed. I still buy CDs and crank them, rip them, and make my own mixes. But this recording of hers, while not about the Road, merits start-to-finish listening. There's not a weak song to be had.

Reaching Dillwyn, inspired by my road-hero William Least-Heat Moon, I ducked into two local places for sustenance. First I went to the window at Dairy Freeze, a drive-in of the 1950s sort that serves up decent cheeseburgers, good shakes, and oddities of Southern backroads such as Pizza Burgers, Bologna Burgers, and even a church flash-mob in 2012, dancing in the parking lot. I'm as suspicious of any organized religion as Least Heat-Moon in Blue Highways, but the video of the mob did make me grin.  That looks like a fun thing for God's followers to do.

God was not on my side at Dairy Freeze, however; they opened at 10 and it was 9:45. The obese lady getting ready to open, a woman who has often filled my orders with much haste and little mirth, shook her head and mouthed the word "closed." The weather looked like wrath-of-God stuff, so I drove my pickup across the highway (to take my shelter with me) and walked into Farmer's Foods for a road-snack. I came away with Lance crackers, a bottle of overpriced but cold water, and an Fuji apple. Not Sal Paradise's amazing deserts, "the pies bigger, the ice cream richer" (15) as he makes his first sojourn to Denver in On the Road, but any snack is welcome when the stomach growls and the sky lowers like an angry blanket.  For later I picked up a wedge of farmhouse cheddar cheese I have only found at this little store, a 1950s idea of a supermarket with decor that would never pass muster in Richmond because of its cartoonish rusticity: smiling cow, cartoon farmer, big pieces of fruit on the walls over the display cases.

The sign touts low prices and lacks letters, yet makes an attempt to be 21st Century with a Web address provided. Never mind that the address is tough to follow because of missing letters. From the Web site, I discovered that a real Johnny Farmer started the firm. A new Food Lion down the road has not put this location under, either. The store's scale and simplicity call to mind Heat-Moon's ideas, in particular his his encounter with a man who tells him "Americans have just got afraid to taste anything" (54). That would include having a taste for local culture that is not artisanal and expensive, as I find in the cities. On the other hand, Farmer's Foods is no mecca for local cuisine. Even my favorite cheese there is at best a decent mild cheddar, not too different from a good national brand. But folks in Dillwyn would not, and many could not, slap down fifteen dollars a pound for the sort of stuff I love.

It's easy to get Romantic about a place one passes through. I've shopped at Farmer's a dozen times in as many years, and I will never be a regular. The clerks know other customers' names. Not mine. They can't tell I'm an outsider from the way I dress when I'm in Buckingham--John Deere Cap, Duluth canvas work pants, work shirt, Redwing boots--that my tastes are different from Dillwyn's. Chalk it up to traveling the world. That opened my head: I want English table-water crackers with that farmhouse cheddar cheese and a craft-brewed local beer, not national swill. It just happens on the road. Travel, not mere tourist jaunts with a guide or in some prettified and sterile "resort," alter the traveler. Heat-Moon quotes John Le Carre, who noted about the journey of death that "Nothing ever bridged the gap between the man who went and the man who stayed behind" (188).  I would not recognize the person who, in 1985, boarded a flight for Europe.

Back then, after reading Blue Highways I learned something. Heat-Moon contributed to my desire to get out of Richmond. Yet my own road ran through the sky to Spain, where I moved for a year before graduate school pulled me back. I'd sold everything save a '74 Buick, dutifully stored in a garage with weight off the tires and stabilizer in the gas tank. I was never certain, however, that I would return for that car until I accepted the offer to attend Indiana University's PhD program. Spain was full of what Heat-Moon, quoting Proudhon, calls "the fecundity of the unexpected" (108). So is urban Richmond and rural Virginia, but I could not see it then.  All I could see in the 80s were Yuppies with more money than sense, bad musical tastes, and the and the ruination of farmland and forest along Broad Street into more of the suburbia I've loathed since childhood.

Rain was spitting as I got back to the truck, and I just made it. Soon the vehicle was shaking and shuddering in high wind, and only now, that I think back, do I recall those Weather Channel videos of cars being tossed around like Hot Wheels as a tornado strikes.  I wondered where my tractor might be, or more precisely, which ditch had swallowed it and the truck carrying it.  Then, on cue, the sky cleared and I picked up my smart phone. This happened to be my first-ever road trip with one of them. I phoned Ricky, the trucker hauling my rig, and he said was passing BB&T. That put him just down the rustic strip of quasi-suburbia from me. I only hate it less because downtown Dillwyn, a slate-mining town of nice brick storefronts, remains intact with only a few vacancies. Yet there is not a single place to eat there; for that, food has moved south to the strip and what it offers. I'm just pleased that Dairy Freeze packs in more folks than the McDonald's up the way.

Amid these somewhat morbid thoughts, I watched as Ricky's rig pulled in with my orange and "new to me" tractor. I was delighted. Ricky drove the fifteen minutes to our farm-gate and not a foot more. Our road in was nearly a half-mile of mud, at spots a foot deep. I had run it that morning, looking for downed trees, and I had to use four-wheel drive all the way. There was no way a service vehicle would make it. Luckily, by the time I got back with my John Deere backhoe, Ricky had unloaded the new tractor, and I drove it on through the mud all the way to my barn.

The unexpected had occurred again. There was not as much as a sapling down across the road from all that wind, despite the soil being saturated with water from the melted snow and the rain that melted it.  Weather works that way.

The next day my wife and I were there again at the homestead, with the Blue Ridge visible from the road at the top of our hill.  it would be an overnight mission, to cut some fallen pines and use the trunks to border our raised-bed garden.

Nancy had me stop the pickup at the top of the road, where a local man named Sam lives, a nice gent who once gave us his tiny phone book so we could look up a number. Sam told us "y'all keep it! Who am I gonna call? I know their numbers already."  My students probably will never again use a phone book, but I suspect they'd envy the view from Sam's front yard the visit stuns a visitor in clear weather. Our gently sloping mountains, largely protected from cancerous development, run across the entire Western horizon like a group of old friends coming to visit us. Nan  said "THAT looks like Virginia." She was right. If you love a place enough and are lucky to return and not be restless, there's a thrill of recognition of a place that looks like home.

In the shadows of those mountains local industries flourish: craft-breweries and cideries, ski-slopes (cutting tree and adding condos), vineyards, kayaking liveries, small-herd sheep and cattle ranching.  Each one beckons a short road trip far from strip-development, tract-housing, and big congested roads. I suspect that Heat-Moon was a bit pessimistic when he wrote Blue Highways. While disasters like Wal-Mart have devastated a great number of family businesses, there's been a concurrent and sustained interest, since the 1990s, in local food, local business, even a voluntary simplicity movement among consumers.

My hope is that these prove harbingers of a nation of blue highways or, at the very least, a space for tinkerers, homesteaders, nay-sayers, and gentlemen farmers like me.  Will my hope come to pass? Rolling home Sunday, for another week of education at the hands of my students, I realized that time would, indeed, be the revelator.

Works Cited:

Heat-Moon, W. L. Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. Boston: Back Bay, 1999.

Kerouac, J. On The Road. New York: Penguin, 1976.

Before the Next Storm

Ever since climate change began to show its effects locally by ever-warmer winters, we have spells of very warm weather followed by a crash. This year, however, the temperatures have been closer to seasonal normals, and that means we may actually get some snow and ice. We only had a little here last winter, enough to coat the old oak out back.

Right now, in late Autumn, we're seeing the sorts of weather I call "Wimpy Richmond Winter": it snows north and west and we get "sleeze": a mix of winter goop that coats things with a little ice, then turns to rain. While the next storm looks like mostly a rain-maker here, with temperatures just above freezing, hard experience has taught me that one nudge by the system could mean an inch of ice or several inches of snow (I hope I hope!).

That is when I find myself stacking wood on a freakishly 70-degree December day, checking the generator, and watching the sky.

I guess city people do these things. I did keep a woodpile in town, but with Krogers at the end of the street, there was no urgency to stock up. Here, however, we already have enough non-perishable food for a storm and after.

Let's see what the weather brings. It always brings something.