Backyard Full of Nature

Late Sunday afternoon I took a walk into the right of way behind the house.  I wanted to check out where the power company had recently cleared (post here) because I have been thinking about sowing some wild flowers there, and perhaps putting in a bee hive.

As I walked down the hill, I started hearing the sounds of something moving through the wood lot.  It was just rustling leaves on the ground, and not very loud, so I thought it could just be a squirrel, or maybe a browsing deer - although that wasn't very likely.

But suddenly right in front of me a young bear popped out into the clearing - not 20 feet away.  He didn't see me, so I had time to get my phone and snap off a couple of photos.

As it happens, I'd seen him last weekend down at the stream, but I was too far away to get a photo.  This time it all worked out.  Afterwards, I made a lot of noise so he would look back at me, and maybe to scare him off.

It's not the first time I've seen a youngster around the yard, but it has been a few years - 2009, in fact, as documented in this post!  They stop in the neighborhood, and as long as they aren't encouraged to stick around, generally move on after a few days.  I hope that's what happened with this fellow.

The distraction meant I didn't make any progress on my plan for bee hives.  But Mother Nature wasn't quite finished with me yet - as I came back near the house I discovered a shed snakeskin.  It was a pretty decent size, about four feet long, left by a black rat snake.

This is a critter we see around here much more often - I'll bet I see one every year, and sometimes I'll see more than one.  Here's a post about one I saw at work in 2014, and here's another about the last time we had one in the yard.  

Of course, no post about black rat snakes would be complete without a link to this post, which is about the time I found one in the laundry room of the cabin.

To be honest, these encounters are part of what I look forward to on my weekends out here.  I like to think they help me find some balance, juxtaposed against a 45-minute commute and all those Excel spreadsheet exercises I have to do during the week.  And yeah, these two sightings definitely rounded out last weekend for me.

Tree Trimming in the Hollow - with @svec_coop

A few weeks ago, our local power company came through to clear some trees along the right of way in the back, behind the cabin.  They've been working for a while on this project and our neighborhood's turn finally came - only the crews were interrupted by the big snow that happened last month.

They came back today to clean up all the downed branches and trees that had been removed.  So right now I'm getting serenaded with safety beepers and chippers. (Just like at work!)

Beaver Run cuts through here, so there is a steep little valley that makes it interesting with these vehicles, but as the one photo shows, that is not stopping them.

Earlier I took a walk out there to check everything out - it struck me that my little yard is only part of the whole county, and their effort has been going on for some time.  It's quite the industry.

Then one of the guys said that they actually used helicopters up in here to take down the branches that were too close to the lines.  I was sorry I missed that - had no idea.



I decided to look it up online though - and I found a good explanation video on YouTube that I have embedded below.  Pretty good show - I still wish I could have seen it in person!

The Hiatus

After such a busy August - followed by a busy couple of weeks at my day job, I took a little time off from blogging.  We've kept up our usual activities at Hawksbill Cabin in the meantime, so there's no shortage of topics to post about!


Yesterday I took a long drive to deliver some hops - I'll get a post up about the trip and the brewery later this week.  In the meantime, I have had a little time to relax on the brick terrace this morning while I write.  An Tess and I took a ride over to the hop yard to have a look around at how fall is beginning to settle in.


David put in a pumpkin patch next to the yard, and the gourds are starting to come in.  Here's a photo of some of them to get us started again.  As I walked around over there, there were still quite a few plumping up - one especially was larger than any of these.

Tess had a great walk, we explored the hop yard and the pumpkin patch, caught wind of the herd of deer that lives around there, and then we walked over to the new fields where the honey bees are.  David has sown the cover crop in there - I'm guessing winter rye.  That reminds me we have some fall cleanup ahead at the hop yards, as well.

Nature Break at Hawksbill Cabin

I was taking care of some chores on Saturday afternoon and happened to catch a little movement out of the corner of my eye.  It turned out to be this little praying mantis, no more than an inch and a half long.

We get them every year in the gardens at the cabin, sometimes I see them when they're young, but more frequently I see the mature ones, since they're bigger and much easier to spot.  I think this is the smallest one I've seen to date.

I hope it gets its fill of some of our bugs.

Harvest Time 2

Again I'm borrowing some Facebook posts from a friend, this time Sue at Wisteria Farm and Vineyard.  I couldn't make it out to the start of harvest season at Wisteria, but Mary did and she texted me a few times about how much she was enjoying herself.  So I thought I'd go ahead and make a post out of these borrowed photos.

Wisteria's annual harvest kick-off features two traditions - first, the blessing by a local Orthodox priest, and second, barefoot stomping of the grapes.  Meanwhile, a volunteer force goes out to gather the first crop (I think Seyval this year), which turned out to be a record.

There was a good crowd of volunteers to help with the harvest and the first bout of chores that need to be done - hauling in the crates, weighing the samples to calculate the yield and forecast how much wine will be produced, de-stemming, and then all the cleaning and scrubbing.  That's just the first day of each variety's harvest!







On the second day, the de-stemmed grapes are pressed into juice, and the actual process of fermentation begins.  I like all the parts of the process, but I especially like the work on the second day - probably because it has a lot in common with my brewing activities.

I'm sorry I missed a harvest day though.  The season runs for a few more weeks - eventually it will be time to bring in the reds, so I'll get out before it's over.  And looking forward to it.

Harvest Time 1

I'm borrowing these photos from David at Public House Produce, but I saw last week that he had harvested a bunch of pumpkins from "TRP" - The River Patch, and I wanted to put them up here on Hawksbill Cabin.

TRP is a relatively new bit of ground they're working, and I believe it is planted with pumpkins and winter squash.  Gourds, if you will.

It's a challenging bit of ground to work, too - there is an irrigation system in the mix, and it's open season for deer and gopher around there.

David harvested 10 big crates of pumpkins last week and hauled them down to the Dayton auction.  The load was big enough to take it through the drive aisle (see a video) - but David and his wife were headed out of town so he left them on pallets with the auction master.

That's a lot of pies and jack-o-lanterns!

Bugs and Slugs

It's typical that we see a praying mantis or two every year at Hawksbill Cabin.  For one thing, I suppose that is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, to have such a bug around and coming back year after year - the mantises and the toads and snakes.

So last Sunday I was looking out the window at the emerging beautiful day we had on our hands, and there was this young praying mantis crawling up the window.  I tend to see them a little later in the year, in September, when they are nearly full grown.  This little one was about two inches long - although the close-up makes him look much larger.

A little later, I took Tess around to the back yard while the coffee was brewing.  As we turned the corner on the gravel pathway, I looked down to find this enormous slug, larger than any I've ever seen.  We've had problems with them before, eating garden plants...this guy obviously got away with it for a long time!

It's nature.

Pig Wranglin' - Part 3

With one pig moved using the “goat halter” method, we stopped to regroup.  This method didn’t meet up to expectations on several accounts – for one thing, the pig squealing had upset and exhausted all the on-lookers, and for another, David’s shoe was full of…how shall I put it…ordure du cochon -

All was suddenly as I feared, and we were going to have to move on to Plan C:

“Chase down and catch the pigs one by one, and then carry them the 200 yards or so...”

Queue Flatt and Scruggs-

We went back to the barnyard, where the pigs had gone back into the chicken coop and were resting from all the excitement.  David remembered that he had an old training crate for his dogs, so we thought about how we might coax the animals into it one by one and transport them that way.  So the first thought was to see if we couldn’t just open the door to the chicken coop and let one of them out into the crate.

We tried it – but the pigs didn’t cooperate.  They knew by now that we were after them and they just looked at the open door, seeing that we had set a trap for them.  Then they just milled around the coop, eventually settling down in the straw to wait for us to go away.

Our next big idea was to move them back to the goat stall, and see if we couldn’t corral them from there.  Same technique for moving them – that worked, and now we had the three pigs back where we wanted them.

I carefully positioned the crate in front of the gate, and we opened it just slightly, so that unless the pigs took a flying leap they’d have nowhere to go except for inside.  Then David went around behind the pigs to rustle them up.  One came over to check out the crate.

David swooped in and caught the pig’s two back trotters, lifting them off the ground, and proceeded to try and push the pig into the crate wheelbarrow-style.  Once the pigs head was safely inside, we knew that the body would follow…that’s just how pigs work.

The pig’s head was free and he was choosing every direction but in the crate.  He got his nose under the crate, around the crate, over the crate, and at one point, he had part of himself squeezed between the gate and the crate.  Finally, David decided to snatch him completely off the ground and kind of toss him in – and I snapped the little hatch door closed.

Next step was to move him in the crate, which had taken a beating from all of this and didn’t look like it would survive being carried over.  We decided it might be best to haul the thing - pig and all - over to the new pasture, using the tractor with the bucket attachment.  We loaded him in, and I climbed in beside the crate for the ride.

Taking stock of my situation, you’d never catch me at work riding one of the machines.  But this was different – we were moving the pigs – and sometimes, you just have to go with it.  I hope none of our safety monitors are reading this.

That pig had settled right down as soon as he was in the crate.  I think it even went to sleep for a few minutes during the short drive over to the new pasture, where we unloaded him and then reconnected the electricity to the fence.  He immediately joined his colleague happily grazing and rooting around the fresh ground.

It was time for us to reconsider our approach – this crate method had worked out for us, but the other pigs had learned that once a pig went in, he didn’t come back.  Pigs are smart, you know, and also, these last two were wary. 

We spent another half hour in the barnyard with those two pigs, trying to catch them and move them.  It was a failed effort though – eventually, our thoughts turned to having some cold hard cider.  You know, there is a new cidery in the Valley…

I caught up with David and his brother a few days later at an event.  They told me they had started fresh the next morning, and moved the last two pigs easily – they even got them both into the crate at the same time.  I was happy and proud I could help come up with such an innovative, easy way to wrangle the pigs. 

I went back for eggs the next weekend, driving up slowly to make sure that the Sourses weren’t home this time.  It was all quiet while I made my transaction in the cooler, and then I quietly drove away, unscathed, and not out of my depth this time.

Still, on the way out, I stopped to check out the pigs in the new pasture.  When I walked up to the fence, they came a-running, putting the past behind them, happy to be on the fresh ground doing their piggy things.  They’ve got a few months left now to enjoy themselves.

Pig Wranglin' - Part 2

Three of this year's group.  Lower left is the haltered pig.

We had come up with three ways to move the pigs, but we were already ruling them out, so I was worried we were going to run out of options.  Here are the three plans we’d hatched: 

1. Build a short pathway from the barnyard to the pasture - but we didn't have enough electric fencing to get us all the way there.
2. Use the goat halters to calmly walk the pigs from one place to the other.  This one sounded really good, in theory - at the time, I was not familiar with how readily pigs accept being on a leash.
3. Chase down and catch the pigs one by one, and then carry them the 200 yards or so...the pigs at this stage are only 50 pounds or so, so I agreed that the idea was feasible, but not necessarily practical.

At their present size, the pigs could still get into the chicken coop, and they often slept in there with the chickens roosting above and on them.  It was a quiet and comfortable place for them – and so we decided we might use it as a corral.  We’d simply get them all to go in there and then we would shut the little door so they couldn’t get out.

David trekked around to the barn to find the goat halter and Brett and I wrangled the pigs into the chicken coop.  However, after a few tries in the closed quarters, it looked like the halter plan wasn’t going to work.  We decided to rustle them over to the goat stall, where we would have more room and the pigs would be closer to the gate we would use to move them through. 

Brett and I were stationed outside the chicken coop with a large plywood board to guide the pigs over to the other stall.  Our thinking was that if they came out of the coop and their view to the barnyard was blocked, they’d naturally turn towards the goat stall – and once they were headed in that direction it would be a natural thing for them to just go on in there, especially once they saw us out in the barnyard.  And that was just how it worked out for us – easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

But now we had a stall full of four pigs who were on to us.  We closed the gate on them, and David dropped the halter down on one of the pigs, catching it under one of its forelegs and around the neck. 

If you catch a dog this way, as long as the animal is not already panicked, you might find it simply relaxes under the gentle pressure applied to its chest and back – it’s a calming feeling to them that reminds them of their mother’s care when they were pups.  Not so with pigs – their instinct is that any constraint means that they have become a prey animal, and the eating will begin soon. 

The pig was right in this case, except that we planned to give it a few more months before the deed must be done.  But the animal bucked and jumped a few times, and the screaming started.  Not something you want to be around – I heard the peanut gallery over there yelling “Make it stop!” a few times.

This pig wasn’t going anywhere on a leash.  It finally just collapsed on the floor of the stall and waited to meet its maker – except that wasn’t our plan at all.  David moved in and hefted the pig off the ground, hauling him towards the gate and yelling out instructions as he went, only barely loud enough to be heard over the pig.

We got them through gate, closing it behind so the others couldn’t get out.  David was moving along at a trot, with the pig in his arms, and I followed along to open the electric fence (that we had turned off, I should be sure to note).  Meanwhile the pig was screaming all the while.

David’s triathlon training was paying off, and I had trouble keeping up with him, but there was another good reason for me to keep my distance.  About halfway to the new pasture, David looked over his shoulder and back at me, asking asked, “Is this pig peeing on me?”

“No, David,” I said, “he’s shitting on you.” In fact, the pig had been continuously evacuating itself since they’d gotten out of the barnyard.  Fortunately, most of it had not landed on David – but now I noticed that he was not going to emerge unscathed from the experience.

“I think I got some in my shoe!” he said.

Plan C at work - but that's tomorrow's post.

As we continued along towards the new pasture, I had to reflect on my own preparation for this experience.  Two years of butchering, and a month as an agribusiness intern doing odd jobs on the farm, and this was the first time I had seen an animal release such quantities – and on the fly, so to speak, as well.  I had developed such a pastoral, bucolic view of the whole eat local thing, but that was turning into something altogether different, and fast.

I turned these thoughts over in my mind until I remembered why we were doing this – for next spring’s bacon.  I got over it pretty quickly after that.  We sped through the rest of the chore, getting that pig in its new pasture and turning on the electric fence, and our thoughts began to move on to how we might catch and move the other three.

At this point, the one thing we knew for sure was that this approach wasn’t going to work for us with the next one.  We were going to move on to plan C – and that’s where I will pick up the story tomorrow.

Pig Wranglin' - Part 1

“Never wrestle with a pig.  You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” - Unknown

A few weeks ago, when my nephew visited, we decided to drop by Public House Produce to pick up some eggs for breakfast.  Our plan was to pair them up with some of the bacon I had from last winter’s butchering, with Mary making a batch of Popovers(!) from the mix our friend Brian sent us – he’s written about them frequently on his blog “Breakfast at Epiphany’s”:  http://breakfastatepiphany.blogspot.com/search/label/Popovers

The four pigs in the barnyard, before we started.

As we entered the driveway, the Sourses were out front playing with their dogs, so we yelled “howdy” to each other – when you hear this in person, on one side of it, it sounds more like “Woooooooo!” – and I mentioned we were after eggs (although I also wanted to check in on the 2014 pigs).  They wished us well and we drove on back, where we picked up the eggs, and then I showed Brett the pigs and chickens in the barn stalls.

The visit went well and we had our eggs - it was all "good times on the farm" - and then David came around for a chat.  He asked if I might help him with a chore:  He needed to move the four pigs from the barnyard to a new pasture, and it was a task that required at least two people.  Despite my fears of not being up to the task, my fears of basic ineptitude or inadequacy, I agreed.

David tells the story of how a couple of years ago, the first year I was involved with the pig business, he went to the barn to tend the animals and saw the pigs and goats all mixed together in a stall.  They get along very well for the most part, and by this time the pigs had gotten over 200 pounds.  As he walked up, he noticed that one of the pigs had the back leg of one of the goats in his mouth - just sort of casually sizing up whether his stall mates might make a good meal or not.  

This was serious business.  Here we are sizing up the task
after moving the first pig.  Some might call this phase
"Moving on to Plan B."

It seemed the close quarters were getting everybody into trouble.  The goat was none the worse for the experience, but that led David to decide the pigs and goats needed to be put out to greener - and larger - pastures once the herd got to a certain stage of maturity.   So that bit of insight was what led to the chore that we were going to take on today.

Now, it's a standard practice of mine - whenever I happen to be there for a chore - to get a pretty thorough walk through of the task at hand.  This has served me well, because the first purpose of the conversation is to determine if this is a real assignment...something actually necessary on the farm, and not a practical joke to be played on greenhorns.  We quickly progressed past this stage on the chore, reference the story about the goat and pig above.

The second purpose of this orientation discussion is to find out if there is an actual plan for the activity.  I just want to know what to expect, since I am honestly a newbie at some of this - and I'm not shy to admit it.  It turned out that beyond some basic ideas about how to do it, there wasn't really a plan for moving the pigs along.  However, the goats were already "over there" in the pasture, about 200 yards away.

David spelled out three alternatives for how we might accomplish the migration. It wasn't exactly like we would be parting the Red Sea or anything, but still it was going to be a challenging task:

1. Build a short pathway from the barnyard to the pasture - but we didn't have enough electric fencing to get us all the way there.
2. Use the goat halters to calmly walk the pigs from one place to the other.  This one sounded really good, in theory - at the time, I was not familiar with how readily pigs accept being on a leash.
3. Chase down and catch the pigs one by one, and then carry them the 200 yards or so...the pigs at this stage are only 50 pounds or so, so I agreed that the idea was feasible, but not necessarily practical.

My next post will move on to the execution of this chore - including our decision about how to do the job.  But in the meantime, I'll leave you with this short video of our assessment of how cooperative we might expect the pigs to be.  As you watch, consider how easily it might be to implement option 3.  

Quality Time at the Vineyard

We had a couple of events planned for the weekend, centered around activities at our neighbors', Wisteria Vineyard.  The harvest season has begun, and the volunteers are moving through the vineyard picking the Pinot and Seyval so far.  More varieties are coming along, and we're hoping to get back out spend some time working with everybody (and enjoying the vertical tastings that are a requisite educational part of this whole thing).

We were too late on Saturday to be part of the picking in the morning, or the other event that was scheduled that day - the annual picking and stomping, a la I Love Lucy.

http://youtu.be/1vZtU4LdY2E?t=1m34s


That's always a great time, and so far we haven't seen any pushing and shoving - or grapes tossing, for that matter.

In the evening, Sue and Moussa had planned a fund raising event for a local charity and we joined the fun.  In addition to having a good time visiting with friends, I was looking forward to having a few minutes to walk around the vineyard hoping for a good photo opp or two - the quality of light in these late summer evenings is incredible, and the fall colors are just coming out.

As it happened, the sheep went out to pasture to have a last minute graze just as the sun was sinking.  There's a bit of golden light in the treetops, and in the background you can see some of the harvest gear staged for future picking (this is the "white" side of the vineyard - the "reds" aren't picked until later this month, which is when we'll be back to get more involved).

You know, a vineyard is a pretty photogenic place.  I'll have to keep that in mind.

Big Water on Beaver Run

The Potomac River flows near the house in Alexandria - we can walk down to the river on a leisurely stroll if we wanted, and I drive by the tidal part of it and up through the gorge on my daily commute.  It serves as a connection from the Alexandria house to Hawksbill Cabin, because you can trace the path of the water here in the Potomac back through the Shenandoah River, to the South Branch, to Hawksbill Creek in Luray, to the Little Hawksbill Creek, and finally to Beaver Run, which forms one of our property lines as we look out across the hollow from the brick terrace at Hawksbill Cabin.

There is so much water in the Potomac though - and that conceals just how much might have fallen upstream, and the challenges and damage that those storms can bring.  That's the case with the five-inch rainfall that caused the high water on the Hawksbill I wrote about on Monday, it was a real challenge to the little Beaver Run stream to drain the hills and hollows it runs through out in Stanley.

We were out there for one of these storms, which I posted about here:  http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2010/03/weekend-rains.html; we just heard about the storm last Friday and then we saw the aftermath.

By the time we arrived on Saturday morning, our friend Mickey had already been out to plow the driveway, collecting all the gravel that had washed down into the road.  We've got plans for some remedies to mitigate the problems we are having with the driveway and I will post about them soon.   But there were lingering signs of how high the water actually got this time.

The first one was a log that had floated up out of the stream bed and lay by the side of the road, where the creek runs under a little bridge.  Then, as we looked closer, we could see how the flows had washed away some of the ground around the bridge and its rock footers.

It is part of cabin lore, and probably a subject for a future post, but the bridge has washed out before during a hurricane in the early 1990's - both Sally and Dan and Steve and Noelle have told us about that, and someday I'd like to get a scan of the photos they have for the blog.

The bridge was reengineered after that and is a much sturdier structure - but I don't know how many of these strong storms it can take - and that's the reason I'm calling VDOT, hopefully we'll get them out soon for a look so they can assess any potential damage.

Unwinding Jordan Hollow Farm Inn

This is the last of three posts this week meant to help me get caught up on the vacation week that Mary and I spent at Hawksbill Cabin in late May.  I still have a few left, but won’t put them up until next week at the earliest.

Back in 2010, the locally famous Jordan Hollow Farm Inn finally succumbed to a combination of the bad economy and some bad business decisions by the owners, and it went into foreclosure.  Somewhere in the history of this blog, a reader might find a few photos of the property back then, as Mary and I took a couple of looks at it while we tried to decide if we might make a play for it at the foreclosure auction.

At the time, the bank was sticking with a price that was just too high.  I ran some proformas and simply couldn’t find a way to make the old inn work with the mortgage that would be required – so we passed on it.  We met a lot of good local people during our due diligence, and we got to spend some time with a few good friends who could offer insight into the wisdom of the venture, so I count the whole experience as a win

Eventually the price came down to almost half of what the bank originally sought.  The moment had passed for us, but the price was too good for the property to sit for much longer and a new buyer appeared.  Now we’ve been watching the place with great interest as a lot of improvements have been made under the new trade name of ‘Hawksbill Hideaway.’

A couple of weekends ago, there was an auction of some of the personal property at the place – I guess you’d call that the final unwinding of the old inn.  The event was just packed, but after having benefitted from a couple of up close and personal looks at all the items that were up for auction, there really wasn’t anything that Mary and I could use, or would likely bid on.

That is, except for two items – the old signs for the inn.  I’d used a modified PowerPoint version of one of them on my business plan when Mary and I were looking at the place. They’d been tucked away in the old barn gathering dust; I saw them on one of my old walk-throughs, but I had completely forgotten about them. 

We stopped by the auction briefly on our way back from the farmers market, just as the crowd was moving to the vehicles and lawn care equipment.  We walked around looking at the flotsam and jetsam of what had been a popular local spot a couple of decades ago, sorry to see it coming to an end like that.

Then I spotted a lady moving the signs around.  She’s picked them up for less than $50 for both.  I chatted with her a bit, and told me she had taken riding lessons at the inn when she was a youngster, so having the signs around her farm was going to be a nice memory.

I agreed, and told her they probably were the only things I might have been interested in, too, but that I was glad to hear they were going to a place like hers where they would be appreciated.

And then I helped her load them into her car.

Early Season Action at the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction

On our vacation last week, one of the essential activities I had planned was a drive down to the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction in Dayton, VA.  I learned about the place when I worked with David during my "agribusiness internship" back in 2011; we went back last summer as well.  This time I wanted to see the early season crops...but Mary suspects that we went because I wanted some pie.

They have a little snack bar out in the back where you can buy sandwiches and sodas - and pie.  There is a board where they list the varieties of the day.  It's funny how on the day we went, everything was a two word flavor.  For the record, we both chose one of my favorites - oatmeal pecan.

As far as the produce available, there was more than I expected, including early lots of tomatoes.  David said that some of the farmers use hoop houses, so they get an extended growing season that is 6 weeks earlier and 6 weeks later.

While most of what was available was flowers (there are always plenty of these), there were some flats of herbs grown from seed, and a few other varieties.  I made a little video of the call on some auctions - it's embedded below (you can see another action video on the Hawksbill Cabin YouTube channel!).



The auction's web page is here:  http://svproduceauction.com/

It's a very pleasant drive, with the last part cruising over some winding back roads through dairy farm country.  My last photo from the outing is of a barley field at one of the neighboring farms.  We were lucky with a beautiful day for our trip!

ISO...My Driveway

Well, there was a real gully washer out at Hawksbill Cabin a few weeks ago.  I knew because my friend David showed the picture of his weather station, which reported, “It’s raining cats ‘n’ dogs.”  Then neighbor Dan sent me note telling me we’d had a washout.

So, I was prepared for some damage out there – over the course of the summer t-storms we always need to have Mickey come out with the box blade for some minor repairs, and then from time to time we have something a little more major, like this time.

In any case, while I was out walking the dog on Sunday morning, I decided it might be worthwhile to track down exactly where our driveway had gone…I found it, about a hundred yards down the road, deposited in a neat pile in the little meadow alongside Beaver Run.  It was like a practical joke courtesy of Mother Nature.

Mickey will be out soon to do some repairs.  But I don’t know if his tractor will be able to get back in there for the flotsam – we might have to fork out for some new gravel this time.

Pruning the Old Apple Tree

We’ve been talking about getting the old apple tree pruned for years now.  I’ve written about our plans to do just that quite a few times – check the link at the end of this post and you can see that I’ve been writing about it since 2008!

The winter this year, with at least four decent snow falls, took a toll on the pines around the Hawksbill Cabin yard.  We figured that as long as we were having so much tree work done – we took down about five mature pines, a couple of dead trees in the side yard, and one dead dogwood – we would have the tree guys prune back the apple tree.  And instead of a careful prune of just a third of the tree, we pruned hard, since I am sure that tree hadn’t been attended to in close to 40 or 50 years.

Our timing was good, as friends had told me that March is the time to prune your apples.  Another bit of advice I got was that apple trees aren’t supposed to be pretty – they’re supposed to grow fruit, and you get that by pruning.

Last week I saw a few blossoms, not nearly as many as in years past, but we know we haven’t killed it, and it is leafed out nicely.  Next year we’ll pick some of the small branches to keep and prune off the rest of them, and hopefully we’ll be back to full crops again in a few years.

In the meantime, I collected a bunch of the old branches and had them sawn into firewood length.  The wood is curing out on the brick terrace.  We’ll look forward to some fragrant camp fires out on the brick terrace next fall.

Incidentally, a quick look at those old posts reminded me that we seemed to have good harvests in even-numbered years.  I am sure that is just a coincidence, but who is to say.  In any case – here’s the link to the old posts about the apple tree:

http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/search?q=apple+tree

The Barn Cats

Sometime in the early summer we noticed this litter of kittens taking shelter around the shed, mostly under the lean-to where some old building materials are stored. Four of them, and sometimes when the mother showed up - barely more than a kitten herself - five.

They stuck around, and later we learned that the neighbors had been feeding the mother, so she stuck around the area and considered it home.

About a month later, I saw four more kittens in the front yard, emerging from under the pool deck.  It wasn't long before we saw the mother there, too, and we also learned that the mother was being fed by the neighbors.

Ten stray, un-neutered cats. Well, over the course of the first month or so, one of the kittens from the first batch, and another one or two from the second, had been killed off or died.  They're strays, and nobody is reliably taking care of them - we don't live there full time and have no intention of adding feline pets, certainly not seven or eight of them, to the family.

We started looking for sources of help with getting these guys adopted out or relocated to a place where they could be looked after.  We found out that there is a nonprofit called Cat's Cradle in the Valley - web site is http://www.catscradleva.org/ - that will catch, neuter, and release feral cats like this bunch.  Seven feral cats is a good start on 50, for Pete's sake after all.

So the adventure began - there was an evening of trap setting, and eventually everybody was caught.  Here's the first litter - having lost one of their siblings by this time.

It turns out that with the long hot summers we've been having, cats are having two heats a year - it's very important to get this under control.

We also caught the mothers of both litters, and some of the younger litter, who turned out to be too small for the operation just yet.

Now, they're all back.  They're free to live a feral life around the Hawksbill Cabin, although Mary feeds them on the weekend and the neighbors pitch in when they can.

I guess you could call them feral with emerging domesticated habits.  They know when they're going to get fed and they emerge from hiding places all over the place when they hear the food bag.  And they've started to interact with the humans around the place.

Sunday when I got back from errands I saw the little black striped one sitting up on a fence post near the shed.  I guess they are getting personalities too.

Wisteria Vineyards Harvest - A Wrap

Here's a view of Big Meadows Mountain in Shenandoah National Park,
as seen from some of the new vines at Wisteria.

 Mary and I had a great time during the late summer and early fall getting to know some of our neighbors as volunteer grape pickers at Wisteria Vineyard.  Each weekend morning as we went over to the vineyard, we joined a dozen or so friends from around town who’d come out to pick the Seyval, Traminette, Chardonnay, Merlot, and Norton grapes.

Here's an orientation of the vineyard - the harvest
progresses more or less from right to left.

Although the hour was a little more civilized and there weren’t any stalls to muck out, I’ll chalk up the experience as another “internship” – similar to the one I had last year working with David at Public House Produce, where I learned “up close and personal” about the craft of raising excellent local food and agricultural products.     

I posted about the experience in more detail a few weeks ago (http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2012/09/scenes-from-vineyard.html ), but as volunteers we helped during the early stages of the winemaking process.  We picked, then worked the destemming/crushing equipment, loaded the wine press and watched as the juice or early wine poured out and was loaded in the casks to complete fermentation.  Then we cleaned up – and there was a lot of that, but it was fun too. 

The barn, where the sheep and chickens reside, at Wisteria.
Behind is the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah National Park.

Just as I have learned with my new brewing hobby, cleaning up is a big part of the process for these crafts.  There are estimates that it takes 20 gallons or so of water to make a gallon of wine, because of all the cleaning.  In my home brewing experience, I’d say that I probably use five gallons for every gallon I make, although I may be more efficient when I start making five-gallon batches.  But all of this effort is meant to ensure you have a high-quality, safe, and tasty end product.

And that is definitely what you’ll find at Wisteria Vineyard. 

Red grapes, the last harvest at Wisteria.

For Hawksbill Cabin readers, if you happen to be coming out to visit the vineyard, give a yell – we’re only a half mile away, and maybe we can meet you there.

Herpetology and a Healthy Ecosystem

Returning from errands on Sunday, Mary and I detected some movement near the hose bib where the addition meets the old stone house.  On closer inspection, we saw that there was an adult ring necked snake crawling along in the mulch - fully grown, but still a small animal at only 18 inches or so long.

As I started my pool chores, I moved some tools around and disturbed a little brown mouse.  It skittered of to hide below the deck - I thought of it as a little prey animal for the new barn cats living under the shed in the backyard, or perhaps for one of the black rat snakes that patrol the property.

Then, while I was unpacking the pool vacuum out of the cabana, I moved the box of prepackaged pool treatments and found a pair of new born black rat snakes.  The mother must have made a nest nearby, perhaps even in the cabana - I've never seen two of them together before.  They managed to get hidden before I could snap a photo, so all I can do is write this quick post.

The Hawksbill Cabin property is carved out of an old farm that has returned to woodland - in fact, about 2/3 of the acreage is now wood lot.  So we are surrounded by nature.  It's not really a surprise that from time to time we're going to encounter some wildlife.  As one blogger put it, "be thankful you have snakes, it means you have a healthy ecosystem."

It may also keep some visitors away!

The Apples, Etc.

The height of summer, this weekend was one where we enjoyed watching all kinds of wildlife from the brick terrace at Hawksbill Cabin. The apple tree was dropping fruit all around, and the berries on the sweet gum tree must have been ripe, so we had plenty of birds and squirrels, along with this very brave doe who ventured up into the yard despite us being visible nearby up on the terrace.

I didn't expect to have any apples this year.  The tree is rangy after decades of neglect; it's still in bad shape after the snowpocalypse winter two years ago when we lost one of the twin trunks.  I've intended to get it pruned for a few years now, and we simply haven't found somebody to take care of this for us - we want to be sure the tree will survive a hard pruning so that we will have fruit again soon after.

Last year there was a storm during apple blossom season, so none of the fruit set.  This year, there didn't appear to be many blossoms, and I thought we'd lost the crop again - but there's plenty.

We're only seeing the one deer so far.  The heard that moves through the hollow is larger than this - last year Tessie and I watched five of them up in the yard one day, eating acorns.  The does usually have twins and there are usually a couple of families milling about.  From time to time we'll see the buck, but he usually stays hidden down in the brush near Beaver Run.

As for the other wildlife, we had our usually share of varmints - squirrels and hedgehogs, including one particularly clumsy squirrel who fell with a loud "plop" thirty feet or so out of one of the trees onto the road.  There were the usual jays and cardinals, and now that the weeds have gone to seed there are goldfinches in their bright plumage.

But the biggest delight of all were the pileated woodpeckers.  We know they're out there, and I catch them in flight passing the yard quite often.  But this weekend, they were after the berries on the sweet gum tree.  I was surprised to see three of them in the tree at once - I've always thought we only had a pair of them nearby.

They must be doing well back there in the hollow.  After all, between the acorns, apples, and other fruit and nut trees around, there is plenty for all the animals to eat.