Updates!!!!


10/25/03 - Dreams

11/3/03 - Closing day

12/8/03 - Destruction

2/21/04 - Honeysuckle clearing

3/6/04 - Flood
3/11/04 - More destruction

3/14/04 - Planting the orchard

3/19/04 and 3/21/04 - Destruction III

3/27/04 and 3/29/04 - Deroofing and Pictures

4/27/04 - Spring Flowers


10/25/03 - So, have I bought it yet?  Not quite.  Had to wrangle with the realtor, give up when he asked too much, and then (after 6 weeks) decide the land was worth what he asked after all.  Then I had to do a title search and make sure the right-of-way wouldn't be an issue.  Lots of other running about too.  But now we're pretty much ready to go.  Should close any day now.

I already hauled my father up to look at the buildings - the house isn't worth fixing since the foundation would have had to be jacked up among other things, but I can use the wood.  The barn is in good shape, just needs a new roof.  (That's really high up, but, penny-pincher that I am, I guess I'll learn to deal with heights.)

I found a beautiful site for a 169 square foot, underground, passive-solar-heated house.  (No, those last two aren't oxymorons.)  And some beautiful forest at least 50 years old.  My bedtime reading has mutated from fluffy fantasy to books on building your own home.  And I'm planning an orchard.

And planning on whittling down my chicken flock.  Joey and I really don't eat even half the eggs from 9 hens, and once I move to Sinking Creek by myself, I'll be eating a good deal less.  Not that I'm planning another chicken-killing day.  One per month is way more than enough for me.  I'll just be giving chickens away.  Does anyone want a chicken?

11/3/03 - Closing day! Now we actually own the land. Good thing - I've already hauled tools there and planted seeds.


12/8/03 - Finished tearing down the southwest addition to the old farmhouse. Destruction is so pleasant, especially since I know that I can use the wood which I tear off either to build with or for firewood (depending on its condition.) I had to saw off the still living limb which had fallen on the addition, crushing the structure, but that can also be used for firewood. Too bad I broke my hammer, or I would have gotten all of the nails out of the salvaged wood. Next time!

The site I found on 10/25 turns out not to point south, but the site of the old farmhouse is south-facing. I've also decided to stay aboveground, since the groundwater is very high and an underground house would be more of a boat in that location. Currently I want to make a strawbale house, though I'm not sure whether that will involve fixing up part of the existing farmhouse or building a whole new structure.


2/21/04 - I've been up to the property a few more times since December. Once I chose what was forecast to be a warm night and camped out. It was cold! Which prompted me to learn to build a fire. I also finished pulling nails from the addition wood and moving the salvageable wood down to the barn. (The unsalvageable wood went into the fire.)

Today I had the help of Mom and Maggie and we cleared a lot of the edge of the house hill so that I can put in fruit trees there this spring. Japanese Honeysuckle has taken over much of the area and is very difficult to clear. I foresee that removing the honeysuckle is going to be a long process.

I also crawled up under the house, and it really may be salvageable. I'm hoping to save one room and use it as the frame for a strawbale house.


3/6 and 3/7/04 - Flood!  Friday night at Wartroot, the sky opened up and rain pounded down on the tin roof.  In a short time period, we netted nearly an inch of water.  I suspect the Sinking Creek area got the same, because when we arrived on Saturday morning, the creek was raging and muddy. 

Parking in our usual spot at the side of the road, "comb frogs" (chorus frogs) were calling deafeningly from every direction.  It had been a warm week, and frogs had begun to call at Wartroot.  At Sinking Creek they were in full swing.  I saw big masses of Wood Frog eggs in the puddles in the driveway, along with the smaller chorus frog masses.  Chorus frog eggs are new to me - only twenty or thirty gelatinous eggs, glued around a submerged stick or other item.  I even saw the chorus frogs themselves, tiny frogs the size of a peeper active in the puddles. 

Daddy had come up from South Carolina to give the house one more look over.  I wanted badly to be able to salvage one room, to speed my moving in, and he had promised to look at the house more thoroughly.  All that stood in our way was the creek.  The creek - which was currently over five feet high, overflowing its banks, and racing along at an amazing clip.  I jumped into the water on the creek's edge, hoping to get across, but even clinging to a spicebush I nearly got swept away by the cold water.  Downhearted, we turned back (though the brownies I'd brought cheered people up considerably.) 

I had been told that Sinking Creek rises quickly but falls just as quickly, so we made plans to return the next day and try our luck again.  As we walked out on Saturday, we met a neighbor - Dick Austin who turned out to be a Swarthmore alum!  He told us the tale of the creek...

Not far downstream from our property, Sinking Creek drops down through a sinkhole and into a cave.  (This is, of course, where the name comes from.)  The water flows through the cave, under a ridge and under the Clinch River, before swelling back up above ground on the other side of the river.   Quite a journey, under ridge and river, before the water finally flows into the Clinch. 

The sinking nature of the creek explains its tendency to flood.  The cave will only hold a limited volume of water, so the rest of the water backs up and spreads out across the floodplain.  Once the cave has emptied out enough, the rest of the water can pass through and the flood waters go down. 

Dick Austin was right.  When we returned on Sunday, after a day of dry weather, the creek had gone down two or three feet.  At our usual ford, I could wade across with water only up to my knees.  We did so, and Daddy gave sentence on the house - tear it down, he told me.  I was saddened, but he said the wide oak planks were very good and that a good deal of the wood can be reused. 

I noticed daffodils coming up beside the house.  Also alders and spring beauties blooming in the woods - my first tree flower and woods wildflower of the year!


3/11/04 - Tore more things down!  Started taking apart the collapsed porch I'd been ignoring (but which suddenly was in my way) and got out 10 pieces of possibly useable tin to fix the roof.

Toad eggs have joined the frog eggs in the driveway puddles.  The yard of the house is suddenly full of daffodils, a few of which are blooming.

I've noticed that the property has suddenly started feeling like home.  Maybe because it's warmer, so I don't feel like I'm just trying to survive while I'm there.  Or maybe it's because I'm getting to know the neighbors.  But I really think it's because of that chair I hauled up from the floodplain.  I don't sit in it - I like sitting on the ground - but it makes it feel very homey.

I still haven't had any luck on figuring out a good name for the whole property, but I named two coves (using names suggested by Mom and Maggie for the property, tweaked a little.)  The cove above the house is Wellspring Cove and the next cove west is Twingully Cove.

And I'm too tired to write!  But a good, long day of work. 


3/14/04 - Yesterday I learned to graft fruit trees.  And today Maggie, Mom, and I put in the beginning of an orchard - eleven apples, cherries and pears.  I don't know how many are likely to survive, but if even a few do, I'll have fruit around about the time I finish paying off my debt for the land.

As usual, exciting things happened on the land.  As we dug holes and shovelled in barn dirt, we could hear a far off Ruffed Grouse thumping on a hollow log, trying to attract a mate.  The sound was like a heartbeat, but one which sped up and then stopped.

Later, we heard ravens and then saw two of them, soaring over the hill behind the house.  And, in the frog puddles, both toad eggs and Wood Frog eggs were already hatching tiny black tadpoles out of the gelatinous egg masses.

On a more practical note, Maggie and I carried a plank down into the floodplain on the way out.  It is an attempt to bridge one particularly swampy spot which I suspect was the old Sinking Creek channel before it was moved.


3/19/04 and 3/21/04 - As spring comes, I'm getting really serious about this destruction business.  This Friday and Sunday, I went up with Mom, Maggie, Joey, and Megan and we tore all of the siding off the house as well as removing a couple of walls.  (Joey got carried away with the walls.  They're supposed to be holding up the roof, but the roof stayed up.  I'm not really sure what is holding up the roof.  But it's pretty neat to be able to look completely through the building.)

The whole yard has come up in daffodils - beautiful!  And the fruit trees have, miraculously, not been chomped by deer.  I guess the Irish Spring soap did it's job.

All of the scrap wood which is too rotten to salvage is in a huge hole in the yard.  Maybe it'll be good for something, or maybe we'll just have a gargantuan bonfire at some point.

Still haven't figured out how to clean the well.  We tried lowering an extension ladder into it, but the extension fell off into the well!  Luckily, we were able to pull the extension back out with a hoe - a good thing since it was a borrowed ladder.

I used the same ladder to pull siding off the high portions of the house.  By the chimney, I discovered a little door which opened into the attic.  Unlike the rest of the house, which is built of boards without a beam in sight, the attic and roof are full of beams!  Maybe I won't have to buy so many after all!

Newts in the pools in the floodplain!  Chorus frogs still yelling as loud as they can.


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Last updated 3/04