Make that Oakham Odette!

We came to the conclusion it probably wasn't good to have an animal digging around in, and possibly damaging, our leach field. We called animal control about having our groundhog captured and relocated. Someone was supposed to call back but we were told that they would probably refer us to an outfit called Critter Control. When they didn't call back, we just went ahead and called Critter Control directly.

They came out at 7:30 this morning and set up their traps so that there was no way for the animal the leave or enter the hutch without passing through a trap. Our groundhog was in a trap by lunchtime.

When I first approached to take a picture, she rolled on her back and hid her face in the corner
revealing that Oakham Odie was really Oakham Odette.

After she calmed down a bit.

We let Critter Control know that they had an angry groundhog in their trap and they came to get her. Her release point will be many miles away. I would have released her a couple of miles down the road in the state watershed area but the Critter Control guy said she'd be back in no time.

The guy did say that she was probably 3 years old and had probably been with us most of that time. She's probably had a litter every year. Fortunately, the babies leave home a 3 months and scatter far and wide.

Just in case there are others, the traps will stay in place until until tomorrow morning. Once they are gone, I'll set a smoke bomb off in the hutch and block the entrance. That will let me know where any other entrances are. With that known, I'll lace the hole(s) and surrounding area(s) with repellant and fill the hole(s) with large rocks, gravel and dirt.

-JC-

Oakham Odie!

There has been a burrow up on the house-facing side of our leach field for the past few years. I've tried several times to fill it in but it always seems to get dug anew. I've tried setting the wildlife cameras to catch whatever lives in the burrow but, until now, all attempts have failed.

It's possible that the burrow has gone through a succession of owners but we definitely know who's living there now. We have a groundhog (woodchuck, marmot, etc.) who seems to feel so safe when its in the proximity of its burrow that it will let us approach to within a few feet before diving to safety.

We first noticed it standing tall on its mound like a prairie dog or meerkat and we now see it all the time. Its diet includes wild strawberry leaves and shagbark hickory nuts which are both abundant on our property.

Yesterday, I put one of the wildlife cameras on a short tripod and set it about 6 feet from the burrow. The results are fantastic!

For the next round, I've reset the camera to take still pictures.

-JC-

AND ONE DAY, LIKE A MIRACLE, HE'LL BE GONE

We saw this sign a couple of times. Once was next door to our daughter, Briar, in Rutland, MA and the other was in Holden, MA. Both looked homemade and the only thing that we were able to find online was a bumper sticker on Etsy. Making our own was the only option.

Briar has a printer that makes vinyl decals. She worked up a design and cut the decals. We ordered blank signs (had to order a minimum of 3) and Briar applied the decals. We're really pleased with the results.

My sister Stacy and her husband Jack saw Briar's mockup and wanted a sign. Shipping a sign to Lake Oswego, OR was prohibitively expensive so they ordered their own blank signs and we sent them a set of decals. The sign is now bicoastal!

-JC-

Wildlife

We haven't seen a lot of wildlife lately, probably because we stopped putting the bird feeders out and because of all of the brush clearing that I've done. The feeders were a big draw for the bears and the spilled seed was a draw for rodents that serve as prey for many of our other local predators.

This small bear was our first of the season:

This was a good shot of a deer:

Racoons and skunks have been too numerous to bother with. We've had porcupines and squirrels climbing across the camera lenses. And we've had a couple of bleary foxes. Still waiting for our first bobcat.

-JC-

5th Massiversary

It's hard to believe but it's already been 5 years since we arrived in Massachusetts, here's the link to our arrival post..

That was the arrival at the Pine Acres Campground in Oakham. We had never heard of Oakham and had no idea that we'd end up living there. We still had a couple of months of house hunting, escrow and waiting for the movers ahead of us but it all worked out.

-JC-

Late Snow Storm

It's April 18th. We've had to restrain ourselves to keep from starting our vegetable garden. The rule is: "Never before Mothers Day" and, apparently, there's a reason for that.

We had 70 MPH winds and heavy rain early in the week and had a tree come down across the road.

The tree broke off about 10' up and fell across the road. Someone must have pushed it onto the shoulder before we were even aware that it was down. We got out in the rain and raked all of the remaining debris off the road and out of the driveway across the road. This picture was taken the next day.

We hauled all of the small stuff around to a new burn pile and cut the trunk up, stacked it and put a "Free" sign on it (as you can see, I took down that 10' stump). The free firewood sat there all day and then disappeared under cover of darkness {except for the splintery pieces from either side of the break - they were added to the burn pile).

I had thought that I was through with burning for the year. I had burned 12 piles and the weather had turned drier and warmer. With this good start on a 13th pile, I added some of my brush cuttings to it and had one last burn. My permit expires on May 2 so that will definitely be my last.

On Thursday morning, we had a 1/2" of snow. It never collected on the roads and was fully melted early in the day.

This morning, we had about 6" of very wet snow. Again, nothing on the roads (the roads get so much sun this time of the year that they are like heat sinks). It's almost 11 am and the amount on the ground is diminishing even as the snow continues to come down heavily.

I just fixed the windmill yesterday. The high winds had bent the blades back.

We're ready for spring with all of our garden ornaments out of storage.

The rhody on the other side of the door has a robin's nest that we can see out the window. Mama's been sitting on 2 or 3 very blue eggs. Today, it's piled high with snow. If mama's there at all, she's under it. Guess we'll see how that works out.

Our unplanted raised vegetable bed.

We're wondering where we're going to find flowers for our flower cart this year.

-JC-

Started quarantining on March 11

My 69th birthday:  4/13/20

Life under quarantine has been an experience.

This was driven home a couple of days ago when we received our Google Maps Timeline for the month of March. If you're not familiar with what that is, the Google Maps phone app keeps track of everywhere that you go and then provides a report with maps (daily/weekly/monthly), photos, milages, etc. It even knew if you are driving or walking (somehow). Nothing invasive or Big Brotherlike at all.

There have been interesting months that included Scotland and Ireland or San Francisco, Hawaii and Los Angeles. This wasn't one of them.

Kristen put a 'Q' in our calendar on March 11 to indicate that we had started to quarantine ourselves.

Before that, we were treading lightly but did some things that we knew were about to end for a while. We had lunch at 3 of our favorite spots, made trip to our local market and Kristen got her hair cut.

After March 11, grocery shopping accounted for just about everything. Kristen braved the local market a couple of times during the 6-7am senior hours. That was too stressful so, after determining that grocery delivery doesn't exist for Oakham, we landed on Wal-Mart. Kristen fills our online cart, chooses a pickup time and pays. Once we park in the designated spot, someone runs out groceries out and loads them into the back of the truck.

On March 15, I did take Gus to Lowes to get doors for his new home office (a break of quarantine but his truck wasn't working).

We did make one trip just to get out of the house. We'd never seen Quabbin Reservoir. It's just to the West of us and is the main water source for Boston and about 50 other cities. It stretches about 20 miles from North to South and the fact that the major East/West roads have to pass to the North or South of it explains why our area is as isolated as it is. We took a picnic and stayed in the car. We'll have to return when we can get out of the car.

Other than that, Google provided reports and maps of our daily walks.

Social distancing hasn't been a problem (except for my trip to Lowe's with Gus). Gus had a piece of wood that needed to be ripped down for one of his office doors. Briar gave me the measurements and drove it over while I got the saw set up. She handed it to me from 6' away. I made the cut and handed it back. Later, Gus needed to borrow my 1/2" drill. I set it down at the edge of the driveway as stepped back while Gus loaded it into his motorcycle an left. When I retrieved it a few days later, Briar just left it on her porch (the kids waved from inside).

One thing that was a problem with Wal-Mart was meat. Briar has told us about a local farm that raises grass fed beef and will deliver the meat. They also brew beer and have a taproom (several local farms brew beer and have taprooms). They will be delivering meat and a growler of IPA this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon (probably tomorrow since we're having a thunderstorm right now). They'll leave it in the ice chest that we have on the porch.

Glad that we got our raised vegetable garden built and filled with soil back when we did. Our normal sources for plants might not be open this year but we think that we've got alternatives lined up. We grow lettuce from seed. Briar is growing seedlings that she will share. People up the road have tomato seedlings in their greenhouse and will have them out on a table (payment via the honor system - we'd rather not touch cash but sometimes it's necessary).

-JC-

Productive Winter

Kristen put a couple of items on my winter todo list this year (for those days when it was too bone chillingly cold to work outside).

First was the kitchen range hood. For some inexplicable reason, it was set up so that it vented back into the kitchen rather than to the outside. Kristen couldn't cook a steak without opening a window so the smoke alarm wouldn't go off.

The new hood (very similar to the old except for the stupid part).

Through the wall into the garage. It was only a couple of feet over to the outside wall. I had to cut a much larger hole through the wall because, of course, a stud ran right through where the ducting needed to go and some reframing was necessary.

The new vent.

Kristen's other todo item had to do with the dryer venting. Our laundry room is on the 1st floor in the middle of the front part of the house. The dryer vent goes through the wall into the area under the front stairs where it elbows through the floor to the basement. After passing through a number of bends and constrictions, it makes its way to the outside through an old window opening that had been replaced with plywood.

My job was to replace the entire duct system and eliminate all of the constrictions. I replaced all of the bends an constrictions with metal ducting and only used flexible ducting on the straightaways. While doing that, I realized that that plywood panel needed to go. Soil was against it on the outside and the bottom was half rotted away, allowing mice to enter the basement.

Just to complicate things, the dryer vent wasn't the only thing passing through the plywood. the electrical conduit to one of the air conditioners and a drain (from something) were also there. I managed to remove them, replace the plywood with a concrete backer-board panel and then reinstall them.

Finally, there was my brush clearing and burning. When we took most of November off to go to California and Hawaii, I wondered how much of a dent I had put into my brush clearing time. Fortunately, this has been a relatively mild winter and I've managed to clear enough for 10 brush pile burns so far. I hope to do my 11th and final burn tomorrow. My burn permit is good until May 2 but, unless we get more snow, I won't feel comfortable with my infernos.

I've found a lot of metal to remove and take to the recycler. There's wire fencing on metal poles buried in the brush along the perimeter. I've removed that as I've come to it. I found a spool of barbed wire that must way a hundred pounds. I also found what I think must be a roll bar from a tractor. It weighs so much (at least 200 pounds) that I'm still puzzling over how I'm going to get it out of the woods and into the truck.

The focus this season was clearing between the lawn and the wall along Barre Rd..and along the back wall from Barre Rd. Here are a couple of pictures from the upstairs windows:

Back wall along the treeline at the left. Barre Rd. at the left.

This is to the left of the previous picture. 

To the right of the 1st picture. Corner of Coldbrook Rd and Barre Rd through the trees.

My one last project was a raised vegetable garden bed. The old beds were in back of the garage and were out of sight and too far from the faucet. I broke them apart last fall, added the wood to my 1st burn pile and filled in the low areas of the lawn with the dirt.

Outside the kitchen.

-JC-