Drilling a Well - and Camping and Bird sightings

Drilling a Well - a  hole and a hole.

Doesn't look like much, but this is the beginning of what I hope to be one of two water wells on Die Weide. This first one is next to the water harvesting shed and half way between the orchard and the garden. Although the water harvesting shed will go a long way towards watering the orchard, it doesn't provide enough water for the garden too. I stumbled upon a video on youtube from this site: drill your own well which has a relatively inexpensive way to drill a well to get to relatively shallow groundwater. Several of the neighbors around us have groundwater wells with the water table at 19 ft deep. I expect the table to be deeper as a result of the drought though. I'm planning to drill a 50 ft deep well and case it with 4" PVC. 

After doing some research on groundwater hydrology, I plan to put the 2nd well at the edge of the pasture, much closer to one of the four wet weather creeks that runs through the property. This should be a shallower well according to groundwater hydrology and less likely to dry out. This well will be used to provide stock water for the 2-3 cattle we plan to have and the donkey we already have.

Inge brushing her donkey, Herbert

Today I had the pleasure of seeing two new birds on Die Weide. Within an hour of each other to boot! I went out around 10 this morning with my folding chair and a cup of hot tea and had a seat on the back (West) of the property to be still and see what critters showed up. This area always gets lots of deer traffic and Inge and I saw an Armadillo here last week too. Anyway, a pair of noisy small birds were pecking on food on the ground about 4 yards from me when a large greyish bird swooped down to try to snag one of the little birds. I thought, "hawk!" but when I swung the binocs over I was staring eye-to-eye with a large owl! After a minute or so it flew up into a nearby tree and I spent the next 20 minutes studying the owl. Online I found that its grey and tan horizontal striped markings and size indicate that it was a Barred Owl.

A few minutes later I headed back to pack up the campsite, walking slowly along the Western Trail, when a large brown bird flew away from me and I thought, "Hawk!" But it landed on a branch ahead of me and I snapped up the binoculars to see a Great Horned Owl staring back at me. This time I didn't get to study the owl as he flew off as soon as we made eye contact. But there is no doubt that I saw the "ears" on a very large brownish owl head.

Trail Cam Tales

We got our trail cam back in action. For awhile it was taking no photos, but I found out that there was one bad cell in the rechargeable batteries that, even though the camera registered 60% battery power remaining, it wouldn't detect movement or fire the camera. Once I replaced the batteries, it started taking pictures again.

We have a new critter on Die Weide - it's one of the ones that make you go Ahhhh! But I'll save that for later. First I will show you a sequence of two photos and tell you the story behind what occurred in these two brief pictures.

So, what do we have here? We have the tail end of a deer. To give you more perspective, I have my trail cam set up to take a burst of five photos upon detecting movement. Then it waits 30 minutes before reactivating the sensor to take the next burst when something moving triggers it. This was the first photo and the other four frames in the burst were empty. My interpretation, at the 08:26 timestamp, this deer was hauling by so fast that from the time the sensor detected movement and this first photo snapped only its hindquarters was captured as it fled by the camera. Normally I get four or five frames with deer as they are leisurely grazing along. Hmm, so what spooked the deer past the camera?!?

Why it was my friendly neighbor wandering by exactly 30 minutes after the spooked deer. From these two photos I can deduce that my neighbor walked along the north fence approximately 30 minutes earlier (to the left in the frame) which spooked the deer to flee south past the camera. It took half an hour between the deer fleeing for our neighbor to navigate our woodland trail to cross from behind the camera (there were more frames of his passing by). We met and talked the day I retrieved the memory stick and he told me he had been on the property as he was hunting for his missing dogs and that I might find him on my trail cam. Sure enough he was there but I also found it interesting and a bit amusing that my trail cam actually caught a small story here - that of a deer spooked by a wandering human.

And now for that which I enticed you with - (drum roll please) the new critter! Technically it's not new in the sense of a new species as I have plenty of pictures of this particular species. However, as you can now see, it is a "new" critter!

Now everyone say, "Ahhh, how cute!"

But for me an even cooler aspect of this critter is the very next weekend, when I went camping with my brother on Die Weide, I got to see this delightful critter in person! I had just finished turning our bratwurst and was stirring the Ranchstyle beans over the fire pit when my brother pointed behind me and said, "there's Bambi!" So I turned around and saw no more than 10 feet behind me the cute critter bounding away through the tall grass. What a fun thing to see. Every time I get to stay out at Die Weide, I think, "Life is Good!"

Last note and last photo - this is from yesterday's visit to the land. We watered the orchard as usual, brought the neighbors a loaf of home-baked Sourdough German Mischbrot, and swapped out the trail cam memory stick. This photo was on the stick, which I blew up a bit to show an odd sight - a deer with either a pink collar or something like trash around its neck. I think its a collar, though pink seems garish. The deer appears healthy and the collar doesn't appear to hinder it. Unfortunately, the deer never turned sideways to get a better view. I hope the trail cam captures it again.

Tarp Tent Camping on Die Weide

In Die Weide we have a natural place to enjoy, which we have visited every weekend this year to water the orchard and continue blazing trails in the woods. However, I have grossly neglected writing this blog about our thorny paradise. I have writings in notebooks about the land but transposing them to the blog is work that I keep putting off. Today's blog will be about my camping trip last night.

This is my tarp tent under which I have slept on two camping trips since I last wrote in May. I pulled a one-nighter yesterday evening. Inge had to work this weekend so I chose to camp out overnight Saturday evening. Normally I would head out Friday evening but I chose to attend a memorial service Saturday for a co-worker, Rafael, who passed away recently from pancreatic cancer. He was only eight months younger than me. Time passes and attending Rafael's memorial reminded me that my date with meeting Jesus will come in His due time - a time no longer as far off.

After a delicious cornmeal encrusted fried catfish supper with Inge I packed some snacks, drinks, and breakfast supplies to be cooked on my coleman stove and headed out. The sun settled just over the treetops when I arrived at Die Weide and unlocked the gate. I pitched my tarp tent under the picnic pecan using an X-frame from two-by-fours over which I stretched and tied off a taught rope that became the ridge-line for the tarp. After pounding few tent pegs and stretching bungee cords to tarp grommets my shelter stood ready for my cot.

Our ever-friendly neighbors, Kenneth and Derrellene, stopped by with their passel of dogs and we chatted the sun down - mostly drought talk as that impacts us all this year. Darkness quickly settled over the pasture after they left and I set up my folding chair, cooler, and poured myself, "eine Krug Bier." I offered a salute and the first sip of Bier to Inge's mother Kunigunda, as she enhanced my love of good German Bier. She took us to places with fresh from the keg mugs of foam-capped, "liquid bread." "Mutti" always raised a toast and said, "Die erste Schluck ist die beste!" (the first sip is the best) then quaffed half the mug followed with a twinkle in her eyes and a huge foam mustache smile.

I love the nights here on Die Weide. The last time I camped here the moon only dimly lit the pasture with a fingernail sliver reflection. Last night though, the moon phased more brightly as "waxing gibbous" - a bit more than half full. I sat by the Picnic Pecan on Die Weide which resides in the pasture with copses of woodlands only paces away. The moon's glow paints the nearby copse of trees in patches of pale and dark grey and lights the tall grasses of the pasture in silvery tan hue. For some minutes the high pressure system that commands our drought caps the pasture with an absolute stillness. The heat of the day persists in this stillness building a sheen of sweat on my skin and twitching and itching my nose with dry dusty-drought scent. The stillness carries sound and from the southwest someone plays a mixture of country and rock music that I can hear with sing-along clarity, but so far away as to be quietly pleasing. Dogs bark in various directions punctuated by a donkey's long, loud, "braaee-huh, braaee-huh". Nearby, insects serenade me with chirps, chirrs, and whirrs and I begin to think the night's sleep will be uncomfortably warm until I hear treetops in the distance rustle and soon the picnic pecan whispers behind me passing the breeze over to tussle the hair on my arm and neck and wash the heat from my skin.

Later I gathered my walking stick, on which I have carved a face, and set out to explore Die Weide at night. The half-moon lights the way as I step-pause-step my way slowly to the path we've carved in the woods to the pond. Tonight, though the pond isn't my destination. I only seek to find a place within the woodland boundary where I can sit and listen for the rustling of critters in the woods. At first I sit upon the ground on the path, but that proved a thorny seat. And my solution to that problem lead to this haiku lesson learned which will end this blog entry.

Sturdy walking stick

placed as seat on thorny ground

prevents prickly butt.

Water Harvested!

My daughter blamed our water tank on facebook for the drought in Texas because it hasn't rained since we put in the water harvesting shed. However, last Wednesday and Thursday we had some storms roll through and we anxiously looked forward to seeing if the Austin rain also hit our land east of home. And as we drove up, we were overjoyed to see, WATER!

Our rain gauge recorded 8/10ths inch of rain (our neighbors had 9/10ths). The tank shows 125 gallons of water, but there was about three inches already in the tank from two times we got a trace of rain. As nice as this picture is, we won't see it like this in the future because we wrapped the tank in a black cloth to inhibit the growth of algae.

Paucity of Precipitation

For those who follow Die Weide I owe an apology for not writing in a while. We have been out to Die Weide every weekend, but the hours I've been working the past month have resulted in a dearth of energy for writing the blog.

And we move the the critical dearth on Die Weide - a paucity of precipitation. I saw a weather report last week where the meteorologist stated that of the six or seven rain events since January, none has produced more than two-tenths of an inch of rain. Indeed, only one produced more than one-tenth of an inch of rain. So there, upon Die Weide stands a shed with a water harvesting tank that has only collected enough rain to water the orchard trees once. So our last four or five weekend visits have consisted of filling water barrels and coolers at home and watering the orchard and garden by hand. Thus, my writing of Die Weide wouldn't have consisted of much beyond, "this week, we watered the garden and orchard." 

Two weeks ago we had a change of pace in that we invited Mom, Janice, and Kenny out for a BarBQ. Below are a couple of pictures of that family outing. It is great to see that Mom has recovered enough to be able to travel out to Die Weide and enjoy an outing.

Last week Inge and I watered the garden and orchard and hacked a path through brambles next to the creek. The pond still has water, but the level is dropping very rapidly. If we don't get rain soon, we will again have a muddy hole in the creek - the state it was in during the drought last summer. Here a couple pictures of a very primitive garden. Also, even in a drought, we manage to find a few wild bluebonnets on Die Weide.

Orchard Maintenance with Dog Following

Die Weide Bluebonnets

This week Inge and I watered the garden and orchard and for a change just went exploring. I set out with camera and notebook to try to identify a few trees on Die Weide. I will write later of my findings. Here again are garden pictures Inge took today. Note the corn is growing nicely.

In this photo, there are six tomatoes, four store bought tomato plants and two that spontaneously grew from compost leavings in our back yard garden. We have so many of these wild tomatoes that I chose two to move out here. Note how vigorous the wild tomatoes up front appear compared to the greenhouse tomatoes in back! If it looks a little rough it's because we used leaf litter as mulch.

Primative Tarp Camping on Die Weide

Not having camped in over 20 years, I no longer owned a tent. But I've got tarps and a sleeping bag and a strong desire to camp again. I bought a lamp, and a cot to add to the supplies and Friday I left work early and headed out out to Die Weide for my first camping trip on our place.

First things first - I also purchased a Remington 597 .22 rifle for plinking and rabbit hunting (someday.) So I set up to shoot a few rounds to see how she fired. I brought a small screwdriver to adjust the iron sites, but found out that the elevation adjustment also required an allen wrench which I didn't have.  I got the windage adjusted correctly but it shot high and I'll have to adjust that next time. Once I knew it shot high, I adjusted my aim and subsequently shot pretty good groups for rule-of-thumb low aiming.

After breaking in the .22 I started the fire in the pit, but it was very windy, so I constructed a windbreak from plywood, 2x4 scraps and a left-over sheet of steel. The wind break worked great Friday evening because the wind blew consistently from the South-South-East. Below you see a photo of my bacon burgers and home fries over the fire and a glimpse of the windbreak.

As the sun settled in the west, I recalled that one of my quibbles with our house in Cedar Park is I can not see a sunrise or sunset from any vantage point from our house because there are too many houses and trees to see the horizon. However, that's not a problem in the wide open spaces of Die Weide so I captured a nice sunset photo through the picnic pecan. Nothing spectacular, but the day will come when I will be able to take photos of a stunning sunset or sunrise. After dark I threw another log on the fire and brought out my guitar to serenade the wind, fire, and stars.

Here are my Friday evening fire and sunset photos.

Bacon burgers and home fries. (Windbreak at top)

Sunset Through Picnic Pecan

Enjoying the fire at night

I built my camp site by the light of my led cap light and the lantern I purchased earlier in the week. Taking advantage of the shed and a couple of handy 2x4s I draped and tied down the 8x10 tarp into a lean-to to keep the wind off from the south and added the smaller tarp to provide privacy and further wind protection from the east. The wind never let up over night and at one point, around 2:30 in the morning, I got up and tightened up the small tarp as it woke me often flapping in the strong breeze. I woke an hour before sunrise but snuggled a bit longer in the sleeping bag due to the cool morning. A warm sleeping bag on a cool morning is one of the few reasons I stay in bed after waking. Here is a photo of my tarp shelter. (Inge said it looks like a hobo camp...)

Hobo Tarp Tent

I stepped out before the dawn and scouted for rabbits with a telephoto lens on my camera. I never saw a rabbit, but did see and hear a lot of cardinals, who have a song as beautiful as they look.

After the rabbit-less wandering I fired up the pit and cooked up bacon and eggs for breakfast. The night before I covered the fire with dirt for safety and when I removed the dirt in the morning I found a few still-smoldering coals. So for fun I built my kindling and stick tee pee over the coals, stuffed in some dry grass, blew a little and in no time flat I had a fire without a match or lighter! I feared my breakfast fire a bit though because the strong winds from the night before became stronger and swirled far more, which blew a lot of sparks around. I worried that I might set the drought dried grass afire. I resolved then to cancel cooking for lunch. (Rats! I looked forward to yummy pork chops over the camp  fire!)

The rest of the day I spent jumping on the shovel in the garden area to loosen the soil deeper than the plough reached. I only managed to cover a third of the garden as shovel jumping is wearing work. Afterward, I planted my corn and black-eyed peas and the rest I will plant bit-by-bit over the next couple of weeks. I am concerned that this might be a meager garden as La Nina has put us in a spring drought that has the soil a lot dryer than needed for good germination and growth. Although the water harvest shed and tank will hold a lot of water, it requires rain to fall first. And rain is something we've not had this spring. Inge and I have discussed and I've looked up on line several methods for putting in a shallow well as most of our neighbors have wells that produce water at 19' depth. If we don't get rain by June we'll throw in to drill a well to keep the garden producing.

Planting of Orchard and did I mention great neighbors?

I failed to publish last week even though we planted our first six peach trees in the orchard. Chalk it up to working 14 hour days and being too pooped to write.

We loaded the truck up with shovels, bags of mulch, a roll of wire fencing and so forth and headed out to Die Weide. I installed some gable trim but only did half the work because my boots were too slippery to work on the steel roof. Once I got down (carefully!) I started planning the tree spacing for the orchard. According to the Texas A & M ag web site, peach trees should have 9' foot diameter spacing and at least 18' on center from tree to tree. We mapped out a zig-zag pattern and dug holes and planted trees. As a bit of care and overkill, we put down black weed barrier cloth and covered that with mulch, leaving a space around the tree in the center as recommended in several articles. One thing a lot of articles said to do first was to kill grass and weeds around the tree area with herbicide, but I object to that and will take a chance with the weed barrier and mulch and diligent cutting/mowing of the area between the trees. I am not an organic fanatic, but don't feel comfortable dousing my land with herbicide. Our neighbor's fruit trees produce and look healthy and I don't see signs of weedkiller, so we'll see how that works out.

Did I mention great neighbors? The previous week I mentioned to Kenneth that I plan to rent a rototiller to put in a garden at the side of the shed and he said he had a plow that would turn over the sod. And there he came Saturday with the tractor and sod-busting plow. Although it took a bit of maneuvering around the shed, he plowed sod under for a 12' x 48' garden in which I plan to plant corn, greenbeans, black-eyed peas, watermelon, cantaloupe, and potatoes. He also mentioned that another nearby farmer was going to run a tractor-driven tiller over his garden and he might run it over mine too. So later that afternoon, I hear the tractor chugging along and here came Neil with a tiller to go over the freshly turned sod several times.

Here come the photos....

Inspecting the plough

 

Bustin' Sod

The green twig is a peach tree.

Critter Proofing Peach Tree (hopefully!)

Water Harvest Shed - Ready to collect rain!

Sunday my brother Kenny and I headed out to complete the water harvest shed. The wind gusted constantly making the gutter installation a bear - to which Kenny commented while drilling another gutter screw hole, "ya know, professional gutter installers would be taking today off." But I didn't let him off that easy and we kept trucking such that by noon we finished installing the gutter and by 2:30 we installed and plumbed in the tank. Along the way neighbors dropped by brimming with questions and admiring the work, and one time as a pair of neighbors drove by in a golf cart the wind whipped their words by me, something to the effect, "(he) put the tank inside the shed!"

As another testament to the wonderful neighbors I've mentioned before, we were given several peach tree rootings that afternoon from their father's productive orchard. I can't get over how great everyone is around here! 

As before, I'll let the pictures tell most of the story. In the last picture, the tank looks small within the shed because it is a temporary tank adequate to irrigate the first year of peach trees. Next year this 330 gallon tank will be moved outside the shed and replaced with a 1500 gallon tank. Together the 1830 gallons will provide sufficient water for an orchard of more than 20 trees, requiring supplemental water only in case of extended drought.  As for the shed, all that's left is to install next weekend is the gable end trim. Later in the year, after building savings back up, we will install floors and walls around the tool shed part of the building.

Construction Team!

Details of the system

Steeling The Water Harvest Shed - Roofing, that is.

Inge had to work this weekend so my brother Kenny and I tackled the steel roofing without our construction supervisor. The weather forecast a few days ago was for a sunny breezy day today - they got that wrong on both counts. The good news was that the breezy part was wrong to the good side - it was, for Texas, a reasonably calm day. The sunny part of the forecast was wrong to the bad side though. We endured a cloudy drizzle almost all day. This made for slippery work installing the steel panels. I spent most of the day on the ladder and Kenny spent the day on the roof. I passed him panels, screwed the bottom down and he screwed the top and middle. And here we have a few photos of the work and the finished product.

Dark Dreary Drizzly Day - Roofin'

Last Panel - Is that blue up there?

Ridge Cap almost done

Roofed Shed - Gutters and Tank tommorrow!

Gardening on the Home Front

No Die Weide work today because our backyard raised bed gardens called for our attention. However, to tie this activity back to a mention of Die Weide, I'll discuss my hopes for a two location garden strategy. A couple of pictures accompanies many levels of discussion.

Puppy De-Fenced Garden

Over the last four years I've constructed four raised garden beds and a grape arbor in our back yard. I constructed the latest addition, a picket fence, in defense of puppy digging. The back bed in this photo once stood verdantly filled with two years worth of strawberry plantings. This year we hoped to harvest our first serious bounty of strawberries. But two months of puppy digging deprived us of any hope of home grown strawberries this year.

Inge scattered a mixture of wildflower seeds we received as a Christmas gift which is now poking green into the foreground of the photo. We planted this same patch in corn last year, which produced nothing, and in potatoes two years ago, which produced a very nice bucket of potatoes which we enjoyed.

Compost Corner

Above is a photo of our compost corner. Two halves of a portable wire dog cage saw second duty as a pair of compost heaps. Later I added stakes and wire to enclose a third heap between the two enclosures. Today, I scooped out the rich compost from the two bins and worked them into the raised beds, along with some bags of manure from home depot.

So how does this relate to Die Weide? It is my hope that this year we will plant the backyard garden with the primo veggies, like tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, and lettuce. On Die Weide, I will dig up a small garden area into which we will plant the bulky and space consuming vegetables like potatoes, black-eyed peas, corn, perhaps some squash (though Inge and I aren't big fans of squash) and the sweet non-vegetables, watermelon and cantaloupe. Inge and I both have our doubts about this remote garden, but for different reasons. She doubts the water harvesting shed will produce enough water for a garden (for which I respond, God will provide), and I worry that a lightly attended garden will be gnawed away by the critters. Hopefully I can scrounge up enough fencing material to keep the critters at bay. One thing I don't worry about is the ability of Die Weide to produce. The soil there is richer than any soil I've worked with in my life. But any soil can be deprived of ability to provide a bounty if not replenished. On Die Weide I will construct the simple shipping crate compost heaps into which we will pile grasses cut from around the orchard, and eventually manure from the livestock we will graze.

A Shedding We Will Go!

Weekend two of shed construction. We completed the roof rafters Friday afternoon and Saturday we screwed on the fascia board roof sheathing. Wrestling oriented strand plywood boards up onto the shed rafters was a bit challenging with two people and a breeze. Fortunately, the wind didn't get really stiff until after we finished screwing the boards down.

Kenny, my brother, camped Thursday through Sunday on Die Weide. He has camped for years and has all the supplies for a nice camp site. I'm envious! You can see his tent under the picnic pecan. Before the month of March is over with I intend to camp out at Die Weide too.

Did you see the pickup next to the shed? There's a story behind that too. Pressure Treated 4x6 posts warp at a sneeze and Kenny noticed a warped lean on the shed, so he backed his truck against the offending post and ratcheted a 2x6 board to the warped post to straighten it out until we get the sheathing on.

Construction Supervisor

I ordered the metal roofing supplies to be picked up this week. Along with the gutters, I hope we will have the shed ready to collect rain next week.

Water Harvest Shed - Construction Begins

Fact - One inch of rain falling on one square foot of roof can gather 0.623 gallons of water. However, with evaporation, flush systems, and gutter overflow losses, using 0.5 gallons per inch per square foot is a more realistic estimate. For a shed roof of 12x22 ft dimensions every one inch rainfall event can collect 132 gallons of water. Die Gruene Weide is in an area that has an annual average rainfall of 34 inches, for a potential of almost 4500 gallons of "free" water. Free after the cost of the shed and gutters and tank, that is. Considering the water company wants us to fork over almost $5 grand to put in a water meter, and still have monthly payments for the water consumed, the ~$2 grand for the shed and tank and free water thereafter will be a bargain.

To start with I purchased a food-grade 330 gallon tank that will be sufficient for the first four trees of our modest orchard plans. Next year, the water tank I intend to install within our budget and water use model is a 1500 gallon tank, which should be enough to water at least 18 trees.

Tank, in hand (or on land) it became imperative to start shed building. Especially since Inge was skeptical that we could fill the tank. I wagered that by the beginning of summer, the tank would be at least half full. In order for the tank to be half full, I needed to start the shed! For this blog, I'll let the pictures tell the story - which occurred over two days.

Lunch Fit for Construction Work!

Another Round of New Critters

We spent both Saturday and Sunday out at Die Weide to start building the water harvesting shed. However, this blog is about critters. Saturday we went to the NW corner in the "deep woods" to gather the SD card from critter cam. And deep woods was full of new critters. On this batch of candid cams we caught a squirrel (which I'm not bothering to post) and an opossum and an armadillo. Interestingly I've seen lots of signs of digging around back there and assumed it was wild boar, which is possible. But seeing the armadillo reminded me that they have a reputation of being diggers too. But after you take a look at the critter cam photos below, hang around - I've got another new furry friend photo to show you below the critter cam photos.

Primo Possum

Armadillo Crossing

Approaching Armadillo

The following critter comes with its own story - Where we needed to place the shed happened to be where we had tossed brambles and vines from copse clearing efforts. So we had to move the bramble pile to a new location. After we moved the pile I mowed the area and started unloading lumber. A few minutes after we got started, Inge looked down and saw this critter (cute!)

Field Mouse on Die Weide

Close up Field Mouse on Die Weide