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| The sun rose in a smoky, yellow sky. |
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| Conditions in Montreal are much worse than here. |
Here is a map I made from the resources at https://nofc1.cfsnet.nfis.org/mapserver/cwfis/index.phtml. The red states are New England. The yellow star is where we live in Vermont. | ||
| The moon this morning in the western, hazy sky. Waning gibbous moon, 88% of full |
A year ago in April, John and I found this small quarry on my land way back in the woods. Amy has since told me that she had found it long ago, but she never told me about it. This quarry is not on the maps. John theorized that it was an exploratory quarry and when the seams of quartz were found, it was abandoned. But we have found (as you will see in Part 4 in the future) that this quarry was used to make our house.
Above: cut granite was never taken down the mountain.
Above: Buddy Cat (who always hikes with us at home) hears a mouse.
Above: a closeup of where Buddy heard the mouse.
If you have never seen an old, abandoned quarry, you could walk into it and not recognize it. Below: you can see the marks the drills made in the granite.
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The altitude is in meters. The conversations below refer to the red push pins on the map. #1 is the bottom red pin, 2 is middle red pin and 3 is the upper red pin.
The text of the conversation with Mr. Paquette about the Barton Mountain Granite Cluster:
#1: John Barnard's Quarry "John Barnard's farm had falls on May Pond Brook, a grist mill for power, and four barns. across Route 16 and up Barton Mountain, John Barnard had a granite quarry. Later, Ryle Miller built a house on the grout pile at the Barnard Quarry."
#2: Pete Damon Quarry (on present-day Labrecque farm) "Pete Damon had a granite quarry. 1915 or later. Knew his granite. He built a lot of granite bridge underpasses for the cows to go under the road. The Labrecque farm had one and the Michael farm has one." "When I owned the present-day Michael farm there was a granite water tub in the old milkroom that was built by Pete Damon. The granite in that tub was four inches thick."
#3a: Harry Fisk Quarry (on present-day Michael farm) "The quarry covered four acres. A granite company had a four-year lease. They worked four years and then, gave up. A man named Ferguson worked this quarry after the company left. He worked alone and did hand-work only. They brought the granite to South Barton."
#3b: Harry Fisk Quarry (on Spiller Road, first mobile home on the left) "Very small quarry. His quarry never got electricity."
"In 1920 (plus or minus), electricity was brought to the first three quarries before anyone in Barton got electricity. Barton got this electricity from Charleston.
In the early times, almost all of the granite was cut by hand. Route 16 was dirt back then. When the granite was brought to South Barton, they used what they called 'shoes' to trig the wheels of the wagons that were loaded with the very heavy granite. These 'shoes' were made of cast iron at the Markland Company which was located on Water Street in Barton."
"In the 1920s, Richard Ryan made the gravestone for my little sister who is buried in St. Paul's Cemetery in Barton.
"In 1946, I bought the Fisk farms which consisted of three hundred and sixty acres of land. I used the electricity from the Fisk Quarry."
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Let’s take a step back in time to May 7, two weeks before the wedding. I had been told, and Amy had been told, that our septic system was fine. It was just wet because the land was wet. It has always been wet, we were told. Well, John took one look at the leach field and said, nope. . . the septic system has failed and has to be replaced. And he set about doing just that. In the photo above, you see John digging holes in the front yard for the septic design engineer for soil samples that the state requires.
The soil tests were done while Route 16 was being paved. Above, the flagman waved traffic through. One day, while getting the mail from the mailbox across the road, a driver nearly killed the flagman because he was speeding and didn’t stop until it was nearly too late. There usually isn’t this much traffic on the road here, but it had backed up after a long wait for the flag to change from Stop to Slow.
Above, one of four trenches dug for soil samples.
They found a drain pipe in one of the test holes. We found that this pipe comes all the way from a downspout on the house. The pipe ends at the catch basin way down at the bottom of the yard near the road. We have no idea why previous owners did this.
On the left is the metal of the catch basin that the town installed a long time ago. On the right, barely visible, is the end of the drain pipe from the previous photograph that drains a downspout on the house.
A few days after the holes were dug, this spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) (a chorus frog) was found at the bottom of the hole. It managed to crawl up the side of the hole and free itself. Peepers here make so much noise that you can’t talk on the phone without closing windows and going to an interior room!
The septic engineer has returned and surveyed the land for the state requirements. He has designed the new septic system and will submit his plans to the state. I hope the process is short! Part 2 of this series will return when there is something new to show.
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| John and me at the September wedding of my nephew |
Yesterday, in Pageant Park, we were married. After being a widow for 16 years, I finally found a man who is fascinating, intelligent, outspoken, talented, tolerant, hard-working, giving to a fault, protective and loving. My children love him and the cats adore him. The grandchildren think he's the greatest thing around. We have expansive plans for our lives and are looking forward to the future. You've seen some of our adventures here in the blogs — many more await all of us!
of Crystal Lake before the ceremony.
beyond it from Pageant Park.
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Psalm 8 1 O Ceiling Cat,u iz pretty ossum! Ur cool n in teh ceiling. 2 Bebehs and kittehs drinkin milkz dey sey dey liek u, cuz u pwn teh noobs n stuff. 3 When im in ur outsied, lookin at ur heavns stuf you maed wif ur own pawz liek teh mun and teh strz dat u put der 4 I wantz to no why you liek me and oteher lolcats. Why you talk 2 us? srsly. 5 Ainjels is moar importent than us but only a littul. You gives us lots gloriez and onnorz and stuff that we can has on our hed. 6 We can has control of cheezburgers. They has to listin to us cuz u sed so! 7 Aminals too. 8 And also burds and teh fishus too. 9 Ceiling Cat, u is maed of win and ossum. |
Get ready now cuz the wild weekend is coming!
Board the Friday Ark at The Modulator (submit your post here)
Weekend Cat Blogging
(see the week’s& host to enter your WCB post in the comments for the weekend roundup)
Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos
Optional Theme
(submit your post here)
The Carnival of the Cats
(submit your post here)
On May 10, Ironman had the camera again and took photos of our oil delivery. We’ve never had to have a delivery in May, but it snowed the first two weeks of the month and we ran out of firewood. We should be set with oil now for a couple of years.
Then the 4 year old took the camera into the room that John is renovating and got this shot of the cellar hole. The boulder is part of the original 1900 stone foundation. It is a granite boulder that was quarried on Barton Mountain in our quarry.
These are some old farm implements that were tossed into the cellar hole. There were treasures and trash under the floor — some of it was over 100 years old.
Ironman’s self-portrait.
Scout (left) and Willow napping on the couch on the sun porch.
To see a naughty photo of Scout that Ironman took, click here. I won’t post the photo on the blog.
Ironman’s 6 year old sister, Catgirl. Ironman is on the right.
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