Three Photos

Relics of sawmill on Route 5

I was on a photography jaunt (for wind tower photos in Sutton) one day in July when I took these three photos. This old sawmill is south of Barton on Route 5, before the Underpass Road. I thought it was the old railroad station for South Barton but I have been told it was probably a sawmill. Let me know if you know.

Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis)

I continued home and ran across Patti fishing off a bridge on Route 5. Just as I walked up to her, she pulled in the brook trout you see here. She is using this photograph for her profile pic on Facebook now and says that the fish was great at supper that night!

Another boulder yanked out of the back yard.

I finally got home and found that John had found another boulder under the earth in the backyard. He needed these chains to haul it out. You can see our back road on the right in the photo. The boulder is now at the corner of the back road, the big lilac and the wall going down to the backyard. Buddy and Oscar often nap next to the boulder because it is so large it creates cooling shade for them.

It was a good photo day.

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A Model T Axle

Rear axle for 1923 Model T Ford

We have found many things here during the house and stream restoration, but this was big. Upstream of the brook that runs through the back yard, during the continuing clearing and restoration of the stream bed, John found this rear axle to a 1923 Model T Ford. A tire remained draped around it, and a tire rim was also in the brook. I know folks back then dumped most everything in the woods, but this axle surprised me. In all the years I have lived and explored here, I never saw evidence of this axle in the brook. It was buried under blowdowns and leaf litter. (Photo from PlanetSpring.com)

I know nothing about cars, but I found this interesting description of the design and construction of the Model T rear axle at The Frontenac Motor Company site:

The rear axle uses a "3-point drive" system, unique to Ford. This type of construction necessitates the use of only a single universal joint and permits of the housing of the entire driving mechanism in a dust proof, oil tight case. If plenty of oil is supplied to these parts there should be no trouble during the natural life of the gears, made as they are of the best special alloy steel obtainable, carefully cut and case hardened. The rear axle runs on Hyatt roller bearings. End thrust tendencies of the large bevel gear are taken by fiber discs between hardened and ground steel discs—the best possible construction for this service. The propeller shaft runs in babbitt bearings at both ends. The entire axle is lubricated by a copper tube which leads from the oiler and enters at the ball joint. The oil flows down through the tubular torsion tube to the gears and finally to the Hyatt roller axle-bearings. These bearings are spiral rollers and each alternate spiral is reversed so that they distribute the oilautomatically over all parts of the bearing surface. Dope cups are installed on each drive shaft bearing and the four rear axle bearings to assist lubrication, as dope will be retained longer and therefore gives better results than oil. Note: The rear hub brakes are intended to perform the function of emergency brakes as their name implies and consequently they take hold severely. Used only in emergency they should outlive the rest of the car. Many theories to the contrary notwithstanding, the transmission brake is not injurious to the driving gears if used judiciously, as every other part of the car should be used. And inasmuch as this brake equalizes the forces between the two rear wheels uniformly, is more easily lubricated, inspected and adjusted, it is better practice to use it for service than the hub brakes.

Rim from the Model T

I’m wondering what else we will discover around here.

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The A. K. Ballard Company

A broken Ballard jug excavated from the back dooryard.

With just a bit of searching, we learned that if this jug had been whole, it would be worth at least $500. But it was broken and only small pieces of the rest of the jug were unearthed when John was excavating the back dooryard. The University of Vermont has a collection of pottery from the A. K. Ballard Company of Burlington, which made this jug. UVM writes:

About the year 1830, E.L. Farrar built a pottery company on the south side of Pearl Street between St. Paul and Church Streets. In 1850 the Ballard Brothers, Orin L., Alfred K., and Haria bought the company. They enlarged the establishment, but in 1867 the company was dissolved. Alfred Ballard ( - 1874) founded a new company which he held until 1874. After his death, the company was sold to Franklin Woodworth. Woodworth continued in the pottery business until 1896. When he sold the company, the pottery became a dye manufactory. At present (December, 1979) the building houses a restaurant.

We found one other source of information: Ballard Family Potteries at the Internet Antique Gazette:

A. K. Ballard operated a pottery alone in Burlington, Vermont making stoneware until 1872. He used an incised mark reading A.K. BALLARD/BURLINGTON, VT.

The three Ballard brothers, Orrin L, Alfred K, and Hiram N. worked briefly in Burlington before taking over the old Thompson & Co. pottery in Gardiner, Maine in 1854. In Burlington they used the incised mark BALLARD & BROTHERS/BURLINGTON, VT. They operated the Gardiner facility for about a year and produced wares with the incised mark BALLARD & BROTHERS/GARDINER ME. Following this experience the two brothers moved to Portland, Maine, where in 1855 they established a pottery at 100 Green Street. The 1856 Portland directory lists them at that address and describes the as “Manufacturers and Wholesaler Dealers of Stone Ware of every description, which they offer to the trade on the most reasonable terms.”

Orrin and Alfred moved back to Burlington and made pottery together from 1859 to 1867. Their mark was O.L. & A.K. BALLARD/BURLINGTON, VT.

From this information, we estimate that this jug was made between 1867 and 1874. The history of this house continues to be uncovered . . .

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Our Little Turtle

The baby turtle's home for three weeks.

Do you remember how John had to excavate the back yard to level it so the house wouldn't flood? One day, when he stepped up into the tractor to continue excavating, he saw a strange, tiny shape in the hole he was digging. John got up and picked it up and found an infant painted turtle. We found an old aquarium for the baby, and got him a couple of worms and lettuce and a rock to lie on and let him rest. The turtle had to have been born either in the beaver bog or in a sandy bank on our property. A friend has told us how she has seen, this year, a big turtle crossing the road here. We haven't found any turtle nesting sites yet, though. But however it did it, the baby turtle came up the brook and crawled into the back yard and into the excavated hole. I am so glad that John's eyes are so good. I doubt anyone else would have seen a well camouflaged baby turtle in a big hole.

The turtle had no distinguishing marks to identify it, but John knew it was an Eastern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta). The baby never ate lettuce or any vegetable — it only wanted worms and flies. Some of the worms crawled out of the aquarium, which was sort of nasty because the turtle was on the kitchen counter! We have some earthworms in an elephant ear plant pot. I have been feeding the worms some coffee grounds and bread crumbs from our homemade bread. The worms came from the soil from the yard which we used to plant the huge bulb of the elephant ear in a huge pot. Basically, we used one pet to feed another pet.

By the time we released the turtle, his markings had developed.

We often debated how long to hold the turtle. He was not doing well at first. His shell was dry and dehydrated and he was lethargic. But after two weeks of rest and food, he began to do much better. His colors appeared as he grew and he vigorously attacked the worms. If we kept him captive, he would probably have outlived both John and me, and he would never be able to survive in the wild. If we released him, he would most likely be eaten by somebody else. We finally decided to release him and let him enjoy whatever freedom in the wild that he had coming to him. The brook was running slower after the spring rains, and we decided that June 18 was the day for him to leave us. I carried him out to the brook and set him free. The rest of the photos are of his delight in the outdoors.

Baby Turtle's first drink of wild water in the brook.

Baby Turtle leaves the brook.

After an hour of eating, drinking and swimming, the turtle left the brook once again — headed in the same direction to the same place where John found him! I redirected him several times and hoped he would hang around with us amongst the irises and wildflowers we had planted on the bank of the brook. But I turned my attention to something else for a few moments and he disappeared. We haven't seen him since and I often wonder how he is faring. I think we made the right decision in releasing him. He was a determined little guy, healthy and strong. He definitely enjoyed life outdoors.

Our last sight of the little turtle.

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A New Backyard

Wall built from old barn foundation.

The backdoor yard had to be graded to stop water flooding the basement. There is a small hill not far from the house in back and it sloped right into the house. So John drove the backhoe back there and began excavating . . . and found another household dump and the stone foundation of a very old barn. Nothing here is very simply, is it? He hauled boulders out of the dirt and used them to build a stone wall at the bottom of the hill. He spend many hours excavating the dump, and even I was able to work at it one day. There were hundreds of antique bottles, piles of broken glass and crockery, farm implements, leather harnesses, the harrow, metal fence posts, old dry cell batteries, and other debris.

Looking to the backdoor and flat yard from the top of ungraded stone wall.

After the excavating and grading, John planted grass seed and put in tomatoes, peppers, and three kinds of squash. He transplanted a good-sized lilac shoot from the big lilac on that hill. From friends, I planted more rhubarb,horseradish, chives, marigolds and small pansies which I put over the brook (which flows under this hill through a culvert that was installed long, long ago and comes out on the right of the photo, unseen here.) I also planted one pumpkin plant that the children and I started at Sunday School. Finally, when Zorro died, we moved a snowball bush from the day lily garden to the left of the big lilac here on the hill.

A June 1 hailstorm did not damage the little tomato plants.

This wouldn't be Vermont without dramatic weather, and on June 1 we had a violent storm with large hail. In the photo above you can see the rock pile from rocks pulled from the leach field and the back yard. That is where the mink lived this past winter, and from the way the cats behave around the pile, still lives today. You can see some of my many tamarack trees on both sides of the rock pile. Where there was bare dirt on June 1, we now have squash vines growing and blooming all over. Years ago, John had saved Hubbard squash seeds. He planted them this year but figured they were too old to germinate. They germinated. Come fall, I will be selling many Hubbard squash at the Barton Village Market. This property is lush with these new gardens.

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Maple Stump

You learn a lot digging in the dirt. John found this ancient maple tree stump, bigger than the tractor, in the front near the road behind the rotting fence. Digging it out, he found that the yard once had a stone wall on the road with at least two huge maple trees. The road was not in the exact place it is now and it wasn't paved back then, so it must have been beautiful. He finally got this stump broken and dug out and dragged up to the driveway. We still don't know what we'll do with it.

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A Couple of Problems

Tent caterpillars in apple tree

One of the apple trees has tent caterpillars. Probably more by now since we haven't done a thing to this nest. At least the birds will enjoy the tasty caterpillars. A friend in the village has or had a nest in one of her apple trees, too. She was going to cut the branch off and smush them all with her feet. I have to check with her about that, but this branch of ours is way, way high up — too high to cut.

Electricity to artesian well only 6" underground

Because of flash floods and flooding brooks, John re-graded the back yard this spring. Now last year, while re-doing all of the electrical in the house, he found all the circuits and wires except the one for the artesian well. He found it this spring with the backhoe. He dug very carefully because he knew the wire had to be somewhere back there. But he never figured it was only six inches underground! We could have dug into it at any time over the past few years! It wasn't in any pipe or anything. It was just lying under there. The wires don't go straight from the house to the well. They go way out to the small hill, as if they were going to go out to the spring well (which, of course, doesn't need electricity) and then snaked back to the well. For the past couple of weeks, these wires have been draped over the roof of the garage while the grading is going on. They will be properly buried when this digging is over.

Other than these problems, we have that mink from the winter sneaking into the garage to steal garbage. The weeds have almost taken over the day lily garden. The black flies have been the worst I have ever seen in my entire life. But worst of all is that two of my cats have illnesses.

Zorro

On their vet visit this year for rabies and distemper shots, I complained about Zorro's vomiting and weight loss. I had had him wormed and changed his food but it just gets worse. After a blood test we found that Zorro, who will be 16 years old in August, has hyperthyroid problems and is now on a little daily pill. I hope it works because he is still losing weight.

Possum

Sadly, Possum has EGC (Feline eosinophilic granuloma complex). It is manageable but is inevitably fatal and I have lost several cats to this. Right now she only has lesions in her mouth and they are so small they don't require treatment. But they will. I hope that researchers finally find a cure for this disease. She and Zorro are such sweeties. We have gone so many years without cat health problems that I probably was thinking these kitties were immortal.

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A Harrow Underground

A tine from a spring tooth horse-drawn harrow

After last year's flash flood, when we suffered damage, John has been grading the land around the house and digging out the original stream beds for the brooks. As part of this project, he had to grade the back dooryard, which slopped right into the basement from the brooks. He has excavated the area so that it is flat and level with the brook in the back yard. While digging, he found dozens of antique bottles and horse paraphernalia. Obviously, there used to be a barn on this site. Up the road at the culvert close to Stevens Mill, there are many rose bushes. We think the original farm house was there. There are also huge maples there that people usually kept about their house.

John also uncovered a stone foundation for a barn in the back yard. He has taken out the most dangerous of these boulders and built a stone wall at the bottom of the rise out back. I apologize for not having photographs of this project. The blackflies have been ferocious this year. I don't know how John works out there with those things, but I can't tolerate them and have not shot his work. The back bathroom and hall are usually muddy now because of the work, so I sweep and vacuum almost every day. We are planting on top of the stone walls — rhubarb, chives, horseradish, daffodils, lilacs, cucumbers and even tomatoes. There are also plans for sunflowers, sedum and a fern garden. There will be photos soon. Promise.

Anyhow. During the excavation of this barn foundation, John found this tine of an old spring tooth harrow. Click here to see a photograph and description of a complete harrow. John is positive that the entire harrow is underground, but it is not threatening to be pushed to the surface by frost, so he didn't search for it. This harrow was a one-horse harrow and had a wood frame, some of which we have. Harrows were used after fields were plowed. The harrow prepared the land for seeding.

Besides photos of the project, I will be photographing all of the artifacts that were dug up. This project was more of an archeological project than a grading project. We now have three known household dump sites on this land.

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New Found Daffodil (It's Finally May!)

April 22, 2011

When he was clearing the infernal willows from the brook near the house, John found this small bunch of daffodils growing in the brush on the other side of the brook. From other clues discovered there, we figure there used to be a flower garden over there. It must have been pretty with the brook bubbling and dropping beside the flowers. We are going to restore the area with other bulbs and roses. I can imagine what it will look like in coming years when I look out the window, across the brook, in the spring. I went over yesterday to photograph the daffodil that bloomed about three days ago. It is a frilly flower and reminds me, somehow, of lions.

April 30, 2011

Happy May!

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Raccoons Again

These photographs are from a series of experiments with light and shutter speed. They were taken at night with flashlights held by my husband. No tripod was used because I didn't think I had time to set it up. Ironically, this coon stayed so long I could have set it up and still gotten a thousand photos. The raccoons have not returned for me to continue the lighting experiment.

I posted one of these photos at my Project 365 site and was both gratified with the generous comments and dismayed with the general consensus that raccoons are "cute." You may remember the night the raccoons here slaughtered four chickens and the nightmare we had clearing them out of the woods. There is also the threat of rabies, which is a very real threat here. There was a raccoon rabies outbreak within the past five years. On top of all of this, there are the cats. But the cats are in at night which is when raccoons come out.

Nearly two weeks ago, I was polyurethaning a new cabinet that John had built in the new living room. I was concentrating. I remember John walking through and saying something about raccoons. Later, I heard him tell me from the other room that there was a raccoon lying under the bird tree. I was curious and wanted a photograph of a raccoon in the daylight. I mentioned that it was rare for them to be out in the day and wondered out loud why it was there. I got the camera and went to the window. Sure enough, the raccoon was lying down. But it was not eating bird seed. It looked sort of dead. John joined me at the window then and I told him it looked like a dead raccoon. He said, yeah, it did look like that. I asked why it was behaving like that. He said because he had shot it four times. I screeched, almost dropped the camera, and left the room.

Apparently while I was working on the cabinet, John had told me there was a raccoon behaving badly outside. He had loaded his rifle in the same room that I was working in and gone upstairs for a clean shot. The raccoon had been stumbling and could not keep its balance. It probably had distemper and John humanely shot its troubles away.

All the raccoons that we have seen since then have been healthy, as the one in these photographs is. But we are keeping a wary eye open for them.

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Kitchen Update

All photos shot on April 10, 2011

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Ferns and Ivies in the Kitchen

The asparagus fern waits for us to find a pot big enough for it.

Every March I typically have a fever to see green things. This is understandable to people living here in the Kingdom. With three feet of snow on the ground, it can be difficult imagining that summer will ever return. This past March, my sister, Camille, and I made one of our famous shopping trips. Instead of going book shopping, we went plant shopping in Lyndonville.

Camille lives in the Lyndonville area so she took me to White's Market to look at houseplants. Camille also advised me to get an asparagus fern because, she said, they are easy to care for and grow a lot. The asparagus fern at White's Market was huge and I wasn't sure that I wanted it. But then Julia, the floral designer, saw us and came to assist us. Julia is a gem. She knows her plants and is so enthusiastic that she convinced me that I can grow anything. She introduced me to new plants that I never considered buying, and made me very excited about the prospect of being a successful gardener. I ended up buying the asparagus fern, a large Boston fern, two small lemon button ferns (which are variants of Boston ferns), a huge grape ivy, two small English ivies, a large shamrock and a small schefflera. White’s Market must be very pleased with Julia!

The asparagus fern takes a bath.

All of the plants are doing very well here at the house. In fact, the asparagus fern is doing so well that it was growing in front of my eyes — it was growing into other pots that were near it. It became bigger and bigger and by April 9 we had to repot it. It took the brute strength of John to get it out of the pot and had to be divided into two. After a nice bath, we hung it in the living room where the spider plant used to be. We moved the spider plant into the kitchen sun porch.

Repotted asparagus fern now hangs in the living room.

The spider plant now hangs in the sun porch. John built the bookcase on the side of the double oven. It holds our cookbooks. The bookcase is made from pine salvaged from the old porch

The divided and repotted angel wing begonia.
This begonia was a gift from Barb, a friend at the library.

Instead of curtains, I have used the Boston fern (right) and a Swedish ivy from the C&C (left) to frame the kitchen windows. John used a 200 year old piece of Douglas fir as a functional trim to hold the weight of the hanging plants. We can add smaller planters as we desire in the future.

I am more than pleased with my numerous houseplants. May they continue to thrive (and may I continue to successfully care for them)!

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American Hornbeam Trees and Coppicing

Carpinus caroliniana

We have quite a few hornbeam trees in the woods. I didn't know this. I thought they were all little beech trees. After reading about hornbeams, it isn't surprising that I thought they were beech: another name for hornbeam is blue beech. But the bark is smaller grained, flakier and grayer than beech. The leaves of a hornbeam are even similar to beech leaves. Since it is winter, I have no photographs of either leaves to compare. And apparently I have photographed every part of a beech tree (leaves, buds, seeds and seed hulls) except the bark. One difference between the trees is that hornbeams, but not beech, have catkins (male and female).

Hornbeam is also called ironwood. It is very hard wood, used for things like axe handles, soles of shoes, piano actions and other object that require a very hard wood. But the most fascinating thing about hornbeam is how it is grown to make hardwood poles and parquet flooring.

Coppicing is an ancient way to manage woodlots. A tree is cut down almost to the ground at the beginning of winter. In the next spring, many shoots will grow out of the stump (which is called a stool). These shoots are allowed to grow for several years after which they are harvested for poles and other uses. These poles can also be used to make dowels. Below is a public domain diagram of the coppicing cycle from Wikipedia:

Dowels are of interest to me because John and I have frequently discussed their use in the construction of the new kitchen. So far, John has made his own dowels to create plugs to cover certain nails on the cookbook bookcase and in an ancient piece of Douglas fir that he used over the kitchen window. When I learned, on an early spring walk that we took on top of the deep, crusted snow in the woods, that we have trees up there that could be used to make dowels, you can imagine my interest!

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Kitchen Floor 3: The Trim

After the kitchen floor was tiled, there was trim work to be done under the cabinets. The problem was the design of the tile. What part of the tile would you use to trim the cabinets? We decided on two different ways: one for the wall cabinets and another for the island. Look carefully at these two photos to see the differences. It may seem that we paid too much attention to this, but after looking at alternatives, I found that choosing the wrong design could detract from the entire floor. I am very happy with what John did — it enhances the floor and the cabinets. In the photo below, you see where the floor ends until we finish the demolition of the rest of the old kitchen.

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Kitchen Floor 2: Stone Inlay

March 4, 2011

When a house is 110 years old, it is going to sag and get crooked. John leveled the entire house and the kitchen floor was level. He demolished and rebuilt crooked walls and the floor would be straight. But one addition to the house was built crooked to the house. In order to straighten it, he would have had to dismantle the entire addition and rebuild it. The house is sound without doing that. But one consequence is that as the tile floor reached the French doors in the breakfast nook, the tiles would have crossed the threshold of the doors in a diagonal and that would have been unacceptable both to John and to people who walk on the floor.

To straighten that line, John designed and tiled an abstract stone inlay of the trees and wildflowers in our fields and woods. To lay this design within the tiles, each tile had was cut and one piece of the tile was slid away from the other to make room for the inlay. This sliding of a part of each tile realigned the tiles and the floor then appeared straight as it neared and went under the French doors.

March 7, 2011

These photos show a small sequence from the beginning until the end of the creation of the inlay. Stone from here and from John's travels was used. The tree is brownstone from Whiteville, Virginia; pink flowers are Brazilian rose quartz; the green is green crystal beryl from Alstead, NH. He also used art glass for the white and blue from Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. The white center of one flower is an actual marble made of marble, sliced in half, giving the floor another dimension.

March 9, 2011

I still have not photographed the inlay since it has been grouted. You simply have to wait for that!

John is now encouraging me to design the counters of two built in cabinets that he has built (one in the breakfast nook and one in the living room). I had planned on doing tessellations of regular polygons. But after looking at the tile and stone that I have available, I have decided on an abstract pattern featuring local stone from the fields and the granite quarry up the mountain.

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Knobs

Stained and polyurethaned cabinet knobs.
March 3, 2011

I'm learning. After being shown how, I stained and polyurethaned twenty-five cabinet knobs for my new kitchen. They are bright and shiny and I am proud. You have to understand that I hadn't done this before, so it was a big deal for me. And now, a month later, I even know how to clean and store the polyurethane brush and how to care for the can of polyurethane. I don’t have to wait for John anymore to coach me. John built this rack from scrap lumber for me to dry the knobs. Most of them are now installed in the kitchen. But some have to wait because we have to refinish the old cabinet faces. I may not be able to do the sanding then (because of the dust), but I'll do the staining and polyurethaning all of the faces!

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