Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Our search for firewood in Floyd County

Even the best laid plans can go awry and this year gives us a painful example of that. We had laid in a larger supply of firewood this year than ever before but the continuing cold weather has caused us to burn it all with more freezing weather ahead of us.

It is still a long time to spring and our wood stove will be running 24/7 for several more months unless we get a reprieve.

I put a backup plan (Plan B) into action several weeks ago in which a number of dead trees were cut down so I could attack them with a chainsaw and split them up into firewood. Unfortunately this backup plan was stymied by the fact that 16 inches of snow fell and we cannot get to the trees to work on them.

So, we went to plan C in which we called our neighbor who had offered to deliver logs which we can cut up into firewood. He would have been be happy to deliver, but he couldn't get to the logs because his tractor could not handle the deep snow.

Now we were down to one day's worth of firewood and things were looking grim. I start calling around and found that nearby firewood dealers cannot get to their woodlots because of the deep snow. The phone book was not much help as firewood is a seasonal thing and is often a sideline activity so it is not widely advertised.

We persisted and I got a partial load from Pete Hall, who lives just down the road from us. He had a little left over from another delivery and the wood he delivered would hold us for a week if all went well.

It' was time for Plan D and I was looking for firewood everywhere. I was driving home and I saw a large load of oak firewood being driven down the road ahead of me. I followed the truck for quite a while until the driver saw me and pulled off the road so we could talk. I arranged for him to deliver a truckload of firewood as soon as possible

As soon as I got home, I secured a load of pallets from my neighbor to dump the firewood on so that it will stay dry until we can store it away. That is what you see in the image at the top of this post.

The truckload of firewood arrived two days later and looked like this before we covered it all up with a tarpaulin.

I think it will hold us until Spring, but I am going to keep an eye on our consumption and will reorder if necessary.

If you live in Floyd County, VA, here are a few people who can supply you with firewood:

Bob Backlund, Sawbrier Farm 3182 Webbs Mill Rd 540-391-8999

Frank Griffith, Mountain Top Logging, 386 Silverleaf Lane 276-692-5806

Pete Hall, Franklin Pike, 540-745-7228

Preparing for a colder decade - Part 1

My friends who follow the "official" line on climate change look with pity at me as I persist in looking at websites that insist on refuting EPA and IPCC forecasts. As a result I am preparing for one or more decades of increasing cold while they are doing their best to stave off global warming.

We will see how things work out in the coming years.

In the meantime, I am considering a series of actions that may make life easier while Nature makes up its mind whether we will have a warmer future or a colder future.

 The first problem that I see is that many of my handy tools and equipment are designed for temperate weather and we are seeing extreme weather that stops outside work completely. I plan to modify what I can to extend the working range of this equipment.

This is the first step: A Wheelbarrow - Sled Conversion Project

I have a fine two-wheeled wheelbarrow which is light and strong and works like a charm until the snow gets more then 4 inches deep. Since the snow is about 15 inches to 24 inches deep and I still need to haul firewood from the woodpile to the front porch, I decided to convert the wheelbarrow to a sled.

I removed 6 carriage bolts and lifted the barrow body off the undercarriage.

I drilled two holes in the lip of the barrow and attached a rope to use as a tow line.

Once the tow rope was secured, I could easily draw the barrow across the snow. The entire conversion took only twenty minutes.

We used the improvised sled to move hundreds of pounds of firewood from behind the house up a slope to the storage area on the front porch. My neighbor Raef King did the heavy lifting while I did the heavy thinking. I was very appreciative for his assistance.

He did a little testing on the sled and concluded that more work is needed before it can be used for coasting down snowy slopes. It doesn't steer worth a damn.

Other than that limitation, we have a workable solution for hauling heavy material around in deep snow.

Future projects that might make country winters less oppressive:

I have ideas for other projects, but they are much more difficult to implement. I would like to find a conversion for my garden tractor that involved tracks or really wide wheels for the rear wheels and wide skis for the front wheels. Think of a slow speed snow tractor.

I would like to find a low cost greenhouse with automatic ventilation that can be erected on a raised deck. It should be able to withstand severe weather and should be relatively easy to dismantle and store away during the summer. If I can extend the growing season for my deck gardens, it will be very useful as the climate gets colder.

Covered storage for our vehicles is no longer something that might be nice to have. We spend a lot of time cleaning ice and snow off our car and van. In some cases, it takes as much time to make the car drivable as it does to drive it into town. If winters continue to be colder, it will make sense to make our vehicle use as efficient as possible.

Local blogger and his airborne Subaru jump a barbed wire fence

On my way to deliver a framed painting, I hit a fifty foot stretch of ice on Franklin Pike this morning. The subaru's all wheel drive was no match for the ice and we shot down the hill and up over an embankment into a pasture six feet below.

The car clipped the top strands of a barbed wire fence and was airborne for about 15 feet then it touched down and slid to stop under an apple tree some forty feet from where it had left the road.

The engine was still running, but I could not get traction in the deep snow. The visible damage was limited to the left front tire and the underside of the front grille.

The temperature was still in the teens and the wind was howling so I was hard pressed to stay warm. I called neighbor Ann Bower and she picked me up and brought me home for some coffee until the tow truck and State Police arrived.

Bell's Towing and the State Police showed up within 15 minutes and they both got into action with no delay. They are both old friends. The last time I had seen Tommy Bell he was winching my van up onto his tow truck.    

Trooper Anthony Mackian asked if I was on my way to deliver one of Gretchen's paintings. After getting my insurance data, etc. he walked up the road to investigate the accident scene. It was so treacherous that he had to do some fancy footwork to keep from falling on the ice.

We were very fortunate that there was no traffic from the north end of Franklin or we might have had a nasty pileup against the tow truck. There was no way to stop or change course once a car was on the ice.

Tommy Bell managed to pull out enough fence posts and barbed wire to make room for dragging  the Subaru back onto the road.

The Subaru was still operational and I put it in reverse while Tommy dragged the car back to the opening in the fence. Once the car was positioned on the bank, Tommy had to lift the Subaru up the bank and drag it onto the road.

The Subaru looked pretty good considering what it had been through and Tommy was able to drive it up onto the tow truck for the ride to the garage. This was fortunate because the tow cable had come off the spool during the final minutes of rescuing the Subaru from the pasture.

This is more proof why Subaru is the "car of choice" in Floyd Virginia. If you do not have four wheel drive you are helpless in this weather.

All's well that ends well. The Subaru is fixable, the fence can be repaired, and I escaped without a scratch.

For those of you who are interested in details, here is an annotated shot of the jump area.

If you are traveling south on Franklin Pike this week, watch out for the ice on the hill just south of Silverleaf Lane. It is unsafe at any speed.

Is this a preview of the climate change to come?

Our family has been so preoccupied with the insanity of the global warmists that we have not taken a good look at the oncoming threat of 20 years of global cooling until very recently.

The latest series of snow storms have dumped several feet of snow on our property in Floyd VA and we have been fortunate to have our neighbor Rodger Bower to dig us out each time we became snowbound.

Because we have been getting mixed snow and rain, the snow becomes so heavy that it is very difficult to shovel. If we did not have access to someone like Rodger and his tractor, we would have been confined to the house for weeks at a time. The snow was deep enough that the usually reliable all wheel drive Subaru could not get us out to the plowed road.

We have been very fortunate this year, but I am beginning to wonder what will happen when the winters are significantly longer and colder. Are we going to be able to handle months and months of deep snow drifts and 10 degree weather?

We have been able, with the help of friends and family, to amass a store of firewood that was many times larger than what we gathered in previous years, but we have burned our supply faster than in any previous year.

We will need to cut and split another few cords of wood to make it through to warmer weather. Fortunately, we have a supply of standing dead trees that can be easily dropped and rendered into usable firewood. I can see several years supply, but I wonder what will happen when the several years of colder weather turn into a decade or two?

Our backup heating is electrical baseboards which work like a charm but are quite expensive and are used as a last resort. I shudder to think what out heating bills would look like if we had propane or electrical heat.

Global cooling will seriously impact our growing seasons. Our micro garden (foot square gardening) was barely satisfactory because of the short growing season. Local farmers were also affected and did not have the crop yields they had last year. If we are in for a long siege of shorter growing seasons, I am sure that we will soon be constructing greenhouses to make the most of the cooler summers to come.

People are resourceful when pressed to the wall and I think we will see many changes in how we heat our homes, how we grow food, and how we live during the colder years to come.

 Our clothing styles may even change as time goes on. In May, we will change from our winter mukluks to lightweight summer mukluks. You read it here first...

Early morning thoughts about life in Floyd

The small hours of the morning are a good time to reflect on how lucky we are to have arrived here in this community. I am on the computer as usual while Gretchen and assorted cats sleep soundly.

We are experiencing a torrential downpour here in the mountains and power has been flickering on and off for the past few hours. The weather map seems to say that we will have more of the same with a snow storm coming by late tomorrow.

The rain has washed away the last of the ice that has covered our yard and we'll have time to replenish the supply of firewood on the porch before the next snow storm.

Weeks of temperatures in the teens has given the wood stove an insatiable appetite. We are pleased that our supply of firewood has held out this long. We have good neighbors who helped us when I was not in shape to cut and stack wood for the stove.

Gretchen and I have been fortunate in many ways. Our involvement with art and artists gives us opportunities for continued personal and professional expansion even though we are decades beyond our corporate careers.. We continue to support grassroots efforts at sustainable economic development and see that as a long term vital activity.

My custom framing business continues to attract appreciative customers and that is a wonderful thing indeed. I am finding opportunities to donate framing and photographic services to local organizations and am still helping others with web pages.

Gretchen continues to paint in pastels and mixed media and she is holding small classes on pet portraits for other artists. She is displaying her art in more venues every month thanks to her involvement with a network of local artists who share ideas and resources..

We support local merchants and buy from local sources unless the products are only available elsewhere. We are practicing economies in all areas and find that our quality of life has not suffered because of this.

I feel that businesses in this area of the country has always been struggling to survive and that this struggle will continue for the foreseeable future. On the positive side, there are those who still have money to invest and their continuing investments in this county make a huge difference in our ability to continue and attract tourists and new settlers.

Some have their attention stuck on the fact that businesses are closing, but I see that as a normal part of winnowing out enterprises that have failed to meet the needs of the local community. The positive signs are the continuing appearance of new businesses and home-based enterprises which bring money into the county from outside.

We have a high percentage of very creative people in this county but they are like seeds from which an attractive community will emerge. It takes innovative business people with investment money and resources to enable our creative potential to flourish and pay dividends. Fortunately we are blessed with creative and business people who work together in many ways.

People with small businesses are attracted to communities with great creative potential. A community cannot survive by standing still. They either grow because they are interesting places to live and work or go into decline because they have no future to offer their children.

We are struggling to make ends meet like the rest of the world, but we feel there is promise for a better life and it stems from the creativity that is encouraged here.

A Cold Spell has been cast upon us

Now that the global warming scam is history, many of us are scrambling to keep the home fires burning hot enough to ward off the cold.

Here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, temperatures seem to be much lower than in the nearby cities like Roanoke and Christiansburg, Maybe these are example of Urban Heat Islands which are significantly warmer than their surroundings. The town of Floyd is definitely not warmer than its surroundings.

We are burning firewood at double the usual rate in order to keep the house temperature in the 70's. I can't imagine what the people burning other fuels like propane must be going through.

Another sign that we are experiencing severely cold weather. We are sprinkling birdseed out the door and we usually have a carpet of birds all day long. Yesterday I saw crows feeding about 5 feet from the front door. When they start banging on the door to let us know that the seed is running low, we will know that the end times are near.

Dealing with a balky Emergency Generator

We were snowed in for a few days and ice built up on the trees to the point where branches were snapping off and blocking the roads.

Here is a picture of our lane taken by Tom King as he and a chainsaw-wielding neighbor cleared their way to the main road.

I was completing a backlog of Christmas framing projects when the power went out but I was not too concerned because I thought my emergency generator was ready to go and save the day. After all, I had started it every few weeks after the last storm and everything had been working perfectly.

I had purchased an extra spark plug in case it was needed and had three 5 gallon cans of gasoline in addition to a full tank on the generator. I felt that I was much better prepared than last year.

Little did I know.

We Appreciate Simple Pleasures in Hard Times

It's 18 degrees outside and the wind is picking up, so the chill factor is probably 8 degrees. The weather in Floyd today is brisk.

Fortunately, we decided a long time ago that we would install one of those new-fangled wood burning stoves with an outside air feed. Our medium-sized wood stove keeps our 1650 sq ft house comfortably warm with no other heat sources except for tiny bathroom heaters in the remote ends of the house.

Our 3 1/2 acre property supplies enough oak firewood that we do not expect to need any other fuel source  for the next four years. Our winter fuel costs include chainsaw parts, gasoline, and bar oil but not much more.

Christmas can wait - We're still in Thanksgiving mode...

It's been a week to count our blessings. Lots of things happened but everything worked out well in the end. The weather got really cold in a hurry, but we had a ready-made solution right at hand - Brunswick Stew.

I even found time to empty out part of the crawlspace.

We visited family in North Carolina for a pre-Thanksgiving celebration and heard our talented grandchildren perform in two concerts in Raleigh.

We enjoyed Thanksgiving in Floyd with Gretchen's daughter Marjorie.

Gretchen has been getting commissions to paint portraits and I am seeing a resurgence in demand for custom framing projects.

Business has also been picking up at the art gallery in The Locust Street Station. That is something we are quite thankful for.

I had a cataract removed and now I have great vision in both eyes again. Doctor David Kinsler at the Vistar Eye center in Salem did the procedure and the results were fantastic. This is the second eye he has done for me and I am happy to recommend him to anyone who needs this procedure. We were in and out in less than two hours and I was back on the computer in the afternoon.

Gretchen had a minor accident on Sunday and we ended up in the Emergency Room at Montgomery General Hospital where we were taken care of by our old friend Dr Joe Baum!

Dr Joe is one of those people who make you feel better when he enters the room.  An xray and some Ace Bandages and we were on our way back home.

We are now preparing for "Dickens of a Night" in Floyd this Friday. Almost all of the businesses will be open, there will be street singers, street musicians and the regular Friday Night Jamboree. It will be a great opportunity to connect with old friends and to meet newcomers.

When things slow down a bit, I hope to start writing again. Fortunately, Doug Thompson, Fred First, and Colleen Redman keep blogging so there is no shortage of interesting things to read.

Starting the day with a good country breakfast

The Blue Ridge Restaurant in Floyd, Virginia, is the right place to begin a long day of hard work. This veggie omelet with home fries was just what I needed to bring peace and harmony into my day.

Tom King, who was sitting across the table, started his day with the Oatmeal breakfast.

Breakfasts like these and good conversation are what living in Floyd is all about. If you ever spend a night in Floyd and wake up ready for a country breakfast, check out the Blue Ridge Restaurant.

They offer friendly service and good food. What's not to like?