With temperatures in Ithaca rising into the 50s, spring feels like it’s right around the corner. In actual fact, we’re still deep in February, and it might well snow on Friday. But the heat still makes me imagine the coming warm months, when the ground will thaw and the become ready for planting.
With that in mind, I’ve started searching for information on our soil and the wonderful plants we can grow in it. Reading a great local blog, Living in Dryden, I found a handy map produced by the town of Dryden which roughly classifies soils and floodplains in the area. According to the map, we’ve got either Class I or II type soil, which they consider the best for agriculture. Excellent news!
I dug deeper and went to the Web Soil Survey from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. This is a really great resource which lets you look up soil information for just about anywhere in the United States. And most of the information is current, which may not be true about paper soil maps. In our region the map is from 2006.
After tinkering with the interface, I came up with a map like the one below. It shows roads and the boundaries of different soil types. It also has a nice legend which helps you figure out what you’re looking at, and lets you pick a point and grab information about it. In the small area I chose there were just 6000 acres with 35 different soil types!
This a flashback to one of thirty-one days in August. It would have been like any other day, except it wasn’t, because on that day the Concrete Man came to visit the dacha. Watch to learn what to expect from such a man, and see how our foundation was poured.
We present to you Concrete Day, a human interest story, about pouring a cement foundation.
-Lea LSF
Presently, the Winter Palace is buttoned up for the season. On occasion there are even people sleeping in it. There is a makeshift shower, Bernise-the wood stove, couches and shelves! To see it in its current state check out the post before this one. The building is almost done, though we decided to put off the plastering until next spring, on account of it being winter and all.
videos to come- cinder blocking, frame this fame, roof roof roof, and straw balin’ smooth sailin’
Danila here, bringing you an update on our fabulous little cottage. While the rest of our crew is wintering in sunny California, Joe and I have been working on the toolshed-turned-guest house nearly every day, trudging through mud, ice, snow and the joy of building stuff with our hands.
Since November, we have made wonderful progress, and the little building has really come together. We’ve put in windows and doors, plugged holes in the walls, and have gotten to a point where someone could stay in the cottage without freezing!
So without any further ado, on to the photos! Here’s what the “toolshed” looked like in early November, when we were just getting the straw bale walls up:
So much going on so little time to blog. Even though I have officially retired to California for the winter, others are dutifully working the land and completing our humble Winter Palace. Here is some of what has happened since our last work party.
By thoroughly monitoring Freecycle and Craigslist we managed to score loads of free windows, doors, wood and assorted goodies. Our roomie at the Buddha house gave us a lot of tile (A LOT), more wood, and even a tiller and two awesomely cute bridges for our semi existent streams. Wow. These things needed storage right away, so we decided to get one of those sturdy tent thingies.
Here Lea and I go through an intense assembly process:
Every evening for the past while, a sea of birds (black birds?) fly over the land at dusk. We see them as we finish building for the evening, or as we prepare to build into the dark. They don’t go far once they’ve vanished from our view, I know because their immense dialog is audible for nearly an hour after. Apparently, they roost not far from us. Their flights converge right over our land, just before they come together in one tree, or perhaps even three.
Here is pt 2, just like I promised. Please enjoy, it took a second to edit. More on the way in future. Perhaps as it gets so cold in Ithaca that I can’t go outside, I will pump these out faster. For now we are still building, taking classes, making friends and being mad busy. This week we’re putting up the roof. Hoorah!
This is pt 1 of our tool shed building adventure, shot way back in August, when the tool shed still aspired to be a tool shed. Eventually, we over built so that we began to feel bad about calling it a tool shed, and started referring to it as a palace.
Being the Russians that some of us are, and having a dear friend Mr. Winter, whose hard work has been so helpful, we decided to call it the Winter Palace. One day, I hope we will use it as an art studio, or a guest cottage, or something else entirely.
Today, more than two months have passed since Lily shot this, and in reality we are up to part 6 or 7. All the footage will eventually be imported, edited, exported, uploaded and embedded, even if it takes all winter.
Thanks for everyone’s support, please enjoy pt 1 and pt 2 soon to come.
Yes, we loved the bunnies and the skunk cabbage, our bare naked land, our baby. And like any parents, we decided to go shopping and dress it up in cute little baby clothes - the tool shed.
Lea and I started scavenging wood when we first arrived in Ithaca, through freecycle - although our first finds weren’t of great quality. Still, it was exciting to begin bringing materials to the land.
first scavenged wood brought to land
Once Joe joined us in town, we realized that our materials, tools and the sweet sweet tractor needed a place to crash, and soon, before the coming winter months. We considered getting a storage container to use as a space, we talked about cob building (my recent love - oh cob!) and we looked around at what we had laying about. Continue Reading »
By the way, we are still looking for a new name. It has been many months since we fell in love with this plot of earth, but still no name. Green Nettle? Come on, we all know there aren’t any purple nettles! Or are there? Besides we haven’t seen one nettle on our land yet. Continue Reading »
This news is a bit belated, but just as official-the land is OURS!
On July 15th Lily, Lea, Danila, Joe and I gathered to sign away our collective souls to 16 acres of green goodness (Marina was there in postal spirit).
Although I have recently (and reluctantly) left the utopia of shale-laden waterfalls and lake-front farmer’s markets that is Ithaca for the foggy coastline of the bay area, our land survey keeps me company out west.
Hanging prominently on my wall, it reminds me that this “utopian experiment” is no longer a fantasy or a dream, but a very tangible reality for all six of us. Let the games begin!
