Easter Weekend Part I (Friday)

I arrived in Floyd on Friday morning after a 2 1/2 hour ride from Charlotte. There I met with Dennis Anderson of the Virginia Department of Forestry at 9:00 AM sharp - he's very punctual. On our previous encounter - to view property he was selling - he called Christy and me 1 minute before we were to meet to see where we were - we were only a block away. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with punctuality. In fact as I get older I'm finding that timeliness is a good thing. I believe someone once told me that being on time is a sign of respect.

Forester Anderson is a veritable fountain of knowledge when it comes to the natural history of the forest. There we were, walking the property with Dennis pointing to and naming trees, shrubs, invasive species, etc., and me furiously trying capture all he said in my notepad... "here, smell this." as he handed me a twig he broke off , "this is black birch". It smelled of wintergreen. A little further into the woods ,"Deer tend to defecate where they eat" he said pointing to a small shrub which had its end nibbled off. And sure enough, not 3 feet away was this:











So I learned quite a bit in the hour and a half that we spent together. It's pretty cool that the state of Virginia offers professional forestry advice for landowners.

After the meeting with Dennis, I met with Dr. Mark Schonbeck, a soil scientist. I figured he was an alright guy when I saw his Dennis Kucinich bumper sticker. We chatted a bit about hybrid cars and why car makers are putting out hybrids that barely get as much mileage as some cars did 20 years ago. His Corolla gets >40mpg. My friend Tom's Civic also gets over 40 miles per gallon. And so the obvious question is - why is a hybrid that gets 30-40mpg so great when a regular gas combustion engine car can do the same? Why spend $25k when you get a used
Civic for $3-4k? So Mark took some soil samples from near the home site and also some from the field below on Level Bottom Rd. The thinking is that we may want to grow something down in the field. Although sun exposure is a concern there during the spring and fall. But if we grow crops that don't require full sun during those seasons we could put the field to work.

In between meetings I took the time to set up my tent:



After meeting with Mark and getting settled in I took my mountain bike for a spin. I drove by Ed and Randye's son Eli's house and noticed some people working at the burn site. There was a 30 acre fire a few weeks ago that started on Eli's property and stopped just shy of ours. So I rode up to the house to find that those two people were Ed and his hired-hand (or caretaker as Ed likes to call him), Jay. They were segregating burnt wood for the furnace from structure wood (because of nails and screws). So I ended up helping them for an hour or so until we broke for lunch and drove up to Ed and Randye's. There we had a delicious meal of spaghetti with seasoned ground venison (very tasty) along with brocolli, green beans and salad. Again, most of the ingredients from their garden.

Driving to Ed and Randye's with theirs and their son Eli's dog keeping company.

Ed and Randye invited me to an Equinox party later that evening at their friend Luke and Laurel's house. I wish I had taken pictures of their house because it was amazing. Luke & Laurel built it themselves. It's huge, spacious, and surprisingly "green", although I dont' know if an 8,000 square foot home can be considered green. I'm making that number up but the house was huge. Nor did anyone claim that the house is green. That was my adjective in describing the design and materials. They're going to be installing huge underground cysterns for collecting rainwater. They also have solar hot water panels.

I met a bunch of cool and interesting people at the party. It was just a casual potluck get-together. A woman, Christine, I was talking to asked me "Were you at the recent Green Expo in Roanoke?" To which I replied, "Yes!" (Yes, there really was an exclamation mark afterwards.) She proceeded to tell me that she had met Christy at the Expo we attended, and they talked about us buying land. In fact it was Christine who put us in touch with another woman at the Expo who was looking to sell some of her land.

After dinner, a bunch of us went to their sunken livingroom where there was much singing and laughter. It was a lot fun.

I got back to the tent around midnight. It was a beautiful clear night with a new full moon. Full moons do not make for good sleeping in a tent. With the wind, owls calling, coyotes howling in the distance, and hoping to hear a deer walk by the tent, I may have slept for an hour in total. It was not a fun night to say the least. Next time I'll bring eye covers and ear plugs. Comfort wise I was fine. Even though it got down to the 30s my down sleeping bag kept me quite warm.

The next morning I had breakfast at the Blue Ridge Restaurant. It was a bit busy inside. I always feel akward when going out to eat by myself in a crowded restaurant. Thank god for newspapers.