I took my camera for a walk up Plummer’s Hollow Road this morning, starting at the end of the country bridge over the Little Juniata and ending just below the houses, a distance of a mile and a half. View the slideshow or browse through the photoset.
The “green” house in Plummer’s Hollow
I have been remiss in not posting something about the newest residence in Plummer’s Hollow, which was completed a little less than a year ago. But my procrastination has paid off, and now you can read the whole story, and look at the photos, in my mom’s latest Pennsylvania Game News column, The Green House.
As you’ll see, we had the house built over at the old McHugh place to minimize its footprint. “Green” features include passive solar design, a geothermal heating and cooling system, and insulation made from blue jeans. We are delighted to have Troy and Paula Scott as neighbors, caretakers, and — as noted in the previous post — fellow naturalists.
Game cams offer tantalizing glimpses of wildlife on Brush Mountain
Starting late last summer, some of the hunters on the property have been using game cams to better track deer and other wildlife. Game cams are motion-triggered, sturdy, outdoor cameras increasingly popular among outdoors enthusiasts, and sometimes scientists, too. Troy and Paula Scott, Jeff Scott, and Troy Scott Jr. have all been involved in this project, but Paula has been the most persistent. A few days ago, her efforts were rewarded in a big way when a game cam she positioned near a bobcat scat and baited with venison caught a full-grown bobcat in the act at 7:36 AM, 1/21/10.
Another hunter had already seen a bobcat from his tree stand during deer season in December, and we’d seen other sign of it, as mentioned, so this wasn’t a huge surprise, just really nice to document. Another game cam capture from January 18 was a little more surprising because it showed that at least one gray fox is still resident on the mountain. After a rabies epidemic swept through two summers ago, we had our doubts.
We don’t permit any predator hunting or trapping on the property, so the game cams offer a neat way for the hunters to pursue this kind of quarry without harming it — and help document wildlife populations in the process. We’re grateful to Paula and the others for taking the initiative. It also seemed as if they were especially persistent in their deer hunting this year in part because they had a pretty good idea from the cameras of how many bucks and does were present — important knowledge on a year when deer numbers were down generally.
One game cam snapped some cute photos of a black bear cub back on September 15. Here’s the best of them:
Another sled ride down the hollow
My sledding video from last winter was such a success, I thought I’d try it again this year. The conditions were pretty icy and scary last winter, so I stopped at the half-way point, not wanting to risk the video camera any farther. (I hold it in my right hand as I ride — this isn’t a helmet cam.) But this winter, given all the wonderful cold weather and regular snow, sledding conditions have been exceptional, and with the January thaw imminent, yesterday afternoon I went ahead and shot this video of a sled ride clear to the bottom, a mile-and-a-half-long run. It isn’t quite non-stop, as you’ll see: there are two places, slight uphills on the way down, where I had to get out and walk for a few yards. The first is the half-way spot where I stopped in last winter’s video.
Since I was on hard-packed snow rather than ice this time, the ride was relatively quiet. It’s the quiet that I love about sledding, as much as the speed, so I decided to dispense with rousing music in the soundtrack and go for straight realism. (Actually, a little less realism might’ve been nice, but unfortunately my camera doesn’t have image stabilization. I also apologize for all the sniffing — but that too is the sound of winter, isn’t it?)
Blogged at much greater length at my personal site, Via Negativa.
October snowstorm
Snow on October 15! At first it was fun. Rolling balls for the snowman, I had to keep stopping to pull out black walnut leaf ribs — enough to make three dozen Eves, at least. Sure, give him a blaze-orange cap. Maybe he’ll come to life and wreak some minor havoc.
Snow fell throughout the afternoon and evening, fell faster than it could melt onto a ground that was still unfrozen. (Hell, we’d just gotten our first frost the day before!) By Friday morning, the power was out and the phone was dead. There were three to four inches of heavy, wet snow in the vicinity of the houses, and five inches at the top of the field. Sitting outside to drink my coffee around 8:00, it sounded as bad as any icestorm we’ve ever had, with loud cracks and crashes every few seconds. The trees seemed to be taking “fall” a bit too literally.
The bigger-leaved trees took it the worst: oaks, maples, tulip poplars, black locusts, and cucumber magnolias all suffered extensive pruning and occasional bole-snap. The damage was localized, presumably corresponding to wherever snow fell the hardest and stuck the longest. This was a very elevation-dependent snowfall throughout the region.
Numerous limbs and broken treetops, and around a dozen toppled mature trees, came down across the Plummer’s Hollow Boulevard. It took our new neighbors and caretakers, Troy and Paula Scott, two days to clear them all. Damage petered out along with the snow about a quarter mile from the bottom.
We’ve had October snows before, but none so heavy or so early. Of course it was beautiful — but some kinds of beauty we could definitely do without.
Plenty more damaging storms have hit Plummer’s Hollow, but it’s been a while since the oaks have taken this hard a beating. Icestorms rarely affect them. Although of course that’s in part because icestorms generally don’t occur until after the leaves are all down… knock on wood.
The guest house black snake, coming and going
Here’s a video that combines some footage I shot in July with some from last Sunday. Our new caretaker Troy Scott can be heard in both parts, joined by his son Andy in the second part. It was Troy who spotted the snake each time, though I’ve seen it in previous years; it seems to be regular summer visitor. When Dad and I replaced the guest house bathroom 10 years ago, we found lots of snakes: milk snakes, a few garter snakes, and one big black snake in the ceiling — possibly this very individual.
Lumber company that trashed Plummer’s Hollow declares bankruptcy
We were interested to read in the local paper that the Blair County-based Helsel Lumber Mill has fallen on hard times. Ralph Helsel was the lumberman described in Marcia’s book Appalachian Autumn, who believed that it was his divinely ordained mission to harvest “overmature” trees, which in any case “wanted to be cut,” and who put his beliefs in practice on the 120-acre McHugh tract in Plummer’s Hollow. (We subsequently purchased the tract from a third party, after it had been mostly clearcut.) It seems that overmature companies may be subject to a similar fate.
A Blue Knob lumber mill that has been operating for 81 years and most recently doing business with China may soon be filing for reorganization under bankruptcy laws because of the downturn in the economy, according to its president, Charles Salyards Jr.
At one time, Helsel Lumber Mill of 3446 Johnstown Road [Route 164] did $6 million to $8 million in business annually and had 85 employees, Salyards said.
The demand for wood products, however, dropped dramatically in the past 18 months because of the lack of new housing construction and rehabilitation on the domestic side and the high cost of fuel, which affected the international market.
Business dropped to one-third of peak levels in 2008, Salyards said. As of late last year, the mill has been shut down.
“Every tree we cut, we were losing money,” Salyards said.
While we feel for the employees who have lost their jobs, we can’t help noting that the lumber company’s past decision to export much of its lumber to China contributed to the loss of many more state and regional jobs in the value-added hardwood products industry.
Mills like Helsel Lumber provide the wood to furniture makers. While once many furniture makers were in North Carolina, in recent years, the business shifted to China.
The wood producers followed the manufacturers, but the overseas business suffered when the bottom fell out of the housing market worldwide, Craig said.
Production of wood products in the state is down 40 percent, he said.
And it almost goes without saying that Helsel never could have afforded to ship logs from Pennsylvania all the way to China for the production of furniture designed for export back to the United States, if they weren’t able to take advantage of an economic system in which environmental costs — such as the generation of carbon dioxide via logging and global transport — can be excluded from the balance sheets.
As luck would have it, the other major culprit in the 1991 trashing of Plummer’s Hollow has also been active in selling out our natural heritage to foreign corporations. One of consulting forester Michael Barton’s main clients now is the Spanish energy giant Gamesa, which has been bullying township supervisors and battling grassroots environmental groups all over central and western Pennsylvania for the right to erect industrial wind plants on our ridgetops, reaping huge windfalls from U.S. taxpayers in the process. Mr. Barton’s talent for putting lipstick on pigs, which we first encountered in 1991, has been put to good use in newspaper op-eds defending Gamesa. He has even proposed the construction of a nonprofit wind education center to encourage wind tubine-centered tourism. If you’re the sort of person who imagines picnic tables and swingsets when you see a sign for an industrial park, then you’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania.
Plummer's Hollow, Pennsylvania 