Oregon City, Oregon - Week 43 - October 19- October 25, 2020

Last week was it my goal to finish removing holly and filberts from Sector 1???  Why, yes it was, and I was successful.  In Sector 1 there are NO holly trees and NO filbert trees, either.

Here's before and after photos of just one spot in the woods

There was a fallen tree over one of the trails.  I cut it into six pieces, backed the ATV up the trail, hooked up the chain, and pulled the log up to the firewood pile.

This is what happens when you are on a steep slope and you do not carefully put down the chainsaw.

 School has been good.  Ruby learned about models - Thomas the Train, for example, is a model of a real train, and a globe is a model of the earth.  We even made our own models....out of marshmallows and toothpicks, which was a bit of a challenge.  Ruby made a caterpillar and a dog and I made a T-Rex which kinda looked like a dog, with an elephant's nose, sitting up.  Luckily I had the little rubber toy as a model.

JJude and Abby learned about Systems - a system is a group of parts that work together and when one part is missing, the the system doesn't work as well.  We decided that each of our families is a system.  Since this week both Jessica and Bev were out of town and thus one piece of their system was missing., I asked if things were different with their mom gone. The answered was a resounding - YES.  One family couldn't keep the house picked up, and the other family had quarreled more.  We also worked with pattern blocks which, I think, shows that using the exact same blocks, you can make different systems.

Here is my design.

Travis came over on Saturday.  He had repaired the broken cradle for the hot tub cover and on Saturday he and Dad assembled the repaired  hot tub cover system.  Afterwards he gathered a bunch of cousins at the Manor and had an archery and a rifle clinic.  He is such a good dad and uncle.

We've had a surplus of eggs lately  - - so I've made German Babies and boysenberry fruit spread several times.

Oh - next week I will report that the holly and filberts from Sector 5 have been forcibly removed.

 Oregon City, Oregon - Week 42 - October  12- October 18, 2020

Once again it seems like we only do activities associated with wood - either cutting, stacking, burning, or clearing.

And, yes we did finish stacking all of our wood.....and found some lovely mushrooms in amongst the logs we needed to cut/split/stack.

Burn season in Clackamas County started up again!!!!!!!!!!!!!  My goal for the week was to finish up taking all the filbert trees out of Sector 2....and some additional wood debris as a result of the big windstoms.

This dead stump had the audacity to lose its upper parts and ruined my clean ground. 

Here you can see that my "limb dropping" wasn't very accurate, and I got the ATV instead.

But at the end of the day at the end of the week all (can there ever be a totality in "all"...don't think so) I had all the debris up to the burn pile. 

Also.....I found this big metal thing in the middle of West Creek.  When I first stumbled upon it it was covered with ivy and when I pounded on it, there was clanging.  I thought it was an upside down water tub.  Here it is without ivy.

First I had to dig around it, which was hard because I'm standing in the middle of an oozing spring and as I shoveled, water seeped into my footsteps.  I got a chain hook in the middle where there was a hole and with the ATV, tipped it over.

Here's the "left behind" in the creek.

With my trusty chain, winch, and ATV, I pulled the antique (maybe washing machine tub) out of the stream bed and up.  It was the hardest thing (in the woods) I've done so far.

School is going well.  The fourth graders learned about heat transfer, and we had a lab where we documented rising and lowering temperatures in cups of cold or hot water which were put into pans of room temperature water.  And - here are our data to prove it!

Ruby learned about time and calendars and days of the week and so on---

One of our activities was to talk about birthdays and how old one is.  So, Ruby got her own Mug Cake with five candles.

Holland, in an outdoor class on animal husbandry, learned how to feed a chicken.

Dad learned he needs to be more careful when he takes off his hearing aids.......and not leave the tiny plastic cushions in his ear canal.....they don't come out with a q-tip.  He needed professional help.

We celebrated Whitney's birthday with a gnocchi soup (made by Warren) and a delicious birthday cake.....made by "you know who'.

Next week there will be more reports of brush burning, as I have the goal to finish Sector 1

 Oregon City Oregon - Week 41- October 5 - October 11, 2020

The most exciting happening of the week is that Travis Mower (his last name is really Jansik) came and finished clearing out the brush in the West Sector.  Here's what some of it looks like now, but it really looks better in person because one can see the broad expanse of our newly reclaimed property.

I walked around the perimeter of the newly cleared area and marked it on my GAIA GPS app on my phone.  The area encompassed in the red circle is now West Sector.  It is about .25 miles.

On the northwest corner of our property there is a point where three property lines come together (check previous photo).  I took this photo showing a really tall pole on a fence post at that three-point property corner.  And, there's a bit of pink surveyors tape at the top of the wooden fence post.  I've got a lot of brush clearing yet to do before we ever see the fence at that property line.

Remember the big cedar tree trunk that's down by the bridge I built?  I finally finished clearing off the mat of ivy!  And I cleaned out a rotten branch that was under the log which was impeding the flow of water in the creek. I'm calling this log, "Cedar Bridge".

I manhandled the "pelt of ivy" up the bank and managed to get it tied to a rope attached to the ATV and pulled it to the burn pile where it will meet its eventual demise.  It's folded up on itself and doesn't seem to be as impressive as it actually was.

Just up creek from the Cedar Bridge I started cleaning out the salmon berry thicket from both sides of East Creek.  The picture doesn't look too impressive, but it was hard to do, and the job isn't finished.  Wait till next week for another picture.

Malcolm cut up about half of the logs that we'd pulled out of the woods.  I split it all and stacked it so we'll be ready for when the "unknown" occurs - -as if that hasn't happened already in 2020.  Fortunately we have all the wood we'll need for two seasons already stacked in the basement.

Home School is going well.  The fourth graders studied the "microscopic world", and for a field trip, we went to Ryan's clinic and used his fancy schmancy microscope.  We looked at blood cells, whatever was in the urine sample, cells of an onion skin, salt crystals, spores from a mushroom, and a strand of Logan's hair.  Why didn't I take any photos of the kids looking in the microscope!!!!!  No excuse.

Ruby studied MOTION this week - up and down, around and around, fast and slow, push and pull...We contrasted and compared a cheetah and a tortoise, and I - - -because I have learned about Venn Diagrams_ - - - made a Venn Diagram to illustrate the sames and differences!!

The second graders learned that "a FORCE is energy that makes things move or change".  To demonstrate that, the kids hammered nails into wood (push) and then, with great difficulty, used the hammer claw to pull  out the nails.  Also did screws by turning and pushing them into the wood.

 

You ca tell when we've finally decided that winter and rain are coming - when we rollback the shade cloth - so sad.

That was the week - teaching science and working in the woods

 Oregon City, Oregon - Week 40 - September 28 - October 4, 2020

Last week I ended by saying that this week I would post a photo of the season's first burn pile.  Well.......as we feared, burn season was postponed until........................................  But, the pile is waiting!

But....another wonderful thing has happened instead.  The guy that I contacted to clear brush on steep slopes - Travis Jansik - finally came!!!  Here is his machine and the blade

Here he has his machine in Sector 2 which is the first place when I started clearing with the brush cutter.

H

In hardly any time he was finished!!!

I have been working in the woods.  North Creek is the creek between Sector 1 and Sector 2.  It is the area where the original Brunner family threw their trash--at least bottles and cans.  When we first moved here in 1977, I'd go down into that area and pick up trash, but there was too much to even pretend that I could pick it all up.  And, even now, the trash remains.  This week I pulled out two 5-gal buckets full for the trash bin.

In the woods there is a humongous old cedar tree that fell over the creek between Sector 1 and 

Sector 4.  It must have happened eons ago.  Over time it became a platform for evil ivy vines.  The ivy is brown now because I've sprayed it, but the stems are still very thick and strong.

I started removing the "mattress" of ivy using my clippers

I cut off what I call "ivy pelts" and took them reverently to the burn pile.

We've been doing a lot of grapes - not as many as last year.  I think there might be one or two batches left to do...which would be about 12 quarts.

School has been going well.  Last week we made raisins ,and this week the kids got to make their own trail mix.

Abby and Jude made trail mix too -  Abby pretty much left out the peanuts...(I would have too).

Clara nd Logan made Slime which we learned is a non-Newtonian liquid (whatever that is)

It was General Conference weekend.  We met Sunday morning at Jessica's and watched it together.  Jessica made her famous crepes (Beverly made them too).  Following is a collage of crepe pictures.

Poor Abby didn't want to watch Conference....she wanted her own movie and tried her best to cancel Conference on the tv.

Paul and Janie were comfy

Sunday was Pumpkin Patch Day

Dad had, yet another, hernia surgery this week.  He was pretty sore the first and second day but was feeling fine by the third day.  Not to gross anyone out.....