Spring progresses, Dave does not.

While Dave has made little progress in Dump Demolition, spring has certainly taken over the landscape since my last post. A few days of temperatures over 70° have finally brought some green. The leaves are just now beginning to pop out on some of the trees, starting with the willows down by the creek. Green grass is finally rising above the matted down brown mess that winter left behind.

But spring brings interesting complications as well. With high winds and heavy rains last night and this morning, Herkimer Creek is looking more like a lake. Or else Canadarago Lake is overtaking the creek. I'm not sure which describes it better, I only know that the back 40 is swamped, more than I have ever seen it.

I did some quick playing in Photoshop to give you an idea of what happened here since last night. This view is approximately 180° going from south to north (left to right). We very rarely get water in between the creek and the house, and the creek itself is usually barely visible. You can also see on the northeast side, that the lake is taking over the horse field, combining with the creek and almost washing over the road.

We are happy to be on higher ground, although with more rain expected, I hope it's high enough.

I couldn't wait to also add my first photo of the new babies across the street at the horse farm. So far, I think there are 6 new foals, and a few more are expected. This little one was very curious about meeting me, until a neighbor stopped in his car to say hello...then the curious one ran back to momma for safety. I will try to get some more photos of the rest of them when the weather clears a bit.

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Not much progress!

If you look at the previous posts, you will see very little progress has been made in The Dump Demolition. From March 22 through April 22, you can barely see a change.

Dave and Donnie put in about 8 hours total in a really good week. We are getting comments from folks who know Dave that we will be lucky if he is finished by December. And this is how he leaves our lovely Dump, right on the road, all dressed up for Easter weekend.

No progress on selling our NJ house either. We had a few showings in the past month, but no offers. Just this week, someone inquired about a lease-to-own deal, and also a realtor said she had someone interested in renting. One or the other may be the temporary fix to our dilemma. Maybe some rent money will get us through this sucky housing market!

Hope that everyone has a lovely Easter, or whatever other holiday you celebrate...including Earth Day! We are having friends Jane and Mac over for dinner on Sunday. We give Jane all the credit for helping us when we bought the property (and The Dump!) in 2005. She was Land Use Officer at the time, and if it were not for her advice, we would have given up on the deal.

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Video chat on the Mac

I often let the screensaver on my iMac run a slideshow of all the photos that are on there. It's better entertainment than television! (Truth be told, we don't have any TV reception up here, and we are too cheap to pay for cable.) Sometimes the cat statues, especially Dave, sit there and watch the show. They seemed especially interested in this photo of Lester and Sophie back in NJ.

I am headed to NJ myself today—escaping the snowy North Country. We still have patches of snow left in the areas where it had drifted, but for the most part it is finally gone. Temperatures are supposed to be in the mid-50s today and tomorrow, and even warmer in the South Country—possibly hitting 82°on Monday there. Yikes! that could be too hot for all the garden demolition I have planned.

Since no one is looking at the NJ house, even after we lowered the price to basement level, I have decided to dig up as many of those spring-flowering perennials and bulbs as I can dig. I'll just buy a big bag of grass seed to replace my years of hard work. If all of the money we spent on my fabulous garden is going to be wasted on the new generation of homebuyers, I might as well save what I can.

My realtor and others keep telling me horror stories of young couples buying houses and bulldozing all the landscaping so that they have the more "traditional" carpet-of-green perfect lawn with a few lollipop shrubs around the foundation. All they want is a low-maintenance yard. All I can say is YUCH.

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Demolition continues, spring declines

The Dump demolition hit a snag when Dave had a less-than-communicative conversation with The Husband last week. Both got angry, work was threatened to end.

Magically though, anger was the solution, and Dave and Donnie have been out on a more regular basis since.

March went in and out like a lion. Although most of the snow is melted, we are still getting regular "snow events"...one again today (see photo). Thankfully, the ground is warm enough that it doesn't stick.

Headed back to NJ to do some more cleaning up and digging up of my precious plantings from the old house. I am convinced by realtors and others that no one will appreciate all of my gardening efforts there, so I plan to rescue as many perennials as will fit in the CR-V and bring them back here.

Not only do the new house-shoppers seem to want a bigger house than my favorite old house, they also want a no-maintenance yard...which mine is not.

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Fossils and a lack of progress

On one of his many walks through the creek in below-freezing weather, The Husband happened upon a very interesting rock. While we frequently find rocks with tiny fossilized shells, this is much larger, and appears to be a piece of bone, possibly some kind of joint.

I posted it on the Fossil Forum online, hoping to find some more information about it. It is entirely possible that it is just a hunk of rock, but that's not what it looks like to me.

I love this property for its history, but when we purchased it, I had no idea that it would reveal a history much older than the stories we heard of the Herkimer Farm in the 1700s. I think I will have to accept the offer of my new friend Anna, from the Little White Church, to come over with her 2 metal detectors and do a little archaelogical survey of the back forty. I know it won't help me find anymore fossils, but I think this land has many more stories to tell.

Dave did some damage to The Dump last Tuesday, and then went home and rested on his laurels. Nothing has been done since.

And we had a house showing last week as well, but they were not interested, and rated my favorite NJ house as only "fair". Shame on them for not appreciating what a great house it is! This, plus the recent inactivity, convinced me to come down in price again. Shame on them!

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Detroiter/Dump Demolition by Dave and Donnie

He did use that 3" or 4" of snow as an excuse to not come out on Monday, but Dave made up for it on Tuesday. He fired his first helper Johnnie, and signed up Donnie to help with taking down The Dump. They took off the walls and windows in the front addition today. Now you can see that pristine turquoise, cream and black siding on the inside. I wasn't able to get anyone to reuse the siding, but at least Dave can sell it for scrap. He was a bit disappointed to find out that it is tin, not aluminum which is worth a whole lot more. Who knew?

You can see in the first photo just how sturdy that foundation was...Not! I wonder how many critters will be displaced by the demolition. I know there have been groundhogs and at least one skunk living under there, and I suspect there are more mice than anything else.

What a difference it will make to the horses across the street! It will very much improve their view of us. Several of them were standing at the fence watching the goings on at The Dump. I think if they had thumbs, they'd give us a big thumbs up.

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First week of spring!

Coming in like a lion?

We were finally able to see some grass, with only about a quarter of the ground still covered in snow for the first day of spring...and then Monday morning brings more snow. Go figure! I guess that's what spring is all about—dramatic changes in the weather.

Let's hope that Dave the Dump Destroyer doesn't use this as an excuse for yet another missed Monday of work.

The Husband and I went to "Sugaring Off Sunday" at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown yesterday. We had the fine pancake breakfast, with real maple syrup of course, and then wandered around for a bit since the weather was so nice. We also bought enough local maple syrup to carry us through to sugaring off next year.

When we returned, we filled the seed trays with yellow beets, Brandywine tomatoes, black cherry tomatoes, winter and summer squash, sunflowers and pumpkins—all from Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine. We'll pretend it is spring inside since the outside is not cooperating. It felt good to play with all the nice warm dirt (seed-starting formula). And this year we are trying Johnny's "CowPots"—starter pots made from composted cow manure that you can plant with the seedlings. The toughest part was finding a spot to hide the pots from both dogs and cats who found them very fragrant, and probably would think they were very tasty as well.

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Milestones

The CR-V passed the 100k mark last time I was coming back from NJ on the Northeast Extension. (Yes, I was doing 70 mph, don't tell the troopers!) This is the third car I have driven to that point. The last one, the second, was my favorite 1985 Toyota Corolla SR5 which was stolen and stripped when it had 109k on it. But I'm not still bitter, really I'm not!

The other milestone event is the destruction of The Dump. It is not happening quite as quickly as I would have liked, but at least the inside is completely gutted. Dave the Dump Destroyer keeps promising to "come back on Monday" and start taking off the additions, but a few Mondays have passed with no obvious action. The photo was taken in the kitchen part of the trailer, looking all the way to the back bedroom. I thought without all the walls and stuff in there it would look larger, but it actually appears much smaller than when it had walls, furniture and appliances.

The Tax Assessor was out to inspect on March 3. I think enough was done at that point to convince her that we no longer have "multiple residences" on the property. I am curious to see how much difference it will make in our property taxes now that we have removed one of them.

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The Little White Church in Schuyler Lake

The Husband and I went to the Second Sunday Soup at the Little White Church today to talk about preserving the wonderful little white church which was built in the early 1800s. The church was severely damaged by a fire on December 28, 2010. See my post from December 30. Although the larger Methodist church would have them tear down the building and start fresh, discussions are underway to preserve this historic structure.

If you watch the video in the post below, you will see not only the church in all its glory, but also Mary's Pantry and Chazoo's barn. I think the folks who recorded the piece about the barn parked in our driveway while they were out and about, since that is the direction from which they walked. I think we deserve a credit in the video!

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YouTube video of Schuyler Lake, NY

Spring will come, soon enough

I had another nice photo from Monday, so I thought I would post again even though I don't have much to say.

Things are happening in real estate: Some friends are going to settlement on a house that they have been trying to close on for months. I still haven't heard anything about our house showing last night, but I am grateful that at least people are out shopping. With all that good weather you're having in the south country, come on people, COME SEE MY HOUSE! It's my favorite house in all of NJ...there are no comparables if you ask me!

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