Diversion III – Dickeyville Grotto

Our North Woods destinations usually take us due north into the Driftless Region, crossing the Mississippi River at the old city of Dubuque, Iowa (founded 1765) and through nearby Dickeyville, Wisconsin. Here stand a Grotto and Shrines conceived and constructed nearly a century ago by a tireless parish priest.

"[O]n Holy Ghost Parish grounds are the works of Father Matthias Wernerus, a Catholic Priest, Pastor of the Parish from 1918 to 1931. His handiwork in stone, built from 1925-1930, is dedicated to the unity of two great American ideals — love of God and love of Country. These religious and patriotic shrines were constructed without the use of blueprints."

Alan and Donna consult with the docent and prepare to enter the central maw.

A staggering quantity of colored stone was donated to the work from quarries in the Dakotas, from Iowa, and nearby in Wisconsin. The stones and shells and glass and all else are attached expertly and almost invisibly with very little obvious weathering or aging. The docent told us that when pieces come loose or fall away, they are very quickly reattached.

It is a relaxing and contemplative place.

The constructions include huge pieces of petrified wood, such as this incredible specimen.

The fencing and railing were especially impressive from an engineering standpoint – very stiff concrete constructions for being so slender, and with so little spalling at the many sharp edges. That priest had a good sense of strength and proportion.

Spring Arrives with an Icy Roar

At the equinox, Alan was away so I set the sunrise marker on the observatory on my own. From the west side of the field I sighted east through the aluminum pole in the center of the field, to the eastern horizon as the sun appeared. Then I pounded this stake in the ground with a large hammer. It came out pretty close to the autumnal equinox stake from last September, as it should. We'll keep adjusting these points as time goes on, until we figure out what to use for permanent monuments around the perimeter of this 11-acre field.

As I did in September, after setting the stake I hurried down to our entrance at the county road, to watch another sunrise from below the top of the bluff and demonstrate how precisely east-west is the road alignment. It was so cold! About 10℉ and -5℉ windchill, painful to face and fingers.

   

And a few days later, another snowfall. For hours and hours, in barely-freezing temperatures. Perhaps for the last time this season, the farm was transformed into a winter dreamland.

This is the back end of the shooting range, the 80-yard rifle targets. You can see the platform in the background. The "chimes" are 1/2" plate steel and stainless steel.

Take a Morning Walk Through the Soundscape

Put on your headphones and spend the next 30 minutes walking a loop around the farm, through woods and across the creek and along the fences that border the meadows. Crunch through the last of the snow. Listen to birds of all sorts, sounds distant and near. Explore the soundscape through this audio verité field recording.

This is a rather quiet recording, so if there is very much noise in your listening environment, you'll hear the sounds of the farm much better if you wear headphones.


Morning Walk - 27 March 2013 by American Nacre

It's in the Air

The growing season winds down as the equinox approaches; the gardens look tired and we're making the last of the summer harvests. August brought our little farm more than seven inches of rain, and these first days of September a little more. But still there has been almost no runoff. The pond water level continues to drop with daily evaporation and many of the rivers hereabouts are mostly sandbars. By these measures the drought persists, but the grass is verdant and lush and we're behind in the mowing.

The little tractor carries a mowing deck between the front and rear tires, and the weld on a connection has failed. We acquired a welding machine at an auction a few weeks ago, but the classes Alan and I took are now long ago and we have not attempted the repair. Tomorrow, however, a friend who much more recently worked as a commercial welder will come out to give us a lesson and connect the broken parts.

Autumn is not yet here but there are hints of it in the air, now cooler and drier with trace scents of mould and wet soil. The tree leaves rustle more crisply and the insect orchestra drones a different movement of its seasonal symphony. The milkweed pods are bursting open to cast their downy seeds upon the breeze. Almost all the rabbits have vanished, as have the red-winged blackbirds and goldfinches and bluejays. The cardinals had gone but have now reappeared, and the robins are flocking together.

In the woods, the grasses and forbs are senescing and it is much easier to leave the groomed trails and to see longer distances beneath the canopy. Now revealed is a rather amazing network of game trails, many of them suitable as walking paths, and I'm getting to know even more of this diverse property. I thought this ancient shagbark hickory was looking especially stately a couple days ago.

I've been revisiting the giant puffball mushrooms and they are growing to astonishing sizes, some now 18-24 inches in diameter. The one that I harvested had a beautiful texture when sliced, like tofu or mozzarella cheese, and fried up very nicely, but none of us cared for the rather strong, sharp flavor – it is an acquired taste, I suppose.

We harvested the popcorn and though the yield was not great, it certainly looks good! It will dry on the cob indoors and we'll test several kernels every few days until it's popping well, then shell the ears for storage.

The peppers are still coming on profusely, ripening nicely, and developing some good heat. The yellow individual is the only habanero to show any color than green so far. I hope there will be enough degree-days in the season remaining to finish them.

Another sign of approaching autumn is the occurrence of brilliant pure blue skies, here being sailed by a turkey vulture.

From our east fence, across the neighbor's soybean field, an aspect of infinity:

Almost every time I come this way, the duck is laying on the ground, and I replace it on its pedestal. I would like to install a motion-detecting camera to find out what's going on.

Alan built this beautiful meditation bench at one of the highest-elevation points on the property.

This morning as I paused at the bench I watched this coyote in the neighbor's alfalfa as it hunted some small item of game, pounced successfully, and made a meal.

Wild turkeys roost in the woods, high up in the old growth, and it produces quite a startle when from silence they suddenly fly off directly overhead, making all sorts of noise and leaving feathers behind. It seems some violation of natural law that such large things are up that high at all, let alone supporting themselves on wings.

Donna has become a worm rancher, raising red wrigglers in a plastic tub in the basement, where they convert newspaper and coffee grounds and kitchen scraps to castings that are an excellent soil amendment. The worms multiply rapidly, and she periodically divides the population for release into the compost pile and gardens.

The worms are also good fish food. Here are Bubbles, a smallmouth bass, and Delilah the sunfish, which Donna caught in the pond and now live in the aquarium. They are voracious eaters and are growing rapidly, encouraging my plans to raise fish in cages in the pond next year.

Rainbow at Dawn

We set a live-capture trap for whatever it is that's scaling the fence and eating the sweet corn, using cat food for bait on the assumption that we're dealing with raccoons. Temperatures cooled enough overnight that about four o'clock this morning I turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows and listened to the breeze in the sycamore, the bullfrogs in the pond, and a few errant drops of rain upon the roof. By five-thirty I'd had enough bed time and got up to find that the trap hadn't caught anything, but neither were there any freshly-molested corn stalks.

Just at sunrise this was the view to the east.

And to the west, a symbol of hope. A little later a nice shower fell but I don't think it amounted even to a tenth of an inch.

We're finalizing preparations for a to-do that commences in a few days, the Palmer Long Outdoor Weekend, Muscatine Edition. The working-out of the acronym is left as an exercise for the reader.

We're keen to get the trails in good shape, so Alan and I were out with the chainsaw and rotary brush mower, pushing through the spots where fallen trees obstructed the old tractor trails that we're re-establishing, and finishing the surfaces.

Eye Chair exposed! It had been buried beneath a fallen, over-mature black cherry.

That black cherry is now a stack of logs. We're looking into ways we might market the wood, possibly as stock for lathe turners, lumber for furniture or flooring, or gunstock blanks.

Here a trail branches into a loop through Cedar Grove. Counting the field perimeters I think we've got about three miles of trail at this point, with a wonderful variety of vantages, up and down hills, along the creek, past the old growth giants.

And we've essentially completed the shooting platform at the trap range. It is a very sturdy construction!

We've got some other features in store for our guests this weekend, and those that follow. But that is all for today!

Summer Solstice

We took the occasion of the longest day of the year to begin work on the observatory. Here Alan adjusts a guy line at the principal observation point in the center of the terraced field.

Checking for verticality.

Then we prepared to set a stake on the west fence along a line to the horizon point where the sun would set, but an enormous cloud bank quickly moved up and into the way.

We made an approximation then watched the clouds boil.

The forecasted thunderstorms never materialized. We got a few sprinkles of rain overnight and the overcast this morning kept us from setting a stake for the sunrise. Oh well – this is a 40-year project and by successive approximation we'll establish points for the equinoxes and cross-quarter days as well as the solstices, and who knows what else.