Brrrrrr

Mysterious creature at Big Tree

While the ranger was taking the measurements of our Eastern White pine, I was looking around at some interesting footprints in the snow. Unfortunately my camera battery died so I was not able to get a photo of the prints.

However, they were a mystery to me and the ranger, though he did speculate. He said they weren't big enough for a bear. That's good I thought, so I suggested it might be a bobcat. He didn't think so. He said, "Maybe a coyote."

After he finished with the tree statistics, we looked at the prints more closely. They were about 4 inches across and the steps were close together. I'm thinking a coyote would have longer strides. He concluded it wasn't making deep tracks, so it wouldn't weigh much.

The word wolverine did come up, but not knowing what a wolverine was, I didn't exactly get excited. The ranger only mentioned that it might be.

We didn't dwell on the tracks long and I was anxious to get home so he could add up his numbers for our tree. Later, I wished I had taken actual measurements of the prints, stride and looked at front and back foot differences. My hind sight has always been 100 percent.

I looked up wolverine on the internet and chose not to believe that's what we have living around our tree. He did have steps leading from the right and left sides of the tree. And, wolverines do like to wander about in the snow.

Tom assures me they don't attack people, but they are vicious and have many names such as devil of the woods, skunk bear and others.

While I was waiting on the ranger, I heard a strange knocking sound coming from the area of the tree. It was a bit spooky and I moved around to see if the wind was making some of the limbs knock together. I didn't see anything.

There is a pile of brush in the gully at the base of the tree. Is this where my creature lives? Was he warning me away from his home? I don't think I will be taking a moonlight walk anytime soon down to my tree alone or otherwise.

Big White PIne

Our big tree being measured for the register of big trees in Maine.

Forest Ranger Merrill Ring arrived at our house this morning in 9 degree temperatures to officially measure our "big tree".

It is a mile round trip, the snow was two feet deep and I followed him all the way to the tree. He had to officially measure what Molly and Beth had measured in December.

At the end of December, Molly and Beth came over and we hiked on snow shoes to measure our big white pine. I had seen an article in the paper where you could register your tree if you thought it could make the register of big trees in Maine, but it had to be done by December 30th.

Armed with a 20 foot tape measure and a 12 inch ruler, we set out to make history. Snow shoes are okay for walking, but try walking around this tree to measure the circumference when the back side is a gully, especially when the tree is 20 feet around. Molly was a good trooper and she and Beth measured it at 20 feet. The ranger got 19.5.

Then we had to measure the crown. How in the world can this be done.? Molly said, "Grandmom, you stand under where the limbs reach out on one side and I'll go on the other." This distance had to be measured. Again Beth and Molly mastered the gully. Would you believe in this crude manner we got a crown of 73 feet and the ranger got 68.6? Again, a plus for the ladies.

The ruler did not give us a fair way to measure the height of the tree as we couldn't get far enough away, so we missed it quite a bit. We over estimated!!!! Anyway the ranger got 112 feet. Using a formula of adding the inches in circumference, to the height of the tree and a quarter of the crown, we had 362 points. The Champion white pine in Maine has 379 points and the ranger actually thinks it died.

So where does that leave us? As soon as Augusta confirms the figures, we may have the largest white pine in Maine sitting right here on Postlude Farms in Sumner, Maine.

My Swap Shop

I've written a little about my dump Swap Shop, but feel I have to say more about the people involved with the shop and show you some pictures.

We had a shoe rack that we moved about daily and in the summer we put it outside leaning against the container. Today my carpenter angel came in and said, I have a solution for that shoe rack. This angel has already built all the shelves, an outside shed, installed the lights and everything else we needed. I followed him into the bookstore shop where he said, "I can put this on the back of the container door and it will be out of the way." I said, "Go for it."

He went to work and a few minutes later he had the rack securely fastened to the container door. Now no more leaning it against the books so people have to look through it to find their book choice.

I have three workers who want certain hours EVERY week. I have someone to open every Wednesday and another to open every Saturday. I have another helper who wants to close every Saturday.

Keep in mind that today's high was 22 degrees.

The town has recently added power so we have lights and heaters. In an open container the heaters are mainly for sitting down close to and getting your feet and hands warm. We have added a hot pot and have instant tea and coffee for the volunteers.

These people have faithfully weighed each item going out on our scales and for the year 2008, we kept 40,000 pounds of usuable items out of the waste stream in the Transfer Station.

Here is a shot inside the forty foot container.

That's enough for today, but I will blog again to tell you some heartwarming dump stories from the "Dump Diva".