Homesteader turned Gardener, Landscaper, Horticulturalist, Arborist and Greenhouse Manager. Writer,Potter and Artist. Mom, Grandma, and other half. Rider of bikes, horses and kayaks. Hiker, Swimmer and Storyteller.
Coming home one day, while living up in Freshwater Cove, I crossed the low water bridge and saw a critter in the creek. I stopped and watched as a beaver played around in the water. Hmmm.
“Wonder where he’s headed?”
Two days later there were two up at the pond. They started cutting down trees and dropping them in the water. It took them only two days to gnaw through a Tulip popular that was probably 24 inches in diameter. We started to worry about all the trees on the North slope of the pond. A lodge was built pretty fast and then the tree cutting slowed up. Winter came and went. In Spring, cutting began again and baby beavers emerged. It drove the dogs crazy, seeing those beavers swimming around out there in the middle of their pond. Geshen attempted to outswim them a couple of times, but a dog is no match for a beaver in the water. They would circle around the dogs, making them turn and turn, and eventually exhausting them. I had to go out in the canoe and bring Gesh in before she drowned. She would not give up. When I got her back to shore she lay heaving and gasping on the shore for a good while afterwards.
When the water got warm enough for us to go swimming , the beavers were still there. I could get within about three feet of them if I swam quiet with my eyes right at water level. It was kind of cool to swim with the beavers. Then they started expanding their universe. They built a dam right next to the driveway where the feeder creek came in. The water rose and then started swamping the road out. It was getting really mushy and muddy to drive through. Jimi tore the dam down numerous times but they kept building it right back where it was. He even had a backhoe come in a dredge the creek back out to clear it. We would find him down there , waiting with a gun, daring them to rebuild it. They just waited until he went to bed.
I went down and had a little talk with the beavers.
“If you all want to live, you should try heading on down towards my barn and build a little dam on the creek down there. I could use a little drinking pond for the horses.”
They seemed to understand that and they walked over in that direction directly.
“Wow. That was cool. Didn’t know I could talk beaver.”
Unfortunately, the dogs didn’t get the same message, or not in the right way. Before the beavers had managed to get their new dam finished, and a protective pool around them in the process, Gesh and Poss had ganged up on them and taken them out. They were trying to be good dogs. I felt bad for the beavers but at least the trees were safe again. The rest of the beaver family moved on out shortly thereafter. We didn’t see them again.
It was such a long way up the hill from the pond, and it took her all morning to finally reach the shady dogwood up on the lawn. There had been a drought going on for weeks now and she knew the ground was going to be really hard to dig in. It couldn’t be put off though. She was not in control of the weather or her body. The sharp edged rocks scattered all over the slope had scraped her belly and probably removed an entire layer of skin. She lay gasping, trying to get up enough energy to dig a proper hole. It mattered, if her family was to survive. The dirt was so hard and dry though, that she had to pee on it just to be able to loosen it enough to claw away a shallow depression. Water would have been nice, but of course, it was now six hundred feet back the way she had come. She tried again. Rested. Scraped some more, using her legs, her nails, all her energy. It would have to do. She felt movement in her innards, a sliding, heaving mass, oozing out of her. One, two, three, rest. Four, five. She collapsed in relief. Started digging again, covering them up as best she could. Not deep enough. She knew that, but it was all she could do. As the hot June sun sank lower behind the hills, she turned and started crawling back down to the pond.
The lawn got mowed once a week by guys on fast, zero-turn mowers. They rolled efficiently over the acreage kicking up dust clouds wherever the grass was thin. Their noise was overpowering on such a quiet day. They had not seen her digging out there and would probably drive right over the spot without realizing anything was there. I stood up, stretching my hunched over back, and walked over to get a closer look. Two of them were not even fully covered. There was no way they would make it through a mowing pass. Grabbing an old flower pot and some fresh soil from the truck, I carefully lifted the two outliers, and shoveled a little extra dirt on the rest, leaving the other three to their fate of either a mower or a skunk.
The pot sat by the water garden at home all summer long, getting watered by an occasional rain or a passing garden hose. It never looked any different. I finally tipped the pot upside down to check on them in late September, figuring they had died. Two quarter sized baby turtles spilled onto my hand and slowly started to move their legs. They were alive! There was no sign they had ever emerged but there they were. photo credit: http://www.hiltonpond.org/images/TurtlePaintedJuv01.jpg
Now I had to do some quick research on what to do next. When I Googled “caring for Eastern Painted Turtles”, I got a ton of information. It turns out they had hatched and then hibernated without ever coming out of the soil. I hadn’t known that was a possibility. When they hit my warm hand and started moving, they had broken hibernation. Not a good thing. So now I needed to put together a terrarium for them and care for them until spring, when they would be able to feed themselves.
I had a twenty gallon aquarium in the basement and started to get creative, while they scritched and scratched around in a cardboard box lined with grass clippings on the kitchen counter. Half the space I decided to make a swimming area and half a gravel bed with a miniature stream with plants. I went to the local pet store and got a little water pump, heater and filter, some turtle food, and a fluorescent light with a timer. It was fun to put together and Wallace and Grommet (after the English clay-mation characters) moved right in. They quickly learned to paw at the glass when they saw me come down the stairs in the mornings and I would feed them. They basked under the light, swam in the pool and even floated down the stream over the waterfall. It was nice having them in the house all winter and they grew from the size of a quarter to about two inches across by Spring.
When the water outside in the water garden seemed like it was finally warm enough, I took them outside and set them on a rock near the edge. Our pond is about thirty inches deep, twenty feet long and six
Water Garden
to eight feet wide with a waterfall at the shallow end. There are frogs and plants and a goldfish living in the water and trees and plants all around. It is a fine place for turtles to live. After a bit, one turtle slid into the water and started paddling around, checking it the new home. The second one ( I could not tell them apart) slid in and then sank right down to the bottom of the deep end and did not move. At all. No bubbles. He was dead. He must have gone into shock when he hit the slightly cooler water temperature. I had to reach in and grab him back out. Luckily, during my research on the internet , when I had first discovered them hatched, I had read about how to resuscitate a turtle. Not something you would ever think might actually be necessary to do. But here we were. The poor thing had drowned. I held him on my knee and got hold of his tiny front legs with my fingers and proceeded to gently pump his arms forward and back. Water started coming out his nose and mouth. I held him in my cupped hands to warm him up some and repeated the procedure. He sneezed and shook his head and then started moving his feet. I warmed him up a little more then set him on a flat rock in the sun near the water. He was breathing and looking around and then walked over and got back in the water. This time he swam over to his brother and was fine. Who knew? I was so happy he made it. And so glad I had read how to do that in advance of needing it.
Wallace and Grommet lived happily all year round in the pond and we saw them on a regular basis during the warmer months when we would sit relax there. We did not feed them. They found their own food and were not tame. They went back to being wild as soon as they moved outside.They and the frogs hibernated in the mud in the
Green Frogs
winter and emerged each spring to grow some more. For four years all was well and they grew to about 4 inches across. Then, one night, a raccoon came in and fished them out, leaving me the shells as evidence. I have since tried putting other turtles I have found in there, but they are never seen for long. I don’t know if they walk away or something comes along and eats them. It is sad. I love turtles and I miss Wallace and Grommet, but at least they had a few good years and were not run over by a mower.
Living up Freshwater Cove in the eighties we were lucky enough to have great neighbors who let us use their pond. We swam in it, played horeshoes, set up a sauna, ice skated, fished, and just watched it. It was only a couple of acres in size and was installed as part of the flood control after Hurricane Camille ravaged Nelson County in 1969. At is deepest it was probably only about 12 feet but there was a dock and we kept a tiny area to the side of it clean enough to get out on. The springs feeding the pond were small and the turnover of fresh water was kind of limited in late summer when it was hot and dry.
This made for some serious scum of algae and pollen that had to be cleared away before you could jump in. This was a job for the “Scum Busters!”, otherwise known as the kids. We’d send them out to stir it up and clear all the yucky stuff out of the way for the rest of us. They didn’t seem to mind too much. Swimming time is fun time regardless of the quality of the water. One thing we were careful not to do though was touch the bottom any more than was absolutely necessary. Snapping turtles and muck are best avoided. Usually we climbed out on the dock rather than walking in or out along the bank.
Sometimes folks from the city, friends of J and J, would be visiting, and would not know how to act. They would set themselves out in inner tubes and remain still for long periods of time, napping even. This is an invite for the bluegills to nosch on anything interesting on your body, like a mole, or any kind of protuberance really. We were always careful to keep moving. Did I mention we were usually naked? Enough said. One dozing woman actually woke up and yelled “RAPE!
Horseshoes
Something’s getting me!” and came up out of the water pretty darn fast. Some of us found this funny.
We had horse shoe stobs set up on the dam and would play teams. Skins vs. Shorts was one moniker. You had to be careful of yellow jacket nests though. I do not recommend sitting down on a pond bank in August until you have thoroughly checked out the area. They can keep on stinging even after you’ve jumped underwater. Believe me, I know.
There for awhile we had a sauna we built out of saplings cut and bent down in a circle over a fire pit. We found an old green, mildewy smelling, canvas tarp up in the barn and covered it over like a tent. Then we heated up rocks in a fire outside of it and brought them in with a shovel and poured water on them while we all sat around inside. It was a great sauna and we got a lot of use out of it until the pony pushed it down one day while he was mowing the grass.
Some of us thought it would be a good idea to drip irrigate our five acres of organic veggies using the pond water but that did not go over so well in the end. It pays to get permission for that kind of endeavor and it did lower the water level in the pond. It was a gravity fed system, very low key. Just ½ inch black plastic pipe that we drilled holes in run down the length of the rows. It made a big difference that one year during the drought. We had green beans when nobody else did and they went as high as $15.00 a bushel, from $3 the year before. The following year, everybody had irrigated beans and the market dropped back down though. There is no way to win in farming for very long.
One year we raised a bunch of ducks, thinking that would be a good
Ducks
idea for the pond. I love ducks, but they are messy and seem to have an innate desire to leave their droppings right where you don’t want them. Like all over the dock. They are also very fond of tomatoes and can devastate a huge patch of ready for market ones in the space of time it takes for you to go to the post office and back. Foxes managed to get any that decided it was a good idea to sit on eggs down at the pond. The only successful mama was the one who kept her nest right under the rabbit hutch. She would hiss at you like a snake if you came near.
A couple of years we were able to ice skate on the pond. It was probably around 1983-84. We built bonfires to warm up with and had a blast. People dug up skates that hadn’t been used in many years. I don’t think I have used mine since either. I kind of miss ice skating. We used to have winters where you could play ice hockey for about 6 weeks but that all stopped back about 1972.
One time, coming up the driveway, I saw a couple of beavers down by the low water bridge. They found their way up to the pond about two days later and started gnawing down trees on the North side. They were cutting through Tulip poplars too big to get your arms around in one night. Dropping them right in the water. They built a lodge and started raising a family. You could swim around out there in the water with them and get pretty close, which was kind of neat. Then they started attracting the attention of the dogs. We had a couple of
Geshen and Possum
border collie type dogs and Geshen, the female, was bound and determined to catch herself a beaver. She would swim out and try to get behind them the same way she got behind groundhogs on land. Beavers can swim forever though and they did their best to exhaust her and get her to drown. I had to go out in the boat and haul her in. Then the beavers started building a dam just upstream of the pond right where the road up to J and J’s crossed, causing it to go all swampy. J had to keep tearing the dam down and they kept building it back. Guns were going to be next. I decided to have a little discussion with the beavers, and told them they needed to move on. I suggested they head down stream towards where my barn was and build a little dam there in the creek. I could use a deeper watering hole for the horses. They actually did! However, before they got it all built, the dogs got their revenge and that was the end of that.
These days the pond has silted in so much that nobody wants to swim in it anymore, except the snappers. I loved having it there though and seriously miss living in a place where you can just peel off your clothes and jump in whenever you like. Someday, I hope to live near water again.
In the eighties, living up Freshwater Cove, in Nelson County, cash money was always in short supply. We were living rent free in a two hundred year old log house adjoining the land I had bought with the money from my Uncle Wats. The plan was to build a house, grow organic produce for sale, and raise our kids.
Bottom land before we cleaned it up
It was a beautiful spot and had lots of potential with good bottomland, a couple of small creeks, and about ten acres of woods. Two of my kids were born there and I worked just enough to pay a few small bills while they were small. Their dad worked as a stone mason, planted trees and tried to make headway. Working in Nelson back then pretty much meant inventing your own business since there wasn’t much in the way of jobs locally. I stitched leather at home for a guy up Buck Creek for a few years, sold my hand woven shawls, placemats, and rugs for a while, final cleaned construction sites and taught basket weaving up at the ski resort. We worked the gardens constantly. Tilling planting , weeding, picking, selling at the farmers markets. Canning and freezing. Going out to dinner was not something that ever happened.
Gourmet Picnic
The creative work around we came into was the Gourmet Dinner Club. As a group of six couples we met once a month at one of our houses for a dinner cooked my one couple. Each couple only had to cook two times per year and it was totally up to them what they had on the menu. We all chipped in on the wine for each meal. It was a great solution and one I think I would like to try again. We managed to keep it going for a couple of years before we all moved on to other things.
One of the meals was a potluck picnic where we all packed up our favorite picnic dishes on a blanket and then drew straws for which one we got to eat. A couple of times we had a Luau at Bob and Sally’s and a hot tub rental company from Lynchburg brought in a trailer with a hot tub already half filled and left it for the whole weekend. It was heated with a small propane tank and when it ran out we swiped the tank from the cookstove at the house. That was great fun.
We had a dinner at our house where we roasted a leg of lamb that we had gotten from over Shipman way, all homegrown dishes of asparagus, twice baked potatoes, and homemade raspberry sorbet for desert. Another time we had our homegrown pork, and a flaming plum pudding. Once I made a stew that had all kinds of fish and sausages in it, homemade bread, with strawberry meringues. Some of the members got really fancy and used ingredients that were hard to get and complicated recipes. It was all really good food, better than any restaurant, and affordable.
Picnic
The best thing about it was the people time though. We got to drink wine, visit and relax without a long drive when it was time to go home. I always looked forward to these meals, especially when they were at somebody else’s house. It was a fair amount of work to set up, clean and cook for twelve guests at a time. I definitely recommend trying it though.
photo credit: http://www.hiltonpond.org/images/TurtlePaintedJuv01.jpg
