French Creek Valley

Here are some things we do here that don't fit into any other category:

What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?
Many kids don't know what they want to do with their lives at the tender age of 10 or 15, or maybe even at 18, I have heard.
This surprises me, since I knew where I was going by the time I was about 8. Later on, in high school, I think, we all had to take a preference test called the "Kuder Preference Test". It asked over 100 questions with multiple choice answers. For instance:
"Would you rather be a nurse or an airline pilot?".
Then the system categorized your answers into one of ten "interest" areas, such as Mechanical, Literary, or Social Service.
This testing system went out of vogue some years ago for some reason, but when I took it, Its results fit me perfectly.
Anyway, I have found a similar tool that can be used by kids to help them (and to help you parents) identify areas of interest for their own future careers.
Here it is:
Career Wonders 2011, SD Dept. of Labor and Regulation

Dry Basement- Improved Drainage for Walkout Basement
Finally Eliminating Water from our Walkout Basement

Is "Living OFF the Land" for you? what about old age?
My thoughts on dealing with hard work in the "Golden Years".
Here's my 8 minute youtube video on that important subject:
Is "Living Off The Land" Really for you?

We had this great deck built several years ago, but, since the railings have curved, vinlyl covered tops, we couldn't mount typical garden store brackets to them. Here's how we solved the problem:
How to fit a plant hanger or Bird Feeder to a curved-top deck railing

Fruit Fly Elimination! See how we get rid of those pesky Fruit Flies:
Click here for Fruit Fly Elimination

A couple of years ago we decided to Clean Up A Neglected Area behind the building that I call the "TTT" shed.
"TTT" stands for "Tractors, Tracksters and Trip Hammers, because that what is mostly filling it up at present.
We had dozens of trees growing into hundreds of wire mesh cages and lots of other stuff to dig out, using manual labor, chain saws, the backhoe and its new "thumb".
Click Here to see how we cleaned it up

We recently did a Controlled Burn of a part of our tillable farmland.
Click Here for a short essay of that event

Building Collapse
During December of 2010 we had a record single snowfall of close to two feet. It was followed shortly by another several inches of snow and then about an inch of ice. The weight was too much for the 40 foot by 60 foot building in which we store most of our power equipment.
Click Here to see what happened and what we did about it

A Short Tour of Our South 40
We have 60 acres of land on the north side of our road and 40 acres on the south side. If you take this link, you can use my first attempt at an image map to see a few things that are of interest to us on that piece of land.
Our South 40
(when you see the cursor turn into a hand, click on it to see that area in more detail)

We built a 70 X 100 square foot pond on this 40 back in 1975.
Here are a couple of pictures of it:

The beginnings of our pond it 1975.
Note the lack of foilage. You can see all the way across French Creek Valley!


Here's the completed pond, about 25 years later, circa 2000.
It's now surrounded by trees and totally hidden from the road at the floor of French Creek Valley!

Whoops! Here it is, the early summer of 2022 and we must have had some big winds over the winter because several trees in the pond area have blown down.
We have cleaned up most of the damage, but two trees have fallen into the pond.
Here's a short video that shows what we have to deal with:
Trees in the Pond
We will wait for the ground around the pond to firm up before bringing in a tractor to haul them out. Then, of course, we will cut them up for firewood for the neighbors.

Beaver Problems in 2011
Beavers have been killing trees on our land for a number of years since about 1980. See what we are doing about this infestation.
Beaver Pond and Dead Trees, 2011