You may be wondering– how did we come across the name Fern Creek for our farm (to be) and our blog? Well, the picture below is what much of our 10 acres looks like.
As you can see, we have quite the collection of ferns on our land. We also have a small creek and 2 springs that we have found. Don put all this together and decided to call our property Fern Creek Farm. It was his idea to start this blog (although so far, I am doing the most posting…hmmmm). He named the blog Fern Creek Farm, as he wanted to follow our building process. I expanded this and added life to what we would be writing about. And here we are!
Rain…
So this was our past weekend. A non-hurricane, hurricane. A nor’easter in the south. Call it whatever you like, it rained the entire weekend. It was cold. Cold. Rain. We stayed in most of the weekend–we did go to see my Mom and Dean on Sunday afternoon and had a nice visit with them where they RV camp each summer, about 30 minutes from us. It rained off and on yesterday, and it is still raining on and off today! Yes, even without the big blob on the map, Boone is a temperate rainforest.
Yesterday, in between the rain bands we decided to go up to Fern Creek and see how much erosion we had and to check out the drainage. We have steep bank at the front of the lot where Kyle, the owner of Carolina Dozer, was concerned we might have some erosion. Kyle suggested planting grass, but Don nixed that as he did not want to mow. So instead, we decided that we would plant some wildflowers on this hill (and I will be planting rhodies after the construction on the hilltop). We also have terraces in the back so we wanted to check those out as well. Don grabbed the drone to get some cool shots, we picked up some sand to mix with the wildflower seed, and out we went.
The terraces held up well, and yes, it was quite muddy, but the drainage was also very good for the building pad, considering the amount of rain.
I had never spread wildflower seed before, and after doing some research, found that mixing sand and seed is one way to make sure to not spread too heavily. We got a mix that is specifically for partial sun/shady areas. We got this mix, if you want to see what flowers we will be growing (hopefully). Foxglove is one of the flowers, and in case you didn’t know, it is used to make the drug Digoxin. Don mixed up the seed and sand and I spread it by hand while he used the drone to take various site photos.
An example of Don’s drone work (and my seeding work).
Other random things…lions and tigers and BEARS! Oh my!
Yes, the High Country has black bears. Facts that I have learned about bears in the past 24 hours. 1- Bears are omnivores, but mostly herbivores. 2- Bears have tooth rings, so their age can be determined. 3- Bears can move at up to 40 MPH!
You may ask why, why is Michele writing about random cool bear facts??? Well, last night we had a visitor to our garbage can. We heard a crashing noise just after Don got inside last night after walking Chuck, our dog, around 10:30 PM. I said, “animal in trashcan”. Don jumped up, looked out, and yes, we had a bear in our driveway that knocked over our can. It ran away before I could see him or get a picture. Don’s description. “Very, VERY big”. “Shoulders as high as the Jeep bumper”. No bear sightings this morning, but Don went out and bought some bear spray for future night-time outings. One more fact–male bears typically have a larger territory than female bears. A study in Pennsylvania found their territory to be equivalent to an area 8.1 miles by 8.1 miles for males, and 4 miles by 4 miles for a female. Male black bears maintained a home range about four times as large as females. A second study in Washington found a similar difference in home ranges sizes between males and females, stating that males had 3.8 times larger home ranges than females. We are hoping this bear is male, and that he moves along.
Next week, we have the site visit with our construction super where they should mark out the footprint of our house. Excitement growing!
Until next time, Michele and Don