What is Wrong with Starting Early?

It is an unfortunate fact that we have not experienced the normal late August cooling trend at The Homestead. We have had consistent, and persistent, temperatures in the nineties. Which means that the best time to get anything done is between 6a and 10a. After that, work is simply a suffer-fest.

In addition to the weather, we are still experiencing the joys of home renovation. As I noted last week, we are in the middle of a project to winterize the back porch. This project, in conjunction with the circumstances of our current weather, brings me to the reason for this post (yes, despite the evidence, there is a reason).

With the exception of the Mexican guys who replaced our roof, every contractor we've met this summer seems to start his work day at 10a. When they tell me they'll be here in the morning, I'm standing out there at 7a. After three hours of waiting, they usually come slouching in with a cigarette and a cup of coffee sometime before eleven (if they show up at all). They work until noon or 1p, take a lunch break, then come back and pack up their tools so that they can be gone by 3p. Is this the normal work day?

If it were me, I'd be on the job site by 7a at the latest. Yeah, you can be somewhat quiet as you unload the sheetrock (so you don't wake the neighbors), but by 7:30a there is no more Mr. Nice-Guy: The nail gun is switched to full automatic. By the time the sun is really hot, you've got half your work done. Plus, the project takes just three or four days instead of a couple of months. Is there something wrong with starting early?

Spruce Beetle

For about the past ten years, the forests of the western United States have been subject to two different bark beetle epidemics. Most recently, the talk has been of the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB, Dendroctonus ponderosae), which, as you might guess, impacts mostly pine trees. There have been large areas—millions of acres—of pine mortality in places like Colorado and Montana. The dead trees are often lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), which is not rare, but a high rate of mortality in outposts of five-needle pines, such as whitebark pine (Pinus albacaulis), have caused some to worry that rarer species may face local extirpations.

Meanwhile, in spruce-fir forests, there have been cases of nearly complete Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) mortality—see Utah's Markagunt Plateau—caused by a cousin of the MPB called the spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis). The specimen pictured is a spruce beetle plucked last Thursday from beneath the bark of a dead spruce tree at the headwaters of Wolf Creek in northern Utah. The spruce beetle lives in the cambium of the tree for two years, eating the phloem until the tree is completely girdled. Unfortunately, what is often left in place of the spruce is subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa), which is the rattiest-looking excuse for a tree a forest visitor could ever wish to see.

Uinta Wasatch Cache

This week's assignment takes us to the Uinta Mountains of northern Utah. The mountain pine beetle arrived first, and has killed most of the lodgepole on the north slope. Our local sources tell us that the spruce beetle is just getting started in the Engelmann spruce. That leaves a lot of ugly subalpine fir, which is mostly infected with broom rust. We are doing vegetation management plans for campgrounds on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Between the forest pests and the millions of campers who simply must try out that hatchet they got for Christmas, it is tough to keep the trees alive at many of these sites.

Pulling Weeds

I've come to the conclusion, after a summer of doing it, that the true test of someone's willingness to work is see whether they will pull weeds. Weeding, especially where the ground is hard and the cheat grass thick, is not a rewarding occupation: The work is slow, tedious, and difficult. If you don't much like to work in the first place, you're not going to have a lot of enthusiasm for pulling weeds.

At the Parowan City nursery, we've had a weed problem this year, and I've spent many hours trying to get it under control. In addition to the weeds, we've had some convict labor assigned to the nursery by one of the local judges. Well, not convicts really, but kids who have spent their time misdemeanorin' and need to work off their debt to society with a little community service. What I have discovered is that the two do not mix. That is, convicts will not pull weeds; they would rather go to jail.

(The Economist recently had an article about farmers in Georgia who were running short of field hands this year. An enterprising state legislator came up with the bright idea of building a program to match the state's unemployed population with the farmers who needed help. The plan quickly ran aground when the bright eyed politician discovered that the jobless were unwilling to do that kind of work. So, the unemployed stayed home while the crops withered in the fields.)

Which is why I was dismayed to learn that the local university (Southern Utah University) would be sending a group of freshman to Parowan to do community service. I was assigned a work crew and my job would be to get them to pull weeds in the city cemetery. I figured that I would do the work while they gossiped, flirted, and talked on the phone.

When they arrived yesterday morning the sun was high, and I was already sweating on the end of a shovel. I showed them what to do and got back to work. Much to my surprise, they all pitched in. There were five of them and they each worked in the sun for more than an hour. They didn't complain (much) and managed to complete the task I had started. Hats off to my five kids from SUU, they passed the test.

Work in Progress

At Rural Ways we agreed on a small home renovation budget for this year. The need for a new roof and a new sewer connection had become dire: We had reached the point where we were achieving a good flow through the shingles but none through the pipes. So we tackled those two projects first. Afterwards, we found that we would have enough left in our budget to build a small studio by enclosing the sleeping porch.

Since both Valerie and I work out of The Homestead, we need both office and studio space under one roof. For the past couple of years we have been sharing a windowless 200 square foot room. It has worked out OK, but it could be better. For one thing, Valerie drives me crazy with her sudden loud laughter when someone sends her a funny email. She has disrupted my concentration so badly that, for two years, I still haven't been able to decide why I like brown ale so much. She, on the other hand, is probably tired of me constantly telling her how and what to paint (as though I know anything about it). As a result, we have both felt that we could each do better with our own space.

We decided that the most cost effective way to build an addition without building an addition was to enclose and winterize the existing screen porch. The work, as you can see from the picture, is in progress. When complete, the new room will have five largish windows on both the north and the west sides. This will provide WAY more light than what we currently have in the area where Valerie paints. It will also provide her with a place where laughter is allowed. As for me, I will have a quiet space where I can focus on the things that really matter: Like whether Brett Favre and Randy Moss are really retired?