Crystal Groves

Burnt grass and foliage in Gettysburg from just this morning

This is the dryest summer that I can remember. I don’t know whether it’s the dryest on record for this area or not. Gettysburg climate only differs slightly from Westminster, Maryland. But Westminster, Baltimore, and Lancaster have all gotten a lot more rain than here, and Westminster is only 30 minutes away.

I asked dad if he remembers it ever being this dry back on the old farm he grew up on. He said he remembers some droughts, but nothing this bad.

Our trees are turning yellow, our stream is down to barely a trickle, and I keep worrying about our well since it is only 17 feet deep. I am strongly hoping that whatever is feeding our well is also staying at a trickle or more until we can get some decent rain around here.

The drive down to Frederick every day along route 15 is wrought with BURNT (not just dry, BURNT) trees, brown trees, dead trees, dying trees. I -know- I have never seen things this bad before. The drought coupled with intense regular temperatures in the 106 range have created an onslaught of damage.

Dad mowed down our corn Sunday. It was all dead from lack of water, so we have no corn this year. Tomatoes are doing okay, better now that we’ve gotten a submersible pump for the stream. Potatoes I have no clue yet, we’ll try to dig some up and see. I’ll be semi heart-broken if the potatoes are all dead as those are a large staple in our house.

I had many plans for canning this year.

Going through a drought this long (I’d say…maybe 1 or 2 significant rains since May, the rest mainly insignificant sprinkles or instant thunderstorms that last maybe 5 minutes at most but still don’t provide enough water to quench deep down in the plants), I’ve observed a few places that we could better prepare, and then others that will always remain hopeless in such extreme cases.

For example:

1. Rain Barrels – Rain barrels are a great concept of using a lot of under-utilized water. Our roofs provide so much water in a short amount of time, you can fill a rain barrel in a matter of minutes with a good rain. But you need a -lot- of rain barrels for them to be much worth around here. Watering the amount of plants and animals we do, we’d go through a rain barrel in a matter of 2 days. And this drought has lasted several months, and this doesn’t account for human use either.

So while rain barrels help, they don’t help nearly enough unless you have a LOT of them. I do plan to get more.

2. Submersible pump – Great asset to have, wish we had the means for it sooner. But doesn’t do much when the creek is down to trickle.

However, an adjustment in pockets of water could help. Dad is planning to get a bobcat over here and create a swimming pocket in one part of the stream that is surrounded by these big beautiful rocks. The deeper the pocket, the more water available for using the pump to water the garden. If we have several pockets, then we’ll have several reserve “wells” of water once the rains come again.

The downside, however, the pump will likely empty them out pretty fast in this type of drought.

I also don’t like that we only have an electric pump. I’ve always wanted a manual pump, but dad said it would be too much work. Well I figure that, but what happens if the electricity is out? Not too long ago the electricity blew out at work because of extreme heat melting the wires. It -is- possible. I still plan to get a manual pump anyway, I enjoy that type of a “work-out”.

Since I was home a little early yesterday, I decided to take some time to play in the stream with Bastian. It really is a beautiful stream, there are even some minnows in a few spots. It needs some cleaning up of some small amounts of trash around the edges (not sure if it washes down stream or what), and some branches that have been swept down stream. There are also a lot of thorn bushes along part of it that I’d like to clear some out so I can open up the stream more for resting (that’ll be a pain).

Dad says there’s a peaceful spot up the stream further in the woods that I’ll probably go check out at some point. I’m amazed at the amount of rocks around here. BIG rocks. We never had rocks like this down in Carroll County. I really like them.

Dad says he found an old horse-shoe in the garden. No clue if it was from a horse in the civil war or not, but I’m willing to bet it is more than likely simply because there’s an old civil war hospital two houses down from us. I want to get my uncle over with his metal detector and see what else is buried here.

I can tell that Gettysburg Tourism season has started. I hear it’s a nightmare. Fortunately I think I’m enough out of the touristy area that I shouldn’t have to worry about it too much unless going through town.

I’ve seen a lot of campers drive by recently. The Grove plans to have a yard sale up here one weekend to make some money for the Grove. I’m definitely in a decent spot to do so I think (I hope).

Dad had a biopsy done on his leg last week to see if there’s anything else going on with his leg that’s helping cause the ulcers (you’d think they’d have found something, I dunno, a few decades ago). No results yet.

I got a call from dad today that he ran over his cellphone with the lawnmower……….again. It cracks me up when he does it, cause I know he feels bad about it. But it’s still funny how often it happens (one time he did lose it plowing snow though, I’ll give him that).

Fortunately for me, Virgin Mobile (our carrier) will send a replacement phone free, you just pay shipping. I will have to buy him a new case to wear on his belt though, so all in all I’m looking at $20 I’ll be spending.

It’s moments like these that I’m glad we have a land-line though. As opposed as I am to it, knowing my dad it’s definitely a good thing to keep around, despite the extra cost.

And if I don’t hype how much I love Virgin mobile enough, no contracts! Best cell service I’ve ever had out of any I’ve tried. And reasonable prices (for me).

I mentioned before while learning more history of my new hometown Gettysburg, that there was only one civilian killed during the entire battle.

One of the Gettysburg blogs I frequent, the Gettysburg Daily, just posted a segment on the house she was killed in (not lived in), including pictures of the damage left behind of the fatal shot that killed her.

I love reading this blog everyday.  It gives great insight on the history around here, which I deeply want to learn about.  I’m amazed that living in Westminster so long, I never once came up to Gettysburg.  Honestly I never knew it was so close.  Now that I live here, at least I’ll have all the time in the world to explore and learn.

I received my first tax notice for Fiscal 2009 on Friday. I wasn’t sure what it was at first and then realized that in PA you have to forward your property tax bills to your mortgage holder to pay out of your escrow account if you have one, which I do.

Right now my escrow account has like $1600 in it, and this bill is for $503.97 if paid by April 30th, which is a 2% discount. Normal price is $514.26 if you pay by June 30th, and the penalty price is $565.69 if I pay by December 2009. Naturally I want the discount so I mailed this off Monday.

I’m very very new to property taxes and escrow though, being as this is my first time owning property. I’m curious, does the $1600 currently in my escrow account mean that I have over $1,000 overpaid in it? Or should I expect another tax bill soon for some other crazy PA tax that would take over the $1,000. Or do they split property tax bills into several payments throughout the year and this is just the first quarter or something? And even so, I’m still paying into my escrow account every month, so the account is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger, so that wouldn’t make sense.

These may just be questions for my mortgage company, but if anyone has any insight, I’d be all the appreciative for it.

Silly PA taxes.

I’m going to set up a reminder on April 1st to verify the payment was received from my mortgage company because 1. I don’t trust mortgage companies to do anything right, and 2. The tax collector does not send a receipt unless you mail a stamped addressed envelop with the payment, which I can’t because I’m not sending the payment.

Dad and I have been trying to contact the construction company that owns the huge wooded lot behind us for weeks now. They’ve never called us back, I don’t know what their deal is. I’m trying to be polite and ask permission to haul dead wood out of there to cut up for firewood.

I’m going to keep trying, but in the mean time I told dad to just start pulling wood out with the tractor. Heck if anything maybe that will get their attention faster. They’re just going to develop it anyway.

Once spring hits we usually like to start preparing our wood stockpile for the next winter, in addition to our normal gardening.

Going to be a busy spring. New cords of wood, whole new garden, whole new set of pens and chickens, almost complete restart of an herb garden.

I just spoke with my dad and he said a friend of the family that was in the accident this morning stopped by to give us their contact info. Apparently the woman has a broken hip and some fractures in her legs (explains the screaming agony when they pulled her out), and the man has some fractures in his face.

Apparently the ambulance guy says he hit the dog with the ambulance? But I don’t remember seeing that, and I watched him arrive and leave. But no one knows where the dog is, if its hurt, or worse…dead. It may require some searching in the woods.

Additional Edit: On the way home my I called my dad again and he said the dog was hit a second time by a woman. But apparently not hit directly, just sorta side-swiped. The woman and my dad went all through the woods and couldn’t find the dog. I did some whistling and put out some food when I got home, but I have yet to see this dog.