The land in question, clear-cut in the 1970's, has taken care of itself for the past forty years. With no human to tend it, trees have sprung up, bushes have overgrown the pond and trails, and invasive weeds have threatened to take over the native growth. Deer and turkey thrive, coyote and fox are shy yet show themselves every once in a while. Juncos and sparrows fill the air, accompanied by the occasional woodpecker. And insects, lots and lots of insects. Black flies, mosquitos and horseflies are the worst of that lot.

In October 2007, my husband and I became stewards of these 12.5 acres of overgrown mountainside. While most of our works has been in renovating the dilapidated cabin, some of our energy has been to clearing out "junk" growth. The sumac, for instance, grew right to the foundation of the cabin; we removed that immediately upon taking ownership to prevent further damage to the foundation.

But we are city folk, or at the most, small town people and know little about forests. Learning what we need to know has three distinct categories:

1) Identification of what currently grows on the land

2) Determining what is natural to this part of New York State and what is "junk"

3) Coming up with a plan of rehabilitation and stewardship.

Some progress has been made on the first two parts of this task. Identification of the trees and plants has begun, and in making those identifications, we now know what to keep and what to rip out.

  This aerial shot shows the acreage in the spring when the trees are still bare. The dark spot near the bottom of the photo is the pond. Because the previous owners did not line this man-made body of water with clay, it will never get much deeper than three feet. Because it remains stagnant for much of the season, it gets a large algae growth each summer. The frogs do their best to keep the insect population down, but it still breeds more mosquitoes than we'd like. Getting the water flowing is on the list of this summer's things to do.

As of Spring 2012 the cabin is nearly habitable. All we need now is running water from a source other than our rooftop runoff. There's a 500 gallon cistern in the basement and we use that water for the toilet, shower and both sinks. But it's not drinkable, nor will I cook with it. We put in an inline hot water heater last year (replaced in 2012 since we forgot to drain it at the end of the season and the little water left in it froze and burst the interior pipes), but that doesn't get the water hot enough to purify it.

So the goal this year is a well. Placing the well so it is efficent, yet has little impact on the surrounding forest is part of what we need to figure out. I also would like to grow vegetables there. That means clearing some land and terracing the mountainside. More research needed as to how to build retaining walls!

Other pages about the cabin: 

Plants at the cabin

Trees at the cabin

Water at the cabin

Yankee Ingenuity

Generic information on wells

Harvesting timber