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Posted
1 January 2012
Winter
Garden
Our
first attempt at a winter vegetable garden is going well.
Molly was able to harvest greens, carrots and radishes on
New Year's Day.
The
cats normally aren't allowed in the garden. Molly let them
in while she was cleaning up the tomato bed for next summer.
Kitty Boy explored the winter vegetable bed.
The
beds are 16 feet long. This one is 8 feet wide. The winter
bed is 4 feet wide, with metal tubing hoops bent to support
the plastic cover. We keep the bed covered with plastic when
the temperature drops below 35 degrees. When it is very cold
(below about 25 degrees) we also cover the plants with spun
row cover. When it gets extremely cold, Molly will cover the
plants with leaves, then row cover and finally the plastic
over the hoops.
It's
not all work in the garden. Here Molly is texting while gardening.
She's wearing a blaze vest because hunting season didn't end
until New Year's.
More
soon!
Comments
Posted
24 November 2011
Bobo's
Passing
Bobo
passed away quietly early Tuesday morning, October 11th. He
was in his spot between us, his head on a pillow. He's been
such an important part of our lives since 2000 that it's hard
to write this, even a month later.
He
made it through last winter and even at the end had an amazing
spirit. This photo was taken on Sunday when we were out in
the "old" garden. We miss him.
The
other cats have reorganized their lives without him relatively
painlessly. Little Peach Blossom has discovered a new place
to go to in the house. She likes to walk from the loft, on
the beams above the kitchen, to either the bookshelf above
the sink where Molly keeps some of her cookbooks or to a child's
chair hanging high overhead.
Before
we started this version of Sootypaws News it was entirely
on our website. You
can still see the old pages from years ago. There are
lots of photos of Bobo, too.
More
soon!
Comments
Posted
24 November 2011
Gas
Well Study Updates
I've
fallen behind in our updates so I'll combine everything into
one post.
First
off, there's a great article from the New York Times
that we highly recommend: "The
Fracturing of Pennsylvania" by Eliza Griswold. The
article appeared in last Sunday's Magazine. It's about
the problems some people who have leased their minerals have
experienced with Range Resources in southwest Pennsylvania.
The health issues are similar to those we've heard about occurring
in this state and elsewhere. The company's run-around is also
typical.
We've
posted a couple of new videos on YouTube (www.youtube.com/GasWellStudy).
The most recent is You
Get Used To It. We include more of our recorded interview
with Paul Phillips (a Kanawha county resident) in this video
and for that alone we believe it's worth watching.
In
September we presented our
comments to the state for the proposed new regulation
covering horizontal natural gas wells. We're disappointed
with what the Department of Environmental Protection has come
up with. What's happening in this state is that while members
of the legislature are attempting to create new regulations
for oil and gas, industry and the political establishment
(e.g., the governor) are blocking it. What we're getting instead
are regulations written (more or less, more than less) by
industry that do nothing to protect the health and safety
of the state's citizens or the environment. Our comments have
the state's proposed regulation appended.
We've
created a document called Thirty
Wells that tabulates the problems we've seen in our area
with regulatory compliance and environmental issues such as
contaminated drinking water supplies. Industry's awful compliance
record in our area is nothing unusual. It's sad that it's
these people who get to write their own regulations in this
state.
And
we've written an interim report titled Fracture
Gel's Possible Synergistic Influence for Chloride's Effects
on Vegetation. Last summer we made some trial applications
on vegetation of fracture gel we made using kerosene, guar
gum and water. Those applications with the gel alone showed
no adverse effects. When we added 5000 mg/l chloride the adverse
effects were much worse than we'd expect from chloride alone.
It's possible that fracture gel enhances the negative effects
of chloride. We'll be looking at this again next summer. The
report discusses the types of organic solvents used in making
fracture gel (such as kerosene, diesel, and 2-BE). In West
Virginia fracture flowback (including gel) is land applied,
except for Marcellus wells.
More
soon!
Comments
Posted
3 September 2011
A
Visit to the Kanawha State Forest
Last
Monday Molly and I took a day trip to the Kanawha
State Forest. Molly and her parents had been there years
ago but I never had. The Forest is about 8 miles south of
Charleston and is beautiful. The CCC set up a camp there (Camp
Kanawha) back in 1938 and built trails and buildings in the
Forest. We wanted to have a day off, but we also wanted to
look at some of the gas wells in the Kanawha State Forest.
Just like us, the state, in the case of many of its state
parks, owns only the surface. This is true also for the U.S.
forest system in this state. Gas companies want to drill in
the Monongahela National Forest.
More
soon!
Comments
Posted
20 August 2011
Two
New YouTube Videos
We've
added two new videos to the GasWellStudy channel at YouTube
(youtube.com/gaswellstudy).
In the first, Gas
Well Study Cooking Class: Making Fracking Gel, we make
a gallon of liquid gel fracking fluid. This results from part
of our continuing study of the effects of chloride on vegetation.
This year we began applying other components in waste that
is normally land applied, in this case fracture gel alone
and then with chloride.
The
second video consists of two interviews with West Virginians
who have lost their domestic water supplies due to the effects
of Marcellus drilling. It is titled Bottled
Water because once their supplies were poisoned, the only
solution now for them is buying their water. The state doesn't
seem to intervene when a driller contaminates water. Affected
persons must seek redress through the courts.
We're
working on more videos and have lots of great interview material
from both Bonnie and Paul who appear in Bottled
Water.
Once
I can figure out how to configure the YouTube embedding for
size, I'll start put in the normal video links. Until then,
clicking on the titles will get you there, or go to www.youtube.com/gaswellstudy.
Comments
Posted
20 August 2011
Our
Garden
It's
been such a whir around here the past couple of months I haven't
had a chance to write or post anything about a really important
addition to our home -- the new vegetable garden. We began
clearing just after the first of the year. Originally we thought
we'd have to clear a half acre or so but we seem to have been
lucky and have achieved our desires with the cutting of a
lot less trees.
We
have photos of the stages of clearing and creating the garden,
but there's not time to present them right now.
This
was taken the beginning of July and shows Molly standing between
the two raised beds in the garden. To her right are the marigolds
and standing even taller are the tomatoes. In front of Molly
is the large bed with about 100 square feet planted with soybeans
(Molly's harvested the last of these recently and they're
drying on the porch before shelling). This large bed will
be our fall and winter garden. Molly's already planting seeds.
We'll
be having more about the garden and the new space we've cleared.
It's become a favorite of the cats and we now have a place
where we can watch the sky at night in the summer. Plus we're
getting fresh organic vegetables!
More
soon!
Comments
Posted
9 July 2011
New
YouTube Video
We
put up another YouTube video yesterday, titled Natural
Gas: Blunders and Numbers.
The
state was not able to pass new regulations for the oil and
gas industry in the most recent session earlier this winter.
That's not really a huge surprise, considering how much pressure
the industry was putting on both the legislative and executive
branches to do nothing. It's always putting pressure so that
nothing is done which is why things are in the shape they
are now: contaminated streams and rivers, contaminated ground
water, well site accidents, and more.
Our
newest video is about what we've seen in our area in respect
to industry's compliance to the state's laws. It's not a pretty
picture, especially when the numbers get totaled and compared
to the 55,000 producing wells in this state. West Virginia
has a serious problem.
Attempts
now are being made to pass new regulations during an interim
session. Our fears are that whatever happens it will be more
of the same.
More
soon!
Comments
Posted
1 July 2011
Song
of the Wood Thrush
We
have birds singing in our yard and the surrounding woods year-round,
though it is awfully quiet in the winter in comparison to
late spring and early summer when migratory songbirds fill
our woods.
The
slowly changing song of the wood thrush is enchanting. They've
been singing for about a month now. For a week or two, one
would serenade me from a tree close by while I worked in the
shop. Usually they're more reclusive and not that readily
seen.
I've
used our video camera to record a wood thrush singing in early
evening. This one was high in a tree in the woods just west
of our home. It was windy when I recorded this and it's impossible
to hear other wood thrushes responding, frogs at the small
"pond" between our home and the new vegetable garden,
or other singing birds.
The
segment here is about 90 seconds long (2.3 MB file size).
More
soon!
Comments
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