What we found in the woods

The other day Jeff wandered in the wooded part of our 3.6 acres. I didn’t follow because I was in shorts and barefeet in Crocs. After a while he convinced me it was worth changing and following him. The edge of the forest around the house is choked thick with alder. It’s hard to walk through and you sure can’t see through it. But it turns out that 10 feet it, the forest is older and there isn’t much undercover so you can see quite far. It’s gorgeous back there. There are big old spruces who’s roots are thick and spread over the surface of the forest floor. I don’t remember seeing anything quite like it in Ontario.

Unfortunately there is a spruce beetle here that has killed a lot of the mature spruce in this area. We have several dead spruce on our land. Some of them have already fallen down. There are lots of baby spruce trees growing too.

The most interesting thing – there is a foundation back there! There are a few layers of wide, but not too thick, rocks that are stacked like a foundation and covered with moss. There are some broken plates and pails inside the area surrounded by these rocks. Beside it there is a deep dug out area – maybe a basement or something? Behind it there is a circle hole that is surrounded by rocks as it goes down – it looks very much like an old dug well. After we looked at that, we went a bit farther up the slope and I spotted another old well! This one is the cement kind that is circle and has a cement lid! Fascinating! How long have those wells been around? Now this part is odd. There was a new-ish green garden hose there. It looked like it had been inserted into the black pvc pipe in the top of the cement cover and it went through the forest in the vague direction of our house and then stopped. What the heck is this for? The only thing that was in my head was we were going to stumble on a field of pot plants. We didn’t see any though. I have no idea what someone would need a hose up there for.

Last night Jeff went on another adventure to find the property stakes in the corners of our lot. He said when he found the back corner he could see a boat and a shed – I know the neighbour mentioned there was an old cabin up there. Behind our property line across the back there are No Tresspassing signs.

We have some really nice spruce near the house that have been recently delimbed at the bottom. I have no idea who would saw off those branches, but someone is obviously grooming them for future harvest – although they are ours now. I’ll have to get back there again and look closer.

Our plan is to borrow/rent a decent brush saw so we can clear out all the alders that surround the house. The only problem is what the heck will we do with all that brush after we cut it. It might be worth waiting until the leaves fall off and then we could slowly chop them up and burn them in the outdoor fireplaces we have. Or we could stack them somewhere. After we cut them all out then we’ll have a gorgeous view into the forest from the house. That’ll be much more attractive to look at.