Finally Bought Some Land

[j44ke]

Eagerly looking forward to some updated images after last night. 23 inches in my driveway in Schenectady and still big cat paw aggregates pouring out of the sky. It must be spectacular in the woods.

This is as far as I've gotten so far this morning. I'd say we are around 20" for depth? The path lights here are 27" tall as installed. Snow is very fine here and very sticky. Completely packed up the soles of my boots and stuck to the bottom of my pants legs. The birds are absolutely panicking. There must be 50 goldfinches at the bird feeders. Need to go clear some of the snow off so they can get to all the seed. That will be my first task, after coffee.

[Tom]

Yes, I am going to have to keep an eye on the feeders. They are absolutely mobbed this morning.

[j44ke]

Just a brief update: Beyond building approx. 4.0 miles of trails, the landscapers have been working around the house about 50-100' into the forest, clearing out barberry, bittersweet, dead pines, and other mess to allow hardwoods and healthy native plants a better shot at getting some daily sun starting this spring. The difference is amazing. This isn't clear-cutting - selective pruning and removal. Plenty of standing deadwood left behind and lots of logs on the ground to keep the soil going. And we're working on a trail map for the property. We'll need one of those carved wood "You are here" signs soon.

[j44ke]

It has been a year since we moved in, and I am beat up. Hands take an hour to wake up in the morning, elbow feels like tendinitis, knee has some gravel in it, innumerable insect bites, and I've been stung by g-d wasps at least 15 times. I feel strong and in need of a rebuild both.

But it has been a lot of fun so far.

Here's our 1 year birthday present to the house. A sculpture project by Marek and Kristyna Milde, two artists we met through a friend in the Czech Republic. They started working on the design about the same time as we moved in. Craft Metal from Chatham NY did the fabrication and installation. Top notch work. Piece is just finished but designed to rust and evolve. A geologic botanic aquatic sketch of our property. Made of cor-ten steel, plants, stones, 7 cubic yards of soil and water.

[Clyde]

Never seen anything like that, very cool.

[robin3mj]

The way the edges conform to the rocks. Amazing.

Congrats on the house and I hope it eventually provides you the right balance of effort versus relaxation.

[Mabouya]

It has been a year since we moved in, and I am beat up. Hands take an hour to wake up in the morning, elbow feels like tendinitis, knee has some gravel in it, innumerable insect bites, and I've been stung by g-d wasps at least 15 times. I feel strong and in need of a rebuild both.

But it has been a lot of fun so far.

Congratulations, Jorn, but don't over-do it.

As you know, we only get one body, so don't destroy it by doing too many chores too quickly - you want to save it for the fun stuff too.

[j44ke]

I can sense that season is turning. Everything is in the fruit stage and the birds are already stuffing their faces for migration. Soon the biomass will begin receding. I am amazed by how much vegetation is produced during the growing months and then disappears entirely during the cold months. Where does it all go? Gives a real sense of how much energy gets stored in wood, coal and petroleum.

I’ve never been afraid of hard work, and while I might procrastinate a bit at the start, once I start I finish the work. But plants make that word “finish” more of a detente. And then you wonder why you are doing this when the plants will do what they want anyway? However, the look of the land is changed after a year of work, and we seem to have more animals, more interesting plants poking through the herbaceous cacophony - or perhaps I’m just seeing all this more clearly.

Anyway I’ve planned a bit of recovery in August. Maybe even some bike riding. Crazy talk I know.

And then I’m going to pile on a bit with the machinery. Splitter, Gator, etc.

[mnoble485]

Jorn,
4 years and 59 pages later I still follow your journal with interest. This latest addition is amazing and will be fun to watch it “morph”.

Thanks for inviting us.

Mike

[j44ke]

Jorn,
4 years and 59 pages later I still follow your journal with interest. This latest addition is amazing and will be fun to watch it “morph”.

Thanks for inviting us.

Mike

Thanks Mike (and everyone else too!) for reading. The advice I've gotten here has been very valuable. And I actually didn't realize it had been 4 years. No wonder I am a bit tired!

[froze]

I'm not much into modern architecture, but yours looks fantastic, nice work and congrats!

[j44ke]

Thanks!

We now have a tenant. He was here before everything was finished. Then he was evacuated when work with the angle grinder began. Now he has back. Seems to approve of the upgrades.

[j44ke]

Rough winter. Deer browsing and vole browsing. When the snow melted we had owls camped out in the trees around our house every night. I watched a red-tailed hawk catch and eat three voles in a 2 hour period. While I was doing winter clean up, I killed 2 or 3 myself. Then my neighbor told me to take mouse traps and put them in the paths the voles made in the winter. No bait, just set and go. That resulted in a fair number eliminated. I dug out several baskets worth of hay nests and rootless plants. Voles, unlike moles, eat the roots, often from beneath the plant. So when the snow recedes there are all these dead areas where the voles were most active. Pick up the plant and there are no roots. In the end, they didn't do a huge amount of damage, but the damage is noticeable. We'll likely cut the sedge and rush tussocks short next winter so the voles have less material to use for housing. Several managed to get into the atrium sculpture and destroy the moss in some spots. That's coming back but the artists are going to visit in late May to look at what did well and what died, and then they'll make some changes. The weather has been cold enough that everything is really just starting to perk up. And after a bunch of rain, we've been having very low humidity days with relatively high winds. Like 17% humidity with 20+mph winds gusting to 30-40mph. So the trees are looking a bit exhausted. However, the garlic mustard (a vigorous invasive) is having a garden party. I can't even count the baskets of garlic mustard I've pulled out of the ground or dismembered with the string trimmer. That's a weed you have to wear out. Cut it right before it goes to seed or hand weed the entire plant out of the ground. Seeds last in the ground for up to 9 or 10 years, so all our good work opening the forest up and removing barberry bush this winter was rewarded with a bumper crop of garlic mustard sucking up all the new sunlight. Next will be the spongy moth (formerly gypsy moth) caterpillar infestation. Basically we've made a salad and our house is the bowl.

View from the porch. The white flowers are wild strawberries. The turkeys will eat all those, but the turkeys are better than TV so we enjoy having them around.



Our roof plant guy really got into the rock garden after we asked him to toss all his clippings down into the rocks. They've now done a nice job filling all the crevices and some nice moss and sedge growth has taken hold as well.



The yellow birches seem to have done really well over winter. They produced a ton of seed-filled catkins so maybe we'll start seeing saplings.



This gives an idea of what the "lawn" is made of. It isn't just sedge or rush. This is about 60% filled in after winter, and there are seeds from two years ago that should be coming up this year. Tons of asters and monardas (bee-balm or bergamot) and salvias, all natives. We'll see - not everything works as planned but sometimes it is better.

[mnoble485]

Thanks Jorn, this is like an unexpected visit with an old friend.

Mike

[nelo784]

Thanks Jorn, looks amazing. Is the last photo of the roof or outside the house? It'd be great to get a photo of your roof growth. It looks pretty vibrant in the second photo, but it is hard to tell how well this has progressed. I really would love to do this on our next place. I appreciate your follow up.

Thoughts on how it is to live there now you're a few years in? Good architecture is about changing the way we feel in a space and I would be interested in your thoughts on what it's been like living in the house? Any regrets? Things you'd change? It really is an extraordinary home! Many Thanks.

[j44ke]

Thanks Jorn, looks amazing. Is the last photo of the roof or outside the house? It'd be great to get a photo of your roof growth. It looks pretty vibrant in the second photo, but it is hard to tell how well this has progressed. I really would love to do this on our next place. I appreciate your follow up.

Thoughts on how it is to live there now you're a few years in? Good architecture is about changing the way we feel in a space and I would be interested in your thoughts on what it's been like living in the house? Any regrets? Things you'd change? It really is an extraordinary home! Many Thanks.

Last photo is the ground outside the house. The roof is entirely succulents - all sedum species - selected for our particular climate, which means most of them occur naturally in places like Switzerland and Hokkaido. Northern areas with winter snow. Right now they are filling in after winter, so they've haven't been trimmed much - and won't be until after they flower. The topography you can see in the photos below is created by the mix of different varieties.

I like the house and like living in it. The architects did a near perfect job dividing the space up and creating flow between the rooms. All the glass makes this a very outward looking house. So much so, putting artwork up seems redundant. The feeling is akin to living in a hide or a duck blind, except that the openings to the outside are floor to ceiling windows rather than tiny slits. Animals walk right by the house while we are inside, and I can't count the number of times I've woken up to see a turkey deer coyote bobcat skunk possum etc. walking by the window of our bedroom. So it definitely answered our request for light, air and privacy (though the latter is because we surrounded the house with a bunch of land.)

I don't know that I have regrets per se, because I didn't know I would do something differently until after living with it. But I think I would have spent more money in at least one place. When you reach a certain level of expenditure, I think the money transcends ridiculousness and you have to make sure the entire house rises to the same level. So I think we made a mistake firing our cabinetmakers when they came back with a $20,000 upcharge due to their miscalculation and misreading of the building drawings. The differences in tolerances between an excellent carpenter and an excellent cabinetmaker building cabinets (which in this house design included much of the interior along with the kitchen) are significant enough to affect the overall precision of the house in the way it all fits together.

And we should have put in a photovoltaic system. But I knew that even while we were building. There is no way a photovoltaic system was going to be a bad idea - assuming reputable provider etc. Totally future proof in that way. And sure enough, with the war in Ukraine and the inevitable profit-taking that's occurred, our electrical costs (area-wide, not just us) went up ~120% as of January 1. So I suspect we will put that in sooner than later.

I think if you are doing plants on the roof, don't do it for practical reasons. R-value rating for roof insulation, non-reflectivity/urban warming, storm water runoff, etc. blah blah blah. Do it because it is beautiful and lovely to look at and it changes everyday and adds to the overall feeling of the house in a really pleasing way. But it does help with stormwater runoff. Roof insulation? Okay maybe in theory but there are probably cheaper ways to do that. Aesthetics are great though. Do it for that and the enjoyment of looking at it.

[Todd Amunrud]

Don't know if it'd work, but can the bluebird houses be placed up there?

[nelo784]

Thanks Jorn for the comprehensive update. On the roof plants - noted. The constant transformation is the appeal.

On your cabinetry - it is getting increasingly hard to find good craftspeople. Pre-Covid we had our kitchen replaced with an Italian factory made install that took 5 months to arrive. The first installers up and left as soon as they saw the boxes. The second guy was a pedantic German migrant in his 70s who reveled in the challenge. His installation work in an 1870s DC row house is some of the best carpentry I've seen. It was certainly money well spent!

Glad you're enjoying the house. Your photos have certainly provided inspiration for us as we look at our next project in Portugal.

[Octave]

As usual, absolutely beautiful, Jorn.

When the time comes for you to go PV, give me a shout. We're fully covered now and couldn't be happier. Energy costs in our area also went up and between that and regular outages due to winter storms and summer fires we are chuffed to be off-grid. You've certainly got the footprint to do the same, depending on what your energy needs are like.

[bking]

Jorn, Why the rock garden area of the roof? Guessing it has some purpose, or just asthetics?
Thanks