We could use a little more rain this month but overall, I have absolutely no complaints. Several farm projects are coming along nicely (I keep forgetting to take the camera out to document it all), the girls are enjoying their summer vacation, and Nancy is – thanks to a downsized boarding operation – able to spend more time doing what she loves: training Dressage horses.

I’ve mentioned the Cahas Green development in previous blog entries. The subdivision is visible in the photo down in the valley at right. If you enlarge the photo above you can see the next home construction in progress. They’ve got the basement poured and it looks like they’ll be framing before long. The new homeowners are horse folks; I believe they left a message for us yesterday concerning access to our indoor/outdoor riding arenas. It’s exciting to have more riders relocating to our area and I look forward to meeting them in person!

I picked up a total of four cubic yards of red mulch from Hilltop Mulch in Rocky Mount this week and made some more progress with our “secret garden”. Hilltop is a great place to get mulch, decorative stone, turf supplies, and a variety of trees and shrubs. I paid $20 a scoop (half yard) for the red mulch, and $30 for a scoop of brown stone. f you’re in my area, they’re off Wirtz Road, about a mile from the Route 220 and Wirtz Road intersection.

It hit 95F here on Saturday (100F heat index according to my weather station) so I was drinking water at a rate of about a gallon an hour. In the photo above I’m reminded that I still need to finish painting the planters. I gave the foreground planters a fresh coat recently but I’ve got seven more to go including the two in the background. The color of the painted wood used in our landscaping is Lowes Olympic’s Soft Ivory. I have them mix it with semi-gloss exterior oil paint, which holds up really well outside.

The lawn is looking much better. It’s nothing to write home about unless of course you saw just how dead it was during the drought last year. Last September I overseeded with bluegrass and it established better than I expected. This September I may overseed with some fescue, depending on how the bluegrass tolerates the heat.

It’s hard to see from this picture but our two rhododendrons that hide behind the Japanese Maple and the Japanese Andromedas are flowering. These guys flower about a month behind schedule due to their cool and heavily shaded nook. In 2006 I gave them about a 5’ tall haircut, and of course they reacted in 2007 by not flowering at all!

The keen eye will observe a small dark circle 1’ below the window at right in the photo above. That is where a hose bib protruded from the brick wall until yesterday, when it blew right out of the wall – along with an 8” threaded pipe) as I tried to turn it off. A sideways fountain sprung from the brick as I sprinted into the house, down into the basement and into the mechanical room to shut down the main valve for all of our hose bibs! So instead of mowing this Sunday morning, I’ll be cutting out some drywall in the basement stairway exterior wall and installing a brand new hose bib.

This is what our arbor looked like at 9:30am. These Wisteria have not flowered in the 3 years we’ve lived here. They are in what is called (ironically) a vegetative state. In 2005 when we moved in, I didn’t know quite how to approach these vines. They looked much like they do in the picture. The moving guys had to use hauling straps to pin back the vines to clear a path for hauling boxes and furniture. During early Autumn 2005, I gave the vines a haircut by cutting back only what was drooping downward. No flowers in the Spring. In early Autumn 2006, I did the same thing. In 2007 there were no flowers during the Spring either so I did some reading up on Wisterias. It turns out that the flowers bloom on last year’s “new wood”. Great, I thought, problem solved. I’ll skip the Autumn trim and see if the vines flower in the Spring of 2008. Well, the Spring of 2008 came and NO FLOWERS. So, I do some more reading. It turns out that very mature Wisterias can stop producing flowers altogether. One method of restoring blooms is to do a major crop, down to about 3–4’ below where you’d like the Wisteria to ultimately reach. Then you thin some of the side shoots as well. From my research online, after a major cut back, the Wisteria might not grow flowers for 1–2 years. Moving forward, each year you’re supposed to cut back at least 90% of new growth.

So, I decided, enough is enough. Let’s break out some gas powered landscaping goodness and kick us some Wisteria Ass! We’re going to get this old fart to flower if it kills us!

This is what the arbor looked like at 2:30pm. I thought it would take 2 1/2 hours to trim and clean up. Ultimately the entire job took 5 hours. So my perfect record – of under-estimating the time involved in any project whatsoever by 100% – remains intact! Yay for me.

If I didn’t have my trusty John Deere hedge trimmer (with the 5’ extension) I’d be hanging dead from the arbor instead of writing this blog entry. The mass of vines and leaves was 5’ thick on top of the arbor and after I cut a notch out for my 12’ ladder I was on top of the arbor and systematically sawing the mass into sections so I could shove off hunks of vine down to the ground. The extension on the trimmer let me do it from a distance so I didn’t have to climb on top of the vines, which would have been asking for trouble. Once the top was mostly bare - except for the vines 2” thick or larger – I got back down to ground level and cut every vine down to about 6’. After thinning a little more I was ready to clean up. Cleaning up took as long as making the mess to begin with. It took about 10 trips with my wagon to haul the debris to my brush dumping ravine (every redneck should have one). A little cleaning up with the backback blower, a few dehydration induced hallucinations and I was all done.

The arbor looks nice with more of it exposed, but I’ll look forward to training a few of the wisteria vines to crawl back up to the top again. I’ll trim back new growth more regularly from now on and maybe we’ll see some flowers in a couple of years. One thing I’ve noticed is that with the wisteria mass gone from the top of the arbor, the six Rose of Sharon bushes lining the walk (the tops visible behind the arbor) need to be trimmed much shorter in the Autumn to match the “new” height of the arbor.

I’ve got a couple other landscaping jobs I’m working on while I prepare to get back to fence building. I look forward to blogging about those soon!

We’re getting more Spring showers after a few very enjoyable days of sun. I love the colors and tones that are brought about by early evening sunlight mixing with showers. It’s a special time.

Well, this has been a wonderful Spring so far here in Boones Mill, VA!

Our fourth Spring here has so far been my favorite, with ample rain and sunshine. The Azaleas and Dogwoods are all in great shape. I’ve done mowing with the garden tractor and tomorrow it will be time to mow some pastures for maintenance purposes.

That’s all for now! I hope your Spring is going well also!

Okay, bear with me while I summarize the past five months of the Pecor clan.

In early December, I travel to the 2007 Webmasterworld Vegas Pubcon. It’s an internet marketing convention where one can hear advice from top independent consultants and get input from key representatives from all major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Live.com, and so on). It was at the Pubcon where I gathered up recommendations from Matt Cutts, a key “search engine spam” representative from Google. To avoid a Google penalty, or an outright ban, Matt recommended several steps, one of which was this: that you provide an “about us” page that would contain contact information so Google engineers could be assured that you’re a “real business” and not a producer of “made for advertising” sites (also called “spammy sites” or sites that contain no real content except for advertisements). I made lots of notes and went home to the family and to catch up on house and horse farm projects. The stresses of farm related responsibilities, my internet business, and the rising cost of just-about-everything begin to grind away on me.

During the Christmas holiday, we head up to Vermont and spend time with family and friends on Stonewood Farm in Orwell, Nancy’s parents 1,000 acre family farm. It’s a wonderful experience; and a nice opportunity to forget work and the farm for a spell. And spending time around Middlebury, Vermont reminded me how much I loved New England. Beautiful historic colonial and victorian homes, charming farm houses… Tight knit college towns with a cultural richness that belied their small size… Driving home from Vermont to Virginia, I begin to silently weigh the pros/cons of moving back to Vermont…

Prior to leaving for Vermont for the holidays, I implemented every single one of Matt’s recommendations I noted from the December Pubcon. I created a one page bio-site at my corporate domain (digitalspinner.com) that described who I was and provided contact information. In the interest of full disclosure, I provided a simple bullet list of each of my 15 resource sites. Each of my 15 resource sites were linked to this corporate page (a simple footer link that read “Web site by Digital Spinner”). Three weeks from the day I implemented those changes, and two days after returning from Vermont, 14 of my 15 sites were banned by Google! I mean, completely flipping banned! Since 2/3rds of my visitorship originated from Google, this promised dire consequences for my business. Gee, thanks, Matt!

Much of January is spent planning and developing ways to increase web site traffic from sources other than Google. I also make massive changes to each of my sites so that they would clearly be seen to operate within Google’s “quality guidelines” for web sites. I submit re-consideration requests via Google’s Webmaster Tools that force you to admit wrongdoing, promise you have made corrections and provide documentation of those changes. Google never responds to these requests, and never tells you what you’ve done or are doing wrong. To me, this is very Kafka-esque. Google owns 66% of the search engine market – and search engines are a first stop for virtually everyone who conducts online research. One might argue that Google is clearly a monopoly and they are abusing their power as a monopoly to alter the fabric of online commerce and trade by selectively banning web sites. And they are selective. To a reasonable and educated search engine engineer, none of my sites were behaving in a way that would be deserving of an outright ban. But my sites were banned. They were banned while other web sites in markets I compete in – sites that are clearly in violation of Google’s “quality guidelines”  – remain in Google’s search results.

While all this is going on, Nancy and I decide we’re selling the farm, downsizing and simplifying our life, and moving back to Vermont. Our property is put on the market and we begin searching for our future home in the Middlebury, Vermont area. I spend several hours a week searching for property in the Middlebury area. We find only a handful of properties, all of which would require significant remodeling and barn building expenses. As an example, we locate a small 200 year old farmhouse w/ 20 acres and no usable barns with an asking price approaching what we are asking for our Virginia estate w/ 38 acres, sweeping views, a huge and beautiful house, an indoor riding arena, a 10 stall barn, and a beautiful machinery and storage barn. This is not a good sign. Further investigation uncovers New England’s dirty little secret. Taxes. Property taxes are easily 3 to 4 times higher in Vermont. And Vermont’s state income taxes are 3% higher than in Virginia. And everything else – groceries, fuel, education – is about 15% more expensive in Vermont.

February marks an improvement in my online businesses. My hard work is paying off and after finding the bottom of my “dotcom” downward spiral, I’m able to better concentrate on growth again. Also during February, Nancy and I divert our focus away from Vermont and further into southern New England. We search for and find potential property in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. All of these properties are, once again, much more expensive – pound for pound – than the Franklin County, Virginia area. We begin paying attention to the weather reports. On a day in February when it’s 35F and sunny in Boones Mill, VA, it’s 15F in Middlebury. Like a trauma victim recovering from amnesia, bits and pieces of my memory of New England winters return to me. A dreary gray sky that dominates much of November through March. Snowy, icy, messy roads. Rock salt covering every inch of your car. Rock salt tracking into houses. Clouds breaking every so often for a few days of sunny skies that, while glorious, drop temperatures into the single digits and below. Night falling at 4pm. Frost heaves. Frozen water pipes. Yay!

As my business is slowly improving, and Nancy and I are becoming more skeptical of relocating, there is a surprising amount of interest in our property. Couples tour the property. Single affluent women tour the property. I wonder to myself how exactly a single woman (or a single man) could possibly keep up with the demands of owning an actual horse farm while commuting to a day job in Roanoke. One nice woman tours the barns and the pastures – wearing stilettos – and it is soon after that Nancy and I have our moment of clarity. There is absolutely no way in hell that we want to sell our farm. We love it here. We’re uniquely suited for the property and it’s uniquely suited for us. We’ve made so many friends. Our girls love their school. We love our home. We love our farm. We ain’t movin.

March arrives and my business ticks up a notch. Our property is taken off the market. It looks like at this point we’ll be holding on to all of our land. My business income won’t reach the record highs of 2007 for a few years to come, but I’ll get there again. It’s inevitable. I’m too stubborn to fail.

We are simplifying, however. We’re transitioning out of boarding horses. We’ll just be keeping our own horses on the farm, along with the odd horse in training. Nancy will still teach riding lessons. In fact, she’ll have more time to teach and looks forward to arranging and teach various riding clinics. We’ve reduced the number of horses on our property from 16 to 10. By July, we’ll be down to 7. I’ll have more time for home and farm improvement projects. Emotionally, we’re in a good place now.

There, I’ve caught the blog up. This retrospective was therapeutic but it’s time to start looking forward again.

To be honest, I was never one to blog on a daily (or even weekly) basis. However, pausing for 5 months without posting an entry is out of character even for me. So consider this entry a dipping of my toe into the water; the precursor to returning once again to documenting various home, farm, family and business projects.

This photo was taken about 2–3 weeks past the prime of this little corner of our landscape. Better late than never. I consider the snowbells a minor victory of sorts. When we first moved here in 2005 only a handful of these flowers were able to fight their way past the mass of weeds and debris that was piled up around the japanese maple. I’m not sure clearing out the weeds and debris alone was the only reason for their rebound, but I’m willing to take at least part of the credit. In 2006 I decapitated the two overgrown rhododendrons as well as the japanese andromeda (?). For the next year they looked rather pathetic but by the Spring of 2007 they had recovered from their extreme pruning  

The next step for this area might be some red cedar mulch, but I’m pretty happy with it as it is.

Folks in Franklin County, Virginia (like us) have begun to receive 2008 real estate reassessment letters from the county government. Our farm acreage and farm outbuildings increased in assessment by nearly 300%!

Someone explain to me why three A-1 farm parcels totalling 111 acres (34 acres open, the rest in mature forest), with three barns and land that won’t perc well enough to allow anything less than 5 to 10 acre lots should be worth seven f#!$ing digits!!! My farm property tax bill is jumping from $2,000 to $6,000 a year.

I haven’t received the assessment letter for the 17 acre house parcel yet. If they think 111 acres and three barns is worth $1.145 million then the sky is the limit on the house with the million dollar view.

Ugh. I missed the November 1^st deadline for registering for Land Use, so I don’t think I’ll have much luck making an appeal. No harm in trying though!

I don’t mind paying taxes but a 300% increase is plumb beyond reason!

This very nicely made 10×20 victorian style cottage shed, built by Pine Creek Structures out of Pennsylvania (with a retail location on Route 220 in Rocky Mount, VA) represents phase 1 of Moira and Chloe’s small animal barn. I’m going to be ordering a custom 10×14 shed that I’ll join with this shed, to make an L-shaped barn suitable for our chickens, small pets, and our future pot belly pig and pygmy goat.

The slope required that I order about 80 tons of crusher run to build up the level base for the barn. Once the other section of the barn arrives, I’ll do the landscaping. I’ll add a couple of shade trees; build small animal paddock fence, add a cobblestone walking path, and so on. By early next Spring it will be ready for the pig and the goat!

If you’re in the Virginia area and are ever considering brick for your house then I’d highly recommend Old Virginia Brick in Salem, VA. Pictured above is their wood moulded brick product, 30 years after construction. It’s still in great shape and as you can see, the imperfections of the wood moulding process adds a very whimsical texture under certain lighting conditions. The brick patio is also 30 years old and is also Old Virginia Brick.

Our door and window trim will be renovated soon and I’ve been trying to help Nancy and I lock down a color to use during the job. Pictured above is the trim around the kitchen door after I sanded and painted it with a slightly darker yellow paint than what was previously used. It’s a bit dark and depressing so I’m going to go for a brighter tone. I’m thinking that the color I’ve “standardized” on for wood used in landscaping is the next candidate:

Pictured above is the color I’m going to try next. It’s an Olympic oil based paint mixed with a Lowes “Biltmore” color called Soft Ivory. It’s a gorgeous creamy tone that shifts its hue depending on the outdoor lighting conditions. I think the house trim will wear it well! I’ll give it a go this week and post a photo.