Back from my trip

[oregano]

Actually, I was back early yesterday, but tired from driving for 4 hours straight. I got up there and got what I needed, then it rained that night. Went to the land in the morning and the soil was mucky like it usually is after rain, and I couldn't do anything because the mud sticks to my boots, then more mud sticks to that mud, then suddenly I'm wearing platform boots. The next day I went back and the ground had firmed up.

The ground is very clumpy and rocky once you dig down a couple inches, and the clay is only 4-5 inches deep instead of 9 like the geological survey I found online said. I had to put the concrete pylons on their sides to get them in the holes. When I go back up in a few weeks I will place standard size bricks in the bottoms of the holes so the pylons will go in correctly. The holes wound up with the shape of an inverted trapezoid-large on the surface, then slanted on the sides to a bottom smaller than the surface opening.

 

[oregano]

See what I mean? Even worse, the hole in the upper middle is in the wrong place, and the pylon is tilted weird because I was trying to fix it without having to dig another hole, but I couldn't.

The bricks you see are scrap bricks that were laying around my mom's property that I used for markers. When I go to level the holes I will use new bricks.

 

[oregano]

View to the south from my land.

 

[oregano]

Looking across the valley to the northwest.

 

[Mary Terry]

That's very pretty place, Oregano. You could put a salt or mineral block out in the pasture away from your house site to attract deer. They're fun to watch. (And tasty if you like venison). I enjoy following your progress.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Are these for a house? For pilings my preference has always been to work with Sonotube that I can square up before pouring the column. My spouse and I had a house built a decade ago and used ICF (insulate concrete form) construction for the exterior walls. Unlike you we are on a massive lateral moraine from the last glaciation that carved Lake Michigan and the subsoil is sand and gravel interspersed with boulders. With good drainage we dug our walkout lower level into a south facing ridge and used the boulders to terrace a garden between the upper and lower levels. The only problem of being on the first moraine east of the big lake is getting hit by weather as air is forced up and cools. In winter this leads to heavy lake-effect snowfalls.

 

[unperson]

have lived on clay soil in tasmania, the foundations will shift. it's like living on the ocean, am currently on sandy soil in another state, it's constantly shifting too!

so... do your clay soil research, it probably involves restumping so get to know how to diy that, or (if concrete slab) injection into inevitable cracks.

clay soil has its own merits, apples love it! it's nutrient rich, black walnuts I think, stuff that has woody roots.

 

[oregano]

have lived on clay soil in tasmania, the foundations will shift. it's like living on the ocean, am currently on sandy soil in another state, it's constantly shifting too!

so... do your clay soil research, it probably involves restumping so get to know how to diy that, or (if concrete slab) injection into inevitable cracks.

clay soil has its own merits, apples love it! it's nutrient rich, black walnuts I think, stuff that has woody roots.

No, this isn't clay like in the Sacramento Valley. The area has volcanic loam soil down to about 5 inches, then volcanic "cobbled clay" (the words used by the US Geological Survey) down to maybe 24-28 inches, then volcanic basalt rock from there. The area has seen heavy volcanic activity in the geological past (several millenia ago) and Mount Shasta is 60 miles south and is considered an active volcano even though it last erupted around 1720 CE. (The designation is likely due to the relatively dense human settlement surrounding it. It is not "active" in the way that, say, Kilauea is.) Mount Lassen which is even further south erupted in 1915 CE.

 

[Mary Terry]

You'll have to deal with the clay, for sure. Our area is permeated with Yazoo clay which expands and contracts depending on moisture content. Fortunately, there is none on our land but our concrete foundation (4 feet thick and poured in 1960) has sunk down several inches on the north side of our house. The slab is not cracked. It is just sinking down on one side. We recently hired a foundation repair company to jack it up, put some kind of filler in the void, and drive in deep stakes to hold it in place. It's not cheap but has a lifetime warranty.

Your soil looks rich, volcanic in origin perhaps. Bet you could grow some good potatoes there.

Edit - you posted that the soil is volcanic just as I hit the post reply button. I can tell that from the color.

 

[watersprite]

Wishing you good luck and strength @oregano. I hand dug and pick-axed a 25’x18’ area - clearing out about 30 wheelbarrow loads of rocks - for a garden. This was about 3500’ elevation in the gold country, south of where you are. But the conditions were similar.
Could you rent a post hole digger, perhaps?

 

[unperson]

No, this isn't clay like in the Sacramento Valley. The area has volcanic loam soil down to about 5 inches, then volcanic "cobbled clay" (the words used by the US Geological Survey) down to maybe 24-28 inches, then volcanic basalt rock from there. The area has seen heavy volcanic activity in the geological past (several millenia ago) and Mount Shasta is 60 miles south and is considered an active volcano even though it last erupted around 1720 CE. (The designation is likely due to the relatively dense human settlement surrounding it. It is not "active" in the way that, say, Kilauea is.) Mount Lassen which is even further south erupted in 1915 CE.

awesome research, a motor home suits majorly.

 

[Aspychata]

Beautiful views. Thanks for sharing. You may move out there and decide to build a house even. Who knows. The container houses from trains have grown in popularity. I saw a house made from soda cans.

Great adventure to read about. For water, can you have it delivered? Or is there some water source nearby?

 

[oregano]

The Klamath River is only a couple miles away, and there are several year round creeks that flow into it in the area. Of course there are water dispenser machines in Yreka. I don't shower much, so don't need a lot of water. I will also have rain barrels.

 

[oregano]

Trash burning is illegal in Siskiyou County most of the year. There is a county dump, of course. Base rate $5 for three cans of household waste. Looked into "humanure composting", that is also illegal, at least as far as dumping it on the land as "night soil". My solution is simply to mix the human waste with organic matter (I will use horse bedding), put it in plastic bags, and throw it in the trash. The dump forbids "septic tank pumping waste", but as far as I can tell they don't forbid human poop mixed with organic matter in bags with the rest of the trash.

With these rural subdivisions that were platted in the 60s as land scams, the HOA was created by the original land office as a selling point. The worst HOA in the area is Klamath River Country Estates, which is NOT where this land is. I made the mistake of buying a KRCE plot as my first Siskiyou land purchase. I quickly offloaded it onto some rich guy from Chico who would be paying less dues than the big R-Ranch sportsmen's club was charging him. I dunno what the deal is with this particular HOA, it seems to be run by some guy in suburban Los Angeles. I've been paying property taxes on this lot for several years. The only addons are a bond passed to build a new high school in Yreka 25 years ago and a bond that has something to do with the local community college. No Mello-Roos taxes.

I don't look/smell THAT bad. The border checkpoint is mainly there to stop stupid people from bringing fruit into the state. They look in your windows and ask if you have any fruit in your car. Sometimes they'll just see CA plates on a small car and wave the person through. The big function of the checkpoint is to comb through big rigs to make sure nobody has any whateverflies hitching rides into the state. Every big rig has to stop and the cops search the loads to make sure there's no creepy crawlies in the load.

Besides, I won't be in the town itself, I'll be about 11 miles to the east. Up in those hills nobody cares as long as you don't cause trouble. I'm thinking of putting up ads on the town corkboards offering acorn (and other edibles) removal services. Acorns attract squirrels and other rodents, after all, which is exactly what a rancher DOESN'T want. Believe it or not, the Whites up there generally don't realize the variety of edible plants in the area, or how to prepare them.