Papercreters: [papercreters] Re: Bought a parcel of land

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

[papercreters] Re: Bought a parcel of land

Interesting story Perry! I'm interested to see what you find out.
I too bought some land in California, mine is north of Reno just on the California side - sorta near Honey Lake. Mine is covered with a layer of silt and scrub plants from a very old lake bed. Where is your place?

Perhaps some of the farm extension offices in Central California would be able to provide some help to define the soil quality and what those crystals are.

Joel

--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, Perry Way <perryway@...> wrote:
>
> Hello papercreters, I have some happy news and not so happy news. First the
> happy news, I bought a parcel of land! It is 2.5 acres in the Central
> Californian outback. It is off the grid but if I want to pipe into
> electricity it is one lot away.
>
> The not so happy news stems from my newfound apprehension about my first
> holes dug on the property.
>
> I need to find someone who has some knowledge or experience on soil. Before
> I build I need to know what I'm up against on this property. There are
> patches of the soil which are thin of vegetation and has a white powder on
> the surface. So I dug some holes, the white part seemed to be kind of
> shallow and once I got down deeper than that it looked like very very nice
> clay-loam soil. Easily breaks up and all probably because it is all fluffed
> up from vegatation with a kazillion microscopic roots in just one shovel
> full. As I dug deeper though, the soil looked very nice. It has
> practically no sand, but it has a lot of loam. So I grabbed a handful to do
> a compression test on it. Squeezed and released and it stuck together real
> good and it got smaller too. So I kept squeezing to see how compact I could
> get it with just my hand and it had to have compressed at least 1/3 to 1/2.
> Suddenly I had visions of a cob house. This soil is really good for cob, I
> think. But maybe not.... A day later, I'm at work to pass the good news to
> my buddy about buying this land. So I found my clay ball, it had lots of
> white crystals forming on the surface! Now hours later, the area I swiped
> with my finger is regrowing little hairs little crystals forming on the
> surface. Now this soil came from deep in the hole I dug. It had nothing
> visible white about it at all. It was only moist. (we just had a spot of
> rain a couple of times in the past week at that location). Fast forward to
> another hole I dug, I dug about half a dozen holes in various places. This
> other hole I dug I got down to the clay where it is noticeably clay and hard
> to dig and I got a half a shovel full of it and noticed white specks in the
> clay. More than specks actually. About 1/4 inch in size they were
> everywhere equally. Not so the clay looked white, but more like how much
> chocolate is in chocolate chip ice cream on one of the cheap brands. Back
> to the clay ball forming white powder on surface, I had had visions of
> perimeter fruit trees, some row crops (its 2.5 acres) and an off the grid
> cob house which is dirt cheap (haha) but now I'm wondering about soil
> quality not just for the fruit trees in my mind but also for anything that
> would use the soil. In other words I'm wondering if I would be able to use
> this soil in papercrete as an additive, or rammed earth, or cob or adobe or
> whatever uses there are for soil for that matter.
>
> Back to finding someone with knowledge or experience on soil, if anyone has
> someone they could direct me to, I'd appreciate it a lot!
>
> Perry
>