Aurora bathroom repairs. The visitor building main bathroom floor had water damage from leaks. Xian and McCune have torn out the floor and are rebuilding it from the joists up. The work is being done during the time of year when our visitor program is closed.
Anya's birthday. Anya celebrates her 4th birthday behind Kaweah, where she was born, by decorating cupcakes with friends.
Thanksgiving 2012 dessert table. Many desserts, too many to fit on the folded out ping pong table below this display.
Thanksgiving 2012 dessert table. All who wish to participate gather in the one large dining room of ZK. After the meal people who wish to do so stand up to say what they're grateful for in the past year.
Hardy kiwis. Grown in Kaweah backyard. They really do taste the fancy ones from the supermarket, only fresher.
The "Colonial 200" relay race ran through our property, out front, on Vigor Rd. Here is the support team meeting up with a runner for their team. Hundreds of people participated in this long distance relay race.
Colonial 200 relay race runner passes back water bottle, continues the race along the 200+ mile course.
In late September 2012 we hired a well drilling contractor to have our main drinking water well hydro-fractured. The well output had declined apparently due to the August 2011 earthquake.
We had to remove the dirt roof from the well house, then create a cutout to give access to the drilling company's fracking equipment. Here the crew is carrying a section of pipe which will be lowered into the well using the crane.
Looking down into our well house. The fracking crew is setting up one stage in the process. The hole in the bottom of the photo is our well. This well has yielded about 7000 gallons per day for 33 years!
Early indications are that the water output of the well was improved by fracking. We'll soon be doing more tests to try to quantify how much improvement we got from this process.
Early stages of repairs to TCLR roof. A Twin Oaks crew is at work at this stage. We hired a contractor friend to help manage the project, and at the end hired a roofing contractor to apply the metal roof cover.
Twin Oakers and a guest work on TCLR roof remake
TaChai Living Room roof is getting major repars and a high-quality enviro-friendly enameled steel roof. This year the chronic low-level leaks in the roof got much worse.
The roof not only was leaking but also had a severe sag in the middle. We lost the clerestory windows and their nice light. But we added well-flashed roof skylights to help compensate.
The road in front of our property, Vigor Rd (aka Rt 697), was repaired and paved this year. The one area of major repair was at Polecat Creek which forms our west property boundary. The road "pavement' is not what one usually pictures--it looks like gravel instead of asphalt but it's hard and smoother than the old unpaved road.
Most Twin Oakers argued against paving. Some of our neighbors strongly favored it. It would be interesting to hear what the average communard thinks now that the work has been done. The road was widened only a little bit, and it wasn't straightened.
Kristen and Keenan out for an evening stroll. The frisbee field is in the center background. The VA Highway Dept (VDOT) wanted to pave the road because of the traffic level. Most of the cars on this road surely were Twin Oakers, service vehicles such as daily UPS, and guests.
Much upgraded Polecat Creek crossing of Vigor Rd. Maybe this time the road will withstand quite a few of the frequent flashfloods that come down this creek.
