Turkey Troubles

Spring 2008. The turkeys are coming! The turkeys are coming! There are many farm fields that surround the Havey so it is a common occurence to see turkeys. You can tell that they visit the mine occasionally because of the stray feathers that they leave. Once in a while you will see them on the way in and sometimes, if there are no engines running, you can hear them gobbling. This spring a mother hen decided to make her nest right beside the road to the mine, so every time anyone went in or out she would crouch down so to camouflage herself. If you didn't know right where to look she was hard to find. She did nest far enough away so that while I was working I did not disturb her. Finally, coming in one day most of the eggs were hatched is she and her brood were gone.

The turkeys have left the area.

 Now that the bulk of the excess material was out of the mine I could continue cleaning up the remaining area and see where the best place would be to start mining. Of course I needed access into the mine for the equipment, so this meant that there was a certain amount of area that I would not be able to look at as easily. The pegmatite workshop had asked to come to the mine so I wanted to expose and clean off as much ledge as possible. I am still  new at this and can use some knowledgable eyes to look and give me some direction. As it turned out the most promising areas so far were to be under the road. As I kept narrowing up the road I was able to remove a fair amount of loose rock. The last time the Havey was mined in the mid 1970's Terry Szenics was having a loader come in and remove the loose rock. While using this machine was optimal at the time, it was not able to rip all of the fractured rock that may have still been bound together after the blast. Now, using an excavator equipped with a ripper tooth I was able to tear down through an additional 1' to 3' of loosened  rock. In doing this I was exposing some new ground that hadn't been seen.

Access ramp into the mine. Note the basalt dike on the left hand side of the picture.

All of a sudden some 10 to 20lb blocks of purple lepidolite started to come up. Much of the lepidolite from the Havey is a fine grained purple and takes an excellent polish. It was time to take a closer look. I didn't always have a camera handy and this was one of those times. There was a lot of cleavelandite beside the lepidolite and upon closer inspections in some of the vugs (small open spaces in the rock) there were some small quartz crystals. If you go by what the books say, things were looking mighty fine.Yes, I was excited. As I slowly cleaned off the area the lepidolite mass kept growing in size until it was over 3' long. There was montebrasite, muscovite, beryl, quartz, and the lepidolite that went from purple to green. This was the place to be. The electric hammerdrill came out in hopes of finding a pocket, but it was not meant to be. I covered it up at the end of the day and although I would expose it periodically I would not mine this exact area for another 16 months.

The first large mass of lepidolite that I exposed at the Havey. Montebrasite at the top right of the greenish lepidolite.
Two rock hounds not having much luck finding the tourmaline.

Shortly after finding the lepidolite mass, the folks from the Pegmatite Workshop showed up. There were between 30 and 40 people with many varied interests. From novices who knew less than I up through some with doctorates in their field of study. It was interesting to listen to some of the scientific debate on the geology of what is going on at the Berry-Havey quarry. Aside from the area I was working, it was pointed out again that some areas on the opposite side of the quarry looked promising for pocket formation. Listening to some of the different ideas  it emphasized the more you know the more you realize you don't know.