Category: Flowers

First Wood Collection of the Year

Things have been busy around here on the old farm lately. I have been doing some cleaning out in the yard to get ready for the season. I also got fed up with the grass at the front of the house, and how the land leans and keeps water too close, so I got into the tractor and sorted that out. Now there is no grass there, and a couple of old water troughs that leak set there as planters. I filled them up and will be putting in some flowers soon. I was ready to get at some work the day before yesterday when there came a knock on the front door.

The knock was the guy who owns the house just down the road from us. He lives in town and was having a tall pine tree taken down in his yard up there. He asked me if I wanted it. Well, that’s a silly question! I went up and spoke to the tree man and specified how I would like the wood cut up. Then I got the trailer the hay was on and took it up for pickup. Sadly, I did not have much luck getting the hay off the trailer in a neat and orderly fashion as I was not sure how long I had till the wood was ready to start piling on. So the hay ended up knocked over in the yard, and of course it rained since. So that’s a bit of a problem! But in the end, the gentleman who owns the tree decided to have a second, shorter tree taken down too. It was under a power line, so it was actually wider in the trunk than the tall one because it had been topped over the years.

So I have all that wood in the yard now. I am thinking I want to do the milling as soon as the ground is dry, then put on Anchor Seal to reduce cracking. That stuff has worked really well on the wood I milled last year. I think a couple of pieces will get milled into large blocks, and the long pieces will be milled into boards. I’ll have to see what the knots in the cant look like! The rounds and branches can be put into firwood, and some of the smaller branches want slicing into coasters and Christmas ornaments for the laser. Maybe there are a couple of signs hiding in there to be laser cut too. I’ll be keeping an eye out.

Spring Cleaning was begun this morning in the kitchen. Some sense and order is being applied to make things more serviceable in there. It was pretty bad. But we made good progress on it today till we wore out, and we will finish it tomorrow, I am sure.

Despite the warming weather, I see two frost days coming up this week. As that is the forecast, and it is always guessed at about two degrees warmer than we actually get in our specific location, I think there may be more. Missus has me warning her each night so she can do any quick saves required.

The kids attend school for four more weeks till they are set free for the summer. I am really looking forward to it! It will be nice to have them about, and to free up the schedule so I can start going out to get wood for the fire and for the mill. It is time for me to start drawing up plans for the woodshed. I have been thinking about it plenty, but I have not put pen to paper on the topic yet. I think I know what I will have to put in place, though it is not exactly what I want. But perhaps I can refigure as I recently found out I am allowed a larger build than I thought without a permit. So, there is that to look at first.

Well, it’s evening here now, and time to get settled and ready to rest for the fight of another day!

This Week On The Farm

This week we got some work done while the weather was cool. We did not do any specific projects, just some general work here. I suffered some sciatic pains, so that kept me from doing much for three days. But on Thursday I got a call from a farmer neighbor to come help him get hay from his field into his shed. I drove one of the trucks for a couple of loads, and took over the loader tractor when his daughter had to go to work. Yup, she was running it like a champ at sixteen years of age. I told her it was amazing watching her girl-power that thing around like an old pro.

Friday was a tired day, so I fought off the tired by going to get firewood. I expect this to be the last load of the spring, as the weather is getting awfully hot now. Now it is time to cut wood to length, and split it and stack it during the cool parts of the day.

We have been mulching flower beds, the herb garden, and the gothic garden. We have fought hard against weeds and grass that regrows where we try to clear and plant anything, including the vegetable gardens and the raised beds. Nothing seems to have worked, so we are giving up on much of it and putting down plastic and mulch to try to defeat it once and for all. Failing that, everything will be put into containers and kept on mulch beds. This place has always been fortunate where grass is concerned. I have burned holes right through the lawn, and within two years, it has recovered itself and looked like nothing has ever happened.

I took down the last of the raised beds in the front yard. That makes room to widen the parking on the driveway, and finish the circle drive we decided on a few years back. That will be completed once and for all when I get a tractor to do the job with. There is no doing that job by hand!

I planted the potato crop a little late when I did that this week. But it is fine since Missus likes New Potatoes. I am okay with that, too. as I suspect our growing seasons are getting longer anyhow, they will have time to finish up in the autumn. Enough, anyway! I put in a whole garden patch full of russet potatoes.

We have three 110 foot garden hoses on order to solve watering issues for the time being. I will put in a new frost free hydrant one day. Again, when a new tractor with backhoe arrives! Just one more of the many jobs I anticipate doing!

On Saturday, my primary job was removing weeds in the pastures across the street. I also put in the top wire on the fence that separates the front paddocks. That is the final assurance that the male llama won’t jump the fence and have his way with his sisters. I need to put a fence in at the back pasture to separate it into two paddocks. Maybe it would be good to divide the paddocks once again, eventually. I would like to see us doing rotational grazing with permanent paddocks. Then we can do better field management and hopefully get the grass in tip top shape.

The farmer I worked for this week came by on Saturday to deliver two bales of hay for our goats and the old llama that remains on this side of the street. We sat on the front porch of the granary and talked for a while. He is an interesting guy, and knows his work. It is always good to talk to him, and to learn what he knows.

During the coming week I need to get some mulch to finish the bed in front of the house. I also want to see about some gates that would better suit the front drive, and move the ones we have to the canal access. That would finally put a good gate across each end of the canal access that would be easy to open and close, keep the animals safe, and allow me to hang No Trespassing signs directly on the gates. There are people around here who assume that because the canal path goes through our property, so can they. It is not the canal’s property, and I do not have to grant access to anyone but the canal company’s people. I don’t think it is a general disrespect that leads people over our land, just an unawareness.

You may have heard that there is a drought in the Western United States. It is true. We are expecting temperatures in the 90’s for at least the coming week. I checked our weather station, and it was 97 this afternoon with a humidity level of only 1%! The place is a tinder box! I am sat with my kids right now, fans running, drapes drawn, the place as cool as we can keep it with no air conditioner. I have seen old trees from around here that have been cut down, and they show in the rings that prior to around the turn of the millennium, the weather in the valley was wetter. I should confirm that on the weather records! It would be interesting to know for certain. I wonder what the future holds? After a year of Covid, I am less certain and more determined to make the best lives we can on our little farmette.

Giving Up On The War Against The Grass

We are uniquely cursed here on our place. We have grass growing here that I cannot remember the name of, but it is a blended type that when cut short serves as a wonderful lawn, and when left to grow long serves as an equally lovely pasture. It is a curse because I have burned holes through it with burn pits, I have tilled it to death, and I have even in the distant past used grass killers on it in places. In every instance, within two years of letting up these attacks, the lawn has been back, and by the start of the third year, the place where it happened has been completely indistinguishable from any undamaged part of it.

This is a great place to be if your life is about your lawn, and cheap upkeep, or if it is about grazing cattle, and you want an easy pasture to keep.

It is not so great when your wife wants a flower bed, and so you till and prep and cover and till again, and by the end of the year the flowers have all but succumbed to the weeds, and are followed the next year by a lawn that will choke out even them.

We have put in raised beds with no bottoms, we have put in raised beds with cardboard bottoms, and we have put in raised beds with plastic bottoms, and the grass has come up through and overgrown the tops of the beds. I have pulled raised beds out again, too. I am in the process of doing that, now. The only place where we have succeeded has been where the raised beds have been covered at the top with cardboard or plastic and mulch. We have done a fair job of keeping the grass at bay with those efforts. So that is the direction we are looking now.

So this year we begin anew with a different approach to the flowers. We have a couple of beds where we have flowers coming up through plastic, and mulch all over that. We also have purchased half barrel shaped plastic tubs that will sit on beds of plastic and mulch, filled with flowers. It is not necessarily the look we would like, but then, neither is “pasture choking petunias to death.” It is just too grim.

I have a bed right in front of the house that I would like to till, surface with the appropriate slope, cover in plastic, and mulch today. It is not too big, so that should be an attainable goal. There are five tubs for that space. I am not going to win against the now two Russian Olives growing there, but I suppose I can trim them back till I can get my dream tractor with a hoe, and dig out the stumps.

There is work to still be done in the herb garden, but we have got to the point it could be easily said it is half way done. We were working out a watering solution for it yesterday, then I went with a shopping list to the stores down in Logan, and while I was at one of them, I spotted a pair of copper-toned sprinklers that were about three feet tall, and decorative, almost Celtic, and got those to put up in the garden, along with feeder hoses that worked out really well. I could not decide between a green one and a red one, so I got one of each, and while I had other plans for them, they worked for the sprinklers to the point that the green one now sits across the grass, and the red one across a mulch bed of nearly the same color. I could not believe it.

We have a space under the kitchen window that needs doing, and against the back of the garage where Missus would like a she-shed, or a space where she will be able to sit outside and work in the future. By, ‘in the future,’ I mean after that noisy goose finally dies of ole age! But then, a quick Google search suggests that he may be with us for another 20+ years… Maybe it is time for him to move to the water across the street! Apparently he is not like to leave us anytime soon.

With the flowers in place in the spots I have discussed, I think that planting season is about done here. If anything is to get root, and flourish it needs to have been in by now, or at least sooner than we can afford more. I can see a couple more trees going in, and I will be putting in the potato starts in either today or tomorrow. I have about 330 feet of potato rows to plant into in 11 rows. I may be out doing that tonight at sunset, or after, when it is cool. I know it is getting late in the season, but that is fine, as Missus prefers New Potatoes anyway.

We have a short, almost cool spell on us till around Friday, so it is a good time to get some mess cleaned up and sorted out. I would like to see the girls and myself picking up firewood down at the Logan City Dump on Friday. I am pretty sure we are all stocked up for the coming season, but I would like to get a trip or two in before summer’s weather is hot in earnest, and then go back down again in the autumn for the rest of the following year’s supply.

Our rejected goat has been staying in the duck run, and making friends out there in the daytimes, and coming into a crate in the house at nights. We are bottle feeding her milk from the fridge, same as we drink. In the days since we brought her in, she has started walking correctly, and even becoming more playful, and she has gotten fatter across the mid section where he backbone was starting to show before. She likes to follow us around in the house. It looks like she is becoming a part of our family! She’ll have to go back out with all the other goats when she is better, and when she is big enough to take a full hit from her mother and either withstand it with no problem, or even deliver it back to her.