Yes, I know, I'm overdue for a blog entry. As soon as the weather warmed up it seemed that everyone decided it was time to get their web page revamped. Every time I'd sit down at the computer I'd feel like I needed to be working on web work, and the blog could wait. It can wait no longer!
There's so much to do and just not enough time to do it all. I've significantly cleared out the garden area along the edge and put up a 5' tall fence. I've taken to throwing all of the brush on the outside of the fence to further deter deer from jumping it and hopefully it'll be good wildlife habitat for less garden-aggressive creatures.
I decided to cut things back when I started planning out the exact fruit tree locations and realized that they'd be getting quite a bit of shade, and if I didn't cut those trees back now it'd be a lot harder when the fruit trees are planted because the trees and branches could very easily fall on the fruit trees. It's been sweaty work, but it's finally done. I don't enjoy cutting trees down, both on principal and my general dislike for running the chainsaw. It just makes me nervous handling something so dangerous.
Incidentally, a couple weeks ago I accidentally cut a tree down and had it fall on the straw bale place. It did some damage, but not nearly as bad as it could have. I'd actually taken extra precautions because it was near the house. I had a wench set up and had it under a lot of tension pulling it away from the house and cut an extra large wedge, but somehow the laws of physics decided to throw me a curve ball. I've since chopped the tree up, along with some others and will be inoculating them with shiitake and chicken of woods mushroom spore plugs in the next week.
I've successfully been driving the truck around without being hassled. So far I've picked up all the supplies I'll need to raise the wind generator, supplies for the plaster that'll cover the gravel bag foundation wall, a load of horse manure, and a heaping load of compost. The compost came at a price though. I didn't realize that the new trailer that I'd been given couldn't handle the weight I put in it. The person who gave it to me told me that he'd used it to haul compost and so I just filled it up. I didn't realize anything was amiss until I pulled into the driveway and was clearly dragging something... it turned out to be the whole trailer. The neck part basically just bent, and I'm not sure what I can do to fix it. The guy who gave it to me does welding, but I'd feel bad asking him to fix this. I've considered just flipping it over and using a sledgehammer to bash it straight, but even if it's effective it'll still be weak.
Despite the tree falling on the roof and trailer breaking things have been generally good. I put up the gutters on the front part of the house and have been harvesting rainwater. All of my seedlings seem to be doing well. I was worried for awhile that some of the older seeds weren't good any more, but they just took a little longer. I've got one of the garden beds planted with cool weather crops. I've added nesting boxes and a run to the old guinea coop in preparation for the chickens.
I've met some interesting people in the last few weeks as well, and everyone always seems to bring me things. A couple people from Columbia came out and brought me 3 loaves of freshly baked homemade bread which was absolutely delicious. I've even been invited to come out to the next bake so I can see how it's done.
Yesterday, a guy that lives a little over an hour from here came up for a visit. He's building a geodesic dome, and it turned out we had quite a lot in common. He brought me some great stuff that he'd got dumpster diving behind a Trader Joe's. I'm quickly getting on board with the dumpster diving idea. It's not exactly sustainable, but it's certainly making good use of things that would otherwise just go to waste. You wouldn't believe the perfectly good stuff that people throw out. He'd even found working power tools in hardware store dumpsters!
As with every post, I've got to talk about the weather. It's been unseasonably warm here, it got up to 82 today and right now there isn't anything close to freezing temperatures in the forecast. I've been sleeping with the door and windows open, and I installed a cat door on the screen door so Pink wouldn't just tear a hole through it. He didn't like it at first, but he's getting used to it. The nice weather has made it all the harder to spend time inside working on the computer.
My next projects are getting the fruit trees in the ground, getting more manure, and raising the wind generator. I've had a lot of offers for help getting the wind generator up, but there's quite a bit of prep work I need to do, and even then I need to think about exactly how it's going to work and what people will need to be doing. I'm trying something a little... unconventional, but I'll save that for my next video post.
