When we bought this disaster, Robin said she didn’t want to be somebody with animals and fences and barns but the house still under construction. Yet, somehow we seem to work on outside projects 10 hours for every 1 hour indoors. But honestly, if you had a choice between mouse poop falling on your head and … um … pretty much anything, what would you choose?
Front Bedroom: Yes, we are still not tearing out the front bedroom. That is our only current indoor project. I have plans for the next few steps after the bedroom is gutted. They are just being held up.
Firewood: A neighbor had a large oak and ash tree cut down and offered us the wood at a reasonable price if we’d deal with the cutting, splitting, and hauling. That was over a month ago. About two weeks ago we finished all the cutting and splitting with some hired and unhired help, but the moving isn’t going quite so fast. During the week we’ve managed about 2 pick-up loads a day after I get off work. So far we’ve hauled and stacked almost 4 cords of oak (that’s 16,000 lbs). There’s another partial cord left, and a cord of ash as well I think. The photo on the right is of some of the unsplit rounds. I don’t appear to have an image of the mountains of split wood we generated.
Brambles: No progress on the bramble destruction since the last update. In fact, I would imagine they are gaining a small foothold as the whole property desperately needs to be mowed. Our neighbors can probably attest to that fact. The front yard (which is incidentally 95% plants other than grass) is foot-high in patches and the ‘orchard’ is worse. This brings us to the next project:
Mower: I need to come up with a mowing solution. Long term I hope to let sheep mow the vast majority of our property. In fact, I have a strong aversion to lawns. When you really think about it, they are completely pointless. Americans cultivate 20 million acres of lawn each year. We spend billions of dollars and millions of hours of our time mowing, poisoning, and fertilising to create vast wastelands of monocultured earth. Why? For an asthetic? Because we lack creative vision to do anything else? Because it’s a status symbol to grow pointless plants instead of our own food? Okay, I’ll stop ranting. Anyway, the point, if I had one, is that until we have sheep I have to mow for the sake of bramble control. And to do that, my first hope is to fix the Craftsman riding lawn mower that was abandoned on our property. The previous owner said he parked it after it threw a mowing belt. Easy fix. Unfortunately, since then it has sat out in the rain, rusted a bit, and sunk into the ground. First order of business is to get a decent rope so I can pull it free.
Tractor: I’ve started research into finding a tractor that will support all the multiple roles we might want one for: harrow (to smooth our bumpy ground), brush hog, sickle bar mower, grain planter, pulling a trailer, etc. For cost reasons it will definitely be an antique. For geek reasons, I’d love to convert it to an electric vehicle. (Which is both cost effective and useful for a tractor.) At the moment I’m leaning toward an Allis Chalmers G because it’s an easy EV conversion and I grew up near an old Allis Chalmer’s plant. However, finding one may be a different story …
Garden: I borrowed my brother’s rototiller to break up about 70 foot square of field to define a garden on Wednesday. It has rained continuously since then, so now we have to let it dry before making a couple more passes. I’ve been reading a neighbor’s copy of Teeming with Microbes (a book about the amazing complexity of soil life). I know it’s going to recommend no-till gardening, but I haven’t got to that section yet so this is what we know. Next year perhaps we’ll have a different strategy. There’s not enough time to even get an overview of all things we should be learning about.
My brother’s tiller was once my parents, so it was kind of nostalgic operating it. I never got to run it as a kid (that’s a good thing), but I remember staring at the big red machine sprouting with levers and a walkie-talkie (the muffler). Actually operating it taught me two things. 1. There are muscles in your upper back that don’t like rototillers. 2. Tilling up a garden to grow vegetables is hard on wildlife. I saw several fleeing mice and can only assume others weren’t so lucky. I also found two unlucky gardener snakes. This I felt particularly guilty for, because snakes are nice predators to have around. Perhaps the first one survived. I carried him well clear of the area and hid him in some weeds. Obviously, PETA would recommend that I raise livestock instead of vegetables to minimize animal deaths.
Fences: I’ve been overdosing on fencing research for the last two months. When I finally figured out exactly what I wanted (high-tensile woven perimeter fencing with offset high-impedence electric wire), I discovered that it is pretty much impossible to find in the state of Oregon. Today I may have located a source for my woven fencing wire. Thank you Wilco! I’ll write a separate post on fencing when we get started, but it looks like this might actually happen in the next couple weeks. Just in time to protect the garden from deer!
The fence needs to serve multiple roles. Around the chicken sedan it will keep in the chickens (mostly) and keep out dogs. Around the garden it needs to keep out deer. Around the rest of the property it needs to keep in sheep, lambs .. goats, pigs, a donkey? .. and keep out dogs and foxes. Add to that my durability goals (25-30 years minimum) and desire to be ecofriendly and you have a very confusing formula.
Trees: We have found someone to take down the two Port Orford Cedars in our front yard. They are big beautiful healthy trees, but they are too close to the foundation, shed heavily on the roof, and cut out light to the living room. I have plans to split the trunks up for (some) of my fenceposts. We are also hiring a neighbor to drop a dying Red Cedar in the chicken lot. All this needs to get done before fences go up (the fall paths all cross future fence lines).
Whew, too much for one post and too few pictures!
