Farm: April 2005 Archives

By request of Susie at Underpaid Kept Woman (you are getting a lot of air time on my site, young lady!): The weather in central Virginia is getting on my LAST nerve. It is almost May for pete's sake and it is still cold. I am in no mood to garden wearing a winter coat and boots with 2 pairs of socks. dogwood.jpg Dogwood in bloom It is a good thing that the gardens are not waiting for me! They are doing very well on their own. The most impressive to me is the sight of tiny little damsons hanging on the trees. I hope every single one ripens! I really want to experience all that is the damson. My strawberry jar is full of little green strawberries and a few that are turning a brilliant red. They are small but red. I know my 7 year old will enjoy eating them this evening. The herb pots have double in size this past week as well. There is also little butterbean sprouts pushing out of the ground in the kitchen garden proper. The tractor is in the shop. It seems something broke loose in the PTO case and broke a gear and bent the shaft. It had better be under warranty. That thing is only 6 weeks old! With the tractor out of service and all the rain we have had you can imagine the state of my grass. By next week I am sure it will be knee deep in places. Great we will look like some hillbilly family with the yards over grown. If we were to put a refrigerator or a broken down washing machine on the front porch we would fit the description of said hillbillies perfectly. Next week I will be taking my monthly photo of the front of the house. I like seeing the visible changes. A year in pictures is a great thing. The changes always amaze me.

We worked on putting in the kitchen garden today. We put in a variety of hot peppers and sweet peppers, black beauty eggplants, 4 short rows of clemson spineless okra, 5 short rows of butterbeans, 1 row of brocolli, 3 rows of red and green cabbage. We also worked on a small bed for rubarb. Having never worked on a garden of this scale Steven stopped about midway and asked, "Isn't there a machine we can use to do this?" Hoeing rows was kicking his butt. Using a pry bar we lifted the fountain in the side garden and managed to get it to sit level. One side is resting on the ground, the other has bricks under it. The vinca and the ivy and plants hide the fact one side is not touching the ground. The solid mass of concrete is so heavy we tried to lift it so we could shovel in soil to help level it but there was no way we could lift it. The statue is back on the base and the pump works to send a trickle of water cascading down from the top. It is a lovely sound. We spent hours cutting and pulling and clipping and cleaning in the garden in that area. At the end of the day, you couldn't tell we had done much at all. We cleared 2 carts of clippings and debris, old lights, wires ... I cannot believe the people who put in that fountain had buried an indoor extention cord to power the pumps. It was an electrocution waiting to happen. The ivy was pulled down out of the tree. We found about 5 old metal birds and butterflies that had once been staked out there. There was a tiny cedar tree growing in the mass of leaves between the trunks of the tree that had to be cut out. I cut back the azaleas branches that were scraggy and near bare. The liriope got a much need hair cut. I was choaking out the new grown trying to sprout. We really needed to work on the boxwoods somemore on that side of the house but I was too tired to start. Taking down 3 feet off the height of those things requires a ladder and a lot of stamina in the upper arms. My arms are too tired for it. Maybe I can work on it tomorrow and tuesday before the rains come. I am not going to complain about the rain this week. We have predicitons of rain from this Tuesday night thru next Tuesday. I want the rain since we put in the kitchen garden and well water just maintains it. It is the rain that really makes things grown and I want it to rain. Even though rain means we won't get much more done for more than a week. We installed a new series of low voltage lighting around the side garden as well. We set the timer for the lights to come on around 4:30am and 7:30pm and to go off at 5:30am and 11:00pm. It really looks pretty. I took some photos after dark but the flash on the camera washes out most of the lighting. The solar lights around the koi pond look inviting at night. I can imagine on warm summer nights sitting in either garden and listening to the night music. I can't wait for those sultry summer nights. The day was long and during the hottest point, the sun beat down and we couldn't drink enough water. After weeding one more bed we called it a day 6:30pm. I drank water all evening and just knew I would be up half the night running to the bathroom, suprisingly I guess my body needed the water. I didn't wake up once and I wasn't running to go when I woke. All in all is was a very productive weekend. Steven always acts as if we didn't get near as much work done as we should have. I am always asking him to please stop selling himself short. We are making headway. Everything is showing vast improvements. The mountain of debris is over our heads out in the back, evidence is piling up to attest to the amount of work we have accomplished. Still he thinks we could more. If I could find a handyman/gardener I would hire him. We do need help out here to get this work done. I have asked around and no one is interested in minial labor. I would like to have someone, maybe a retired man looking for some extra cash, who would work 4 to 5 hours a day for 2 or 3 days a week. Perhaps I should put an ad in the paper. However I am not looking forward to a formal arrangement where I would have to file SS and tax payments. Whatever happened to teenage boys who did yard work for pocket money? Posted by Angie at 08:29 PM | Comments (2)

April 11, 2005 A Weekend of Work We spent the entire weekend working outside. Save for a trip to Lowe's and a birthday party lunch, we spent all the hours of the day working in one area or another. The boxwoods around the house and lining the drive, a couple dozen of those things, have been left to grow pretty much unattended for many years. The ones in front of the house block the porch and are between 8 and 9 ft. tall. We have consulted with a landscaper, he consulted with some others in the trade, and the general concensus is they need radical pruning. It is suggested we take off as much as 4 feet of the boxwoods in front of the porch. It will take 2 years for them to recover. The less radical approach is to take off 2 foot this year and 2 foot next year. I like the latter MUCH better. The larger ones along the drive we will just shape and not remove any height. Those are 15 feet tall and trying to bring them down to size may cause a loss. I prefer not to risk it. We could never replace them at the size they are. Steven mowed the grass in yard area around the house and in the orchard. It was quick work with the new belly mower. Out in the back field we moved all the rotted bales of hay the previous owners left, about 8 in all we hauled to "the pile". Steven had already moved nearly a dozen scattered around the fields. All over the fields piles of old rotted hay. I wonder if their animals ate that stuff. I have not seen anything that looked as if animals should be eating it. With snow in December and January they had to be eating something. As soon as we get the barns cleaned and disinfected and the fields clean we will getting chickens and milk goats to start with. I have so missed the animals I once had in Georgia. We have a 5 room chicken barn that will hold 500. While I do not plan to raise 500, I do plan to have many. I also plan to have some pure breeds. My favorites are Rhode Island Reds. In Georgia I was able to sell the excess eggs and hope to be able to do the same here. I want cows, but I don't think Steven is ready for those. We have a lot of work to do before we can have goats. Dogs and sheep were left to run wild and they did not bother to clean up behind them. The chicken barns are filled with poop. Dogs lived in the lifestock barn. We have to pressure wash and disinect both barns before any animals come to live here. I do not care to have eggs nor milk as part of our daily nurishment that is produced in filth. The large barn where the previous owners had dogs has to be treated for fleas too. We moved in on the day we signed the papers, January 25th. Since then it has snowed or rained nearly everyday through the middle of March. The past 3 weeks is the first time we have been able to do anything. We did have one day of sunshine and it took the entire day to cut down the honeysuckle that had grown over the gardening shed. It was so tall and so thick and had choked itself out to the point rats had been nesting in it about 3 feet off the ground. The nests we ripped down were huge. The back fields are not too badly overgrown, everything is briars. The orchard is in good shape. I was able to start spraying and trimming in the cold weather in preparation for spring. This weekend the damsons got another healthy spray of "Orchard Spray." Sometimes I look at the state of things and wonder if we will be able to put in animals at all this year. There is no way to get water to the barns other than carrying it in a bucket. We have to have a well put down. There are spigots out there but have long been dry and cut off from the well we are currently using. Our well, from which we drink, I am told is one of very few left in the area. About 4 years ago all the wells around here went dry. I don't know if this is a good thing or not. So, add us to the waiting list and maybe by next month we might have a new well. It will be nice to have real water pressure. We have enough water now but we have little pressure, the pump that is 'new' is not very big and the previous owners put it down but have no idea what size the pump is. Between the fields, the barns and the house we seem to be playing catch up. If the rain would not come every other day we might accomplish something this summer. I am also trying to learn how to say things in a way Steven understands and doesn't get so grumpy with me. I know he hasn't ever lived on a farm. I have spent my life on a farm and I have to stop myself and try to remember that things that come natural to me are foreign to him. I sincerely apologize to him often for making him feel like an idiot. I spent most of the day today installing shelving and sorting out all of our tools from the boxes we are STILL unpacking. It took longer than I expected as things had to be sorted into what will be used in the barns, what should be in the gardening shed and what tools we will use around the house. I was so close to being finished then I had to go to Georgia last month and haul everything I own here. So may boxes still to unpack. Tomorrow I plan to tackle the tack room in the big barn. I am tired thinking about it. Maybe I'll finish in time and the sun will shine long enough for me to pressure wash the back porch. It is green. So far I have learned one lesson, think twice before buying a farm from a junk dealer! Posted by Angie at 06:47 PM | Comments (1)