Last night, I finally had a chance to clean up and move out the temporary fire pit I’d set up to burn things that wouldn’t fit in the burn barrel.
It was too dark for photos at the time, so I went back this morning.
This is where it had been sitting, and you can really see how the heat affected the ground, through the metal sheet it was on.
I’ve set it aside near the burn barrel for now. It worked out so well, I want to have it handy for future use.
That weed that managed to grow through a hole in the metal sheet was certainly tenacious!
I had originally intended to dump the ashes behind the old outhouse. That is where we’ve started to dump things that are compostable, but not appropriate to use in the garden later. Then I remembered something.
Not far from the burn barrel, there were two tractors. My dad had given one of them to my nephew. He and my brother, amazingly enough, got it running and were able to move it, though my nephew had to come back another time with a buddy to help him get it home. The tractor had been sitting there so long, its wheels had sunk into the ground, leaving behind holes. They had filled the holes with scrap wood and rocks that they found around the area, but it wasn’t quite enough. While we don’t usually go into this overgrown area, it was still a safety hazard. Especially when the renter’s cows got through the fence. Human or cow, it would be easy to break a leg in them.
I could use the ashes to fill the holes the rest of the way!
So I did.
Here, you can see 3 of the tire holes. The fourth is hidden by the little maples. The holes from the back tires each needed a full wheelbarrow of ashes to fill. A third wheelbarrow was enough to fill the smaller holes from the front wheels. That was even with the pieces of wood and rocks filling them! After those three loads, the fire pit was empty enough that, with maybe another shovelful or two scraped up, I could remove the ring and use the sheet of metal to pick up and pour the remains into the wheelbarrow. That last little bit went onto the larger holes.
So I was able to accomplish two things at once; remove the temporary firepit, and fill in some holes!
As for the little maples growing where the tractor was, I am debating if I want to let them grow, or if I should take them out. In time, we plan to fill in and level out this area, and maybe put in some polytunnels, raised beds, etc. This would be years in the future, and I don’t even know if we’d go into this space. If we leave them, and then find we want to build around there, they would be much harder to get rid of than now.
I still need to cut away the trees growing through the remaining tractor. I can decide then.
Looking at the weather forecasts, it’s looking more and more like our planned outdoor gathering with family to celebrate multiple birthdays and anniversaries is going to be an indoor celebration!
So today, I focused on tidying up the Old Kitchen a bit more, so my mother, at least, can sit in it comfortably. Between the Old Kitchen and the sun room, we should be able to fit all of us, if a bit tightly. Of course, if my mother is up to doing the stairs between the old and new parts of the house, we can always move to the dining room.
While wiping things down, I started doing a more thorough cleaning of the old wood burning cookstove. It’ll probably just have a tablecloth thrown over it and be used to hold the food, but I wanted to get some more progress in cleaning it out. Including several decades old ashes in the fire box!
Here is how it looked after I removed the top pieces, and brushed the ashes through.
I should be able to remove the metal plates at each end, which would allow me to remove the grate at the bottom, but I couldn’t see how to do that. For now, I just tried to sweep away as much as I could.
Doing so revealed something strange about the inside wall.
The middle plate looks absolutely destroyed!
I left that for later. First, I wanted to get rid of the ashes. Under the grate are three rollers that can be turned from the outside; a crank handle to do that seems to be missing, but I was able to turn them with my fingers. This allows the ashes to fall into the box below.
I had mostly emptied this box before, so this is all ashes from the fire box.
I’m not sure where that unburned piece of… paneling? … came from. I might have simply missed it, before.
The piece to hold one end of the handle is broken.
After taking the ashes out to the compost, I hosed it down. Then used a chisel to scrape off things stuck to the sides and bottom that were definitely not wood ashes. :-( After hosing it down again, I set it aside to dry, then went back to working on the fire box.
I ended up taking out the bottom of that destroyed panel completely.
This is thick, cast iron. Just how hot did things get, for this top happen?
Once it was out, I tried to sweep away more ashes.
I ended up knocking out chunks of packed ashes, like this one. More was jammed behind the top piece of the metal panel, and I took that out to get at the rest.
Ashes are not supposed to be able to get in there!
I then started sweeping out the space the ash box fits into. In the ashes I swept out, I found some odd things, like old nails and…
What is this???
That, my friends, is the screw end of a light bulb.
Later, I found the filament in the ashes, too. No glass, thank God!
Why on earth would someone toss a light bulb into the fire? The nails, at least, I can see happening. Scrap wood would have been burned, and if they had nails in them, no one would have taken the time to pull them out, first.
But a light bulb???
Then I used the miracle of technology that is my phone camera, to see what I couldn’t see otherwise!
This is where the as box slides in. The flaps above divert the falling ashes towards the box.
The camera focused on the flaps, but you can see the rollers above, that keep the hot coals from falling into the ash box.
I did as much as I could for now on the fire box side. Next was the cook top above the oven.
As you can see, the oven box is covered with ashes. Now that I’ve seen the broken panel piece in the fire box, I know why.
I didn’t even try to get those out. The metal pieces can be removed for easier access, but…
… they are held in place by screws, and there is no way I’m going to try and take those screws out now!
Though I’ve taken the ring plates out before, somehow I never looked at the bottoms of them.
!!!
It seems the fire was allowed to be built up too big and too hot to cause all that damage in the fire box, which then lead to ashes and sooty smoke getting into the space around the oven box. I was quite young when this was still being used, and don’t remember much about it, but I may well have been among those causing the damage. :-/
I really wonder, at times, how we didn’t burn the house down back then!!
I just brushed off as much as I could from the underside of the ring plates. The panels over the water reservoir didn’t need as much.
I didn’t even try to clean the inside of the water reservoir this time.
I did go into the drawer under the oven. The handle and a piece of hinge from the broken oven door is in there, along with …
… the lifter for the ring plates.
I just used my hands to lift them, but when the stove is in use, this tool is vital.
I… can’t imagine what was done to it to cause this damage. !!!
The final thing to do was give it all a wipe down, then leaving it to dry completely before closing it up and putting everything together again. The cook surface and parts like the front of the fire box, and the panels below it, are the only things that are not enameled. Eventually, I want to use stove blacking on those parts. The rest still needs a very thorough scrubbing and rust removal, but I really don’t know far I’ll bother to go with that. We can’t use it – partly because of the damage, partly because we’d lose our insurance if we did – so mostly, I just want to keep it from degrading further. It would be great if we could get it all fixed up but… I’m not sure that it’s worth it. Especially since, there is another one in the storage shed that I know my late brother used, back when that building was his workshop. As far as I know, it’s in good shape. It’s not as old as this one, but is almost exactly the same design.
Who knows. When we finally build our outdoor cooking area, maybe we can include the wood cookstove as part of it. I think I’d really like that.
It was a little bit cooler today, so I decided to do a bit of clean up around the spruce grove perimeter. Eventually, we want to clean out the junk pile, but it’s got kittens in it, so I am just working my way towards it.
Here is where I started working.
All those thistles and crab grass are growing out of a pile of … dirt? I’d already cleared a path to the chokecherry tree behind it, and now I wanted to clear the pile itself.
Which meant pulling the thistles and crab grass up by hand.
Yes, the row marker I used in the spring was still there!
It is now leaning against the garage, where there is at least a bit of shelter from the elements.
As for the pile itself, I’m not sure what it is. Stuff was pulling out of it easily, so I thought it might be an ash pile from cleaning out the old wood furnace over the years?
It’s really quite sandy in texture, though.
I’m sure this pile was made for a purpose, but if it’s not an ash pile, I just can’t figure out what that might have been!
After clearing most of the pile from both sides, I continued working my way towards the junk pile. I had seen branches piled there early on, and had added a few myself whenever I needed to clear something but didn’t have a chance to take the wood to one of the piles outside the yard at the time. Like part of the cherry tree by the house that broke off when I tried to move it around the post with an old bird house on it. In the above photo, I’d already cleared that out – and dragged out a length of those tiny decorative wire fences for around flower beds, in the process. It was pretty bent up, so that ended up on the junk pile that will eventually be hauled away.
My first load of very old branches that I dragged out after pulling away more thistles and years of crab grass.
I never did get another full load…
The closer I got to the junk pile, the more old branches I uncovered – as well as something yellow. It looks like a large piece of very thick plastic… tarp?
It was at about this point that I got stung, and found a small, yellow and black wasp stuck in my shirt.
After brushing it away, I kept a close eye out while pulling out a few more branches.
Aaaaannnddd… yes. There were more wasps.
To the left of centre in the above photo is the remains of a log. The wasps seemed to be coming out from under it.
So I took a hose to it, then eventually used a long metal pipe we use for poking around when doing a burn, to lift it over.
Yup. It looked like the opening to a ground nest was right under it.
I hosed that for a while, too. I don’t know if it was enough to drown out the nest, but there were quite a few wasps flying around. They don’t show up in the photo, but they’re there!
At which point, I was done.
I have never seen so many wasp nests in my life, before this summer. They’re all over the place! There is the tree in front of the kitchen window, and one beside the beet and carrot beds, that are nests. Then there are 3 active paper nests in various places, plus the one above the garage door that I got rid of, and the one under the eaves of the house at the old kitchen that I got rid of. There appears to be a nest inside the branch pile near the garage, and now this ground nest by the junk pile.
And those are just the ones I know of.
There isn’t much we can do to stop them from building under the eaves, but this is just more reason to get rid of the junk piles, debris and branch piles!
And those Chinese elms.
Meanwhile…
This is the pile of thistles and quack grass, with a couple of spirea I pulled up near the end, that I cleared up and added to the new compost pile. With so many thistle seeds, I plan to give them a few days to dry, then burn them. That will help with breaking down the old tree stump in the middle, and making sure more saplings don’t start pushing their way through again.
So, I think this is going to be it for clean up in this area for a while. I’m not sure what to do about the wasps, other than hosing the area down repeatedly. With the kittens living in the junk pile, I don’t want to be using wasp poison.
I think it’s time to pick up another wasp trap. The one I got before is currently being used to catch fruit flies in the house, which suddenly became a problem.
Well, a bit of progress is better than no progress at all!
Yesterday, I moved the metal ring the compost pile was in to its new location. I ended up using the same wires to hold the seam together; they’ll just be much easier to undo in the future! That allowed me to simply roll the whole thing over.
This is where we decided to put it. I’ve trimmed around this old tree stump many times, but those little trees (several kinds of them) keep coming back.
In the background, you can see part of what was cleared to get at the chokecherry trees, including another tree stump, and the pile of spirea and thistles from clearing towards the junk pile.
Now that we’ve discovered her babies, I fear Butterscotch has already moved them somewhere else. I hope not!
After taking a pruner to the saplings and adding a pile of dried weeds and grasses I’d pulled up when clearing here earlier, it looks full already!
The tree stump does take up a lot of space.
Time to start burning!
I needed to burn out all around the stump, to hopefully kill off the root systems those saplings keep growing from.
By the time I was done, several hours had past, and it was completely dark when the girls came to help me make sure all the coals were out and put everything away.
I had the hose going so much, spraying around the fire and keeping the sparks from getting far, it was actually muddy by the ring.
On the plus side, I got rid of the pile of spirea and thistles in the process.
Of course, I needed dry wood to keep the fire going, since much of what I was burning away was pretty green. So I raided the pile of branches by the garage that’s waiting to be chipped.
I couldn’t see anything, but I am convinced there is a wasp nest somewhere in that pile. I can hear them, and the sound is NOT coming from the nearby Chinese elm.
!!
This is how it looked this morning.
Hmm. I am thinking I might need to do this again, before we start using it for compost. The stump didn’t burn much, but that’s okay. It’s the area around it that has stuff I want to kill off, so they don’t start growing into the compost when we start it.
I’m thinking this will be a good location. We’re happy enough with the nearby garden beds (even with the deer decimating our beets) that we will continue growing there, so having a compost pile nearby will be handy. It’s closer to the house – but not too close! This is near where we plan to build the cordwood shed to use as an outdoor bathroom with a composting toilet. It might be in the way during construction, but the way things have been going, I’ll be happy if we can just dig out the sod where we want to lay down gravel and level things, first.
Though we plan to have a composting toilet, the contents will NOT be used for compost in any of our garden beds. I’ve seen many sites talk about how great human waste is for compost, and it absolutely horrifies me. It’s not the waste itself I have concerns with, but what might be in it. Not many people are in my husband’s situation, having to take more than a dozen different prescriptions, but even if it’s just OTC pain killers, hormonal birth control, or other prescriptions, it will be an issue. So we will have a separate dumping site, well away from anywhere food will be grown.
So that is how things are progressing with the new compost location.
One of these days I intend to get some dual roller composting bins. They are supposed to compost a lot faster but, for me, it’s more about accessibility and mobility. We may not need it now but, at some point, it will be more of an issue.
That’s one thing I learned about living in the housing co-op we were in before moving back here. It was one of the few places that had a lot of wheelchair accessible housing, and many of my friends and neighbours had a variety of mobility issues. Now, I see everything with different eyes. It did make the transition to my husband becoming disabled much easier, to be honest. It can happen to any of us and, as we age, it’s almost inevitable. One woman I know uses the term TAB to describe people without disabilities: Temporarily Able Bodied.
Accessibility is now an almost constant thought in the back of my mind as we work on things and plan ahead.
One of the clean up goals that got shifted back a year, due to my husband’s hospitalization and other issues last year, was to clear the spruce grove. Not all of it; parts of it will be left overgrown to shelter critters. I do want to get most of it cleared. This will be a multi-year project, but at the very least, I want to get the perimeter done.
That was supposed to include clearing around and into the junk pile, but now that we know Butterscotch’s kittens are in there, that will wait.
We never did get a chance to clear things out to reach the Saskatoon bushes near the junk pile, but I still wanted to get that done so we can reach them, and the chokecherry trees beside them.
Here is how it looked when I started.
The spruce tree in the foreground is still alive, while the tree on the left of the photo is dead, as is the one by the junk pile on the right of the photo.
(Also, I set up containers for kibble and water for the babies, and yes, they’ve already discovered them!)
There had been quite a few bushes and spirea at the base of the live spruce tree, and crowding the horseradish, that I cleared away a couple of nights ago (it was too dark for photos at the time), so a start has already been made in this area.
The first thing to do was cut away the elms that have been growing in the old wine barrel planter that used to be such a favorite place for the kittens to nap and play in. Then I began working a bit towards the junk pile. Not too far, though, as the spirea in there creates places for them to hide in.
I’d forgotten about that tire rim that was buried in there… :-D
After moving the tire rim into the old wine barrel planter, I discovered something else.
Those are concrete blocks, buried in the soil!
When we first moved here, the wine barrel on its side in the bushes was intact enough that the cats would sit on it. It was another favorite spot for them, until it rotted out enough that the staves collapsed! :-D
It looks like the tire rim was placed on top of the blocks, then the barrel on top of the tire rim until it eventually got knocked over. Unlike the planter, this was a whole barrel, not one cut in half to be a planter. I don’t know what it was set up for.
I’ve left the blocks for now, and did not clear further around the remains of the barrel. I figure this makes a nice spot for kittens to play in!
I didn’t want to go any closer to the junk pile – I don’t want Butterscotch to move her babies! – so I started working around the other side. Some of this area, I’d cleared before, but it doesn’t take long for spirea to spread out again!
Here is how it looked when I stopped for the day.
I would have liked to continue, but even working in the shade, it was just getting too hot.
The Saskatoon bushes are still loaded with – now dried – berries. I’m sure the birds will enjoy what we could not harvest. The chokecherry trees in there should be ready for picking fairly soon. It is likely too late in the season to make a difference this year, but clearing up around them will likely result in better growing and fruiting conditions, too.
Here is another view.
For this photo, I’m standing near the horseradish and facing right into the Saskatoon bushes, with a few chokecherry branches hanging over from the side.
This is how it looks from further in.
All those skinny little trunks you see on the right half of the photo are chokecherries and Saskatoon bushes.
When I worked in here previously, I’d cleared away the spirea up to a spruce tree with an extension cord hanging down from it. So most of this area had already been done. I only worked closest to the Saskatoon bushes and chokecherry trees for now. Eventually, I want to clear all the spirea out of here. There are wild roses growing not far from here, and I would like to encourage those to spread, instead.
As for this area near the edge of the spruce grove, I want to keep it clear of undergrowth. It’s one of the areas I want to eventually set up a bench and create a little haven, near the stone cross my late brother set up at the very edge of the grove. If possible, this would be an area I’d like to encourage moss to grow as a ground cover.
It was a fairly small area that got cleared, but there was a lot in it! I was able to pull most of the spirea out by the roots. With some of them, there was a LOT of root coming up with them! The topsoil here is decades of decomposed spruce needles, so it’s quite loose, making it much easier to get those roots out.
Eventually, we will have the tree company that cleared our roof and power lines come back and take out the two dead spruce trees here. We were supposed to get that done this spring, or at least get the chipping done, but we ended up spending all our money fixing vehicles and replacing appliances. We probably won’t be able to get it done this year at all.
Which gives me more time to clean up the area, which will make it easier for them to get at the dead trees.
When we moved here, the compost pile we’ve been using was already set up in a metal ring, near the old garden. It’s been pretty full for a while, and well past time to start another one.
Today, I decided to dig out the metal ring in preparation for that.
The first thing I did was use a potato fork to lever under it and loosen it from the soil, and clear away some of the mulch around it or things growing out from under it.
The ring is made of two pieces put together, and this is one of the seams that I cleared.
It’s held together with a combination of electrical wire and barbed wire (without any barbs).
Between my dad and my brothers, I think we ended up with a whole lot of scrap electrical wire available, because I’m finding it used for stuff like this, all over the place!
The barbed wire, however, is a new one. :-D Not that I haven’t seen it all over; just that it’s usually limited to jerry rigging barbed wire fences, so it make sense for them to be there.
It took some fighting with it, but I managed to get the wire unwrapped and back through the hole. Yay! I can move the rings now!
Or… not?
Ah. Of course.
Even though I’d lifted the ring out of the soil earlier, it wasn’t enough to reveal the second set of wires, holding it together.
*sigh*
The electrical wire was easy enough to get loose, at least.
Hmmm.
At this point, I got a pair of pliers.
A pair of pliers that also had wire cutters on them. Which I needed to use, after I unwrapped part of it. The wire ran under the ring itself, with no way to finish unwrapping it from this side.
Finally, it’s clear! I could leave the other seam as is, and lift the whole thing out from the compost pile.
I don’t actually have high hopes for the compost we’ll get out of this. What we added to it should be fine, but when I tried digging into it to turn it, earlier it the summer, I was still finding lots of wood (the summer before we moved here, my sister and her husband had piled pruned branches into it, with plans to burn it, until my brother pointed out that it was too close to an apple tree!). I also found plastic garbage and pieces of fabric rags. What else might be under there, I don’t know!
It’s free!
Plenty of roots were hung up on the wires at the seams.
After talking about it with a daughter, I think we will move this over a tree stump near near where the old wood pile used to be. The stump itself is in the way of things, and having a compost on top of it will encourage it to break down faster. Once the ring is in place, I’ll use it to burn some of the stuff I’ve been clearing out of the edge of the spruce grove. Things like thistles and spirea don’t belong in the wood piles we’re planning to have chipped. Before, I’d put them in the fire pit, but there’s so much of it, plus we’re actually using the fire pit for cooking, now. Some of the saplings I cleared away from around the tree stump are already growing back, so starting off with a burn will ensure those are killed off, too.
I hope I can find a better way to close up the ring than using those wires, though.
Yesterday afternoon, we had a constant, light rain.
The perfect time to light a sketchy fire!
Of the several fungus infected tree stumps we need to burn out, I started with the only one that isn’t cut flush to the ground. I figured I should get the bigger one done first; the rest will get done very quickly, in comparison!
The metal ring I rolled over from where I found it by the storage shed was just the right size.
You can see some of the fungus from last year, dried up on the side of the stump facing me. On the other side is the remains of an ants nest. When we cut what was left of the tree down and left the short length of trunk next to the pile of diseased branches we’d pruned earlier this summer, the ants moved with it!
So no killing of ants involved. :-)
Of course, I made sure to have a hose handy, even with the rain. The wood used as fuel is from the stack of diseased branches, which all need to be burned.
I set myself up with a chair and an umbrella, too. :-D
It took a while to build the fire around all of the stump, partly because I needed to keep the fire small. It wasn’t directly under another apple tree, but close enough to potentially damage some of the branches.
I’m not too worried about that particular tree. Of all the apple trees, that one has the smallest, least edible apples on it.
The birds and deer like them, though, so that’s good.
This tree is one of the ones I want most to protect.
It’s at the far end of the row of trees, and next to one of the stumps cut flat to the ground that we found fungal growth on, too. This tree already has tasty apples! It has the wonderful combination of sweetness and tartness that I love. There is one other tree, at the very end, that also has really good apples, though they take quite a bit longer to ripen. The main grafted part of that tree died, and it’s the suckers from the base that are producing such nice apples. Usually, it’s the other way around.
So I’m rather motivated to keep this fungal infection from spreading! We really should have done this in the spring, but the weather was not at all co-operative. Spores for these emerge in the fall, so we have a bit of time, yet.
When I stopped for the day, I scrounged for something to cover the stump with. The fire was out, but might still smolder, so I wanted to make sure it couldn’t flare up or spread.
That top of an oil drum is something I fished out of the edge of the nearby spruce grove when I cleared the north side of it. The metal sheet was just one of those things among the garbage we dug up near the old garden shed.
The fire got quite a bit of it cleared. I don’t know how far into the wood the fungal infection gets, but even if the fire killed that off, I still need to get the stump down to ground level.
For now, I’ve taken an ax to it to break it apart a bit. We’ll start another fire on it later and repeat the process as often as necessary.
Normally, I would not have done clean up on a Sunday, but the chokecherries needed to be picked, and we couldn’t get at the two trees with the ripest berries.
Which turned out to be 4 trees… :-D
Here are the ones behind the garden beds where the old wood pile used to be.
The arrows are pointing to the two chokecherry trees. They are close enough together that I had thought they were just one tree at first. All around them are dead cherry trees with live cherry saplings coming up the bottoms, along with other odds and sots that have come up since I cleared things away last year.
I started on this side because I figured taking out the dead cherry trees would be the more difficult job. Especially since we were getting spotty rain, so I wasn’t going to string out extension cords to use the electric reciprocating saw!
This is how it looked when I stopped.
The fallen spruce tree and poplars behind them kinda make it look like they’re not cleared, but there is plenty of space to walk around them now.
While the girls started picking berries, I moved on to the other side. This is how it looked before I started.
In the spring, I had cleared a path to the junk pile to access the wood stacked in it, and I’ve been trying to keep things clear around the Saskatoons. You can see those on either side of what’s left of the path, and the arrow is pointing to the chokecherry tree. Which is actually two trees next to each other.
Most of what’s here is spirea and thistles, with a bit of burdock, plus a few other things hidden by the spirea. I figured this side would be much easier to clear, since I could basically just yank them out of the ground.
I really should know better by now.
The spirea and thistles were, indeed, easy to pull up.
First, I’d forgotten about the fallen spruce tree in there, and how close it was to where I needed to go.
It’s been there for a long time, so I was pulling out bits and pieces that had broken off as it fell, as well as breaking off or pulling out rotten branches that were jutting out all over.
I’d uncovered the one stump that I already knew about, then found another, smaller one, beyond it.
As I worked my way closer, I found something else.
There’s a reason we call what started out as a pile of neatly stacked boards that used to be covered with a tarp, a “junk pile”.
So… that’s… wire? It looks like the wire from those little decorative fences you can get to put around garden beds.
Also, there’s an old pallet there.
Because, of course there is.
Don’t mind me. After clearing out the old wood pile and dragging away a couple dozen rotten pallets, I’m not much of a fan of those anymore! :-D I remember having to work my way around it, while searching for boards in the pile that weren’t too badly rotted.
As I worked my way closer, I found the chokecherry trees grew through the partially rolled up wire. Which gives an idea of how long it’s been hidden there!
That wire really does look like it’s from one of those little fences, undone. It even has cross pieces still wound into the twists.
At this point, I stopped!
It was clear enough to reach the trees, and most of the berries. So I started picking those, while the girls harvested carrots and little squashes. :-)
The piles of debris will wait until tomorrow to be hauled away!
This pile is almost all spirea and thistles, with a few smaller branches from the fallen spruce tree tossed in. I had to pull up some of the wildflowers, too. They’ve shown up all over the place this year, so there are plenty more around the yard.
This pile is mostly the cherry I cleared away from around the first chokecherry trees, plus the larger pieces of the dead spruce tree I was working around.
These are pieces I set aside to keep for future crafting or carving purposes.
As for the chokecherries, we picked about a gallon pail of them. The girls had picked from the tree by the squash beds, and the ones among the lilac hedge, too. Lots were left behind for the birds. We are finding more chokecherry trees deeper in the spruce grove, that are not ripe yet, so we will have more to pick, later on.
It’s a hot day today, but it’s going to get even hotter throughout the week, hitting above 30C/86F in a few days. Plus, I’ll be doing a lot of driving throughout the week. I figured if my brother could be out baling hay in this heat today, I can prune some deadwood!
There were two trees in particular I wanted to get at. Here is the first I worked on.
I had already cut the dead parts of the main tree, our first summer here. What was left were the suckers growing out the base. As the main part was grafted, what grew out the base was not the same type of apple as what had already died.
When I first worked on it, the live parts were bending low, so I left tall stumps of the original tree and used them as supports to tie the live ones to. One, growing out the middle, didn’t need the support.
As you can see in the photo, that’s the one that is now dead.
It actually did have leaves and even flowers this spring, but they didn’t last. As I cut it away, I was surprised it managed even that much. It was so dead and dry, I could only cut about half way, and then it was easier to break it off by hand.
One of the live branches was hanging down again, even though part of it was supported, so I got creative.
I found what was probably an old mop handle and zip tied it to one of the old stumps at the bottom, and to another live branch higher up. Then I lifted the bent branch and attached it to the support. Hopefully, this will be enough for it to start growing straight – or at least straighter – on its own. If nothing else, I won’t be getting my hair caught in it when I mow past it, anymore!
The next tree was a bigger job.
I’d actually thought I would be working on an old plum tree, but it was another apple tree that needed help.
There are two large branches on the apple tree that have died. In the background, you can see the dark coloured plum tree meandering its way up. The branches are so tangled, it was hard to see what belonged were, but it seemed that the plum branch still had live branches and little plums at the top.
I would see better, after the apple was cleared.
I took the slightly smaller branch off first (on the left of the trunk, in the above photo) using the reciprocating saw, and it came down fairly well. The branches at the ends were tangled with live branches, so it ended up standing upright on its cut end when it fell. Once I cleared that, it was time to get the big one down.
When cutting larger branches like this, you always have to be careful when it gets past a certain point, depending on the angle and weight of the branch. Once it starts breaking under its own weight, things can go in unexpected directions.
This one was a bit different.
It didn’t fall.
You can see the one live branch growing out the side, so I made sure to cut above it.
I cut right through, and it just sat there!
Hmmm… I wonder why that would be…
The live plum and apple branches were holding it up!
There was a lot to get tangled on!
For this tree, I used pruning spray on the cut branches, to protect the main trunk a bit.
There is still one branch alive on this tree, and it’s got quite a few apples on it.
The plum in the background does have a lot of dead branches, but at the top, it’s still alive. I am leaving it for now.
Usually, for stuff like this, I would have broken down the branches a bit, but otherwise just hauled it over to one of the piles of branches we’ve made while cleaning up over the past couple of years. I did things differently this time.
The small branches, I cut short and loaded into the wagon, to be used as kindling in the fire pit.
The large pieces will wait until I can co-ordinate with one of the girls to work on them.
The wood looks surprisingly solid. I’m going to see if anything can be salvaged for carving. If not, they’ll be cut to fire pit size for use during cook outs.
It isn’t much, but I’m happy to have gotten at least this bit done. There is another tree, an elm, near the fire pit area that is mostly dead. I actually thought it was dead our first year here, but after a rainfall, it perked up. Last year’s drought seems to have done it in, though. It’s quite large, though, so we’ll have to be more careful taking down the dead parts.
When we first moved here, three winters ago, there was a bird feeder mounted on a metal post at the opposite end of the flower garden where we currently have the platform feeder.
One of the first things I noticed about it was that there was a rock sitting on one corner of the base. I quickly discovered why it was there, when I lifted the top to add birdseed.
The whole thing tipped over to one side.
The rock was a counterweight, so it wouldn’t tip when birds landed on it, or in the wind.
Eventually, I took a look and discovered that the feeder had a metal mounting that fit over the post, so it could easily be lifted off.
Also, there were only 2 screws on one side, holding it in place, and that’s why the feeder kept tipping. Rather than add more screws. someone just put on the rock.
I’d set it aside for cleaning and painting, and for the past two years, it’s been sitting upside down on the bench near the main entry. I just kept forgetting about it.
This evening, my daughter wanted to add a second coat of paint to the bottoms of the picnic table legs, so I went out with her. We’d made a dump run, and I needed to hose out the plastic bin we put the cat litter bags into until we do. As I was putting the cleaned bin back next to the bench, I saw the feeder and realized this was the perfect time to prep it for painting. I just needed to take the two screws out and remove the post mount, first.
Of course, they were two completely different types of screws, that needed different screwdrivers.
One of them was actually bent.
That would be from the bird feeder tipping! I’m surprised they weren’t both bent.
Here is the feeder, after hosing it down to get rid of debris.
And spider webs.
I don’t know how much the birds would have used it, considering it was basically surrounded by the lilac, plus the maple tree that was growing through the middle of the lilac at the time. I’ve since removed the maple and pruned the lilac, so the post is now clear enough that I think the birds will use it, once we put it back again.
I suspect being engulfed in greenery had a lot to do with the feeder being so covered in lichen.
I scrubbed it as best I could, though there are still some crevices the brush I was using couldn’t fit into.
Which is fine. We’ll just paint over it.
I noticed there were holes drilled into the base to allow water to drain off. Considering much much water collected from the hose while I scrubbed, I don’t think they’re enough. I might drill a few more before we paint it.
If I remember… ;-)
I then flipped it upside down to scrub the bottom, then let it dry.
I see absolutely no sign that this was ever painted.
Yeah, the wood is definitely showing signs of rot.
It’s still pretty solid, though. Once it’s painted and the mount is properly secured, it will probably last for many more years.
The plan for tomorrow will be to head into the city for the rest of our monthly shop. Only one of my daughters will be coming along. I believe my other daughter is planning to do the first coat on the top of the picnic table while we are gone, when she takes a break from work. There should be plenty of paint to do the bird feeder, too.
I am also planning on painting the frame of the screened window I made for the old basement.
The Re-Farmer 