trees

It’s finally done!

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Today was absolutely gorgeous out, and I was able to get so much done outside!

I was going to share some of the photos I took, but I need to do my garden tour videos, so I’ll just save it for that. I normally would have taken the videos yesterday, on the 20th, but that didn’t work out. I was going to do it today, but ended up not doing it for a very good reason.

The tree remove guys made it out today! They almost didn’t, calling to say they’d come on Saturday, instead, but then we got another call saying they’d be out in half an hour.

Yay!

Before they got here, I started things outside sometime after 7:30am, with the usual cat feeding, then the morning rounds. I moved the solar powered critter cam off the elm tree that was coming down and attached it to the back of the water bowl shelter, facing the isolation shelter, catio and shrine feeding station. I haven’t experimented yet, but I should be able move it around to see quite a lot of the yard.

Another thing I got done was adjust the netting over the sunflowers at the chain link fence. I’d already adjusted the hoops, but they are growing fast and already pressing against the netting again. I took the slack off from over the fence and draped it into the inside of the hoop rods, which are now mostly just standing straight up. The netting is still wrapped around the ends of the bed to keep the cats out, but it worked. The sunflower can now grow to their full height with nothing obstructing them. I also spent some time training the winter squash up the chain link fence, as much as possible.

After breakfast, I headed out again and transplanted the few more little seedlings that have managed to sprout in the seed tray. Two winter squash, same variety that I suddenly can’t remember. Golden Pippin, maybe? There were two Siberian watermelon, two other melons of different varieties, and a single Eureka cucumber. The first that has germinated from these old seeds. I have no idea if any of them will survive, and it’s unlikely there is enough growing season left for any of them, but I’m still hoping we have a long and mild fall.

The transplanting done, I broke out the push mower. I was able to do the paths around the main garden beds, then around the tarp on the ground, where it’s killing off another section of grass and weeds, and cleared around the little poppy and winter squash bed. Then I kept going and was able to clear more of the area where the poppy bed it, though not all of it, and got in among the trees in the maple grove.

I kept that up until I headed in for lunch. The rest will have to wait for another time. After eating (my daughter was a sweetheart and made lunch for me) I headed back outside, this time with the weed trimmer. Since I’d gotten so much done with the push mower first, I was able to finally do the edges of all the main garden beds and even go into the maple grove a fair bit. I was able to clear enough to access around most of the old garden shed, where there is a lot of stuff that needs to be moved to the junk pile for later hauling away.

It was while I was on my third battery and almost finished that one, when I guy came around the house. It was one of the tree guys, hauling the lift. Two other guys hauling the wood chipper showed up not long after.

I showed him which trees needed to be done. The big elm tree was priority, but he assured me they had time to do the dead spruce, too.

Normally, that tree would have been de-branched, then brought down in roughly 4′ sections. I asked him if it was possible to do it differently, as it was a nice straight tree and I wanted to use the wood. I explained that I wanted the thickest part of the trunk in a 10′ section, then an 18′ section, and the rest would be the usual 4′ sections. He said that would not be a problem. They would debranch the tree, fell it whole, then cut the lengths I wanted.

I also said I wanted to keep the wood chips, which he was good with. In fact, there were chips already in the truck that I could have, too! I wanted to have the pile closer to the house this time, and decided on a space I’d just cleared because the chicken coop (still, sadly, without chickens).

When the truck with the shredder arrived, they started off with the spruce. Using the lift, they removed all the branches and the top. Chipping the branches filled the truck, so I got a lot of wood chips rather quickly.

Then they left the spruce and moved to the elm tree.

While they worked, I did a bit more weed trimming before the last battery died. Then I got the wagon and some loppers and headed back to the main garden area. My SIL has been slowly chipping away at the overgrown area with their zero turn mower, but part of it has a whole bunch of poplars invade, and many were too big, even for that mower. I was able to clear all of the poplar out of that area, then did the area near the old squash tunnel, which was also getting very full of poplar saplings invading the open area. These areas can now finally be mowed! There are still more little poplars I need to clean up, that that will wait for antoehr day.

By this time, I was getting quite tired and sore, and sat with a water bottle where I could safely see how the tree guys were doing.

Fantastic. They were doing amazing.

That elm tree was a huge job. The started off using an extended pole chain saw and cleared the south side of the tree, leaving the huge branch over the roof for last. While one guy was on the lift, very carefully taking sections off, the other two guys were cleaning up. They stopped to chip branches several times, with more clean up in between.

Getting the roof clear was the “easy” part. Then they got to the main trunk. It was too thick to take down in pieces, and they ended up using a chain saw and wedges to fell the whole thing.

The balance of weight at the top, however, made that very unpredictable. As soon as it started falling, the top twisted around. The guy with the chainsaw had to let go and jump back. The trunk hit the chainsaw on the way down, flipping it around, before landing.

Amazingly, the chainsaw not only kept running, but didn’t break!

Then they had to break the trunk down, and reduce the stump as far as they could.

What a huge job!

We now have a huge stack of green wood, including some amazing slices. There is potential for carving in there, before it get weathered and dry. It’s been a long time since I’ve done any wood carving.

Once the elm was down and everything cleaned up, they went back to the spruce tree. That gave ma a chance to take the above pictures. The second one has my rubber booted foot in it for scale.

Talking to one of the guys later on, he brought up about coming back with the stump grinder, but he’s at a loss about what to do with that tire. The stump grinder can’t touch that, or it will be damaged. It has to be removed somehow. It would be filled with tree and soil.

As for the spruce, it took a lot faster to bring that down than how it would usually be done, in pieces. They felled it, taking steps to make sure it fell in the direction they needed it to. When it landed, it actually bounced, and exploded loose bark all over the place!

Then they cut the sections I’d asked for and, amazingly, picked up and carried them to where I wanted. The 10′ log was heavier, and that got placed near the first one I’ve already collected. Sort of. I had meant to store the lengths along the side of the garage, but my brother parked his baler in the space, so I got them to just leave it along the chain link fence. It’s blocking that half of the gate, but the hinges are broken anyhow, so I could simply take the gate off and put it back on again.

It took the three of them to take the 18′ length to the main garden area for me, then two of the guys brought over the 4′ pieces while the third one worked on the stump. That stump needed to go as close to the ground as possible. I told him that this is where the septic truck has to squeeze through. Now, not only is there more space to maneuver, but there won’t be a stump in the way, either.

Once that was all done and cleaned up, they were on their way out. It all took 3 1/2 hours. I was able to give the main guy my brother’s email address to send the bill to. At 3 1/2 hours, that worked out to $1400, plus tax.

We talked a bit about coming back with the stump grinder – I only asked for a call in advance so I could open the gate – and the problem of that tire, then he headed out.

At this point, there was still enough light that I cold start making some garden tour video, but by this time, I was too exhausted. It’s been outside for almost 12 hours by then, minus going inside to eat and hydrate.

So I will do that tomorrow.

It’s coming up on 9:30pm as I write this, and I am more than ready to collapse into bed.

It feels so good to have gotten so much work done outside! I’m going to pay for it tonight and probably tomorrow but, for now, I am feeling really good.

Well.

Except for the falling asleep while I type thing that’s also going on right now!

The Re-Farmer

Books and trees

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I took advantage of some Cyber Monday deals on Amazon and ordered a couple of books on my wish list, last night. Just now, I placed an order for some trees that will arrive in the spring. (None of the links below are affiliate links. Links will open in new tabs.)

First up, the books.

One is Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills. Fourth Edition. I actually have a 1981 Reader’s Digest edition, Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Our Traditional Skills. I don’t know that these are connected, as the one I’m ordering has an Abigail Gehring listed as the editor. No Reader’s Digest listed anywhere. Looking at the preview of the one I ordered, it does seem to be an updated version of what I have. Which is an excellent book.

The other is 40 Projects for Building Your Backyard Homestead: A Hands-on, Step-by-Step Sustainable-Living Guide This one has even been shipped already, even though I ordered it just last night.

Both of these are supposed to arrive before Christmas but Canada Post hasn’t exactly been reliable of late. I believe they are technically still on a rolling strike. We shall see. I look forward to going through both of them over the winter!

Next are the trees.

One is a bundle of five Bleu Basket Willow. I’ve been considering for some time, where the best place to plant them would be. Willow propagates easily, so the plan it to expand them. The source, Prairie Hardy Nursery, also has two other varieties of basket willow in different colours that I plan to get, when the budget allows. The plan is to coppice them so that they can be used for things like wattle weave fences and, yes, weaving baskets. Thinking long term, these will be planted beyond the outer yard, and will need to include protection to keep the renter’s cows from crushing them by accident, until they get bigger.

The other is a single bare root seedling, as part of our food forest; a Manchurian Walnut. While we have black walnut planted, they may or may not have a long enough growing season here for fully mature nuts to form. Normally, they wouldn’t, but the ones I got were from a nursery in our province, so they are probably acclimated already. The Manchurian Walnut is hardy to zone 2b. It’ll be 10-12 years before they start producing. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now! They are also described as fast growing, so we should be able to enjoy the tree for its beauty before it starts producing. As with the black walnuts, these will be planted in the outer yard. They are self fertile, though it is recommended they be planted in pairs for better production. Which we might do, when the budget allows.

The nursery opened for the sales season in November, and the dormant seedlings will be shipped in the spring. I’ll get an email in April to work out the best shipping date based on our last frost date. If I am able to order more trees between now and then, they actually have a code to include to combine orders, so as not to increase the shipping fees, and everything gets shipped together. The shipping costs are relatively high, but they include insurance. Most places don’t.

It’s slow going, but little by little, we’re getting it things done!

The Re-Farmer

Clearing the lane

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Yes!

Finally!

I was able to get out with the chainsaw and work on that dead spruce tree.

It was still damp out, but more because it’s not warm enough for things to dry than because of any rain. We’re under a weather watch right now, as a large system is being blown almost straight North from the US, so the southern and eastern parts of our province are expected to get a storm. Locally, we’re expected to start getting rain at about 7am tomorrow morning. It’s then expected to continue to rain, off and on, through to the next morning, when it is supposed to become a mix of rain and snow.

Based on the current forecasts, today was pretty much my last day to get this done.

Here is my Instagram slideshow of how it went.

The first two pictures were taken before I got started. That’s basically how it has been since my daughter was last able to work on trimming away branches.

Which was the first part of what I had to do. I had my baby chainsaw (electric pruner) for most of that job. This part took the longest, because I took the time to break down the branches to fit into the wagon, then dumped them on the big branch pile in the outer yard. A lot of these were branches from the diseased crab apple tree, so they need to be burned. Previously, we were able to get the branch pile chipped, but this year we’ve been piling up diseased branches as well as things like squash plants that had powdery mildew on them.

While cleaning up the branches, I found the remains of an old bird’s nest.

When I finally got things clear enough to start using the chain saw on the crab apple tree, Syndol decided that would be a good time to climb the tree! I even cut away a broken section while he was up there, hoping the noise would have him jump down, but nope! In the end, I dumped another load of branches and came back before he finally made his way down.

Then it was more cutting and clearing and cutting and clearing. Crab apple tree branches are so bent and twisted, they took a remarkably long time to deal with. The wood is so much heavier, too. The difference is quite noticeable when I had pieces of apple tree cut quite short to load into the wagon and haul away, then tossing them on top of the pile, then started working on the spruce tree. I cut sections that were much longer than the apple tree trunk pieces, and the spruce tree’s trunk was at least twice as think at the top section of the tree, yet were so much lighter!

In the end, I had to stop because it was getting too dark. I left a section of the crab apple trunk alone, so that we could easily see it when we can finish cleaning it up later – likely in the spring. I was able to load three sections of the spruce tree’s trunk into the wagon to haul away (my apologies for the very fuzzy picture!) – that will NOT be going onto the burn pile, but will be stacked near the old garden shed – while a couple of larger pieces were left for later. The main thing is that there is now a cleared land that we can walk through – or drive through, if necessary.

Once the cut pieces of trunk are cleared away, the rest of the tree can be left for the spring. It’s going to take a lot more effort to clear that out, since it is in between other trees and in underbrush in the spruce grove.

In the end, I messaged a daughter to come out and help me put things away, because I was losing the light so fast, so the remaining logs have been left where they are until tomorrow. Hopefully, it won’t be raining too hard, and we can haul them away and stack them. We may be able to use these pieces for when we make a new garden shed as our cordwood practice building. We’ll need a lot more, but the walls for the practice building will probably be only about 8 inches wide, instead of the 12 – 16 inches more typical of cordwood building. I still want to use the method for when we build an outdoor bathroom (NOT an outhouse over a pit), but we need to clear some very large dead trees before we can work in the area I want to build it in.

We still have lots to do to collect and prepare before we can start building, but these logs could at least be a start, if the wood is in good enough condition.

All in good time.

For now, I’m just glad I was able to get that tree cleaned up and cut up enough to get that lane open again.

Little by little, things are getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Frosty garden plans

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We had fog roll in yesterday, so by morning, we were back to looking like a winter wonderland!

Nothing like seeing frost to get me thinking about the garden! 😄😄😄

One of my goals for today is to mark out on our calendar, when we need to start different seeds indoors. We will also need to figure out how to build a barrier to keep the cats out of the living room, as we need to migrate trays out of the aquarium greenhouses and over to the rest of the room. Last year’s set up had serious issues when it came to protection from cats determined to get at the pots. The problem there comes down to funds. The “unallocated funds” of our budget we would use for projects like this are now allocated to make “car payments” into savings, so that we’ll have a down payment for a replacement vehicle before next winter. That’s not going to leave much wiggle room for other things.

Still, it will need to be done! We’ll figure it out.

With the ground still frozen and covered with snow, I’m thinking about where things will be planted, and when. The old kitchen garden is getting to the point where we can start making it into an actual “kitchen garden” – the place to plant those things that we would be wanting to harvest casually and continually, as needed for our cooking. It is also a good place to plant things that will need more protection and warmth.

The waffle weave bed is done and ready. The contents will, of course, sink as time goes by, but I deliberately filled it higher than I wanted it, so that won’t be too much of a problem. With the woven walls, I do want the top of the soil to be lower than the top of the bed by a fair bit, so it’s less likely to fall through the gaps. That bed gets full sun on the long, narrow side, while the short side that gets wider at the end gets quite a bit more shade.

The rectangular bed will be built up a bit higher on the sides, plus an even higher “wall” to hold back the pink rose bush, so that won’t take much to finish. The hard part on that one will be trying to pull up all those mint roots again!

The small raised bed along the south side of the garden is ready, and the strip in front of it has bulbs planted. The area right against the bed, covered with grass clippings in the photo, has bulbils from the single walking onion that keeps coming back, planted. Last year was the first time since we’ve been here that it didn’t get broken by something before the bulbils formed! We’ll see if they survived the winter. It would be nice to have perennial onions in here. This garden would be a good place to grow bunching onions, too, though those failed completely, last year.

There’s a section by the laundry platform that is overgrown with mint that needs to be cleaned up. That could be another bed for some flowers, perhaps – my younger daughter really wants to have a flower garden in here. There’s a bed along the retaining wall blocks that needs some work – it got very compacted last year, and I finally gave up trying to keep it weeded. That bed is where the bunching onions died. 😄

This garden would be a good place to start our herb garden. We transplanted mint into alternating blocks of the retaining wall, and they did survive and grow last summer. I don’t know what variety they are, but we now have spearmint seeds. We could plant the spearmint in the remaining blocks, so we can keep it under control.

I like having a retaining wall that doubles as planters!

Other herbs seeds we have now that can go in here are the thyme (two types), chamomile and oregano. I do not want to plant the dill here, as I want to plant that somewhere it can grow freely and self seed, without taking over a bed from everything else. The lemon grass, of course, will be going into a pot and set into a microclimate against the house.

I’m thinking this garden would be a good place for the Little Finger Eggplant, as well as at least some of the peppers. The free seeds for Jebousek lettuce we got would probably do well in the shadier beds, and I’d love to try the Hedou Tiny bok choy in here.

It sounds like a lot, but I think we’ll have enough space for all of this. For things like the peppers, we’re looking to have just a few plants of each variety, as we see how well they grow here, and which ones are enjoyed the most, so they shouldn’t take up excessive amounts of space. As for the herbs, we’ll only need a couple of plants each to meet our needs, so they won’t take up a lot of space, either.

Hopefully, with raising the beds higher, we’ll have less of a battle with all those invasive flowers my mother had in here, taking things over! The raised beds should also make it easier to have protective covers we can more easily move aside, to access underneath. That was one of the biggest problems I had with tending this garden last year. We had netting to protect the plants from critters, but it had to be fixed so thoroughly, it kept us out, too!

The corner around the honeysuckle and white roses really turned into a jungle of periwinkle and purple bellflower last year. I’d like to keep fighting those off as much as we can, so my daughter can start planting new – non invasive! – flowers to eventually out grow the invaders. The purple bellflower even buried other flowers – lilies, if I remember correctly – to the point that they never bloomed. That patch needs to be divided, so we could take advantage of that and perhaps use them to create a border. I am considering transplanting the rhubarb out of there completely. They are not doing as well as they could, right under the ornamental apple trees as they are. Though, to be honest, I’d like to get rid of those apple trees, They’re creating too much shade and preventing other things from thriving. They’re so beautiful, though, and they do provide food for the birds, so I’ve no plans to do that until we have something to replace them with – somewhere else!

It will be good to have more effective use of this garden. Having a small garden so close to the house should be very convenient, if we plan things right.

The Re-Farmer

Long day, but the trees are in!

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Oh, my goodness, what a day. And it’s not even 4pm as I start writing this!

Since I was heading to my mother’s early, my morning rounds were on the short side. It was pretty chilly out there, with rain expected, so I didn’t take the plants outside, just in case. I’m glad I didn’t, because the “light showers” we were expected to get turned into a series of downpours. :-/

A grader had made its first pass before I left, which made it easier on my mother’s car on the gravel roads, including where the water is crossing over the road again, in two places. I left early enough to put some gas in the tank of her car. That was painful. Just the other day, the prices in her town went from 188.9/L to 197.9/L One US gallon is 3.78L, and at the current exchange rate, that works out to US$5.94/gallon. Other parts of Canada are now above $2/L, so we are by no means the most expensive gas in the country.

Still, it makes for a painful fill at the pump! Most of which got used up by the time I got home again.

The visit to the doctor went all right. Medical facilities are still forced to have mandatory masks. I probably would have been okay if I just needed to go to the clinic, but I also needed to go to the lab, and they aren’t allowed to accept exemptions. Which is illegal, but that hasn’t stopped our current government from doing whatever it wanted before, and they’re not stopping now. I wore my Mingle Mask. One of the receptionists – who had her own mask pulled down every chance she could – complimented me and said she missed being able to read lips. I got my bloodwork requisition then went to the lab, and they were fine with it, too. My mother, who shouldn’t be wearing a mask either, wore hers under her nose. No one said a thing. Not even while in the examination room.

My mom was very confused when we came in to see a young woman, and thought we were taken to the wrong room. It turned out she was a student who is working with our doctor as part of her training. I’d helped my mother make a list of what she wanted to talk about, then took a picture of the list. I’m glad I did, because she didn’t bring it, though she did bring another, completely different one. By the time the student was taking my mother’s blood pressure, my mother was saying, “so… Dr. ___ didn’t want to see me, then…” The student reassured her that the doctor would be seeing her; he was just with another patient.

He did come in later, and we talked for a while longer. Then he made sure to explain to me what he wanted to change up, because there’s no way my mother would remember any of it – and might even choose to ignore. I’ll pass it on to my siblings, and between us, we should be able to get my mother to understand. It just takes a while.

That done, with a quick side trip to the lab for my mother, we headed out. I had fasted for my bloodwork, so we were going to go for lunch, but we made a quick stop at a hardware store. I picked up a box of bed bug traps. Other apartments in the building she’s in have been sprayed for bed bugs, and now we’re finding out she has them, but she cleans her bed really, really well, so she’s fine… *sigh* The more I talk to her about it, the more details she brings up, the more horrified I am. Meanwhile, she’s all proud of herself for being so thorough in cleaning her bed and mattress, and squishing so many of them… *sigh* The traps are mostly as a check to confirm, and won’t get rid of them, but it’s a step forward. She’ll have something to show. My brother and I have been really stressing that she needs to call the housing department that owns her building so her apartment can be treated, but she thinks she can handle it herself.

After picking up the trap, we had lunch – breakfast for me – then started home. I had mentioned to her that I had live trees to pick up at the post office, but suddenly she was wanting to make side trips to other towns. I said no; if we’re going to do stuff like that, we have to plan for it ahead of time. I started getting the lecture of how when I am with her, I need to make it a “holiday”, to spend just with her. By which she means, do anything and everything she wants to do. It’s not “holiday” for me at all, nor do I want it to be. I have too much work to do to lose entire days at her beck and call. At least today, it was rainy, so there’s little we can do outside right now, but those trees need to be picked up, and we need to get at them as quickly at possible, even if the holes we dug for them are too full of water to do any transplanting today.

She still got me to stop at another hardware store and pick up some soil for her, to top up her houseplants. The bags are all in outdoor garden centre displays, in the rain, which meant I got my nice white hoodie and new coat all muddy. :-/ Ah, well.

Once I got her home, I set up the traps, then went over her medications with her before finally heading to the post office, driving through a few more downpours along the way, then home.

Can you believe there are 41 trees in here? !!! I’ve got it next to the box that the highbush cranberry, sunchokes and sweet potato slips came in, for perspective.

Looking at the forecasts, we’ve got three more days where the overnight lows will be too cold to transplant any of our vegetables, but we’ll be able to work on these trees, instead. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get them all done in one day.

So much to do; so little time to do it! Especially with the weather not co-operating!

The Re-Farmer

Leaving their mark, and planning ahead

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With the temperatures staying warmer, and the days getting longer, I’ve been starting to bring back my evening rounds. I was all ready to head out the door yesterday evening, when I saw three deer, running and jumping through the outer yard, from the direction of the barn!

Then they stopped and seemed hesitant.

I had a suspicion as to why.

I was right.

There were other deer!

These two were already hanging out at the feeding station.

I was able to open the inner door without startling them, so I could see them better. I could tell they saw me and were watching me, but they didn’t run off. So awesome!

The three made their way into the inner yard, but eventually left rather than joining the two at the feeding station.

There they go, all in a row! :-D

I was losing light fast, so I took the chance and went outside. They actually watched me for a bit, before running off.

As I was checking things out in the outer yard, and making my way to the back gate, I had to pause to take these photos.

I was in the path I mow to the back gate, half way between the fences for the inner and outer yards. The line of snow is what was hard packed from so many hooves, it left their mark in snow that’s taking longer to melt away.

Last winter, they seemed to prefer to jump the gate by the old garden area, where it is more open, but this winter, they definitely seemed to prefer going through the maple grove, then jumping the fence near the massive old willow.

Every time I see them making their way through the trees, or along the spruce grove, it makes me glad we were able to clear the trees out so much. It’s not only much easier and more pleasant for us to be able to go through the trees, but the deer prefer it, too!

While doing my rounds this morning, my daughter joined me as I took a closer look into the spruce grove, where we have SO much clearing to do. I had earlier identified 6 dead spruce trees that we’d like to cut down, on top of the 3 that are closer to buildings that we plan to hire someone to take down. We were able to go further into the grove and look more closely.

It’s not 9 dead trees. It’s a full dozen.

And that doesn’t include any others further into the grove, but just along the Western edge, where we need to work on cleaning things out first. It also doesn’t count the dead trees that have already fallen, and are either on the ground, or leaning on other trees, that need to be cleared away.

Looking in the area behind the garlic beds, it’s almost all little poplars, and those cherry trees that aren’t right for our climate. They bloom beautifully, but produce almost no cherries. They’re all relatively small, so I will be taking them right out. The little bendy poplars will be used to build trellises and arches, among other things. The cherries… they don’t look all that good. They have been killed off by late frosts, then regrowing, so often, none of them are particularly big, and are growing in clumps around whatever parent plant had died off in the middle. They might just end up being really nice wood to cook over.

The size of this area that has no large trees in it is pretty significant. Any spruces that used to be there have died off long ago – I expect to uncover more stumps as we clear back there. It also gets quite a bit of sunlight, so this will be a good area to plant some of the food trees and bushes we are planning on.

Once it’s all cleaned up and cleared away, I expect to see a lot more deer cutting through the spruce grove, rather than skirting around it!

As for the additional trees we identified as being dead and in need of removal, I noticed a couple of groups of three. Depending on the condition of the stumps, they might work well to use as the supports, to make a table with a bend on each side. We are wanting to create pleasant little seating areas throughout, where we can sit and enjoy the wild roses and red barked dogwood that we plan to leave as undergrowth, along with the Saskatoons we are finding (we’ll be taking out the chokecherries, though), and the other trees and bushes we intend to slowly plant in the area.

Like the mulberry tree that will be shipped late in the spring, so we’re going to need to get those dead trees out sooner, rather than later!

Plus, in other areas of the grove, we intend to transplant more spruce trees, into the spruce grove!

This whole area is going to be completely transformed over the next few years.

If all goes well, it will be a haven for both humans and deer. :-)

The Re-Farmer

That’s convenient, and sooo tired!

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With feeding the critters outside, I needed a good, sturdy scoop to hold the cat kibble, deer feed or bird seed. At first, we tried re-purposing the gallon plastic jugs from distilled water. They’re basically the same that milk comes in. We would just cut the bottom off to form a scoop and, with the cap on, the jug itself became the carrying vessel.

The plastic, however, was too flimsy and bendy. I believe it was my husband who first cut the bottom off of an empty popcorn container from Costco. The plastic is much stronger, and even the handle is a better shape. Very convenient!

There is something else that’s convenient.

When we fixed up the old platform bird feeder, I’d taken off the rotten seed platform, but left the supports. I figured I might add another platform in the future, but as soon as it was set back up, the birds started using the supports to perch on. Being so handy for the birds, they’ll be left as is.

Which is working out for me, too.

After refilling the new bird feeder, I need to hands to be able to put it back on the hook.

The supports are the perfect width and height to hold my scoop for me while I hang the feeder! LOL

Also, while doing my rounds, I couldn’t resist getting a picture of this clump of trees by the barn.

They are just so tired!

I know. Lame. I couldn’t help myself! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Look what I found

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While tending the garden beds where we have the beets and carrots, I was looking into the area behind it. It had been part of the plan for this past summer to clean up further into there, and I was thinking of what I might still be able to manage this year, while we have some co-operative weather.

Of course, with the leaves turning, I was seeing all sorts of yellow and reds and…

… reds?

Those aren’t leaves. Those are apples!

Yup. I found another crab apple tree!

It is easily the tallest of any of the crab apple trees we’ve got, including the ones that aren’t buried by other trees. I honestly can’t remember if I’d noticed anything blooming here in the spring, but if I did, I probably thought it was another cherry tree, since there are so many in this area.

It’s not like I could get closer to see. There are at least 3 dead trees that have fallen by it (the leaves in the foreground are cherry suckers, grown from the bases of dead cherry trees). Through the matting of crab grass and various other undergrowth, I can see wood from other dead trees, but not well enough to tell if they are separate trees, or pieces of the ones that I can see more easily.

There is even a big fallen dead branch, stuck in the apple tree! I suspect this one fell during our more recent high winds, though, and was not part of the fallen trees at my feet when I took this photo.

I was able to get around one side and reach a single apple to pick and taste. I notice the apples are a pretty decent size for crab apples. It was sweet, but the texture wasn’t very pleasant. That could be due to the recent frosts, though.

Well, if I do get a chance to start doing some clean up this fall, I know where I plan to work! I want to clean out up to and around this tree, and get that dead branch out. That will open things up and give it more sunlight and space to branch out.

I suspect I will be finding little surprises like this for a few more years as I continue to clean up further into the spruce grove. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: west fence line and maple grove

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Today turned out to be too cold and damp to do the mowing between the trees I cleared last year, that I hoped to do today. I thought I might be able to at least use my reciprocating saw to cut some of the smaller stumps of trees I took down last year to ground level, so I could mow over them. In the end, I decided it was just too damp to drag out the extension cords and use electric tools.

Instead, I worked on an area I left partly unfinished last year; a double row of elms leading to the garden gate at the west fence line.

Here is how it looked before I started.

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