Clean Up: Maple Grove, garden path

June 30, 2018June 30, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

We had some much more pleasant temperatures today, so I headed out to do some work in the maple grove this evening.

After the tree care guy came to give us an estimate, I decided to focus first on clearing the old garden path. Whether we hire these guys, or the company coming to give a quote on Monday, they will need to bring equipment in to access the trees they will be cutting clear from the power lines. Good enough reason to start at the old garden path.

This is what it looked like before.

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The deadwood on the ground here is partially cut, and it made up of several trees. Elm and maple, from the looks of it.

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This photo was taken back in May, and you can see where the path is supposed to be in the background.

I also worked my way along the north row of trees, bordering the garden, and heading towards the garden shed. I started off by using the weed trimmer to take town the tall grass and weeds, so that I could at lease see the branches and trunks.

Then I started dragging stuff out. This photo is of JUST the deadwood I pulled out of the grass.

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Almost all of this is just from that blocked garden path! Even after this, I kept finding more, as I walked back and forth and I would step on something. I’d then go to pick up what I expected to be a small branch, often finding myself pulling out something 6-7 feet long, and completely buried in grass and leaves!

After I cleaned out the stuff already on the ground, I started taking out the dead spruces on either side of the path, and cut back the other trees that I had pulled the deadwood out of. They were mostly dead, already. I also took out another small dead spruce tree that was near the big dead one that will be coming down when we get the lines cleared. I almost left a young elm to grow, until I clued in to how close it was to the big dead spruce. I looked up and, sure enough, the elm was directly below the power lines.

So that had to go.

Along with the dead stuff, I also cleaned up some suckers at the bases of other trees, or growing out of stumps. Some of those suckers had been growing long enough to almost be trees all on their own. For the trees I took down, I left fairly tall stumps to make it easier to see them until I can cut them at ground level. A fair bit is being left until my birthday present arrives. :-D

I finished off with the weed trimmer again.

Here are the after pictures.

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A couple of the stumps near the centre of the picture were already there, hidden by the suckers growing out of them. The old garden path is now open!

The big dead spruce tree that will come down is the one with the big rock next to it. There is also a young maple kind of by itself there right now, and I will be cutting that down when my birthday present gets here. It’s directly under the power lines, too, and already grown tall enough to almost touch them!

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This photo was taken from near the big dead spruce tree. The main garden area is completely overgrown, but it was so roughly plowed, mowing is not an option. It’s not a priority right now.

There are three spruces next to each other, just right of centre in the photo. I am hoping the one in the middle can be salvaged. The other two are too far gone.

On the garden side, starting from about where those spruces are (I think they are Colorado blues), is the old row a raspberries. It’s completely choked out with crab grass and weeds, and overshadowed by mostly dead trees, with a very few canes trying to grow. Another area that is not a priority right now. When the time comes, we plan to have a raspberry patch with three different varieties, including one with gold coloured berries, that mature at different times. That way, we will be harvesting berries from July through September. :-)

All in good time.

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I plan to work my way down these two rows of trees, next. Where the big rock is, is the garden tap. It’s got a couple of dead trees by it, as well as a live one. They will all come down to clear the tap, and the buried pipe that leads to the house. I’m hoping the roots haven’t caused any problems. I have yet to hook it up at the house end to test it out, since it’s barely accessible right now.

There are two old tillers that have been sitting there for years, one covered with a piece of tin, the other with an old rug. They should still be salvageable, so I am hoping to be able to move them into a shed or maybe the barn, to get them out of the weather.

Once this area is done, I will turn my attention to the West side of the maple grove. Lots of deadfall in there, too.

The really big job is going to be dealing with the trees to the North of the grove, that has been so densely planted with trees.

While doing this outside, I also will be working on packing up the old kitchen, so we can get that cleaned out and looking good again. I want to get that done within the next week. I’d like to be able to open the door and not worry about the cats getting int. :-)

Lots to do! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Down it goes

June 26, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

When things started to cool down, I did a check around the yard to see how things were.

No surprise at all to find that, having taken down a dead tree trunk recently, the still living but broken branch is was supporting has come down.

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Unfortunately, it hasn’t broken completely.

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The break is way too high for any attempt to cut it with the extended pruning saw. I tried to pull and twist it, but it’s still hanging on. All I managed to do was break of some smaller branches.

I’m just going to have to leave it for now. As it dries up, it should eventually become brittle enough to pull down.

Meanwhile, it is basically blocking the path around to the back of the storage house that I was able to go through with the riding mower. Which means that, when I do get the chance to mow, I’m going to have to find some way to either get it down, or somehow prop it to one side until I’m done mowing.

Oh, my! As I wrote this post, some very dark clouds moved in from the West. We’ve got storm warnings for that side of the province, though not as far us. Hopefully, we’ll at least get some rain. According to my weather app, we should have heavy rain and a thunderstorm in 21 minutes. Whether that actually hits us, we shall see! The last few predictions of rain and storm missed us entirely.

The Re-Farmer

Looking around, planning ahead

June 18, 2018June 18, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

The heat is on for the next few days, with some thunderstorms predicted by the end of the week. This will limit what we can do in the yard, and when, for a while.

After dropping my younger daughter off for her first shift at her new job, I decided to finish up the sun room. I’ve emptied it out completely, and mopped the concrete floor. I’d originally intended to take a hose to it, but there is nowhere for the water to drain.

I mopped that floor three times, with many changes of water. I swept it as much as I could, but there was just so much dust left behind!!

It is now drying, so I figured this was a good time to make a post. :-)

Yesterday was our day of rest, and I took advantage of it to just walk around, checking things out now that it’s all as green as it’s going to get, and thinking ahead.

After I finish with the area I’ve been working on for the past while, I intend to slowly work my way through the maple grove to the garden area.

There was a time when this space was a path to the garden. I think that stick next to the dead spruce tree is marking one side of where it used to be.

As you can see by the dead branches in the foreground, there’s more than dead spruces blocking the old path. There is where there are a bunch of maples that had been cut down, cut into pieces, then left there. I don’t know who started the work and then stopped part way through; for all I know, it was my late brother, which might also explain why it was left unfinished.

Before we can even start on taking down the small dead trees (the big ones will wait until we have a chain saw), I will have to clean up all the deadwood on the ground.

We’re going to have several years worth of fire wood for cookouts, by the time it’s done!

I squeezed my way through to check out the West end of the garden space. There, I discovered a huge mass of horseradish! My mother had told me she’d transplanted some there, but that the younger of my brothers had plowed too close to the pole and dug it up, so she transplanted it again, under a spruce three nearer the house. Clearly, she missed some, and it is thriving!

When I was younger, this area was pretty much all open. Now, there is a dense, virtually impenetrable wall of trees where I remember we once had a cabbage patch. From what I could see, along with the usual maple, elm and black spruce, I believe there is also some Colorado blue spruce and birch.

Unfortunately, the trees near the pole are tall enough that they are reaching the power lines! I think they are still clear enough, though, that we can safely cut them down without hitting the the lines. At the very least, we will need to thin the area down. It is so dense, everything is fighting for survival. I can tell quite a bit of it is deliberately planted, such as the Colorado blue spruce (not a native species) and the row of birches, plus the rows of black spruce, but I’m pretty sure there is quite a bit that is self sown. Some of the black spruces, perhaps, and most likely the maples and elms. I am hoping to save as much as I can; the birches look pretty good, but I will likely be removing 2 out of every 3 trees in the rows of spruces. Though just removing the dead ones might achieve the same goal. I would really like to save the Colorado blues.

A number of years ago, the Canadian government was encouraging people living on farms to plant more trees and shelter belts. They had a program where people could sign up and order all kinds of trees, shipped to them for free. I have no idea if this program is still available, but I know lots of people took advantage of it. I am thinking that this is how my parents ended up planting so many of the trees I’m finding, including the shelter belt outside of the yard, along where the cow fence is now.

After checking this area out, I took a look at the North fence line. At this end, there are a number of trees that look like they were deliberately planted, along with some obvious self-sown ones. There is a gap between the big trees and the fence line, which is good. I’d like to clear that gap, so that the fence is accessible. Once the lilac hedge starts, though, I couldn’t see the the fence line at all, and couldn’t tell if there was a space between the bushes and the fence. While walking along the lilacs to try and see, I did find a couple of chokecherry trees.

There are quite a few berries forming, though a lot of them seem to have insect damage to them. We shall see how they do throughout the season.

Eventually, I found a gap in the lilacs and went to see how close to the fence line they are and found…

… some mystery wire.

I have no idea what kind of wire this is, other than it is NOT fence wire. I can’t even see anything nearby that it might be from, or that might explain why it is here.

Something else I’m going to have to clear out and add to the haul-away pile.

The lilacs, meanwhile, are well into the fence line. Not going to be able to clear a path out. Ah, well.

As I was finishing up, I went past a bush my mother planted by the clothes line platform. I had ruthlessly pruned it down, because it was in the way of trying to hang things on the line.

It seems to have like the pruning, because it is now completely dense with foliage, and covered with flower buds, including one early bloomer!

Based on how many buds I’m seeing, by the time this bush is in full bloom, we’ll hardly be able to see any leaves at all; it’ll be a mass of white!

I’m rather looking forward to seeing that.

Well, I think the sun room floor has had enough time to dry. Now I have to decide what to put back, and what will have to go into storage!

By the end of the day, we should finally have a usable sun room. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: before

June 13, 2018June 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I plan to work my way down the front of the row of trees and bushes in the West yard, from the fire pit area towards the flower garden. I’ve started at the linden tree at one end. Here are the areas I will work on next.

Like the maple and spruce groves, when I was a kid, I used to be able to mow in between the trees and bushes here.

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Nearest the linden and plum trees I’ve already cleared is this tree. I don’t know what it is, but a lot of the leaves are turning yellow with black spots on them. I’ve done a quick search, and it might be a fungal disease. If so, I might have to do some serious work on it – but first I have to get to it through the undergrowth!

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I’m going to have to somehow get to that dead tree in the middle of some false spirea and… some other bush. I think the dead tree used to be another plum.

I like the false spirea. Really, I do! But my goodness, they are invasive!

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This crab apple tree seems to be doing okay. It’s got lots of bitty apples starting, no bigger than rose hips right now. It is still going to be needing some pruning…

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More self-sown false spirea at the end if this row, and you can see some of the deadwood on the crab apple tree.

Also, I think you can see some surviving lilacs.

You can’t see them in any of the other pictures, but there used to be two rows of lilacs behind all these trees and bushes. I remember how, at the end where the linden tree is now, the two rows of lilacs formed a natural tunnel that I used to be able to crawl into.

Now, I’m not sure how many of them have survived, blocked as they are from the sun by the overgrowth.

I hope to start cleaning up these areas over the next few days, weather willing.

The Re-Farmer

Fire Pit Area Cleanup; between buildings

June 5, 2018January 14, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I went back to cleaning up the West yard, by the fire pit area, today, focusing on the area between the other house and the log cabin that’s slowly disintegrating.

Photo heavy post ahead! :-D

The girls finished clearing away the last wood pile from when I cleaned up in the East end of the maple grove. Before they went into the house, we got rid of the old freezer that has been sitting along the side of the other house, for many years.

It was a beast of a freezer, but it is now finally out of the yard, and in the pile of stuff that will be hauled away in the fall.

The baskets and foam were inside the freezer. The chair and the plastic thing on it were dug out from between some maple trees.

It took two of us pushing, one pulling and steering, to drag that old freezer out!

Modern freezers are much lighter. :-D

When I started cleaning up the remains to haul away, I found even more Styrofoam, buried under the leaves.

Time to start working on the rows of trees directly behind the other house.

This involved cutting away dead branches, suckers and picking up fallen branches, just to GET to the stuff I needed to clear away.

The rain barrel that was there appears to not have any cracks or holes in it, so I just set it aside for now.

The roll of wire fencing was almost completely buried in leaves and dead branches.

That plastic bin on top? It was upside down on the ground. After lifting it up, I found…

… old cat litter.

As I was clearing away an area at the base of a maple tree, I found more cat litter, under the leaves and branches.

It appears that, when my dad had a cat, this was where the old litter was dumped. I think that plastic bin is what was used as a litter box and, when the cat died, it just got dumped into the trees and left there.

That cat died many years ago.

I was also finding lots of horse droppings. I’m told my younger brother had let his horses into the yard. Considering how many piles of their droppings I’m finding all over the place, this was either done often, or for a very long time.

I’m not impressed.

More stuff to add to the haul-away pile. Some stove pipe, a roll of cable, aluminum sheets and… I don’t know what that plastic thing is, but it made moving the stove pipe out much easier. ;-D

While clearing dead branches away near the building, I found all sorts of things buried in the leaves. I’ve just leaned them here, for now, for clearing out later.

More was added, before I was done for the day!

In the foreground is an area I’d gone into with the weed trimmer recently. I had to stop, because I was finding so many dead branches, so I started a pile at this end that I cleaned up today. In the background, you can see where I hadn’t used the weed trimmer yet.

There was a LOT of dead branches in here.

I also cleared dead branches from the trees themselves, as well as pruning back live branches and seedlings.

This is another section I’d used the weed trimmer on previously. For now, I’m ignoring the dead branches and trees on the other side of the fence.

That tree in the foreground?

Completely dead. I thought there was one branch that still had green leaves on it, but that branch is from the tree on the other side of the fence.

So this is going to have to come down at some point.

While clearing away the dead branches, I found more metal, buried under the leaves.

There was some cable leaning against the building that I thought was rolled up, like some I’d already cleared away elsewhere. It turned out to be only partially rolled up. Most of it was stretched almost the length of the building, all buried under the leaves.

When my daughter came out to let me know supper was almost ready, she helped me take down this dead branch from one of the group of three maples near the fire pit. I started cutting it with the pruning saw while she used a rake to reach the other end and applied gentle downward pressure to make it easier for me to saw. Then when it started breaking under its own weight, I just stepped back and let her pull it down.

I feel so much better, now that it’s down. There is another huge dead branch just above it, but it will have to wait for another day.

Here are the rows of “living fence” my mother planted. There is a third row closer to the log cabin. I did more clean up and weed trimming after this picture was taken. We will have to go back and work our way towards the log cabin. That area is filled with dead branches, so I can’t even go in with the weed trimmer, yet. There’s quite a bit of oak in there. I’m hoping my mother will let me get rid of some of these, and encourage the oak, instead. They are planted way too close together to be able to grow well.

Here is the area that had the old toilet, rain barrel, and other debris in it. It will still need more clean up before it’s finished, but it looks SO much better now!

The rest of the rows of trees. There is one willow in there, and the rest are maple and elm. There are still dead branches on them, but they are too high to be able to clear.

I noticed, as I was clearing up against the house, that the willow has a huge root, running right under the building. I guess it’s a good thing it’s just siting on blocks, or it would be causing all sorts of damage to a basement or foundation.

Let’s see if I can find some before pictures to include…

What a difference a few hours of work makes!

The Re-Farmer

West Yard; fire pit area clean up

June 1, 2018June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Another wonderful day of yard clean up today!

And a photo heavy post to show for it. :-D

After all the clearing I did yesterday, we had a lot of wood to breakdown and move out. The rain was holding off, so my younger daughter and I started on the big pile. As I was de-branching and cutting down the dead spruces, I was thinking of where we were moving it all and how we were running out of space. With all the rain we’ve had, we could actually start burning some of it in the fire place.

So that’s what we decided to do. My daughter would get the fire pit going, while I continued to break down the spruces.

Wet as things have been, we still weren’t going to take any chances. My daughter started by getting the hose ready.

So far, we’ve got two hoses going; I found a shorter one we’d been using on the south and a much longer one I’d hooked up to the tap on the north side of the house, to use on the flower garden I’ve cleared up and started to layer.

The long hose got moved to the south side when my daughters cleaned out the eaves troughs, and as long as it is, it wasn’t long enough to reach the fire pit. Adding on the shorter hose still wasn’t enough. Is there more hose? I remembered a long hose in the side of the garage, so she went and got it.

It turned out to have several major holes and breaks in it. She tried patching it with duct tape, but two were so bad, the water just sprayed out from under the tape.

I checked the garden shed. Turns out there were two more hoses there, so I grabbed the heavier duty one.

No holes, but it did leak right at one end, where it was attached to the first hose.

We just put that part of the hose over an area of dry grass, so it could water it. :-D

We’re going to need to buy new hoses. Several of them.

All in good time!

That done, my daughter got a fire going. Then she sprayed all around the fire pit, and the trees by the fence line, and basically anywhere else she felt might be at risk from sparks.

Because we err on the side of caution when it comes to that.

As she started working on burning one of the piles of small stuff. We had one pile of larger wood, then a second pile for little branches. That one got huge, fast, so a second pile had been started of those. Which is why I wanted to start burning it. There’s just soo much of it!

In the photo above, you can see the beginnings of a pile of green wood, waiting to be broken down. My daughter and I had already removed the old awning I’d taken out from under some maple trees, and it’s now on the pile of stuff outside the yard we plan to hire someone to hall away in the fall.

After I finished breaking down the three sections of dead spruce trees – they had so many branches that needed to be cut off before I could cut the trunks shorter – I decided to stop with that pile, and start helping my daughter.

By this time, she’s almost cleared up the smaller pile of little things. As I watched the fire, I couldn’t help but feel my paranoia creeping up.

See those spruce tips in the background?

I am really not happy about how close the fire pit is to the spruce. Spruces are just big resin torches. Plus, there was all the other brush and undergrowth.

I started to break down the pile of green wood and stacking it against the back of the log cabin. These will sit to dry until next year, where they will be used as fire pit fuel. I expect that pile to get rather larger before the summer is done!

Finally, I went under the branches of the spruce tree and started clearing under it. The lowest branches were all dead, so I took them to my daughter to break down and start burning. Then I started cutting more branches for as high as I could reach with the hand saw. The branches were still hanging down to the ground, so I got the pruning saw and kept going.

What a difference just a few minutes of cutting made!

I cleared a bit of underbrush as well, uncovering the remains of an old wagon and another electrical cable spool.

After getting under the spruce tree cleared, I tackled the big dead branch by the old gate. I wasn’t sure how much I could clear of it, because the break was so high. Turns out it’s been dead for so long, I could just pull it away. You can see part if it in the above photo.

Here’s the rest of it. I’d already started to clear away some of the smaller branches when I took this photo. That huge piece of tree was just dangling there, for who knows how long.

Getting it down made us feel MUCH more comfortable with a fire. The wind was blowing towards the fence line, so any sparks would have gone right into that area.

After getting this down, we decided to really give the pruning saw a workout and get the dead branch from the maple tree on the other side of the fire pit. This branch had actually been long enough to reach over the fire pit, but I’d already broken some of it off. Still, it was rather close and low enough at the end to be a concern.

Did I mention the pruning saw is awesome?

Oh, how good it is to have the right tool for the job!

We took turns sawing at it. Because of how high it was at the trunk, and how thick it was, it didn’t take long for our arms to start loosing circulation! :-D

Much to my surprise, this branch did actually have a few living twigs on it, so part of it went to be burned, and part of it onto the greenwood pile.

That done, I just kept on clearing along the fence line.

Here’s how it looked before I got back to it.

After breaking down the big dead branch I’d just pulled down, I moved the wire spool and started clearing more under that area, then just kept working my way towards the gate, separating the living from the dead.

Most of it was dead. Dead for so long, that I was pulling bushes right out of the ground, without having to cut anything. Or even yank hard. My daughter had so much dead wood from what I was pulling out of here, she stopped taking from the main pile completely, until I was done.

Of course, there always has to be at least one surprise! :-D

This picture is from the base of the tree I’d pulled the big dead branch out of.

That is some sort of garbage.

It’s IN the tree.

That piece of garbage has been there for so long, the tree has grown around it.

I also found some old beer cans and even a juice box, but nothing else that was grown INTO a tree!

Though some saplings growing through the fence wire came close.

Here is how it looks now.

One side of the old gate is now CLEAR!! Yay!

I am at a loss, though.

The barb wire gate is still there, just like it was when I was growing up. Then that picket fence got added. I don’t know when. It’s actually attached to the posts of the barb wire gate with more wire.

Why would someone essentially block off an entire gate?

At some point, we’ll need to re-fence the yard, and I’d like to keep a gate here when we do. It’ll be much easier for the septic cleaners to get to the tank from this end, then going around the house from the other side.

Here is the mostly cleared fence line. There are still little things I’ll need to get back to, and I’ll need to decide if it’s worth keeping some of the long, scraggly bushes. (I don’t plan to cut back what’s on the other side of the fence this year.) They’re living, and some are even blooming, but now that the dead stems that were holding them up are gone, I really don’t know how well they’ll stay up on their own. It wouldn’t take much to break them.

While clearing stuff away, I found a big metal ring that would actually work well as a fire pit, if we ever needed to set up another one. It’s slightly smaller than the metal ring that makes up our fire pit now. I didn’t try to move the remains of the wagon, yet. There is more dead wood back there to clear away. The spool, I’ve just left there for now, making sure not to block access to the side of the log cabin, as there is more dead wood to clear away in that area, too. There’s also a mostly dead maple tree, but that will need a chain saw.

And here we have the green wood pile, after my clearing away of the fence line.

There really wasn’t a lot of green wood from there to add to the pile.

Though more clean up will be needed, especially of all the dried leaves on the ground, the entire area is now much less of a fire hazard then it had been!

Once we finished breaking down and burning the deadwood I’d cleared out of there, my daughter and I continued to break down and burn more from the big pile. You know; the one we’d originally started the fire to start getting rid of! :-D

It was awesome. My daughter even brought a couple of chairs and made a carafe of lemonade for us to enjoy while we kept feeding the fire.

Our first fire of the year.

By the time we wound down for the day, there was a huge new pile of ashes in there. Since we are only burning wood in here, it will be a great addition to the layers I am building up on the flower garden, when it comes time to clear it away.

I am so loving this kind of work. I missed it so much!

The Re-farmer

Maple Grove Clearing – into the trees

May 31, 2018June 10, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 9 Comments

More progress on clearing up the trees!

The maple grove behind our house has several rows of trees. I worked on only the two or three (depending on the area) southern ones.

Here is the north side of the furthest row I worked on.

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This area starts to have a fair number of trees and branches already down on the ground, including some that had been cut down, cut shorter, and then left there.

This is how it looked after clearing.

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Here’s a before picture from between two rows of trees.

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Note the dead spruces further along.

I’d originally intended to leave those, but they were small enough that it was practical to use a hand saw to take them down. I just had to cut away a section of dead branches, first, so I could reach the trunks and start cutting.

The first one, I cut leaving a stump about 2 feet high; I will go back to cut it to ground level, another time.

The second was actually two spruces so close together that, as they got larger, they grew into each other at the base. I trimmed branches to reach the trunks, and cut the thinner one down first, then started on the thicker.

At which point, I realized there was a LOT of movement at the base.

So I just tipped the whole thing over.

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Telling my younger daughter about it later, she was laughing about her mighty mom, tearing trees out of the ground by the roots. :-D

It came down quite easily.

Here is how this in-between area looked, after.

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Oh, and I found something interesting at the base of one of the maples, closest to the pile of chimney blocks. After cutting away the suckers, I found…

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What I believe is a gooseberry bush!

It was completely hidden by the maple suckers. Now that it’s cleared, and I’ve trimmed off the dead bits, I hope it will now have enough sunlight to grow well.

All this clearing meant I was getting a rather large pile of cuttings, which my younger daughter says she will start sorting and clearing tomorrow (the green wood will be piled separately, to dry and become fuel for fire pits next year; the deadwood will be for use, this year). Weather willing, of course. We’ve got predictions for more rain tomorrow, and storms the day after, so we’ll see.

By the time I added the second spruce tree to the pile, though, I realized I needed to stop. There just wasn’t room to add to the pile anymore, and I had to leave it off on the side!

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That tree the pile is next to, on the right? You can see the fresh cuts from the last of the suckers I’d cut away on there. Most of that tree, plus the lilac beyond it, was cleared last week.

That is a lot of trimmed wood to clear away! All of this, plus the pile from clearing the shed, is just what was cleared away today.

And finally, here is an overview shot.

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Complete with a cream separator basin planter, on a stump. :-D I don’t want to move it, because it ensures that no one will trip over the stump or something. ;-)

I am just so happy with this. The whole area just FEELS so much better. It’s now so open and airy! It’ll be a while, yet, before it’s safe to mow under here – there are still many old branches hidden under the dead leaves that will need to be found and cleared out, first. I should be able to get in with the weed trimmer a bit, though. Plus, as things get raked up, I can add more to the flower garden to break down and build up the soil, there.

This is starting to look the way I want it to! A beautiful, open, usable and accessible space.

After all this, I finished the evening with a trip into town with my younger daughter, to see a dear friend and his lady fair, performing in one of the local coffee shops. It has been many years since I’ve seen him singing and playing his guitar, and never together with his lady love, on an electric ~~cello~~ upright bass!

It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful day.

The Re-Farmer

Maple Grove Clearing – the garden shed

May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Today would have been a perfect day to be mowing the lawn.

If we had a working lawn mower. :-(

So, I started working on the maple grove, instead.

And I am in heaven!

I got SO much done, and it looks so much better! I took lots of pictures, though I didn’t think to start doing that until after I’d cleared quite a bit out. I worked on three different areas, all kind of overlapping each other, with a priority on clearing the garden shed door. These pictures were taken after I’d finished the shed area, so they’re all “after” shots.

20180531shed.south.clear

The items in the foreground are a mess I had to clear maple suckers away from before I could start on it, including from the dead maple, which grew out of an old maple stump, near the middle of the photo. With only a hand saw and pruning saws, I wasn’t up to taking this dead tree down yet.

Maples are almost indestructible!

I moved the picnic table to various areas so that I could stand on it to reach. In particular, I wanted to clear the two trees leaning towards the house as much as possible. Lots of dead branches on them.

20180531shed.south.overhanging.trees

I wasn’t able to get all of the dead and dying branches I wanted to. Especially on the trunk in the foreground. That one started to bounce when I started to cut farther along. It’s already touching the roof and, with the bouncing, it was hitting the roof more, so I stopped. That whole thing needs to come down, to protect the house. I’m hoping that the weight I removed so far will make it at least a little bit less of a risk of falling on the roof.

20180531shed.door.clear

Suckers from the tree on the far side of the shed had mostly covered the door. Once it was clear as far as I could reach, I dragged the picnic table over and cut what I could from higher up. Again, lots of dead or half dead branches. That tree keeps going quite a bit further, over the opening to the garden. It will need more cutting back. We’ll need to assess it to see how much of a risk of collapsing there is, to decide how much.

The shed itself has very little life left in it, and there’s a hole in the roof. My mother wants to replace it, though we could probably get another year out of this one.

20180531shed.north.clear

The north side of the shed was overgrown with maple suckers. I cut them back and discovered … stuff. Including a milk crate.

When clearing up the mess by the chimney blocks, I took out the old bed frames (or whatever they are) and those are now leaning against the shed in this space. Basically, I’m putting all the junk in one place for when we hire someone to haul it away.

Also to the north of the shed is a dead spruce tree, but it did have something growing on it…

20180531shed.north.vines

The base of the dead spruce tree is on the left. To the right of it are vines. Some were already dead long enough to just pull out of the ground, while others needed to be cut.

Even as fast growing as these vines are, it takes a LONG time for them to develop such thick “trunks”!! They may well be what killed the tree.

20180531shed.door.pile

This pile is of the stuff I cut from the shed door, and the north side, only. Most of this was blocking the door. Plus, there’s a bit of what I cut from above the shed door.

Shed is now clear and accessible again!

On to upload photos of the next section…

The Re-farmer

Morning Cats, and shopping day

May 30, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

I want to start by sharing some photos of the cats this morning. Because it’s a great way to start the day!

Like waking up to this…

Actually, I woke up to see her sitting there, staring at me. :-D The cats really appreciate the extra thickness of the window sill, thanks to the log walls in the original part of the house. They’d love to get up onto the other window, too, which is much, much bigger, but it’s the one that didn’t get replaced. Which means it still has sheets of plexiglass covering them on the inside, so there’s nowhere they can sit at. Which drives them bonkers, when the outside cats are in the trees outside the window, looking in. :-D

Speaking of outside cats…

With all the rain we’ve been having, I moved the food bowls under the little roof over the basement window. They actually seem to prefer when the kibble gets a bit wet; likely softer on their teeth. “A bit wet” is not what’s been happening, lately. Which is a good thing!

When I came out this morning, Squishum (not in the picture) was all talkative, squeaking away as if wanting attention, but still won’t let me come near. Nasty Crime Boy, Beep Beep and Butterscotch were content to ignore me to come to the food.

The Hand, on the other hand…

…would not go to the food while I was around! I took this through the screen door of the sun room, after bringing back the container I use to take food to the bowls. She would only peak her head around the corner of the shelf outside, watching to see what I would do. I was able to move my phone enough to get more than just her head, but she was not comfortable with me being there and slunk away to the clothes line platform to wait for me to leave.

I don’t want to prevent her from eating, so I left.

I so want to touch that cat! :-D

Instead, I got to touch the Butterscotch!

I even got a decent picture of her! She makes it very difficult. :-D

I wandered around the East side of the house and did a bit of weeding to free up some irises that are coming up. Looking into the spruce grove, I just had to get another picture.

Remember this?

That photo was taken on May 15. The leaves are barely coming out at this point.

This is what it looks like, today.

That broken piece of tree in the first picture is still there, in the left side of the photo. Completely hidden from where I was standing, and barely visible even at other angles.

That horseradish is coming up nicely, too.

In time, that underbrush will be cleared mostly away, and the dead tree will be cut down. Likely not this year, though. I think we will focus on cleaning up the maple grove, first. At least as much as we can, until we have a working chain saw.

My goal is to have both the maple and spruce groves open under the trees, park-like and mow-able. I would like us to, at the very least, be able to walk through the trees without having to skirt dead branches, dead trees and other detritus. Including my husband, with his walker. Maybe set up a picnic table or something in the shade, so we can enjoy the spaces more.

Little by little, we will get there.

Late this morning, my older daughter and I made the trip into the city for our monthly bulk shopping trip. Our usual routine is to stop at the town we drive though on the way, to fill the tank. The gas station we stop at is a co-op we have a membership with, which will translate into a check at the end of the year, so we make it a habit. When we got there, however, I got the nasty surprise of seeing the gas prices had gone up 10¢ per liter. !!! Our tank was lower than I normally let it go (we drove over 1800km since I filled it and reset the trip counter at the end of last month), so I kind of had to put something in. I ended up putting in $30, which didn’t even bring it to half a tank. While paying for it, I asked when the big jump happened. Turned out to be a mere 2 hours before we got there!

When we finished our Costco shopping, I filled the tank there. The price was 14¢ per litre less! Plus, since it’s Costco, that will also be included in the check we’ll get at the end of the year. Even at the lower price, and having already put in $30 of gas and bringing it to just below the half way mark, it still cost over $60 to fill the tank. That’s almost half our gas budget for the month, right there. Thankfully, our van does have good mileage.

The increases in gas prices are really going to be a problem. The politicians can talk about how we should be using alternative transportation all they want. Even in the city, that’s not always feasible. For anyone living in the country, what choice do we have? It’s not like there’s a bus we can hop on, and we certainly can’t bike to the city to do our monthly grocery shopping. Or even to the next town. Plus, most people have multiple vehicles, because they are work tools, not just transportation. Heaven help those who make the commute to the city! When we last lived out here, my husband had a 70 minute commute, one way. That’s highway driving, for the most part, so it wasn’t affected by traffic until the last 10 minutes or so. I know others who have longer commutes. Back then, it was a big deal when gas prices went higher than 60¢ a litre. Now we’re looking at $1.309 (there are about 4L in a gallon, for those of you in the US. That works out to about $5.24 per gallon), and other areas are even higher.

That’s going to make life more difficult for a lot of people. :-(

We got the monthly shopping done, at least. $600 later. :-/ My splurge of the month was new wiper blades for the van, to replace the ones being held together with electric tape. :-D Tomorrow, we go to the regular grocery store to get the things we don’t need to buy in bulk.

It feels good to have well stocked cupboards, fridge and freezer again!

The Re-Farmer

It’s Raining! Also, we need another wood pile.

May 24, 2018May 24, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This is so awesome!

We’ve got a real, honest to goodness RAIN happening right now!

We recently got more weather alerts, this time for thunderstorms, for the south and east areas of the province. The usual warnings about possible hail, etc. These storms tend to pass us by, where we are. I remember talking to my dad on the phone and asking about storms I was hearing about, and he’s say, no, nothing over here.

I did just hear a rolling of thunder as I wrote that last sentence. Oh, it is so wonderful to see the rain!

So here are some pictures from yesterday.

20180523.flower.garden.leaf.layer1

More was added after this picture was taken, but it still wasn’t enough to cover the entire flower garden.

There are plenty of leaves to rake up that can be added. The maple grove has lots. Unfortunately, it’s such a mess, we can’t actually do any raking.

I started cleaning up around the area closest to the flower garden. Just around a lilac bush and a maple tree.

Most of the lilac bush was dead. Even with the living branches, I still trimmed away deadwood. Thankfully, I’d found some anvil pruners, which made the job easier. At least until those break, too. :-/

I also cut away most of suckers at the base of the maple tree, taking out dead branches that had fallen – including one that had fallen right into the lilac bush – and as much as I could reach of those that hadn’t fallen yet. These suckers have had years of growth, so a saw was needed. The space needed to saw them meant I wasn’t trimming them as close to the trunk as I should be. :-/

(Darn. Sounds like the rain has already stopped. I hope more comes, later!)

This is what’s left of the lilac bush.

20180523.cleared.lilac

I took about about 3 or 4 dead trunks, along with lots of dead suckers, and trimming the excess. I love lilacs, but they do have a spreading habit, so there was quite a bit to trim at ground level, spreading towards the maple.

I moved the old wash basin, once it was clear enough. There’s a maple stump on the left that it used to be sitting on, as a planter (I had to cut away maple suckers from the stump, too!). I considered turning it right side up, but that cats like to sit on it. :-D

Now there’s just the pile of soil from inside the basin to clean up. I might put the basin upside down over the stump, just for the cats. :-D

20180523.mostly.clear.maple

The base of the maple tree is mostly clear; there are still suckers to cut on the other side of the trunk.

It’s amazing how much difference, just this little bit of cleaning did. For one thing, there is no longer dead branches hanging over what used to be an open path.

20180523.trimings.dead.wood

This is what I cleaned out.

We need to start another wood pile. The dead stuff can go where we are currently piling wood, but the green stuff needs to be set aside to dry, to be fuel for the fire pit next year. :-)

You can kind of see what it looked like before; the following picture was taken from the garden side, and you can see the wash basin planter and the stump it had been on.

20180507.cut.trees

In between working on the open areas of the yard itself (that weed trimmer is sure going to pay for itself, over and over!), we will continue to clean up in the maple grove, and continue to layer the leaves we rake up onto the flower garden.

That will take a few months.

:-)

I also moved this…

A strange place for a bird feeder stand. It is now in the end of the flower garden outside the living room window. We’ll look into finding some way to anchor it, since that area is more exposed to winds. Between this and the bird bath I want to move over there, we should soon have a nice little sanctuary outside our living room window. :-)

The Re-Farmer

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