Look what I found

June 13, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Yesterday, I’d done the south lawns, including along the fence line and behind the “spare” house (more as a space to turn around with the mower, than to cut anything, since there’s barely any grass there).

Today, I set aside hoses, picked up branches, and so on, before I finished mowing the rest of the lawn.

Later, I went back behind the other house to see if I could get down some more of the dead branches. A lot of it involved simply reaching up with the extended pruning saw, which has a hook at the point, grabbing onto an attached dead branch, or dangling broken branch, and yanking until it fell to the ground.

I even remembered to take a picture of how it looks, after my daughters did such a great job raking up under there.

Which is when I found this.

The branch is so big, I actually missed it at first, thinking it was just another part of a tree. Nope. A big ole branch broke, some time after I’d mowed here yesterday, and was hung up in the other trees.

I couldn’t even tell which tree it came from.

In the picture, you can just see the power line that goes from the other house, to the pump shack (which isn’t hooked up now, thank God!). It wasn’t on the power line, but the branch that it was stuck on, is just above the power line.

Once again, I used the extended pruning saw to grab and yank it down, though I did have to cut down a branch from the tree outside the yard that was hanging over the fence, and in the way.

Finding stuff like this is why I’m on such a drive to get the dead and dying branches down, as much as possible. We’ve got entire trees that are ready to come down, almost on their own. One is right in this area, in fact; I cut away some of the lower branches that I kept getting hung up on, and the entire tree was shaking and making cracking noises at the base. I could probably push it right over, if it wouldn’t fall directly on that power line I mentioned earlier.

After this, I did some other clean up in the yard, but I will post about it later. After I shower. I keep finding little bits of dead tree stuck in my hair!

The Re-Farmer

Front Yard Clean Up – the shrine

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

Cleaning up the south yard, I finally got around to working on my mother’s little shrine area.

Here are some before pictures.

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That statue of Mary has been featured in a few different places in the yard, if I remember correctly.

I don’t know what the pedestal was for.

The little structure to the right is an actual shrine. My oldest brother built it for my mother; it is based on the kapliczki, or roadside shrines, in Poland that my mother remembers from her youth. Sadly, it has not been maintained over the years, and the wood is starting to rot in many places. For a while, it had a place of honour, right on the concrete landing at the main entrance.

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Another “before” view of the area, at the fence line. The post in the foreground is for the clothes line. I’m guessing the rope is to keep the post from being pulled by the weight of clothes on the line, but with the amount of slack on there, I’m not quite sure what it is really there to accomplish. :-D

The first area I started cleaning up was the tractor tire planter. It was overrun with vines! The roots had circled under the edge of the tire, with two big clumps of vines pushing their way out in such a large mass, they actually deformed the tire!

I’m starting to develop a strong dislike for those vines. ;-)

Once I was able to reach it safely, I took the statue out completely. Then started working around the back, cutting away and pulling up a huge mass of dead vines.

I then found a whole other flower garden area!

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Bricked up and everything.

I vaguely remember noticing a couple of bricks there, shortly after the snow melted away, but did not expect to find this!

It had nothing but dead vines and leaves in it. Any flowers that were ever planted there were long gone.

Feeling how my feet sank when I stepped in it to cut and clean away the debris, I figure it never actually had soil added to it. It’s all basically composted leaf debris!

Here are the after pictures.

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When the tire planter and bricked areas were clear, I pruned what I could reach of the willow trees, taking down more vines that had climbed their way up the trunks in the process.

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Then I gave Mary a good scrubbing, before returning her to her concrete block. There was moss starting to grow on her!

You can really see the one spot where a clump of vine roots distorted the tire. The other spot is hidden by the pedestal.

With this area, I don’t know about planting anything there again. What I’d really like to do is get rid of the tire planter. I’d like to get rid of all the tire planters! It will be a huge job to clear the tractor tire planters, so it might end up waiting until next year.

Until then, I just want to make sure those vines to take over again!

After finishing this, it was all I could do not to just keep on going and work in another section of the yard!

Have I mentioned, I really love this kind of work? :-D

The Re-Farmer

Front Yard Clean Up – by the gate

June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today was another awesome day of clean up in the yard. It is looking so great!

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I so missed this kind of work! I love it so much. There’s the feeling of accomplishment, and at the end of the day, when the body is sore and achy, and I’m tired – it’s a good tired. You know what I mean?

Oh, and I also got some great news today. I got an email from the electrician. The new pole to replace the one the movers broke will be delivered in the next couple of days. Whoot!

Meanwhile…

While the girls started on the HUGE job of raking between the trees I cleared out yesterday, and adding them to the flower garden, I started working on the south yard. I figure, it’s about time I did some work on the parts of the yard people see when they come to our place, rather than the parts hidden away behind houses. ;-)

The first section I worked on was West of the people gate. This is where there was a mass of dead plants that turned out to have a wire fence in it – and a bottomless glass bowl. :-D

Here is what it looked like, before.

Tree tire is tired and broken.

This is how it looks now!

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Cutting away those vines – both the old, dead ones, and the new ones that had started to grow – was a huge job, all on its own. The mass was so thick, it was hard to find what I needed to cut with the pruning shears (those anvil shears (affiliate link) are amazing!).

Then, after getting the big stuff off, I had to go back and find more vine roots and clip them. They spread through their roots, so there was a lot of pulling up.

I like vines. I really do. But my goodness, they are invasive!!

That done, I moved on to the lilacs section.

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This is how it looked after I first started working on it. There was a lot of clipping and pulling out of vines, cutting away dead and dying branches, and figuring out what lilac stems were keepers, and what had to go.

Lilacs also spread through their roots, and can become invasive, if they’re not kept in check. Except when they’re being choked out by vines. :-/

As I worked my way to the far end, I found…

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… Seriously?

The biggest lilac bush at the end of the row was growing straight out of a pile of horse droppings.

I’m getting really tired of finding horse droppings all over the place.

Here are the after photos!

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This is from the West end of the lilac row, after trimming and raking.

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And here’s how it now looks from the East end.

With all the vines I pulled out of there, I think I just extended the life of these lilacs by quite a few years! Well. As long as we keep on top of cutting back the vines as they try and grow back, that is.

I’m pretty sure my mother had flowers planted in here, too, but they don’t seem to have survived the vines. I don’t have any plans to plant anything here this year, but we’ll see what we decide to do with the area next year.

Next post; cleaning up my mother’s… shrine?

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

Yard work and home care visit

June 4, 2018January 14, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today was very much an outdoors day!

Thanks to the AWESOME riding mower my brother and his wife gave us, I was able to finish mowing the yard yesterday. Which means that one of the goals of the day was to get out the weed trimmer to clear areas the mower can’t get close to.

A loud and messy job, so I waited until after our afternoon appointment with someone from the home care department. This was a follow up on the last visit, with a different person. So while we waited for her to arrive, I started working on cleaning up the flower bed on the west side of the house.

At one end of the flower bed, there is an unusual variety of lilac; it’s bushier, has tiny leaves, and masses of sprays with tiny flower buds right now; it’s blooming period seems quite a bit later than the other lilacs, which are near the end of their blooming period.

One of the problems with it is that there is a maple tree growing out the middle of it.

Plus, lots of dead branches.

So I started cleaning away dead branches and cutting away the many suckers at the base, just to get at the maple. Where I found this.

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This is the trunk of the maple tree (which would have been self-sown), bent around a lilac stem.

I had to cut away more of the lilac before I could take out the maple, which had to be done in sections, due to the size.

It was very awkward work. The lilac stems are surprisingly long and bendy, and many were wrapped around each other. So much so, I found myself wondering if someone hadn’t done it deliberately at some point; perhaps they were overhanging the space between the house and the flower bed or something.

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Once the maple was out, I could see the damage it did to the lilac.

I’d already had to cut away a branch of that stem, and I’m not sure if I’ll have to cut the rest of it away. Without being regularly pruned, the stems are so long that, without the dead and dying branches (and the maple tree) holding them up, they’re just sort of… flopping.

It was while I was working on this, that the woman from home care arrived.

While she was here, she went over her form questions, double checking my husband’s mobility needs and what we’ve got around the house. She even took a look at our bathroom (higher toilet, bath chair, lots of arm bars in the tub/shower, and we made sure to bring the special hand held shower with us when we moved; you can shut the water off at the handle, rather than at the wall, and it has an extra long hose). She asked about how he finds raising his legs over the side of the tub, and brought up that, if he ever needs it, there is a transfer chair available. Which we already have, as my father needed one, and it’s still quite new.

She checked out the hospital bed as well, confirming that my husband is now able to get in and out of bed without losing his balance. He’s really enjoying that thing, and finding it very comfortable to sleep on, too.

She also went through her list, asking about cooking, shopping, laundry, etc. If the girls and I were not around to take care of this stuff, he would be able to get home care to come in to help. As things stand now, it isn’t needed.

Which brought us to the only thing that we are hoping to be able to get; a ramp, to make it easier for my husband to get in and out of the house with his wheeled walker. One of the things we learned is that, if we were to qualify for a ramp, we would need to get a contractor to give us a quote to pass on to them. Qualifying for funding is another issue. I had found out about the program online and read that there is an income cut off that can change, so they said to contact to find out what it is. I’d sent an email and finally got a response.

Based on that, my husband’s disability payments put him at too high of an income to qualify. :-/

She’s still going to see if there are other programs available, but if we can just get someone to assess the location for us, and give us the information we need, then we will have something to go on to get it done ourselves, at some point.

So that meeting went well.

After she left, I headed back out to work on the yard. I just cleaned up the trimmings I’d cut down earlier, then got out the weed trimmer – and the two 100 ft extension cords we’d been using to get power to the garage. With those, I can reach pretty much anywhere in the yard.

While I worked on that, the girls cleared out the large pile of branches I’d cleared away from the maple grove. The dead stuff went to the piles by the fire pit, but most of it was green. The green wood pile by the fire pit is already getting big, so they decided to add to the pile I’d started outside the yard, when I cleared the back of the garage.

I didn’t think to take photos before I started with the weed trimmer in some areas. After going around the house, I went around the east yard, including clearing a path to the Saskatoon bushes. When I started working on the south west yard, I was finally able to go around parts of the “spare” house in the yard (I have no idea what my mother has in mind for that building; I did ask her, but the only answer I got was that it’s for storage. !! It was originally intended to be moved to one of the other quarter sections, for one of my brothers to use as a home), and the south fence line. There had been a single mowed pathway leading to around the back of the other house. There are several curved rows of spindly trees, planted close together. I’d asked my mom about them, and she told me she planted them to be a “living fence.”

Personally, I’d like to get rid of them, as it’s really not a good place for trees. I don’t think she really thought about what they will be like, at full size.

And that doesn’t even include the two rows of fully grown trees immediately behind the other house.

Very little of the area is mowable, and no one has tried to clear in between the trees, at all. So I started clearing parts of it with the weed trimmer. There isn’t much I can do behind the other house, until we clear away the junk and fallen branches, and random cinder blocks. :-/ It’s a big job, and I wasn’t able to finish it today. Weather willing, I’ll continue tomorrow.

Once done the yard work for the day, I decided we needed to have another cookout. This time, though, I did baked potatoes.

I will post about those, separately. :-D

My husband was even able to come out and join us for a little while. Not long enough for the potatoes of finish, unfortunately, but even a little bit is good. :-)

After the fire was no longer needed to cook food, my younger daughter and I took advantage of it and started adding more from the clean up pile. Unfortunately, we seem to be adding to it much faster than we’ll be able to use it for fire pit fuel! :-D

Since we were tending the fire, anyway, we also took turns cutting down some of the logs to fire pit size lengths.

We’re going to be set for wood for a good, long time!

We’ll just have to find lots of reasons to get the fire pit going, I guess. :-D

The Re-Farmer

I’m so thrilled!!!

June 2, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

My older brother and his wife are the best.

Awesome. Amazing. Fantastic. Fabulous. Wonderful.

They came over for a visit today, and brought me an “early birthday gift.”

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I actually started crying, when I saw them pull up with the trailer, and this was on the back.

They bought us a riding mower. Fully refurbished, heavy duty enough to handle the work we’ll be making it do AND it is fully maintainable. It can even tow a small trailer!

I am thrilled beyond belief.

Of course, we had to start it up and test it out, and before I knew it, I’d mowed an entire section of the lawn.

Apparently, I had a huge grin on my face the entire time.

They have been beyond generous, since even before we moved out here. I am so incredibly happy and grateful!

I can’t wait until I can finish mowing the lawn. Which might not be until Monday, as we’re expecting rain off and on.

When they left, they even took the push mower that needs a new carburetor, to fix. And a gas powered weed trimmer to check over and hopefully get going.

I am so incredibly happy right now!

During their visit, we went around the yard to check things out (getting our feet completely soaked in the process, so we didn’t go beyond the yard). While seeing what was done in the flower garden, my SIL spotted a lovely little surprise.

One, lonely little asparagus spear. LOL There was a second one, about a foot away. Who knows? Maybe more will show up, eventually.

Nice to know they’ve survived.

We also went looking around to see if we could find the cherry trees my mother says are in the spruce grove. It’s so overgrown with trees in that area, all about the same size, we never did find anything we could be sure was cherry.

There were a couple of other trees I’d noticed blooming a couple of weeks back, and I now know what they are.

Saskatoon berries!

Yum!

These were on the list of food trees we want to have. We might some day transplant them to a better location, but for now, I’m just happy that we have them.

So we know now for sure that we have chokecherries, Saskatoon berries, some raspberries (still need to clean that area up), gooseberries and chokecherries. Hopefully, we’ll also have cherries. Then there’s the rhubarb, horseradish and struggling little asparagus.

Which is pretty darn good, all things considered.

Me, I’m still grinning from ear to ear, over the riding mower. :-D

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.

20180531trees.before.north.row.north.side

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.

20180531trees.after.north.row.north.side

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

20180531trees.before.between.rows

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.

20180531trees.during.spruce.roots

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.

20180531trees.after.between.rows

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…

20180531trees.gooseberry.bush

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!

20180531trees.pile

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.

20180531.overview

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 – a big, rotten mess!

May 31, 2018June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

In this photo from my last post, you can see part of the mess I also cleaned up today.

20180531shed.south.clear

That round thing of rotting wood is the top of a giant spool that was used for electrical cable. It was likely used as an outdoor table or something, at some point – that was a popular thing for a while. This top part, I was able to tilt up and roll away to the back of the shed.

But not before I had a very close call.

There’s a reason I stopped to clear the area around the chimney blocks instead of focusing on the trees. As I stepped towards one of the trees behind the mess, to clear away branches that had already fallen, I felt something go through the sole of my shoe.

I immediately pulled back, put away what I’d been working on, then went back to dig through the dead leaves and old grass.

I found this.

20180531mess.nails

This area became a priority clean up!

This rotten wood turned out to be part of the remains of an old pallet.

20180531mess.beginning.clearing

The above photo was taken after I’d cleared away the old pallet, and even removed a bundle of wooden stakes.

There’s a tire rim under there.

Because of course there is. There are tire rims fekkin’ everywhere around here! :-D

I’d already moved some sort of basin that was screwed onto a metal base. I have no idea what it was used for since, unlike the other basins I’ve found around the yard, it wasn’t used as a planter.

I used it to hold the rotten, some nail filled, wood I was finding.

20180531mess.basin

Then, when that was full, I used the blue … barrel? … you can see in the previous picture to hold the pieces of wood I found under the top of the wire spool.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After moving out a whole bunch of rotten and rotting wood, I tried to move the wagon that was leaning against the chimney bricks.

20180531mess.wagon1

It promptly disintegrated.

The top half wasn’t as bad, but when I moved the bottom half, even one of the wheels just sloughed off.

20180531mess.wagon2

I wonder how many years it sat there?

After I moved it, I found something that brought a smile to my face.

My stone “ostrich egg” !!

20180531mess.stone.egg

My late bother and I found this in a field somewhere, when I was a kid, and brought it home. The size and shape made us think of an ostrich egg, so that’s what we called it. It actually turned out to be quite handy. My mother used to make sauerkraut in a big clay crock (which I believe we still have in the basement!). After layering the cabbage, she put an upside down plate on it to keep the cabbage in the liquid. This rock (after being cleaned thoroughly, of course) was put on top of the plate to weigh it down.

I’m so happy to see my rock is still around. :-D

Then I moved on to the mess under the top of the wire spool.

20180531mess.wirespool.bottom

The base of the wire spool itself was completely rotten, falling apart as I pulled it up.

Then I raked up the decaying leaves and whatnot that was under it.

Whoever put the spool there took enough care to place it on bricks.

20180531mess.wirespool.bricks

With enough time, not even that was enough to keep it from rotting.

I did find another mystery, though. Can you see it? Just above the brick at the bottom, right.

Seashells.

There was a pair of seashells under there.

I just… accept mysteries like this, now. :-D

I took out the bricks, cleared away around the chimney bricks – found some more small bricks, and raked around it. Here is how it looks, now.

20180531mess.after1

The little stools had been leaning against the chimney bricks. They really should be tossed, as they’re old to the point of unstable, but they can stay here for now.

20180531mess.after2

I forget what the long clay “pipes” are for.

All cleared!

And – most importantly! – no more rotting wood with nails sticking up.

Back to clearing the trees!

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

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