May 16, 2020 Mid-Spring Rains

It rained most days this past week. But enough work was in it to tire ourselves out.

We started the week on Sunday, but not doing labor. I found a fellow in Camas who had some scaffolding frames for sale. They are pretty beat-up but not so much they needed repair and since we have been looking for a solution to putting up the house it made sense to invest in the right tools. We also acquired a few more important parts for the house build from Craigslist. We found the house wrap, some heavy duty wire, and a very nice weeding cart.

On Monday we added another raised bed to the Kitchen Garden and Ann moved the few remaining plants from the Flower Garden and planted them in the new bed. We have two fairly well matched planters full of great plants. These will become the public entrance to the Kitchen Gardens someday.

Monday morning our son Jack and I began using these frames to take down a one-hundred, twenty foot tree which sit about twenty feet from the back corner of the new Farmhouse. It was so big that the branches over-hung the walls of the Pantry, so it had to go before we could put a roof up. Part of our house building and farming plan has always been to remove most of the diseased trees from the home-site and there are places where full sun might be better than shade. Most of the large hardwoods on the Farm are in pretty poor shape and dangerous so they have to go. We cut and burned all of the branches we could cut safely and it took two days to not get the entire job done. Some of the central branches were just a bit too dangerous to take down whole, especially with the wind blowing from the wrong direction. The tree is small enough now to put the roof up now and when we rent the man-lift to put the roof on the Farmhouse we will also use it to shorten up the highest branches without putting other things in jeopardy. While Jack and I wore ourselves out cutting and burning the tree Ann spent her time in the Strawberry Patch of the Kitchen Garden weeding.

The Strawberry Patch is just about ready for early picking. We have four types of berry plants, all of which are of the ever-bearing type (meaning that they give fruit for months rather than one solid week). The Ozark Beauty berries is the first to bear fruit and these are going to be ready very soon. This is my favorite berry variety because they give very nice looking berries from May until October. Eventually we may replace all of our berries with this one sort, but for now we have three other varieties. All of them are good. The Shuksan and Fort Laramie berries aren't pretty, but perfect for canning. But for eating the Ozark berries are just a bit prettier. This week we ate berries straight out of the garden. All about an inch and a half large, red throughout, very low acid, and with enough sugar to be pleasing. We will be putting the Produce Stand up in a week or so.

Wednesday was spent clearing weeds with our tractor's roto-tiller. The area behind the home-site and

The attic floor goes above the Bedroom
section of the Farmhouse.

the Flower Garden area in MacGreggor's Market Garden needed cleaning up so the best tool for the job is the roto-tiller because it mulches the weeds into the soil.  Our goal is to never let a weed go to seed so we're doing more than one thing by tilling the weeds in because the weeds become mulch. Jack ran around burning the weeds growing under and around our fencing until our propane burner ran out of gas. The Farm is looking better every week and the soils around the Farm are noticeably better this year than last.

On Thursday we left the Farm for a couple of hours to buy some beneficial seeds to throw out on the newly cleared, but unused, ground so that weeds wouldn't simply grow back. The seed we bought is of the type which both flowers, self-seeds, and brings nutrients and organic matter to the soils when tilled in. The ground we have open will look good and be improved once these seeds come up, but we need a bit of dry weather so that we can put the seed out.

Beth and Wendy planting.

Jack came on Friday to help us put the flooring on the new house attic. Half of the house has an attic space above it and we designed the house to have as much storage space as we can, so the attic is a very large room in our plans. The attic floor is made from the same heavy wood as the floor of the house and it took all day to cut the panels and get them nailed down. We will be putting up the attic walls and finishing the outer walls early next week. Then we will be ready to put a roof on the house.

While were doing this Beth and Wendy, two of the girls involved in helping Ann during the period last year when I was injured, and who have been here a few time since (most recently having planted all of our potato crop) came to put in their Victory Garden plants. They have tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, and lettuces out there. We will be putting a duck fence barrier up for them next week so things don't get snacked to death. We still have plenty of really great dirt to give if you want to grow some food for yourselves or others. Just get in touch and we'll find you a spot. All for free.

Aside from the great progress we made cleaning things up this week, we had a fairly good week with the chicken and duck eggs too. Unfortunately we lost one of our favorite hens but we found a few new ducks to pick up Saturday, so life goes on happily.

Next week the plan is to finish the framing on the house. The weather forecast is for dry conditions. Things are moving along very well.