Manure manouvering

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

So how was your weekend? Mine was crappy–as in filled with manure.

We’d made some progress on the turnaround so far this spring, picking up the rocks and rubble and flattening out the piles of dirt. However, I wasn’t very confident in the quality of that dirt, so before I started to plant anything, I wanted to give it a boost of nutrition. Like any decent farm, ours came with that barnyard fixture, the manure pile, so we have lots of natural fertilizer.

The turnaround is the size of some people’s backyards, so a decent quantity of manure was required. Likewise, there’s a decent distance between the pile out behind the barn and the turnaround at the front of the house.

My Dad left his trailer here a few weeks ago, and with the help of Wiley and his front end loader–my skills are much improved over last year–I brought three full loads of manure up to the garden.

The manure isn’t smelly anymore, but the lesson of the weekend is that it can be a bit slippery. I had a couple of close calls standing in the trailer shoveling it off.

This probably wasn’t quite what my Dad had in mind for his trailer when he left it with us, but he’s a good sport. So good in fact that he brought his rototiller up to the farm and went back and forth over the turnaround mixing the manure into the soil. My Mom pitched in too spreading the soil around the edges and picking out the rocks–lots and lots of rocks.

Thanks to my parents, our tractor, the trailer and our convenient manure pile, the turnaround is now ready for planting, so I guess my weekend wasn’t that crappy after all. Pretty productive, in fact.

How was your weekend?

Memories of Muriel

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I’ve said that I didn’t do any gardening last year, and that’s not entirely true. I planted one thing: this lilac.

This lilac came from our first house. It had lived for six years in the flower garden Matt and I made in the front yard. It never bloomed. It didn’t really grow very much. But I nursed it along because this plant is another one of my special treasures.

This lilac was a shoot that I transplanted from a beautiful bush my grandmother had growing in her backyard. She was always very proud of her lilac and its prolific double blossoms. A few of the grandchildren took shoots to plant in their own gardens.

Last spring as we sold our first house and moved to the farm, I carefully dug up the lilac, cleared a space in the overgrown garden at the front of the house and transplanted it.

Over the past year, it has finally started to thrive. It’s grown taller and bushier. And for the first time ever, it’s blooming.

This is a banner year for lilacs at the farm and it turns out we have lots: a large bush outside our bedroom window, others scattered around the gardens, a hedge stretching nearly from the house to the pond. However, this, our smallest plant, is my favourite.

Landscaping… the long list

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I cannot bring myself to write a list of everything I want to do for renovations in the house, but for some reason I have no problem doing a master list for the landscaping outside.

Alright, I’ll admit it. That’s a little overwhelming.

There’s obviously a lot to be done, so it’s a matter of prioritizing what part of our 129 acres we want to focus on. This year, it’s the residential area.

And just to make things a little clearer than the animation above, here’s the plan for this year.

That’s manageable, right? As you saw at the beginning of the week, we’ve already made some progress on the turn around, the flowerbeds and the pond shore. Maybe by the end of the growing season, we’ll have the property in shape.

The long term plan will take who knows how long.

I’ve decided my goal when it comes to outside work is to transition from landscaping to gardening. Weeding flowerbeds is much more manageable than building them.

How do you handle renovations and landscaping at your house? Do you write everything down or just keep a mental list? What are you hoping to accomplish this summer?

Death by landscaping

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I am dead.

I’ve been working on a lovely introduction to this post referencing the Secret Garden and the joy of tending a neglected garden. But it’s not coming together for me, and I lack the mental power to make it work. Because I am dead.

You never heard any of the characters from the Secret Garden say, “I am dead. This garden has killed me.” Let’s be honest here, Ben probably said it, but Frances Hodgson Burnett did not include it in her story of love, childhood and horticulture.

In my story of love, adulthood, responsibility, country living and horticulture, landscaping has started.

The turn around has gone from mountain goat terrain to a blank slate, thanks mostly to our farmer with his heavy equipment.

I’ve weeded one flowerbed and my mother-in-law tackled two more. (All of the plant pots were left by the last owners. The plants are still alive, so I’ll be planting them soon on the blank slate of the turn around).

My father-in-law trimmed some of the trees and stumps around the pond. We still have a ways to go before we can actually mow the shore, but I’ve staked out the new fire pit, and we have lots of wood ready to burn.

Matt, my Dad and I dismantled one of our biggest rock piles on the property–and it only took us four hours.

I started building a new flower garden around the well head. And this is when I died.

Last year’s landscaping efforts were limited to some very cursory grass cutting. The property was unkempt when we bought it, and our neglect over the past year while we focused on the basement reno made it worse.

The amount of work required to bring a garden back after years and years of neglect is never mentioned in the Secret Garden. Sure there’s a bit of pruning and weeding, but mostly it’s romance and roses.

In the category of things get worse before they get better, even our efforts at clean up have led to more mess. Drilling the new well and trenching new waterlines destroyed one established flowerbed and left lumpy piles of very hard dirt in its place. Burning brush and scrap lumber as we’ve tried to pick up around the property resulted a mountain of ash and a half scorched spruce tree.

Landscaping was at the top of the list on my home goals for this year, and I will get a handle on the situation outside, even if it kills me.

Doe a deer

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s apparently wild kingdom week here on the blog, and I’ve saved the best for last.

For the past week or so, deer have been grazing in the back field. They show up every night around 8 o’clock and eat their bed time snack before heading back into the bush.

Some nights there’s been only one. Usually there’s a group of three or four. The high point was a herd of seven.

We can walk partway along the back lane towards the field without them bolting. Usually we just watch them with binoculars and try not to spook them.

Fortunately, Matt’s brother, who came to visit last weekend, has a better camera than we do–and is also apparently a bit of a deer whisperer–because he was able to get quite close and get the best pictures so far for us. Thanks, Greg!

“I could be Thor!”

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Pop quiz:

You’re walking in the forest and you see this tree.

What do you do?

Marvel over the crack and continue on with the hike. Nature will take care of itself.
Marvel over the crack and make a note to invite your father-in-law over with his chainsaw.
Marvel over the crack and decide that it’s too dangerous to leave and go find a saw to deal with it yourself.
Marvel over the crack. Poke sticks in the crack to try and lever the tree off the stump. Fail. Decide that this tree must come down right this minute. Decide that the best tool will be a sledge hammer. Saw, pshaw.

So my answer would probably be ‘B,’ but of course my resident lumberjack saw an opportunity to advance from his most recent experience felling a tree with an ax to be even more manly. The words “I could be Thor!” did in fact come out of his mouth.

A couple of hard whacks popped the tree off its stump–all while I watched and photographed from a safe distance. However, the tree is still standing more vertical than horizontal, branches tangled in his closest neighbour.

We are now moving on to plan B.

What would you do? Any idea what made the tree crack like that? We had a big ice storm the other week, so it could have been the weight of the ice, but other trees that came down didn’t crack horizontally across the trunk. Anyone else living with someone who fancies himself a god?

Having a blast

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I suspect that the universe is trying to tell me that it’s not yet barbecue season. When I fired up the grill for the first time this year, I had a bit more fire than I expected.

Further investigation revealed additional flames around the pipe fittings on the underside.

Fortunately, the combustion was confined to fire and nothing actually exploded. Unfortunately, barbecue was not to be on the menu, and we had to rely on indoor appliances to salvage dinner.

Our barbecue is an old hand-me-down, so it may be time to replace it. However, I don’t like to give in that easily. Do you think it can be fixed? Tightening the fittings or maybe adding some teflon tape is a lot easier and cheaper than buying a new barbecue. Has anyone else had a problem like this? I’m open to advice for repairing barbecues or for grilling steaks. Any suggestions?

Frozen out

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Winter isn’t going down easy this year. Spring had made some gains over the last week with four days straight of rain and above zero temperatures. However, today, winter struck back, driving the temperature back down below freezing and turning the rain to ice.

Fortunately, Matt and I made it home before the roads got too slippery. Unfortunately, that wasn’t soon enough for our gate, whose padlock was frozen solid. My poor little car was locked out.

Matt and I each keep a bottle of lock de-icer in our cars specifically for this situation. However, smashing the ice that had frozen the chain to the post, chipping at the ice around the lock with my car key and squirting most of my bottle into the keyhole had little effect on the lock.

Abandoning my car, I headed off on the long, cold, windy, wet walk to the house. Did I mention it was cold? Fortunately, I’ve learned some things since moving to the country and was already wearing my rubber boots–with my nice suit trousers attractively tucked into the top.

I was able to get into the house much more easily than I was able to get into the property. I changed into warmer clothes, ate some Easter chocolates and contemplated my life while I waited for the kettle to boil.

This new country life I lead sees me outside with the wind blowing the freezing rain nearly horizontal, trotting down the driveway carrying a steaming kettle.

It took just a few splashes of hot water to release the lock.

Soon enough I was inside, warm and dry. The lock also got to spend some time in the house warming up and drying out.

Hopefully the padlock recovers and there’s no issue getting into the property tomorrow night–I don’t want any delay in starting my weekend!

What a difference a year makes

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

This is not this year’s forsythia. This time last year after a mild winter and an early spring, the forsythia behind the driveshed was in full bloom.

This year, as the snow is sticking around and spring is dragging her heels, the buds are closed up tight and no blossoms have arrived yet.

Two weeks in a row now, my mid-week post has been my “be on the lookout for spring” post. As we’ve moved into another cold snap over the past couple of days–complete with daily snow streamers–the search is still on.

Matt the lumberjack

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Like Good Friday dinner and chocolate bunnies, lumberjacking seems to have become an Easter tradition for us. Last year on Easter weekend, we spent pretty much the whole time cutting and splitting firewood.

This year, it was only one tree, but traditional logging techniques were Matt’s method of choice.

This spruce tree has not been doing well. It needed to be taken down, and now was the time before the sap started to flow and the trees around it came into bud.

We don’t yet have a chainsaw of our own, but Matt’s been looking for an excuse to chop down a tree with an ax, so he was quite enthused to go to work.

The trunk, now stripped of boughs, is laying beside the fire pit. We’ll cut it into lengths and split it one day when we can borrow Matt’s dad’s saws and splitter–the novelty of lumberjacking lasts only so long.

How did you spend your Easter weekend? Did the Easter bunny pay you a visit? We had lots of chocolates, including my favourite Cadbury cream eggs. Are there any other wannabe lumberjacks out there? Do you have any unique Easter traditions?