Last weekend was spent going around in circles! We are trying to get about three acres cleared of cheat grass. The stuff has totally taken over the fields and there is nothing left but cheatgrass and thistles. I tried to plant grass about a decade ago without any success. It got choked out by the cheat grass. Our plan is to keep killing the cheat grass until we cut down on the number of seeds in the soil. I will keep spraying Round-up and plowing the field under until we just don’t get much cheatgrass emerging. We got a really good kill on the grass and I was trying out the new plow that the Gingerman brought over. It is an old rotating or flop plow that allows for the direction to be changed. It took a few hours to get the number of pulls on the rope figured out. It cycles through a transport/lower/lower/flip cycle depending on where you are in the rope pull cycle. Plus, there are a couple of springs that need to be replaced. I had to get off and kick the levers every twenty minutes. I do have the springs on our grocery list so I do not forget them. It took me two days to plow, disc and harrow the three acres. When the equipment is only 2-4 feet wide it can take a while!
Annmarie went out and checked on the bees. They are doing great and finding all different colors of pollen. They are not even bothering to eat any of the sugar water we put out for them. We pick up our second hive in the evening of May 1.
The new town chickens we were given are so stupid. They keep flying into the yard where the dogs are residing. Every day, Annmarie or I chase some chickens out of the yard. The kids came down to stay the weekend and they bring our young Border Collie, Chance, just harasses the chickens all day long. She has not killed any yet. Mouse killed two last weekend. Honestly, we warned the chickens that the yard needed to be a no fly zone for their own safety and they ignored us. The chickens are just too stupid to live.
The weather forecast was for rain all weekend. I figured I had better get the 50 bags of soil out of the back of the pickup before they absorb any more water! I loaded them all up last week alone and they were not that heavy when I put them in there. I was able to get the four new blueberry bins filled and ready for plants. I had to refill our regular bins. Every couple of years they each need a bag of soil to top them off again. I added one new bin to our herb area and think we can get another 3-4 bins squeezed in there. I am not sure we will fill them all with herbs but we can put in low growing veggies. I was also able to fill in a new six footer bin we purchased last year for strawberries.
We had two more new bins in the berry area. One is a new asparagus bin. I cut the bottom of the bin out, it was rusted out, to allow the plants to dig down further into the ground if they want. This bin we are not going to over plant with any strawberries. The strawberries tried to choke out our asparagus in the first bin we planted. The asparagus is still alive but we were just able to keep the plants alive last year. We did not get any asparagus from it. The plan is to just plant a straight asparagus only bin. Once the asparagus is well established I might look into some type of flower that is compatible that will just grow on the surface and is a low to the ground and a late bloomer.
The six foot bin was for more strawberries. I had planted some in the garden area in with the squash as we had more plants than space. So I transplanted them to the new bin and I expect them to fill in the entire bin by the end of the summer. They are pretty aggressive. We did get a lot of strawberries last year! I really need to build a little arbor around them so I can hang bird netting from it and it will be much easier to move out of the way when picking.
After fifty bags I was ready to be done! I am not as young as I used to be and I can feel it these days. For some reason my knee started to bother me. I think I was crouching down in the gravel and forgot I was old. The rain held off on Friday until I got back from town.
I needed to protect the wild rose bushes in the driveway and was going to buy 8 foot T-posts and some horse fencing. But by the time I priced it I was going to need $400 worth of fencing and posts to circle three wild rose bushes. We have to protect the rose bushes from the alpaca. They love eating rose bushes. They will eat rose bushes before anything else. I ended up buying four 16’ cow panels at $33/each instead. I set them up in a square like shape and they are standing up by themselves currently. I had to turn them upside down so the large openings were on the ground. This lets the quail and pheasants crawl through the fence to hide and eat from the quail block. I will probably toss in some old trimmed tree limbs into the enclosure to create a hiding spot. We have been working on creating more habitat for the quail all over the farm and it is paying off. We have a native population of about 150-200 quail now.
I was able to get eight bags of Sackcrete mixed by hand and poured into the hole I dug by the concrete weir. When you back the water up by the pump, the water was leaking out of the dirt berm. I am hopeful this will stop that. If not then we will line the pond with a liner to allow us to fill it up with water for irrigation. I cannot move the irrigation pump alone, it is just too heavy. I need to get the pump out of the way so I can pull the wooden supports out and then jump down into the concrete weir and dig out all of the mud! I have not cleaned it out for a long time and it has about a foot of mud built up in it. All of that has to come out so I don’t have to fight mud and grit on the sprinkler end of the irrigation. I went to town again as I needed a figure 8 Clevis so that I can pull the new plow. I want to plow those two fields I sprayed. I of course could not find the one I know I own somewhere. It was raining by the time I got back from town.
On Sunday the Gingerman helped me move the old irrigation pump and I was able to pull the boards off the weir. I am going to have to get some all thread and drill through the boards to pull them all back together. I had sandwiched eight 2×4 together in two bunches to make a platform for the pump. They are starting to come apart. After that we went over to the Gingerman’s place so that I could crawl into an old water tank. I needed to install a plug so that we can get the tank ready for our fire suppression truck. We just need to get the tank up on the truck, clean it out and get everything hooked up. We have most of the pieces already.
Overall it rained over 0.27” this weekend as of publication time.
It looks like I am just going to have to squeeze in an update whenever I can. Last week I worked on getting the garden area all sprayed with Roundup. I am just waiting to see how much it killed before deciding to hit it with anything else. If you get the broadleaf plants when they are small sometimes the Roundup will kill them even though it is not designed for them. Our driveway and the fence lines are finally starting to turn brown. I have a couple of small spots in the driveway I missed. I will need to do some touch up spraying to get everything. I need to spray a lot more around the gazebo. I have to kill the hillside so I can cover it with rocks. I need to make sure the pad does not shift.
I sprayed the two fields down by the old water pump and it got a great kill. I need to hit it with the plow soon. My plan is to keep killing it all summer to knock down the cheatgrass seed. But to do that I will need to add some water to it this summer so the cheatgrass can keep sprouting.
We have someone coming out now and working on our yard. This is great as it will free me up to work on the farm, Mr Golfpro. He made sure and taped up his fingers the first time to ensure he did not get any blisters, he had a golf game the next day. He is excited to be able to get out and about. I even showed him how to use the tractor to fill in the dog’s new hole to China. It was another impressive feat by the border collie and border terrier.
I spent most of last weekend working on the rock wall. I am trying to spend 2-3 hours during the week after work working on the wall. My goal is to get it finished this month. It is getting easier but I still come inside soaked in sweat after an hour or two on the wall. It makes that mini excavator look better and better. Unfortunately, I will be done soon!
I did spend Easter weekend working on the fence down by the cattle guard. My mother-in-law has been buying quail blocks and trying to drop them over the fence. In an effort to not have to cut her out of the fence I decided to shift the fence and open up the dead area in the corner of the field. This way she can just set the quail block down near the rose bushes. It took me two days of solid work to get the fence corners installed, wooden posts reset and all of the T posts hand pounded into the ground before I could move the fence and then retighten the road side. It has been a long time since I built fence all alone. It takes a lot longer when there is only one of you.
I went in and bought 100 cubic feet of soil for the elevated garden beds. I just need to get it out of the back of the pickup and into the beds! This will take a few hours. I can only get close with the tractor then I will have to hand carry them to get them into the garden. This will have to be this upcoming weekend. I also have to purge and circulate vinegar through our instant hot water tank on Friday. When it gets too much buildup it starts overheating. I will clean it first and if that does not fix it then I will have to tear it apart and clean out the bugs out of the fan but that was just done last year. It made it four years before that was needed so I am sure it just needs descaled.
Stewart Creek Somethings 