garden

Trying to winterize

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Wednesday Mr Golfpro came out to help me with the garden. It needs to be winterized. I had planted some black raspberries from a friend at work and they did really well but they were all over the ground. I had never bothered to put a wire for them to grow upright. So we installed two new rows of raspberries. One is the new large great thorned berries and the other are transplanted cuttings from our thornless berries. The screwy part was we still had berries on the bushes! I could not believe it when we got inside the plants and found raspberries. I at the ones we found, they were good! We used the small wooden pecker poles and were able to just drive them in the ground with a post hole driver and not dig a hole. This does require quite a bit of effort but between the two of us we got it done. I did end up with a large blister on each hand that tore open before we were done. I know have bandaids on both hands to cover up the open blisters.

There were about 12’ of Sunchokes that we pulled up and tossed over the fence. The ground is pretty dry so we did not dig any up yet. It is supposed to rain on Thursday and Friday so I will dig them up after that. We disturbed enough of them from pulling up the stalks to fill four large paper bags. I expect to dig up at least six more boxes and this is from a pretty small area. These things are amazing at just growing! We were not able to get all of the garden finished but we did get the netting off of the berries and that is a huge issue so it should be a lot easier now to finish up the trimming and getting every thing tied to the wire. On the raspberries we cut out all of the canes that got trimmed and tied last year and then tie up all of the new growth and cut it to height so it will bear fruit next year. The two new rows we cut at six feet high. I was taught to cut them off at four feet. We will see if there is a difference next year.

Before we could get started on the garden we needed to play Jengo in the machine shed. I needed to park the hay laden trailer under cover so it did not get rained on and the machine shed has a cultivator torn apart in one bay, one bay is tools and welding, one has grain and wood and the other two have equipment and spray. So we put all of the hay equipment in the machine shed near the back. I was able to get the new mini excavator into the first bay so I can work on it. The second bay now has the hay trailer and we moved the cultivator over to the bay with wood and grain so I can finish repairing it. There is also space for both tractors now so they can spend the winter under cover. We had to move the old pickup and I need to see about getting it to the junkyard. We filled up the trash can and moved everything to the appropriate bay. I really need to spend about4-6 hours putting all of the tools away in their appropriate spots so there is some open counter space. I will get to that eventually! It was a good day. We even got all of the tools from the greenhouse assembly put away.

I ordered a new chicken door for the chicken coop. I found another dead chicken and am only getting two eggs per day again. I only counted 10 chickens but it was daytime and they tend to spread out. The door should be here on Friday and it has to be installed so that we at least get enough eggs to feed us through the winter. At the rate the predators are killing them I will not have any chickens.

Haying and yes it’s October

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Well I finally took another staycation and my list that I put together is probably about three weeks worth of work and I only have one week. On top of that I am still haying! It is a little late to be haying in our area but it was raining last month and I was busy. I have had to turn it twice already and I think I will need to turn it two more times for it to get dry. When the temperature is only getting up to 65F it takes a lot longer to dry out.

I am cutting the Naked Gardener’s fields and I had to take a couple of hours today and work on the access point to the lower field. There is a rock bluff that kept getting more exposed and I just about could not get down with the tractor. I took the land plane over and spent a couple of hours adding a bunch of dirt in the hopes to even out the area. It turned out pretty good. I need it to not wash out now due to rain. Since we don’t get much rain in this area anyways my chances are pretty good. It is even enough now I think I will be able to pull a trailer down to load up hay. I just need it to not rain until Thursday. I will be done haying on Tuesday but Mr Golfpro is coming out on Wednesday so we can work on the garden and get the berries cut and the sunchokes harvested.

I wanted to get a picture of the weight box before I started to do anything with it. It needs a new frame welded to it so the 3-point hitch parts quit bending and tearing away. I noticed that the sheet metal was only tack welded in places so I use the wire feed welder to weld all of the sheet metal joints first. Once that was done I cut my four corners and tried to weld one corner on with the wire welder. I need more rod and need to use the rod welder for this step. I had to ask the son-in-law, Gingerman, for some help and I am glad I did. I thought I was going to have to remove the wire welder hook up, nope, turns out you just have to plug in the rod welder and ground into the appropriate spots and the wire feeder welder portion can stay attached! I would have spent 30 minutes swearing and removing the wire feed portion. The Gingerman was looking at me sideways when I asked for help converting it. I don’t think he realized I had never done it before and prior to taking the welding class at the local college a few years ago I had never welded. I can do a lot of things but that is a fairly new endeavor. I don’t really want to say skill as I am not very skillful but stuff does stick together when I weld it!

I made my death pepper this weekend. I ground up the hot peppers that have been drying on the breeze porch for the last year and grind them into a dust. This is always painful. This year I did take a damp tea towel and place it over the grinder. This worked great until I had to check on the spicy concoction. It had two or three types of hot peppers and I managed to not puke. It was so hot I had a couple of nasty coughing jags from inhaling it. Annmarie left early for her trip after coming into the kitchen. She did not want to be in the house. Every time I do this she reminds me I should actually wear a protective mask. I think about it, but my sinuses were really clear after I was done!

Sunchokes for the win

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On Sunday Mr Rainman came out again. We are now starting at 0900 so it is a little warmer when we are working. It was quite pleasant, I was able to work with just a long sleeve shirt and a wool cap on my head. There were still a few get ready for winter items to clear up before we could work on the garden and lavender. The plan on Saturday afternoon was to work on the lavender. It needs trimmed up again. But the longer I worked on the berm the more time I had time to think and prioritize. So we went out to the barn first thing and finished setting up all of the chutes and feeders. They were still outside and in the hay rooms from when it was dug out. There are no sheep on the property but we will have to bring them back in three weeks and then they will need to be sorted so I can take some to the livestock auction. We also tossed out food into all of the feeders and then tossed out bedding. The barn is all ready for the sheep. There are a couple of overhead lights that do not work, the ones in the hay rooms being the most needed. The damn raccoons have torn some of the wires out by crawling up and down the walls. I need to put in more zip ties and anchors that I screw into the walls so the wires cannot be pulled. I am not running conduit for those 12v wires. I will add that to my list but honestly it will not happen until I get the raspberries, blackberries and trees all trimmed up. I need about another month for all the leaves to finish falling off of everything before I can do the trimming.

We then filled the feeders for the pregnant cows and the two feeders for the feeder cows down below. We used all of the round bales from the second cutting at the neighbor’s. There were still a couple of moist ones but there was no mold and none of the bales were warm/hot. We managed to get the truly wet ones fed out immediately and the cows just ate them. So in a couple of weeks I will have to actually feed out some of the large bales of hay we purchased. I am super happy that we are not having to touch the purchased hay until mid December. That bodes well for maybe not having to purchase any hay next year for winter.

We now Winter is near when the quail start moving down towards the houses. We feed them during the winter and there are more buildings/shelter down near the houses for them to wait out the bad storms. So there is a large covey hanging around that we see every day. They are super noisy! You can always hear them usually before you can see them.

Once we had all of that done we had to see how our Sunchokes did. I planted them for the first time this summer. I planted about 30 small tubers. The plants got almost twelve feet tall and the sunflower bloomed very late. It was the very last flower we had available for the bees. I am not sure if it was due to the time I planted the tubers or if they are naturally late bloomers. I am unsure but we will know next year. Mr Rainman and I started to dig up the tubers after cutting off the dead stalks. I had read that you needed to be careful with sunchokes as they can turn into a weed and can be very invasive. Wow! We dug up almost 80# of tubers from a single 15 feet row of tubers. I planted one tuber about every six inches initially. It was crazy! We just kept pulling them out of the ground. There was no way we got all of them when we were digging despite going over the area several times. All of the wield small or shovel cut tubers ended up being the ones we replanted into the same row. I sent a three gallon bucket home with Mr Rainman and we put the rest in the root cellar. I did plant a row in the yard near the newly installed side fence. I want to plant a six by six foot patch on the other side of the fence gate but I was running out of steam. I will do that in the spring. I will need to put in a couple of posts and some wire to hold up the tall stalks so they don’t fall onto the house. Annmarie and I have not eaten any of the Sunchokes yet. The plan is this next week to peel and boil a batch and see how they taste. If we like them then we will probably plant some more. I have read online where people mix them in with potatoes to add texture and a nutty flavor to their mashed potatoes.

Once Mr Rainman left I took the Kubota tractor out to work on the culvert crossing in field #4b. The spring ditch is so deep now that you can no longer drive a tractor across it. The back half of the culvert was torn out in the last flood. The reason it got torn out was I did not install a rock wall face on that side. It was one of those things I was going to come back and finish later. The side that had the rock face survived the flood but the other side did not. It took a lot more dirt than I thought it would to get the back half built up. I did bring in two loads of very large rocks to place near the culvert. I need about eight more loads to complete that entire side but my chest was not going to allow it. The nice thing about the weekend was it was the first one in ages where I was able to work the entire weekend without stopping early to rest. Things are improving.

Winter is coming eventually

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I think Winter will show up eventually but it is slow in arriving. We have had a couple of hard freezes and I have actually scraped ice off of the vehicle windshields twice. Mr Rainman came out last weekend for a couple of days to help me. It is nice to have the help and I am still healing up from the pneumonia, a little pericarditis tends to slow you down some. The Winter chores need to get done so we worked on that Saturday. We stripped the garden clean and rearranged the beds so that different vegetables would be planted in different bins in the spring. I dug up the other half of the potato bin. I did decide to leave the beets in the ground that I planted late this fall. The greenery is still intact and has not wilted so I am going to let them grow/hibernate until the greenery dies. I planted one bin three weeks earlier than the other and it is doing much better. We had never planted beets before so it is a great experiment. Once that was done and we had the garden area ready for Winter the bulbs were next.

I had an entire vegetable crisper bin in the fridge full of flower bulbs. It was time to get them planted before the ground froze solid. Since the rock wall is only completed on the right hand side of the bridge I only wanted to plant bulbs on that side. After much contemplation and input from various sources I am going to have to rip out about 15 feet of completed rock wall on the left hand side. When I dug down I found the original base stones and I was using those as they lay. The wall is kicking out the further I get toward the barn. So I need to tear it back and scoot it closer towards the house and keep it in line with the right hand side wall. I may even put up a stake with a string! We tore down the fence and I had to bring over five loads of dirt and a load of rocks to finish getting the flower bed lined and height correct. We opened up the packages and read the planting instructions to determine the height of the final plant. We tossed out the packages based on height then laid out all of the bulbs on the surface of the dirt. Once we had them all laid out we planted them. Surprisingly, there were a lot of bulbs. We ended up planting a bulb almost every six inches throughout the entire flower bed. The tallest flowers are toward the edge of the wall so they will shade the short plants. I realize that appears backwards when you are driving in and walking down the sidewalk but from the house we will see more flowers. Most of the short bulbs are early risers and like partial shade. We will know next year how they do but they are in the ground! Once that was done we laid out the fence over the top of the entire flower bed to keep Chance from digging up the bulbs. So far it has been one week and she has not dug up any bulbs. She has another hole to China started and it is deep enough now that when she goes in it she disappears. This hole is of course in the front yard.

Mr Rainman had to leave after a few hours so I spent the rest of the day on the tractor working on building up our dirt levee over by the old chicken coop. I had extended the hill last year but the cows had torn it down to only about six inches high. This time I piled up the dirt and then proceeded to drive on it every time I went back for another scoop of dirt. This really helped compact it down. Once I had the entire thing done I ran over it again in two directions to compact it one more time. I am only looking for about 16” of berm. Those last two horrible floods could have been diverted back into the stream bed with a 12” berm. I am just trying to get the flood precautions all finished. I have one more thing to do, there is a downed tree in the dry creek bed that is backing up water. I need to cut the middle out of the downed branch so it doesn’t create an artificial dam and flood out field #1. Once I get that done all of the flood precautions that should help if we get another bad flood will be in place. There is no guarantee they will work but honestly, I would rather do all the work, guess and take precautions and never find out if they were necessary! It has taken me years to rebuild all of the stuff torn out, or up or altered by the flooding.

Sheep moved, projects advancing

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I went over to Hermiston and took the pregnant ewes with me. I unloaded them into their temporary pasture and then worked on setting up the electric fence just inside the vinyl fence. The sheep have never been around an electric fence before. It has been years since we used one on our place. I just keep cross fencing the farm so I don’t have to move any chargers or electrical wire around. I had to do the part directly across from the neighboring field first. As soon as the ewes came out of the trailer the herd across the driveway came running over to see what was up. So both herds wanted to stand next to their respective fences. I was afraid the ewes would just hop through the vinyl fence. I got it up and then hooked up the charger and ground wire. I forgot to bring a tester and I really did not want to grab the wire, luckily several ewes tried to scoot closer to the vinyl fence and it was readily apparent that the electricity was on! Before I could get the next section up and energized I had one ewe try three times to get to the vinyl fence. Everyone else had caught on to the consequences and was avoiding the outer edge of the field. I think she got the message after the third shock as she just ambled into the field to be with everyone else and ignored the herd across the driveway.

Winter is coming so I planted a bin full of garlic and looked at tossing the green beans and tomatoes over the fence for the chickens but they are not frozen down yet and I may get one last picking off of each one. My beets I started in the fall are growing but they have some weird brown leaf thing that is stunting them. I am not sure what it is but it is not a bug. I am hopeful we can go another month without a hard lasting freeze so they will continue to grow. I will pick them once the leaves wilt down. I dug up half our potatoes and got almost 20#. We did way better this year by switching bins. Next year we are moving every single type of plant to a different bin. We win also be testing the soil and adding nutrients as needed in the spring. I will dig up the other potatoes in the next 2-4 weeks.

I did disconnect all of our yard and garden hoses. I blew out the lines going to all of our garden and to the lavender plants. By the time I was done we have several piles of hose with 15 hoses total being used. The tree orchard is slanted one direction so I just opened up the drain plugs at the end of each of the three lines.

The Gingerman and I removed the old dishwasher and installed and leveled the new one. I thought this would be a quick process. If you call a solid two hours to remove the old one, clean up the floor, change out the electric cord to the new dishwasher, install the new one, level it and then attach it to the underside of the countertop so it doesn’t rattle around fast then yeah it was quick.

We then set up the table saw and ran all of the bathroom cabinet pieces through it so I could hopefully take some of the wow out of the pieces. It helped. I won’t really know until I start the assembly but now I can actually start the assembly. I will be finding my Kreg tool that lets me drill pilot holes on an angle so I can glue and screw the pieces together.

I hav two main projects left, the gazebo floor and the greenhouse. It’s a race now to see what gets done.

I did finally capitulate and find a varmint rifle for the tractor. I needed something that could just be beat up. I ended up getting a single action break open 243, one shot with a Vortex scope and synthetic stock. I have a waterproof ammo carrier on the stock of the rifle. The entire setup was around $500. Now I just need to weld the holder onto the tractor and get it mounted. I bent one of the bucket support arms a couple of years ago and kept it thinking I may have a use for it in the future. I am going to cut it in 14” lengths, weld them straight up the arms of the bucket and put a piece of angle iron across the top. This way I can bolt the rifle holder directly to that angle iron. We will see how well it all rides soon.