Now to finish out the weekend’s fun! On Monday morning, Jeremy and I were both dragging after 3 days of working on the yard. At the same time, the end was in sight and we knew that if we worked on it for a few hours in the morning we could finish it. So we dragged ourselves out of bed (late) and got to work.
We leveled out under the maple tree, tilled the aisles and raked them smooth and dug up the wormwood to transplant out to the farm. That got the last part of the side yard north of the sidewalk ready. Then we started on the south frontage. We had 7 raised beds still there which amounts to about 25 wheel barrow loads of dirt that had to find a home somewhere. Nine of them went to various neighbors who wanted good quality topsoil. It felt good to see the soil we built going to good homes where it would continue to grow great plants. Of course, we still had another 16 loads of dirt that had to go somewhere! Some of them we spread thinly around the maple tree because it was a finer tilth than the mulch mixed soil already there. The rest we spread all over the south frontage and raked it out smooth. There is a slight crown to the frontage now (a little higher in the middle than on the edges) but it’s not too noticeable. Then we put down grass seed. We didn’t have any straw left at that point, so we just raked it in with the plan to pick up straw over our long lunch break. The after picture below is from Tuesday after we put the last straw down. We even got a bonus rain Tuesday night!
Side Yard last year
Side yard this morning
Another view of the side yard
Along with all the work on the yard, throughout the weekend we had been building another load for the farm. We had a bunch of pavers, more clay, another cattle panel from the fence, several cedar fence poles and a bunch of weed cloth all loaded up in the truck by lunch on Monday.
The weekend was not without casualties though. Catherine has requested that we bring her rock to the farm. Her rock is a small red boulder with a nice flat side for sitting on. It weighs somewhere around 500 pounds as near as we can guess. Our plan had been to roll it off of its current pedestal into the wagon, roll it up the ramp on the trailer and take it to the farm. Unfortunately, when we rolled the rock onto the wagon, one of the wheels shattered. Apparently red rider wagons are not made for 500 lb boulders. Who knew? So instead we rolled the boulder up into the new bed around the maple and we’re now figuring out whether and how it’s going to make its way to the farm. We are also figuring out what to do about the kids’ wagon since it is now totaled.
Catherine's Rock
The wagon after the rock :-(
After all this fun, we took a LONG lunch break (about 4 hours) that included a good nap. It was nice to be out of the heat and to know that the side yard was fully seeded.
When we finally forced ourselves to get back to it around 5:00, we loaded the brush pile from the corner of our back yard onto the trailer. Then we headed for the farm. We unloaded the brush, finished trimming around the last of the trees in the upper pasture, watered everything on the lower level and cleared out some more of the fence line.
We also got a surprise treat! While using the electric trimmer to clear out around one of the baby trees, our neighbor offered to let us use his scythe. We have 2 scythes on order but neither of us had ever used one. The opportunity to try one out was just too much to pass up! His scythe worked really well for all the tough weeds that the string trimmer didn’t handle well. With its help, we cleared enough of the fence line to plant the grapes later this week and got a good start clearing where the blackberries will go.
We visited with our neighbors a bit too which is always nice. We are collaboratively working on the details of the living fence in the upper pasture between our properties. The more we talk, the more we find we have in common. It feels good to be moving close to like-minded people.
Then we watched the sunset at the farm and came home. What a weekend! For those worrying that all we ever do is work, we took Tuesday off… ;-)
Also, we have been picking blackberries! Check out these beauties! The grapes in the bottom picture won't ever get to finish growing unfortunately. We'll be moving the vines this week or next and will have to prune them back hard so they'll survive the move. *sigh* Some year we'll get to have grapes from our own vines!
The blackberries are HUGE and delicious!
Healthy grapes, for now....
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