Moving logs isn’t always easy…

First, a tiny moment of celebration.  My father, brother and I won a golf tournament this weekend!  It was a benefit tournament for the Bethel Neighborhood Center in Kansas City and we’ve played in it for the last 4 years.  This year everything in our round went right – putts fell in, drives landed in the fairway, chips actually landed on the green and close to the pin.  We had all the kids and my step mom along too which added to the fun of the day.  Even if we hadn’t done well, we had a really good time.

Now back to the rest of our weekend…

We left for Colorado Sunday afternoon with 2 goals.  Ott (Jeremy’s grandfather) found a miller in CO who will mill for $.45/board foot which is significantly below the other estimates we’ve gotten.  It’s also pretty close to what we’re getting here in Lawrence.  So our first goal was to move some logs over to the miller for him to work on.  That will let us bring back finished lumber on our next trip which will ride easier and get us closer to ready for doing the joinery.  The second goal was to bring another load of logs back home to work on here.  Why the rush, you ask?  Because it will start snowing there in October and won’t stop until May.  That means if we want to have the timbers here to work on through the winter, we need to get them here before the snow really starts.

We arrived in Colorado at about 10:00 their time.  The trip was completely uneventful.  The kids and I worked on cutting up old jeans into strips and rolling the strips in to little rolls for most of the trip.  While we were in CO, Phyllis (Jeremy’s grandmother) taught me how to braid a rag rug without sewing, so on the return trip I worked on this:

Rug in process and the bag of denim strips

 

The next morning, we were up and at it about 7:00AM.  The logs we most needed milled were 16’ long so we loaded several of those onto the 12’ trailer.  We then topped it off with a couple of 12 foot logs.  I should say here that several of the 16’ logs were both large and green, so we had quite a load on the trailer. 

Jeremy lining up the first (huge) log

The first load before we strapped it down

 

We pulled out of Tanglewood about 8:00AM on our way to the miller.  The road out of Tanglewood begins with a long stretch of dirt road going downhill and ending with a 90 degree right turn.  We reached the turn going about 15 miles/hr after gearing down and putting it in 4 wheel drive.  The truck made the turn, but the trailer didn’t.  It gently eased the back of the truck off into the ditch as it slowly jackknifed itself into a 90 degree angle with the truck.  In the process it gouged a 1.5 inch hole in the passenger rear tire and put a nice dent in the rear quarter panel.  Fortunately, it all happened so slowly that no one was injured or even particularly shaken up and we didn’t go fully off the road.  It could have been far worse if we had been going any faster.

The damage after we were pulled up out of the ditch

It took about 3 hours to get back on the road after that.  We had to use the skid steer to drag the trailer and truck back straight, get a floor jack to take the tire off, run to town and get a new one and put it back on before we resumed our journey.  For those wondering why we didn’t give up and just go home here – you clearly don’t know us.  ;-)

The load was so tail heavy because of the 4 feet hanging over the back that we couldn’t go above 35 miles/hr without fishtailing.  The miller lives about 25 miles away so it was a nice slow ride through the valley.  When we arrived, we met Dave Roscoe (the miller) and we unloaded the logs using his skid steer and our logging chain.  That part at least went pretty smoothly.

We chained each log to Dave's skid steer - Ott is giving the thumbs up that this one is ready to go

Then Dave backed up slowly, pulling the log off the trailer and into position with the others

After lunch, we loaded another set of logs for Dave and hauled it out.  This time we didn’t slip on the road at all (whew!) and we were able to get up to 45 before the trailer started wandering (we were taking more 16’ logs).  Unloading this round went even more smoothly than the first round – probably because we didn’t take as large of logs.  We went over the timber schedule with Dave and then we were on our way back to Tanglewood where we loaded our final round of the day.  This load was coming home with us, so we made sure it wasn’t overloaded and there was nothing overhanging – we didn’t want to be driving 45 all the way back to Lawrence.  We also tossed a few short aspen logs into the back of the truck to give us a bit more weight on the rear tires (traction is a good thing).  These will get milled into some thinner furniture type wood to use on something pretty eventually. 

The end 3 plus the aspens on top and one more log not pictured came back with us this trip.  The 2 shorter ones on the left are from the last trip.

The drive back was very uneventful thank goodness.  We arrived at Tim’s at 4:00PM and we were headed home by 5:00PM.  It was a wonderful feeling to have accomplished so much in 3 days, but we were also incredibly glad to be home and stationary.

We will have another trip to CO sometime in the next month or two to pick up finished lumber from the miller and to mill out a pair of 22 foot long timbers for the last of the timber schedule.  Until then, we’re going to enjoy being back home!

More milling and rock update

We spent Wednesday evening milling another 2 logs.  The process was much the same and we managed to finish all the 10' floor joists for the cabin along with some other pieces of misc. lumber and a nice stack of quarter rounds to become siding one day (hopefully).

The trailer loaded to go to the farm

This is the current pile of rocks

We are still in the rock moving business, although we will not move another load until sometime next week.  Eventually these will all become something.  Until then, we have a small rock yard on the farm.

Milling the first log and more rocks!

For those of you anxiously awaiting the results of our first foray into milling the logs we brought back from Colorado, the wait is over.  This morning Jeremy went over to Tim O'Brien's and milled the first log and part of another one before a mechanical issue with the mill brought the work to an early end.  Here's kinda how it went:

Drag the log over to the mill

Roll the log up onto the mill bed for the first cut

Carefully square each side to make a rectagular cant

Mill the boards

Here is what came out of the first log

In all, the first log made two 4x6x10's, 3 - 2x6's(flooring), 2 - 2x4's, 1 - 1x8 and several quarter rounds for siding and a couple of slabs that will be trimmed to boards later.  The wood was beautiful - grade A all the way - and the boards are now stacked neatly in the greenhouse to cure until we get to start the joinery for the timber frame.

Also this weekend, we made 2 more trips to get rocks.  We were very fortunate to have help again from the Diliberto's.  With Daniel's help, we were able to load and unload this massive stone:

We estimate it weighed close to 300 lbs.  We aren't quite sure what we're going to do with it yet, but it will have to be cool to justify the effort that went into moving it! 

So far, we've moved somewhere around 12 tons of rock.  We estimate that we'll need about 12 more to do the foundation and stem wall for the next structure so we'll be moving rock for a while yet.  In case you're wondering what 12 tons of rock looks like, here's an idea:

This is actually from before we unloaded the last load on Sunday, so the pile is currently 4 tons larger than shown here.

To top off our last few days of productivity, I went out after work and planted the last 2 fruit trees.  Now that they are all in the ground, we can skip an occasional day to work on things off the farm.  Woot!

Rocks!

We started what will be a long process of moving rocks from a house South of Lawrence up to the Farm this week.  We'll be making many more trips over the coming few weeks (and probably months) so this is just the beginning.  We're hoping to get all the rock for the garden shed foundation moved in the next week or so. 

We are fortunate that we still have the heavy duty trailer we used to bring the logs back from Colorado.  It holds 3+ tons of rock at a time plus some in the bed of the truck.  In case you're wondering, yes, 3 tons is a lot of rock to pick up twice and move.  It wasn't quite as bad as we thought it would be though.  I think we have built up enough muscles over the last several months that we're getting conditioned to the work.  Thank goodness for that!

Jeremy with the loaded trailer South of town

These are the 2 piles of rock AFTER we pulled out the first load

The finished retaining wall planted with sweet potatoes

The rock sorted into piles by size and stacked close to the future garden shed

As you can probably tell in the last picture, we finished unloading at close to 9:00 and it was getting dark.  We're quickly losing daylight to the shorter days.  The phrase "losing daylight" has never seemed quite so powerful as it does now.  If we don't take full advantage of the daylight we have, we won't have a prayer of getting this foundation done before freezing weather.  The rush continues!

Planting trees

One of the last things that Aaron did at the farm was dig the beginnings of our tree swales.  What are tree swales, you ask?  A swale is a low mound of earth used to catch or direct water.  In the case of our trees, the swales are arcs about 10 feet across that funnel rain water to the base of our trees.  Each tree is planted in the center of one of the arcs.  When we got back from vacation, we widened and deepened the swales that Aaron dug and started planting our trees.  We have 2 trees left to plant.

We are hopeful that the swales will enable the trees to survive the drier, hotter summers we are predicted to have over the next 50 years by concentrating the rainfall in their root zones.  Time will tell if this strategy is successful.

Of the 12 trees, 4 were planted to replace the failed transplants from our house to the farm.  Another 7 will be used as a border to our North field and will be incorporated into the larger site plan for that part of the farm.  The remaining tree will be added to the line of trees close to the front of the property.  We can't wait until we can start picking fruit from these guys!

Unloading logs and goat update

We made it back to Kansas safely after an uneventful 12 hour drive with logs in tow.  We drove straight to the sawmiller to unload the logs.  We were very fortunate that he has an excavator to help move the logs around - it makes handling 500-800 lb logs much easier!

This is the load as we pulled out of Colorado

The excavator rolls it, Jeremy and I hold it...

5 logs waiting to be milled

We hope to mill these sometime this week.  Stay tuned!

Before he left last Friday, Aaron managed to dig mini-swales for our fruit trees and a first swale for the grape vines.  He also finished the retaining wall in front of the greenhouse and planted the first 4 fruit trees.  We cannot express our gratitude for all his help enough.  With a little luck, Jeremy and the kids will get the other fruit trees in the ground tomorrow and we'll work on the grapes later in the week.  Once the plants are in the ground, we'll be ready to look at doing the dirt work to start the garden shed.  Oh, and we have to move a bunch of rocks and a bunch more logs.  Its safe to say that we'll be busy!

In other news, the goats are gone.  No, they have not met an untimely end.  We decided that until we are living at the farm full time, we don't want to have daily chores.  There is simply too much for us to balance right now.  So, Rollins (the little black one) has found a home with a family that plans to spoil him rotten and Hercules (the buck) is being bought back by our neighbors.  Both will have wonderful homes where they will be well taken care of.  Sometime in the future when we are living on the farm, we will consider getting goats again.  Until then, we will go back to just taking care of plants on the farm.

Log moving time!

While our main goal in coming to Colorado this week was to have some time off, visit family and generally relax, we also have the priveledge of picking up the first set of logs to build our future garden shed.  We are benefiting from a windstorm in the community where Jeremy's grandparents live.  It blew down somewhere around 200 trees that they are now cleaning up.  Instead of paying people to cut up and carry off the wood, Jeremy's grandpa, Ott, is cutting it into logs and we are going to bring at least some of it to Kansas to use on the farm.  We cannot express our gratitude enough. 

Phyllis and Ott Lehrman

For this trip, we will be bringing 5 large logs and 6 smaller ones home.  Getting the logs loaded was an adventure.  The first 5 went on pretty well.  Ott used his skid steer to pick them out of the pile and then put them on the trailer. 

This is the pile before we pulled logs to take on this trip

Ott and the skid steer - he was awesome!

Then we had to pull some other smaller logs from other posts.  That required some trimming with the chain saw, rearranging and a little bit of adventure getting them over to the trailer.  We got them all loaded though!

Jeremy and Ott with the loaded trailer

The 6 smaller ones will hopefully form the vertical posts for the garden shed.  They will be peeled and have their ends squared off, but will otherwise stay in the round.  The 5 larger ones will probably turn into decking and braces.  We will be making another trip in the near future for some 12 foot logs that will become the main horizontal members.  Stay tuned!

And, just in case you think we aren't doing anything fun, here are a few pictures from the vacation part of our vacation!  :-)

On top of Pikes Peak

Napping after a 5 mile hike to Comanche Lake

Catching up

Its been a bit since we've posted and I didn't want anyone to think we'd been resting or anything.  ;-)

We officially listed our house on Friday.  That required an insane amount of cleaning, moving, packing and did I mention cleaning?  All of this in the same week we were getting ready to leave for our vacation in Colorado.  That would be why we haven't gotten much posted lately.

You can see our house listed here:  http://www.stephensre.idxco.com/idx/6117/details.php?idxID=392&listingID=128790   I would recommend looking now before we get back from vacation.  It won't stay this clean for long!  LOL

We left for vacation early Saturday morning and made it safely to Colorado Springs, CO, that afternoon.  While we've been gone, Aaron has been hard at work at the farm.  We marked off a contour line for our future grape trellises and marked spots for the trees we bought.  Aaron is planting the trees this week and may be digging the swales for the grape trellis before he leaves on Thursday.  He has also built and back filled the other half of the retaining wall.

If you look closely, you will see the flags marking the contour line

I managed to get a bunch of grape vine trimmings on Thursday and took them to the farm.  Aaron is going to put rooting powder on the cut ends and put them in a planting bed.  Hopefully a few of them will survive and we'll get a few more plants out of it.  If not, then at least Aaron now knows how to prep grape cuttings.  He has also done a ton of weeding and other great work around the farm.  We'll be sad to see him go and we'll hope we get to see him again!

Grape cuttings waiting to be rooted

Aaron weeded the herb area - it looks so much nicer now!

In other news (and if you've managed to read this far), today is Jeremy and I's 13th wedding anniversary.  We took an awesome hike in the Colorado mountains with Jacob and then enjoyed some quality time with Jeremy's grandparents.  Did I mention that the high was only 80 degrees today?  Perfect!

Garden Lesson wk of 7/30 - nitrogen fertilizers

What about fertilizers?- Part 2:  There are many organic fertilizers on the market these days and it can be hard to know whether you need any of them or what each is for.  This week and next, we’re going to look at the most common organic fertilizers.  First, we’ll look at nitrogen fertilizers.  Nitrogen is one of the “big 3” plant nutrients and it is the most easily lost.  There are 2 primarily nitrogen fertilizers that are widely available – blood meal and fish emulsion.   We’ll also look at some non-commercial sources of nitrogen.

Blood meal is dehydrated blood from animal processing plants and it is usually purchased as a powder.  It contains significant amounts of nitrogen and many trace minerals and it breaks down over time in the garden.  Its down side is that it is an industrial by product and so can contain very tiny amounts of anything that would be in a slaughterhouse cow’s blood stream.  Blood meal is applied in the early spring and can be added to planting holes for high nitrogen feeding transplants like cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower to give them a boost.

Fish Emulsion is pureed fish bits from a fish processing plant (think canned tuna and salmon).  It contains both high levels of nitrogen and many trace elements.  It is much more quickly available to plants compared to blood meal.  It is generally a liquid that gets mixed with water and used as a spray-on fertilizer.  Depending on the fish it is made from, it can have the same issues as blood meal with trace amounts of antibiotics or other industrial additives.  Fish emulsion is often used as a foliar spray (spray on the leaves of plants) as well as a liquid fertilizer during the growing season.  It leaches out of the soil more quickly than blood meal, so it must be reapplied during the growing season.

If you’re not interested in commercial organic nitrogen fertilizers, there are 2 other readily available sources.  The first is fresh grass clippings.  You can top dress your beds (mulch them) with several inches of freshly cut grass clippings to help smother weeds.  In the process, the soil micro-life will break down the nitrogen in the grass and make it available to your plants.  Just be careful that the clippings don’t have herbicide, fungicide or pesticide residue on them.  The second readily available source of nitrogen is urea.  Yes, that would be urine.  Studies have shown that tomatoes watered with a 10:1 (10 parts water to 1 part urine) mix grow at about twice the rate of plants without.  Human urine has lots of very readily absorbed nitrogen as well as a host of other minerals.  This is a fertilizer best used fresh as the nitrogen will quickly change into a smellier form after about 24 hours.  Interestingly enough, one person produces about enough urine in a year to fertilize the farm ground that produces their food.  Funny that, don’t you think?  If you’re not game for collecting your own urine, you can also buy dried animal urine (labeled urea) in some garden centers.  This is also an industrial by-product similar to blood meal.

Garden Lesson wk of 7/2 - Succession Planting

What is succession planting? – Succession planting is planting crops one after another in order to maximize the food produced in a given space. Some examples from our garden are the cucumbers currently growing where we had lettuce this spring and the green beans growing where we had green peas this spring. Additional crops will follow on throughout the year keeping our garden productive from spring through fall! As a rule of thumb, summer things (squash, tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkins, peppers) can be planted as late as the beginning of June and still perform well in the garden. This makes them great candidates to follow the very early spring plants like spinach, radishes and some lettuces. Green beans make a great follow on to any crop that is finished before the beginning of September because they only need 2 months to produce pods. In the fall, lettuce, radishes, spinach and other greens can follow after the high summer crops of cucumbers, squash and zucchini that have usually given up by the time weather starts to cool off in September. By using succession planting, we can double or triple the productivity of our garden!

Garden Lesson wk of 7/9 - Why no chemical fertilizers?

Why don’t we use chemical fertilizers? – I find that most people who garden assume that nothing will grow unless it is “fed” with something from the store. If we look at the history of agriculture, we can see why this seems to be true. Historically, western cultures have plowed/tilled the land, harvested from it and not added back anything that was taken out. This quickly depletes the soil’s nutrients and requires that they be replaced somehow. Enter the packaged fertilizer! At Crown Gardens, we take a different approach. The soil we started with has everything in it that our plants need to thrive (as they have more than proven). By capturing much of what is taken from the soil through composting the kitchen waste, we keep these nutrients in our garden where they can feed another generation of plants. We also add other materials to our compost – grass clippings, coffee grounds from work, and food scraps from home (yes, you can bring food scraps for our compost – ask if you want advice on how to do so without smells or huge inconvenience). These supplements to our pile add nutrients that can be depleted very quickly – namely nitrogen – and serve to keep our soil healthy. As long as we continue this cycle of recapturing nutrients in our compost and adding the compost to the beds every year, we should maintain our garden’s fertility and productivity.

Garden Lesson wk of 7/30 - Double Digging

How do I improve clay soil? Last week I wrote about using the lasagna method to improve clay soil. This week, we’ll look at double digging. DD is a method many organic gardening enthusiasts swear by and it can be a very effective way to improve clay soils. The first step is the same as for lasagna beds: identify where you want your garden beds to be and where the aisles will be. Next get a good digging spade and a lot of compost/old manure. You can also mix in some raw organic matter like shredded leaves (not whole leaves), grass clippings or old mulch. For every 4 square feet of garden bed, plan to have 2 cubic feet of organic material (that would be 1 bag of most commercially sold amendments). Start at one end of your soon-to-be garden bed and dig out...

a trench 1 spade deep (about 10 inches) and a foot or so wide across the bed. Put the soil into a wheelbarrow or bucket and set it aside. Next, use the shovel to break up the next 10 inches of soil underneath what you just removed. Add in several shovel fulls of organic matter (the leaves, manure, compost) and mix with the shovel. Then, shovel the top 10” of the next foot in your bed onto this enriched base. Add organic material to the new topsoil and mix it in. You should now have a 1 foot wide mound of loosened, enriched soil and a 1 foot trench next to it. Repeat the process of breaking up the subsoil, adding organic matter, moving the next section of topsoil and adding organic matter until you reach the end of the bed. Use the material you set aside at the beginning to fill in the last trench. For pictures of the process see: http://www.communitycrops.org/doubledig.

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Garden Lesson wk of 6/25 - Why no till?

Why don’t we till our garden? – An ecological garden (sometimes also called a permaculture garden) models itself after natural cycles and ecosystems in an effort to make mother nature our partner instead of our enemy. For example, natural ecosystems are never tilled and all soil additions happen at the surface (leaves fall on the ground from the trees and stay there – no one comes and buries them in the soil). In this environment, a host of mostly microscopic organisms does the very complex job of breaking down organic matter into plant food and soil humus. Some microbes even live on plant roots – the plants produce sugar (food) for the microbes while the microbes digest material in the soil into food for the plants. So what does that mean for our garden? It means that we want to let these microbes do their work of feeding our plants so that we don’t have to! We do that by always adding compost and grass clippings to the top of the soil. We don’t till because that would disturb the ecosystem that our partners need to thrive. We constantly add organic matter to feed our partners and they turn it into the best plant fertilizer there is. In exchange, we get healthy plants and delicious food without the time spent tilling and fertilizing. Sounds like a good deal to me!

Garden Lesson - wk of 7/23

Some of you may be aware that I help organize a garden for the Ronald McDonald Houes in KC, MO.  Part of my duties is writing the weekly newsletter.  Each week, I've been including a "garden lesson" on some topic in organic gardening and I thought I would start posting them here in case its helpful to anyone else.  If you see something I've written that you disagree with, please feel free to call me out on it.  I write based on my own experience and knowledge and I am far from an expert! 

Here are the last few weeks of updates.  From now on I'll post them as I publish the newsletter on Thursdays (usually).

Garden Lesson wk of 7/23:

How do I improve clay soil? We are blessed at Crown Gardens to have the Missouri Organics soil in our raised beds. It is a wonderful mix of compost and topsoil that is just magic for plants. But what if that isn’t what you have? What if you’re growing on solid clay? Take heart – you can still grow healthy plants and lots of food! There are several ways to improve clay soils. This week we will talk about the lasagna method (my personal favorite).

Identify where you want your garden beds to be and where the aisles will be. If your beds will have sides, build the boxes and place them on the ground. In the beds, lay down a thick layer of newspaper or cardboard (remove any tape or staples) to prevent weeds and grass from growing up into the bed. Next, s...

pread 4-6” of grass clippings/old hay/old straw on the paper. Then add 1-2” of compost or manure. Repeat the grass/compost layers 1 more time with a little extra compost/manure on the top layer. Ideally, you would do this in the fall and let the materials sit over the winter. You can plant directly into the soil on top without waiting though. Over the first year, the green material will break down and leave rich bed of topsoil. Each fall, add another layer of green matter (grass clippings or similar) and then add 1” of compost in the spring. Over time, the earthworms will work this rich soil down into the subsoil and you will find the clay to be looser. It takes about 5 years for the natural process to turn the top 6-8 inches of clay into clay-loam. In the meantime, your plants will love the top layers you’ve built up and will produce delicious food for you!

Updates - retaining wall and moving

A quick post to say that Aaron has finished backfilling the retaining wall north half and we moved another load of stuff (including our compost bins) out to the farm.

We've also been busily cleaning in the house in order to list it on Friday.

Didn't want y'all to think we'd been resting or anything!  ;-)

Retaining wall viewed from the south

Viewed from teh north - sweet potatoes are planted in the straw