Tending to Piles

Today, Adam tended to piles on the farm. Piles of branches:

We had three large piles of dead branches, plus lots of loose branches lying around. Adam gathered it all, secured his burn permit, and set it ablaze.

He had puppy help.

It took many hours

A generous, kind, elderly friend has loaned Adam the use of his truck for a while. It was a huge help today. He was able to haul the limbs in the truck rather than dragging each one.

We had other piles that needed tending too. Can you see them way out in the field, little specks? Each one is a big pile of dry grass Adam raked up.

That was a lot of work. He drove around and put each pile in the truck bed and brought it all to the compost bins.

He's been working that manure from the barn stalls for days, shoveling, watering, shoveling, stirring.

The barn has four stalls. He's removed manure from them all, but they're not empty yet.

We expect rain tomorrow. Adam's working so hard right now on farm/soil issues because this is the time of year to do it. After all ... the first, most important crop you grow, is soil.

Looking Farmish

Looking Farmish -- that's what Adam calls it, when things get done around the farm, and we move one more baby step toward the final picture he sees in his head. Yesterday in the rain, he built more of these:

Now he has four compost bins all in a row.

He's layering the grass and pine straw with goat manure right now, very dry, very old goat manure.

In spite of the rain (of near-Biblical proportions) we've had in recent days, do you see how dry the inside of that manure pile is? It's quite hard to encourage water into this compost.
Adam hauled all the junk wood from where it was ripped out of the out-building, and used some of that semi-rotted flooring to make the compost bins. It's no good for flooring, but it's perfectly useful for holding up compost.

He's decided against using the shower doors (phew!). There are limits to how "jakey we are willing to look. Jakey is a word my grandmother used. She had quite a few fun terms from her West Virginia upbringing.

Adam found three long iron posts buried beneath pine straw along the back fence. They're about twelve feet long and heavy.

 He dug out one of them to investigate.

Anybody know what these are? Each one has a flange on each end. He's ruminating on what purpose he could use them for on the farm. I'm wondering what purpose they served before.
Speaking of rain, we're so glad Adam raised the beds in the winter garden.

The seedlings have truly sprouted! They haven't drowned yet.

Just down the street from us, and closer to the Bay River, the watery scene looks like this:

Quite wet.

Collecting Raindrops

One of Adam's farm projects is making a rain collection system. Initially, he's using these two barrels that were left on the farm by Mr. M.

 They have spigots attached, and you can join them together into one water flow, attaching a hose. Then you spray water on the compost pile or wherever you need it.
These barrels are presently at the barn, collecting water from its roof. But first Adam needed to clean the roof and gutters of debris like pine straw and leaves.

The gutter is along the back side of the barn. And  here they are, raised and catching that rain water.

Later this is the shady, protected area where Adam plans to raise worms, red wigglers. Producing worm casings is actually a thing among natural farmer types. Quite beneficial for one's soil. Adam says, "We're growing soil, not crops." Excellent soil will naturally produce wonderful crops. So he's all about the soil.

The debris from the roof is already on its way to decay.

To be honest, I haven't been back to the barn since I took these photos a few days ago because it's been so rainy! I finally got that photo of the raised barrels just this afternoon :)
Almost as soon as we got the seeds into the winter garden, and I took the clothes off the line, and  Adam got his two barrels hooked up and ready to go ... the rain began.

Here's a photo of Oriental yesterday -- the town where we used to live, right on the Neuse River. When the wind blows strongly into the river, it piles the water up into the creeks and we get flooding. This is called "wind tide." The area on the right of the fence above is usually Raccoon Creek. The area on the left of the fence is usually Hodges St. Not yesterday! I guess we should call it Hodges Creek.
I'll snap a photo of the barrels soon for you. Meanwhile, a very fortuitous thing has occurred. Adam was chatting with our HUD inspector the other day. He happens to have some land and about eight Friesian horses. Adam read that those large animals put out about 100 pounds of manure each day -- per horse! This fellow piles it up and adds wood chips, but would love for Adam to come haul away as much as we'd like to have. Yippee! Well-seasoned horse manure is like gold. With the use of a friend's truck, Adam hopes to collect lots of this farm gold. Another nearby friend has cow manure also. All this wonderful stuff will put us about a year ahead, in our farm plan for growing things.

God is so good. Even though our lives in other areas are sometimes quite stressful, quite difficult, we see repeatedly that God is in this farm pursuit; He is blessing it. What a relief and joy that is! Because we truly don't want to pursue anything that He isn't participating in, with us.