Ripping It All Out ~

Today began the Great Kitchen Redo. We started with the great emptying of stuff:

 We'll be living with chaos in the dining room for a while.
Then we continued with the Great Ripping Out:

Apparently these cabinets were brand new in 1986!

The only thing we actually ripped out today were the two lower cabinets on either side of the oven. We figured that indicated serious commitment, haha! Adam wants to work from the floor up; we'll be putting in a plywood floor, either painted or finished with epoxy.

It didn't take long, but it was exhausting! The kitchen is by far the ickiest room in the house. We've threatened to do this redo for months, and we knew if we didn't give it a good start, we'd put it off again until after the wedding (in June) and after summer, and then after Christmas and .... yeah.

In other farm news:
The three baby chicks are fine. I've named one Applesauce because she has a cross-beak.
Adam has begun cutting down unwanted crepe myrtle trees along the road front.

This tree is now removed.

 And he's building a new fence to divide the pasture in half. It's a natural fencing technique from England in the Middle Ages, used to keep pigs contained.

 A double row of low posts, filled with woodland debris, becomes a thick barrier.

He'll leave a wide gate on the right-hand end and a small gate on the other end by the garden.
Adam has trimmed one pear tree and begun cleaning out the garage too. Much must be done before the wedding in June -- we'd better "get a move on"!!

Tree Out, Tree In

Adam and I visited the local nursery again. I told the girl, who was displaying her Christmas wares, that I'm always only interested in what's 50% off :) So I bought some perennials. (Who wants to waste time on annuals that die?) I got the following:
Three artemisia that are quite spindly from the wet weather we've had. They'll come back in the spring.

Two sedum of the stonecrop variety. I usually get Autumn Joy, but not this time. I love sedum.

These we put in the newly tilled sun bed on the side of the house.

And one hardy amarylis that will handle the winter weather.

I know some of you are bored by photos of green tufts in pine straw. But some of you know the excitement I feel. And I bought three astilbes and put them in the shade bed that already has lambs' ears and hostas:

And then! I saw what I wanted for Christmas!

A eucalyptus tree! I adore eucalyptus -- so unusual-looking, so lovely, delicate. Rather tropical. We have several in the area, so I know it can thrive here. Sometimes the cold temps will zap the leaves, but the trees survive.

We perused the yard when we got home, looking for the perfect spot for her. At last, I knew I'd found the location -- no wires overhead, lots of sun, center stage. Problem was this: a large crepe myrtle already occupied the spot. That meant Adam would have to dig out the crepe myrtle, root system and all, and do it the next day (Saturday), so we could put the eucalyptus in before the cool weather came.

I came home from the market and found he'd already made good headway.

He used a mattock and a shovel. Toward the end he put a car jack under the root ball, 

and shoved it out that way.

Meanwhile, the puppies played. Sandy and Maggie have stick wars, in which they bark loudly at each other, back and forth, proclaiming ownership of the stick. Sandy wins.

The eucalyptus waits for her place. I didn't want the root ball to sit out in that pot when it gets cold. I want it in the ground, watered in and snug.

Just around supper time, he finished. He was exhausted. That was back-breaking work, and without either of his sons here to help him!

 Well, he might wait until Thanksgiving to let them help him haul it away to the burn pile.
It's quite heavy.

He will keep the branches, which are straight, for various poles and stakes around the farm.
While digging it out, we found many, many (about 100?) daffodil bulbs. Just tons of them. I'd been told there were many daffies on the property. I put them in a bucket, separated them, and planted about half of them new in the sun bed mentioned above. I still have a pile left to put ... somewhere.
And there she is!

You'll all be glad to know:
The roof is fully fixed. At least we think so, so far :)
The septic system is fine. The whole system is actually owned by the company, and they came and checked and worked on it twice, no cost to us.
We got a total of six Knock Out roses for the front of the property, all at the sale price -- quite a steal!

It's Catch-Up Time!

Hello, all. Sorry I've been absent on the farm blog. I visited my family in West Virginia, including a brother with a wonderful pick-your-own blueberry farm they've run for about 20 years, and a brother just starting into an apple orchard enterprise.
But Adam has been quite busy on the farm in my absence.
He's been raking up leaves all over and putting those leaves on the compost piles.

 The potatoes in the bucket are coming along.

He started work on our chicken coop and yard. The yard will be a long rectangle along the orchard fence.

 He's using what he can find on the farm for the posts. Here's he's cut two cedar trees and used their slender trunks for posts. They don't rot quickly.

 Here's another post he found.

 And for the four corner posts of the chicken coop, he's using the stands for the telescope lens grinding class he taught a couple of years ago. The stands already each have a 5-gallon bucket full of concrete. Seemed a shame to have them sitting around. They make good footers, so he buried them in the ground.

Here's a view of the proposed site from the other end.

 One of the cedar trees is here behind the barn, on the very rear of the property. It's laid down over the back fence. Adam's already cut away a lot of it, to clear the back of the barn, but there's more to be removed.

 It's quite a large trunk. He only used the top end of it for that post.

 Some other trees he's only trimming the lower branches of, like this one along the back fence.

These two cedar trees grew right in the fence that separates the house yard from the pasture. He'll cut them away to the ground.

 This awful tree grew in the overgrown area next to Anna's little house. It was leaned far over. I'm so glad to see it gone!

 And here we have a pathetic fig bush, dominated for years by a weed tree. Adam cut it away. I want our figs to prosper so I can make preserves next summer.

 The most significant tree he removed was a good-sized maple that grew in front of Anna's house, right between two huge pecans. It was a lovely tree, and I'm sorry it's gone, but it was in a horrible location, under those pecans. A tree in a bad location is worse than no tree at all.

 At least ... that's our philosophy of trees here in the Southeast. In Iowa years ago, we found the attitude toward trees quite different; they love any tree they can get to grow -- weedy, ugly, broken by ice, it doesn't matter. Trees there are valued as a wind break, and they do have wind!
This was a dead crape myrtle right by the road:

Alright, you're probably tired of seeing tree stumps! He hauled it all to our burn pile. We plan to roast a fair share of marshmallows over Thanksgiving, haha!

Pecan picking-up has continued apace. Adam wore his back out with bending over, so I bought a little contraption at the local hardware store.

 I've seen the kind that roll around. And I've seen the metal-box kind with the grate on the bottom. Both are more metal, and I worried that this one would be flimsy and not work well. The fellow sold it to me, asking that I bring it back if it didn't work. He clearly had his doubts too. But it worked great! You just press the slinky-thing onto the pecan. It holds them well up to the top, and then you dump them all into a box.

Ignore the saw. In fact, ignore a lot of random things you might see lying around our farm. It's a work in progress! Anyway, Adam has picked up many pecans. That big box is just a fraction. I took three bags to West Virginia.

On to the next topic: our sewer.

We have a septic tank in the side yard that connects to the city sewer. The grass there grows thick and particularly green:

I noticed during our heaviest rains that the yard there was quite soupy and smelly. Adam told me it was nothing to worry about. We do have a pump (below) that is supposed to engage when the septic tank might get full and pump it into the city sewer.

 The tank has this little thing ...

 And this cap, which was askew and open until a few days ago, when Adam investigated.

The pump was turned off -- we didn't know this. That's why we had the soupy smelly yard. Hopefully it will behave better now.
And speaking of green -- the wheat and barley are doing very well! They're tall, and not too yellowed from all the rain. We're having delightful, dry, cool autumn weather now.

barley on the left, wheat on the right

 The winter garden has survived, but it's slow going. Some greens are looking good, but small still.

 We had some on our sandwiches last night.

 See? It's green and growing, but still quite short. Time will tell if we get a hearty garden this winter.

That's it from the farm! Adam's doing a beekeeping presentation today for a group, and next week we have company for Thanksgiving, so we continue to be quite busy. Enjoy your lovely autumn day!