The Steaming Earth

Adam is the compost wizard. He loves nothing better than to fork leaves/manure/straw around for a few hours, watering it and watching nature do her magic of making dirt. His compost piles are quite warm these days. See the steam from the heat inside?

Maggie loves to lie on the compost piles for that very reason.

She's a cutie.

His oldest bins are getting rather dry and have ants in them. Nothing wrong with the ants, but it is a gauge for moisture. Compost needs water. This was yesterday. Today he's watering all the compost.

A stray piece of onion from the kitchen found its way into the compost and is now happily growing there.

The big pile has the potato trash can nestled in it, and boy-oh-boy are those taters growing well!

These taters are an experiment to see how it works as a growing method. Adam is pleased.
This past week, one morning we walked around the whole farm (all 3.84 acres - haha!). I'd never walked the far fence line before. Here's a shot of the buildings from the other end of the field. L-R: Anna's little house, the main house, the garage, the bee hives the red bard (barely visible) and the red water container.

Adam's wheat field shines in the morning light. It's recovering a bit from all the rain.

The winter greens garden still hangs in there, although it doesn't grow much. We had more rain this morning, so it's waterlogged again! I imagine we'll get some eating out of it eventually.

That stunning oak tree. I never thought an oak could look so pretty.

The next morning when I went into the field to see Adam, Maggie was holed up under the old horse feed trough. She likes cool, muddy places. Perfect farm dog.

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!

Puttering Around on the Farm

We're looking quite autumnal here on the farm. The grapevine leaves are yellow.

I got quite a bit done this morning before lunch. I wandered into the little workshop/shed on the back of the garage. It was quite a mess.

I straightened and tidied and put away and hung things up and threw things away.
It was quite satisfying. I love tidying and organizing. It's the most fun I've had all day long.

Still messy ... but better.

We stopped at a local nursery yesterday, and I bought 3 hostas she'd already cut back and sold for half-price.

So here's the beginning of my shade bed: four lambs ears and three hostas (behind the lambs ears). These are "humpback whale" hostas, the massive blue/green ones with deep ridges. I love that color.

Anna visited Target while in town and brought back two Christmas towels!! She's a dear. I love Christmas.

I'm not wild about our front door, but it's the door we have. It's a pretty window, but Not My Style. However, Mr. M. (the previous owner) had put a metal mini-blind on the inside of the door, to block the light from that oval window. Ugh! Today I removed it at last.

... because (while cleaning up the shed) I found some old curtain rods I used back in Statesville. The rod attachments are magnetic. You can place them where you want (if you have a metal door) -- no screwing them or nailing them.

I have two rods and two pairs of the magnetic block ends. I plan to put a rod at the top and the bottom of the door, and make a sheer panel that will go on each rod so it won't fly around.
Meanwhile outside ... puppies have been playing. Maggie loves the outdoors.

Adam said this morning all three dogs played a 3-way chase game for a half hour. Maggie was pooped out!
One day I also noticed her wandering quite close to the bee hives, but she didn't get stung. She doesn't know what they are yet.

Adam has been faithfully working his mulch/compost piles: straw, leaves, manure. He mixes and shovels and wets it with rain water. He plans to have four more compost bins like the first four.

The wheat field is quite bright green now. This photo was yesterday. See the panel of brighter green on the left end of the field? That's the barley. It's sprouted in a more timely fashion and is a little taller, and neon green.

Adam is tickled to death about his wheat/barley field. After all his hard work there, it's no wonder!

Our winter garden is damp yet AGAIN. Lotsa rain. We now know this part of the field is too damp for a veggie garden. Adam will move it next year and put something else here that doesn't mind wet feet. The greens are still growing well, but the two beds on the right are not as healthy.

It's busy around here! As the weather cools, I enjoy being outside more, and I LOVE working outside. I just need more time! Don't we all?