Tilling the Soil

This week Adam is working on the wheat field. He needs to get the wheat in the ground by the end of September. This first preparation of the soil is the most challenging. It's been in grass, with animals grazing, for years.

At last the ground is dry enough to till. The wheat field lies in front of the bee hives.
Before tilling he had to mow the area one more time with the push mower to get the grass as short as possible. Otherwise the grass wraps around the tiller blades, making tilling quite difficult. As it was, the grass was still a challenge.

You can see on the left the taller grass, then a strip of mowed grass, then the once-tilled area.
And around the edge of the square is grass yet taller; all of it will eventually become a growing area for something. But right now he's focused only on the wheat.

When he's mowed and tilled the entire square, he'll till it again the other way, perpendicular to the first tilling.  It's quite exciting! We know farming (even on a very small scale) is fraught with failure and unexpected setbacks. We've watched my brother and sister-in-law in West Virginia work so hard for so many years on their farm, with beautiful results. But it's never, ever easy.
Update on the orchard foray:  Adam got a nice case of poison ivy on both legs. He's so allergic. He knew better than to go in there this time of year, but I tempted him by hacking back some of the verge. Oh well! He'll be off to the doctor today.

Sunday Afternoon

After prayer time, Sunday school, worship service, and snack, Adam is tired most Sundays, so he comes home and takes a long nap. Today while he napped, I went outside. What glorious weather!! It's the kind of day you wait for all year long. Perfect temperature. Low humidity. Light, delectable breezes. Leaves rustling and thinking about falling.

 A few colorful leaves already crunch under foot.
Behind the garage (which you see on the left) is the orchard. I use that term loosely. The grapevine is quite healthy and has taken OVER, and many of the apple trees have been smothered. Still, it's better than no orchard at all, right?
In the photo below, the orchard is the overgrown vegetation behind the fence. If you look between the tall trees in the background, you'll see the top of the biggest apple tree, shooting branches straight up. It's toward the back of the orchard.

 This gate to the orchard is directly behind the garage.

This is what faces you when you enter the gate. A bit daunting, but one must begin somewhere.

To the left of the gate two apple trees are espaliered along the fence.

 Here's a little fruit tree struggling to survive in the middle of the thicket of pine saplings and vines. I also found a rose bush, a climbing one, I think.

I put on long pants, a long sleeved shirt, and took my loppers and began cutting down sapling trees.

 I took along a dog too. She was pretty happy. Beau stayed inside to nap with his daddy.

Soon Adam and Beau emerged from the house and we all thrashed around in the orchard. Adam saw the path I'd hacked and charged into the fray with little Beau right behind him. Beau became trapped in lots of low-lying vines and couldn't escape. Adam rescued him.
At the back right corner of the orchard is another gate, near the barn.

And we found more passion fruit! Mr. M. must've liked this fruit. It's along the fence that runs from the back orchard gate to the barn. You see below the fruit (which is rounder this time) and one of the flowers.

It's so strange to have these things already growing here, thanks to Mr. M., without our doing a thing. About seven green passion fruit are hanging there today. How many days until they're ripe? I don't know, but we'll be checking.

On the Fruit Hunt

While I was gone to the farmers' market this morning, Adam attacked the verge with his scythe. The fenced-in overgrown area around the out-building needs hacking back. There are two or three trees in there worth keeping, but nothing else. It's volunteer pine and gum trees, and brambles. (Click here to see an aerial view of the farm; this section is #6 on that plan.)

One tree we'll keep is just to the right of Adam in the photo above. It's a pretty little crabapple tree with lovely blooms in spring.
Anyway, Adam whacked away ... or scythed away ... and did quite a fine job. He started in the corner closest to the pasture along the fence line.

He avoided the larger trees along the house lot, but worked deep into the weedy area, mostly filled with brambles.

Here's another little fruit tree (of some sort) we'll keep.

Doesn't the scythe do a great job? Just before I arrived home a heavy thunderstorm with wind and heavy rain came through, and stopped his work. But now we can walk back there are take out some of the larger stuff.

And speaking of clearing vegetation and looking for fruit, we meandered to the overgrown orchard to see what we could see. I wanted to stroll outside; it's cooler and feels just a tiny bit like autumn. Here's the fence containing the orchard.

All along the inside of that fence is a massive grape arbor. That's rather exciting! Adam will research about how to prune and care for it. We didn't notice much fruit, so clearly it needs tending in order to produce better in later years.

I found a little grape.

It was yummy.
We found another fruit (actually two of these) and had no idea. It's not ripe. It's not a grape (haha) -- it's a bit smaller than an avocado.

Adam plucked a few leaves from the plant and brought it inside. Quickly he discovered that it's ...

... passion fruit! (Click on that link to see a photo of the blossom, which is striking.)Truly! Can you believe it? I'm wild with wondering what other treasures Mr. M. (the previous, now-deceased owner) planted back in that orchard, that we'll discover this fall when we're clearing it out. It's a large space, about 30 feet x 100 feet. It could be quite spectacular. Oh, I hope so!

'Shrooms

Hi, all. On a morning stroll in the pasture, we found these.

 I encouraged the puppies into the photos so you could get perspective on how LARGE these mushrooms are -- plates!

 We've had so much rain this past week. The 'shrooms spring up everywhere.

And a few like this:

Adam tried to till the field in recent days. When he dug into this Pamlico Muck (our local soil type), he quickly found water. The field was draining the rain away. There's a slight slope from the back of our property toward the road.

And the dogs? They absolutely adore living here. They get to roam around in the pasture while Adam works out there. They haven't known this much freedom (especially Beau). They are happy.

 The bees are happy. Adam wants to add a box on each hive as he's now feeding them as they head into the fall/winter. They've been too grumpy to open their hives. The raked grass is doing a good job at keeping the weeds down for now. The chicken feeder is a bee feeder. Adam like this arrangement.

These are Adam's farm boots which do not come into the house. Down here in river country, they are shrimp boots, but they serve well on the farm.

He borrowed a nice tiller from a friend and (as I said) made an attempt. 

He got a strip done, but not too deeply.

Hopefully the soil will be dryer in the morning.

What Adam Did Inside:

We had those horrid shower doors in our bathroom. Adam and I wanted them gone. We feel they make the shower a bit claustrophobic. We prefer a shower curtain. Adam took out the doors and installed a nice rod, and I hung the curtain.

Our bathroom is small, and we have just the one. We like it this way. We want a small house -- easy to heat, cool, clean, and care for.

There are such conveniences to a small house, and a small bathroom too. From a seated position, one can reach everything. One can wash one's hands, straighten the vanity, reach all the drawers and the trash can. One can begin drawing one's bath water, swap out the toilet paper, flip on the light, brush one's teeth, comb one's hair. Ah -- the conveniences of a small bathroom!

This morning I woke at 4:00 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep, having too many troubles rumbling around in my mind. This made for a groggy morning and a long afternoon. I was a bit downcast. When I arrived home after 6:00, Adam and Julia had been busy making me happy. They painted the living room this afternoon!

They moved all the furniture to the center, removed the rug, taped all the doors and windows, cleaned the edges and sills, painted, and returned everything to its place ten minutes before I got home. Whew!

The room looks lovely. And it did make me happy :) At last I have a room with pretty walls ready for pictures. They say Julia's bedroom is next.
Wasn't that a particularly nice thing for them to do? And then Adam made us delicious French toast for supper. I have a very sweet husband.

A Garden Plan

Sunday evening: Adam is plotting out his scheme for the pasture this fall. He's marked off the rectangle (about 110 feet square, or about 1/4 acre) for his wheat field. He hopes to get it tilled in the next two weeks, and plant wheat there by the end of September.

He also hopes for a winter garden, a long strip 6 feet by about 30 feet. In it he'll plant lettuces, spinach, broccoli, bok choy, chard. We hope to have these winter crops to sell at the local farmers' market during months when there is little available that's fresh and local.

In the spring a much larger vegetable garden is planned. Adam is enthusiastic about eating primarily veggies and little meat. We've already been doing this for a year or two. We love a vegetable medley roasted on high heat -- potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and sweet potato fries, with little tomatoes added at the last minute. Serve this with a dip of mayonnaise and peppery dijon mustard, like a brown Inglenook mustard.

It's one thing to have a plan for farming; it's quite another to accomplish it. But Adam is enthusiastic and motivated. He's been wanting, even longing, to do this for quite a few years.

He has five healthy bee hives now. We lost two small nuc boxes in the spring/summer that did not survive, and we lost the one Warre hive in the move. He's been feeding the bees honey-flavored sugar water for the past several days, and they are sucking it down! He wants to add a box on top of each hive for the ladies to stock with new comb and honey, before winter comes.

Monday morning: I went out to the pasture to take a pic or two of Adam scything the wheat field, but this is what I found:

Not my husband withe a scythe swinging through the air, slicing the grass down, but the rumbly, puttery noise of a lawn mower. :(
He tried the scythe, but the grass (which was rough cut last week with a bush hog) was too short for a scythe. A lawn mower was the other option. You can tell we haven't been farmers! We don't have all the machines in the shed, all the options.

This morning he had this strip of the wheat field done, which is about the same size as the winter garden will be (in another location) later.

The mower is sitting in the corner of this season's wheat field, and the field is a bit bigger than the width of this photo indicates. Next year, the vegetable garden will be much bigger and include this wheat field (and about as much more again), and the new wheat field will be past this field, further down to those tall pine trees on the right.

A Few Move-In Photos

A quite important piece of furniture is in place. It's been years since it had a front-and-center location in the home.

The cluttered table is not bolted down yet (top to legs), but it's been eaten on!

The red couches make life comfy in the evenings. Don't notice the crumbly drywall dust and mess that still muck up many surfaces in the rooms.

The kitchen's looking homey and is getting lots of use at last.

The house had an old stove and old refrigerator, but they both work fine enough for us. I don't believe in throwing big appliances into the dump if they still work.

Adam installed a new ceiling fan in our room Wednesday, and that makes for lovely sleeping!

This light fixture came from Julia's ceiling. She'll get a ceiling fan too, and this lovely piece will go into the kitchen. I LOVE this style -- simple like a pill-box hat.

When the contractor moved the A/C return vent into a kitchen cabinet, he left me a narrowish space perfect for my cookie sheets and pizza pans. Lovely!

It's now Friday morning. Adam came back in from raking and piling grass cuttings from the pasture, and putting it around his beehives to keep down weeds there. It's 8:30 AM. He's a morning bird, always has been. He's eager to get this property up and viable -- he views it as unemployment insurance :) Those of you who've done farming in the past may giggle at that. But a man must have a dream and a hope and a plan, and it's nice to watch. He loves his pastoral work very much, but someday we will need to retire, have a place to live, and have something we can to do make a little income in our later years.
I set about cleaning the back porch this morning, dragging the nasty rugs outside, sweeping it well, wiping off surfaces, and putting in a second bookshelf for more storage. You can never have enough storage.

 Those wonderful built-in bookshelves in the office have freed up many of my other bookshelves for other purposes.

Every surface needed scrubbing, but it looks great now.

Adam installed new closers on the back and front storm doors.

 And a new handle on the back door, since the old one was broken.

 Adam's other chore today was to install a clothes line for me. I don't think I've had a clothes line since we lived in Iowa, many years ago. Our goal is to cut costs and live simply and from our land (when possible). A clothes line will slash electricity costs. It drives me crazy to dry sheets and work clothes in a dryer -- what a waste when there's good sunshine and breezes outdoors!

(Now it's Saturday afternoon and I WILL click "publish" on this post before I find any other photos to post!)
So many people seem to be pursuing this rural, simple life ... and blogging about it. I've loved finding those kindred-spirited bloggers out there. Our children, nearly grown, seem to gravitate to the urban life, but we 50-somethings are drawn to the countryside like lemmings to the sea. Here's hoping that the fall into the waves is a pleasant one!!