Clearing the field
When we moved in, our property had been neglected for several years. Trees were overgrowing the house, barn, and pond. They would bush hog the pasture each year, so there weren’t many large trees, but there were a whole lot of smaller trees, especially sumac (which makes a tasty treat, but is not great to have all over the field). Last year, we were wondering what we would do to clear the field. While planting our chestnut trees up by the road, a neighbor stopped his truck and asked if we would mind if he brush hogged our field for us. Mind? That was amazing! That cleaned things up nicely, but still left six inch stumps everywhere (since the brush hog is a field flattener, not a lawn mower). Those stumps make it hard to walk (and easy to trip), and impossible to tether the goats since they get their chains wrapped on them immediately. One of our activities in April (and before), is to go out with long handled garden clippers and cut hundreds (thousands?) of the tree stumps down to the ground. After clearing about half an acre we brought in our mower and mowed everything down. I don’t want to be mowing often, but it was amazing to see the area cleaned up. Now we just need to maintain it and let the goats eat the new sumac as it comes up! (The cattle don’t eat the sumac.) It was a lot of work, but was a fun activity with my boys as we all went out together to give the field a haircut by hand. Now we just have the next ~2.5 acres to do. :o)
Clearing vines
Along with clearing the field, parts of our woods look like something out of an exploration of a long lost, ancient civilization. The vines are so thick that you can’t make it through the forest. While I like having natural, wild areas, this is killing the trees underneath that support those vines. It has been a fun and fulfilling activity to clear the forest of the vines and dead trees that are damaging the living trees. For how bad it was, clearing it has gone much more quickly than I expected, and like exploring an ancient civilization we have discovered artifacts from years gone by, namely old, rusty, twisted barb wire fence, which we are working on removing though it is imbedded into many of the trees and root systems.
While working, I couldn’t help but think of the effects of sin. From the outside these areas looked wild, but beautiful (at least in the spring), as honeydew and other flowers grew off of the vines. However, once we worked our way inside (which took effort), it was dark and dead. Dead branches. Dead trees. This death came slowly, from many years of letting the vines work their ways up and through the trees. It probably just looked pretty at first, until it was out of control. We now have one area clear of vines, through the death below remains, … and the roots of the vines remain. Sin works its way in, and may even seem nice at first, but then it kills. Fortunately, vines, unlike sin, make great food for the goats, so these vines will be managed instead of being removed completely, but either way, they need to be dealt with or they will destroy.
New trees
We planted some new trees including cherry, peach and plum. We’ll see what happens as the area where they were planted is needing some help to bring life back to the soil. (This is true for much of our property and we are working on building healthy soil with the help of our animals.)
Plant potatoes
We planted our potatoes in the big garden. Some recommend cutting up the potatoes with multiple sprouts to have more potatoes. Someone we respect recommends keeping them whole for various reasons, so we are going with that route, since our seeded potatoes are not big. We’ll see how it goes!
Figs to life
We thought our fig trees were dead after the winter. It turns out that those above ground trees were dead, but the roots were good and new trees are coming up quickly. Apparently this is a normal routine since they are for more of a tropical climate (unless we can protect them for the winter). They should still produce fruit, and we’re looking forward to this possibility.
Seeds sprouted
As well as the animals, our two gardens are going well. This is the first growing season for the one plot (second for the other), so we are still developing the soil, but things are growing well. It’s nice to have the rabbit droppings as the perfect fertilizer for the gardens. Once the rain stops we will be harvesting our first batch of potatoes (on a dry day so that we can dry them a bit to store longer). Our tower gardens are also growing well and producing our greens along with some different greens in our bathtub garden (why throw away a leaking tub when you can grow in it!).
Border Fencing
Goats are known to be escape artists. We are blessed to have very contented (non jumpy) goats. However, their quicklinks on their chains have come loose occasionally (one day three of them got off their chains), and they wander around. So far no problems, but as mentioned with the ducks (and for our cattle… and toddler) we are looking into options to add to our fence to avoid problems.
3rd Culture Living 