Evening Excitement

As evening progressed, I was bewailing the lack of interesting things to happen today. What a normal, dull life! Nothing interesting to report.

BANG! A rifle shot sounded from up towards the road. A bit later, Phil came to the door. “We’ve got deer meat.”

Well, we will, anyway. He first had to figure out how to drag the dead deer down to the woods (used the little John Deere riding mower), then try desperately to remember how to gut a deer. He’s only done it once, several years back. I checked his progress at 10:30pm, and he had almost disemboweled the animal. In the light of the flashlight, the steam from the innards rose constantly. And there was my husband, hacking away with knife, leather gloves on his hand. There was the deer, looking remarkably like our goats, cavity filled with blood, guts hanging out but not cut free.

My husband, who refuses to cut the umbilical cord at our children’s births, dealing with this bloody processing like a pro.

As I walked back to the trailer, mainly pleased that I now had something worth writing about, I realized that more happened today than I remembered at first glance. Phil and I compared symptoms of mange with what is on Annabelle’s neck, and we didn’t think the symptoms were at all similar. We don’t know what the problem is, but we are reasonably sure it is not mange. That is a relief.

Phil worked on siding the little house. At the end of the day, he was surprised with how little he got done, and how quickly the day had passed.

Besides normal duties, I reread the lengthy description on the “right” way to plant fruit trees (see “Fruit Trees on Steroids” at http://www.highbrixgardens.com/general/downloads.html). Or, if not the right way, the way we plan to plant. There were some encouraging points, such as the need for 10 pounds of soft rock phosphate per tree. Well, we have leftover soft rock phosphate from our mineral spreading adventure, probably even 4080 pounds (what we’ll need for our 408 trees). What a blessing not to have to buy more totes, at least until next fall.

The most discouraging point was that the grower recommends digging out a cubic yard for each tree. In the bottom foot, put in “muck” or leaf litter, compost, animal wastes. The middle foot gets the topsoil that was removed, and the top foot gets, again, the muck/compost layer. So each tree needs, basically, 18 cubic feet of compost-like material. Phil figured we would just order some from our compost company again, until he realized that we would need about $11,000 worth. That’s really not feasible.

We do have 40 acres of trees, though, and the leaf layer right now is quite voluminous. I am not thrilled about taking the fertility of the forest to give to my orchard, but I’m REALLY not thrilled about an $11,000 bill, so I’ll probably transport leaves.

But before I can do that, I need to know where to transport them. And before I can do THAT, I need to figure out the spacing of the trees, and for that, I should probably have stakes to mark the spots, rather than spray paint. So I ordered 305 stakes for the apple trees (the cherries, peaches, plums, pears, and apricots don’t need stakes). And that was really great. The nursery recommended AM Leonard’s stakes, and I figured the fiberglass ones would be best. I called and asked for a discount for my bulk order, and I got a good one, over 25% off the regular online price! Yay!

We are considering purchasing a few Dexter cows, so their manure will help restore our land. We might wait until after our Thanksgiving trip, when we’ll be away for nine days (and the regular busyness of life might force us to wait anyway!), but to get a few small cows will be fun. Phil spoke with a Dexter breeder yesterday, and the man recommended that, since Phil plans to seed new pasture, he do so in February. The freezing and thawing of the ground, he said, will suck the seeds in to their appropriate depth. Pretty slick!