The Miry Pit

Phil drove into Charlottesville with the four older children to pay for the cattle panels and T-posts that have come in. He didn’t bring them home, because 250 panels at 8’x16’ each would not fit in our van—nor our pickup!—but he did look them over before paying, and now gets to figure out how to get them home.

We went down to see the end result of his excavator work (although the rental place won’t pick up the machine until tomorrow, since we’re not paying for today, we didn’t use it today). It was both encouraging and discouraging.

I was encouraged by the amount of land that is cleared. I figure he probably only worked maybe six hours, without ideal equipment, and probably cleared about 1/3 of an acre. If we rent a better piece of equipment for a month, I think he could easily clear all four or so acres down by the creek. Once we get the trees planted and the fencing up, that will be next on the list.

I was discouraged first by the soppiness of the ground. Isaiah had eagerly run ahead into the cleared patch; the mud literally sucked his shoes off, and he stood, sock-clad, sobbing, ankle-deep in cold, red clay. (Phil carried him to a tree, removed his socks, put his shoes back on, and then graciously carried the sodden socks back to the trailer—what a guy!) We have deep gullies on either side of our house and future orchard clearing, and they make a V-shape as they run into Hog Creek. The northern gulley cut a well-marked channel; until we cleared, we didn’t realize that the southern gulley suddenly spreads out into a delta, and the delta runs right over the newly cleared land.

Hence, the standing water and ankle-deep mud.

The sight of freshly scraped land also brings no joy to my spirit. I’m pleased to have unhealthy trees knocked down; I don’t miss the thorny briers. But the beautiful green carpet of ferns and moss underfoot has been entirely destroyed. I know enough of microorganisms and humus to know that heavy machinery on wet land is not only not ideal, but is, in fact, destructive. Farewell, soil structure! (To be fair, though, I noticed no dead earth worms, and the soil itself appears to be heavy clay, as the rest of the land. Perhaps such drastic measures are not as bad as I fear.)

If there were a way to clear the land without creating an orange morass, how wonderful that would be. However, I am also impatient, and I suspect that any hand-clearing method would take too long, at least for me.

Before we moved, I read about “compromise,” and how farmers have to do that sometimes. I suppose this is my third compromise (the second was bringing all my recycling to the dump; the first was using disposable diapers).

Another discouragement is the materials’ handling. I would prefer not to burn any organic matter, leaving it to compost instead. However, I’m steeling myself for the potential future compromise of burning, even while hoping to come up with a brilliant plant to avoid it.




The other big accomplishment today was that we ashed the skin of one of the deer Phil shot. Despite all the rain, it had dried enough to burn. Phil borrowed a 55-gallon drum from the Bessette land, and took a few of their logs. Then we burned the skin. We have heard that an effective deer repellent is to take the ashed skin and dynamize and potentize it (grind it and mix it with water in a specific way), then spray the water around the fields where deer are unwelcome. The book we read this in had this to say: “The effect of the deer ash could be clearly observed on an unfenced clover field. The animals had grazed the clover in the surrounding fields but not within two metres of the trial area. They had not crossed the line marked by the ash. Indeed the ash had radiated its effect two metres beyond it.”

I’m happy for deer repellent, no matter what form it takes. Keep the deer out of our orchard!