Peach Bud Grafting

Phil did a dump run Tuesday. He filled the truck, but was only able to fit the building debris: trimmings of insulation, packaging materials and such. We'll do another dump run soon. It is good to clean up the property.

I transplanted comfrey on Tuesday. I dug up more large roots and transplanted them into the orchard. All 101 spots are now filled, and hopefully they will all grow well. I tried planting an extra one, but the ground in the orchard was hard and rocky enough, I think I'll wait until Phil can help me with the backhoe before attempting to expand the orchard planting.

Phil and Isaiah went to do laundry today. That's always a heavy task.

I suddenly remembered this afternoon that I needed to try grafting the peach trees today. I haven't actually seen the peaches since about April. I gave up weeding them almost immediately: they were so small, it was challenging to spot them, and the spacing was off from the apple orchard. So though it's fenced off from the dogs, it's been virtually abandoned.

With their teeny diameter and complete neglect, I expected to find maybe 30 of the 60 struggling along, barely alive.

One by one I uncovered six plants in the first row. The spacing wasn't very regular, and I couldn't remember how many were in each row: I figured that was six living and four dead.

In the second row I uncovered six more. And the third row. And they were all in line with one another.

Did I really lose not a single tiny tree? It was almost beyond belief.

Bud grafting peaches was not as simple as the apple trees. Smaller trees and smaller buds meant that I needed fine motor skills par excellence. And I had a niggling suspicion that I had heard somewhere that peach trees were a bit different from apples, that their buds are different. Finally I found the tidbit I was looking for: a single bud is a leaf bud, but two or three buds are flower buds. Don't graft flower buds.

I kept weeding the patch and the sun kept setting. Some of the trees were very challenging to spot. After seven rows, I made duck stir fry for dinner. Then back, in the dusk, to finish the final three rows. The dark came fast, but I finished.

Done on a fruit day, during the period of the waxing moon, during the warm days of August (though mid-August would have been better, perhaps): somehow I managed to hit the timing exactly right.

In the end, there were two trees that had died back on the top, so only two inches were growing. I grafted them anyway: maybe they'll take. And one tree was just gone. Ninety-eight percent of the trees yet living.

That almost makes me cry: have we had 98% survival of anything?

And in this case, when the trees survived without any input, it is just a gift.

Goodbye, Dr. Scholl's

When I was in high school, my Mom gave me her pair of Dr. Scholl's sandals that she had as a young lady. I have worn them the last fifteen years or so. The stitching has gradually been loosening; occasionally I wear them through wet grass. But I was still sad when somehow the strap connected with Bitsy's teeth and tore right through. I'm going to miss those cute, comfortable sandals.

We had a great day today. One of the priorities right now is to clear the area across from and slightly downhill from the big greenhouse so we can start building underground storage. Before that can happen, though, the amazing compost pile needs to move. And that is a project.

First, where to put the compost? I have been gradually using some of it for comfrey planting, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. But I'm nowhere near done with that project. Some of the nursery trees will be ready for planting later this fall, and I would like them to have a good compost boost then. But it's too early for planting (I want the leaves to fall first).

After a long conversation about options, we decided to use the tractor to put the compost pile in the unused quarter of the greenhouse, happily right near the entrance.

First Phil pulled the enormous weeds off the top of the pile.

Then he broke up the clods.

Then he was ready to transport compost. Bucket by bucket he would scoop (uphill worked much better than downhill), then drive to the entrance of the greenhouse. There he would pull any weeds or Johnson grass roots, in order to give the greenhouse the best possible chance.

This was a huge boon: I had been weeding, cleaning, chopping, and transporting by hand. Now the compost was dumped, mostly cleaned, only a few feet from where I needed it.

Near the end of the compost pile, Phil had another materials handling issue to deal with: we had stacked all the unused cattle panels on the other side. In order to scoop compost, he needed to move the 40 or 50 panels.

That's a tough job. He hoists the 16' panels into the back of the truck, all by himself. After the truck is pretty full, he drove up to the metal building. I am SO thankful to have a place where they can be out of the way and not covered by massive weeds. What a frustration that has been, to pull panels out of a dense mat of weeds whenever we need some.

I had a productive farm day. This is a fruit day with the waxing moon, in August: the perfect time to bud graft. And I had 30 apple trees that I hadn't bud grafted yet. After researching, I finally steeled my nerve enough to attempt it.

And I was surprised to find that I loved bud grafting! I thought cleft grafting was fun in the spring, but this bud grafting felt ridiculously fast (as a rank beginner, I don't think the entire batch took more than an hour, including locating new growth with buds and gathering materials).

Will the grafts take? I have no idea. If they do, I think I've become a convert.

What makes it more fun than cleft grafting? For one thing, the trees are already planted, so to put the graft on the north or east side of the tree isn't difficult: I know where that is. It takes so little strength, comparatively: a little slice in the bark of the rootstock, a little cut on a branch, a little wrap. No top to seal off with either sealant or wrap. It felt more controlled, and the materials handling was much easier.

I'll be interested to see if bud grafts do better: with the top of the root stocks intact even now (the leaves act as solar collectors until the bud takes off), it seems less stressful to the plant overall. They've grown so much since planting! (You can see the little graft down at the bottom.)

The trees have grown well recently: all the rain, and the cooler weather—they don't seem dormant any more, as they did during the heat of the summer.

Don't they look good?

When I finished the grafts, I hurriedly weeded in the greenhouse quarter, so all the compost would fall on a more clean surface.

Then I did six rows of comfrey filling in, double what I've done before. What a joy to have soft, moist soil. I am so thankful for the rain.

To close, a joke, by Abraham, age six. Why are cows good bakers?

Because they're always making pies!

"I Could Be a Butcher"

Friday night, beautiful rain clouds rolled in. Oh, we were so excited! The boys started singing with me, "Come on and rain down on us, rain down on us, Lord!" We had some light drizzle ... for about two minutes.

Oh! We were so frustrated! We've been waiting for the autumn deluges for weeks now. I seem to remember every August getting long, deep rains, one, two, three inches. But we continue dry, horribly dry.

Saturday we woke to grey skies. I know that grey skies are gloomy, but when the land is as rock solid and dusty as ours, they hold promise.

Phil headed out to mow first thing, and while he was doing so, a light drizzle began.

The light drizzle continued, and gradually strengthened. Finally!

I went to check the rain gauge today, to see how much we had. We have a square 4x4 with two rain gauges: one that's gradually lost its numbers, and the new one.

The new gauge showed 2.6", which is fabulous. The old gauge showed 4" even. That's a whole lot more; quite a difference. Hopefully Butch will be able to settle the question of accuracy very soon.

Two little life tidbits. We've been irritated this year by a new annoyance: bell hornets. These bright yellow and red two inch flying insects pack an extremely painful sting (from what we've heard). Surprisingly, they fly after dark: we had five fly in through an open window one night, and buzz angrily around our fluorescent bulbs. Phil killed them by crushing them between two books: the fly swatter is nowhere near strong or large enough.

I have been feeding my bees every day (each hive eats 12 cups of sugar a day!). I was pouring in the almost gallon of liquid. It takes a little while to pour, and as I stood there, a bell hornet flew onto the inner cover, stung one of my honey bees to death. I kept pouring, entirely devoid of a way to kill this powerful enemy, wondering how long it would take my hive to kill this ferocious killing machine, ten times the size of my little honey makers.

But the bell hornet just carried away the dead bee, and I closed up the hive, and that was that.

Nature can be vicious!

Completely unrelated, Isaiah has been wondering about possible life vocations for him. He's assembled a lengthy list, in the double digits, with a range of ideas from architect to farmer to science teacher to big game hunter guide (that was Phil's idea). And then he tried to figure out a way to do as many of those jobs as possible.

Jadon wasn't much interested in our input. He would like to be a world traveler, as the market for explorers (like Magellan or Hudson) has dried up in the last several hundred years.

Abraham had an interesting combination: missionary-wedding photographer (I think the latter would supply the funds for the former).

And then Joe, just turned four, said, "When I grow up, to be as big as Daddy, I think probably I could be a butcher."

I have a niece just a few days older than Joe. Somehow I doubt that she would ever think of "butcher" as a potential occupation.

I sure love these boys!

Tines Disappear

Thursday was a blacked out day, biodynamically. It was just as well: whether due to a sudden reaction to Spanish olives, or a sinus headache from mowing the day before, or a reaction to the bit of syrup he put on some apples (none of which seem terribly plausible, but that's our best guesses), Phil slept most of the day.

In the evening, though, we had a treat. The farm manager of the amazing estate Edgemont, founded 1796, invited us out for a Bible study on the mountaintop. We sat up there and watched the sun go down over the Blue Ridge mountains. Later, we drove around to see the estate in the dark. In the Jeffersonian style, the colonnaded main entry had, like Monticello, buried arms extending to the efficiencies on either side.

"It was pretty dilapidated in the 1960s and even later. It took a pretty penny to restore it." Now, though, the beautifully manicured fields are one of my first memories of Albemarle County.

Phil was better today, and he kept the boys working. Isaiah did the mowing after they moved the cows. Later, when it was time to park the tractor for the night, Phil sent Isaiah up to park it indoors. "That was handy," he said, as he kept chopping up the compost pile.

We're in a brief window of maintenance. Some of the finger is so overgrown with weeds, even the cows weren't much interested. Phil mowed, with a huge cloud following, whether from pollen or dry dirt, I'm not sure. He continues to uncover various tools and implements. Today it was the backhoe, buried under 8' weeds.

I was relieved to come to a section of greenhouse comfrey that had 2/3 of the plants survive, not a third (or less). It's ridiculous how excited I am for that little patch; I give progress reports to Phil constantly: how vigorous certain roots are, how other roots are bouncing back, how many plants have sprouted in each row, how the additional compost appears to be helping. I really like the stuff!

We took a family walk to the lower pasture. When Phil had been down there a few days ago, he came across a hole next to a tree. Looking closer, he saw that there was comb on the ground next to the hole.

Presumably a bear had clawed the hole to get the nectar. If I had to guess, I'd hazard they were wasps of some kind, as the broken hive inside looked like paper. In retrospect, I probably should have picked up the comb, to see if it was wax; at the time, I was just impressed to be seeing such destruction on such a small scale (I probably wouldn't have noticed it).

There are a few vigorous elderberries growing along the creek. They are beautiful, full of purple flowers and butterflies.

Much though I value the berries themselves for syrup for the flu (I've purchased some in the past and it seems to work well), I have heard good things about elderberry flower tinctures, too, so I snagged a cluster and broke it off.

Cowboy Joe started off having a great day. He was thrilled that the straw hat from Grandma didn't fit Phil: "Now I'm a farmer!" he said. With good black boots and good new work gloves, he was ready for the day.

Later, though, he was playing barefoot on a trailer when somehow he imbedded several enormous splinters in his foot. Poor fellow! I had to cut them out, as the wood was too crumbly to pull with tweezers. (Happily, with all the sutures we've had lately, the doctor passed us some supplies, like clamps, scissors, tweezers: I used several of those handy tools.)

He's up walking around now, and the wounds didn't bleed much, as they didn't get too far into the tough sole of the foot, but what a crummy, crumbly thing.

In other news, it is fall and the two beehives I'm feeding are ravenous. They each ate through fourteen cups of 2:1 sugar water in about fourteen hours yesterday. Bone dry feeder every time I checked. Isaiah helped me stir up today's sugar water this morning, and as he put the fork in the swirl, I overheard him narrate, "Tines disappear!" in a very dramatic voice. What a succinct, exciting statement! Too good to be passed over. I told him I'd commandeer it for the blog.

Little Pleasures

Abraham read his two pages today more swiftly than normal. Isaiah focused on his math problems and I knew that he knew what he was doing, as he nears the end of fractions. Joe put on his little gardening gloves, both hands, all by himself. Jadon grinned at Isaiah's claim of craving "red zinger tea and green olives!" (Can't say I've ever craved that combination myself!)

Phil had the older boys shovel out the wood chips from the cattle trailer. Phil moved the water trailer up near the metal building.

Then he managed to pull the runaway trailer out of its jammed place without difficulty.

Do you know how many things we've done here that have been without difficulty? Do you know how wonderful it is to write that he had no difficulty?!

I have started to feed the two swarmed hives this year. They each ate 6 cups of syrup, and in 24 hours were completely dry of feed. I've done this before. I wish I had enough forage for the bees that they could effortlessly provide for their own needs, and supply a surplus of honey. But we don't, yet. So I am thankful I know enough (I think) to keep them alive.

My picnic roast boiled dry. Much of the meat wasn't burned. What wasn't fit for human consumption was joyfully nabbed by Biggles. He had been almost scary skinny (allergic to the feed we have?). But I've been finding bits of meat to feed him, and though he's still not a chunk, he doesn't feel like he's about to keel over, either. I like all the animals we have around the farm.

Have I ever liked all the animals we have around the farm? Do you know how nice it is to see all animals and have no irritation (to say nothing of loathing)?

I continue to work in the comfrey patch in the greenhouse. Several of the rows I dealt with today had only perhaps four sprouts out of 15. Horrible, horrible take rate. But I have pieces to transplant, and when I was running low on energy and comfrey bits today, I came across a large root, a piece from one of the earlier dug up plants, that supplied enough bits to finish what I had hoped.

A little comfrey gift, unexpected. What a pleasure.

First Day Post Construction

As Phil pointed out, just because construction is done, doesn't mean the building is quite "done." We returned the man lift today; we got a rake. The gravel and chunks of concrete on the floor of the building wasn't quite what Phil had in mind, so he scraped away out a portion of the gravel, then dropped large concrete chunks in, and smoothed the gravel over all again.

The interior now mostly usable, he started to clean up the exterior: strips of sheet metal into the pile for the dump; larger, extra sheets inside for future projects. Insulation and hoses and the plow, all moved under cover.

I started dealing with the greenhouse comfrey. In the last rows planted, I have about a 50% germination rate, which is not a good utilization of the greenhouse space. So I started digging up the largest plants, and taking cuttings from the roots. A large plant will give me about five cuttings, so I place the cutting in some moist compost, put it in the ground, and then cover the site with a half bucket more of compost. I probably should have done this initially, but we didn't have the compost ready yet.

Each 15' row is getting about a wheelbarrow of compost, so new sprouts and growing plants should be well fertilized now. I think I did three rows today, and planted six larger roots, a bit trimmed, in the open spots in the orchard.

I love working with the comfrey. Currently, I've taken the leaves and put them in my worm bucket; I always want my worms to be happy!

Finished!

It took most of the day, but Phil finished the metal building. Good for him, and for us.

Then he went to pick up Shadow, who was fixed today. Let the male dogs come, now; there's nothing for them here!

My day was a discombobulated Monday. Late Saturday evening, I was getting some trays down to make pizza, and accidentally nudged a pile of bowls, which fell onto the counter and shattered. The ceramic shards didn't cut anyone, but it took me until this morning to finish wiping, vacuuming, mopping, and shaking the shards.

The older boys had walkie-talkies and spent most of the day hiding around the metal building, saying inane secret communications. It's nice to see them playing so cheerily. We started school around 8pm, and they focused well (though we didn't get quite all the subjects covered!).

Phil moved the cows. He is thrilled with the improvements on the neighbor's land. We started grazing there a year ago, and though there are enough weeds to require some mowing as the cows move off a section, overall, the grass has thick stalks (a sign of better nutrients), and when Phil took a stem to chew, he was surprised to find that it was sweet.

Almost Done

We have interior space now. Our neighbor stopped by Friday afternoon and helped Phil jump ahead on panels. He had one section of insulation, four panels to put up, one panel to finish, and the back trim as of Friday night.

Saturday I was off farm for much of the day, but Phil and the boys worked together. They moved the cows from the finger to the neighbors to the south, and Phil described the large help that they were. Isaiah maneuvered the tractor, and both older boys helped wind up electric line. Phil told Abraham to grab a hose "over there," so Abraham wandered the hill for a long time, looking for this mythical hose. (With more specific instructions, he was able to locate it, but how precious, to wander a hillside, faithfully searching.)

Once I returned in the late afternoon, Phil put in the last four panels. He has to trim the back edge and put on the final bit of waterproofing. One more day's work.

Phil cavorted around the interior space. Enormous, white, mostly empty: it's fun to imagine the possibilities.

I have now basically finished weeding the planting of year-old comfrey roots. I did four rows of comfrey a day all week. Thursday I had a single patch to go, but it was screaming "black widow" to me for some reason, and my disposable gloves I had worn to deal with insulation and then comfrey were torn and falling apart.

Friday, wearing gardening gloves, I found a black widow in that patch. Of course, I thought. No wonder I felt I needed to quit.

Five seconds later, I killed another one.

Two inches more, and there was a third.

I hadn't been weeding two minutes yet, and I had killed three black widows.

It made it psychologically uncomfortable to carry on. And although I only found and killed two more that afternoon, I was jumpy the entire time. It's not a happy thing to find infinitely more black widows than earthworms, but since no worms appeared, that's what happened.

I think we have 80 plants that have survived the heat of summer, and none are enormous. The hope was that they would shield out weeds after a few weeks, but that has not happened.

I dug up one medium-sized greenhouse comfrey, started from a two-inch clipping in mid-May. What gorgeous roots! I trimmed three or four lengths off the bottom, and planted those in the greenhouse where three or four roots hadn't come up. I'm trying to be more diligent now, actually fertilizing both in the hole and pouring compost over the top of each emergent plant and root cutting. This project will take some time.

Once I had trimmed as much as I felt comfortable trimming, I transplanted the comfrey plant to an empty place in the orchard. The transplanted comfrey is on the left in the photo, the year-old root on the right. Apparently, our soil actually is better in the greenhouse.

One final bit of trivia: our neighbor told of a dog of his, how the dog was bit by a copperhead. The dog's head swelled up, eyes swelled shut, hard to breath, hard to drink. The symptoms were identical to what happened to the late calf Denise. And, really, that makes the most sense. The symptoms didn't seem to fit exactly with anything in the books. I think it probably was a snakebite. Was there anything we could have done, or an anti-venom the vet could have delivered? I don't know. Would it have been worth it to pay a vet to come out? Debatable: she wasn't strong to begin with.

But good to know, should we face this in the future.

Three Years Means Nothing

After another night of unsuccessful stakeout, Phil called me early this morning: "Come see what Biggles caught!" It looked like one of the enormous jumping field mice. He growled over it for a few hours.

Phil had to figure out how to seal off the front of the building. Every step requires a new sequence, a new set of steps to figure out, maybe a few extra sealants. I think the front required two types of tape (double sided and tacky), two types of foam strips, rivets and screws, and at least five different pieces of metal. It took hours.

After finishing that detail-oriented job, Phil did four more panels (sixteen left to go!).

We had one scary moment. In order to hoist the roof panels, we bring the panel over and set it against the building. Phil goes up to the roof, ties rope through a small hole he's drilled at the top, and pulls the panel up. Early on, one of the panels had jammed itself a half inch or so into the dirt, so as Phil pulled, the panel bent a bit until it pulled free of the ground. Since then, I stand at the bottom and lift when Phil pulls.

We did this, and the panel had risen no more than a few inches before it came crashing down. The base was on the downhill slope, and I looked up to see if the top of the panel had scraped the wall. It hadn't, but just barely. "I'm glad the panel didn't scape the wall!" I yelled to Phil.

"I'm glad I didn't just fall off the roof," was his response.

Apparently, as he pulled the panel up, the rope broke and he fell. When asked if his head had dangled in space, he said, "I wasn't that close to the edge." I didn't press for more details. He got a new piece of rope, and we carried on.

I made a list of what I'd like to accomplish this fall. We had a clear plan last year, and it included blueberry bushes. I'm not so sure about blueberries now. I realize that they sell well, store well, and are a quality, healthy food. However, I have doubts about our gallon-a-minute well being able to support the household use, the growing cow herd, whatever irrigation we choose for the orchard, as well as the rather finicky blueberries.

And we'd have to change the soil pH a good bit, as blueberries prefer acidity.

I dug up the blueberries I'd planted last fall. Out of eleven small plants, ten survived. But they didn't grow much, still about ten inches tall, maybe three leaves each. I'm pleased they lived through the hot summer without watering, but that's not a fabulous success.

So the question remains: what will we do with our cleared land in the finger?

I'll add it to the question of what to do with the greenhouse.

I was starting to feel behind, like we should have figured out more than we have. Three years here, and still unsure of the master plan?

It was a great relief to me to look up "three years" in the Bible. There's nothing meaningful related to three years! Jesus ministry probably took about that long, but that's based on references to the various feasts, not because any Gospel writer says, "And then came the crucifixion, just three years and two months after the start of miracles and teaching."

Seven years has meaning. Forty years, too. But I had somehow got it in my head that three was supposed to be really significant, and that because more hadn't been accomplished in three years, that we were somehow failing, falling behind.

But three years means nothing. We just are where we are. It's not a bad place to be.

The Nine-Point Buck

After another unsuccessful stakeout last night, Phil realized this morning that although he still counts 27 chicks, there are so many feathers scattered around their pen, he can't tell if the predator is actually killing. So he moved the chicks to a new pen, and mowed all around it. If there are scattered feathers there, he'll be ready.

These nights spent in the back of the truck, listening to economics lectures and audio books, cannot be very fun. I'm hoping third time's the charm.

After chickens, Phil moved the cows. Well, first he mowed around various sections of the lower pasture. As he was gathering up the electric netting, he came across an unexpected sight: a nine-point buck, caught by the horns, trapped in the plastic threads of the net.

Phil said that for the next half hour or hour, he gradually loosened the buck, touching his horns, his head, and the buck simply lay there, letting him. It touches me, to think of it: the wild animal, helpless; my patient husband, carefully figuring out how to loosen him, strand by strand. (I know how I would have reacted: tears, frustration, panic, desperation. How fortunate for the buck that it was Phil who found him.)

For today, I am happy for that little moment with the buck. There are hunters on every side, so I doubt we will see him again, living.

The cows are in their very temporary paddock, grazing the finger (though they are blocked out of the moon bed, the apple nursery, and the asparagus patch). We all love to have them so close. They are round and red, with happy lines to show they have good minerals. Clover has such a distinctive face, and his forelock is beginning to curl (a sign of good testosterone). When Snowman came to us, his forelock was straight (perhaps not adequately mineralized for some time before he came). It had continued straight for many months, but I noticed today that it is wavy again.

Little Dorothy found the pit where Phil burned the vine, and he viewed it as a jungle gym. While we ate dinner, we laughed and laughed because she would zip down in and back out the other side. Or she'd just vanish into it for a while before jumping out to greet her Mom.

Clover and Charlemagne were doing a little head butting. Not cruelly, just playfully. Various cows would lie down, which is such a peaceful picture of contentedness.

We had a few sprinkles today, right as Phil would be heading out to work on the building. I don't think he was too disappointed not to be able to get more done. He tweaked his wrist, and between lack of sleep and aching muscles (not to mention the stress of hoisting a 200 pound roll of insulation onto a slanted roof over 13' in the air all by himself), sprinkles that forced him to answer emails and spend time with the boys was not the end of the world.

I had mentioned sometime this morning that we were going to do schoolwork soon. I wasn't surprised, then, to find that Jadon had vanished. He wasn't in the RV, so I was fairly certain he had headed up to the metal building. I wasn't highly motivated at that moment to do schoolwork, so I let him be.

Late in the afternoon, Phil called to me from the metal building. "Did you know that Jadon is in here? Did you know that he has not only a pile of books, but his rain coat? And that he dragged a chair up here? And has a bottle of kombucha? He looks like he could camp out here for several days!"

That's Jadon, summed up. Reading his various books for fun and education, working on his math problems, hiding out (as a joke ... mostly) to avoid schoolwork. If I'd called him, he would have come immediately, but as long as I didn't call him, he's content to not rock the boat.

Fourteen Roof Panels Up

Phil worked like a crazy man today. He finished two roof panels by breakfast, and he unrolled and finished eight more by the end of the day. He took a few rests as needed (just hoisting the ridiculously heavy rolls took some serious effort), but again worked until dark.

My aid was limited: I helped him lift the heavy rolls onto the man lift (two times) and helped carry over the 19' panels. Trying to get the panels propped against the building without scratching the blue (much) was a challenge, and trying to figure out how to communicate, when there's a 19' wedge between us, made for some tense moments. You can see the final panel of the day, propped against the building.

Fourteen roof panels finished: just 20 more to go!

And we have solid, permanent interior space, useful for storage, for the first time. First used: today. I put the rest of the insulation under cover, so if it rains, the new roof will protect the rest of the roof material.

I noticed that the comfrey patch in the orchard has been gradually growing more overgrown. In fact, there was a preponderance of running vines, which is not good to have in an orchard. I started weeding just as night fell, and of the first few rows, I found nineteen living plants, one dessicated root, and two vanished plants (I know I saw them growing at one point: maybe they will pop back up again one of these days). Just seeing so many growing, even if they are not all thriving, was very energizing and encouraging.

And to know that the total area to weed isn't super enormous: there's something to be said for starting small. I like knowing that I could weed the whole area in a few days; that maybe maintenance on this year's projects is possible.

After weeding, I came inside to find Joe. He asked me to look at his lighthouse, made with Geomags. I've never seen Joe make anything very complex with the Geomags: that's been a fun creative endeavor for the older boys. So to go from nothing to a lighthouse—unbelievable. I actually went and asked all the older boys if they had built it and were playing a trick on me. (I mean, Joe's eyes were communicating truth, and he's not usually one to struggle with dishonesty, but really, how surprising!)

Roofing

Phil's stakeout yielded nothing. He had connected the chicken netting to the perimeter fence, so it was putting out several times the shock. It could be that the predator decided a meal wasn't worth the risk. In any case, Phil stayed up very late, then slept on a mat in a sleeping bag in the back of the truck, ready with spotlight and gun.

We found a suspicious track near the building. Was it a coyote? Or just one of the dogs? We don't know, and even our book of tracks didn't help us much (except we know it's not bear, so that is nice).

In any case, tonight he's sleeping inside. The boys had a good time playing with his outdoor sleeping pad.

The boys and I, after a three week hiatus, resumed schoolwork. I think they were glad to be back (at least on some level). They headed up to ride the lift with Phil afterwards, and there was noticeably fewer spats than the last few days.

Isaiah saw me taking a photo of Joe, and he said, "Wait! I'll be a second head!" So here is Isaiah, attempting to look like a second head, sprouted from Joe's neck. I don't remember trying to take such photos when I was child.

I have probably told this before, but Joe remembered his joke this weekend, and repeated it for me. "If a bee landed on stinging nettle, the nettle would sting him, and then the bee would sting the stinging nettle!" I am confident that I did not make jokes about stinging nettle when I was a child.

Phil and I took down that last panel and put it up again. Then Phil fit the corner piece over it, and prepared to do the roof.

The first four feet of insulation was extremely challenging. How to unroll 42' of flexible insulation, up in the air at least thirteen feet, sometimes higher, without any piece sticking on the double sided tape? How to pull it tight, and not drop it down between the rafters?

In the end, he said, he went as high as the lift would go, and that helped him pull the insulation tight. Then he used the lift to hoist the first two roof panels.

Next, he had to put on a 6' wide roll of insulation. That was much, much worse. First, the roll itself weighed 50% more than the previous roll. Even with both of us carrying it to the lift, I wasn't sure I would make it. Thirteen feet up in the air, Phil had to manhandle it all himself.

Once he balanced it on the 3' of insulation and roofing panel, he had to cut off the plastic wrap that held it together, and then unroll it, all on that slim section of roof. And he wasn't in the manlift now, but he was also balanced on that 3'. At one point, right at the beginning, it looked like he was losing it, and the roll would drop down between the rafters.

But he recovered, and unrolled without too much more difficulty.

He figured out how to hoist the roof panels themselves, and by the time he quit, at full dark (a little after 9pm), he had four panels done, one panel in place but not screwed down, and one panel on the ground, ready to hoist.

The assembly is a bit more complex, as it requires various sealants and such, so though the driving screws isn't too bad, the process per panel is longer.

I finished weeding the tree nursery, and then spent an hour or so snapping Johnson grass seeds. Apparently, there are more than I had wished or realized a week ago. I wonder how long it would take to dig those horrible roots out of the ground: the mind boggles.

We've been here three years, and this last weekend, I wanted to pull poison ivy. It didn't go very well. I hadn't done much, but knew I wasn't actually pulling roots, just leaves, so I gave up. I must not have washed my wrists thoroughly, because I have a fairly bad reaction there. And in my weeding, I must have walked through seed tick haven, as I realized this evening that I was covered with them, dozens, in my clothes, my hair, all over my skin. Ugh! And this is what we dealt with when we moved here. But then, we had no running water or electricity, so that was definitely worse.

Sunday: Fox and Flowers

The dogs barked on and off all night. We've had continued predation at night, but though Phil and I both got up multiple times to light up the chicken pen, we saw nothing.

Phil had researched predators yesterday, mostly to see what kind of animal we are dealing with. Based on the entire disappearance of the carcass, he figured it was a fox.

Despite the fact that the fox carried off multiple birds in the night, Phil felt strangely energized in the morning: "I figured out how it's getting in, I tracked where it crossed the fence line, and I know about what time it came to the farm, sometime between 2 and 3am."

Time for a stakeout. I'm glad it's Phil and not me, protecting our 27 remaining chicks. Yes. Twenty-seven out of 100. And only 11 are hens. We've had no new eggs in two weeks. The entire chicken situation depresses me.

Phil and I went to let the cows into another part of the lower pasture. The greenery has filled in dramatically from when we first moved here: much of the area is covered with such a thick sward that I can't see any bits of ground.

The cows were moving off of the pasture to the north, with the swales and chestnuts. Phil has mowed the slope as he's moved the cows down, ensuring that the brambles don't take over. The slope as a whole looks nicely groomed.

And the former road, now grazed and mown, shines green in the sun. The grass doesn't cover the ground entirely yet, but it gets better.

Fern and Beatrice hadn't joined their companions in the move to the new pasture. Of course not: they had ducked under the wire and had been happily munching on the brand new growth. The rascals. While I stood strategically, preventing them from heading upslope, Phil and Shadow nudged them from behind. Fern wasn't terribly interested in moving, despite Phil's pushes and taps. Then Shadow got into the action.

With the dog barking at their heels, both cows ran where they were supposed to go.

The temperature has been reaching 84 or so as a high. The powerful punch of summer has passed; in the last few days, we've noticed the first of the fall red leaves.

As we walked along Hog Creek, I saw some purple flowers. "I bet those are elderberry blossoms!" I plucked some to check: sure enough. What a rich smell; how fun to find them growing wild.

I spent some time admiring my few flowers. While there, I noticed something that looked like a cross between a hummingbird and a big bee. The wings were a shimmering blur, the body mostly upright in its erratic flight.

An internet search showed that it was a hummingbird moth (which was exactly what it looked like!), a Snowberry Clearwing (Hemaris diffinis).








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