Autumn Harvest

From roughly late August through October some of our trees produce copious quantities of fruit and nuts.  We were lucky this year to have found some ripe pawpaw fruit in a few locations around the property.  The American pawpaw is a native tree that bears a fruit which, to me, has a taste somewhere between banana and mango.  For it to be fully enjoyed it must be eaten after it has fallen off the tree naturally.  Whenever we picked them from the tree they tended to be a bit hard and not as succulent.  The turnoff for some might be the rather ugly appearance they have after becoming ripe.  They are mottled grayish-black.  But don't be deterred by their looks as they are a delicious fruit that is rich in nutrients.   There are hundreds of these slender trees growing naturally along the creek banks, floodplain and slopes of our land.

Coming a little later are the hickory nuts.  We have several mature hickory trees probably about 30-50 years old that produce vast numbers of nuts.  Elizabeth collected probably close to 30 lbs.  While they contain quite tasty meat they are a lot of work to crack.  We tried using a hammer and a vise and both ways work but the best device is one we recently purchased exclusively for breaking them open.  It works great.

Besides the bountiful forest harvest this year we also managed to get some fruit and vegetables from the hugelkultur beds we started in the spring next to the barn.  We planted a bit late so the watermelon crop yield was low.  One of our main goals was to see how well the swaled beds would be able to capture and retain moisture on the slope as we had made them on contour, filled them with trees, wood chips and soil.  We had about normal amounts of rain and the temps were in the upper 90's frequently in July and August and yet in spite of our only being there about every 7-8 days very little additional water was needed to keep them going.

Farm progress and "farmer problems"

The wood shed is finally done!  We ended up going the easy route and used wire fence to be the walls which was easy, cheap and quick to install.  The added benefit of this material is that it allows complete air circulation from all directions.  Additionally we had reasoned that no one would be able to see the sides and rear wall anyway.  So the next thing is to get a few more pallets to stack the wood on, rent a splitter and make an all day event out getting the wood split and stacked.

It was a busy two days as we also took advantage of the dry conditions and had 36 more tons of crusher run delivered to finish up the barn floor leveling.  We ran in too a mechanical problem with the hydrostatic steering on the tractor causing us to shut down for awhile to fix the problem (sort of).  The steering ram cylinder came loose from vibration (all four bolts were still in place but the cap screws were not engaged!).  We managed to get them realigned and properly tightened without cross threading the screws.  This fix allowed me to continue using it but now I think there is either a problem with the steering pump pressure or the cylinders are bad.  At about the same time this happened Elizabeth had declared that the well pump had quit working or the well was dry!  After taking a short break and thinking about the issue I walked over and pressed the circuit breaker button on the generator and it reset.  Well pump not broken and well not dry. :)

Ramp nearly level with bottom of door now

Moving and leveling with FEL.  The Farmi was only along for the ride to counter weight the front end.  I should have put the rear blade on the for additional leveling capability.

Elizabeth was very busy planting tomatoes, zuchini, watermelon and ochra in the hugelkultur beds which we amended with topsoil removed from the wood shed.  The farm is coming along nicely!

The cute and adorable little fellow was found in the wood shed when we were excavating the topsoil

Hugelkultur on Contour

It was a Good Friday project at the farm.  I decided to take advantage of the drier conditions we have had the last week or so and cut a few more swales on contour uphill of the barn.  Instead of leaving open catchment ditches I changed up the strategy a bit and decided it would be more "permaculture-like" if I started the soil building process proactively.  We took a lot of the young trees/logs we cleared from other areas of the property and placed them in the swales then covered them back up with the soil and wood chips we'd made a few weeks earlier with the chipper.

This is sort of a 'before' picture.  I had already dug one swale but you can see where the next one is going with the red flags.  To the left you can see my homemade A-frame clinometer leaning against the middle lean-to post of the barn.