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.

Farmi Winch Trial

We got around to finally testing the Farmi 351P logging winch Saturday.  With autumn around the corner and the impending house clearing that we have planned this winter it was time to set it up, learn its operation and do a test.  The first thing we had to do was read the manual!  With the various forces involved with operating this sort of machinery there is really is no second chance for an operator that does not follow recommended procedures for its safe operations.  In order to run on our Massey tractor we had to size the PTO shaft length to fit our tractor and this required some measurements and cutting of the shaft according to the manufacturer's instructions.  It was a rather finicky task trying to connect the PTO onto the Farmi's splined shaft due to the lack of space around Farmi's PTO guard.  However with a bit of patience, disassembly of the PTO guard (and then reassembly once installed!) we managed to get it done properly and working safely with all guards correctly in place.

With 34 acres of forest around us, a small scale logging winch/skidder seemed justified since our plan is to selectively harvest timber in the years to come for fuel wood to heat our home and perhaps to sell on spot basis if the economics are right.  We had considered the Wallenstein model of winch but instead decided on the Farmi brand (Finnish company) due the ideal mix of performance (log pulling capacity =7,720 lbs), price, reliability and reputation.  It is really a solidly built piece of equipment and I imagine that it will far outlast us!

Summer 2015 Update

 We spent a week at the Black Sheep Inn located in Chugchilan, Ecuador in early July.  It is a great place to visit if you love to hike and enjoy the outdoors.  The views from the Andes mountains were spectacular.

Cabin at the Black Sheep Inn - Chugchilan, Ecuador

View from Black Sheep Inn - Ecuador

Sarah on the Cloud Forest excursion - Chugchilan, Ecuador

Horse back riding at Black Sheep Inn - Ecuador

Rest Stop in the Cloud Forest - Chugchilan, Ecuador

Quilatoa Lake, Ecuador

Sauna at the Black Sheep Inn - Chugchilan, Ecuador

Zip lining in the jungle near Mindo, Ecuador

Rat Snake!

Over the Memorial Day weekend we spent a bit of time at Beechnut Hill farm splitting some wood, watering the newly planted veggies and installing the new (temporary) shower.  As we were walking near the woodshed this rat snake slithered across our path and up a tree to "hide".  About an hour later we saw him again slither under the pile of logs near the woodshed.  These are very common (and beneficial) snakes in our area that will help to keep the mice population and other small rodents in check.  They are known to invade chicken coops and steal an egg to eat.

Rat Snake

A little more to the stack each time!

The shower connects to the garden hose which hooks up to the well pump pressure tank for a nice bone chilling shower.  Excellent after a long session of splitting wood when its 90F outside.

Handles added to the sliding barn doors

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

Spring growth

Update on the trees and other things.  We frantically planted all of the above tree types in March at the first opportunity after we had experience quite a few rather cold weeks here in NC.   The pecans (kanza and lakota) were very slow to burst their buds but finally did about in the first couple of days of May.  The apple leaves erupted way before almost right after we put them in the ground.  The bald cypress in the lowland area were late April and are doing very well in spite of the limited sunlight now with the canopy shading them.

Pecan buds

raspberry emerging

Bald cypress

The view down Beechnut Hill lane

The real house will be located about same spot as the tent

trekking down to the lowland area

The left of the trees is an old logging road that traverses part of our property

Our old 1/2 bath sink we kept and re-purposed for washing up - we'll connect the well to a cheap sink faucet via garden hose for when needed during camp outs.  We'll add a 3x3' outdoor shower platform next to it in coming weeks.

Wood shed nearly done.  Add clean gravel stone base, nail up the wire wall fence and start stacking it with all the cut rounds scattered about the property from the site clearing a year ago.

Mates

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.