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.

March Madness

So we've accomplished a lot in the first week and half of March.

- pecan trees planted (6)

- Fuji and Gala apple trees planted)

- Doremund raspberry bushes (10 planted)

- about 40-50 bald cypress bare root seedlings planted in the bottomland

- the shop/barn is finished (95%)

Close to finished barn

Plantra cylinders to protect young trees from predators. It's a well made and easy system to install.

Barn with sliding doors installed

Pecans on right and raspberries at top of hill with protectors

Kanza pecan

Moonn Creek bottomland with likely it's first ever bald cypress glade?

bald cypress seedling inside its 'greenhouse'

Looking down from up the hill over the planted bald cypress

Deep Freeze in February

The second half of February was rather "wintery" by typical NC standards.  With several inches of snow and temps dipping to around 11 F on the 19th I think we set some records for chilliness.  Contrast that to the early part of February when we were camping!  We actually had enough snow that we needed to plow the driveway.  As we headed into March though things were warming up and we looked forward to planting out nut and fruit trees.  More on that in a later post.

Trail along Moon Creek

Wood Shed Rafters Harvested

On February 14 we headed over to our other lot which has a couple hundred young pine trees growing on it to select and cut down a few for making our wood shed rafters.  We located seven Virgina pine that were minimally 12 feet and about 3-4" diameter.

Peeled and ready to for the roof installation

Farmi