And we are getting a small driveway put in next week. Just large enough to pull off the road all the way. I am planning on driving around in the field with the truck, to get closer to the strawberry patch and to the sandy area. Right now it’s almost impossible to walk through all those weeds, which are chest high and over! We thought about borrowing a brush hog, but then the cuttings are picky and we really don’t need to do the whole thing.
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I have NO idea how this is all going to turn out! Last night we planted a small garden at the dirt. Watermelon, canetloupe, onions, carrots, sweet corn, and pumpkins. I also had a big bunch of old seeds so we scattered them all around. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) actually produces something! We have no way to water anything and will not be out there weeding or otherwise maintaining it. I guess if we get one watermelon from the pack of seeds it will have been worth the effort!
At least the ground has no sod on it so it was really easy to dig trenches and put down some seeds. We also had some really old grass seed that we threw in the spreader and made a little grass seed path out to the strawberries. Which, by the way, are full of flowers and buds! So with any luck we’ll have fresh strawberries later.
Now if it would just stop freezing. We’ve had 3 freeze warnings since the beginning of May, when the danger of frost should have already passed.
Most of our trees are looking good. Many of them have leaves, or at least buds. There were only a very few that looked like they didn’t make it. Also discovered some volunteer trees. It will be exciting to watch them over the years and see which ones make it!
Many of our trees have buds and some even have small leaves, and the strawberry plants look good too! We’ve had around 3 inches of rain in the past week or so, and parts of the field are in puddles. Hopefully the cedars are enjoying the lake they are living in!
And they are all planted, except the three fruit trees. We planted the other 180 this weekend, plus 10 asparagus plants and 15 strawberry plants. No watering either, just rain, so whatever makes it through the summer will be tough indeed. I am excited to see our field when the little saplings start getting leaves! I saved 10 strawberry plants to plant here so I would have an idea of how my plants are doing there. I figured it might save me running out there every day impatiently checking for strawberries. We have some good black topsoil here so I’ll plop them in some of that and see what happens!
We were really lucky to have completed most of the planting yesterday when it was in the 70′s and breezy. Today it was in the upper 40′s when I went back myself and put in the lilac bushes, two hickory trees and the asparagus and strawberries. It is always windy out there too. I was glad to be done.
I want to extend a thank you to our friend Annie, who came and helped, and hung in there til the end. We stuffed her full of beer and pizza afterwards. We were all filthy, including the kids, but it will be worth it!
25 cedar, 5 each of blue spruce, Douglas fir and white pine, 25 sugar maple, 50 hybrid poplar, 5 American beech, 25 red oak, 10 silver maple, 10 pin oak, 5 redbuds, 10 white flowering dogwood, one honeycrisp apple, one sun Fuji apple and one Harrow delight pear. The fruit trees will be here in one week and the rest in 3 weeks.
I think we are going to need to have a Tree and Beer party – get a bunch of people out there to plant trees and nurse our sore backs with beer afterward! An update and pictures to follow once the planting is done!
We haven’t made any decisions yet about building. Work seems to be stable for now, but the future just doesn’t feel very secure. I think for starters, we are going to plant some trees. I am not sure we are going to farm any of it this summer, we still need to talk with the farmer once we decide what to do. If we can get some trees going that would be great.
The USDA has some programs as well for helping return farmland back to native trees and grasses so we plan to check into that.
Otherwise, probably not much news here at all until spring.
We closed on Wednesday this week and it was very short and sweet. The folks who sold it to us seemed very nice, older couple who lives not far from us. We are glad this part is over. Now comes the gigantic search through house plans.
As we are waiting for the money to be clear so we can schedule a closing, we have been looking at home plans. I have several books of them but then you can also go online and look through literally thousands of them. After a while it makes my head hurt.
I think my favorites so far are Craftsman homes. I like the character that 100+ year old homes have – Victorian era homes are lovely but so fussy… I like the oldness of Craftsman style homes but the lines are simpler and cleaner than Victorian style homes. I really want to choose a style and plans that are a little different than a lot of new homes you see. We really need to go to a bunch of open houses just to check out various layouts. I’ve got a running list of features I’d really like in a house. I don’t require a totally custom set of plans but I would like something a bit off the beaten path. Lots of decisions to be made, that’s for sure!
We got our financing stuff done, now we are just waiting for the bank. You would think that a check from a national financial institution would not take 11 business days to clear, but it does. I guess banks don’t trust one another in this day and age. Looks like our closing date will be pushed into the second week of December. And so it starts.
