What We've Been Up TO

Sorry for the lag in posts this summer. We have all been so busy it's been difficult to even gather our thoughts let alone write them down!

I have been working on a post about ponds but it has taken on a life of it's own.

In the meantime I have been collecting photos along the way so I decided to just give you a pictorial overview of some of our activities this summer and catch up on the writing when I get a chance.

Thanks for stopping by and we'll talk soon.

One of my top bar hives had a mouse.

 The Meat Chicks are well on their way.

Our daughter in law had a show.

Buck plays host at the Art Shack

The old barn is getting a face lift, 2 inches a month.

And the underside is full of Carpenter Ants.

It's Red Haven peach season at our neighbors.

 

 Buck fermented amazing pickles from the cucumbers he grew.

 Our littlest friend has coming for visits. Busy, busy.

My and Jake's coffee roasting has been taking on a much more serious flavor. We have been cupping wholesale lots of green coffee beans to prepare for large orders.

 Amazing sunsets are pretty regular this summer. All the smoke in the air.

Wild life has been staring in the window at us.

 I found some really promising fasteners at Harbor Freight.

 Buck is really good at keeping us fed.

A blessed moment for June, that puppy finally slept!

Sculpting The Landscape

One of the jobs that I have taken on this summer is keeping the usable space we have reclaimed, from the blackberry vines and Scotch Broom, clear.

We have lots of open areas that we would like to keep that way. One of my current projects is to keep the blackberries from tip rooting and gaining more space. I walk around the Homestead with a pair of professional grade hand clippers (I don't mess around with the 12 pairs of crummy ones I own any more) in my leather holster and every time I see a long tendril of tender Himalayan Blackberry reaching for more real estate I whack it off.

Buck has invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears into clearing some major mounds of blackberry and I have been keeping them in check, starving the roots by continually harassing the sprouts with my boot heel and the mower. It seems to be working. They send up fewer and skinnier sprouts each time.

Another ongoing strategy I have adopted is that when I am walking the property for any reason I pull as many small Scotch Broom as I can with my gloved hands. My currant record is 150 in an hour. I admit some of them were barely bigger than a pencil, but hey, they would have just become bigger and bigger, throwing their seed far and wide.

One thing Buck started and I have expanded on is the art of Landscape Architecture by mower.

It lifts the spirit to have visible results with some real impact on our and our guests quality of life. I have created all kinds of walking paths through grass that is now shoulder high. It's so fun to walk along these "garden paths" with company or the dogs in the evening.

I have also created little "rooms" under trees and in random clearings to rest in the shade or just look into. It is really only a fraction of the mowing I do and it gives me a lovely break from brush mowing.

I mowed around the upper burn pile for safety but in the process found myself imagining what it would look like from an airplane and found myself mowing what amounts to a giant spiral crop circle.

Unfortunately, foraying into unknown territory with the mower around here has its problem spots full of limbs, rocks, wire and bailing twine. It's something like being a steam boat captain on the Columbia.

Only, luckily, my mower doesn't sink when I hit all that junk.

Some Photos and a Painting

I have been really busy lately. I am helping to set up a Community Garden and it has taken a lot of what little spare time I have had. It's a very important project though and near and dear to my heart and I am glad to be involved.
Because of the time crunch I was thinking I would thrill you with a post full of photos I took this last week.

I also managed to finish a painting last week.




All in all it's been a great week here at the Homestead.