I did a post two years ago (see here)
on the flowerbed I enclosed in landscape timbers and leveled out. Connie has added more plants each summer and the flower bed is looking pretty nice. Here are a few photos that I just took a few minutes ago.
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Blogging hasn’t taken a high priority for the last few weeks. Upon our return from Oregon at the end of March we have been busy, busy, busy! I had put off doing any gardening or seed starting. That had to begin almost immediately after arriving back home. That went well and we have been having fresh radishes, greens, onions from the garden.
I did a couple of posts as reports on our trip and I have more to post. Bear with me, I’ll get it done.
Shortly after getting back to the farm we began getting baby goats. Zoe, the goat who refused to accept her kid last year, was the first to kid. She had a nice little doeling which we named Zaylee. A couple of days later Brownie also had a doeling. We named her Baylee. Not exactly twins but are half-sisters, from the same daddy. Their mothers are half-sisters also.
That is Zaylee on the left and Baylee on the right.
Annie waited a couple of weeks and presented us with twins, Abe and Abby. Annie is getting old and isn’t in as good a condition as in previous years. I’m not milking her, just letting her raise her babies.
I used rocks I hauled home from the old house I’ve been tearing down to level out Connie’s flower bed. (See my post on that here.) That took a few days.
When I built our deck in 2005 I used some “cull wood” from the sawmill as decking. Even though I have applied water seal a few times some of the boards were rotting. I replaced the deck floor with treated deck boards.
Here you can see some of the new boards that have been put into place. The blue/green in the lower left is one of my water tanks that are under the deck. These are used to hold some of the rain that runs off of the roof.
When we first arrived back home we were in a bit of a dry period here in South-Central Kentucky, running a deficit of about 8 inches. That has changed. Over about 4 days at the end of April we received over 3” of rain, which we really appreciated. However, the next weekend, Saturday and Sunday, May 1 and 2 we got 11 and 1/10 inches! Living on top of a ridge we had no major problems, just a bit of erosion from the gardens, etc. But, our little community suffered some major flooding. Nothing like Nashville, TN but still several homes and businesses were flooded. The city lake almost washed out. The highway was closed and several folks were evacuated as it appeared that the dam was going to wash away. So much water was coming over the concrete spillway and the earth dam was eroding on both sides. Thankfully it didn’t go but there is alot of repair work to be done.
I have spent nearly everyday the past two weeks working to complete the project of tearing down the old house and hauling home salvaged material. I’m close to being done.
This pile of boards, all 14-16 feet long, have yet to be hauled home. Darryl will use his 16’ trailer to haul them. As you can see my little truck just won’t handle material of that length.
As I have mentioned before we heat with wood. The wood stove we have been using for the last couple of winters is a cook stove with a large fire box. When we quit having to have heat Connie hated to go back to cooking on our gas range. She said if I had told her 10 years ago that she would be cooking on a wood cook stove, and further, enjoying it she would have thought them crazy. With the big fire box it just isn’t practical to cook on our Bakers Choice in the warmer months. We discussed moving the stove onto the screened front porch for the summer but that is a pretty big job and still takes more wood to get the stove up to cooking temps. We decided to look for a smaller and less expensive wood cook stove that we could put on the porch. That would become in essence a summer kitchen.
After doing some searching on line I discovered on ebay what we were looking for. The individual/business had 3 different stoves available, all new. One was pretty plain, one just like it with chrome trim and the third one had a slightly larger fire box and a water reservoir. The third one was the one we bid on and bought. The stove is much lighter in weight, is not air-tight and isn’t the quality of the Bakers Choice but is a good little stove. We are enjoying it. Connie is learning how to use the oven as it doesn’t heat quite the same as the one we have in the kitchen.
Hopefully, this brings you somewhat up-to-date. I’ll try to stay a bit more current and I’ll strive to finish my reports on “our big adventure.”
In an earlier post I mentioned hauling home rocks that had been used for the foundation of the old house I’m tearing down. I have since hauled even more home and there are a few more to bring. We have had a flower bed in the back yard that is far from level. The richer soil seems to migrate to the lower edge. I decided that I would use the rocks to enclose this flower bed. That was a bit of work but hauling soil and filling it in is also taking time and a toll on my back.
Now that I am nearing completion I found a recent listing on the “local” Craig’s List. It was captioned, “Handhewn Antique foundation stone - $500” The ad states, “I’ve got about 40 ranging in size from 12x12x5 to a couple 12x12x36. These are HEAVY” What was I thinking? Mine were just as nice and heavy, I used approximately 40 of them on the flower bed and I’ve expended a lot of time and effort, and just think, I could have made a few hundred dollars (perhaps). Anyway, pictured here is the project nearing completion.
As you can see we have to move a few more plants before I can finish filling in the flower bed. Several have already been removed, some planted elsewhere and others awaiting being replaced in this bed.
Connie enjoys flowers and shortly after moving here to the farm I dug up an area in front of our parking area for a flowerbed. I remember that the soil was full of small rocks, I must have thrown out bushels of them. She added compost and manure but it seems she continued to have some difficulties. The soil dried out quickly and perhaps one of the biggest problems was that the ground sloped. Flat land is hard to find here on the ridge. I told her that I would put landscape timbers around the area and level things out.
I got that done last week. I carried up 25 five gallon buckets of dirt from the side of the hill plus added 3 wheelbarrow loads of “dressing” from the stockyard. I’m sure more soil will be needed as everything settles but she has been busy getting plants set out and some seeds planted. Here are a few photos. We will have to revisit after the plants have grown and are fully in bloom.
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