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03/21/2007: "Planting Maples"

After what seemed like a long hiatus, I was able to manage an overnight trip to the farm last weekend. It was a warm and sunny day, perfect for some late-season planting; Nate and I concentrated on planting Big Leaf Maples in some of the more well-drained areas of the woodlot.



We fought our way through a lot of blackberry brambles to accomplish the maple planting; we tried to scarify the soil around each new tree enough to give the tree less competition for water from grass and vines. We worked the better part of the afternoon, and got about sixteen trees put in.

Driving down to the farm I stopped at Ruhl Bee Supply, finally. I got a more or less complete set of hive, clothing, and tools necessary to keep some bees alive - nothing much in the way of the tools for harvesting honey, just the basics. Unfortunately, this stop-off meant that I missed the lunch that Nate and Channa had with new neighbors Jan and Chuck. This was a bit of a shame, since a) Jan made an excellent coconut creme pie and b) Jan shared some memories of how she grew up in the house next door to Living Green Farm some 50 years ago. She even remembers a bit about the owners of the farm in that era, a couple with the last name of Caldwell: they kept milk cows and chickens, and lived a reasonably self-sufficient rural life on the farm.

One thought that occurred to me while I was driving was "What about the owl box? It was supposed to be put up in February!" The owl box was something I built one evening in December for Nate and Channa; we've talked about attracting a pair of barn owls to keep the local rodent population down. Some months ago a woman from the local university visited the farm; the woman inspected our barn and was able to tell us that we have had barn owls visiting. The owl box wasn't quite complete, as it needed hinges and latch on the clean-out door, so the first thing I did when I got down to the farm was finish assembling the owl nest box.



Then we got the tall the orchard ladder out and put it up in the barn loft.



I finally got to see the new shop roof that Dale installed:



Nate and I planted sixteen maples out in the woodlot area of the property. On the way back he pointed out some hull-less oats and special tall wheat he had planted; the wheat, he said, was a variety that grows six feet tall without lodging (falling over)!



Also, despite all the consumption of wheat and oats by Aura, it looks like we'll get wheat and feed oats from the plot that Nate planted last fall.

Saturday morning I was up pretty early to plant a few more items. I had bought some apple trees and blueberry bushes on sale at a Big Box Store, and they were already sprouting leaves from having been in the warm environment. So they needed to be put in the ground pronto. I put the apple trees on either side of the apple tree that has split in two along the south yard fence; we'll see how they do, there wasn't much investment there. On my way to put a few more screws in the owl box support I stopped to look in on our pollinators, the orchard mason bees. The orchard mason bees are awake! Their little nest houses are hanging from the east overhang of the shop, and when I peered into the open holes I could just barely see the shiny back end of a bee still asleep on a Saturday morning.

It was a pretty morning to be up and about in the barn.



I finished up by digging a small bare space around the black currants (I'm still dreaming of some black currant jam!), and then I came back to the kitchen for a nice little farm breakfast of duck eggs on toast.