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04/06/2007: "Sun Splattered Splitting"

The last two days have been absolutely sun soaked. The highs have been in the mid 70s with bright blue skies and a gentle breeze. It's been perfect. So we're soaking up every second of it.

Thursday we decided to wrangle up the oak limb that had fallen on the neighbor's property. He gave us the limb, but we needed to buck it, split it, and cart it out. Nate got his chainsaw out a while back and bucked it into rounds. After sitting a few weeks, the wood was still wet, but the ground was dry enough for us to safely move it. Wet oak is apparently a lot easier to split than dry oak, but it's still gosh darn difficult! Here I am trying to learn to split wood. About 20 minutes into it I finally figured it out and started crashing through chunks. It's very satisfying!

There's more....

Here's Nate moving them out. We had to use the little cart because the space was not big enough for us to move the car into, and it's a pretty short distance anyways. But, the logs were down on the middle of a fairly steep slope, and there was no way to get the cart down to them. (Well, you could get the cart down, but there's no way to get it up!) So we took turns splitting and hauling. I estimated that I moved over 1 1/2 tons of wood yesterday.


Rebecca spent a few hours on Thursday and on Friday working on a trellis system for the grapes. She weeded around them, removed the drip line, punched a few large post holes in the ground and tamped in the 8 foot posts. She's planning on adding smaller posts for individual support, as well as wire for the grapes to grow up.


After working on the oak limb most of the day yesterday, and giving myself a nice sunburn, I decided to scrub the outside of the greenhouse. I climbed up on the ladder and leaned out as far as I could reach. I used a little scrub brush and some "Bon Ami" calcium carbonate cleaner to scrub off the year's algae growth. The light came through a bit better. So today I got out the soil blockers and made my flower starts! The greenhouse is on its way to full now. I'm planning on starting a few more rounds of "fun thing" in the greenhouse in another two weeks, so I have a staggering. I started over 25 different flowers and herbs in the greenhouse today, with close to 50 more to direct sow in a few weeks. Rebecca has started some hollyhocks, fennel bulbs, and coneflowers. We're very excited for the coming flower bonanza.


This is the tool we use to make seed starts. It's called a soil blocker. It works like this: mix up some nice goopey seed starting mix. Move a portion of the mixture into a corner or side of the container. Press the soil blocker into the mush, pressing down firmly on the entire contraption and not the plunger. Twist to make sure everything's tight in there. Now move it to where you want it and depress the plunger while pulling the contraption away. Out pop these wonderful 2 inch blocks with a neat little depression in the center for the seed.


My first few blocks were a little crumbly. But within a few blocks I had a system and was cranking out seed beds. We also have a soil blocker that is 4 inches. It leaves a 2 inch hole in the center, perfect for dropping the growing seedling, block and all, into it's new medium.


The cherry trees are in full blossom. I visited Japan once during cherry blossom season. I was always a little confused over the commotion the cherry blossoms caused. Ours are as heavenly as any I saw in Kyoto!


And finally, I woke up Thursday morning and stepped outside to get the ducks. And what do I see? The barn swallows racing and dipping through the sky. I am so excited. These little guys are so beautiful and graceful in the air. They chatter at us in the barn and fledge their brood right where we can watch. Their nests are interesting, and as long as there isn't anything underneath the nest, they're welcome. They eat a lot of bugs too, especially mosquitos. Barn swallows have a rusty orange chest and a shiny blue back. The males have a very forked tail. Keep an eye out for these acrobats!