fitzw | Doing things

There are, of course, things happening. A local march in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, a local, silent vigil being held this evening. Preparations for voting in November.

At the same time, there are tasks that need to be taken care of around our smallholding: mowing the lawn, trimming trees, digging up aggressive, invasive plants.

To that end, here is a small list of some of the things that we’ve accomplished so far this year (not exhaustive, and in no particular order):

Pruned one of the apple trees along the roadside way back, to keep it away from power lines and give it more chance to grow in other ways. We have plans for the other apple tree along the roadside, but this year the robins built a nest high up in the tree, so that will wait until next year.

Pruned the two smaller apple trees, but not as much.

Installed a stockade fence above the retaining wall on the north of the courtyard area between barn, solar array, and driveway, to provide some privacy and protection for the small garden beds that we’ve put in above that wall.

Prepared a garden bed for planting sweet corn this year, double-turning the sod under the soil, applying compost mulch from one of our compost bins (there was a lot of ready compost in the bottom of that bin), tilling that mulch into the soil, watering the ground afterwards to help spread the nutrients. Today should actually have the planting of seeds.

Prepared a new space for one of the two sheds and hired in a contractor to move the shed with some heavy equipment. The preparation involved removing sod, leveling the space, and laying a lot of the rocks that we dug out over the exposed soil to deter wildlife from moving in underneath.

Started work on clearing the old concrete pad that the shed was on as a place for my son and his wife to move their camper/trailer to that will be closer to house.

Prepared the courtyard garden beds for planting, which involved (again) removing sod and leveling the space, laying down old paper feedbags, placing four raised bed frames and filling them with soil taken from the new space for the shed as part of leveling that space, and laying cedar bark mulch in the paths between the beds (Heather did much of this work).

Planted tomatoes with some companion plants in several really large pots that we have (Heather again).

Moved two tall plant hanger poles from in front of the house to allow space for a roof to be added over our main entryway, reconnecting the hops growing next to the house to one of the poles that was moved.

Worked on preparing another space to receive two yards of gravel and be covered with pavers, as a place to put two planter boxes and a water fountain/bird bath (it’s dry — the bees and the birds will need a place to get water that isn't just the brook across our property).

Hung shade cloths inside the greenhouse so that it doesn't get too hot in there (again, mostly Heather).

Began the process of transplanting new lilac shoots to the brook bank, to help stabilize it.

Planted some new trees in various locations (again, mostly Heather).

All of these efforts were affected by the strange weather that we had in May, including one day where it seemed that we had all four major seasons on the same day (including snow).