The geese are flying these October days, and so I wonder. Geese fly south in the winter, don’t they? A quick trip to Google and I learn that yes, they do, but for many birds, the Willamette Valley IS south. The vast majority in the winter flocks are Cackling Geese, followed by Ganada Geese, Snow Geese, and so on. They circle around our property, heading, no doubt, for the Finley Refuge a few miles south. Cackling Geese? Yep, you should hear them!

But it seems that these fellows are not so welcome in our agricultural county. “Ten geese will eat as much as a cow,” says an area farmer whose wheat fields become home to thousands of the birds every year. And here we are, planning, with the help of USF&W to build vernal pools on our wetlands, to attract water fowl. Wait a minute! The situation is complex, having to do with hunting, a river delta in the tundra in Alaska, an international treaty, and the geese’s preference for Oregon over California.

Maybe Larry will have to add a shotgun to his list of farm equipment, and I’ll have to learn to cook a wild goose. Just kidding, of course, but obviously, we’ll have to dig a little deeper before we launch our conservation program.

Which is stalled at the moment anyway. I picture harried government workers hunched over their desks or investigating streams and swamps and hillsides all over Benton County, having little time to get on with Steve’s wonderful Conservation Plan. Meanwhile, we wait for the fields to green up — so that they may be sprayed, unfortunately, to eliminate the invasives and make room for the natives. Hard to be patient when we see all that has to be done. Example: Steve told us he was walking one of the fields and saw tens of mice or rodents of some ilk scurrying before him. What? Where are our raptors?

Let’s move!

The house is proceeding apace, though. Photo below:

On Wednesday, we met with the electrician, doing the walkabout necessary to place light switches, in-ceiling cans, plugs, etc. Details for which we have now become responsible. Determining to avoid the mistakes in our present home (by which I mean digital controls which are complicated and malfunction often), we will without a doubt create new, unforeseeable problems and learn to live with them. A shout-out here to Gordon, who gave us the benefit of his experience and smarts. Everyone should have a Gordon in his life! (And a Vik as well, who has been holding my hand throughout this project!)

Met with the cabinet maker, conferred with the plumber, with Rod, our talented architect, with the butcher — (ha! just seeing if you’re paying attention.) And when it was all done, hands shaken all around, Larry and I were free to go. Guess where. Yes! Pepe’s, which is the John Deere dealership:

Just look at those little beauties! Larry had been told he might benefit from a “grapple” instead of a scoop in order to pick up all those piles of downed branches, berry vines, firewood. Great idea. Would require the purchase of the 48 horsepower model instead of the 32, in order to have front-end hydraulics. And how much would that cost? I’m sure you can imagine. So, no grapple. Much head-scratching and anguished brow-furrowing later, he wrote the check and walked away the proud owner of his very own tractor. It will be delivered next Wednesday when he’ll be given a tutorial on site. Don’t worry, Tyrone told him, he can teach him what he’ll need to know. (Tyrone is kind of a genius who can apparently do anything.) A new tractor has to be a real guy-magnet. I’m sure Eric and Doug would also stand by, except those guys (along with Moise, who may or may not be interested in tractors) work really, really hard. No time for kicking tires and offering advice.

First job: shoving the crib-cleaning detritus from the barn floor out into the back field. Where, with the rains coming, it may become rich fertilizer to work into the orchard next spring. You think? It’s a theory.

We go tomorrow to clean out more cribs (only 14 left), and because we’re promised a sunny day, and there’s no golf game. And Larry wants to saw and I want to rake over the trench dug through the forest and what could be more fun?

“Saw a skunk walking along the woods,” Eric tells us on Wednesday last. “He’s just strolling along, don’t know where he’s living, but he’s definitely set up housekeeping.”

This is lovely news. Larry is about to work on the stack of large limbs left by the arborists. And where is that skunk likely to be nested? Woodpile? Seems possible.

Undeterred, Larry cranks the saw. He’s determined to prove to his skeptical wife that he can muscle the oak around by judiciously choosing his targets. And seems to be succeeding when I notice that he’s working right on top of our little friend. I wave my arms to get his attention and call him over. We watch as Skunk waddles out of the pile and off into the oak woods. And, as he’s absolutely left the neighborhood, and the danger is over, Larry keeps on sawing. I’m very impressed, though still a little concerned. Peter, when you read this, let me know when you can come back!

Later, Dennis-the-Excavator appears to discuss the location of the drain field, and timing of the work. Dennis is the definition of local, so I ask him. What about the skunks around here?

“Bad and good,” he tells me in his singular voice. “We usually don’t mind about them down here because they eat the yellow jackets, which prey on the honey bees. But you don’t want them under your deck.” Dennis is not given to understatement, so, no, we don’t want ours under our deck. “Can trap ’em,” he says. “But I wouldn’t bother. Yellow jackets’re a problem. Got a dog?”

No dog. So we’ll see.

On Friday, Vik and Gordon came down to check things out, give us some help on thoughts about furniture, lighting, and art work. To our surprise, there is quite a lot of space available for art, which we hadn’t foreseen when looking at the plans. We planned on a picnic, but with the workers crawling about, decided to take our sandwiches up to Marys Peak.

But we were stopped by a ranger before the summit. Seems they’re logging there, and it’s closed to the public, of course. We may, however, have lunch at the little park just down the way. And surprise, there’s a nice clearing, couple of picnic tables, restroom, and the added amenity of a young man with a guitar. Music while we dine. We find a flat rock to serve as a table in the sunshine, open the wine. Nice! But here comes the forest ranger. He writes up a couple of notes on two cars parked there, and we prepare to abandon our wine.

Not necessary. Because this is Ranger Bob. Maybe 65 years, a full beard, by no means full set of teeth, a good belly. He’s quite gorgeous in this way. And, as it turns out, hilarious.

“How long have you been a ranger here?” we ask.

Ah. Good story. He was a heavy-equipment operator, but woke on his 55th birthday and decided to quit. Too hard on the butt, he explained. And decided to go to college. Study biology and forest management. Well, he didn’t decide that right away. He’d give it a semester, and with that in mind, went off to his first class. Got there early to be sure of a seat next to the door to facilitate his exit. Announced that he was there for the parties and the girls. Told us he had to take statistics three times before he could graduate.

Unfortunately I didn’t get his photo. A pure study in not judging based on appearance! A college man, he says he’s embarrassed by the Forest Service’s lack of grammar skills, as exhibited on the signage for Marys Peak. Someone has painted in the missing apostrophe, to which I have earlier referred. Ranger Bob claims that the Service is not allowed to attribute ownership to any governmental property. Thus “Mary’s” Peak has to be “Marys” Peak. I have no reason to doubt him, and it does clear up the difficulty.

We spent the night in Corvallis, after dinner at Del Alma. The White-Davises went off to Eugene to see their grandkid, Jordan, a freshman at the U. The next afternoon, our grandkid, Amy, along with Allison and another mom-daughter pair arrived after their tour of the UO campus for a tour of the farm. While we could wish for a longer visit, it was a lovely 17 hours! Fingers crossed that Amy may decide to come to school in Oregon!

And to close this report, I’m attaching a view of the house seen from the driveway:

We’re heading back tomorrow to chat with the electrician. Not that exciting, but you never know!

Eric wanted me to be sure to explain exactly whose truck was doing the charging and whose truck was being charged. Of course you already know, but for the record: It was Eric’s truck over to our Bob.

The plan that day was that I should drive the truck closer to the stack of wood I meant to load while Larry continued power-sawing. I know how to drive a truck, but it wouldn’t start. Had to ask Larry to come and help. Ah, dead battery. Curses!.

After going into town to acquire jumper cables, and after considering AAA, Larry thought maybe the SUV could power up the truck. Which perhaps it could, if we could locate the battery in the SUV. Nothing for it but to ask for help, and Eric was happy to oblige. We learned, however, that Bob has two batteries. Not sure why. Eric’s truck has but the one. He says he apparently didn’t pay enough for his. (He is funny!)

That was last Wednesday. Today is the following Thursday:

This morning, I lie on my back on a bench hoisting weights toward the ceiling, my eyes closed against the fluorescent lights. I lunge up and down the room, carrying weights. I make like a board, doing planks. (Really hate those planks.) I can’t say I enjoy this, but Aaron is sweet and smart, so I get through the hour. On the way home, I wonder about the equation: I’ve used energy to move my body, and created energy, I think, in the form of heat. Circular. But what exactly is the point? Sure, I need to exercise, I get that, but wouldn’t it be better if that energy were directed toward some result more positive that heating the gym?

So, work. Physical work.

“Oh, I see where you’re going. Don’t pretend that this whole farm adventure is about getting out of the gym or something,” I imagine Larry saying here.

“No, but come on. Wouldn’t you rather lift heavy oak logs into the truck than push weights up to the ceiling? Shovel out the barn than lunge up and down a cold, stupid gym room?”

“You had me up to that bit about shoveling the barn, but yeah. I like to work, too,” Larry might say.

In fact he likes it so much that he went to the farm this Tuesday without me!

Don’t imagine that it’s all inspirational, though, the barn smelling sweet from straw and absent horses.

Here’s one pile of limbs stacked by the arborists when they took out half of the homestead tree. Our objective is to retrieve the fire-place wood from the tangle of branches, the tangle to be consumed in a bonfire later when the fire danger is passed this winter.

And here’s the wood, neatly settled into the cribs in the barn. Seventeen cribs on each side to be shoveled out, by the way. About the cribs: Hard to say, but most dairy operations, says Google, sell their male calves to be raised for beef. Still, it’s pretty undeniable that these cribs weren’t used for any humane purpose, and we’re glad to “repurpose” them. (Brave new world, it seems to be possible now to breed selectively for female calves. We’re not surprised, are we?)

As you see, the barn is hardly charming, but the good news is that we will be getting barn doors soon. The roofing metal for the house is being ordered, and while the builders wait for that, there may be time to mount the doors. Then I can begin my campaign to clean it out this winter, perhaps when rain prevents us from doing anything outside. Find a way to clean the walls, put down some fresh
straw . . .? Hmm. Maybe at that point, the gym will start looking better?

This Saturday, we’ll go back. Work outside for awhile. Then we need to take a measuring tape and imagine the furniture we’ll be needing. How big should the table be? The sofas? Where will we want reading lamps. And what about a TV for the living room? There will be one upstairs in the — well, let’s call it the lounge space — but evenings when there’s a good movie or football game and a fire crackling on the hearth?

Not much to report on the conservation side. Steve says he will be meeting with Jarod and we’ll have the completed plan in the next weeks. Good thing, because we’ll be starting to spray the blackberries soon, and it would be good to have guidance on that subject! We have the bid for fencing, and need input on that subject as well. So, we wait.

I sit at my desk, working through the conservation plan draft Steve has asked us to address. It’s late, we’ve been at the farm all day, but it’s clear nothing will happen until we get this document edited and back to Steve and Jarod.

“I’ll do it,” I tell Larry. Among his skills, please do not imagine typing with any proficiency. He claims it’s the result of being left-handed, and when I’m not convinced, adds that he’s also color blind. These two things are true, if, in my opinion, unrelated to typing. But the administrative work of this project should be mine anyway if it’s he, for example, who will do the sawing and weed-whacking.

And while we wait for governmental approval and assistance, sawing and weed-whacking are about all there are to do on the farm just now. So, after sowing the clover seed in the orchard, a task of about 10 minutes total, Larry straps on the harness and attacks the weeds growing alongside the driveway.

So what am I supposed to do? I walk down to the barn from the house site, and the fields are beginning to show the first green. Birds are busy, but as yet no sign of turning color by the oaks. The berries are spent, now, and it occurs to me that my job today should be to take care of Bob.

Bob has become a de-facto rolling storage shed, the back seats cluttered with everything from a screwdriver to the weed-whacker itself. There’s a very bad smell, suggesting a mouse body somewhere in the upholstery.In the bed of the truck, bags of left-over mulch, assorted sprays and oils, shovels, etc. Okay, this situation definitely needs attention, but we can’t keep everything in the new shed up by the house while it’s still under construction. I think about the barn and the small stalls. I fear they were used for raising veal, but Shirley, Mike-the-Sheep-Guy’s wife, says no, they were used by a dairy operation.

We all know that dairy cows need to be “freshened” periodically to keep the milk flowing, the by-product of which is a supply of calves. They keep the girl-calves, or some of them, but the boys? I haven’t been able to determine their fate, but it can’t be happy. Anyway, the little stalls apparently housed these babies for some portion of their lives.

The stalls are carpeted with 3-4 inches of cow poop and straw, settled together over the course of years into solidified sludge, which I propose to remove. I’ll turn them into storage for our tools!

This is not easy. The “stuff” is heavy and the shovels I have to use are not suited for the task. There are perhaps 15 of these little stalls, and while they are the most-thickly compacted, the entire barn floor is similarly carpeted. The walls and windows are thick with sheep wool clinging to spider webbery, dead insects, and the detritus of years. I don’t know what it will take to clean these walls, but the broom I have to hand is certainly not adequate.

Nevertheless, I make my slow progress. Gather all the tools and whatnot into the bed of the truck to be sorted. We have purchased some plastic bins to contain the small things like gloves, instruction manuals, clippers, and, very importantly, a supply of toilet paper, paper towels, soap, sun screen, plastic glasses and silverware. Just collecting these items in a designated bin has improved Bob’s burdens impressively.

I help myself to some nails from the house site, and using a mallet Larry has found somewhere, find a way to hang some of the garden tools and saws. This thing is looking pretty good!

I know, “good” is relative. Let’s just say better. And, the storage must be temporary until Tyrone can get to the barn doors, which can happen only after the house is closed in. I’m newly sensitive to thievery after discovering Saturday morning that someone bashed in the rear window of my car, parked in the Crane Building garage, and stole some of my music electronics, my pick-up mic, pre-amp, and all the cords. Didn’t take the amplifier itself, probably too heavy, but it’s all a reminder that tools in an open barn are surely tempting fate. Remember what I said about not being stupid?

So I take my photo, disassemble my little tableau and go to watch Larry. Mike has arrived on his little Gator to herd his mama-cows and calves into the correct field. A passer-by has stopped to tell Larry that these 4 have been seen wandering along Llewellyn and we must do something! “Something” means calling Mike, of course.

But this interruption has been enough for Larry to quit for the day. Mike has said, in the kind way he has of not appearing to be telling us what we ought to know already, that we should just spray the road-side weeds. Well, yeah. If we had that tractor, the spray rig, the . . .

We don’t care. We like to go there and do our small chores. Happy Labor Day! P.S., I never found the dead mouse.

Larry standing atop Marys Peak on his 76th birthday!

Fun facts about Marys Peak: (Note the absence of the apostrophe)
At 4098 feet, it’s the highest point in the Coast Range.
On a clear day, you can see the ocean from the summit. And on most days, you can see the peak from our farm.
It’s surmised that the peak’s name comes from proximity of Marys River. (Also no apostrophe)

So who is this Mary, and why no punctuation of possession? Not the mother-of-Jesus Mary, apparently. Two stories: 1. The name honors Mary Lloyd, said to be the first white woman to cross the river. A little thin, I think, as it must be hard to document exactly how far west white women had penetrated at that time, and to thus celebrate Ms. Lloyd’s accomplishment. I’m choosing to go with Story #2. Adam Wimple, early settler, named the river after his sister Mary. In a tragic turn of events, Mr. Wimple was hanged in 1852 for murdering his wife, also named Mary. So a memorial for the decedent Mary? And the missing apostrophe thing? Maybe back in the day, women weren’t allowed to own rivers and peaks.

That was Tuesday. We’d stayed overnight in Corvallis, had dinner at Sur Alma, and got back to work on Wednesday. First objective was the orchard. We got our Dutch clover seed, but perhaps you’ll remember that we were supposed to drag the surface before planting. No tractor, so it was pick up the rakes and do it the pioneer way. Half an hour in, though, the rain got serious and we had to quit.

But I’d noticed a lot of insect damage on the leaves of the cherry trees. Up close, I could see little slug-like creatures on the leaves. Slugs in trees? Well that’s a nightmare. Next I suppose someone will tell me that snakes climb cherry trees, too.

We decided to stop by a near-by blueberry field for the winter’s supply of the fruit on the way home. Check. Then on to a roadside stand for some local honey. This was more picturesque, as the sign announcing items for sale was hand drawn, and the transaction managed by the honor system. Eggs, $3.00 a dozen in a beat-up old refrigerator on the driveway, and there were the chickens, obviously enjoying organic worms and grubs. Not sure I’m brave enough for that bargain. The honey was less of a bargain at $6.00 for 8 oz. sealed in a nice glass jar with a cute label. Should be fine, don’t you think?

On to Shonnard’s, who confirmed that indeed those creatures eating our cherry leaves are slugs, and the remedy is an application of diatomaceous earth at the base of the trees. Apparently these slugs like to overnight back in the soil, so have to cross the diatomaceous powder in order to get to bed. Like having to cross glass shards, in human terms, so if you feel tender about all living creatures, you wouldn’t want to kill slugs in this way. My sensitivities have been adjusting, though, and I say, bring it on.

The rain having stopped, we returned to dose the trees and continue raking the orchard. As we were leaving, we stopped to visit with Tyrone, and asked him for a recommendation for lunch in Salem. In case you read this, Tyrone, Acme was great! Hooray! We loved it!

Rain! Huge cloudbursts on the way home. Fine. Light a fire, read a book, go to bed. A perfect day.

Aha! I did it! Pretty proud of myself!

So, here’s Eric:

Doug:

Moise: Couldn’t get a photo of him, but if you use your imagination, you’ll see him at the top of a ladder somewhere, hammering something.

Inside the little grandkid’s room above the garage:

View of the Homestead Oak from inside kid room. Maybe this will be MINE instead. Great practice room!

Our new favorite hangout, The Longbranch Bar and Grill in Monroe, Wednesday special, the $5.00 cheeseburger basket:

Okay, now scroll down to read today’s earlier post, without illustrations.

With that steep roof over the living room it looks as if we’re building a little gnome home here in the Hundred Acre Woods. So precious!

So wrong! Seems the folks who build trusses missed the mark by two feet and those forms, for which we waited a couple of weeks, will have to come down. Another couple of weeks until the correct forms can arrive, so the carpenters have been quite busy on the garage. Tyrone not happy, with the rain coming and no roof over the house.

So let me introduce these carpenters: Here are Eric, Doug, and Moise. (NOOOOO! “An error occurred in the download, try again later.” Phone call to MAC Force. Miles not in until Monday. I try again. “An error . . .” So, once again, no photos.)

“Tell me about Eric,” I say to Tyrone. “Does he have a family? Is he nice. Is he funny?”

“He’s married, has two kids. I don’t know if he’s funny. Why do you ask?”

“Vik wants to know. How about Doug and Moise? Are they funny?”

“Well, Moise doesn’t even talk, but he’s a great worker. Doug’s a fisherman, and me and him talk about baseball.”

There you go, Vik. Best I can do for now.

We had a good meeting with Steve, sitting under the Homestead Oak. He and Jarod of USF&W have been at work, and came up with a scheme whereby they pretty much divide the property in half. They take the floodplain and wetlands, leaving us the savanna and woods for grazing, and for Monarch and Fender’s Blue Butterfly habitats. Also, we get to keep the oak copse.

This is not to say they literally will own half the property, just that they’ll undertake restoration of same. To include vernal pools in the wetlands. A vernal pool is an ephemeral body of water which contains no outlet, which dries in the summer and fall. Important for aquatic species such as salamanders and for wild flowers, such as lomatium and meadowfoam. Hmm. And mosquitoes, maybe?

Later in the afternoon, Larry was at work with the weed whacker when Mike (Sheep Guy) stopped by. The drums are beating for that tractor for Larry, and Mike contributed his share. You Have to have a tractor. You can’t run 100 acres with a weed whacker, Larry. There followed some technical stuff about shear pins, fuel lines, etc. But he just wanted to tell us, he said, about our pear tree. Did we know of it? He and his wife stop by every evening to feed “the girls” and their calves, and note that they’ve eaten all the windfall pears, as well as all the fruit within reach. Is that okay with us?

But before we get a tractor, we do have to get the doors to the garage in place. Mike says anybody could come by, jack up our truck and take the tires. We’ve been lucky, he says, that the only vandalism so far had been the basketball hoop and stand that someone left by the side of the barn. Upon hearing this, we’ve decided to park the truck up by the construction until it’s safe to leave in the barn. We’re naive and innocent, but we probably shouldn’t be stupid as well. That tractor will have to park behind locked doors.

Meanwhile, we think about our orchard, and with what to underplant it. Steve suggests New Zealand, aka Dutch, clover. We should rake out the plot, then wait on the first rain. Which is this weekend, you’ll note. Then we are to broadcast the seed, and use something to drag the soil across it. A used bed-spring is good for this, he tells us. He means, dragged behind the not-yet existent tractor, I believe, but get a visual of Larry hauling such a thing through the trees behind him. Am relieved that we have, in addition to no tractor, no used bed-spring.

But the clover should be good for the “lawn” area around the house as well, as it’s perennial, low growing, fragrant, green through the dry season. The bees love it, and they’ll help with pollination. (I’d been imagining a little bare-foot time in this clover, but the bees put a stop to that fantasy.)

The rains have come, we’ve learned where we can get the clover seed as well as the little whirling device which spreads the seeds, and feel well on the way.

This Monday, I hope to find Miles, resolve the photo-to-blog issues, and send you a week’s worth of photos. Fingers crossed!

“I’m writing my blog, and if I say ‘the broken tree,’ do you know which one I mean?”

Larry doesn’t even look up from the paper. “I can think of three, off the top,” he says, and continues reading.

Hmm. “Well I mean the one where the chairs are and we sit and talk to people and have lunch and stuff.”

Larry is a most patient man. He puts his paper aside. “But that one isn’t even broken. It’s butchered. It’s amputated. If you say ‘the amputated tree . . .'”

But that doesn’t — no, that’s not what I’m going for. “If I call it the ‘homestead tree’ will you know what I mean?

So. We sat under the homestead tree talking to Mark about the future of cows. He’s willing to move the beasts around, advise us on forage planting, limit the number of animals, work on water solutions. And, he said, the time to plow is now. I’ll get you some names.

Now? We look around the valley and see plumes of dust from busy tractors everywhere. How had we failed to notice? We have to get going! (I don’t mean that we, personally, have to acquire a tractor and get out there, but thanks to Mal and Vic for the encouragement in that direction.)

But my sister and family are here and we have a schedule to keep. One more week won’t matter. And we’ll meet with Tom Snyder from NRCS (National Resource Conservation Services) and get his help with respect to dividing the fields, and so on.

On Thursday, we sit under the tree (you know which one) and talk with Tom. He is horrified and apologetic that he missed our meeting the previous week because he noted the wrong date on his calendar. He’s so smart and competent that we forgive him just about anything. Get started plowing? No!

“I’ve never understood these farmers here,” he says. “Im from Minnesota” — stop right here. Do I need to tell you the importance of this statement? Didn’t think so. “I’m from Minnesota and have lived with farming all my life, and I know that it’s all wrong to pack the living, breathing biome of earth to the point where air and water can’t penetrate.” And so on.

We don’t need to plow, in the first place, he says, as plowing will turn over decades of weed seed, ready to embrace the sun and bloom. We need to disturb the soil by disc-ing, at most. We should consider seed injection after spraying out the emerging tansy and thistle, and disturbing the soil. This should happen no sooner than next spring. We should plant a mixture of three grass species and two legumes.

He will send us attachments to explain all the processes we should consider, but he certainly supports rotational grazing as the most viable method of over-all conservation of prairie lands such as ours. He’s so glad we’re working with Steve Smith (Conservation Guy), and Jarod of USF&W. He’ll be more than glad to help us. (Yeah, I love this Tom. He’s a little bit plump and wears a plaid short-sleeved shirt and tries to balance three reports and notes on his lap while the wind blows everything about. Big smile.)

Tom was followed by someone whose name I forget (I don’t love him for a minute) who will send us an estimate for the fence we want to extend along both sides of the driveway/road/autobahn. I’m sure he’s fine, as Tyrone-our-builder recommended him, but he kept pitching the virtues of plastic fencing. So wrong!

This morning, I find an e-mail from Tom, attaching 6 reports, including PastureGrazingMgmt, Weed Control, and even “Small ac horse farms”. We need not concern ourselves with small acreage horse farming, and I should note that he failed to include anything about raising chickens, but I have my reading to do this morning.

While my own personal Minnesotan is off to the golf course, a much-needed recreational break from this business of farming. It seems there’s not much to do immediately, now that plowing is off the table, but we can begin to consider thinning the oak copse. Yes. This will provide the opportunity for a LOT of power-saw activity. My brother-in-law, the wonderful Matt Scanlon, told us how he and Mary acquire wood stove wood: they observe downed trees in White Plains and environs, contact the company they see at work and ask that the logs be delivered to their home. Where Matt has a saw and: A SPLITTER. His own splitter? Larry’s eyes alight. If Matt can do it . . .

A deeply felt thanks to you, my friends and advisers, for your notes of encouragement about my blog. I don’t have photos for you today, even though Miles, from MacForce, has straightened out my computer once again, but I just forgot to take any last time out.

“Been a year now,” I say. “When exactly did we sign the papers?”

“More than a year,” Larry says. “Thirteen months. We signed on July 10, ’14.”

Time to see how we’re doing, then. We went to the H.A.Woods Saturday morning with the intent to start work on the weedy mess that occupies the vacancy where the old house once stood. A couple of big-leaf maples that are being strangled by the loving embrace of English ivy. Tangles of blackberry, thistle, an undergrowth of vinca, and a wealth of smashed cans, an old colander, plastic bags.

So, we can count the demolition of the house as one accomplishment for the year, plus the driveway and the new house that’s rising up on the hill. Is that a lot for one year?

Okay, then let’s add the contract we signed with USF&W and the Conservation Plan drawn up with Steve Smith. Which were made possible by walk-about visits we made to the neighboring conservation sites along the Muddy Creek corridor, as well as walk-abouts on our own property with Steve, locating native plants, counting birds.

Our little orchard is thriving, neatly fenced in from elk and deer, none of which have we seen in person, by the way, if “in person” can apply to large, horn-bearing mammals.

The large, dangerous oak in the back yard has been tamed, distorted, and while this was necessary, I suppose, I don’t think of this as an accomplishment. Something we had to do, and did.

The cows. Wouldn’t call that a success, as they’ve severely overgrazed the savanna. The wetland doesn’t seem to have suffered as much, nor the oak forest or creek banks. But the good news is that Mark Wahl, Cow-Guy, has agreed to the concept of rotational grazing next year in return for a waiver of the leasing fee.

But we completely lost the war with the tansy, thistle, and blackberry. Giving up, we have an agreement with a sprayer to do the berries this September. A hundred dollars an hour. Whew. So he’ll go until we say stop. We don’t know if he’ll spray, then come back and grind the stalks after the roots have swallowed the poison, or grind as he goes. One of the many, many things we have to learn. Too late for tansy and thistle, but he’ll spray next spring or early summer when appropriate.

A snapshot: Saturday morning. We drive to the barn, where Larry straps himself into the weed-whacker harness, and turns on the machine. Nope. The filament is down to a stub, and the machine won’t release additional strand as it is meant to do. Sigh. This requires a half-hour of disassembly, a certain amount of swearing, as things don’t go back properly, and then, success. But no, as he begins to work, the machine fails again. More mechanical tinkering, and it becomes clear that a farmer needs to be a mechanical engineer as much as anything else. But finally, it all works, and our Larry works for a couple of hours clearing the undergrowth.

Meanwhile, I’ve been picking blackberries using a new system I’ve devised for taming the murderous thorns, and have several quarts cooling under ice in the car.

We quit for lunch, and head for the Longbranch Bar and Grill in Monroe, discovered last Wednesday after golf with friend Dinah at Diamond Woods. Great atmosphere, good food. We discuss whether we’ll return for another round of clearing at the farm, but choose instead to have a look at a John Deere tractor out on the edge of the road to the golf course.

It’s pretty cool. Just the right size, a 2008 model, but we can’t tell if it’s diesel. Larry kicks the tires, metaphorically, and says he’ll call later, after perusing the pamphlets he’s been acquiring from the John Deere dealer back at home. But my sense is that he doesn’t want to jump into tractor ownership until it’s clear that he really needs one. Don’t want to have a shiny green machine sitting in the barn, gathering mouse poop and cobwebs. I agree. We’ll see. We absolutely will need a mower of some size, and a rider, such as we had in Tigard, would be wildly inadequate. Seriously, Larry is a good, intuitive mechanic, but is what he knows enough?

I’m disappointed in myself,” Larry says on the way home that afternoon. “I should be able to work longer than two hours, and I’m just exhausted.”

I’m disappointed in myself, too. I haven’t written much about my brilliant musical career, but it is part of our decision about how much time we imagine we’ll spend on the farm versus here in PDX. Right now, I have to wait until Monday morning to see if I’m still on the mailing list for the next practice of the Spotted Cats. I know my own inadequacy, but would like the chance to improve. Can’t really ask that if the band suffers from its lame, struggling banjo player.

The answer, of course, is to accept the limitations of age and competence. That was the promise when we launched the big farm adventure. Each day to have fun, meet the challenges as we can. Don’t give up. Of course we get tired, and of course we stumble over the electric fence and fall into ditches and weed whack a tree to death.

I set out to write a “Year in Provence” kind of account with the hope that I can whip the pages into some form and begin the masochistic process of trying to publish it. Now the year has passed, and my mission with this blog will change. Larry is probably quite relieved that I won’t be “sharing” our pratfalls and mistakes. Oh. Well, maybe I will. Sorry, Larry.

Thirteen bags full, and counting. We keep the tansy harvest in our so-called barn, in these bags, waiting for the rainy season when we can burn. Today may be the last day we can make a difference, as many of the plants have already sent their offspring off on the wind. Too late to spray this year, says Jason (anyone named Jason cannot be older than 34, and this Jason certainly isn’t), our Spray-Guy. Too late for thistles, too, he tells us, but we’re on his calendar for the blackberries in September.

Couple of days ago I got a letter from a disgruntled, occasional, reader of my blog, disappointed in the amount of time we spend on the conservation aspect of our big adventure. My mom used to say that critics line up at the dishpan, and in that spirit, I invite those of you who think we’re slacking, conservation-wise, to get a good pair of gloves, some sturdy boots, and a lopper and come on over to join us in the tansy fields. Thistles come next, by the way.

But maybe it’s fair. I haven’t been writing in any comprehensive way about our habitat and conservation plan. So, a little summary from the document drawn up by Steve Smith, wildlife biologist, developed in cooperation with NRCA and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I quote:

“Significant natural features of the property are an upland Oregon white oak savanna, a white oak woodland, wetland prairie and riparian forest associated with the Muddy Creek floodplain. The oak trees associated with the savanna can be considered old growth and many may be in excess of 300 years old.

“Riparian vegetation associated with Muddy Creek provides high value fish and wildlife habitat within the property. The unnamed tributary that bisects this farm and enters Muddy Creek has the potential to provide off channel fish habitat during high winter flows, and has the potential to support significant populations of invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians for portions of their life history.

“Sensitive, threatened, or endangered plants, wildlife and fish, and habitats include the plants: Kincaid’s Lupine, Willamette Daisy, and Nelson’s Checker mallow; Wildlife and fish: Fender’s Blue butterfly, Taylor’s checker spot butterfly, Streaked horned lark; and habitats: Oak Savanna, ash/white oak Riparian, and oak woodland.

“Management objectives:
1. Identify native plant species and important wildlife habitats,
2. Develop management prescriptions for long-term habitat diversity and sustainability
3. Provide guidance for integrating farm practices and wildlife habitat goals
4. Identify potential farm improvement and habitat restoration projects.”

This week we signed and delivered a partnership agreement with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. This project was selected, says the contract, “because the Landowners share a common objective with the USFWS to restore habitat for the benefit of Federal trust species on private lands.”

I intend to write more about these activities as they are conceived and undertaken, but please note, we are still two old people subject to the vicissitudes of age and ignorance, which I hope you join me in finding amusing, when not appalling or horrifying.

Today two women drove up the road as we were working on the tansy to enquire if they might pick blackberries. Sure! They’re just now ripening, and we certainly have enough to share:

And we found the cow/calf pairs Larry had misplaced on Wednesday. But we were on the way home when we saw them, so haven’t introduced ourselves. Next week!