I want to get right to the topic of hot dishes, as my hamburger is thawing in the sink as we speak. So, thanks, Martha, for the idea about stroganoff. Yep. And Kelly, I was pretty excited when I came across the recipe I most remembered from Grandma Viehl, the one with rice? Got it from Mr. Google. One can each of chicken/rice soup and cream of mushroom, plus 4 TBS soy sauce and 2 TBS Worcestershire? O.M.G, that’s it! Come on over, the recipe makes one pound hamburger feed a LOT of hungry Minnesotans.

Now, when last seen, Larry and I were trudging through the tall fescue. I’m disappointed to report that Ryan came and cut it while we were away, but when we got back, here’s what we saw:

Amber waves of grain? See, this is not what those words have always brought to my mind, but it will be now.

Ryan seems to work on the weekends, and of course, we seem to be in Portland on the weekends, so we missed the next two chapters in our little story. I did see Ryan, or someone, driving a tractor through this field with strange whirly devices on the tractor front which whisked the waves into flat land, but the baling went on behind our backs. Rats. Would have like to see that! But here’s what was next:

To give you an idea of the scale here:

These bales each weigh approx. 1200 pounds. Each. It’s about equipment, baby. Look at this:

It took five trips to take this to the hay sheds Ryan owns, and here’s some exciting news: Ryan wants to pay us half in US currency, half in — meat! Larry said fine! Well, you know what’s for dinner when you come to my house.

This is not the only thing going on at the “Wood.” Remember the meeting with Ryan and the Grant (Fence Guy)? We agreed to start on the perimeter, and this whole past week our days have been filled with the sound of grinding, hacking, felling. The idea is to clear the land in front of the existing fencing, see what needs to be replaced, or mended, or what is good enough to keep. It’s really magic to walk along a newly created path — well it’s more than a path, more like a boulevard through a park. It’s so gorgeous. First, the machines:

Hmm. Okay, maybe you have to use your imagination, hear the bird song, feel the hush of the ancient trees? I was going to go out and take more photos this afternoon, but, oops, it’s raining. What?

I’m sure you will want to hear how the Vision Garden is faring? Sorry to say, not so well. Apparently the long 13-day period of neglect in favor of a golf tournament has thrown our tomato plants into a sulk. Leaves curled, though they are getting enough water. Seeds didn’t sprout, ditto water situation. So, off to Shonnards for an explanation and, it is to be hoped, a remedy. Only remedy may be replacement. But our Master Gardener did not wish to give up on his babies, and instead, purchased four more tomato plants. Maybe twenty flower starts (instead of seeds), which he is ourside planting. Right now. Yes, in the rain. (We are Oregonians, after all — little rain never hurt anyone).

And as we drove up, we met Scott, the Guy who will be working to enclose our orchard more securely in advance of the chicken coop, which we ordered and now await. So we’re busy old folks, and in fact, when Larry finishes, before our hot dish supper, there will be naps!

If you’re going to be a part time gardener, you will need to have an automatic watering system. First, the new stone planters behind the patio.

In my head: This should be easy. We’ll just get Allen to come over and plug in to the foundation system he already established. A couple of hours.

In Larry’s head: This should be easy. I already have left-over widgets and gaskets down in the barn. A quick trip to the hardware store for some soaker hose and connector brackets. A couple of hours.

Guess which head was in charge. Yep. Those left-overs? Wrong size. Soaker hose? No, better idea. Punch holes in the main line and run auxiliary lengths to each individual plant. A second trip to the hardware store for quarter inch line, another hole-punching tool because apparently a weasel made off with the one we already had. Stakes, which aren’t stakes as you and I know them, but u-shaped wire doodads which hold all this auxiliary line stuff in place. Many hours later, done! No reason to pay some expensive gardener person to do what is so simple that a child could really do it.

Now for the Vision Garden: well, back to the hardware store, of course. There is some urgency to these projects as the Vision-meister will be away for 13 days, and all those fledgling tomato and squash plants? But he did it! Not sure about the blood, but for sure at the cost of sweat and tears:

Pretty gorgeous, right? By late that evening, he had also planted assorted pepper plants, some broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, green beans, spinach, head lettuce, and rows-full of assorted flowers.

But we had been devoting time and energy to the garden and house at the expense of the greater, conservation projects. We were lucky to catch both Ryan (Cow Guy) and Grant (Fence Guy) for a meeting concerning the wider acreage. Decided to focus on the eastern half, down along Muddy Creek, where Grant would have to employ his dozer, brush hog, skid steer, grapple, to clear the riparian forest area for a perimeter fence. Grant says he can get started next week. We are becoming accustomed to the pliability of language as related to time, so hope he can start sometime before August.

Meanwhile, it would be important for the homeowners to identify and stake the two stand-pipes in the eastern quarter, where tall fescue has been growing all spring. Ryan may be able to hay the area to reclaim the forage, which cows will not eat as it stands but will be happy to eat in the barn next winter. But the fescue stands taller than the water pipes, and should the combine roar by and decapitate the pipes, the well would run to depletion before the pipes could be repaired. No!

So Larry and I set about to find the pipes and flag them. Here’s what that looked like:

It was an adventure, walking where you could not see the land below your feet, where there may be snakes. Larry said “Snake!” and when he got the reaction, said “don’t worry, he’s gone.” Yeah, but gone where? I’m really not good about the snakes we see, but when they’re just sitting there on the road, for example, okay, it’s interesting to observe them, but at large in the world? Ugh.

Safely back at the homestead, we called Ryan to see if we could come by to pick up the first installment of the meat which we’ve bartered for his grazing rights. We had not yet seen his holdings and were astonished by the number of huge machines parked in front of an assortment of barns. He’s an astonishing young man. His mom and dad owned the property, got a divorce, and when Ryan was 19 years old, his mom gifted him her one-quarter share of the farm. He got a federal Farm Loan to purchase the rest. He’s been running the operation ever since. Says you can either to to college to learn, or go to life. He earned an expensive year of college credit when he changed the system of feeding his cattle vegetable by-product from broccoli to cauliflower. Forty cows dropped dead, and he learned that the rumen of his animals could not tolerate the change in the Ph factor of the two. Now he custom-feeds animals from the coast dairy operations, moves his own herds across the valley, was taking his bulls in that morning to be tested for semen before turning them loose among his cows. One bull for twenty-five cows, he says. Nice work for the bulls!

And we came home with 23 individual packages of grass-fed hamburger, assorted steaks and roasts. His idea of what two elderly farmers might eat in the course of the next months. Been searching my mid-western memory for hamburger hot-dish recipes. If you have a favorite, post it on the comment site! (Or e-mail it to me.)

By the way, I love your comments! I’ve decided not to re-comment but I promise you, I look eagerly to see if you’ve posted anything and consider your words my reward for sending this out into the atmosphere. Thank you! And see you next time. We just learned that Ryan is over on the property, beginning to cut the fescue. It will look so different when we return!

If your dentist’s office phones you as you’re just pulling out of the parking garage to say that The Dentist is stuck in traffic and you will need to reschedule your 7 a.m. appointment to replace a crown, and if the sun is already warn in the early morning sky, you will probably dance a little jig, and jump back into bed, too.

Of course this means I will have to spend all tomorrow morning on the procedure (they call it a procedure, I call it punishment for a mis-spent childhood.) While Larry gets to be at the farm, working on his Vision.

That’s what he calls it, and you can actually hear the capital letter V when he talks about it. Last post you saw him pushing a rototiller across the designated space. Here’s the next step:

With his rental tractor and attached tiller, he was able to spread 3 inches of this lovely stuff onto the garden and till it into the resident acidic clay. Then came the very hard work of shoveling same into orderly raised beds, with a carefully calculated 24 inch walk between each bed. Good thing this is a Vision, right? We’ll worry later about how to keep weeds out of the walk.

Next comes a visit to the nursery to select the tomato and squash starts which will initiate the plant design. Why do we need 6 tomato plants? There are 7 rows, the outside two set aside for flowers, and He with the Vision wanted to have a tomato plant to punctuate each vegetable row. Wait a minute. Bad math, there. Oh well, easy to get confused when surrounded by the seductive bounty of an early spring nursery.

Time out: Too hard to type with a bandaid on my finger, the result of trying to slice frozen bread. Do not do that.

Okay, I’m back. Found a smaller bandaid and yes, you’re right, it is hard to play my banjo missing the one index finger, too.

Some bad news. While we weren’t looking, one of the cherry trees began to suffer. Suddenly, this:

Back when Peter was still here, I clipped the tip ends of a few branches and took them into Shonnards, another local nursery. “Your tree is just fine,” said the guru there. “Been raining. Lots of trees in the valley are looking like this.” So relieved I didn’t stop to think. It’s been raining? It rains here every year. Seriously?

Obviously our tree is not fine. I took photos and shopped around the other nurseries in town. Got a different diagnosis everywhere, ranging from cancer — trees get cancer? — to borers. “Look under the gummosis and see if there are holes, and if so, you got borers.” Gummosis is the technical term for this:

Larry scraped away, said he didn’t see any holes, but, honestly, how would we know what a borer hole looked like. Nonetheless, he sprayed with something called Serenade, at the recommendation of Shonnards, who admitted that yes, we did have a problem.
It doesn’t look too good for this poor tree. This is the tree which the nearby birds shredded last year, eating every last bright red cherry. We’ll see.

Larry just phoned in to say that at last he has figured out the water-system programming, but can’t yet determine how to water the squash plants. All six of them. Six squash, six tomatoes, two people. Yeah, but, look at our success with the cherries. Maybe we will need all those plants? Anyway, he’s heading out to Block 15 for a well-deserved burger and a beer. Me? I’m going to go sit on the deck with my coffee and read my new book (The Very Marrow of our Bones) until the sun does down.

Which seems a good note on which to end this post.

Oh well, it is Oregon! But today, May 2, the sun is shining and it’s time to catch up.
Chapter One: A Garden is Born. Larry’s been pining for a real garden here, not just the raised beds he and Peter but together last year. So a space was designated, the grass mowed. Next job, rototilling. Larry and Bob-the-Truck drove off to the rental shop and returned with a rather weather-beaten, but serviceable, machine. For some reason it was supposed to be a good idea to unload the thing with these ramps:

I’ll spare you a description of how that went. Suffice it to say that neither man nor machine was broken, but the process was spectacular, and not one that the wife was happy to observe.

But as you see, the job did get done. Hard work! Larry says that next time he will rent a tiller and hitch it to the back of the tractor. Probably would have been a wise choice this time, but, here he is:

Chapter Two: I have always imagined that if I lived long enough I would be a tough old lady living in a cottage in the woods, long gray braid coiled atop my head, making choke cherry jam and playing my mandolin on the front porch. The long hair thing didn’t work out, nor did the music, but otherwise, kinda . . .

This is the pile of wood I may have mentioned earlier that we split one rainy day. Nice shot of the barn, anyway. Me in a flannel farm-shirt generously forwarded to me by friend Nancy when she gave up country life to move to Bend. Her hair never got long either, so what’s that about?

Chaper Three: Work done, Larry and I went to The Bark Place (which sounds like doggie day care, but isn’t) to check out soil amendments for Larry’s new garden. We had selected Option D from the bins, and found someone to help us determine how much we would need.
“Should be about 12 yards. We can deliver for ya.”
Thanks, but I’ll just bring my truck.
“Oh, you got one of those little Datsuns?” (Translation: You’re obviously not a real farmer.)
No, got a Silverado. (which apparently means something in certain quarters.) Three-quarter ton.
“Well, that should be fine. But you’re going to want a tractor to spread it.” (Translation: Dude’s got an okay truck, but he’s too old to be pushing 12 yards around in a wheelbarrow.)
Got a tractor, Larry says.
“With a bucket? Gonna need a bucket.” (Translation: This is unbelievable. Guess you can’t tell a book by the cover, hey?)

Larry puts on a little John Wayne swagger as we walk out of there. Always fun to confound expectations.

Chapter Four: Son Peter and Son-in-Law Tom arrived to run the half marathon in Eugene. Seattle kids and Jenny came along, and we picked up Amy at school to watch. Tom is a way-experienced runner, having completed 100 milers, in fact. So he offered to help Peter meet his goal of doing the half in under two hours. Which he did, and he did. Great fun!

After the race, everyone came back to Corvallis for a field trip to Wilco to see the baby chicks. Ooooh, so cute! Great disappointment when we learned that we could NOT pick them up for a cuddle. Later that day, Larry got a call from his college buddy with an offer to let us have the 6 chicks he bought for his grandkids’ easter surprise. His wife Jan won’t allow the birds to stay with them much longer. and they saw the perfect solution. Give the birds to the Viehls! Except that we will be cruising the Baltic in August, so unable to set up chicken farming just yet.

But here’s my suggestion: Anyone within the sound of my voice should contact us to learn about a farm stay vacation while we’re away. Wouldn’t that be fun? Chicken sitting?

Yeah, I thought so. Well, Peter has Whitman College business in Walla Walla, so we were lucky to have him here Monday and Tuesday as well. Of course we put him two work.

Chapter Five: Burning is allowed on Monday, and we’ve a huge burn pile just east of the barn. Everyone loves a big bonfire:

Now here’s where it gets exciting. While Peter is mowing away something causes the tractor to stop. Seems a hydraulic hose has been ruptured or disconnected in some way, and that’s it. Dead in the water. Larry calls the John Deere people and they come to haul Big Green (with its bucket) away. We have not yet heard when we may get it back, perhaps 5 weeks, as they are quite busy repairing tractors belonging to real farmers.

Chapter Six. Tuesday morning a crew of 5 men and two ATVs arrived to spray around all the 6600 trees and shrubs previously planted. This job takes them all day, but we are grounded with respect to any work we can do, as for example, sawing the wood from old downed trees. One very good note with respect to the infestation of poison hemlock we are currently suffering is that they agreed to spray the large outbreak in the pasture between the barn and Llewellyn. We have lazy cups of coffee, talk about life, and watch the flock of goldfinches that have come to visit our relocated bird feeders: (I believed the plural of goldfinch ought to be “goldfinch” but according to google I am wrong.)

You might have to squint to see them, but there are dozens of the little birds and it’s great fun to watch them squabble over this perch or that peg. Just like the chicks we saw — sibling rivalry across the species. A small flock of doves is also in the neighborhood, and we even saw an evening grosbeak at the feeder. Peter had the idea that it would be fun to drive up Marys Peak, and he was correct. We drove past several downed trees across the road, and into a cloud, so the view was limited. People in Corvallis are justly proud of the fact that our “mountain” is the highest peak in the Coast Range. The claim that you can see the ocean from the top has not been verified by this family, but I’m sure it’s true.

This morning Larry and I are off to the rental yard to see if we can rent a whole tractor. And bucket. Will let you know next time!

If I’m at the farm and can’t find my red sweater, I might say “Oh, it must be at home.” If I’m in Portland and can’t find my red sweater, I might say “Oh, it must be at the farm.” Which is odd, as I think the farm is where I live. But it seems that unbidden language has its own convictions, and so I have come to understand that “home” doesn’t mean the farm. Yet. And what makes somewhere be “home?” anyway? But tonight’s question is, what do I say if I think my red sweater might be at Black Butte? If I don’t live at Black Butte, and if it isn’t “home,” then what is it?

But let’s back up. How was Easter? For us, it was spent in the lovely company of granddaughter Amy (on the left)and her friend Madeline Lewis, on their way from Pasadena to Eugene with a quick stop-over in Portland Saturday night, Sunday dinner at the farm, and then back to school for the Ducklings.

Back to Portland for us for appointments, a symphony, workout and massages. Then on to Black Butte to take care of some ranch business (noncompliant lettering on the house), to deliver a bundle of linens from the cleaners, to have dinner with friends Dianne and Dick and sister Martha, and lunch with friends Nancy and Mal. So yeah. Black Butte. It’s still as beautiful as ever there. Larry loves the place for sure. He loves to play golf, loves the famous BBI, loves to go fishing, loves the hot tub (when it hasn’t been appropriated by strangers smoking and drinking). Okay, it’s a perfect vacation home.

We decided last year to turn off wifi and TV while we’re not there. Smart, huh? We hired someone to keep the landscape tidied up. If the driveway needs plowing, we call ranch maintenance. When we leave, we call the house cleaning service. No, don’t be a smart ass, we don’t have a cook or a wine steward. So there we were last Wednesday. A walk with my sister. Dinner, then lunch with friends. And now we’re approaching the essential thing-of-it. No wifi, no TV, so we read books by the fire. But there are no chores, nothing, really, to do. No pine needles to rake and burn. No food in the house, seriously, so nothing to cook. Sure, I can knit and maybe finish that sweater I’ve been working on for 5 years (not red), I can practice, but I can’t just sit there and do nothing for very long. Now don’t misunderstand, I don’t want to go to Black Butte to wash dishes and mop floors. What do I want?

What we did was pack up and go to Terrebonne, where the nice folks from Central Oregon Chicken Coops have a model under construction that we might look at. And all the way home (to Portland) we talked about how we could fit a coop into our orchard (at the farm), how we might keep the foxes out of the hen house, and so on until the traffic made us so crabby we stopped talking all together and just ground our teeth.

This week: We always say that when there’s nothing else to do at the farm and the rain won’t quit, we’ll go rent the splitter and spend the day in the barn. Today was that day. Here’s what that looks like: A LOT of wood!

Here’s what we have left for tomorrow: Piece of cake.

Jake and his crew arrived in the morning to connect the pipes from the old well, install a nitrate elimination system so that the water from the well will satisfy the county’s purity mandate. And most important, install back-flow devices so that the water from the cattle tanks can’t accidentally reverse direction and get into the cistern. Ugh. Cow slobber in the faucets? No, I didn’t think you’d like that either.

The kitchen sink faucet here has developed a non-stop drip. I call the Philomath plumber. “What’s the brand?” Rhonda, from R.G.Smith asks. Don’t know. I find out and call her back. Oops, it’s a fancy, ridiculous Waterstone designer affair, parts for which R.G.Smith doesn’t stock. But Rhonda looks up the model number for me, the phone number of customer service at Waterstone, calls me back and suggests that they may have the part and will send it to us. Should be under warranty, she says, so don’t let them charge you for it. Wow. I’m impressed, and grateful. And, get this, the Waterstone service person is equally helpful, says she’ll ship the part that afternoon, and no, no charge. A nice story, but tonight, the faucet still drips and we will see how the story ends.

Tomorrow, weather cooperating, besides more wood-splitting, Sam Carter is due to arrive to take down the hulk looming under the tree which we tried to name. The name won’t stick. These trees are too ancient, brave, powerful to bear a trivial name some silly person invents. Maybe I should just call them all “Grandfather.” Sam and his new employee, Keith, got to work, with the result that we have another pile of wood to haul to the barn and split.

Now it’s tomorrow. Larry says that this time he’ll haul the splitter out to the site. Good idea! Anyone in the sound of my voice who wants some free firewood, come on over. Wear boots and bring gloves. Call ahead and we’ll rent the splitter for ya.

Remember those tires I told you about?

Kind of picturesque, huh? Green, mossy? Nestled into slimy mud 2 inches deep, filled with rotted leaves and dead mice? Okay, have you ever tried to empty an old tire that has been resting outside for decades-at-least? Can’t be done. The devilish shape means that the water et al just sloshes from one side of the ring to the other. So the homeowner, Larry in this case, has to deadlift the things out of their mud cradles into the ATV. Good thing he’s been working out — hey Aaron?

From the ATV into to Bob-the-Truck. All twenty-three of them.

And from Bob into the Coffin Butte landfill. Guess what? Tires cost $9.00 each to dump. Plus the environment fee, it was over 200 bucks to dispose of these things which SOME IDIOT dumped. I was all sensitive last week, tough being a farmer, etc. Now? Right. IDIOT. We now think it was probably the former owners of this property, not neighbors, who chose this route. And this is exactly where the spring seeps out of the ground to become Winter Creek.

While at the dump, a friendly man drove up to inquire about disposing of tires. Seems he’d been denied last month, and now had 40 plus derelicts on his property looking for a resting place. We chatted for a while about human nature, and when he drove off I saw the legend on the side of his truck: Hubby For Rent. Hmm. Unfortunately I didn’t catch the phone number!

From the dump we headed north to scout out a sign we’d seen advertising mint compost. Which Larry wants to have for his veggie garden. What we found was a sagging old barn, a couple of swayback horses, and no answer to the posted phone number. And next door, a 100 yard border fence made out of — old tires! Overgrown, of course, with blackberries and ivy and what not. So it seems we have a problem here, because not everyone will find such an inventive, if perfectly ugly, solution.

On to lunch, at a place we found in Albany by following our noses. Bricks and Mortar, great atmosphere, good food. Getting to like Albany for the restaurant scene there. Don’t raise your eyebrows at me. I’m serious. Better than Corvallis anyway.

Next day Larry spent playing golf. I don’t know why. He hates golf. I’d gotten an invitation from neighbor Terri to come muck about in the swamp on her property. Wow. There’s an invitation! She wanted to show me where the water becoming Tributary Creek crosses her land. “There’s a huge sink hole,” she promised, as inducement. So of course I accepted. Here’s what that looked like:

We could hear the creek as it neared our property, but couldn’t penetrate the thicket of blackberries. Terri had thoughtfully provided me with a pitch fork as walking stick which, I must say, I can’t recommend. But as I wasn’t too keen on stumbling into the sink hole, I was glad to have something to test the path ahead with when it was my turn to lead. We were joined by Darwin, a beautiful husky, who’d just had oral surgery to remove a broken tooth and was not his usual frisky self. Here he is by a piece of the stream we ultimately found:

Another nice day today! Larry spent it corralling some oak lengths from earlier projects, delivering them to the barn, and then burning some blackberry canes piled up since last fall. I went down to supervise the fire and found three baby somethings curled up, exposed, hearts beating. Voles probably, Larry said. Sure enough, a little gray furry creature flashed out of the leaves across my feet. But those babies? I didn’t want to just leave them to a slow, sunburned death. But couldn’t kill them, either. I kind-of buried them, thinking they live underground anyway, and maybe the mom will find them. I can believe that if I want to.

Earlier I had rescued a hummingbird who had come into the garage and couldn’t find the exit door, so it seems life on the farm is returning after the cold winter. But no chickens. Not this year. Ha!

How the day begins. Larry, in from his workout in our “gym” aka “garage”, is grumbling angrily, cell phone in hand. “Can’t turn the god damn thing off.” He listens to OPB while stretching, etc.

“Okay, give it to me,” I say. “Um, where are my glasses? Stupid things. I know I just . . .”

And so it goes, the blind leading the halt. Fortunately our little ship has righted itself, the phone has been turned off, I have my glasses atop my head and we go on.

A nice day, so we get to work. We intend to spray the road side fence, but slight winds forestall that chore, and we head out to the pasture and the tree we’re clearing.

I’ve said that I want to consider keeping the massive windfall as a sculpture, and it does have an artistic quality about it. I’ve already played the “let’s keep it as habitat” card, twice, actually, so not sure if the art card will trump anything. (Side note: when will that perfectly nice word fall back into the language with it’s un-charged meaning? Going to use it anyway and maybe . . .?) Okay, what do you think?:

Could argue that it looks like some hulking reptilian figure emerging from the waters, but it’s better when seen against the mother tree, and I don’t have such a photo. Anyway, at least you can see how nice and clean it now looks. All else aside, when Larry made an injudicious cut with the saw, the thing moved a little. Probably not safe if our grandkids ever come to visit and want to go climb a tree.

But uh, oh, what’s this? Poison hemlock? Sure looks like it!

It’s actually lovely, lying under the tree and limb, mixed in with miner’s lettuce, but poison hemlock is deadly — to philosophers and cows equally. In fact you should probably wash your hands after viewing the photo. Just kidding. But Google tells me that there was actually a death recorded of someone who ate a game bird which had feasted on hemlock berries. We’ll take the photo to the nearest garden shop for positive ID before attacking it with glyphosate (Roundup). Don’t want to wake up and see deceased cows under our sculptural feature.

Okay, that was Wednesday. Now we’re up to Friday morning. This day has to be devoted to planting the 3 dogwood trees we acquired mid-week (Wednesday is Seniors Day at the nursery). Still have to do that spraying, but of course, the trees come first. This seems to be a one-man job, so I’m excused from blue-collar work for the moment.

I put this photo in just to show you how gorgeous Oregon can be sometimes!

What else? Oh yeah, chickens. Larry has done some due-diligence, phoning a friend. Who, by the way, tried to pass off an unwanted rooster on us. But it’s not looking good for the chicks, with which you have to start, apparently. They’re not as autonomous as we’d supposed, and need round-the-clock care, at least at first. Could maybe buy pullets (that’s chicken talk for teen-age birds) but. But. If we score some already grown-up chickens from someone wanting to cull their flock, I can just imagine what a sweet set-up that could be for some experienced poultryman. So, better keep the lines open to the supermarket eggs for now. Not out of the question, but fading . . .

Lunch time here at the Wood. Tuna sandwiches today. Come on over!

Having decided to focus on fencing the perimeter this spring/summer, we planned to walk it again this week. So, the perimeter of 100 acres is about 1.6 miles. Easy. I called Terri, new neighbor, to invite her to walk with me, as she’s interested in the fence from her side. She brought Darwin, a gorgeous husky, and we set out from just west of the barn. What with being a dog, Darwin is not beloved of Larry, so he, Larry, declined the invitation to join us.

Oddly, the property between our land and the neighbors’ on Bell Fountain belongs to Benton County. It is, I’m guessing, 50 yards deep and runs the length of our western boundary. It’s a nice buffer between us and the rest of the world, but is not maintained by anyone. Which means that trees growing there reach across the fence to poach our sunshine; berry brambles likewise. Limbs fall, water seeps, but surprisingly, the fence is intact. We make the turn and walk along the south border. Between us and the neighbors is a row of trees, mostly oak. Huge trees. But there are two fences, nicely containing the row. So, hmm. Whose trees are they? Which fence is ours?

We note that should dispose of the old tires someone has dumped across the fence. We’d already taken a load of them early days, and learned that it costs five bucks or so to offload old tires. We see why someone tossed them over to us in there first place. Well, farming is tough, so we have to forgive whomever.

Here’s a surprise: a granary tree!

Acorn woodpeckers excavate holes in a given tree into which they stuff their winter supply of acorns. These birds are listed “of concern” in the Willamette Valley, as their favored habitat, oak savanna, is so depleted. Obviously we’re pretty excited to see this activity, although this tree doesn’t look very full of acorns. We’re told there’s another, active granary in the copse, but we haven’t been able to find that one.

We found a recently fallen oak, and thought it might be the one Martha heard one stormy night, but Larry says no, he’d observed this one earlier this winter. Whatever. More firewood!

Speaking of which, Larry and I spent this morning clearing an oak just outside the orchard. I had gotten the idea that I should get GPS on my phone, and then photograph and identify the larger oaks on the property. While fallen limbs, and even whole trunks, make good bird habitat, they also make excellent berry, thistle, and tansy habitat as well. But we are old people, and this is hard work! Nonetheless, I wanted to document our progress. Here you go. Before:

After:

Okay, I know you are wondering about chickens. Are we or aren’t we? Talked about it today and said, yeah, we should probably go ahead. Larry spent some time shopping on line for coops, but does not report any success. We’ll all have to wait and see.

Let’s pretend I haven’t been writing my post and just move on. Okay?

So, winter has come to the farm, as you see.

Not snowing, but it’s plenty cold for working outside. Nonetheless, we looked out the kitchen window this morning to see a crew of men planting an allotment of the 6600 trees and shrubs provided with our grant from OWEB. Not sure how the economics of the grant thing work; Benton County does the purchasing and hiring of labor while we stand back and admire. Sweet deal, huh?

Obviously these trees and shrubs are, at the moment, mere twigs, but it is a start.

Anyway, the appearance of the men caused a typical conversation. “Oh, they’re planting along the creek.”

“Which creek.”

“That one.” Accompanied by arm waving and pointing.

“I don’t know which one you mean.”

“That one.”

So we see that our creeks need names. The biggest one was anointed the Little Sometimes, back when. It actually never disappears, so the name has no real meaning. It flows roughly from West to East. Larry said “I just call it the tributary.”

Yes, but that’s not a name, I say.

“Well, that’s just what I call it.”

Fine. But you have to give it capital letters, I say. Always think of it as Tributary Creek, and we’re good. Now, what about the other one?

“How about Winter Creek?” Larry asks. I’m impressed. This isn’t usually his territory, the word thing, but he’s done it. Winter Creek it is, meandering down from roughly South to join the Tributary. Perfect.

In a conversation with Peter, later this morning, he encourages me to go to Google Maps to look at our property. Wow. Hadn’t done that before, and it’s pretty cool. From the satellite, though, we can see that Tributary has forks. So now we have North, Middle, and South Forks of the Tributary. Thanks, Peter!

On with the morning: Larry has said that he needs my help moving some fence poles left over from fencing our road. They’ve been stacked in a pile outside the barn, and need to be moved in. They’ll be useful when we have the new trees and shrubs along the creeks fenced. Not too interested in working outside in what is now sleet, but I bundle up and trudge after Farmer Larry. I’m in the barn looking for work gloves when he announces that he doesn’t need me after all and I can go on up to the house. Whew. Honest, I like driving the tractor, but not in this weather!

Yesterday we had decided to have a look to see if the camas lily bulbs planted in the fall by Fish and Wildlife had shown up. We had seen photos of the men/women working, courtesy of F&W, but couldn’t identify exactly where they were. Well, looking for tiny shoots in fields of grass and weeds proved to be useless. Sure, we saw lots of little shoots, but what they were? Dunno.

Anyway, several weeks ago, sister Martha was staying with us and reported that in the night she’d heard a great crack, surely a tree going down. If we couldn’t find infant camas lilies, maybe we could find a downed tree? The thought of loosing one of the heritage trees sickens us, but we needed to know. Fortunately, no luck there either. But I want you to see the ancient beauty of these trees:

If you can click on the images to enlarge them, this would be a good time. Okay, I have to say that when I see the way my body has changed/is changing with the years that pass, I am humbled and a little ashamed. Not this bad yet, but I sure am getting there!

In a meeting earlier this week with Donna from Benton County, Ryan Cheete, cow guy, Jarod from F & W, and Grant, fence guy, it was determined that we wouldn’t run the cattle on the property this spring, in order to allow the pastures we’d planted to develop. But Ryan would like to see the entire perimeter of the property permanently fenced. And that’s something we can get started on now, depending on Grant’s schedule. The property is fenced, sort of, but trees have fallen across the fences, blackberries grown up over them, etc. A mess. In fact, an earlier owner fenced off a good half acre of what is really our property along Muddy Creek. That piece has been ignored forever, so is a thicket of brambles, riparian trees, poison oak, ugh! But Grant says he’ll just go in there with his dozer, take out the underbrush and reclaim the land. Won’t be a park or anything, but why not?

Now we’re up to today. The sun has decided to emerge for a few minutes and the daffodils which I replanted, into pots again, from last year will bloom very soon. Larry has come in for lunch to say that, with the sun out, he will mow the “lawn.” Except that there are storm clouds looming, so spring may not be here just yet.