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!

But first, we’ll have a look at the house:

View from the kitchen window:

Some weeks ago, after renovating their beach house, friend Vik (she of the witty comments at the end of my posts) remarked that she and her husband, Gordon (you’ve read about him, too) were of one mind when working on projects. So work progresses smoothly, and those of you lucky enough to have seen the result of their synchronic brains, will know what a good thing that collaboration is.

Larry and I? Not so much. We spoke of this last night, resting after an afternoon in the tansy fields. We are so often polar in our view of what’s happening, which way we should turn, the optimal solution to a problem. This might sound like a bad thing, but honestly, it isn’t. Somehow it works to have two options, and I couldn’t say if one or the other of us generally “wins.” And sometimes, it’s just funny. And then I get blog material. Read on.

So we’re marching along, checking the hundreds of tansy plants for the elusive cinnabar caterpillar. Larry gathers a cluster of stems which I whack off with the loppers and he deposits in a yard clipping bag. The sun shines, we hear the carpenters at work and overhead the cries of our resident red-tail.

Paradise, except for the ants on the tansy. They torment Larry, crawling up his arms. He has taken off his shirt to catch some Vit. D, but the ant situation would be worse if they were crawling up sleeves. So he swats, sweats, swears and the work gets done.

We stop to load the bag into Bob-the-Truck. The ants are crawling on Larry’s arms, even though they no longer are, and I suggest that I can pour water from the cooler on his itchy skin. Great idea, and he gets immediate relief. We do both arms, and then he turns his back and curls his shoulders. I take this as the indication that he’d like me to do his back. (See second paragraph.) Oh, God. Ice water on the back, when unexpected, is quite a shock. He reacted. I laughed and couldn’t stop. He still doesn’t think it was all that funny. But why did he turn his back? Unexplained.

About those ants. We learned that they eat the caterpillars which are supposed to be eating the tansy. From the abundance of ants and the paucity of caterpillars, we conclude that the ants have won The Great Tansy War of 2015. But we’re careful and when we accidentally clip a plant with the little fellows on board, we carefully move them to a living stalk. One caterpillar equals one moth, which equals three hundred eggs. Okay, maybe we’ll spray next year.

Speaking of spraying, Jarod, of F&W, sent us names of contractors his agency uses. Thistles! Blackberries! Apparently, there’s also the rent-a-goat option, but for now, we’ll just go the hard- core, get-it-done route. An advantage to the slow walk among the tansy is the opportunity to get a micro view of the land. Right now, it’s pretty shocking to see the hard use the animals have imposed, reinforcing our determination to utilize rotational grazing. If we use grazing at all.

Back again on Saturday to resume the tansy attack. Then it’s off to Camp Estrogen in Manzanita with the girlfriends. Laughs, good food, Cheetos, philosophy, People Magazine? You know. Fun!

“You haven’t posted anything for a while. What’s up?” Larry asks.

“Nothing funny’s happened.”

“Ah. Well, I can only do my best. Why don’t you write about that guy at Kubota who tried to sell me a tractor big enough to mow a hundred acres? That was pretty funny.”

“More like scary, you mean.”

But let’s not talk about that. We’re not going to buy a tractor soon.

The first walls are up on the house. I would love to show you a photo, but since downloading “Yosemite” on my MAC I can no longer add media. Will have to get help somewhere, somehow, as is very annoying. Oh wait, just discovered a work-around. So. Beautiful, huh?

While this was happening, we had a meeting with Jarod Jebousek of USF&W, and with Steve, formerly with same. We sat under the misshapen oak for a couple of hours and talked about what can happen. Jarod seems enthusiastic about working on the wetland portion of the property, and he talked about locating and removing old drainage tile as the first project. This so that the water can defuse across the property instead of channeling. Something F&W would do, of course, not the Viehls. At the end of the discussion we agreed to enter into a 10 year partnership with the agency, during which time they do the work we agree upon, and we agree not to reverse whatever they do.

Meanwhile, Larry and I will take with Mark (Cow Guy) about a proposal to rotate the cows among fields we will fence (courtesy of those good F&W folks). And so get to work on the savanna. The cows are gone, by the way, though the fences remain. Hot? Don’t know, as neither of us cared to find out.

But the tansy! Here’s what I have learned: all parts of the plant are toxic. Death to animals, and danger to humans if there is food chain contamination. Enter the cinnabar moth. The moths emerge from the pupae in May and June, then lay eggs under the emerging leaves of the tansy. Couple of weeks later, the larvae, in the form of caterpillars, emerge. They’re pretty cute, though don’t touch them!
Be sure to click on the photo to get a good look.

They absorb the toxin from the ragwort, and are bright colored as a warning to birds that they are poison. Not all the larvae make the pupal stage, as they consume all the plant material (we hope!) and die of starvation. Perhaps because of hunger, they are also cannibalistic. Also predated by ants, of which we have an abundance, only the lucky form their pupae and go to sleep for the fall, winter, and spring.

So, Larry and I armed ourselves with pruning shears and large paper trash bags, and spent Saturday loping off the heads of whichever plants had no caterpillars on board. The strategy, as described by Jarod and Steve, is to take off the flowers, causing the plant to send up another generation of blossoms, which we’ll remove again in the fall. Theoretically. This generation of seed is weaker, and the plant, theoretically, believes it’s completed its life cycle and dies. Because seeds remain viable in the soil for 15 or so years, it’s tough to control. But we marched around the property, examined the plants, cheered on the evil/good caterpillars, bagged up the fallen flower stalks, and considered it a day well spent.

I know. Not as much fun as seeing a matinee, you’re thinking, or listening to music in a park somewhere, or hiking, or playing golf, or whatever else old people do for amusement. Came home, washed off the dirt and went to a party where we met some neighbors whom we like a lot. A good day, even if neither of us did anything particularly risible. Don’t worry. We go again next Wednesday.

We’re listening to the cows. I think they’re mother cows lowing to their babes. Larry says no, they’re “our” cows, not a mother among them. We don’t know, so it doesn’t matter.

“I wonder what happened to Susannah (the-Pioneer-Cow’s, to use her complete name, the source of milk and butter in my childhood) calves?” I say. “Dad used to kill them by hitting them on the forehead with a mallet. Of course, he never let us watch. I don’t think he ever wanted to answer any inconvenient questions about the need for Susannah to be ‘freshened’ to keep the milk coming. But I would think we would have wanted to play with any calves that showed up, and I can’t remember ever seeing one. No, but there’s that photo of Mary playing with a calf. Well, memory. Weird.”

“Jesus,” is all Larry can think to say. “Your childhood was sure different than mine.”

“We did get to watch him kill the chickens, though. Just whacked off their heads with a hatchet, watched them flap around headless. Then we got to help pluck them. Yuck! The smell of wet feathers? Probably okay because the topic of sex wouldn’t have come up. Not a rooster to be found.”

“Kind of hard to raise farm kids without the topic of sex coming up, I’d imagine.”

“Well, they did it. It wasn’t really a farm, though. We just lived in the country and had animals. No tractor or anything like that. We were so innocent, and I guess they wanted it that way.”

“My dog died,” Larry says. “That’s it for my childhood stories.”

We’re quiet for awhile. The deck has been laid on the foundation, so we decided to bring our chairs over and watch the sun go down:

It was a good day. We’d done some work in the orchard, and planned to spend the night in Corvallis, then play golf on a course in Monroe we’d heard about. And why, again, are we doing this?

The question came up when a group of my friends were having dinner on our deck in Portland. When we have this beautiful condo in Portland, why do I need anything more?

But I don’t think that’s the right question. It isn’t about more. It’s about finding home. And if Larry and I didn’t start with the same sense of what “home” is, see above, I think we are converging on that definition. But you’ll have to ask Larry his reasons.

The second answer is that, and here I’m speaking for myself again, I believe it’s important to do meaningful work in the days that stretch ahead, for however long. And I want that work to be something Larry and I do together. He already has meaningful work, managing the family finances, and play, golf. He does those things alone and with his friends. Sure, I play my banjo, and that’s fun, but it isn’t meaningful.

We donate money to causes we want to support, and that’s meaningful, but it isn’t work. So, the farm offers us a chance to work together in a place we both love.

There are huge challenges: the land is abused, overgrazed. The waterways have been degraded. But the property is in a conservation corridor, and we will have the help of Oregon Fish and Wildlife, NRCS, and other agencies yet to be identified.

Next Wednesday, we meet with Jarod Somebody from OF&W. The cows move off on July 10. We’re eager to get started! And not to alarm anyone, but Larry is collecting info on the different tractors he believes he’ll need.

Wednesday and we were on the road again. Going to water those trees, take down some weeds around the orchard, and begin a mulching process we learned about from Margie Lindbeck that was used at the Huntington Garden in Pasadena. Layers of wet cardboard surround each tree, on which is piled 4 to 6 inches of wood mulch. Except that description is retrospective — we know now what to do, but were going on a guess on that Wednesday, the 24th of June.

In what has become a routine, Larry opened the gate and went to pull the truck out of the barn. Continuing up the driveway in the car, I was thus by myself when I first saw the shocking spread of tansy over much of the fields where the cows have been.

Tansy is definitely bad stuff, and last year I am sure we had none at all. If this is what comes of overgrazing, something will have to change. I feel ashamed, sure that our neighboring farmers will be looking with disapproval at the evidence of careless husbandry. “Knew those city folks would be trouble. They’re probably thinking ‘oh, look at the pretty yellow flowers!'”

So. Tansy Ragwort, also knows as Stinking Willie, and Staggerwort. Which should give you some idea. It’s invasive, native to Asia, Africa, and Europe, appearing first in the Pacific Northwest in the 1920’s. All parts of the plant are highly toxic. The plant is biennial, and there are tricks to controlling isolated patches of it. Best are the biological agents, the cinnabar moth and ragwort flea beetle. They are both beautiful little creatures, the beetle iridescent gold, the moth dark gray with red accents. In the larval stage, the caterpillars are orange and black striped (Go Beavers!)

I can’t talk about this invasion without the uncomfortable thought that I, myself, am an invasive non-native arrival in this landscape. From a publication of the Grande Ronde Confederated Tribes about the Kalapuya, who were here before me:

“As a semi-nomadic people, the Kalapuya(s) lived in permanent winter homes and migrated throughout the Willamette Valley during the warmer months. They traded regularly with their Molalla and Cayuse neighbors as well as other Northern California, Oregon coast, and Columbia River tribes.

Camas root was the Kalapuyas’ most abundant and important staple. This “bulbous root plant resembles an onion in shape and consistency but is considerably more bland in taste,” according to “Cooking up Camas,” an article in Historic Marion. A member of the lily family, “camassia quamash” still grows in the Willamette Valley; it is known for its beautiful blue spring time blooms.

While they did not “cultivate” the land in today’s sense of the word, the Kalapuyas were familiar with land management practices such as controlled field burning. The article entitled “The Kalapuya: a Wealthy Way of Life” quotes Henry B. Zenk, a noted scholar of the Kalapuyas: “They slash burned just to make the country an open pasture. To make the habitat more conducive to elk, deer, camas, tarweed, and hazelnuts … The way they managed their land is something they had to work at. They were almost like a pre-agricultural society.”

Steve Smith, our conservation consultant drove up promptly at 11:00, and we put down our rakes to sit under the big oak and talk about OUR plans for caring for this land. We can basically take one of two paths, either agricultural, or toward pure conservation and restoration. Looking out at the consequences of grazing, it would seem a simple choice, but it isn’t. At the end of two hours, we’ve tentatively decided to see if a system of rotational grazing and pasturage improvement will be agreeable to Mark — Cow Guy, as you may remember. In exchange for forgiving any lease fee, we’d like him to be willing to move the cows maybe as often as every two weeks. Then, when these animals are gone in mid-July, Steve suggests we find someone who will be willing to pasture a herd of goats here to round out the grazing approach to conservation. We have an appointment with the director of Oregon Fish and Wildlife to consider signing a partnership with that organization. (A herd of goats? Sounds fun!)

As Steve was leaving, we had a quick look at several tansy plants, and found not a single larvae, caterpillar, or moth to be found. Bad news. We’ll see what Jarod, the F&W director has to suggest.

We went for lunch and stopped to acquire a few bags of mulch from Shonnard’s. Cut a nice piece of dry cardboard and fit it around the Liberty apple, the one looking most stressed. Piled on the mulch. If it’s good enough for the Huntington Garden! We started to water and got three trees done before the well ran dry (metaphorically). Seems we trip some breaker in the pump system and can’t see how to re-set it. So, it being 90 plus degrees, we decided to head back to Portland. Too hot!

At home, we learned that, to emulate the Huntington, one must pile great layers of wet corrugated cardboard around the trees, then pile on the mulch and water and water it. Going back tomorrow, as it is still in the 90’s, with a hot wind. Those trees will be thirsty, and if we can’t get the water to flow from the construction site, it’ll be back to Shonnard’s to fill our barrels and work the bucket brigade again. Onward!



“It’s so tiny!” I say.

“It’s huge!” Larry says.

“It has lots of corners,” observes Eric, the carpenter we’ve just met.

You decide:

For the first time, I’m feeling overwhelmed. It seems that the cows have selectively chewed down the lovely green meadow land, leaving ugly clumps of some less-tasty weed. We notice that most of the animals have been taken away, probably because, without access to Muddy Creek, they had no water. Fair enough.

And where the cattle haven’t been, the grass is overgrown and rough. Thistles are everywhere. And, of course, the construction site is, well, a construction site. Complete with port-a-potty which, while certainly welcome, does nothing for the ambience.

We’ve been studying the conservation plan, and want to get started NOW. It doesn’t work that way. We’ll meet with Steve next week to finalize the draft we have, then meet with Fish and Wildlife to form a partnership, then . . . ? Patience, Jane.

At least we have our orchard, which we can influence. We have only two hours to work, time we’ve stolen out of the compressed week of auto misbehavior in Wyoming. And look at my little favorite cherry tree:

Bravo! Well done! I wonder that some passing bird hasn’t noticed this jewel. This is the entirety of our fruit crop in 2015.

We shoulder our rakes and begin to introduce order to the tilled area inside the fence. I think the soil looks anemic; Larry thinks it’s perfectly healthy. Neither of us has the least idea, but in support of his claim, we do have some very prosperous thistle growing up between the trees. Have to wait til next week to spray.

Larry is an artist at this job. My territory satisfies the goal of flat, but his! It would be right at home in a Japanese raked stone meditation garden. I’m a little ashamed of my work, but don’t worry. The grass, if it ever grows here, will hide both artistry and imperfection.

Too soon we have to give up and head back to Portland and prepare for guests for dinner. On the way out I notice this poor unidentified fruit tree down by Llewellyn: why we need the deer/elk fence!

We decide that it’s too long a drive for so short a visit. Of course, we’re pretty tired of driving, anyway. Next Wednesday, we plan to arrive early and stay late. If time permits, we’ll acquire a back-pack sprayer to get after the most offensive thistles in the orchard and around the building site. Makes us feel useful, though any more comprehensive attack will have to wait for the knowledge, equipment, and manpower of the O.F.& W. team. Okay, overwhelmed, but not discouraged!

At the reception for Amber and Alex’s lovely wedding, we sat next to Bill Bahr, father of Ken, who’s married to Kristi Viehl Bahr. See the chain? Bill is a farmer, having retired from his work as a prison guard, and among the sweetest people you could meet. Lots of stories and advice. One, that we should under-water our new fruit trees a little, to force the roots to reach down for moisture from the earth. Guess we unwittingly succeeded there, although I can report that we now have water at the building site, and that the trees will be watered through the hot spell in that part of the world.

Bill has four acres and, he claims, 23 vehicles in his barn. Larry was — well, let’s do the math. We have one hundred acres. Extrapolating, we see that Larry could have 25 times as many vehicles in our barn. Better get going!

First, of course, we have to get home. Which is proving harder than it should. Here I sit in a motel in Frederick, Colorado. Dear God. Seems the Cheyenne mechanics aren’t authorized to do warranty work on the Lexus, and our new fuel pump is under warranty. Thus another tow ride for this vehicle (which we don’t count among the 23 X 25 to which we are entitled) down the highway to Colorado. We are not advised to drive the thing (duh), so followed in the rental car to which we treated ourselves.

These tow truck drivers are a colorful lot. The road from I 80 exit 20, Nebraska to Cheyenne driver in particular. Been out of the Navy 9 years, has a 9 year-old boy, Wyatt. “Me and my brother-in-law was just down the basement shooting bb guns at the wall, didn’t think nothin of it, just being dumb-ass guys. Then the cousins went down there and started shooting, but they was shooting at a barrel, and the shot ricocheted. Wyatt lost an eye.”

Whoa. Awful! “But he’s good with it now. Got a glass eye. Of course, the police had to get involved, it being a weapon and all, but insurance covered most of it. Know what a glass eye costs?”

Okay, so what about getting ourselves home? Just talked to Larry over at the Lexus shop. Mechanic there not optimistic that they can find the problem. Seriously, people, this is getting annoying! What to do? We are NOT going to drive a car that randomly shuts down across the mountains and desert. Could be miles from an off- ramp. Miles from cell coverage. Remember, I am a princess and while I’m proud of my composure through the tornado (did I talk about that? We actually just missed it, but it was a real, live tornado all right), through severe thunderstorms, through waiting for AAA for 4 1/2 hours in the Toyota parking lot in Cheyenne. Through yuck-o food at various chain restaurants, through, well, just being sick for home, I have to keep reminding myself that this is still all leaves-in-the-swimming pool. We’re fine. The country is beautiful (though the weather leaves quite a lot to be desired!).

So we will probably arrange to have it transported back to Portland, while we drive the rental. The Portland Lexus folks will have to figure it out, or eat it on a trade-in. Though it will be a while before we consider another Lexus! If all goes well, we hope to see for ourselves how the Hundred Acres project is proceeding by the end of the week.

“But your blog is supposed to be about the farm, isn’t it?”

“I know, but . . .”

“You could write about Tyrone’s email, and Lee’s phone call? No? Okay, I get it. Not that interesting.”

Right. So here’s what happened: First, in case you’re planning a road trip yourselves, I suggest that you avoid Colorado. Yes, it is very beautiful, awesome in the older sense of the word, but the entire state freeway system seems to comprise what they call a “work zone.” In a work zone, there will be but one lane ahead. One lane. The mountains in Colorado, coupled with the inevitable rivers of trucking, big, slow-moving trucks — well, you know.

Anyway, hours later than planned last evening, we left the freeway to find our hotel. It was just a little mistake, owing to the confusing signage and the fierce setting sun, but the wrong ramp and there we suddenly were, back on the freeway, heading west again. Next opportunity to turn around, twelve miles down the road.

Lots of Minnesota bad language here.

Fast forward: Never mind the ghastly dinner at Whiskey Creek (peanut shells on the floor, just so Wild West), forget the mistaken order at Starbucks and the woman, delighted by our Oregon license chatting with Larry while I straightened out the Starbucks order (It’s easy to make new friends on the road!). Ignore the Sausage Muffin, all we could find for breakfast. Nebraska is lovely. Green, damp from record-setting rain, fecund (I love that word). We are going to play golf this afternoon. Have a tee time from a course called Thousand Oaks, and then:

Yep. That’s us on a tow truck. On the way to the golf course. Or not, as it turns out.

We arrive, courtesy of the wonderful AAA at the Lexus dealership in Omaha. Not before I have a few qualms. “You can wait in the truck,” says our AAA guy, mindful of the 93 degrees outside (Nebraska is also hot!) as he loads our buggy onto his flat bed. Inside the cabin I note with some alarm the portion of 2 x 4 jammed against the seat, pressing the gas pedal down. The ancient system of buttons and what appears to be a generator on the floor. Is it okay to just let some stranger load your car and drive off with it and you to destination unknown? Do we have a choice?

We arrive safely at the dealership, are seated in some nice office and are interviewed by a charming young man. “Now,” he asks, in a gentle voice, leaning over his desk to inspire us with his kindness, “When did you last fill your gas tank?”

WTF! He thinks we old folks have neglected that little matter of securing fuel? Now, that could, of course, happen. We could run out of gas. But we would KNOW we had run out of gas. We would have informed the AAA operator that we needed gas, not an expensive tow into Omaha. Damn. This getting old stuff sucks on many levels.

Not yet sure, at this hour (9:45 p.m. in Omaha) what the problem is. Undiagnosed. But we have a “Courtesy car” which we are authorized to drive on to Des Moines tomorrow. At some point, we will have to return to Omaha to pick up our car.

And don’t be thinking Why don’t these people FLY when they need to get somewhere? Let us not forget the last time we flew, Montreal? Mechanical problems? Flight cancelled? New flight to Oregon in middle seats between strangers, 7 hours late? Yeah, that’s fun, too.

But, adventure. And these are, as Aaron points out, “leaves-in-the-swimming pool problems.” Right. Life is Good! On to Des Moines.

But what am I going to write about while we’re road-tripping? Two cows did get out, I did get a call for help from Dennis-Excavator Guy. I wish I had been there! How did these boys escape? All I could do was call Mark, who directed me to a sub who chases cows and sheep in Mark’s absence. Who said he’d be there in 45 minutes. And that’s all I know. Not much of a story.

On Sunday, Larry dashed home from the BBI, laden with oranges and apples and laundry. At least, no additional pickles this time! Several hours later, we were on the road to Corvallis where we would spend the night.

And on Monday, we met with Tyrone at the farm to sign our contract with him. Wow! Dennis had done a beautiful job and there was our little farmhouse outlined in gravel. The contract asserts that the construction will be done in 310 days. An oddly precise number, but that puts it into the first week in April, if all goes well.

A philosophical note I saw last week while waiting to get my thumb X-rayed: “In the Now is all time. In understanding the Now we are freed from time.” I take this to mean that all past and future are contained in the Now, and therefore will try to be patient. Yes, that was a simple take-away, but I find the thought powerful. (Arthritis, and thank you for asking, which does not mean that tendonitis may be eliminated as the cause of my troublesome thumb)

The lighter gray in the photo is the house footprint, the dark will be the entry, um, courtyard? But that sounds way too formal. Maybe not. After some discussion, we have prevailed and this space will not be pavers, not poured cement, but just gravel. “You’re going to want to pave that,” Dennis tells us. “Dust.”

Maybe he’s right. But think about those lovely chateaux you’ve seen in Burgandy with their graveled drives. Now dial the scene down about 98% and you may get what we’re trying to accomplish.(I would have said 172% for the effect, but my mom is watching from somewhere and she has taught me that there can be no percentage larger than 100. Got it, Mom.)

Suddenly the amputated oak tree looked sheltering, the stump a place to sit, after the chain-saw artist finishes with it.

You can’t see the stump in this photo, but I included it anyway because the light is so pretty. The area around the tree had been mowed. Paul again, who came to till the orchard and decided to do some mowing, as he was there anyway. Which he didn’t charge us for.

I didn’t take a photo of the newly tilled orchard, but did strap on my farm shoes and wade out to inspect the little cherry tree suffering the lilac leaf blight. “Wade” is the correct word, as the soil is so fluffy that my footsteps were several inches deep. Hmm. But the tree! It had put on 10 inches of new growth from every pruned stem, and looks lush and alive. Okay, Vik, this recovery probably wasn’t courtesy of our organic, homeopathic, non-toxic spray, but 10 inches in 10 days? Way to go, little tree!

Ooops, I accidentally hit Publish, when I meant Preview, and I don’t think there’s any going back. But I’m in my hotel in Pasadena, soon to head to Peter’s home. Tomorrow we’re meeting with Rod’s daughter-in-law, who will give us some suggestions for furnishing the house next year. Will get back to you!

It should have been more exciting. Groundbreaking day! Except, nothing actually got broken. The day was just these two guys hunching over the tailgate of a pickup, making marks on the first page of an unfurled blueprint, then pounding stakes:

This is Tyrone Simmons with his characteristic wry grin. Our builder, who’s going to be a member of the family for the next months. Along with Paul-the-Godsend, one of my favorite new people.

Here’s Dennis, Excavator Guy. He’s just recovered from a month-long stay in the hospital battling lung infection/blood infection — in a coma, not expected to survive. But, as he says, the good Lord told him he had another house to build. Which turns out to be ours. Gotta love that! He’s gruff, loud-spoken, been around too long to suffer fools, but about as sweet as you’d hope.

And here’s a selfie I took of Larry and me, supervising. This represents our contribution to the day’s activities. Lunch. I made a nice tuna salad, packed it along with a couple of tangerines and a bag of potato chips. Except I forgot to pack forks, so discovered that chips make fairly decent ad hoc silverware.

Larry had strapped on the weed-whacker harness to mow the perimeter of the orchard when Steve Smith, our conservation consultant arrived. He brought a draft of his vision of how we might proceed, giving us several paths we might follow, depending on our continued use of grazing. It’s a splendid document, with maps, photos, charts, and we’ve both skimmed it. Yeah. We need to get back to the first page and absorb, understand, decide. Perfect. This was by far the best reason for champagne that day.

No time for weed-whacking, then, but we did need to water the trees. And that’s when I noticed that something was amiss with the pie-cherry tree. Leaves curled, brown, and some blisters of a resin-like substance on the stems. Off to Shonnards with a clipping in a paper towel where we learned that we have lilac-leaf curl (have forgotten the technical name). Probably too late to save the tree, but we can spray a product — naturopathic and non-toxic — clip out the infected wood, and hope for the best.

Damn. First I whack one to death, and now we may lose another innocent tree to natural causes? I get mindful of the fact that we don’t live or die by our farming skills, but am beginning to feel like Calamity Jane. We sprayed, watered, and hoped for the best all the way home.

In the next weeks, when the ground really will get broken, we’ll be at 1.) the BBI, 2.) Pasadena for Charlie’s graduation, and 3.) Des Moines for Amber’s wedding. Our empty chairs will have to do the supervising, and the good Lord will have to water the trees.