blooming

Kind of hard to tell, but this is a big old shagbark hickory tree in the woodsy part of our farm. If the apples don't attract the deer, the hickory nuts will.

The apples trees are blooming. I'd say we have 40-50 trees scatered around, but don't know how good they are yet. Here are a couple along the driveway.

Next weekend, we will be tilling and planting, as well as getting rocks out of the field. Our neighbor planted barley in the field, and noted a lot of rocks, so we are going to try to thin them out. Might end up with some landscaping materials.

first harvest

Well, we were lucky enough to be at the farm when morels were popping. So, along with the chives that were growing by the back door, we harvested our first "crop". This bowl of morels is just some of the mushrooms we found. We fried some , put some in omelets, made some soup, and dehydrated some.

We have several dead elms on the hillside, and that is one of the best places to find morels. We cut out a lot more prickly ash this past weekend, and plan to chip them up and use as mulch.

Memorial day weekend will be the big garden planting day, when we put in all the seeds and plants that can't take frost. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Area 51 relic?

This was left in the yard of our house in Wisconsin by the former owner. It's a bird bath, and kind of looks serene, but overall, it's just weird looking.

Some of the neglected raised beds we are spading over and will be repairing. The tiller won't fit in these smaller ones, so it took a while to till, and the sod mat is still rather chunky.

More toys

We bought a trailer to haul stuff, especially firewood. This past weekend, we finally fired up the Russian stove, and got the brick mass heated up. It took a while for the heat to soak out to the surface, but stayed warm a very long time as advertised. After we tighten up the house and add some perimeter foundation insulation, this should be a warm efficient house to heat this next winter. Our farmer neighbor Bob says he has plenty of down wood he'd be happy to have me clear out, to improve his pasture.

prickly ash

Another photo of the farm. This past trip, I cut down a lot of prickly ash, a native tree that can take over an area if allowed to. It is nasty stuff to handle, as the name would imply. The Stihl brushcutter works quite well, and I'm amazed at how the drive shaft stands up to abrupt changes in speed and torque without flying apart.

We have a lot of random scattered clumps of backberry also. While I like blackberries, Walking through them is no fun, and we will have to try to trim back and keep them in reasonable patches that are easy to harvest. They call them blackcaps up here, but they taste the same.

I did a quick scan for morels, but its too early. After the rain, and with some warm weather, they may start popping up. We're not even sure if there are any on our land, but I sure hope so.

on the road

Mentally, the trip to Wisconsin gets a bit shorter with repetition, but my back still feels the long restriction. We did brush clearing, some odds and ends of straightening, and we finally got a real mattress. Off and on a rainy or drizzly weekend, but it was clear long enough to get plenty of work done outside.

Met with a solar installer, and talked about future improvements on the house. No soalr panels this year, but maytbe in a year or two.

Here's a shot of our first rows in the hayfield/soon to be garden. This is the potatores and peas. After last frost, we will plant a lot more. We're hoping we can just keep the hay mowed around and between the rows to minimize erosion and weeds.