Vultures! (video)

Some kindhearted individual decided to dump a deer carcass on the farm recently and it has attracted about 20 or 30 vultures to the property. I originally thought that the deer may have been shot in the national forest and ran onto the farm. Upon further inspection, however, I noticed that someone drove a truck all the way down the drive and ran over the paw paws to turn around and dump the carcass. Luckily the paw paws were young and seem to have just bent over and not snapped. The deer was not so lucky.

Clearing the Front

We've almost cleared the entire front of the property to the left of the driveway, as you're headed North up the driveway from the road. It was completely overgrown and through the hard work of everyone two weeks ago a lot of progress was made! I cleared for another six hours on the following Sunday and almost finished the remainder of the front by hand.

There was a small stand of young Oaks getting established along the Western edge of the property. I wanted to keep those, as well as all of the persimmons. I also kept well established trees, mainly 5 years or older, of varying species. It was very interesting to see the little clusters of trees living together. A Pine family, overlapping with Oaks, overlapping with Persimmons, but all in their own little stands.

I left three large brush piles behind to save on time, hopefully we'll chip them down soon. I think it will take us three more full days of work to finish up this project, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! You can see straight through from the road all the way to the garden for the first time. You can also see through from the driveway looking West toward the neighbors for the first time.

The Wedding Arbor

Amelia, Carley and Peyton play beyond the new arbor

The whole family was out this week to help out on the farm! Lindsey and John, Peyton and Ruby, Ray, Meredithe, Amelia, Carley and I, and our friend Mat were all working hard. Everyone did their part, mostly clearing the front yard. We took out mainly privet, juniper, blackberries and other underbrush. We kept a few pines, a few Bradford Pears, a couple maple and all the oak and persimmon I could find. Everything else got chopped and dragged over to the main brush pile. Hopefully soon we'll rent a wood chipper, turn it all into mulch and redistribute it out over the garden beds and around the trees etc. I'll show you the amazing progress we made in my next post, but the big accomplishment this week was the wedding arbor. Ray and John put it up in what seemed like no time at all! Mat took our pictures underneath it and all over the farm for our "save the dates" and they're beautiful! The arbor really helps the wedding garden come into focus. Just over five months from now I'll be marrying the love of my life, right under there...

Rose Hips

This is our first harvest of rose hips. Rose hips are the resulting fruit following the successful pollination of rose flowers. Just as with many fruits, you can do all sorts of cool stuff with them! Jams/jellies, syrups and wine can all be made from rose hips, but my favorite is rose hip tea.

Rose hips have an extremely high concentration of Vitamin C and also contain powerful antioxidants, making them a great candidate for herbal teas and remedies. During World War II, British citizens were encouraged to harvest wild rose hips when German U Boats made citrus fruits hard to obtain.

Often mixed with hibiscus, the resulting tea is tart and delicious! They ripen beginning in late summer and throughout the fall. We probably should have waited until the first frost to harvest them, hopefully the plants won't burst to life right before the frosty weather starts, but we couldn't take it any longer... we had to have some of that delicious tea!

Clearing the Front Fence

Clearing this little section up front by the fence took several hours. I was working with a pair of extendable hedge shears, a bypass lopper and my trusty folding saw. I removed one low hanging branch from the pine, but most of the project was comprised of removing young privet. There were thorny vines running all through the privet and up the trees making the tedious chore that much more difficult. There was a little bit of sumac, which I've convinced myself is of the non poisonous variety. There were also a few poison ivy vines, definitely of the poisonous variety, although not the largest I've seen on the farm. I cut out the sumac and took it over to it's own brush pile, separate from the main pile. I wanted to keep it separate so I don't burn it by accident, just in case. I cut about a one foot section out of each vine of the poison ivy and left everything behind, avoiding the area as I worked.  Most of the remaining smaller trees are wild persimmons, they had already lost all of their leaves for the season since they were in such dense shade. Hopefully they'll fair better next year with the newly available sunlight.

Planting Fall Bulbs

There was finally a break in the rain and we were able to get our fall bulbs planted. October was a really wet month and November is shaping up to be wet as well. We're finding out about how well our soil drains, that's for sure. The Western end of the South bed felt a little bit like planting in a mud puddle, but the rest of it seemed to be draining well.

Meredithe, Amelia and I put in 225 bulbs in about two hours. First we put in 60 Joan of Arc Crocus. We planted them in groups of 5, six groups in each bed spaced in between the bushes. You can see the small area of disturbed soil out in front of Amelia in the foreground. She's planting some of the 150 mixed daffodils that were planted in groups of 12-13. They're the bulbs that are laid out in a rough pattern in the picture. We also put in 15 City of Haarlem Hyacinth. They're placed at the end of each bed and opposite the bushes around the outside of each bed. We planted the one odd bulb with the Gladiolas down by the driveway.

The Crocus are a bright white, the Hyacinth are ivory in color and the Daffodils are mixed varieties, but should be comprised mainly of varying shades of yellow. Hopefully, they'll all be up in time for the wedding in late April. We'll also be planting annuals around them in the Spring to fill in the beds.