Saturday on the Farm

We had a pretty good family day on the farm today. We dug a pretty big hugelkulture bed in the fenced garden area a few weeks ago and came back again today to start another one. Nicole and I got the bed dug out and a bit of wood into the bottom before we had to break for the kids lunch/nap cycle. You can see the kids helping there on the right. :)

 The first hugelkultur bed that we dug is in the background but somewhat obscured by all the earth we removed for the second bed today. The soil is amazing! So easily worked and full of big fat earthworms. I almost felt bad turning it all up but once we get the wood and other brush materials buried under the bed it will be a great place to grow veggies over the next few years.

Jula, queen of the last grass island!

Tenzin brought his construction trucks to the farm today for added digging capacity. :)

 Finally all dug out and getting it's first layer of wood. After we pile 3-4 more layers of wood we'll add other loose brush and leaves before replacing the soil on top.

Today we had two new beehives added to the farm. The owner of the first three hives told their friends that we had room for more. Meeting Debbie and Hugh today was really nice, they're good folks and really love their bees.

 Here's Martha's 3 hives. I think we'll end up with a few more in the next few months. The two little white wires are electrified fencing designed to keep out the bears that occasionally roam on to our land.

 And yay, it's solar powered! Believe it or not it only takes two wires and about 400 volts to keep the bears out. This little unit will push a pulse 25 miles!

 BLACKBERRY!

 I'm not sure what kind of tree this is yet but it was clearly coppiced some time ago and has some wonderfully straight and tall branchs now. Good building materials!

Here you can see some of the shade scorch up in the forest. The tall cedars are shading out all the other trees and causing some to just die off and turn black. I think we'll have to thin out that forest some in the coming years.

This is a view of the backside of the house from the road that goes up into the forest. :-)