At the beginning of the year we had grand visions for what we'd do with the pasture. There's about 3 acres of open grass mixed with the pear orchard. We had hoped to turn the grass resource into some sort of yield, even if it was to donate it away. We searched for folks with difference kinds of animals and found a lot of options, most of which we had to rule out due to lack of really solid fencing. Our basic perimeter is roughly fenced and needs repair in a few places. Goats are really hard on fencing so they were out, cows and horses would do well but we'd have to fence them out of the main house area. We found folks with alpacas, llamas and sheep too. Lots of options but all of them require an investment in fencing, something we're not ready to do.
So! The field needed to be mowed. We tried for a few weeks to nail down someone with a combine to bale up all the grass. There are a few such folks up here but they were all booked up for months to come, if we want to do this again we'll have book in January or February. In the end we called a field mower and he came out and made a few hours work of it.
At 5 feet tall the grass was about to become a serious fire hazard as the dry season is about to begin. Also the high point of tick season is upon us soon too. No reason to give the ticks more place to live.
One of our grand old pear trees, beautifully pruned and full of pears!
We have a few big walnut trees, this one, if I'm not mistaken, is California Black Walnut tree. We have a few each of the black walnut and english walnut grafted on black walnut stock.
These 3 pear trees are some of the oldest and most brittle of our trees. They still have a few years of life in them but have taken a real beating over the years. They don't yet have any pears growing on them, we think that's due to them being Comice pears, a later harvest pear.
Our garden. The fence is a bit of a hodge-podge but it keeps the deer out. We'll be digging into the garden real soon!
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