Raspberries!

A gift is a gift when the giver helps plant!
I received ten August Red and five Boyne raspberries from a friend, and they were good enough to help plant them too.
The land wasn't prepped last season, so this was a shovel and a prayer kind of planting.
Dug a hole, added peat moss and topsoil, laid in the plant, and covered lightly with more soil.
Then covered everything with 36" wide weed barrier*, stapled that down, and covered that with ten bags of cedar mulch.
After that, a fence. First time for me to build a large enclosure; I usually build rounds for individual trees.
It is about 6 to 8 feet wide and 45 feet long. Just used bamboo posts, 48" chicken wire, tent stakes, wire, and yellow ribbon.
Like a said, a shovel and a prayer.

Weather report: We received 5 feet of snow in March. It's now the middle of April and snow is still on the ground in places. Trees and shrubs are just beginning to bud.


*Premium 5oz Pro Garden Weed Barrier Landscape Fabric By ECOgardener – Durable & Heavy-Duty Weed Block Gardening Mat, Easy Setup & Superior Weed Control, Eco-Friendly & Convenient Design, 3ft x 100ft

seven year itch

The cabin is standing, and still in use.  The past few years have been focused on maintaining the land.

Changes? The environment - trees and bushes grow and die, I still attempt to save them from deer... life continues. The most marked change is in me; seven years older and perhaps a bit wiser - at least a bit more patient.

Weather is a thing - it's why I bought the property. Last year there was a drought - nothing too severe, but enough of one so that the grasses weeds and flowers didn't need trimming at all through the season. The result was that all the plantings I have been doing over the previous years finally had a chance to get taller than the weeds. Now I need to remember what it is I planted. :) Lilacs, maples, Christmas trees (some of which still look like shoo -in's for Charlie Browns Christmas), and some other things are finally beginning to look like what I was expecting. What hurt during the year of the drought was that I planted 90 poplars. Without irrigation, only 18 survived. I planted 60 more this year, and there has been a lot more rain so they all look very healthy.

I also "upped the game" and rented a brush hog.

I always thought they were enormous and unwieldy machines that would decimate the sacred land. Then I got older. The weed whacker was a step up from the scythe, a tool I still enjoy using, but shorter time upstate and sorer arms and shoulders lead me to seek more mechanization. I took three (sometimes four) days to weed whack the driveway, weeks to do it with the scythe, and 3.5 hours to do it with the brush hog. Love technology.

Wild things are growing and dying too. Many trees and bushes are filling in and looking robust, others are fading. It looks like I have lost all the ash trees along the driveway, probably to the Emerald Ash Borer. The only positive there is I get to practice using a chainsaw, and perhaps get some firewood. A surprise this year was the loss of the pine that greeted us when we got to the cabin. It seemed to die overnight, so I am guessing it was Pine Wilt disease. I made very short work of removing the branches with clippers, hand saw, and a ladder for the higher spots, then shifted to the chain saw for the trunk. It was only about 30' tall so not too difficult. I counted about 25 age rings.

That's all for now...

critter cam collection

Here are a bunch of pictures collected from my critter cam. The camera has worked fine, except for when the batteries died over the winter. Now using rechargeable batteries, and hoping for better results.

The images labeled 2012 are really April 2015.

And the last three are a mystery. Any ideas?

let there be solar

Finally got to build a solar panel and celebrated with light.

This is the one everyone has seen from Harbor Freight.
http://www.harborfreight.com/45-watt-solar-panel-kit-68751-8527.html

The cleared out shed seems to be the perfect spot.

Now I just have to remind myself why I want power.

As nice as electric light in the cabin is, it feels like the change to the space is too great. Or maybe I just need to get used to it. But charging batteries - now that I will like.
-- adding picture soon --

April 2015

It's winter, it's spring, it's, it's...

the Catskill's in April.

The morning I arrived the tree's for miles around were gilded in ice, making the drive to the site a ghost-like passage through a shimmering grey desolation  - a feeling that only the end of winter can give.

The next day was 60 degrees, followed by a deep frost overnight and wicked winds the following sunny day.

Another reason to be there was to clear out the shed - it had been years, and the build up of stuff, mice, wasps, and other intriguing creatures had built up to a crescendo of wasted space - a place where I would quickly deposit or withdrawal items.

Such a disgusting wasted space that I couldn't even take a picture of it at it's worst. this is about half emptied:

Imagine the things I found! Many items from before I even designed the cabin - assorted windows, insulation, doors...

All went to the dump, where anything worthwhile was scooped up by others who will use it or do what I just did.

The guy at the dump was great and he took the time to direct what I was bringing down to the right people / places. So not all was landfill. This however...

Sometimes a picture (or in this case three) tells a thousand words.

The only heartwarming part is that I had seen red squirrels in here last year, so at least it was a native varmint. 

And then, presto chango, a clear shed.

On Dan Barber's "The Third Plate"

This has very little to do with the cabin in the woods, except for the possibility of farming there. I just read "The Third Plate," and no, it is not about baseball.
I recommend reading the book, and this post is more a links page than a review. Barber wrote about many farmers and thinkers. Here are some links I found on my own:
https://attra.ncat.org/interviews/martens.html
http://www.lakevieworganicgrain.com/meet.html
http://www.ansonmills.com/biographies
http://www.stonebarnscenter.org/about-us/staff/jack-algiere.html
http://www.bluehillfarm.com/
http://www.stonebarnscenter.org/about-us/staff/craig-haney.html
http://www.milkwood.net/2011/12/09/eliot-colemans-fertile-dozen-recommended-reading-for-organic-growers/
http://www.laverstokepark.co.uk/info/about.aspx
http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9205251407/hands-willem-kips
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/blog/seed-grower-profile-frank-morton-an-agent-of-change/
http://sustainablefoodtrust.org/team/thomas-harttung/
http://www.natureandmore.com/growers/growganics
http://joansgarden.org/
http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/cultiv/cantisano
http://www.landinstitute.org/
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Albrecht%20Lecture%20-%20Healthy%20Soils%20Healthy%20People.htm
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/howard.html.
http://www.brownetrading.com/products/fresh-fish/veta-la-palma-seafood/
http://www.vetalapalma.es/index.asp?LG=2
http://css.wsu.edu/people/faculty/stephen-s-jones/
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/10/radical-chefs-launch-seed-revolution
from

Irene Hamburger
Vice President
Blue Hill | Blue Hill at Stone Barns
630 Bedford Road
Pocantico Hills, NY 10591

914 366 9606 x224
917 447 4212 (cell)
irene@bluehillfarm.com
@bluehillfarm

Angel Leon and the Almadraba (in Spanish)

http://vimeo.com/18574228

The Perennial Plate on Eduardo Sousa

http://www.theperennialplate.com/episodes/2013/06/episode-121-a-time-for-foie/

The Perennial Plate on Glenn Roberts

http://www.theperennialplate.com/episodes/2012/03/episode-94-carolina-gold/

Dan Barber’s Ted Talks:

https://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_barber

critter cam

This past March I installed a motion trigger camera to see what critters come by. Do you know that wind is motion?
Do you know how many windy days there were between March and now?
After scanning 2000 images, I think I need to tweak the settings.
Here, without the wind, are a few critters - help is needed on the last one.

Dreaded House Cat

Peter Cottontail!

Hop

Hop!

If no one can help, I will make something up.
Pterodactyl?
Snowy Owl?
Bald Eagle?

Fire!

Many a night I have dreamed of sitting around a roaring fire with friends, feet up on the stone wall, finding topics of conversation in the embers.
We finally made it happen. With help from many friends, we built a nice sized firepit - about 8 feet across and 18 inches high.
First, my nephew Max and I gathered field stone from the many rock walls dissecting the property. Pretty much all the property is on a slope, so after pushing up a few choice barrows full of stone from below the firepit site, it occurred to me it might be easier if we took the rock from above the site. And it was; the only thing to watch out for were run away rocks as the momentum built along the downward paths.

This is one of the two piles we gathered

Max having a well deserved rest after the rock gathering.

the enchanted forest

The following weekend Margaret and Larry came up to help me put it all together. This is code for getting out of Larry's way while Margaret took pictures.

I get out of the way and Larry gets busy

I did fill the pit with sand - about a ton of it. Thank goodness it was in small bags!
In a shocking (to me anyway) 3 hours we were done.

starting the sand

 Fire in order!

It must be Spring

Ahh, it is that time of year again - Grounds Maintenance!

There has been plenty of rain this spring, which means the driveway and the field look like one.
I have been giving the driveway an annual spray with herbicide. Last year I used a 1 gallon sprayer and Ortho GroundClear 2 gal. Concentrate Vegetation Killer. The herbicide worked great, but the single gallon sprayer was foolish - fill, pump, lift,  spray for 10 seconds, set down, pump, repeat. As I'm sure many of you remember, this driveway is over 600 feet long. It took days to do the entire driveway this way.
This year I bought a better pump - a Chapin 61700N SureSpray Deluxe Backpack Poly Sprayer, 4-Gallon, and a different herbicide - I had forgotten I had used Ortho, and instead bought Roundup 32 oz. Concentrate Extended Control Weed and Grass Killer Plus Weed Preventer. I know, supporting the devil, but the job was done before I remembered. The Roundup only promises 4 months, and the Ortho promised 12 months. With winters up here I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes, but we shall see.

Last year I also sprung and bought a Toro 2-Cycle 25.4 cc Curved Shaft Gas Trimmer - this allowed me to trim out both sides of the driveway in near record time. Okay, it was record time - it only took 3 days of fighting 3' high grass, as compared to weeks using the scythe. As much as I love using the scythe (and I really do), getting the driveway DONE was a real pleasure.

And remember the last post about being able to count on rain? Yep, another rainy year - back to Mudfest! Last year was a break, but the year before... ugh.

A local business delivered 5 cubic yards of mulch, so I spent some time trying to change the texture of the trail.

Before:

 

After:

 

Didn't get it all done, but simple enough to do. Now if would just stop raining so I could enjoy it!