A Winter Weekend

No big projects finished (yet), no before and after pictures to share, but we did have a productive weekend.

Saturday was cloudy but a pleasant low 70's, perfect weather for planting trees.  A co-worker of mine recently bought a new house, and the developer had planted multiple live oaks in their small yard.  Apparently the developer didn't know (or care) how big the trees will eventually get, but my friend did and wanted to get rid of one.  We were happy to give it a new home! 

Digging the tree up wasn't too hard, since the roots hadn't spread much yet, and once we got it home we rolled it out of the back of the truck and straight into the bucket of the tractor.  Craig used the auger attachment to loosen up the soil so it was easy to shovel up, then we just rolled the tree's root ball right into the hole. 

It takes longer to attach the auger than to drill the holes

That auger is a real time (and back) saver

Easy Peasy

We also planted a Japanese maple (Hefner's Red) that we bought ourselves for Christmas, and we found a little bonus tree coming up in the pot, so that is potted up in the greenhouse.  We transplanted a couple of red buds that we already had out to the island. 

We were expecting a rainy Sunday, and we did get some showers, but not enough to keep us out of the greenhouse.  Craig put in more of the window latches so we can prop the windows open, and he split off the faucet to run a hose inside for easy watering.  Meanwhile I was busy planting seeds.  I'm thrilled to able to get so many things started so early - much more than I could in a sunny window of the house. 

Hibiscus, milkweed, tomatoes, and peppers.

Plus it is really nice to enjoy all the blooms in the greenhouse right now - the plants are loving these warm days and cool nights. 

Orange kalanchoe, pink begonia and pink mandevilla shrub in the corner.  

Crown of Thorns, with a Yellow Pear cherry tomato in the back.

White begonia 

I cut all the coleus back when I moved them into the greenhouse, but they are coming back strong now.

You can see the electric radiators we've been using to keep the greenhouse warm in the picture above.  It definitely had an impact on our electric bill, but thankfully our winters are short and not too terribly cold.  We're going to make a few improvements but so far the green house has been a great success, and I'm so proud of what a great job Craig has done on it.  He's a keeper! 

Farm Goals 2018

We accomplished quite a bit in 2017, and we're looking forward to another productive year.  Without further ado, these these are our GSD (gettn' stuff done) plans for 2018:

Heading home...and into a brand new year!

1. Build an enclosure for the pump
This was already on our "stuff we need to do eventually" list, but there's nothing like having your pipes freeze (repeatedly) to move things up to the "sooner rather than later" list.

2. Put down flooring in the attic
I'm proud to announce that we've already knocked this one out.  Craig took care of it the first weekend in January, so it absolutely counts on our 2018 list.  We've got plenty of room in the attic for storage, but we only had temporary flooring in there.  Craig cut plywood to fit around the various supports, wires and other obstacles so we'd be able take advantage of all that storage space.  Just in time to pack away the Christmas decorations!

This is probably the least pretty "after" pic ever.

3. Renovate the little barn
Okay, renovate might be overselling it, but now that we have electricity to the barn we are ready for the next phase of making the barn into a workshop.  We plan to put up siding on the exterior, paint it, and put in windows and a new barn door.

4.  Double the wildflower meadow
This same goal will be on our list for the next several years, as we plan to keep extending the flowers until we run out of meadow.  We've purchased seed from American Meadows for the last two years (and plan to continue), but I also save as many seeds as I can to add to the mix.  I gather the seeds from our planted flowers, but also from any wildflowers I find in other areas of the farm.

Lulu is a so helpful when I'm collecting flower seeds

5. Spruce up the cabin exterior (paint the foundation and landscape)
This is another holdover from last year; we've done some work already, but this year we're focusing on the aesthetics.  We want to paint the concrete block foundation and put in gardens along the front.  We've also promised Daddy that we'd finish planting azaleas all the way across the edge of the backyard.

6. Cut more trees and brush along the lane
This is a job that is best done when the weather is cooler, and we didn't have all that much cool weather last year.  Of course now we've got the opposite problem and it is too cold to work outside!  Hopefully we'll have sufficient cool-enough-but-not-too-cold weekends that we can get more done this spring, before the grass starts demanding all of Craig's free time.  We'd like to eventually clear out the brush, scraggly saplings, and overcrowded trees along the lane.

7. Clear the goat garden area and start new gardens
I'm planning to put in gardens in the area that used to be goat pasture, hence the Goat Gardens moniker.  More recently it was planted pines, but since those were cut down last spring that area is a mess of tree debris and overgrown weeds.   This area is the future home of fruit trees, grape arbors, the vine trellis, and more flowers, of course.  The goat garden area is highlighted in yellow below (Hopefully Google will get a new aerial shot soon - this picture is from before the pines were cut).

Yellow - goat garden
Blue - house

Goat barn on the far right

8. Expand the walking path around the farm 
There are several "paths" that you can walk around the farm, and taking a stroll around the big pond is somewhat of a tradition when visiting.  We want to clear more paths so we can walk around the entire edge of the property, and we also need to repair a couple of bridges that go over parts of the little pond (and probably put in at least one new one).

Red - property line (roughly)
Green - current paths
Orange - future paths
Yellow - goat garden

Still pretty solid, but with a definite tilt.

9. Finish landscaping the island
You're never really finished with gardening, but we'll consider the island done once we cut down the last of the trees we want to clear out and plant something attractive that can compete with the blackberry brambles.  The island is a large part of the view from the front porch, so while we don't plan to turn it into garden, making it a little more picturesque would be nice. The hill on the island has a pine tree on top that would be a nice focal point if it weren't mostly obscured by the smaller trees.  We also planted a weeping cypress tree last year that is likewise obscured.  But mother nature has to cooperate before we can finish clearing - the water levels in the pond have been too high to get at most of the trees we wish to remove.

10.  Poll winner is:  build a vine trellis!
In our 2017 goal wrap-up post, we asked you to vote on which one of three projects you'd like to see us take on, and the winner with 45% of the vote was building a vine trellis.  So we plan to build something like this as an entrance into the new goat garden:

We do actually have the space for one this long...hmmm....

Of course ours won't be nearly this grandiose and it will take a while to grow in, but hopefully it will do us proud.  I found what I think are roof trusses from an old hoop house in the big barn last year, and ever since I've wanted to use them to build a vine trellis.  So thanks to everyone who voted for it!  I'm researching what I want to plant on it - it has to be something that will grow in quickly and be attractive all year long, but not so aggressive that I have to fight to keep it contained.  Hummingbird and/or pollinator attractiveness is a bonus.  Suggestions are welcome! 

So that's our plans for the coming year.  There will be other projects that come up, plus problems to solve and hopefully some pleasant surprises, too.  We're looking forward to another year of living the dream and sharing our stories with all of you.

Winter Wonderland...mostly

Pre-emptive apologies to our more northern friends as we're about to prattle on about the weather we've been having down here.  First things first...

SNOW!!!

That's right! For the first time since 1989 (according to family) snow stuck to the ground down here in the Coastal Empire. We got over three inches. THREE INCHES! The record for Savannah is 3.6 inches, so we were close.

Neta measuring on top of the sundial...which wasn't keeping very good time that day.

Normally we wouldn't get excited about snow, having lived through plenty of it in our years in Vienna, especially Snowmegeddon in 2010, but this was sort of special. It's not often that snow falls down here, and even less often that it accumulates. Keep in mind too, that we moved down here to escape snowy, wet, gray, cold weather. But still it was pretty to see, especially after the storm passes when you can walk around and take in the beauty of it, knowing that it will melt soon.

Here are a few pictures we took later that afternoon:

Icicles hanging off the greenhouse roof

I'm in the window to the right of the front door, working, while Neta braves the cold for a picture of the house.

The front pond has a thin sheet of ice on the side closest to the house.

Neta put breadcrumbs out for the birds. Apparently Lulu thought she put them out for the "bird dog".

This bird came to the front door...probably to complain about the theft of breadcrumbs.

The old camellia in the side yard.

Our big Live Oak

Snow along the banks of the big pond

Trees next to the little barn

Terrell's boat down at the big pond

Ice at the big pond

The little pond and the island

Despite the beauty of the snow, there is a downside to this cold weather. In this area of the country your well and tank are usually out in the middle of the yard - ours is. Normally the weather doesn't get cold enough to affect your water supply, but sustained low 20's or teens, just like the human version, will give you fits and headaches if you aren't prepared.  We were prepared...mostly, hence the "mostly" in the blog title.

Our well and tank. Typical for southeast Georgia.
The upturned cooler, with custom pipe cutout is an "after-market option".

To protect the water pipe going into the house, there is an upturned cooler that insulates the above ground portion of the pipe and keeps it from freezing. That's rural GA engineering. It's pretty effective down into the teens and for a night or two. Earlier this year I had also wrapped the pipe with insulating tape. Unfortunately at the 90 degree elbow the tape unwrapped and about an inch or so of the pipe was exposed. So on the third night of extremely cold (for down here) temps...that elbow froze. This was Wednesday night just as we'd finished washing up and getting ready for bed. We had just enough water to get by and went to bed knowing that come Thursday morning we would be dealing with no water.

The next morning our most valuable tool in the house was a hair dryer. I put it to work on that pipe for 2 hours. (I propped it up under the cooler. What? Do you think I stood there in the freezing cold for 2 hours holding a hair dryer?) That got the water flowing and all was saved. But we needed a way to keep it from freezing again, so off to Lowe's we went only to discover that they and all surrounding stores were completely sold out of insulating tape, heat tape and any other contraption and configuration you can imagine for thawing or insulating pipes. As you can imagine, plenty of people around here were in the same situation we were. We ended up buying a 60W halogen light bulb (nothing but LEDs in the house) remembering that we had a plug in socket for our extension cord.

The light bulb was all we needed to hold heat inside that cooler.

HA!  Take that Old Man Winter! Try and freeze us out will ya!!!

And on Friday morning...the water was barely trickling. Now what? I checked the tank pressure and it was almost down to zero. AHA! Must be frozen on the side coming from the well. This pipe:

The pipe coming up from the well going into the tank.
That one exposed joint was all it took to stop our water. 

Out came the hair dryer again. To hold the heat around the pipe I draped a towel over it. With the hair dryer pulling in the cool air, the output wasn't so hot that I had to worry about the towel catching fire. After only 5 mins, the tank began to gurgle and the pressure was restored. I was so relieved. Now what to cover that pipe with? What's the R-value of a towel...doubled up? I don't know, but it worked and Saturday morning we woke up to no frozen pipes.

It wasn't draped like this. I zip-tied it around the pipe to keep it from blowing off.
This is merely for display purposes.

This morning (Sunday) we woke up to trickling water again. A check of the tank pressure showed that the pressure was low. Back out came the hair dryer. Apparently my towel draping needed some work as there was a big enough gap for cold air to get in. Again, this wouldn't be normal over a night or two, but seven straight nights of low 20's or lower takes its toll. This time it took about 15 - 20 mins of hair dryer time, but again the water is flowing. So I set about the task of fully insulating that entire pipe and joint.

What I should have done in the first place.

I won't place a 100% guarantee on my work, but I feel reasonably confident with one night left in this cold snap and the temp forecast to only drop down to around 30.  We'll see.

At some point I'd planned to build an insulated pump house. Guess it's time to move that to our upcoming project list. But that's a whole new blog entry.