One of 2018's goals was to build a pump house over our well head and tank. We'd bought the lumber and were ready to do it, but the rains came in December and it seemed to happen every weekend. So much for progress. If it wasn't raining the yard was too wet to work in. And if it was finally starting to dry up, it would rain again and you didn't want to work outside. Damn you El Nino!!!
So the calendar flipped over to January and did the rains subside? NO! After about 15 inches of rain between December and January there just isn't anywhere for the water to go. This past Saturday night (Feb 2) we had .50 inches of rain and we've got puddles in the yard like a hurricane had come through.
Despite the wet weather and squishy ground we've changed our plans, not because of the rain, but because our priorities changed. Our new plan is to clean out the last "unimproved" side of the little barn because our new "priority" is...CHICKENS and GUINEAS! (COMING IN LATE SPRING)!!!
Future chicken coop/run (right half)
We decided the back corner of our small barn would be an optimum place for them. Even though it's on the SW corner of the barn, it is sheltered by a pine woods so half of it stays in the shade during the hot GA summers. At 20'x10' there is plenty of room for a coop and a run (when they're not free-ranging in the yard). With that idea in place we got to work building similar structure to the greenhouse, which meant it was time to...RAISE THE ROOF!
This never gets old!
To start, all we had to do was clean out that part of the barn. Easier said than done.
A lifetime of stuff. Some ours, some Neta's Dad's, some from other family members.
We backed the truck up to the barn and started clearing stuff out. Stuff that we could clearly label "junk" or unusable was taken to the dump. The rest was moved to a corner of the big barn or Neta cleaned it up and it will be re-purposed in some way.
After the cleaning.
Once everything was removed it was time to take down the exterior wall.
These walls might keep chickens in, but they won't keep the predators out.
The last piece falls courtesy of a sledgehammer and a chainsaw.
Once the walls on the long side were down, it was time to jump on the tractor and scoop out the goat manure like we did for the area next to it where we park the tractor and lawn mower.
Decades of black/brown gold for the garden.
With the manure (mostly) scooped out, it was time to start putting up posts to shore it all up, raise it up and provide structure for the future coop and run.
New posts on the back (right side). The front (temporarily propped up) still needs to be cleaned out.
All of the posts are in and the roof is not only higher, but relatively straight and level.
View from the front. The coop/run will be built on the back half.
With the roof raised, more manure scooped out (and sorta leveled) and a (somewhat) blank slate to work with, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to put siding up on this side of the barn.
3/4's of the barn now has siding. Time for painting.
It's starting to look civilized.
There is a set of shelves in the back half that we'll cannibalize to help build the coop. Our next step is to paint the siding, barn red of course, so we can continue our progress. We hope to have it all done, painting, coop building, fencing, etc. within a couple of months as we plan to get the chicks in April/May and the guineas in June.
Let's get one thing straight. Down here it's pronounced PEE-can, not pe-CAHN or PEE-cahn. But that is a mere detail and not the crux of this story.
For the past couple of weekends, Neta has been rolling pecans under several of our best-producing trees. Rolling pecans requires a roller, which looks like a wire bingo ball cage on a long handle, and something to dump them all in after you've rolled over them and the cage fills up.
Pecans just laying around on the ground waiting to be rolled.
Empty roller surrounded by rogue pecans that must be captured.
A pecan-filled roller and a clean surrounding area
Neta got recommendations from family (thanks Pam and Ann!) for a place that would crack, shell and "blow out" the pecans for us. So this past Saturday, after a morning spent at a local plant nursery, we loaded up 5 paper grocery bags filled with pecans and headed out to the Durden Pecan Co. in Metter (about 25 miles west of us).
Guess the total number of pecans and win the Grand Prize!
We arrived at the pecan company and let them know we were bringing pecans to be shelled. We unloaded the pecans and the total weight was 97 pounds. Looking at the bags the man asked, "Are y'all folks from Savannah? These pecans have a lot of hulls and we try not to run 'dirty' pecans through the machine."
Neta pointed out, just to me, that the "Savannah" question was a polite southern way of "blessing our hearts".
Translation: "Bless your city slicker hearts, but y'all don't know the first thing about bringing pecans to a pecan cracker do you?"
A lone pecan hangs in the tree, waiting to fall, with its hull split open.
The man and I culled out most of the un-hulled pecans as they were poured into two machines. Watching the process was quite interesting as the pecans were loaded into two hoppers. They were funneled down and ended up on a small conveyor belt that quickly grabbed the individual pecans and cracked them before dumping them onto another belt. That belt fed them into another machine that finished the separation process dumped both pecan halves and shell pieces onto a vibrating mesh belt that allowed the dust and small shell pieces to fall through. The final machine used forced air to blow the broken shell pieces and heavier pecan halves into circular chambers which separates them so they fall into two different containers.
At the end of the day I assured the man that next year we would make sure that the next pecans we brought to him would be without hulls. At the end of the day we got a 40 pound box of shelled pecans to bring home for just a little less than $40 for the service, saving us a lot of time.
This farm is no different from the rest of our country. We have some crumbling infrastructure that needs to be fixed. Leaning barns, barns in disrepair, old shelters that need cleaning and renovating and bridges that need to be either straightened or replaced. One such bridge was replaced this past weekend.
Before - March 2016
This bridge went across part of our small pond, from the "island" to the "mainland". It had been leaning for a while and the treads were getting rotten. You could still cross it as long as you stepped on the ends of the treads that were directly over the supports, but that wasn't a long-term solution. So I set about doing demo on the bridge by removing the treads to assess the strength of the supports.
Rot is apparent on both supports.
As I was able to remove the treads by hand and didn't need a crowbar or pry bar, it was obvious that some rot had taken place and the nails weren't holding much anymore. It was time to get new poles to replace the old ones. So off to Agri Supply I went in search of 16 foot poles to span the area.
Using the trailer as well as the truck bed I got the two poles home and backed them into position on the island. After muscling the first one off the truck/trailer and standing it up in the spot I wanted it, I dropped it into place. PERFECT!
Next one, same thing. Placed it. Dropped it and... CRACK! OOPS!!! That one had a big knot in the middle and it broke. In hindsight that was a good thing as that knot would have been a weak point and probably broken when it was least convenient, like when someone was crossing.
Oops!
Back to Agri Supply for another pole. They gave me another one without any questions, though I showed them the above picture so they'd know I wasn't taking advantage. I picked out the sturdiest, most knot-free-looking pole I could find. Once I got it back, it dropped in place, but not without "minor" incident. I heard a small crack when it hit the ground. It didn't bend or flex. When I turned it over and inspected it I didn't see anything. I left it turned over (to flex against the crack) and got to work attaching the treads.
It's Infrastructure Week!
I only managed to get the bridge halfway complete the first day. Two trips to the store for poles killed some of the progress.
A little more than halfway
I managed to finish it on the second day and now we have a solid, sturdy and wider (by 4 inches) bridge to cross. It looks crooked in the pictures, but that's the bumps and curves in the poles that I was compensating for.
We still have two other bridges to fix, but this one was showing the most wear and is used the most. The other two go off into the woods or areas we don't walk around in as often. I'll remove the old bridge supports soon and will eventually use them for garden borders or something like that.
Despite all the work that seems to go on around here, we do take some time off to relax and charge our batteries. There is no better way to do that than having friends and family come for a visit. Neta and I love to host and enjoy our time spent catching up, sharing meals and just showing our place off. This past weekend was no exception.
Our friends Kevin and Mandy McCoy, from Colorado, stopped by a few days ago for a long weekend. I've known them for over 30 years, since my days in the Navy, and they are some of the nicest and easiest to please folks you'll ever meet. They wanted a relaxing visit and a chance to leave behind the cold temps and snow of Colorado (it was in the 20's and 30's) for some warm Georgia sunshine. Oh yeah and...Kevin, being an avid fly-fisherman on the rivers and lakes north of Denver, wanted to see what our pond had to offer. He was looking to catch a nice largemouth bass. He was in for a surprise.
Kevin & Mandy McCoy...of Colorado fame.
So Kevin and I headed to the pond just after the crack of dawn the very first morning.
Photo credit - Kevin McCoy
Okay...actually the first morning we decided to sleep in a bit and eat breakfast first since they were tired from traveling the day before and all of us having stayed up late catching up. So we got out to the pond around 10.
Kevin let me use one of his fly rods and he gave me a quick tutorial on how to cast.
Now it was time to get fishing. Kevin caught the first fish, a bluegill. He was quite impressed as you can see.
Judging by his reaction they apparently don't grow them that big in Colorado. Kevin started catching bluegill after bluegill and he appeared to be having a great time.
A while later he switched flies to something that would sink a little bit and he began to catch some crappie. He was equally impressed with their size as well.
He was having a crappie time!
Later Mandy and Neta came down to the pond to see how we were doing and Mandy got in on the act reeling in her own Bluegill.
A Scottish Lass with her first Georgia fish!
It had been a while since Neta's dad, Terrell, had been down to the pond and fished. With all the heat and temps in the 90's since since mid to late spring, who could blame him? But when Kevin was started breaking out his rods and flies, Terrell got interested again...real fast. It helped that it was in the mid-70's that morning. He worked his way around the shore with one of his spinning rods and caught several before relaxing in the shade and watching Kevin and me.
The Old Man and the Sea.
Unfortunately, Kevin never got his bass and the fish eventually stopped biting around lunchtime so we headed up to the house for our own bite to eat. I told Kevin that he'd given me a gift...he taught me fly-fishing, a type of fishing that is both peaceful and artistic. I really marveled at trying to land the fly in just the right spot, watching it sit on the water and seeing the fish come up and strike at it (mostly) and swallow it (sometimes). It is a fascinating and enjoyable way to fish.
We tried them again early the next morning. This time it was just after sunrise. Kevin caught a few, but I had no luck. We quit after an hour or so, came back to the house, got cleaned up and spent the afternoon and evening in Savannah.
We really enjoyed having Kevin and Mandy here. It was a fun, relaxing weekend filled with good friends, good food, good laughter and good times that we won't forget. We can't wait for their return.
In the meantime, if you need to find me, check the pond first.
Each year we create our list of 10 projects to get done and those are our goals for the year, no matter what. The "what" is that sometimes other projects have a way of creating themselves and working their way into our schedule. This past weekend was one such project.
The new project - Clearing part of the shoreline of the big pond to make it easier for fishing (especially fly-fishing) AND using the trunks of the cut trees to temporarily shore up the collapsing overhang roof of the old picnic shelter.
Shoreline Before:
The first 7 pine trees to the right of the tractor are slated for removal.
Shelter Overhang Before:
It's not pretty, but we can at least prop the overhang up for a small improvement.
We had the perfect weekend, weather-wise. We were getting the most extreme outer bands of Hurricane Florence to the north which provided plenty of cloud cover, nice breezes and the occasional misty rain. It was a pleasant day to be doing manual labor outside.
The first step was to use the brush cutter to clear away all of the tall weeds and grass around the trees and along the water's edge. Once that was done, the chainsawing could begin. The first couple of trees came down pretty easy. I wrapped a cable around them and hitched it to the tractor to keep the tree from falling too far from shore and making extraction more difficult.
Using the cable wrapped around the bucket to lift the tree out of the water and up onto the bank.
Two trees on shore and another down and in the water. Also, you can see two pieces
of trunk in the bucket that will be used to prop up the shelter overhang.
Each tree that was cut was drug (via tractor) up around to the head of the pond. We have a large brush pile there that we keep adding to. It's slowly creating a sight/sound break from the traffic on I-16. Soon we won't be able to see, and barely hear, the traffic as it zooms by.
The bottom trunk sections of the trees were measured and cut to size and brought over to the shelter overhang. The scrubby oaks growing in front were also cut down and dragged out to the brush pile. Using the tractor to lift the overhang we man-handled the trunk sections into place. It was not easy work.
This will look a whole lot nicer with some clean-up and a facelift.
Back to the pond...
The fourth, and biggest, tree was a bit of a problem. There was a decent-sized fire ant nest at its base. This called for some fire ant killer and skipping that tree for later while the powder did its work. The third tree was infested with carpenter ants. While they bit and clung to my gloves and shoes as I cut that tree, they seemed completely uninterested in my bare knee as I knelt down to finish the cutting. My lucky day I guess.
By the end of Saturday, I'd cut down all but the "fire ant tree" and put up 3 trunk sections under the overhang. On Sunday it was time to go out and finish those jobs. The last tree was cut down. The final trunk section was put in place under the shelter overhang. After all that, we've got a clean looking shoreline and a reasonably level roof line.
Shoreline After:
Lulu enjoys the first unobstructed view.
Lulu inspects the new, cleaner shoreline.
Shelter Overhand After:
A level roof.
The cooler and garbage can hold food for the fish in the pond.
Still need to clean up the whole area, but at least it is safe to work under there now.
Now don't think I was the only one courting danger with fire ants, carpenter ants, falling trees and collapsing roofs. Neta was out in the wildflower meadow deadheading the wildflowers so we'd have some seeds to spread in other places. She encountered some pretty evil and deadly looking creatures.
As you can see, farm work is not to be taken lightly. There is always something to do around here. You can never accuse either one of us of being a victim of this:
We're slowly whittling down this year's list of farm projects, and we're officially crossing one more off the list: clearing the goat garden area and getting started with plantings. We've completed that and then some. We've started gardens, put in grape vines and an orchard, and built the vine trellis tunnel (which was another project crossed off the list).
Before
After
Pictures don't really do justice to the amount of work that's been put in here, mostly by Craig (and his trusty tractor). This area was goat pasture when I was a kid, but had been planted with pine trees that we had cleared when we moved down. There was a lot of broken branches and debris left after the pines were cut, as well as rows and rows of pine stumps. The trees were cut at ground level but many of the stumps/roots are still a mowing hazard. Craig scraped it all up and added it to the pile of discarded trees in the middle, creating a new hill in the process. He tilled, he planted, he built the trellis and now he mows it all, too. I'm the visionary and supervisor, you understand.
This is part of the goat gardens, right after the trees were cut
In the orchard, we've put in satsuma oranges, loquats, pomegranate, plum, olives and persimmon (the latter two courtesy of Emily). We also dug and moved several muscadine grapes, with plans to add more grape varieties.
Newly planted satsumas in the orchard area
We've added a number of crepe myrtles, too. We didn't originally plan that but when you find crepe myrtles on clearance at the nursery...well, who can pass that up? We're up to 10 so far, including a few volunteers that Craig transported from other locations.
We still have a small area to clear behind the new hill, but I may take pity on Craig and let it go to meadow rather than trying to turn it into an additional area that needs mowing.
Now it just needs to grow in!
Here's the status of the project list - we're more than halfway done. We're waiting on cooler weather to tackle the items we have left. We've already started the barn renovation, and building a pump house is a must, but I doubt we'll finish all the walking paths or clearing the underbrush along the lane. I suspect those are going to be perennials on the list for several years to come.
1. Build an enclosure for the pump
2. Put down flooring in the attic
3. Renovate the little barn
4. Double the wildflower meadow
5. Spruce up the cabin exterior (paint the foundation and landscape)
6. Cut more trees and brush along the lane
7. Clear the goat garden area and start new gardens
