Farming and Orchard – Page 13

Cider Orchard Establishment

I am happy to announce that our cider orchard is almost done. Ok, let’s just say it’s officially started. We took a portion of the backyard and fenced it off. We tilled and planted clover and wildflowers as mentioned in this post. The clover and such are filling in nicely, so are the weeds.

We have a lovely cattle panel arch leading into the cider orchard. I have a kiwi planted near it but that kiwi has been hit and miss for some time so I don’t know that it will recover. If it doesn’t I’ll eventually move some grape cuttings into the area.

We have the swales running in a circle around the orchard. They have proven that they can collect water already, though it was more of an aesthetic and ease of watering thing for me.

The trees are newly grafted heirloom varieties. It took us quite some time to get the infrastructure of the orchard up and thus the trees were in tree pots for some time. These tree pots. They didn’t do all that well in them. It was really hot but I did water them daily. Even still it is my guess that they cooked in the pots. The ones on the outside of did poorly. Some died but the rootstock of some lived. I’m going to let it grow and re-graft later on.

Not all the plants in the cider orchard are cider apples. I have hidden rose apples planted in there because I want to have them close to the house for my personal enjoyment. I also have a black currant bush in there that can be used as a mix in for cider or just for personal enjoyment. Eventually I’ll have a few specialty plums thrown in as well.

The wild flowers and vetch seeds were thrown onto the berm of the swale and into the back of the cider orchard where it is too shady to grow trees and also already has established willow trees.

Where the barn is it is very shady a lot of the time. Thus I am planting a shade garden. I have some hostas, a golden bell flower and a few other things thrown in. The wildflower seeds are doing best in this area.

Eventually I hope to have a lovely table and chairs and picnic amidst the flowers and trees. I think it will be a lovely retreat for us!

A walk around the house

Come take a look around with us. Turkeys approve this message, so long as it comes with snacks.

Yellow sweet clover? We’ve got 30 acres of that! It’s also freakishly tall.

I finally found rubber boots for the kids. They want to wear them everywhere now.

Prince is losing his train and Ella thinks it’s hilarious to try to tickle him with the feathers.

We saved a butterfly last week!

Taking a ride to feed the babies.

Hazelnuts are on the cusp of doing well and dying. how is that possible you ask? Well excessive rain and that sweet clover that grows taller than everything else. Ugh!

White oaks are doing alright though.

Ducks still think I’m Satan.

Paw Paws are doing well!

Vetch. Love it!

We have lots of flowers popping up.

Bindweed. Super depressing amounts of it!

The duck and Prince love each other.

Sugar snap peas. I haven’t cooked a single one. They get eaten right from the pod!

Grapes are struggling a bit

Gourds are doing alright. They’re even rooting along the vine. Crazy!

This is one of the Kraters. It’s doing well!

Jiki our pyr has to come out with me to protect me from the coyotes!

We have salad!

Top Bar Bee Hive Construction

I found this Instructable last winter and knew I had to make it myself. It seemed easy and fairly inexpensive. It took some time for me to get around to it but here it is, my beehive.

I started by cutting a plastic water barrel in half. I then washed it as well as possible.

Then I measured and made a frame for it from 2×4’s.

I put the barrel in the frame and nailed it into place, which resulted in some major thumb whacking and a band-aid applied by Son.

Don’t worry, Daughter has a toy hammer she’s “helping” with.

Then I screwed on the legs.

It turned out surprisingly tall which then required some bracing lower on the legs.

We caulked the gaps between the barrel and the frame with regular latex caulk.

Next I built the roofs out of 2×4’s and metal sheeting that we already had on hand.

I cut a small circle of hardware cloth and glued it over the entrance to the hive. I didn’t want anything bigger than a bug taking up residence in these things.

Then we cut the bars and ran a line of wax down the middle of each to guide the bees.

Lastly we coated the entire inside of the hives with beeswax and lemongrass oil. We hope the oil helps attract a swarm.

The original plan was to keep the hives inside our large lean-to. However, I now believe I am going to build an addition to the lean-to specifically for the hives. That will follow in a later post.

Wine Bottle Hot Box

We have been saving wine bottles for awhile. We have the benefit of other people’s bottles as well. Husband and I discussed various ways to make a hot box from wine bottles and the results are pretty nice if I do say so myself. We scavenged another wooden trough type structure from the local Kubota. Husband drilled holes in it and bam, hot box. We will be testing this as time goes on. Hot peppers are the current residents of the hot box.

A little bit about how this works and why you would want it:

The sun heats up the air inside of the wine bottles. The hot air then pushes through the neck of the bottle and into the soil, increasing soil temperature. This is a good way to increase your growing zone. We chose to put hot peppers in the hot box because of their love for hot soils. I hope to see them take off soon!

Water harvesting in mini Kraters

Our mini Kraters are doing well. In fact we haven’t had to water yet. The cover crop seeds are coming up. The bushes are flourishing. The trees are coming out of dormancy. It is an exciting time!

Every single Krater had standing water in the bottom of it. This will dry up fairly quickly but it is an AMAZING water source!

I did water the bushes after planting. They were leafed out on delivery and I didn’t bother to harden them off, thus they needed water.

So much water in the kraters that you can see it from a distance.

This is a plum tree that is doing amazingly well. Very happy with it! I did have a fair amount of death over the winter. I blame myself, I pretty much killed them all.

The good news is the rootstocks are alive. So I’m letting the rootstocks grow to be re-grafted later.

The unintentional pond was pumped dry but it has since refilled a bit.

A complete yard reboot

We have never paid much attention to the state of our front and back yard. The front has been mostly unused and the back is where the dogs are kept when we aren’t home. Simple as that. At least it used to be. Now we have kids and our space has taken on new meaning. I have been excited to create a playground for our children. It has been going quite well and I’m happy with the results of my labor. Unfortunately the grass and weeds have been a large problem in accessing this playground equipment. We have a mower but it attaches to our tractor and is quite large. Keeping the grass and weeds short around the toys is difficult at best. So we took drastic action.

We rented a tiller, took a day off and tilled the front and back yard. As you can tell, our back yard is humongous. We did make it for the dogs and we figured we might as well go all the way to the barn with the fence. Most of this space is underutilized, except by said dogs. So we decided to cut a part of the back of this yard off and put the cider orchard there. So on top of tilling we also did a small swale in the back section.

I ordered a large variety of seeds. I picked subterranean clover for around the toys and where we walk the most. This clover grows thick and short, we should never have to mow it. Then I ordered multiple species of clover: persian, rose, arrowleaf and ladino are what I remember off the top of my head. This went in the less traveled areas and in the cider orchard. The third bucket is full of wild flowers and vetch. This I sprinkled all along the fence line and in the very back of the cider orchard area. We do have trees in the area already, planted before we moved here. Since they will be too large to put a fruit tree near I have no problem spreading lots of flowers and tall vetch around them. It should be a beautiful location when everything grows!

Of course I was racing to get this done. There was a storm coming and I wanted that rain on my newly seeded yard areas. I made it just in time.

And boy did it rain a ton!