orchard – Page 2 – Peacock Orchard

Futility of Mulching

Nebraska must love me. They have to with all the mulch I’ve put out to blow their way. I’m not quite sure why I still bother. I suppose it’s foolish hope.

There is a reason mulch is praised so highly in Permaculture. Natural mulching is the ideal. Having enough plants and trees that their own natural growth patterns create the detritus that cover the ground. Living the dream.

I’m not living the dream. I’m living the dead land, high wind, low precipitation life. As such I keep spreading mulch out around the property. Then I watch it blow away, to Nebraska. *sigh*

So drumroll please, I’ve mulched the cider orchard. I am about to share my magical mulching secrets.

First I put a collar around all of the trees again. I take them off in the spring because the trees are so small and the collar covers them completely.

Next I water the trees well. It hasn’t rained in months. The cider orchard trees were planted so I can water them, they are expensive.

Next I rip open the glorious bags of mulch. These bags come from my former boss’s residence. I happen to know they are completely organic so I feel no guilt in using the leaves and clippings from their lawn.

I piled the leaves high. I figure if they’re going to blow away best to give them a sufficient mass to move.

I give it a few weeks, or days, depending on wind speeds. I’m happy right now, though.

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Krater Completion, mostly

What a growing season this has been. Dry, windy, hot, miserable. On top of that we had major tractor problems. Still kind of do. I wasn’t able to put the finishing touches on the completed Kraters as the battery is dead on the excavator AGAIN. Uh oh, Husband hadn’t been told of that before this post. Sorry Babe. Battery is going to need replaced big time. Lots of love!

My goal was 12 kraters. I completed 4. I won’t be planting out a few hundred trees next year now. Instead I have modified my plans to begin our graft nursery. I was able to set that space up sufficiently, except the fence, which we simply need to put up real quick.

Back to the kraters. They seem all right. They have been dug, terraced, top soiled and planted. What else could a girl hope to do with all that has been going on. Enjoy a few action shots.

Look at these poor guard dogs. They wander over to check their charges and get mauled with cuddles. It’s a tough life for sure!

It appears I engage in child krater terracing labor. To be fair, the child really likes the labor.

Top soil was dumped on and needed moved around.

Throwing out our hand collected seeds.

Raking the seeds in.

Problems

Sometimes life is a series of unfortunate incidents. Somehow that seems to be our life more often than not. I often laugh such things off. Who else could these incredibly crazy things happen to all the time but us.

The excavator wouldn’t start and we concluded it was a dead battery. It took days to get the excavator back up and running. I was behind on my krater digging plans, but I had the will to catch up. Four kraters dug, 8 more to go. I could do this.

Then the front loader began making an awful sound and blowing colored smoke. I took some video and took it to the tractor dealership. There were several suggested possibilities and we began ticking through the list. The tractor is now not making that horrible klunking noise. Hopefully the problem was nothing more than water in the line. If it starts making the noise during our big test run tomorrow than we are looking at a new engine. An engine so expensive we could buy another car. Now I’m behind again.

The weather is changing, I am not going to catch up before my window closes. Plans are going to need to be modified. Disappointment fills me near to bursting. I will rally. Things will be ok. The trees will get planted as they always do.

Please let the tractor be ok!

Digging Kraters- What to do with all that dirt

A big factor to consider when doing dramatic earth works is what you are going to do with all of the dirt, wood, etc you create by doing it. If you are clearing trees to create a silvapasture, do you have a plan for those cleared? Hugukulture beds to create? When digging 35 acres worth of kraters around three feet deep that is a lot of dirt excavated out. What can you do with so much dirt?

That largely depends on the situation you are in and what kind of dirt you are excavating out. We have various types of earth being excavated from our kraters at the moment and three methods of dealing with them.

The black earth we excavate out is piled up and moved to the area where our natural swimming pond is being made as it is a great water holding clay. We appear to have more of this clay than I expected so perhaps we’ll be building a few more ponds in the future.

The gravel we excavate out is piled up and moved to our road and drive way which are in deplorable condition. I don’t know if we’ll ever dig up enough of this to fill our need.

Everything else is piled in one big pile and moved to our dam site. We have been building up the dam for awhile now but it has a long way to go before it will be sufficient to hold the amount of water we desire.

The top soil is scraped off before hand and piled up to be put back into the krater when excavation is complete.

I hope this look into our earth moving practices helps.

Krater Digging 2016

Will be done by small hands, smaller shovels and tiny dump trucks!

I kid. I’ve begun Krater digging with the usual meth0d, front bucket of our Kubota tractor. This land is a bit more special though. It is what I call “dead” land. Land so over grazed and compacted that practically nothing will grow on it.

Lots of bare spots and tiny plants here. Most of our property is this way with few exceptions.

This is one of those exceptions. So lovely!

I removed the top soil with the bucket but I was completely unable to do any more than that. I have four Kraters mapped out with plans for a full 10 at the least.

As you can tell it’s a few inches deed at the moment. I piled the top soil in a communal pile in the middle for re-application later on.

As you can tell the clay here is thick and HARD. Rock hard.

This would have been a particularity good photo example of that except every time I tried to get a picture our new puppy would run in the way. So, enjoy the puppy pic!

I am sure the excavator will be able to dig this mess up. Unfortunately the battery is dead. It’s in the process of charging. Eventually I’ll be able to get out there and dig my required Kraters.

Rabbits and Permaculture

Permaculture is all about coming to peace with nature and it’s rhythms, at least to me it is. I haven’t had peace as far as the various pests we have are concerned. Rabbits are a big problem for me. They are for pretty much our entire region. The obsessive hunting of coyotes could have something to do with that. I’m not free of guilt there either. I’ve lost a lot of birds to coyotes and I wouldn’t think twice if someone was killing the ones in our area. Still, I do my best to close the gate to the barn and if anyone is left out..well good luck.

I’ve had trees eaten. Plants eaten. Everything has been eaten by rabbits around here. They are thick on the ground, protected somewhat by the presence of our LGD’s who are far too unintelligent and slow to ever catch one.

I couldn’t help but notice a few things this year though. I noticed rabbit digging in the kraters and the swales. I noticed seeds and other debris filling up these rabbit made holes. I also notices rabbit droppings thick on the ground, happily feeding my lacking sad little kraters.