Late Winter through late Spring happenings

Early Spring we hired Dale Strickland Dirt Movers to make a huge mess around the cottage to bury conduit and pipe for the utilities.  Ditches were open for several weeks and everything seemed to be a sea of mud.

We decided that Korean Nut pines would be a great addition so Dale planted 30 along the driveway and sun corridor's sunny sides.  They will grow to be as tall as 40 meters, not 40 feet as I originally thought and should bear pine nuts in 6 - 10 years.  Our favorite blue tubes now protect them from the deer.

A portion of the pine nut orchard.

We got to do the hook-up between buried pipe and the new and very expensive water meter.

I got to help Potelco make connection to the new meter socket I set on the wall of the cottage.  Installed power panels in both cottage and barn and got everything inspected before arranging for the relatively inexpensive conversion to underground connection that was formerly overhead.  Then using Cora's trusty tractor, filled in all the remaining work pits.

We fretted over color selection for the cottage with the help of some of the finest pros in the the color industry (Jane Brown) and consulted authoritative texts (Designer's Guide to Color 5), searched our souls then painted large panels before arriving at the cottage's color scheme.  The trim sort of pulled the whole thing together.  Actually, Cesar Gutierrez the painter pulled the whole thing together.  Coincidentally the scheme is not unlike Cora's truck. The front door is a dummy and not the snappy red orange one that will be hung after a little more work is done inside.

 

 

So while I concentrate on the inside of the cottage, Paulette is protecting trees with tubes.  Time to order another couple boxes of 200.    300 + covered and hundreds to go before September when the bucks will be at it again.

Dale

Blue Tubes



Paulette's invention

Stuffing tree and branches into the tube.

Protection started along a deer "highway"

 This last Friday we teamed up to install more blue tubes using a loading device that Paulette invented using some white corrugated sleeving originally intended as protection itself, and one of the blue tubes.   The sleeve acts to hold the trunk of the tree and most of the branches, the balance of which are then wrapped up in the tube.  While the first person holds this contraption closed, a second person wraps a blue tube around all of it and fastens it, then the contraption is pulled out the top.  It works very well.  It is nearly impossible to hold branches up and compacted, then wrap a tube around the whole lot, any other way.  We got good at it and installed about 50 tubes in a couple of hours (more like four).  We ordered another 400 tubed that are on back order as a start at covering the most vulnerable trees and hope to have almost all but the smallest trees done this year before buck rub season starts again.


Dale

Bad bucks and weather-tight cottage

As found

Our application to have our tree farm recognized by the county for tax purposes was approved and we accepted the terms that will reduce our property taxes.   It seems that the effort and cost of having a tree farm far outweigh the tax benefit. It is nice in any case to get some financial relief for our work. 

This year we saw tremendous growth in the seedlings planted this last Spring and several feet of growth in many of the now three year old trees planted immediately following the clearcut.  We also saw dozens of trees severely rubbed by the bucks that roam the property.  This tree was not the worst of them.  Some had obviously been charged and broken off.  Where only rubbed on one side and some vertically continuous bark remaining, it is possible to protect them with a water-based bark healing compound.  It doesn't really heal anything, it just protects the raw center of the tree and edges of the remaining bark which eventually can grow back around the tree.  

Tree wound compound applied

Ironically, the competing vegetation we cleared from around many of the trees seems to protect them.  The damage is so extensive, easily 100 trees severely damaged, that we considered a couple of extreme options: opening the property to hunters and electric fence around all 10 acres.  Neither of these sounded very good, so we have settled on a labor intensive option of placing translucent tubes around all of the trees subject to rubbing which is most of the ~2000 trees.
The tubes are milk-blue, 4" in diameter and 3' long.  We decided to buy 100 to try them.  They come flat and are wrapped around the tree and closed by engaging punched tabs.  We will show this process in a later post.  The material is back-ordered so we got the last 87 tubes and think we like them so hope they come available soon so we can put them on this Spring and Summer. 

We plan little planting this year and have ordered only 70 plants, mostly native bushes.  We are considering perhaps adding 50 Korean Pines for eventual pine nut production.  We also are behind on alder thinning and will be looking into harvesting a truck load or two of merchantable trees if we can get a logging plan put together.  It is time to update the forest management plan already.

Finally weather-tight, colors TBD

While trees were growing and bucks rubbing, we  managed to make some significant progress on the cottage by hiring good help, LeRoy Boren Construction, a local talented construction firm.   We are happy with the result.  The next steps that we plan to do ourselves are to get water and power to the little house and electrify the barn.  After that we will do the installation of a hydronic heating system mostly ourselves.  We will need help with poured lightweight concrete that will encapsulate the heating tubing on the ground floor.

East quarter & well house (looking NW)

That's all for now.  Stay tuned for the next installment.

Dale

Autumn

P vs. vegetation competing with the seedlings.

Bushes in the nursery continue to get bigger. The new skirting boards and chicken wire are keeping out the rabbits we think were eating the plants earlier.

The forest machine shed aka "barn" has its new roof.

The cottage is partly under roof and we are on track to have it weather tight well before year's end.

We've been getting regular visits by our owl and have been hearing it and a friend in the evening in the alder & cedar woods to the north, and seeing it making low flying rodent runs very near our cottage.

Having taken an early walk up the drive, I captured an image of the rapidly changing sky at sunrise. We've seen few deer. We finally saw one four year old buck this morning up top. Our theory is they are hiding during hunting season though not being hunters, we don't exactly know when the season starts and ends. 

We are looking forward to spending some time going after blackberry plants again, soon.

Dale  

Rapid progress

Things gave been moving so quickly that I've skipped posting. A quick update sans photos follows:

Most seedlings planted this Spring are doing well, some already a foot taller. We are leaving in place those few that appear dead knowing some will come back.

The trees planted immediately following the clear-cut are also doing well including most transplanted out of the cleared areas up top. Some have grown two or more feet this year and are taller than I am.

Native bushes in the nursery were attacked by rabbits. Many have survived and now chicken wire is in place top keep them out.

P and hard-working hired assistant Bret Fenstermacher have cleared around trees and mowed considerable area up top.

We purchase little produce now as we have been enjoying lettuce, beets and their greens, carrots, snap-peas, kale and string-beans from P's garden.

The barn/garage/shop has a new metal roof with skylights and a completely rebuilt side-shed.

The eastern half of the cottage has been demolished, the foundation modified including new porch deck and under-slab plumbing. The old brick chimney is gone. There is a new metal roof on the western half of the building and I am reworking it's framing and sheathing. LeRoy Boren and an assistant are to start framing the eastern half anew next week including new porch and inside stairs to what will be the master "suite".

Finally the shallow irrigation well-house gets it's new roof this week.

Next....go after blackberry plants again, update forest mgmt plan and get cottage weathertight.

Stay tuned for some pix.

Dale

May & June showers bring....

....lots of growth.  First of all, an update on the cedars.   I found what appeared to be a dead one near Paulette's garden and went to pull it out.  It resisted and I persisted and found that the roots were woody and firm.  I looked closely and found some new sprouting green near the soil line.  Then and there I decided to leave all plants in place for the next couple of years regardless of appearance.  Most of the trees we planted this Spring are doing really well and have already shot up as much as six or more inches.  I chalk this up to the unusually rainy weather we have been having.  The rain also made the grass grow like crazy and the now three year old Douglas-firs shoot up a foot or more like this one.  Note the yellow mesh on a branch we thought would be the leader.  Obviously another branch won.  Already many trees are above competing vegetation.  Still, if we can get rid of plants immediately around the trees it would be a big help to their growth.

Speaking more about growth, the ecology of the property seems to have completely changed this last year.  Spurred on by the rain and the invasives abatement, we see tall grass crowding out many weeds and lots of foxglove where the slash piles used to be.  This one is typical.

We had to have a new septic system installed as a condition of the building permit to remodel the existing cottage on the property. While we were at it, we had the installer rough in a driveway to our future homesite up top then I worked on it with our tractor and box blade. You can see one of Paulette's hoop houses in the garden enclosure to the right.

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Last year, no berries.  This year LOTS!  These are the native (good) wild trailing blackberries...very tasty, as opposed to the invasive, European (bad) blackberries....very tasty.

.Inspired by the garden at Good Cheer Food Bank where Paulette has been taking gardening classes, she purchased and added a special greenhouse plastic covering secured by oak lath attached to the end hoops, then framed end walls covered with corrugated polycarbonate. One end has a door and both vents. Window screen is yet to be added to the bottom of both sides shown rolled up.

.And just to show that remodeling has not been neglected, here is to what our new septic system is connected.  This is the lower floor bath with building drain at the bottom of the photo.  This will be inspected along with foundation modifications then we pour concrete.  After that, we will demolish the left half of the cottage to completely rebuild it.  We are saving the right, two story portion of the building and foundation.  This plumbing is in that part of the building.  This will be our new Cora Central, superceding our beloved travel trailer.

Dale

Spring



This salmonberry plant outside our travel trailer was left after we mowed down a blackberry thicket over a year ago. This native plant is common on the property and generally welcome. You can see seedlings in the background from the first of this year's three planting weekends. We are looking east toward the Puget Sound in this photo.

Skunk cabbage aka swamp lantern is popping up lushly in all three of our wetlands this year. It has been extra wet and the wetlands are extra happy. The brown dry vines are what remain of the non-native blackberry plants and thickets most of which we removed last year. The gree foliage is more salmonberry. This view is into the little wetland on the north edge of the property at the foot of our hill.

Looking east from our western property line from the back of the property across the larger of the three wetlands you can see some open water. It will dry up in the summer, later this year probably than last given all the rain.

We are hoping for a berry bounty this year.

Dale