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

60 days after the planting

 Sadly, this tree is not likely to make it.  Notice the blackened topmost branches?  Some trees are all blackened.  Preliminary diagnosis is root rot.  It could be pathogens in the soil or problems during shipping.  It seems that most affected trees were in our third batch and only cedars.   I took samples of whole plants to the local WSU extension who then have forwarded them to a central plant clinic for analysis.   It  could be 100 of 300 trees or more.  We certainly hope not.  The six that I pulled up all had limp roots....not a good sign, and some new sprouts that were already dying back.

  While this tree does not look great, it is probably fine.  Some "bronzing" is normal and tips are green.  Most trees, especially the first planted seem lush and very vigorous, and the hemlocks and spruces are all doing well.   The yellow stuff is the tiller net we talked about earlier.  Deer have learned how to pull it off and I have found a number of munched trees.  I put the net back on what's left and hope new growth will take over.  It seems to slow the deer down at least.  We will post the results of the analysis when we get it.

Dale

Tree planting mission accomplished...buildings, driveway next

Thanks to our friends, Tree Management Plus, WACD plant materials center (our seedling suppliers) we got our tree planting done you could say ahead of schedule.  Our consulting forester from WA DNR stressed that we should get our planting density up from what it was as soon as possible. 

In our forest plan, we gave ourselves two seasons and he signed off on that while kind of making a face.  It turns out that it is best if you plant all at once or as close to it as possible else, simply stated, the older trees will stunt the younger ones.  The replanting after the clearcut happened in 2007 so we are a little late already.

We had thought to re-plant the lower part of our property only this year and bought trees for that.  We planned to clear many of the alder growing there as it is overcrowded in places.  We decided that could wait and that we needed to stay away with our seedlings from where we will later fell the alder (maybe next year).  Since this area is only alder now, we don't have the problem of older fir trees stunting the new ones.

With the freed up plants we were able to stock up the rest of the property.   I also moved some of the now almost three year old doug-fir seedlings out of where we will clear for our other house.  In the end, we had difficulty finding space for all the trees and still were able to plant some down below in the open areas.  

We dedicated part of the lower area to noble fir trees that we will harvest in 6-7 years and sell as Christmas trees.  New trees will grow from the stumps, making a nearly perpetual sequence of harvests possible.

Leaves are appearing on the bushes in our nursery waiting there to be planted out next spring along the course of our new driveway that we hope to put in soon.  We hope to get our clearing and grading permit any day now.

We are emptying out the barn.  It will get a cement floor.  And the well house for our shallow irrigation well is empty now and washed out for its renovation.   With approval of our clearing and grading permit, we will also get our building permit for remodeling the cottage to start soon.

Finally, I go up today to water the sprouts in P's garden.  7 of 8 beds are raked out and amended and five are planted.  I'll start marking the floor of the cottage for foundation modifications.

Dale

Almost ready to go

Here we are almost ready for the planting described in my previous post.  Paulette is on the other side of the camera.  Everyone is holding planting instructions, do's and mostly don'ts.  You can see the bags of trees behind us to the right already fitted with tiller net for browse protection.  It makes the trees easy to spot as well. 

Dale

Almost Spring planting

We ordered 500 trees to be delivered in three batches on three successive weekends.  Yesterday we hosted a planting party.  Six of Paulette's generous and fun coworkers volunteered to help with the first batch.  Somehow, instead of 170 trees, we received 230 which was great because we had such a big crew.  We planted 160 western redcedars, 35 western hemlocks, and 35 Sitka spruce trees many in areas not previously planted.  It was rainy (perfect planting weather) while we worked, then dry for the party afterward.  Paulette made a couple of delicious lasagnas.  We christened our new firepit a repurposed dryer drum while enjoying some good old American macrobrews.



Winter means planting and more progress

I waved goodby to the Bayliner last month.  Two nice gentlemen from Hoquiam Grays Harbor came and took her away. They will fix her up and give her to a good friend who lives on a lake in Eastern WA.  They were pleased with her condition and happy to get the trailer too.  That's a big step toward clearing out the barn allowing us to fix it up to better arrange our farming equipment and also receive all the stuff we have been storing in the house.  We are getting closer to getting our clearing and grading and building permit to renovate the cottage.

We went to WACD Plant Materials Center to pick up 100 big leaf maple seedlings.  We hired Jenny Conrad and Pat Beurskens to help us get them in the ground.  The four of us managed it in about 3 hours.  We now have a plantation per our management plan, in the back near our western wetland.  The funny yellow mesh is called Tiller Net, plant protection that seems like it will be useful in protecting most all of our work against the voracious deer that roam the property.

We also now have an enclosed nursery and a good start on the enclosed garden.  Most of the material for the enclosures we have salvaged from fence, wire and treated poles found in the barn or on the property.  We finished the nursery just in time.  25 bare-root high bush cranberry plants arrived to be potted until we plant them next fall after our driveway to the top of the property is in.   I potted the plants during a driving snow storm from the relative comfort of our barn.

Here the pots are heeled-in in the nursery to protect them from the freezing weather and the deer.

 

Four black walnut trees arrived with the cranberry plants.  After finishing with the cranberry, I planted them in back with the big leaf maple. In March we plant 300 more western redcedar, 100 Sitka spruce and 100 western hemlock.  Next Fall/Winter we'll plant more trees in keeping with our management plan.

Dale

Happy New Year

As is traditional, New Year's is a good time for resolutions and we've started the year out with a few for Cora.  The resolutions take the form of a project plan broken into four parts; Forest, Garden, House and Barn.  Each "resolution" has a series of tasks.  It is easy to head up there and want to work on everything and get scattered. There is so much we want to do. Now we can easily see where we are, pick a task, head to the property and focus.  Thank you construction project manager Marc for suggesting that we do this, and Paulette for urging me on.

New Year's Day, we located our nursery and set posts to fence off the area.  We plan to baby some plants for a year or two in small containers before planting them out.  Now we  have a dedicated 20' x 20' area in which to do it, a hundred or so plants at a time.  We also took pictures of the old Bayliner we inherited with the property to put on Craigslist.  It and its trailer are soon to go to make room in our barn for more forest related stuff.  Our conifer seedlings are on order as well as some high-bush cranberry, blue elderberry and a handful of black walnut as an experiment.  These plants will hang out in our nursury this year and be planted next.  The walnut will join big leaf maples in their plantation we are planning in the west end of the property.  We are recruiting maple seedlings now.  

We've made application for current use taxation and separately for selective clearing for a septic system in a designated non-forest area.  Our forest stewardship plan has been included in both of these important applications, the latter of which we need so we an get a permit to remodel the little house.  So far, the year is off to a busy start.  The picture above is looking west from behind our barn at the hill in the front part of Cora.

Dale

Barred Owl House - Forest Mgmt. Plan

Paulette said "It's time we put up a house for a barred owl.  If you have been following the blog, you know we have one and we hear others calling around evening time.  The owls look for a good spot in Fall and Winter and then nest in the Spring.  We built the house to spec last Friday and put it up in this tree near our western wetland after deliberating for an hour in the rain over which tree would be best.  This one will be shaded by trees to the south and relatively secluded as well as near water.  It is 15' plus a little up in the tree and secured with a longish cable that will allow the tree to grow quite a bit.

We got the forest management plan that I wrote as part of a nine week course, approved by a WA DNR forester.  It calls for us to plant several hundred trees next Spring and quite a few more than that the following year.  We will be applying for USDA assistance with the 2012 planting and do the 2011 one ourselves.   We also plan to set up a nursery for some soft mast (berries for birdies) plants on the property or maybe at home in Seattle, putting up bare root bushes in pots for a year or two then transplanting them out.   This will work for maybe 50 plants and practical at that level.  The trees we plant will be with a special skinny shovel and we hope at a rate of about a tree every two minutes.  That translates to 500 trees by one person in two days or relatively easily by two people in two days.  Stay tuned.

Dale

Pterodactyl Nest and Forest Planning

We've had a rangy series of piles of blackberry canes by our driveway that we collected this last year and it was time to do something with it.  After some deliberation we decided to burn it.   I cut off a 4' chuck of it, pulled it into the driveway and put a little gasoline on it.  It would not light.  I put some paper towels under it and got that burning and some canes caught, burned and went out.  Deciding it was too much trouble and not being excited about the toil of moving and trying to burn already composting vegetable matter, I remembered something P said.   "It would have been nice if we piled it in the shape of a nest."   So I did that.  It has several advantages.  I looks nice and neat.  I can walk around the top of it to compact it and the pile can be a shelter for creatures during the winter and until it breaks down.  We can add to it as we do more clearing, though much of the big clearing is done.  I will put some of our wild-forage grass seed on the bare spots where much of the pile used to be when I seed the open areas on the property in the next couple of weeks.

Yesterday, Mike Nystrom DNR forester walked the property with us.  He said our management plan should be relatively simple.   Clear around all the trees planted following the logging (~1000 trees) and spray the spots.  The Douglas-fir will tolerate the spray and we should only have to do it once.   Get and install tree protectors.  Plant more trees to bring up the density of the planting in the cut areas.  Thin our alder stands and underplant with mixed conifers.   Mostly we should be planting western redcedar.  We can plant noble fir for some early harvest as Christmas trees in the areas that we want to limit the height of the trees.  After thinking about the dawning fact that we are on a trajectory to becoming tree farmers and understanding that the first harvest of big trees will be after our lives, we decided to go ahead with it.

Dale

what you don't see

Most of what we have been doing is not particularly visible.  Mainly we have been going around to places where we removed blackberry plants, cutting emerging growth and daubing the cane "stumps" with triclopyr.  We have been using sponge tipped wands built following a design from The Nature Conservancy and they work very well.  In this picture what you don't see is the old 8' diameter satellite dish.  It's gone, hauled away by Jeff Tangen to turn into an "umbrella" sculpture.  Under the dark spot (cedar mulch) is where the old concrete jacketed steel pole that supported it is buried.

We recently delineated all three wetlands in preparation for applying for a clearing and grading permit required before applying for a building permit to remodel the small house already on the property.

Our forest stewardship plan is coming along as part of a coached planning program of classes put on by WSU extension.  We are learning more about trees, native plants, forest diseases and insects, wildlife and habitat among other related topics.  The speakers are all great and the amount of information is almost overwhelming and exciting.

Dale

Barred owl, the barn and the little house

This guy was atop our barn roof when I went up to sweep off droppings from the cedar trees that surround it and look for leaks.   He literally did not bat an eye and waited for me to go back down the ladder to the car to get my camera.  After a bit he flew into one of the cedars about 12' off the ground which is where he was when I captured this image.  I got his attention by mimicing their who who huh who mating call that I've heard so many times.

 This was a side trip.  I visited the property mainly to meet with someone we are hiring to draft plans for the remodel of the little house.  I also drove up to Coupeville to talk with the Island County critical areas person about our wetlands and a variety of permit issues.  There are helpful folks there at Island County Planning Dept.

Dale

Pressure washing

This weekend we reached the milestone of pressure washing the whole inside of the little guest house.  Now it's springtime fresh inside.  We've been planning this for a while.   Using floorplanner.com, we've been working on the layout.   While D was waving the heavy washer wand around inside for hours, P was waving the industrial strength brush cutter line trimmer around some of the thousand douglas fir struggling to outgrow the trailing blackberries and grass.

Shed Roof for the Cottage Remodel

Dale made a SolidWorks model to try a roof configuration for the redo. The scary little house becomes a guest cottage. (The window scribbles are just scribbles.) Any comments?

Canada Thistle

Today we are going to get ready to visit all of our patches of Canada thistle. Now that most plants have flower buds, it is time to spray them with glyphosate (RoundUp).  We will mix solution today and spray tomorrow when it is dry and not windy.  We plan to mix dye with the herbicide so we will know what we have sprayed.    This variety of thistle propagates by seed and insidiously by rhizomes creating an elaborate and extensive root system.  We've pulled plants by hand using spading forks to loosen the soil and come up with all sorts of evidence, multiple plants off one root section, old dead plants leading to viable roots.   Rhizomes can extend 15 feet and vertical roots 6-15 feet.   Uncontrolled, the plants take over everything and and use up virtually all the resources.  Tree cover that eventually grows will stop them.