Summary

Originally Published: 2020-06-29

As usual another week with its own set of challenges. This week there were severe winds and tornados in the area, fortunately for us there was no damage, others were not so lucky so it was time to get rid of the dead standing trees. The wood cutting project continues well, and with the felled trees there is even more wood to process! Of course the chainsaw breaks down, off I go to buy a new one. The gardens are growing well and the salad is getting more ingredients as the days go by.

Of course I should also mention the solar system. As expected there are no issues with the long summer days our battery banks are filled early in the morning. My son and his family have been staying with us in a separate trailer. There is actually so much power being produced that we have enough for the two families and still have full batteries. Of course this will only last a few more months.

The weather and trees must go

This week we lost about a day and a half of activity as a result of really bad weather. The winds howled and rain poured, tornados were produced and our trees shook like crazy. We were fortunate we didn’t loose a single branch, but our neighbours were less fortunate, they lost big trees, power and the roads were blocked. I have about a dozen or so very large, dead standing trees. Some of these are over 70 feet and if pushed in the right direction could take out our house, so they had to go.

I’m not skilled with a chainsaw and if a tree goes beyond 20 feet high, I call in the the pros. Fortunately in this area there are lots. We strapped a rope around the trees, used my tractor to give them a tug and the pro made there cuts and down came the trees. A couple of the dead standing trees are still in good shape and can be used for firewood. Having just bought seven bush cords to cut and split this is not extra work I wanted right now. However I now likely have a four year supply of firewood. Here are a couple of pictures to give you idea of the size of the trees.

birch tree that was dead
birch tree that was dead standing but the wood is still good
spruce_tree
Here is a spruce tree at the far end you will see the base of another spruce, also taken down

It is a lot of wood but good for burning!

Wood Splitting Project

As luck would have it, suddenly I have tree extra large trees to add to the splitting pile. I am hopeful that my neighbour who has a sawmill will help me pull the spruce out and we will make 2 by 4’s out of it for building projects.

As Murphy’s law would have it, my chainsaw started smoking and that was the end of it. Up until now I still had “city” chainsaws that worked fine for a backyard but don’t work when you live out here and really need it. So I went out and bought a Stihl, that is designed for the type of use I need it for. Right away I noticed the difference, cutting went about twice as fast as the power of the machine makes a difference. So now I have a big wood pile of cut wood to split.

stacking cut wood, cut with the new chainsaw
stacking cut wood, cut with the new chainsaw

And then Murphy’s law strikes again! I ran out of spots to put the split wood, but no problem it was just a matter of splitting and trailering them to another spot to stack.

moving split wood to someplace else
moving split wood to someplace else

Overall that project is going well, I am slightly more than 1/3rd of the way done, but I’ve got three more 50 to 70 foot trees to add to the stack.

The Gardens and Greenhouses

Wow! what a change a week makes suddenly my salad has many more ingredients! The green peppers are growing, the snow peas are ready to pull and eat. Fortunately the severe weather we had did not affect the outdoor garden. Here are a few pictures.

green pepper in greenhouse
green pepper in greenhouse
Zucchini Plants Flowering
Zucchini Plants Flowering
Snow Peas Growing
Snow Peas Growing

The weeds are a never ending battle. They have more patience than I do and seem to be winning. I have started taking all the saw dust from splitting the logs and covering the gardens in saw dust after weeding them. The zucchini picture above shows that start of that effort. Eventually the saw dust will be turned into the soil and become part of it, waste-not-want-not as the expression goes. Here is a picture of the weeds that are winning, this garden will be this weeks weed and cover in saw dust project.

weeds winning
weeds winning

Yes there are valuable plants in there and cucumber plants along the back, but the clover is everywhere! Next week I’ll show a picture of this garden de-weeded with saw dust!

Well that’s all for now, I hope your gardens are going well. Times are challenging and stay safe.

By Barry