Thanks for all the help!!!!!!

Deer stand with a great view of the stream.

We made some huge progress this weekend! 
Saturday we had a big crew working.  Chris and Barbara Byron, Damian Danowski , Elsie Befekadu, Michael Mattney and Chris Finley.  We got the path cleared all the way down to the deer stand and the stand is up.  Damian was the poor guy who got to go up the stand and secure it.  They also cleared the garage area,  now we are down to just the main area of the basement.  That was a huge undertaking and it is so cool to be able to go in the garage and have a place out of the weather to park our lawn mower.

Sunday we had a scaled down crew of Mike Ruttle and George Baker.  They finished up the basement and also emptied the two trailers that were full of doors, windows and mason jars. Our 4th Dumpster is full and we are ready for the 5th.  Oh my!

We can't express how grateful we are to all the help this weekend.  It really warms your heart to have so many people show up to help out on such a cold weekend.

1 Year and Progress!

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy."

Marie Curie



Some of the chairs we have found

 Well,  we are putting that quote to the test.  At Thanksgiving we passed the one year mark of Watermark Woods.  We have been so busy the past few weeks.  Where to start?

A huge mile stone has been securing some reliable scrappers.  Affectionately called 'The Steves', our scrap haulers are making significant progress.  Several of the large barrels are gone and many of the smaller scrap heaps have disappeared.  We think they are even going to take the old international pick-up truck.

Another milestone has been the progress we have made cleaning out the house.  Mike Ruttle, Chris Byron and the Jim & Marie have helped us make huge strides.  Mike, Chris and the boys got the front porch completely cleared and even made it into the front door.  Jim and Marie came and we cleared all but the two back bedrooms.  Jim helped us with the burn piles and Marie shoveled more animal scat than any human should.  Thanks mom and dad!  Chris Byron came in and helped us clean out those last two bedrooms and we are down to just minimal cleanup.

Found Items:

• 20+ Antique chairs.  I hope to take them to the auction house.
• 5 toilets
• 2 auto windshields
• 1 really cool skeleton key and glass doorknob
• 1000+ cabinet doors
• 100+ cabinets
• 4 really ugly sofas
• 1 wheel barrow full of sand with a flat tire
• 2 dishwashers
• Several cook tops and stoves
• 1 antique craftsman table saw, with sawdust

Really you wouldn't recognize the place even if you have been there within the last month.

 

table saw

 

The Steves with two of the barrels on the truck



  



Movin' along

We have started really trying to clean out the house so that we can assess if it usable or not.  It would be so nice to live at Watermark Woods and get down to one property and one mortgage.  Given pending changes in taxes and the economy,  we are thinking it would be in our best interest to get out there sooner rather than later.

We have filled our 2nd dumpster and awaiting the arrival of the third.  Sunday we worked really hard and got most of the front porch cleaned off.  It will be nice to work on the actual inside of the house.  I will be out of town next weekend, but Chris is planning a work weekend while I am gone, so I expect to see significant progress, wink, wink! 

This week,  I finished putting the garden to bed for the winter.  I hope to get the soil of the back part of the garden turned over in the next couple of weeks so that we will be ready to plan corn back there this spring.

The herbs in the forest herb garden have not been dug up since that first time.  Thank goodness for small successes.

Endangered Herbs

My friend Judith gave me a great idea to have an endangered herb garden in the forest.  We picked out a nice spot for it and ordered some herbs.  This week I dug up some ground and planted hyssop, woodruff and wild ginger.  I now have a rustic little herb garden area in the forest.  My biggest fear is the deer will eat my treasures,  but hopefully they will go un-detected!

Judith also helped me identify some medicinal and edible plants we have growing on the property.  We came across tons of garlic-mustard.  There is a nice crop of mullein that would have been great the prior week for Jackson's bronchitis.  We gathered some yellow dock and I baked it into some muffins for Cooper and he never suspected a thing.  We also collected rose hips and I made some tea,  it was a little bitter, but I think worth the benefits.  We have lots of poke, but apparently that can be a little too potent if prepared wrong.  We found quite a bit of plantain which I was happy about,  I hope to make some plantain salve in the spring.  I was hoping to find jewel weed for my current case of poison-ivy,  but I will have to wait until spring.

Beautiful Weekend

The weather in Northern Virgina was perfect this weekend!  Saturday we went camping with the cub scouts so we weren't able to work at WW but as soon as we got home on Sunday and unpacked we headed out to the woods.

Chris, Jackson and Patrick worked on assembling their 2 person deer stand.  They almost completed it but realized they were missing parts.  Chris called the manufacturer but the stand was disontinued 5 years ago and they won't sell him any parts.  I am sure that Chris will find something to make it work.  he is so handy!

I move the wild asparagus to the garden in an attempt to tame it.  I have a 4x8 spot packed full of asparagus and I can't wait to see if it even comes up in the spring.  I still have one wild patch just in case I don't get any this year.

While we were all working, Cooper enjoyed his hammock!

More Cylinder Characters

We've added a couple more characters to the concrete line up.  Thanks to Alexis for the great photo and for giving these guys a loving home!

Happy Fall..Y'all

I have been working at getting the garden ready for winter.  Pulling out the things that are dead or I am tired of (peppers), working compost in and covering with straw.  We finally found a use for the cylinders.  As you can see in the photo they look great as pumpkins.  I've painted up about 20,  if you'd like one,  just let me know.  They are guaranteed not to blow over in the wind.  I wonder how they will look as snowmen.  Any other ideas of how to paint them?   Please post!!!!

Weekend Warriors Wet

We got some good work done on Saturday clearing what we affectionatly call Junkyard Alley.  We had some trees fall in the spring,  and got them all cleaned up.  We also came across a sizeable deer bed area.  lots of matted grass and scat.  Good signs for hunting season!

Sunday started off with rain so we just hung out a home and enjoyed some family time.

Waiting for Fall

Things have been pretty hectic lately. School has started, Chris' grandmother passed away and everyone got sick. Now that we are all home and healthy here is what has been going on.

We have stacked over 3 cords of wood to heat our house this winter. Chris has built up our small trailer with sides so that I can haul mulch and get both our home and the garden at the property mulched.

I am still sporadically getting tomatos in the garden. I am trying to clean up the beds that are done, but my eggplants and cantalops seem to be fruiting again!

Hopefully in the coming weeks the weather will cooperate and we can work on clearing some trails to the stream. Chris wants to make sure he has things ready for deer season.

 



New Fava bean plants.
Lima Beans in Bkgrnd.



Marigolds in the Tomato beds. 
Looks like fall to me



Sweeeeeet Potato!

We have been so busy lately.  We have been working hard to get our wood stacked up to heat the house for the winter.  So far we have almost a full cord and if the weather holds, tomorrow we should bring home our 2nd cord.

Today the boys and I harvested sweet potatos.  It was a little early, but something ate all the foilage from the plants so I was worried the tubers would rot.  We still got a nice harvest and a couple of really big ones! 

We also harvested any pumpkins or gourds whose vines had died.  We still have some vines producing so we should have some fresh ones for halloween.  The ones we got today we are going to dry in the sun for a day then root cellar them.  All my research says they should keep for up to 4 months,  luckily we just want them to last for 2 months until halloween. 

Waiting for our next big batch of tomatos.

Doing the Can-can

We are getting lots of tomatos , peppers, eggplants, cantalope and rhubarb.  It sure is keeping us busy because what we can't eat, we have been canning.  We've "put up"  rhubarb, veggie sauce, tomato sauce, salsa and loads of pickles. 

While we have been keeping busy, we are looking forward to cooler weather so we can get out there and clean out that house.

Ant or Grasshopper??

It seems I am at the garden about every other day harvesting.  That means that every other day I am chopping, canning, freezing, cooking and dehydrating.  I hope that come winter all this work will pay off and we will be more like the ant than like the grasshopper.  We dehydrated a ton of peppers now I am looking for some pepper recipies.  Today we harvested our first eggplants.  mmmmm

Summer time harvesting

After being gone for nearly 3 weeks,  the garden looks fantastic.  We stopped by on our way home before we even went to our house.  There was almost no weeds and the veggies are out of control.

We are getting a steady harvest of zucchini, squash, cukes, and beans.  I have made both dill and sweet pickles and can't wait to taste them.  The pumpkins and gourds are taking over.  I pruned them back as soon as we got back in town,  but they are ready for another pruning.

I am very impressed by the grapes.  Most are now tall enough to reach their trellis.  Two more years and we'll have a crop.  The tomatoes are suffering badly from blossom end rot.  I have got to get some calcium into the soil to remedy that.  Only the romas seem to be affected.  The big slicers seem to be thriving well.  There are a few eggplants showing up,  the fruits are about 4-5in long already.

Photos below are wild raspberries, Grape vines and general garden view.

This week we also did some general cleanup of the yard.  We cut down a bunch of trees and started a firewood pile.  We have a long way to go to be prepared for winter.  We also tried to repair more of the driveway, but got our 3rd flat tire on the tractor.  Uugh

GROW GROW GROW

I went to the garden this morning and pulled a few weeds and  harvested broccoli & strawberries.  The birds were singing, the sun was shining, it was like being at church.

This morning I planted my companion plants, amaranth, borage, cilantro, radish, onion, garlic and stevia.  Hopefully it will help keep the pests away and keep things organic.

Below are some spring photos from around the property.

Peonies:

The Catalpa trees are so cool in bloom, then they get those long bean pods in fall:

Grapes and general garden shot.  These 2 photos were taken 10 days ago.

I also have to send out a huge thankyou to Heidi for the 65 gallon water tank.  It is so cool, it fits in my car and holds enough water for the entire garden, however, the last time I went to fill it, the hose fell out of the top and filled my car instead.  I am still drying out the car and the boys no longer want to ride in my car because it smells terrible.  Anyone have suggestions?????

Lazy Days

We had lots of rain both Saturday and Sunday, but we did manage to make it out on Saturday.  I planted sweet potatos, raspberries and sun flowers.  We also picked up straw to put down between the beds. 

The big news is that Chris passed the electrical inspection on his first try!  Now we are just waiting for Dominion power to hook it up.

Chris had another big win this weekend when the riding lawnmower broke.  It would start but wouldn't go.  He proped it up on a muck bucket(accident waiting to happen!) and crawled underneath. Just one trip to the hardware store later and he made it work again! That sure saved us some dollars.

Ahh, Rain

Another rainy Monday!  WooHoo,  it is so nice not to have to haul water for the garden. 

I have been going out a couple of days a week to do the weeding and watering.  The Lateglow strawberries are about the size of marbles,  it is so exciting to see progress.  We got pumpkins and gourds and rhubarb in last week, just waiting for them to poke out of the soil. 

Chris spent a good part of Saturday finishing up his temporary electrical pole.  He is ready for inspection this week.  Then it will take the power company about 3 weeks to get the service hooked up. 

We had lots of visitors this week.  Heidi dropped by for a garden tour on Thursday,  she thought we should hire some of those workers who stand outside 7-11 to help clear things away.  Damian, Elsie and Brent came by on Saturday and had lunch with us.  Brent told us there is no way we would get this cleaned up by ourselves and we should find some cheep labor to help out(7-11 guys??).  John, Mary and Michelle are the first family members to come by since we made the big purchase.  We gave them a tour on Sunday and I think they left in shock and awe as well ;)  Michelle went home with a lovely granite parting gift.

It has been a quiet couple of weeks lately. Now that the garden is in,  I am happy to just stay in that area of the land, where it seems very civilized. 

Bring on the Rain

As I write this I am so thankful it is a rainy Monday.  We planted the garden yesterday. My little seedlings totaled 60 tomato plants, 30 peppers, 4 artichoke, 8 eggplant, 12 watermelon, 12 cantalope.  We also planted beans, cucumbers, squash, and zuchinni.

Chris spent the entire weekend working on a pole for temporary electrical service.  He got the pole up, secured, several boxes mounted on the pole(don't aske me what they are all for), and two 8 foot grounding poles pounded into the ground.  Is is almost ready for the inspection. 

I have my fingers crossed that with electricity, we will be able to get water from the well.  I have been hauling water from home to the few plants we have in the garden.  It has not been without it's problems.  Jackson and I had several milk jugs full of water and were stopping by the grocery store, when rounding a corner we heard "thud" then the unmistakeable "glug, glug, glug" of milk jugs emptying.  When we got to the store,  we were leaving a trail as the water leaked out of the door jams.  When we came out of the store,  there was a puddle under my car.  That was a week ago and now my car smells like fungus! Eeewwwwww

Progress

Where to start?  We have had terrific weather in Northern Virginia and thus have had lots of time outdoors.

Chris fixed the hydraulics on the tractor and we used it to haul some dirt, but it tears up the yard too much, so we have been using old fashion shovels. 

The garden is looking like a garden!  We discovered the previous owners' compost pile and have some awesome dirt to fill the raised beds.  How many people get that excited about dirt!  So, the beds have dirt and the fence is up.  This week we planted grapes and broccoli.  We got some horse manuer from a friend and the composting has begun.  (again, dirt.  WooHoo!)

We made some nice discoveries as well.  We have a big lilac bush that has white flowers.  We have a nice looking fruit tree(type of fruit unknown).  There are some things coming up which I think are several bunches of peonies and some that I think are Iris.  Can't wait to see what colors come.  We have a beautiful old dogwood.  While walking along the driveway my friend Cheryl and I found.....asparagus!!!  Dinner!  It was delicious.  The first photo below is our attempt at recycling.  An old chair holds a dutch full of chili perfectly for cooking.  The second photo is the blooming dogwood. 

We have been working on dis-assembling the hoop barn for a friend to use,  it is nice to have that thing cleaned out.  We found a little hibachi grille, lots of canning jars, a card catalog, a box of bed springs, seats for a minivan and tons of snake skins. I hope to never see the hoop barn on our property again!

At the end of the afternoon on Sunday along with our friends Chris and Cheryl, we decided to take a few things from the house to the dumpster.  Lo and behold, we made it into the house.  What we found was most certainly as bad as we ever thought it could be.  Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, stuff.  The house is a framed only, 3Br 2 bath ranch style.  There is plumbing, electrical outlets and lights, a shower, a nice fireplace and hearth.  The amount of stuff is a bit overwhelming, but we have nothing but time to clean it out.  Now our thoughts are shifting that we should build a small guest house or a garage to live in while we clean up and renovate the home that is already there.  I am sure our ideas and plans will change daily.   Two things we do know for certain is that we still love the property and we have a lot of work to do.

Happy Easter

Thanks for all the sunshine this week!   It was a beautiful weekend at Watermark Woods and we all have the tan to prove it.  Well, some of us have a sunburn to prove it.  The daffodils were blooming,  we have so many!  And many other flowers popping up that haven't bloomed yet.  Notice the decrepit house and dumpster in the background.  :)

We got all the garden posts up and the garden gate.  12 raised beds and the strawberry pyramid is in and planted.  Chris was going to fill the raised beds with dirt but the tractor blew a hydrolic hose.  We couldn't figure out how he got the tractor all wet,  aparently it was hydrolic fluid.  Oh Well,  just another things to fix.  Hopefully we can still buy hoses for a 20-year old tractor.

This weekend heard the turkeys. We did see an owl, our first tick of the season, a few deer and a huge snake! We will just let him be.

Welcome Spring!

This first weekend of spring brought us some terrific weather. Chris took the day off work on Friday. He worked with his friend Chris Gearhart at clearing some space for the garden. They used Chris G's Gravely and the tractor. Well, that is until the tractor got a flat tire. We were able to get the tire fixed that same day and were up and running again.

That evening we had our first cookout.  We enjoyed a peaceful evening with the Gearharts and Lebors.  I did forget a lighter and cooking utensils.  Oops  It was our first time at the property after dark so we were happy to hear that we have Virginia Peepers and a very vocal owl.  SO cool!
 
Saturday and Sunday I was at Master Gardener classes so Chris and the boys worked all weekend without me.  They worked on building the strawberry pyramid.  Our strawberry plants arrived 2 weeks ago so we were hoping to get them in this weekend, but building the beds proved to be more work than we anticipated.  Jackson drove the lawn mower and both boys hauled concrete to fill the bed.  It is getting close to finished, but we need another weekend with good weather. Below is the progress on the strawberry pyramid.
 

 
 
 
The one project we did complete this weekend was removing some nasty vines from a holly tree.  Below are the before and after photos. I cant wait to see what this tree looks like in a couple of years.  Poor thing.

  

Stuck Again????!!!!!

With all the snow we haven't been out to the woods in a while.  So we decided to leave the kids home and shovel enough so that we could open the gate.  We dorve in a bit and decided the snow was too deep to drive and decided to hike in.

It was tough walking in the snow it was still up to my knee in places.  Sometimes you could walk on top and sometimes you would just sink in.  We saw lots of wildlife tracks.  Tons of well worn deer trails and turkey tracks as well as fox and racoons.  We did see a rather large unidentifiable track(bear?!).  After we hike back and got in the truck to leave and we were stuck.

Uugh,  The truck must have sledded on the snow and the body of the truck was held up by the snow so that the tires had very little contact with the ground.  We used the tire jack to prop up the truck and put branches under the tires and after two hours of digging the snow from around and under the truck, we were able to get un-stuck. 

It was the longest time the boys have ever been home alone, over 3 hours.  They did great! 

What a day!

Fire burning, Fire burning.

After 4in of snow on Saturday we figured it was a good time to burn up our pile of junk.  It took about 4 hours and after about the first hour the kids got bored.

We also finished cleaning out the little shed.  We had some good finds!  We found a complete set of China with lots of serving pieces, a nice Stiehl chainsaw.  Too bad we just purchased a new Stiehl. 

Chris also found an old wooded Winchester Arms ammo box.  Boy, was he excited about that!  We learned that we have 16 red antique chairs in the attic of the house.  They are put together without screws and are actually pretty cool!

The dumpster is now full to the top.  We will get it swapped out this weekend and will be getting a bigger one.  We just have so much stuff that we filled the little dumpster in no time. 

January

This past Saturday we spent time clearing some of the wood and stuff from the house.  We have still not made it to the front door.  Jackson drove the Lawn tractor with a trailer.  He loaded and unloaded several loads.  We think we should invest in a larger trailer for him to haul around,  he is such a big help.  Cooper was happy to be at a friends for a sleep over.  We did get the dumpster mostly full and ready to be picked up.  Also, our burn pile is getting quite huge!

Sunday we had a load of wood delivered to our real house as we are having a hard time keeping up with our wood consumption rate.  We did get our first propane bill since installying the stove and we used about 1/3 of what we used last winter and we have ben much warmer.  That is a 2/3 savings! The delivery guy must deliver gravel during the week so we ended up with 3/4 cord of wood and 1/4 cord of gravel.

Being industrious people,  we put the gravel in buckets and hauled it out to Watermark Woods.  We filled in some low spots in the driveway.  It was a misty rainy day, but we were really proud of ourselves for finding a use for the gravel and following thru.

Today I bought a machete and went out the woods to wack away some of the brush by where I'd like to put the garden this spring.  When I arrived there was a tree down in the drive way from the storm on Monday.  I moved the tree away branch by branch then continued on my way.  The spot where we had dumped our gravel was completely washed away from the storm.  Insert some swear words here.  So much had washed away I was afraid to drive on it as I might get stuck.  I could see that the driveway was built of bricks and some of our concrete cylinders before they layed down the gravel.  That was kind of cool information to learn.  We still scratch our heads trying to figure out why there are so many of those cylinders.

Now we need to make some driveway repairs before the dumpster truck can get in.  Also,  my machete was very dull and I didn't get much brush wacked away. Today was very disheartening.  If only we could get some better weather, but this weekend they are calling for snow again.

Oh Deer!

Saturday was a big day in the woods.  Chris got his first deer ever.  It is anterless season in VA so he took a doe.  With the help of Chris G,  they field dressed the deer and on Sunday the 2 Chris' and Julie processed the deer into tenderloin steaks, a roast and lots of ground meat.  Now our freezer is full.  We figure we got 30 packages of meat(30 meals) from the deer.  That will help out with the grocery budget!

After the kill on Saturday the whole family helped the Gearharts drop a huge, dead, black cherry tree in their yard.  Chris B did most of the chain sawing and now has the know how when we need to do that on our own property.   Everyone else hauled the wood up to the woodshed.  As parents we were so impressed with our own children.  Jackson G. gave Jackson B and Cooper a lesson in wood splitting.  Cooper chopped for about an hour.  He really enjoyed using a real axe; and was super proud of the pieces of wood he contributed.  Jackson worked about 3 hours and reall got thru a lot of wood. 

We all learned a lot this weekend from forrestry to butchering.  Photos to come later......

Brrrrrrrrr

It is just too darn cold to go work in the woods.  We are going to go dig a soil sample to send into the extension office this weekend.  I am sure that the frozen ground will yield easily to our mighty shovel.