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. 

Happy New Year

We had such high hopes for this week.  Chris' company shuts down this week so we thought we'd get so much done in the woods.  Last night we got another inch of snow, so we won't be heading out there again this week.  The view to the left is of our stream.

We did get out one day.  While most of last weeks 20 in snow was gone, there was still a significant amount still in the woods.  We saw so many animal tracks.  They were everywhere.  I think that re-sparked Chris' interest in going hunting.

We moved some stuff from the house to the burn pile.  There is finally enough space on the front porch to stand.  I am a little concerned about the number of snake skins we have found.  Yikes.  The boys helped out and did actually make a difference.  I wonder at what point are they going to ask for wages. Right now they are working for found 'treasures'.  Cooper's favorite is a complete deer skull that he likes to keep in his bedroom.  Jackson just set aside an old sample book containing marble tile samples. 

We spent the bulk of our time gathering wood.  We filled Chris Truck bed and the trailer.  When we got home we stacked the wood and had just over 1/3 cord.  However that was 3 days ago and we have already burned about 1/2.  This heating with wood business could be a lot of work.

Chris mentioned that his goal is to get everything cleaned up in one year.  To say the least,  I am very doubtful,  but maybe by 12/31/2010 we will have it cleaned up.  How's that for a New Year's Challenge? 

Happy New Year!