Now, Hurry Up and Grow

The Tree Team: Dad, Jo, Bill and Me 

As I'm sitting down to type this, it is down-pouring outside and the thunder is rumbling. Rain couldn't have come at a better time. Over the past four days, "The Tree Team ," Bill, myself, my dad and my step-mom Jolynn, planted over 300 trees into our rocky, cement-like front yard. It was, admittedly, exhausting work, and we all ended up with some aches and blisters, but we are pretty proud of those beautiful rows of new little plants...that are now soaking up all that wonderful rain!

We moved efficiently; but those concrete-like clods and ever present melon-sized rocks were something to reckon with. We didn't add any supplements to our soil as we planted, only a few scoops of "topsoil" from a local sand and gravel company (which looked a lot more like organic-starved fill dirt) when we sometimes needed something finer to work with alongside all those clumps and rocks. My dad was a machine, and the farmer in him came busting out, ready to tackle anything and to keep us all moving our shovels.

A Doug Fir, bright green and ready
to grow!

The trees and shrubs came mostly bare-root from DNRC's nursery in Missoula. As I mentioned in the earlier blog, the windbreak consists of 7 rows:




Outside row: Caragana
6th row: Juniper and Honeysuckle
4th and 5th rows: Ponderosa Pine and various shrubs
3rd row: Douglas Fir and Nanking Cherry
2nd row: Green Ash and Snowberries
Inner row: Serviceberries

We pre-dug the holes with the mini-ex a few weeks ago (see last blog post), so the holes were extremely dry and hard to work. Bill and I hadn't planned to put up any deer-fencing, as it truly is rare to see deer (mostly Muleys) hanging around by our place. However, after working to get those trees into the ground, we decided we'd rather not risk it, and we plan to put up an electric fence shortly, in hopes to deter whatever deer are in search of some yummy new growth.

The watering system is not yet in place, but will consist of a series of PVC, black plastic water hose, and emitters for a drip irrigation system.

Other updates: 

We finally conquered the relocation of the hen house! It took some scheming, but Bill figured it out.

The Hen House on rollers.

How to move a shed with an 18V cordless drive...
...oh, and a winch!

We rolled it about 100 feet south, away from our generator and sewage drain field, to a flatter pasture area. Using a 2-ton car jack, we elevated it and stabilized it on two 4x4's.  Then we lifted it again, high enough to slide in sections of 2x4 track and several 5"  "roller" logs. With the roller logs sandwiched between the 4x4's and the 2x4's, we pulled the house forward using a hand winch attached to the back of the truck, leap-frogging the track and rollers as we moved the house along.  Easy peasy!  Thank you YouTube!
We even managed to turn the thing 90 degrees by slowly shifting the angles of the logs and pulling from one corner.




The main reason for the shed move was to accommodate our newest farm addition: pigs!

After the building was in place, we put up fencing to enclose about 1000 square feet of pasture. We opted for cattle panels instead of hog panels to save a few bucks; the hole spacing is a little wider, but it's small enough to contain our 50lb "piglets".  We used some recycled house logs for the corner posts and some left over t-posts to break up the 16-ft panels. To help build the fence we finally bought an iron tamp bar, which made all the difference in digging rocky areas and securing posts. Should have had that in hand when we first moved in.Bill framed in a wall/door to split up the hen house, to accommodate the pigs as well.

Building fence around the "new" hog/chicken house.

We brought our  little piggies to Blue Cloud late last night. They weren't too pleased about the bumpy truck ride to our house and squealed to let us know it, but they seem to be getting along nicely now in their grassy pasture. All we need to do now is build a feeder, and we're set.

We purchased the pigs from a Hutterite colony near Choteau.  I guess the price of pork has gone up drastically since last year, increased from 1 to nearly 2 dollars per pound for wiener pig. But we're sure happy to have them on the farm. After we unloaded them late last night (a tricky affair from the back of our pickup truck), Bill and I stood at the fence panel, awe-struck that we finally did it, and smiling to hear their little grunts as they munched on the grass. Butchering time should be around August. Yum, bacon!

 

The Blue Cloud Bunch