Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Adding a Garden and Trail


Here you can see Fy Nyth in her new home. Right beside my solar panels and new garden. She's in the process of getting a new stain to blend better into her surroundings, hence the currently different colored sides. More on that later.

That lovely smooth garden you can see to the left of the house took a lot of work. Below is me sitting on top of a rock pile that may be a little less than a third of the total rock pulled out of the aprox. 30 foot x 100 foot garden plot. 



Here you can see more rocks pulled out and stacked along the whole garden edge. All of these as well as the pile I was sitting on, and more, went into shoring up and widening the lane that allowed us to drag my house up the hill.


Above is the garden after many passes through it with a big harrow. Every pass tended to turn up multiple new large rocks. With the rocks gone, the remaining dirt is beautiful and rich! Then to get the smooth result you see below, many more passes were made with a tractor driven tiller. Which also tended to find new rocks on every pass. I am so thankful for a friend who has all that large equipment! I can only imagine how hard creating a little homestead like this would have been before tractors and such.


Now I just have to plant lots of things. And keep them all from freezing. Or drying up. Or being eaten by deer, moose, elk, squirrels, etc. You know, the joys of living in the middle of now where!


To get up here, there is a lane but it's still a little damp and torn up from moving the house (see this post) so I also built a foot path into the hillside. Above is the rough cut I made as I figured out the best location. Below is the finished result after two half days of work with a pick ax. I know this is surprising, but there was a lot of rock in this hillside too! I think it turned out pretty sweet and it's certainly easier than trying to scramble up the hillside without a trail.


4 comments:

  1. I look forward to seeing more of your garden as it grows. You did a great job because your trail is lovely.

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  2. Wow! We have a ton of rock too, but no soil, just red clay. Red clay is NOT condusive to a nice garden; therefore, I have to have soil and compost trucked in. =|
    We also have critters to protect our garden from (deer, rabbits, opposums, racoons, squirrels, chipmunks, etc.) so I feel your pain. I had hubby build me a "green room" around my garden. It's basically a frame covered with hardware mesh along the lower half and chicken wire on the upper half. Now if I can just figure out a way to keep the army worms and greenhorn tomato worms out!!! =\

    You did a great job on your trail!! =D ^5

    Can you still see the river from your new location?

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    Replies
    1. Keep some chickens. If they are allowed to run around your garden you will not have any live bugs or worms to be found.

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    2. Oh and yes, I can still see the creek just a little bit through the trees.

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