June 8, 2008

ot alot done yesterday. I took a half day off as I did not get any time off during the week. Thanks to A and his strong back (and height) he got three posts sunk for me, so I could rebuild the front of the hog pen. It looks so much better than what was there before. The chain link fence had been tacked to a old poplar tree (done before I moved here) which had died, and then a windstorm took out the tree at the roots October 31st/November 1st (see November 1st, 2007 blog). The falling tree demolished the gate, the fence....pretty much everything but the hogs which were still in residence at that time. I was offered the chainsaw again and will take it so I can cut up the poplar which is still laying in the hog pen itself (which you can see in the photo). Where I had to cut and put boards to the left side of the gate, is how wide the tree was that fell. Also thanks to J's dad for letting me borrow his skookum fence post pounder. When I get the chainsaw up here, I will trim the horizontal logs even to the post. 

I also finally got my raised beds into the greenhouse yesterday. That has been my long term goal for a long time to get those in. I was hoping to have them in this year by April 30th, but time and weather did not cooperate. Due to snow, it was a little difficult to get into the greenhouse even in most of May. It doesn't look like it, but the beds are 3' x 17' & 3x8' and 3x8' . The aisleways are also 3 feet wide.  I need to get more soil to put into the beds (3 of them) and there is still enough room to have many of my plants in pots. Alot of my vegetables are in pots now, and I will leave them in the pots for the summer probably, as they are too large to transplant without making them sulky. Between the rows I will put in gravel from my gravel pit (yes, I own one on the back of my property) which will help dissipate heat at night when the rock releases it's warmth. 

While all the tools were out, the legs of the potting bench were put together. The poor herbs on the bench are ones I had tucked away and had forgotten to water for a few days. Ooops!

At 7 pm, just as the tools were being put away, my company came over for dinner. Home raised pork steaks from the 2007 hogs, fresh bread, my asparagus, oven baked potatoes & garlic and a nice organic salad.

I did manage to get a bit of the garden tilled today, as well as check fencelines on a tour with my company.