barn razing!

A hearty Thank You to everyone who came out to the Barn Razing this weekend!

Big thanks to Mona for helping me clear weeds and lay drip irrigation all day, and drive posts & wire for the pea trellises, and pre-sprout about 20 kinds of seeds! Thanks to Scotty for bringing and driving the rototiller down the front fence–we’re ready to plant mexican cane & sunflowers, maximillian daisies & hollyhocks out there as soon as we get back from Beltane. Thanks to for offering to let me come dig cane out of his backyard, too!

Huge thanks to Jan, David, Ezra, and Lynn for pulling down the old barn! it’s down to a pile of timbers; the back yard is transformed! This clears the way for drawing up plans for the Community Building that will go back there.

More thanks to Scotty, David, & Jan for loading up a trailer-full of dump-run materials and then driving it down to the transfer station, and special kudos to Scotty for allowing us to hitch said trailer to his truck!

Thanks to Ezra for working on the next bit of livestock fencing–that makes a big difference! As soon as we can come up with a plan, we can get at the rest of the enclosure.

And thanks to for helping with stumps & surveying in the afternoon!

Our next Sunflower River work party will be Saturday, May 17th, 11 a.m. to sundown, lunch included as usual. The theme is wrapping up projects that are half-done. :-) We are planning to finish cleaning up the old-barn area, add chicken wire to the roof of the chicken & rabbit enclosures, finish dividing the rabbit enclosure & hutch into boy/girl sections, finish caulking the greenhouse (and with any luck, install the sand/pavers in the greenhouse floor), and of course, more stump-removal! Possibly including more elm-tree removal, and most likely some gardening activity–planting, irrigation, and weeding all seem likely. :)

Hope to see you then!

The Old Barn last Fall:

A few months ago, Reinhard took a stab at the barn using a come-along to pull down part of the front of the roof-framing. So we started the day saturday looking like this:

Seen from the southeast:

Next time i turned around, was calling, “hey kat, do you want to photograph this before we start tearing it down?” and it was down to this:

and then the next time i turned around, it was down to this:

The end of the day, post-dump-run and tear-down:

We now have a pile of lumber to use for the turkey coop and goat pens. And a bit more clean-up for the May 17th work-party–mark your calendars! :)

Meanwhile, & wired some additional sturdy fencing into the east side of the livestock pen, between that area and the garden, while Scotty rototilled a line down the front fence, where we are now ready to plant mexican cane, sunflowers (of course), maximillian daisies and hollyhocks:

And Mona and I worked on installing the rest of the drip irrigation system down the center of the garden. This is the part of the field that the tractor was only able to till 8″ deep (less than that, in a few places), and therefore we have planted alfalfa throughout it, to break up the clay soil so that next year we can get deeper in.

By the end of sunday, it looked like this, looking south from the house:

looking west from the greenhouse, so you can see the soil-fertility design we’re working with:

note also the lovely chain-link fencing installed that day. off to the left, you can see what looks like more fencing–that’s the pea trellises, ready for peas, as soon as we get back from Beltane.

Chokecherry that , and i planted last weekend (along with several other shrubs about this size):

you can’t tell it’s on the drip system, because the drip system is buried in the mulch to keep it out of the sun.

and the view from the chokecherry north:

Meanwhile, everything’s blooming.

miniature narcisuss (flowers are no more than 1″ across) with the last of the grape hyacinths:

I think these are my favorite daffodils so far:

varigated tulip:

which I also like so much i have to post two of them:

Jerusalem artichoke coming up out front:

and our volunteer bulb–paperwhite narcissus (thank you, Britta!)

and the view from the back steps late Sunday afternoon, after an entire weekend of stump-pulling: