·:[ high hopes gardens ]:·
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I thought a seven-year-old boy would appreciate the life in the wetland, so I made it a point to bring Martin over and wax on enthusiastically about the tadpoles and diversity of life in the small exclosure when we were working on the trees in the back pasture.

A bit later, he was helping mulch some trees and ran out of things to do, so he asked if he could go look at the swamp, as he refers to it.  I watched from a distance as he first climbed part way up the fence, peering in.  I made a bet with myself that it wouldn’t be long before he crawled over the fence and went inside to look.  Sure enough, the pull was too strong and he crawled over the fence. 

A few minutes later he came running at full speed towards me, face red with heat in the 90 degree day “Dad, there’s a turtle in the swamp!”  He shaped his hands about as big as a dinner plate and retold the story of the turtle siting.  As I went back to see if I could spy the turtle he turned to me and said “Dad, the farm is getting a lot bigger now.”  I asked him what he meant and he said “Now we have a swamp, we have a baby forest, and a wind turbine.”  Even though you can’t buy that comment with MasterCard, I still thought it was priceless.

one year ago…”Neil Smith Wildlife Refuge”

We started an experiment a few years ago.  There was this awful mudhole in the pasture that seemed to get bigger by the day - when the grass was soggy, the cows would keep breaking hunks of sod off, enlarging the mud area.

This is what it looked like in the spring of 2005.  Martin can’t float his boat.  I got the idea for fencing this area off from the summer camp I worked at in northern Minnesota.  Naturalist and nature photographer Les Blacklock suggested that an area near the center of camp be fenced off from regular foot traffic and be called the “exclosure.”  The idea was that a different group of plants might grow up just by leaving it alone.  As no part of the farm is left undisturbed, I thought this small section could be spared.

So this mudhole was fenced off, I ordered some marsh and wet (mesic) prairie seeds from Ion Exchange and waited.  The area is hard to manage as it gets runoff from the surrounding crop fields and a few times a year water rushed through like a small rapid stream, but most of the time it is dry or muddy.  I thought if I could establish a canopy of marsh plants, the water might stick around longer in the shade of the plants.

Here’s a peek at one of the plants to pioneer along the edge of the mudhole - Prairie Cordgrass.  It’s been a wet year (5 more inches of rain this week) and the exclosure has had continuous water since snowmelt.

Butterfly milkweed has also been successful in addition to many other plants.  It is full of tadpoles, different kinds of dragonflies and butterflies, and many other things I’m sure I don’t see.

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #70″

There’s always something to do on the farm, but eventually the most urgent things spring to the top of the list.

One of these items is this fence. We’ll call it the “Leaning Fence of Melbourne.” It’s a bit of a pain to tear out the old, but this one is way past its prime.

Tearing out woven wire fence involves pulling out fencing staples from old posts, pulling the old posts out of the ground and ripping the old wire away. The wire is usually the hardest part as commonly there is of soil and grass above the bottom wire of the fence that makes is hard to pull up. Here’s some detritus from the old fencing - the salvageable woven wire will be turned into tomato cages, the rest to the recycling at the landfill.

A section of new fence, standing tall and proud.

one year ago…”Not in Our House”

After another rainy week, it’s important to keep moving ahead, even though the saturated ground prevents us from getting the new trees and grapes in the ground. So today, we moved a fence to enlarge an exclosure in the pasture to accommodate the trees, even though we can’t plant them yet. With saturated ground, it was easy to pull and set the fence posts. It was foggy and drizzly in the morning, but stayed relatively dry in the afternoon.

Linda’s working with the post puller. This is one of my favorite pieces of equipment - it’s easy to use, virtually indestructible, and hard to lose! Since we don’t have much land to play with, we’ve opted to use cattle panels for much of the interior flexible fencing. We like the ease of installation and don’t have a lot of permanent fences, except the property boundaries, so even though it is more expensive initially, we never bought too much at a time, so the extra expense is worth it to us in ease of installation and flexibility.

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #68″

Last year I frost seeded some clovers in the back pasture (frost seeding is a fancy name for just throwing seeds on the ground and the early spring freeze/thaw/rain snow moves the seeds down into cracks in the soil and puts them in a place to germinate).

The pasture was greatly inproved from its grass-heavy state.  So this year I’m doing a couple more types of clovers and some birdsfoot trefoil.  The seed mixtures are so very colorful.

one year ago…”Ice Storm Cleanup”

On Sunday, the temps soared to 46 degrees!

In the back pasture, the four foot high fence is nearly buried and the yellow snow is water flowing through the snow from a drainage in the adjacent field.  We’ve got a lot of melting before spring comes.

A temporary river started flowing through a low spot in the back pasture.  It was strange to see and hear the sound of running water.  Here Martin is walking on a fence over the flowing water.  This time of year the snowpack can be deceptive as the top of the snow can look white and normal, but if you step in, it could be a couple of feet of slushy flowing water just below the surface.  These are fun days for the kids - to run around in conditions that often don’t happen - like water flowing through big drifts where where is usually not any water.

one year ago…”Frustration Begins to Set In”

Now that the temps are in the 90’s - that means just one thing - it must be time to make hay!  We were invited to help at Two Friends Farm this weekend.

How’s this for a date?  Sitting on an empty hay rack after the unloading 100 or so bales is a good rest.

Starting out a new rack after one was under our belts.

Even Emma and Claire were enthused about helping and took their turns on top of the racks.  It’s great to now have kids old enough to handle a bale of hay.  We figured we handled about 8 1/2 tons this afternoon.
one year ago…

Today is the first in a series of views of the farm.  I went to each corner of the property (and the midpoints) and took photos in different directions.  This view is from the NE corner of the property.  I did some of this a decade or so ago, but wish I had been more thorough as the shots are kind of hit and miss. 

This is from the NE corner shooting diagonally towards the SW. You can see the brush piles from the ice storm and an old granary in the back pasture.

This is the view looking due west from the NE corner.  It shows three rows of trees, this year’s planting furthest to the left.

This is the view due south from the NE corner.  It shows the first row of trees along this boundary.

one year ago…

Here’s a picture of our new portable electric fence.  The name of this fencing is “Permanet” as it is designed to be left up for the whole season, if necessary.  We get our electric fencing from Premier Fencing in Washington, Iowa.  Many people swear it is the best you can get. 

We’ve used some of the poultry electric netting and been pleased with it, so when we found this version that is taller and firmer, we thought we’d use it to start some rudimentary rotational grazing in the back pasture. 

This picture cracks me up - it shows that forbidden grass is always better than grass you’re allowed to eat.  The goats were just turned loose into this pasture that goes all the way to the fence in the distance over the goat’s back.  Where do they choose to eat first?  They stick their heads through a fence guarding a tree to get at the “good” grass.

one year ago…

The boundary fence was completed in short order.

“All” that is left boundary fence-wise is to re-string the electric wire around the perimeter and this new line. Eventually, if the planting goes as planned, a new fenceline along the east edge will be in order as well. But that is a much bigger project.

one year ago…

Another nice June-like day in the upper 70’s. Started working on some more fencing (it will never end). Went to town to pick up wholesale buying club order, got some cardboard sheets and more cattle panels and T-posts. Martin is a great 5 year-old worker. Sometimes he asks what work we can do outside.

Here he wraps up the rope that held the panels down on top of the truck. It’s a pain to load/unload them from on top of the truck, but I don’t have a trailer that approaches 16 ft and the truck does, so up they go. The truck has now graduated into the heavy-duty farm use where scratches and dents only add to the value.

Martin was able to drag the panels into position (as long as the location was downhill).

He also was good at distributing the fenceposts - he moved about 75% of the posts to the correct places along the fenceline. All I had to do was get the panels off the truck, drag the uphill panels, and take the binders off the posts that banded them in groups of five and Martin did the rest. The fence is in position, we just need to pound the posts and put up the panels. This is the fence along the SE property boundary.

one year ago…

The weatherman promised rain most of the day, but it really didn’t seem to come as heavily/often as we were led to believe. That gave us a chance to get some much-awaited spring chores done. First was overseeding the back pasture.

Martin’s job was to reseed the cow trail. He did a good job and seeded all the way to the property boundary. We spread about 25 lb of seed over the 2-3 acres.

I’m also behind on fruit tree pruning. Between the cold until early March, ice storm/snow, and week away, it is a little later than I’d like.

I was able to get 90% of it completed. Linda started all the seeds that need a jump - flowers, tomoatoes, peppers, etc.

Martin was a good helper, filling the peat pots for Linda. I also got new fittings on a water tank, so it comes out a one inch hose instead of a garden hose. So the things that had to get done, got done today.

one year ago…

Here’s a look at the furthest east side of our pasture. You can barely see the rows of Christmas trees on the far side and you can see the fencing of the hardwood trees on the left side. For now we’ve decided pasture is not the highest and best use of this ground since we have so little land and need a higher return than we can get from a few grazed cattle.

There’s a bit of higher ground on the far east side, and you can see where a couple of rows of Christmas trees will go. Down the center of the picture, we are investigating woody ornamentals that can stand wet feet. They’re in a low spot that floods maybe once or twice a year if we get a quick, heavy rain in a short time when the crops aren’t in the adjacent field. It doesn’t stick around for long, but does move through pretty good.

We’re looking at curly willow and other brightly colored willows and perhaps some marsh-loving plants like iris in the low area. The willows can be mowed every year and as a side benefit will offer great goat browse as well. I must admit - I do like researching and planning a farmscape like this. A great advantage of doing something totally different than the rest of the county is we’re the only one doing it. Of course, the disadvantage is that we’re the only ones doing it! I do however like the diversity and experimentation that we can indulge in on our little piece of old prairie ground.

one year ago…

It’s not often December 30th brings 50 degrees - we used the opportunity to get a start on some work that is usually done in late March or early April - pulling up and putting in fence. We’re moving the entire line of fence on the north side out another 10 feet so we can plant another row of trees in the north windbreak/Christmas Tree patch.

Here’s Marty working the post puller. It was actually so wet, that we didn’t need this - the posts could just be pulled out.

There’s something about working in a warm rain - I’m not sure it reminds me of camping, or if the rain provides a slight sense of urgency to get done before the rain increases. It was not unpleasant and good to get out.

one year ago…