Working Weekend

I can't remember what we used to do on weekends, back when we lived in the suburbs of the San Joaquin Valley and were dreaming about moving to the country.  I guess we spent a lot of time driving over here and exploring, once we'd decided to start looking for houses over here, but before then it's a blur.  I suppose I read farm blogs and magazines and imagined what life would be like if we had some acreage and weren't surrounded by houses everywhere.

Either way, our weekends now are filled with hard work and well-deserved pleasures after that work is done for the day (even if it's only soaking in a hot bath and getting clean).  This weekend was a mix of work outside -- laying bark, watering orchards and berry patches, building fence, and occasionally stopping to bask in the fresh air and blue skies.  

Last night we treated ourselves to a special Valentine's dinner at the local winery.  There was a six course meal with wine parings for each one.  On the menu were things like oysters, wild local mushroom soup, and pork osso bucco which was absolutely amazing.  After a day spent outside working, it felt wonderful to get dressed up and meet up with a great group of people for some amazing local food and wine.   This morning we got up, refreshed from the break, and hit it hard again out in the pasture and yard.

While I've been out there this weekend, I can't help but notice that spring has sprung, or is in the process of doing so:

Raspberries have leafed out

Bing Cherries are budding 

Blueberries are almost ready to blossom

People talk about the holiday season as being a "blessed" season, but I think spring's blessings are just as sweet, as the soil and all that grows in it wake from winter's slumber and start sending shoots towards hopeful, happy blue skies.

Plant where you can grow

Granny Smiths -- Someday!

We ended up moving our orchard, all the way across the pasture from the west side to the east, from where we originally dug the holes last weekend.  When I went out to begin actually taking the trees out of their wrappings and placing them in the ground, I got a really good look, and feel, of the soil we were planting in and was not happy.  It was silty with a strong dose of clay and a bunch of limestone rocks thrown in for good measure.  Maybe wine grapes can grow in it, but I knew our fruit trees would not be able to get the nutrients they needed from that soil.  Oops.  

Bings and Royal Anne -- also someday!

 Big Ag and I had a discussion about whether or not it would be better to find a part of our pasture, maybe lower on the hill, with better soil (he was initially resistant because, let's face it, no one wants to have to go dig another 10 holes in the ground after you've already dug 10).  But we explored around and sampled what is in the pasture, all the way up and down the hill, and eventually found a large patch that had some lovely soil that was like crumby chocolate cake -- moist, dark and loose -- about mid-point down the hill.  (The new holes only took about a half hour to dig, the soil was so pliant.) Of course, the new spot is a totally inconvenient spot for an orchard from a human standpoint...it's a long walk down and back up the hill, but you need to plant your trees where they have the best shot at growing or it won't matter how convenient the spot is...you'll be taking a short walk to nothing.  A dead orchard won't care that you planted it in a great place for YOU.

So we decided to re-do our plan for where we were going to graze any future animals, place the orchard where the soil was best and work the pastures around that.  As usual, this place is a project list with a fence around it, and the project list can change in a moment's notice, depending on what happens real-time.  Today, it was finding surprisingly crappy soil in a place we thought would be fine.  Tomorrow it'll be something else.  We roll with it.

It's interesting though, to note that the worst soil is where the builders must have dumped soil from where they graded the hill to build the house 8 years ago, and the absolute best soil is down the hill, in a spot that hasn't been tampered with in any way whatsoever.  Mankind always thinks they're not having an impact in places they are, and the best places to grow thing are often the ones that have been pretty much left bloody well alone. 

It's all taking shape now...orchard, vines and pasture. It will all come to pass, but as with anything on this homestead, it probably won't look anything like what was originally imagined for it.   And that's OK.

Planting an orchard

Today we are planting our orchard on the south side of our property.  We have a variety of fruit trees suitable to this climate, and are hoping everything takes off this spring.  Whatever does not will be replaced, until we have a full complement of trees in that area. There is something immensely satisfying about beginning to put this land of ours to good use. I was totally intimidated by it when we moved in here this summer.  I would go outside and look down at it all, then quickly avert my eyes towards something that seemed more....workable.  Like a small bed for my irises, perhaps. But in the last seven months or so, this land and I have gotten acquainted, and it's finally no longer scary to plan out what we want to use it for. I like permanent crops because they require no tillage and few soil amendments, so they allow the majority of our topsoil to remain in place, but of course there are lots of other uses for it as well, since we have almost two acres.  

We've pretty much decided that half what we've allotted for growing space will house fruit trees and the other half will house vines and berries (yum!).  The rest of the acreage will be split into thirds and we will graze goats, sheep and possibly even beef on it.  We'll seed it so we have healthy grasses to crowd out the weeds, and use fencing and rotational grazing to make sure our animals don't overgraze the whole thing, as has happened with so many of our neighbors around here (especially those who keep horses.  I've learned nothing is as tough on native grasses as free-grazing equines).  And as we're on a hill, we need to stay mindful of erosion and the possibility of mudslides.

It feels so rewarding to finally be putting this land to what I really feel God called us to do with it.  We're responsibly stewarding it.  As Deuteronomy 8: 7-9 says, "For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of ...vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey."

All those apple pies, peach cobblers, blackberry pies and homemade wine definitely make this a good land, to be sure.