Lyle Handy showed up at 7:30 this morning to get started stumping the new veggie patch. Heavy equipment is a good thing. Frank had him move the big stumps to the area that should be behind where the garden shed is going to go. He told him to scrape off what top soil there was and put that in a pile, but it doesn’t look like there is much out there.
As soon as he left, we went out to get started on putting in at least one of the raised beds. I hope to get it up and finished before snow flies, so that I can plant in it in the spring.
What we found when we got out there was great. There wasn’t much topsoil, but we knew that was going to be the case, which is why we are building raised beds. Lyle told us about some supposedly really good topsoil for sale at Doc Cohen’s place, and we should make a point to get out there to see if we want a truckload of it. We were burned so badly by the stuff Skip Lockhart sold us that we are wary, though.
But man, the tree roots and the stones. We used the truck several times to pull some small stumps or very stubborn roots out of the area where the first bed will go. We also found a huge stone as well, and this time the truck was able to handle it, unlike the last two times we tried to move a stone with the truck and needed to bring Mark Parker up with his backhoe.
When we were out there trying to remember the design we’d planned, I ended up coming back inside to print the picture we’d drawn last February. I think it will work out, actually. It looks like we cleared the right trees, and the shape of the space is about what we wanted, surprising. It’s really nice to have the plan coming together.
It was much harder work than we thought it would be was laying out the first raised bed. First, the tree roots and stones that I already mentioned — wow. They were everywhere. Leveling the ground was a pain in the neck as well. We dug a trench and tossed the soil into the center of the beds, and there was more soil than we thought. But what was harder were the huge chunks of granite that look like ledge, pieces of the planet, so to speak. We’re just going to build over and around them, I guess, but it makes laying out the beds pretty tricky.
When we got to the second row of 6×6, Frank tried to screw in the long screws we’d bought for that purpose with his portable drill, and that didn’t work at all. Screwing into green oak is going to be hard to figure out. The drill just didn’t have enough oomph, so he’s got to figure out something else to do there.
Still, all in all, I’m really excited. I have a new garden, woo! It’s supposed to freaking rain all day tomorrow, too, but maybe I’ll work outside anyway.
in Back Hoe, Boulders, Clearing, Design Ideas, Drill, Garden Shed, Raised Beds, Soil
Mack Hill Farm
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