This image really sums up the summer for me: happy, tired, food in hand. We're rolling in peppers and tomatoes right now, potatoes are in cold storage, onions are curing, Brussels sprouts are fattening on their stems, European dessert pears and golden delicious apples are sweetening on their buds, and Nancy's flowers continue to crank at an awe-striking pace! For those of you who've been following the back story here, we've been up to our necks in renovations since January. We're finally back in our bedroom as of a couple of weeks ago, and the baby is learning to sleep in her own room as well. It was a truly exhausting struggle for a while there before we remembered the need to surrender, and things have been moving smoother since (no faster, just smoother). The upside of the frustration was the need to blow off steam and the chain-saw frenzy that ensued... our woods have never looked so healthy. I removed the bulk of the ladder fuels as well as many of the bays (major fire hazard and also the chief vector for sudden oak death). The logs and slash were used to create stair stepping plugs down the 4 gullies that drain our land. These will slow the flow of the water to inhibit downcutting and hopefully serve as sediment traps to reverse some of the erosion that has occurred over years of neglect. The chief beneficiary noted to date are the owls. We now hear both Barn and Great Horned owls every night. They appreciate the lack of impediments in their flight paths. A large percentage of land in these mountains is too overgrown for owls to hunt. The other major news around here is that due to some serious big cat action this summer (gone are our cat, many raccoons, squirrels, skunks, countless birds and a 4 point buck) we've decided to get a dog. Sartaj, a 3 month old, male Polish Tatra, will be crating in from Gnu Hampshire Farms (O'hare to SFO) next Tuesday morning. Needless to say, we're pretty excited about that!
Friday, September 19, 2008
Overdue Update
This image really sums up the summer for me: happy, tired, food in hand. We're rolling in peppers and tomatoes right now, potatoes are in cold storage, onions are curing, Brussels sprouts are fattening on their stems, European dessert pears and golden delicious apples are sweetening on their buds, and Nancy's flowers continue to crank at an awe-striking pace! For those of you who've been following the back story here, we've been up to our necks in renovations since January. We're finally back in our bedroom as of a couple of weeks ago, and the baby is learning to sleep in her own room as well. It was a truly exhausting struggle for a while there before we remembered the need to surrender, and things have been moving smoother since (no faster, just smoother). The upside of the frustration was the need to blow off steam and the chain-saw frenzy that ensued... our woods have never looked so healthy. I removed the bulk of the ladder fuels as well as many of the bays (major fire hazard and also the chief vector for sudden oak death). The logs and slash were used to create stair stepping plugs down the 4 gullies that drain our land. These will slow the flow of the water to inhibit downcutting and hopefully serve as sediment traps to reverse some of the erosion that has occurred over years of neglect. The chief beneficiary noted to date are the owls. We now hear both Barn and Great Horned owls every night. They appreciate the lack of impediments in their flight paths. A large percentage of land in these mountains is too overgrown for owls to hunt. The other major news around here is that due to some serious big cat action this summer (gone are our cat, many raccoons, squirrels, skunks, countless birds and a 4 point buck) we've decided to get a dog. Sartaj, a 3 month old, male Polish Tatra, will be crating in from Gnu Hampshire Farms (O'hare to SFO) next Tuesday morning. Needless to say, we're pretty excited about that!
