Why all the buried glass, always something with this place!

As we clear more land I often find broken glass buried under the top later or so of soil. Always in the same maybe 50' or so square area. I wonder if a past owner had a greenhouse there and then buried it rather than disposing if it fell into disrepair. I know that prior to our purchase an older couple had this as a summer home. prior to them it sounds like a farmy type family or couple was here. According to our elderly neighbor that family had a small orchard and garden. That is the 5 heritage apple trees, some in better shape than others, we still have now. Did they have a greenhouse just off the orchard that is where this glass is buried. By the time we moved here it had all gone to woodland and I didn't discover this buried glass issue until we started clearing and expanding for the chickens and then the orchard. I've unearthed quite a bit of glass over the last several years and occasionally a new spot is found by the chickens scratching. I'm so glad that none have been hurt by it as far as know. Today I found another big area of glass buried when I pulled up some bramble by the roots. It was tedious to uncover and pick out. Once done I had a 6 gallon bucket nearly full of glass pieces. The birds of course were nosy about what I was doing and I had to keep shooing them away as I uncovered more and more glass. It's always something. This house and land has been  lot of hard work but I try my best these days. I've gotten a lot done as the kids have grown up and I have more time. It does sometimes feel like one step forward two steps back but there is progress.

More Heatwave, More Broody Ducks, More Bramble Clearing.

Another day well over 90 degrees. Most of the animals seem okay with it, the dogs seem to be a bit bothered. Dartha with her long fur has seemed a little uncomfortable, I need to learn to shave her in summer. The heat seems to bother her more now she's getting older. The cats find cool and comfy spots, the ducks have many swims, the chickens drink a lot, dust bath and sit in the shade, the rabbits dig down into the dirt and enjoy the cool earth, the lizards, well this is what they live for! Our bearded dragons especially, that breed hails from Australia and they love hot, sunny weather. They have been so happy getting outdoors a lot this summer.

Another hot one, looks like a couple chickens would like to join ducks in the pool!

I'm still working most of each day clearing all the excess thorny bramble and tree saplings out of the extended farm fenced area/orchard extension. This can be grueling and it can also be tedious but it's rewarding to see the progress. 10 years ago this area was all woodland. My husband cut down some trees to give the veg. garden more sunlight. I went back in and used a loper/cutter to cut many, many smaller trees over the last 6 years or so. We planted several fruit trees out there and they have done well but the bramble went crazy and spread fast once more light was in there. The whole area was a mass of regrowth, saplings and so many thorny black and raspberry bushes. these are fine and good but they were starting to adversely affect the young fruit trees. The bramble also made it very unpleasant to walk through that area. About 2 years ago I started to clear the bramble and saplings and anything else we didn't want a lot of there. This was in part to extend the chickens yard fence which I did some 2 years ago and again last year a bit more. This summer I decided that one main goal was to clear and fence the whole orchard area. This would more than double the chicken and ducks area, help the fruit trees to thrive, make room for more plantings and make the area more pleasant to walk through. It's taken a long time but the bramble clearing is about 3/4s done now. We will encourage the thorny berry bushes in certain areas and eliminate them from others to make room for more variety.

Having this area a little less wild might help with the new problem of broody ducks! They have so many places to hide nests of eggs now that the ducks are doing just that. For the 4th or 5th time I found that one duck was missing this evening. A search ensued, I was helped by Felix our Siamese mix cat this time and we found the broody duck on a nest of many eggs. She was way at the back of the fenced area this time. All this egg hiding and broody behavior is partly due to all these woody hiding places and party due to the heatwave and letting the birds out so early in the morning and shutting them up later than usual. I don't want them cooped up more than necessary as it does get warm in the coop. Clearing away more hiding spots and keeping the birds in longer when the heatwave finished should help. But tonight it was search with flashlights time again.

Felix and I found the broody duck and collected the eggs. Miss Duck put into the coop with the others. I'll be glad when this stage is over, it's so buggy at night and with flashlights the bags head right for me and bite me! 

This was a bad idea or I bought a Pear Stick on the Internet.

A good idea but a bad time, a bad idea, an uninformed idea? 95 + degrees and fruit trees and bushes arrive by Fedex. Why?

This story begins back when I mapped our fruit orchard and realised that we need another pear tree pollinator for our Moonglow Pear. It's plenty old enough and large enough to fruit and never has. Turns out the problem MIGHT be that no other pear tree is within 50 feet. We looked locally for pear trees and couldn't find one, well except for one place that is selling them for $150.00. I became tempted by ads I was receiving from Stark Brothers Nursery. One day they even sent an email saying these pear trees are ready to ship to your house and they're on sale AND you're new so you can have $10 off coupon AND if you add another thing or two to your cart you will have free shipping. I kept thinking about it and decided to give it a try. This was a couple weeks back. I guess I figured if companies can safely ship baby chicks in cool weather perhaps nurseries are able to safely ship plants in hot weather. A cool pack perhaps like chicks get a heat pack? So I ordered two trees and two elderberry plants all for a very low price with the sale and my coupon and free shipping. I waited patiently and a week or so later my package had shipped, it was due to arrive on the 19th then that changed to the 20th. The 20th was due to be around 100 degrees! But surely the company has this all figured out, why would they sell me these plants if they can't get them to me safely...I reassured myself.

Then the package arrived in the afternoon when it was something like 100 degrees. Even KitKat knows this was indeed a bad idea.

KitKat turned away from the pitiful plants and turned his attention to the up side. There's always an up side to things. A BOX, we got a box to play in OUTSIDE. KitKat and Rufus quickly claimed the box.

So the cats got a box and the humans got (half) dead sticks. I thought they'd be bigger. I thought they'd be more alive. The trees are really quite little and skinny. Suddenly this didn't seem like a good idea at all. I tried to perk up the sticks, actually the elderberry plants look okay and there are 4 of them not two. One pot had one elderberry in it and the other had three all kind of rootbound together so I soaked them and they came apart. The pear tree (the real reason for this order) and the apple tree look really bad. I gave them time in the shade and water and we dug very good holes for them and gave them good dirt and compost. I don't feel confident that we will get the needed pollinating pear tree from this but I'll try. In the meantime maybe those super expensive trees more locally will go on clearance......

Our $27.00 grafted 2 types in 1 pear stick.

If you can not see it, the tree/stick is easy to miss, it has the yellow tag hanging on it.

My poor little pear tree stick :-(.

There is a lesson in this, next time just order the box for the cats and forget the plants. 

Heatwave continues, Harvesting Garlic and Keeping Cool.

Today seemed like a good day to harvest our garlic. The stalks are starting to brown and drop a bit and there will be a good couple days for it to dry outdoors. I know that 2 years ago when I waited until the second week of August to harvest the garlic it had gone a little too long and some wasn't as good as it could have been. I planed three types of garlic this year, German, Music and Chesnook. Unfortunately the tags were pulled out or knocked over (by chickens I assume!) soi I'm not 100% sure which is which but I have a pretty good idea. As far as I can tell the German garlic had the biggest bulbs. 

With the temperatures hitting mid 90's and higher heat index the animals are all about staying cool. I filled fresh pools for the ducks refreshed water for all animals through the day.

I continued my land clearing/organising project it's going well but those prickly bushes are not nice to work with!

Ducks enjoying more cleared area.

KitKat supervises as usual.

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 The monster pumpkin plant continues to grow, I'm not sure that KitKat realises the plant si coming his way!

Hey you up there move I want to grow some more.

Pumpkin grows many inches/feet each day. 

The monster pumpkin plant provides cooling shade for KitKat.

It just keeps growing at a fast pace.

I'm not sure why these volunteer pumpkin plants are doing so well compared to others in the garden proper. It's not the best soil here but maybe the large amounts of wood ash we used on the front path during winter has really benefited the soil there.

Lots done despite the heat

Very hot day today with temperatures in the 90's. Still there was work to be done and animals to keep comfortable. In the morning, from about 7:00-11:00 I tackled a bunch more brush cutting, very pleased with the results so far.

I had lots of feathered helpers. Here are the before pictures and during, for this one area.

And here are the after pictures. One nice area cleared of most thorny bushes a few remain and now those will do better.

It's not that I want just a field and some fruit trees, I simply want more diversity not just thorny berries and poison ivy! Have to get rid of the poison ivy since some in the family do suffer badly when they come into contact with it. I don't seem to be affected so I'm always on poison ivy control duty.

As things get more and more cleared new plants show up or start to thrive, I've found several small high bush blueberry plants that should do well now they actually get some sun. On a not as nice note I found some type of yew (ground hemlock?) with the poisonous red berries *the seed is poisonous. I'll have to get those out of there so the chickens and ducks don't eat them.

One new planting on the homestead is a BLUE Pinkberry, a pink blueberry. That should be fun. Probably won't fruit for a couple years maybe a small crop next year.

All the animals were plenty hot today. Dogs stayed in the path of fams, the cats lazed about indoors and out, the bearded dragons had fun sunning themselves and wading in their little pools, We started out with one pool but they didn't want to share so I added a second. The rabbits kept to the shade and dug themselves cool spots on the ground and the chickens and ducks enjoyed frozen peas and frozen blueberries.

Comet says, I am not budging from this space, I'm directly in the path of a fan.

Beardies keeping cool.

Kikat lazes in the sun.

Chickens and ducks enjoying frozen peas and frozen blueberries.

Linnea found a comfy yet cool enough spot near a fan.