Seeds started!

Just a quick little post - I got the seeds started!

Here are some pictures (I am using the blog to record the types I have planted).

Of course, a while flat for tomatoes.  half of this flat (36) is for roma.  The other are Big Rainbow and Principe Borghese.

Pepper, brussels sprouts, and eggplants

I got some short season eggplants and Brussels sprouts this year.

One flat for cabbage and broccoli - I am not doing cauliflower this year.

Here they are all in and under the lights!  Now to just wait for something to grow!

Finally planting some trees!

Nut trees!

Well, just as I got back into the city I received an email from Willis Orchards informing me that my nut trees were on their way and should be at the farm Wednesday morning!  Ack!

So I make arrangements at work to take Wednesday off and work at home Thursday and Friday.  I head up early Wednesday morning in order to be there for the Fed-Ex delivery.  I was just starting to head down the final road to my farmhouse when I see a Fed-Ex truck coming toward me!  I figured that I had missed it and got real depressed.  I unpacked and texted Katherine the situation.  As we were texting back and forth I see the Fed-Ex truck pull into the driveway!  YAY!!

So I got my tree shipment on Wednesday and immediately started reviewing my planned planting locations.  Its one thing to plan something out on paper, but quite another when you take a look at the terrain and soil.  I made a few changes to my plans that involved removing quite a few trees back along the upper-north edge of my hayfield.  It was a lot of work, taking me all of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evening, and a good portion of Saturday.  I finally got to laying out the pecans and walnuts Saturday, but didn't get anything planted until Sunday.  Sunday I got everything planted!  After planting the pecans and walnuts I laid out the hazelnuts and planted them too.  Then I put on the trees protectors and mulched in all the new trees.

30 trees total planted!  10 pecan, 10 hazelnut, 5 butternut and 5 black walnut.  I hope they survive.  I have concerns about the suitability of the soil and the climate.

Here are some pics:

The hazelnut trees to the left of the grapes

closeup of the hazelnuts.

There are Yamhill and Jefferson varieties there, alternating rows.

If you look close along the upper part of that field you will see the tree tubes around the pecans.

That dark trail is where I dragged down a log.  It was a poplar tree that I cut down that was straight as an arrow for 35 ft!  I had to cut it to mill it (I didn't mill it this weekend, but i will soon)

Looking North from the top of the field - these are butternut trees - also called white walnuts.

I left a few spaces for the english walnuts that I am getting from the Fulton County Conservation District.

I still need to cut more trees out to allow for these trees room to grow - but I think I have the difficult ones out.

The pecans - looking south.

Some of the logs that I have left over - these are mostly firewood.  There is a sassafras tree in there - biggest I have seen on my property - but mostly decayed and in pretty rough shape. 

The stump left from the poplar tree

The northward side of the hayfield after I cleaned it up.  Its a lot steeper than it looks.

Almost cleared all the way down to the stream.

I still need to saw off those stumps closer to the ground.  I hate leaving them up this high.  Sawing them off makes it safer for the equipment, but its hard on the chainsaw chains!

Looking down east from the upper north end of the field.

Here are the black walnuts.  They are just across from the neighbors sheep  barn.

Some of those trees on the right in this picture need to be removed yet, but i think there will be room to take them out between the pecan trees.

 Getting ready for the grapes!

I am taking steps to get ready for the grapes I have coming soon.  Some of the trees I cut down in the upper field were locust, so I milled them for grape arbor posts.  I got a 6x6 9 ft post and a 5x5 9 ft post from one tree.  The other locust wasn't big or straight enough to mill, but I can strip the bark off of them and still get 2 good arbor posts.   I found one old locust log that I milled to another 6x6.  So I have one row of posts ready.  Just 10 more to go!  I don't think I will be able to find enough locust trees handy so I will probably just mill some oak and maple for the rest of the posts.  non-locust posts should be treated with copper-naphthalate before placement.  I hope I have time next weekend!

I still have to strip the bark off these two.  Ugh.

Last, but not least...ventilator progress!

Yep, I have not been working on these much but they have to go in soon - hopefully before the bees and creepy crawlies awaken!  I used the framing left over from the pre-hung basement doors that I installed last year.  I used deck screws to attach the framing to the ventilators because this framing is how they are attached to the house - it must be strong!  I did pretty good at screwing it all together, but I did break out the sides in a couple places, so I had to use a little wood putty to patch things up.  Here ate the vents laying in the basement waiting for the putty to harden.  I will need to sand and paint them yet.  I will paint them with spray paint because I just don't have time (and am not fond of) for the exterior latex paint.

Odds and ends

Oak canning shelves - continued.

I pretty much spent the entire weekend working on getting the shelves made and starting to finish them with polyurethane.

But first, some SNOW!!  Ack!

It all melted by the next day afternoon - so it wasn't as bad as it looks!  Whew!

OK, on to the shelving.

I had planed a bunch of boards last weekend but after I cut them to width I discovered that I needed to plane a few more.  I found some more short boards in my old barn boards  and planed them down and cut them to width.  The next step was to start to polyurethane them.  Katherine wasn't with me this weekend so it was perfect timing to get some finishing work done (she has trouble with asthma so I don't like to subject her to hydrocarbons unduly).

Aren't these gorgeous?  

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to think these were old barn crap boards!

LOL - there are quite a few of them.

I figured out that at 2 foot by 3 foot and 9 shelves that i have 54 square feet of oak shelving in the basement drying.  This is just the first coat.  They will need a light sanding and another coat to be done.

And of course, this need to be sanded and urethaned too!

Moving the shelving frame into the basement wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  None-the-less, I am glad its finally down in the basement were it will stay!  I really want to get this finished before the summer.  Once the summer kicks in I wont have time to mess with it and I don't want it absorbing moisture before I get it finished!