Today my favorite tool is the Fiskars 24″ bow saw.
I have been clearing paths in the back woods so we can have nature walks. Last summer I finished the large loop and started on an inner loop, but had two downed trees across the path I wanted to clear. My long handled pruners and my small pull saw were no match for those trunks. So I purchased a bow saw (about $10) and was able to saw through an 8″ log (which is as large as this saw can handle) in about 6 minutes. Not speedy, no, but the location of the log made me hesitant to pull out the chain saw, and it was great exercise!
So now part of the inner loop is no longer a dead end! Hurray!
I am also becoming obsessed with land art so am encouraging the trees to grow in a couple arches over the path. We’ll see how they do.
Here is the first land art installation in the yard. I keep adding sticks as I pass by because art is a living thing. 😉
So today I started clearing the area where I want to put my garden. It is in the middle of the Chicken Fort Knox rotating runs. (I have three runs, one of which will be the garden, and I plan to rotate which areas the chickens have access to so they don’t completely clear out the runs, and have some enrichment activities when a new run is opened. Or go hog wild when I let them turn over my garden. Hehe.) I started with the hoe, chopping out the weeds and grass. This is great exercise, let me tell you what. Suddenly I feel a “clunk.”
I had hit a rock. No biggie. Turning over dirt in a place that has not been turned over before, that can be expected. I dug around the rock, lifted it up, and carried it over to the retaining wall I’m setting up by the side of the house.
Clunk. This time it was a brick. Easy. Bricks are easy to dig out.
Clunk. Are you kidding me? Clunk, clunk, clunk. How big is this thing? This is how big:
Rock in the garden
Ok, so it is hard to tell from that picture. How about this one?
leftover concrete “rock”
That in the wheelbarrow is leftover concrete that was dumped in the field, probably when the house was built. It is approximately 2 feet by 3 feet. I can’t estimate the weight, but it was fairly thin (2-3″?). But in the middle of my garden. Now we have a few large rocks on the property that are native stone. Picking up large stones is not realistic or safe, so I tip them up using levers, and then tip them into my handy-dandy-favorite-wheel-barrow-ever, and roll the thing where I need it to go. Still hard work, but not back breaking (literally). I have been slowing moving rocks and making a path by the side of the house. This is definitely not native stone, but the back was nice and flat, so I hauled it over to the side of the house and shored it up with some of the dug up bricks, and it is now a stepping stone.
So when life hands you rocks, make a path! (Or a retaining wall. That works too.)
Today my favorite tool is the Fiskars PowerGear Loppers.
We get many downed branches on the property, and these loppers go through branches better than any other lopper I have owned. These were a gift from my folks (after my Dad tried to use my old loppers!) The power gear really allows me to cut through 2 inch limbs. I can make fairly precision cuts, too, for my land art. 😉 Here is a picture of the first land art installation, along with one of my other favorite tools: the Rubbermaid wheelbarrow.
You know what else likes to eat chickens? Raccoons. And we have a whole family of raccoons that live on the property, and they regularly show up on the trail cam.
So I know raccoons are smart (I did read Ranger Rick as a kid, and even recently with my own kids), but I didn’t know until recently that raccoons can undo latches. And raccoons can tear through chicken wire (chicken wire is really just effective against chickens, everything else can rip it open or crawl through), so we will be using hardware cloth to cover any openings in the coop and will bury it around the base of the coop and runs to keep these critters out. And use complex latches that need two or three steps to open. Phew!
I have winter garlic sprouting up! It is very exciting to see the shoots of green coming up from where I planted them. They won’t be ready to harvest until late spring or early summer, when the green wilts and turns yellow, but so encouraging.
Apparently nothing eats garlic leaves either, so I planted them outside the chicken runs. Once the coop is done, we will set up three runs, with the middle section as my garden. My plants will be protected from rabbits and deer, and have natural bug exterminators roaming the perimeter! (Chickens love bugs, but also garden plants, so they will only be let into the garden when harvest is over.)
