So last Friday, Pike, Nell and I headed up north to the property.
We had the Expedition loaded to the gills with 100+ rhubarb crowns, 200 apple trees, and everything we thought we needed for camping.
Original plan was for the whole family to be going, but due to factors beyond our control, things came up which necessitated Patti staying behind and needing help with Violet while she took care of other things.
Things seldom go as planned. I learned that a long time ago. The weekend prior the property had received 18 inches of snow. It had finished melting off the day prior to our arrival. The ground was soaking wet and working with it was difficult.
Nell and I did get 30 hills of rhubarb in, totaling about 70 crowns (depending on size) and about 60 apple trees.
It was good to see the buds pushing on grafts I had made. That means that for now, they have taken and I have a high percentage that were successful.
We did some work on a campsite. Primarily getting a fire pit in that would double as a cooking surface. Involved hauling some rocks, which I was glad to find did not have any permanent detrimental effects on my back. That big one on the right side had me wondering if I had injured myself, but no, things still work fine.
This is the first camping I have done in nearly a decade. Had missed it. Was magical up there. No wolves howling or yotes yipping this time, but grouse were having a competitive drum off around us all night, and was a lot of fun seeing hundreds of woodcock flying around the field at twilight.
We did get 13 Antonovka apple trees in place where we hope they will grow to maturity. They are not large, but will have to be individually caged for some years. I do have a good number of older trees being delivered after this coming weekend and those will be larger, which is going to involve deeper holes and more work, but production on a shorter time frame.
Pike enjoyed two days of running himself silly.
The weekend left me with 140 little trees I still needed to get into the ground for doing more grafting work on later. Monday night I made a trip out to Buffalo Minnesota and Jerid and Katrina Adickes helped me get them into the ground on their farm. Means the grafting work on those will be done down here and the trees moved up to our property at some later point.
We finished those as it was getting dark and rain was starting to fall.
Back home things have gotten nicely warm, so I started putting in tomato plants this week.
Not tons yet, but 17 so far, being three varieties. Rumi Banjan, Terhune, and Lauerer.
Last night as I finished putting some in, the moon rose and I was able to get a good shot of it.
So that is the last 7 days. I will be back up on the property this weekend. Mostly to do chainsaw work and camp with Claire. I am tired, and from looking at the photos I am pretty convinced it is because over the winter I got fat. Hoping that how much we have to get done gets me back into shape.
