Fencing

When we bought our place, we knew we would need some sort of fenced area for the dogs, so they could be outside with us more, and outside unsupervised more. Over the almost 5 years we have been here (and how it has been that long I have NO idea!!), we got used to the lay of the land, and moved things around (like the chicken coop), and established new garden spaces, and slowly we worked out where the fence would go, and what it would contain. We decided that it made sense to have that fenced area for the yard, for the kids too, so that there would be a 'safe' area where the kids could play, with the dogs out with them. We decided that having the existing orchard separate made sense, and having the new side garden and chicken area, as well as the lower garden, adjoining the yard also made sense.

I can't speak enough of the benefit of letting the space work as it is for a while, and making updates and changes slowly, once you see how you use the place, and what the strengths and weaknesses of the different areas of land are. As a result, we're pretty happy with where the fence is going in, where the gates are, how the overall area works within the larger landscape of our property, and how our play, garden, and living spaces work within the fence.

Building the fence has definitely been a learning experience for us, one we have taken slowly, and one that has shaped us in more ways than we likely realize. We started the fence 2 years ago (!), redid the posts last spring, and finally are at the last stage in the final side. Much of the fencing material was free, either fencing and posts existing on our property in other areas, or as trees cut into poles, mostly from our property. Early on, I bought a great book - Fences for pasture & garden, by Gail Damerow, which really helped as we imagined and installed the fence. The details were especially great for figuring out things like H-brace tensioning, which I had never done before.

Just as we have learned from installing the fence, so to has my husband learned from building the gates. His first gates were flimsy things with short lifespans, but these latest gates have been things of beauty, with the strength necessary to last.

Although at times we get frustrated with the number of things still on our dream list for this property, and at the slow progress we seem to be making, when we sit back and look at the pictures of when we moved in, and compare those pictures to how the place is now, we are somewhat awed of what all we have accomplished, even if it isn't near done, or quite under control yet!

Photo annoyance

Since the story of my life right now seems to be that in order to do what I want/need to do, I first have to slog through any number of other tasks to get clearance to do the thing that I am wanting to do, of course I've been trying to post for several weeks now, but have been low on space on my computer to download pictures to accompany a post.

Of course, clearing more space on my hard drive means moving old pictures across to the external photo drive & associated back up flash drives, but that means I needed to fix some broken links, and I had been putting off doing any moving of pictures until I weeded down the number I had. These are photos from when Little M was born, and I had been at first insistent that I would first, before moving them, work up some photo books to have printed. Of course, she was born over 4 years ago, and no photo books have yet manifested, so likely I need to accept that I will have time for that sort of activity later in life, but not right now, and move on (ie get the darn things off my hard drive).

Of course, doing so resulted in iphoto loosing the links to the photos I was trying to download, which meant yet more time spent wading through photo files, moving them around, and re-importing them. Talk about a pain in the rear! I've had several of this sort of problem with iphoto, but since in reality it is due to my overloaded hard drive being just too full, I guess I can't really blame iphoto. I'm not sure I will ever really get used to being so far behind on things, but the reality of having small kids is having limited time, and limited money, which for me has definitely meant being behind on any number of things, thankfully none are really critical, which is likely why I get behind!

Perhaps later this week once I have the photo files sorted back out, I will post an update on our spring - May is my absolute favorite month here, so I've got lots of fun photos to share, and lots of associated adventures.

These days I'm...

Saying goodbye to my beloved Irish Water Spaniel, Tia, my constant companion for over 9 years. She had what turned out to be a cancerous mass removed from her leg last fall, that unfortunately came back in her lungs with a vengeance in the new year, and we let her go a couple weeks ago as it was clearly her time. We went on a nice hike with her the weekend before, and it is nice to have that memory of her in the woods with me right up to the end, just like old times.

Feeling in awe of this large garden space to work with, and constantly admiring the new additions that keep making it more and more a creative space for us to grow in: yarn for the birds to use for their nests, garden spaces for Little M to grow plants in, haybale compost piles, and the fun continues.

Going on a backpacking trip for the first time with the four of us, just up the hill, and loving tent time at dusk with this crazy-hair girl.

Also loving this little cutey on my back on the way up. Not so much loving the midnight hike back down as we realized three in my little tent is too many, and realizing in order to make it through the night, let alone on a multi day adventure like we've been hoping for this summer, we would need a slightly different approach to gear.

Feeling proud of these little cactus that I've started from seed intermittently over the past 8 years.

Watching fresh life appear on herbs I had worried were dead in our early very cold spell last winter before we had any snow covering.

Watching the moon set over the mountains as the early morning sunlight starts to fill our world.

Starting SO MANY seeds with this little monkey!

Getting outside!

We've been spending so much time outside lately, especially now that the mister is back on dayshift, and I'd love to blame my lack of posting on that, but actually I had several posts prepared last month that just never made it to publish! Not quite sure what happened there! Of course they are now sadly out of date, so here's the update instead of those old almost-posts :)

Little M is a self proclaimed 'big help' now, at 4, and with Baby E quite content to be watching the proceedings from my back in the Ergo, we've got 2-3 sets of fairly capable hands quite consistently working around the property, so we've made some real progress. This is the most productive time of year for us around the property, so him being on the same shift as me right now has been meaning we've been motoring through tasks like no tomorrow!

I've been keeping the mister busy already moving the pig structure further to the south, taking fencing down and reinstalling it elsewhere, putting in more posts and getting the garden and chicken/orchard area completely fenced, and starting on the dog/yard fence. It's exciting seeing our plans for this land come together!

You can see the garden and pig area on the left side of this picture below, taken on a hike up the hill beside the house. The chicken coop and behind is the chicken/orchard area, and in front of the coop is the fenced side garden area. The pigs will be in the lower half of that this year, doubling the area in there to be gardened this year, which will be a challenge I'm sure.

We've gotten most of the fence posts in for the yard fence, although we still need to finish our H-braces complete with tension wiring, and then dig the trench for the fencing to be buried in along the posts. It will be nice to have a secure area for the dogs, to keep them a little more under control. The griff's like to tear off to the creek, or after deer, or just generally off on walkabout every now and then, which has made me limit their outside time more that I would like. The fence means that when we are out gardening, or playing in the yard, they can come along with and get their energy out!