Helping Penny Fetch with a Sythe

Another long hiatus between posts! We've been out there nearly every weekend, watering the orchard and garden, and harvesting both the wild and grown bounty. We canned a dozen jars of seedless Dewberry Jelly, then a July surprise - when we returned from a vacation in Santa Fe we found a huge bounty of ripe wild Mustang Grapes. We harvested a 5 gallon bucket which turned into 33 jars of some of the best grape jelly I've ever eaten. Yummy!

Today I watered the orchard and garden, harvested two watermelons, and drip irrigated the dozen blackberry and raspberry plants. While watering the orchard, I used the ball thrower to toss the ball for Penny to fetch - her greatest fun on the land. However, one errant throw bounced into the Mustang Grape Copse where grass and shrubs grew too thick for Penny to get the ball. It was the last of the red balls so I decided to take a scythe to the area to find the ball.

Scythe in overgrown copse border.

 Ten minutes of whacking brush later, I achieved a clear area and a pile of cut grass and shrubs but I couldn't find her very bright red ball. I didn't think it went that far in!

Scythe sitting on pile whacked vegetation.

Cleared area, but no ball!

I decided to take the pictures for this blog and told Penny, "Find the ball, Penny, find the ball! She walked around what was the border of the area and I turned to take the scythe and grass photos, then I looked up to see Penny nosing deep in the brush where her nose did what my eyes couldn't - they found the ball!

Penny found and retrieved the ball from deeper than this.

So I provided a bit of assistance with the scythe to help Penny get back her favorite toy.

We went for a hike and found that the pond still has water and one of the creeks still trickles quietly. I'm hoping the expected El Niño fall rains will come early enough to prevent the pond from drying. So far it's held water continuously for over two years. I've never seen so many frogs in one place in my life and there are lots of small fish in the pond too. If we get some rain in September we might go three years without the pond drying out!

During the walk, I spotted and picked up an unusual flint object which I believe is a tool. It has notches on the sides that fit extremely well in the thumb and hand, and a series of chip-outs at the tip that make this have a sharp serrated point. I don't think these could have occurred naturally.

Notched grip faces at top and serrated point at bottom of this object which I believe is a tool.

Imagine a slightly smaller hand holding this with base of thumb in one notch and thumb in top notch. It is extremely comfortable to hold and the pointed serrations at the bottom extend beyond the bottom of the hand.

I sure do look forward to the day we find an arrowhead out there. This is the second of these notched tools found so far.

Out of the Mud Diswashing Station Campout Build

 One of the joys of Die Weide is the opportunity to have weekend camp outs with my brother Kenny. I usually put him to work and this time I decided we'd put our carpentry skills to building an outdoor kitchen to wash camp out dishes. I chose to build this after I got annoyed last year at having to muck with mud washing dishes last year. The following picture shows the final results built from a few 2x4's, 2x6's and 1x6's.

Sturdy enough to jump from!

The buckets of water will be poured over the ever dry compost heaps. (And a bonus - the sinks will harvest rain into the buckets!) The chunk of 6" PVC scrap well casing will be built into a solar hot water tank mounted on the tall 2x4 to provide gravity feed hot water. I have a sketch of the design which will all be painted black to heat the water.

Kenny pre-drilling. (I insisted!)

We built the 2x4 top frame to the size of the sink with an overhang to place dishes (and junk!)

Kenny Cutting notches for the 2x4 hot water leg.

Always use the right tool for the job!

Needed to notch the 2x4 legs to account for the sink mounting rail. It's fun to work with sharp chisels.

A pan of hot water from the fire and cold water pumped from the well means washing dishes!

Of course, if I put my brother to work, then it's expected to feed him too so we popped the top on good beer, which we drink from covered steins. The covers keep the bugs out and the steins keep the beer cold a long time. However, every camping trip I get to hear, "don't break the steins!"

Nearly sundown - rotisserie chicken turning and sizzling.

 As often occurs a steady south wind blew all day. It's rained a lot this spring so no burn ban and we built wind breaks to keep most of the wind off the fire. The orange bucket isn't just a table for our beer steins, it's full of water just in case and the shovel is just out of sight as well.

Chicken and french fries. I know it's possible to cook healthy food but I go for gusto on the pit.

Sundown stir fries.

It was a bit cool in the morning and the south wind was a tad nippy. Kenny found a nice out of the wind way to tend the fire for the morning breakfast tacos.

Fire pit cooked breakfast tacos.

Installing Deep Pipe Irrigation

Sometimes Die Manchmal Gruene Weide isn't so green. However, I have an orchard and garden and need to keep it watered even in the hot East-Central Texas summers. I keep researching what ways work best and most efficiently because for the past few years I've trucked in water in 55 gallon drums from our city home to water the garden and orchard. Adding the 1550 gallon water tank and re-plumbing the 330 gallon tank gives us 1880 rain harvested gallons for the orchard and gardens, but I've learned over the years that it takes a lot of water to keep a healthy productive garden.

Spraying the water haphazardly isn't an option! I have to find the most efficient ways to apply the water given the scarcity and the fact we only visit once per week. This month my research found another way to irrigate which is cheap, simple to employ and should allow weekly watering to be sufficient. That method is deep pipe irrigation. This article: Deep Pipe Irrigation PDF was one of a several I found that explained how this method gets water down to the roots and is a highly effective way to irrigate trees, grapes and other deeper rooted plants. I decided to apply the method to our four grape vines, four blueberry bushes, and to the four watermelon and cantaloupe mounds I'll plant next weekend.

I had a bunch of 1 inch, 1-1/2 inch, and 2 inch PVC scraps from the well drilling project so I decided to re-purpose those to irrigate those plants in the garden. The following photos shows the very simple process.

PCV Irrigation tubes and install tool

I cut the 1 inch schedule 40 PVC to 17 inch lengths as that was close to getting all of a 10' section of pipe evenly divided. I think I had to trim off one inch off the last piece. These are going in the ground so precise cuts weren't required. I then drilled a series of holes on one side of the pipe. Stacked on the top is a 1 inch oak dowel and a spare 3 inch PVC piece. I used my reciprocating saw and file to carve a drive point, and drilled a hole close to the top to ease removal of the dowel.

 

PVC Deep Pipe ready to install.

Here the Deep Pipe tube is ready to install. The series of holes will face the targeted plant's root system and allow water to disperse vertically. The 1 inch dowel fits perfectly in the schedule 40 PVC which prevents dirt from clogging the irrigation pipe. The extra 3-inch piece of PVC allows the dowel to be longer than the system so I can easily remove the dowel after installation.

Installing the pipe with hammer & 2x4.

Removing the drive dowel with screwdriver.

Installed Deep Pipe Irrigation tube.

I planted these three grapes along the garden fence to use as vine supports. The 330 gallon tank can easily feed these tubes and I'm considering having a simple line to feed these with the tank directly. I will put caps on the ends to keep tiny critters out. I also installed these on the four blueberry bushes but for those I plan to create a simple funnel and use the hose to fill them weekly. One of the articles I read told how they watered desert trees with this method and they only required watering once every two weeks to improve the tree survival. So I'm guessing the once per week watering will suffice to have healthy, productive berry bushes. Also, several articles mentioned that pouring compost tea into the tube feeds the roots directly. Something to experiment with.

Four Watermelon/Cantaloupe deep irrigation pipes.

I have planted watermelons now for four years and have never harvested a single melon. I have harvested cantaloupe, but never watermelon. There has been two issues - once per week surface watering is just not enough water to grow decent size and quantity of watermelons. And, the few small fruits that actually grew were ravaged by wildlife before we could harvest them. This year I planted these deep irrigation pipes in each of the four melon mounds. I have holes on three sides because I'll plant the melons around the pipes. Also these are 1-1/2 inch and 2 inch pipes so there will be more volume of water applied in the mounds. For these I'm considering running a line to directly feed water from the 330 gallon tank with a battery powered timer to turn the water on to fill the tubes every 72 hours. And to defeat the melon raiding critters, I'm planning to create small melon cages to stake down over select ripening fruit. To be fair to nature I'll leave a few for the wildlife, but keep several protected for our enjoyment. I hope this strategy works to get our first Gruene Weide Melons!

I will install two additional irrigation systems in the next few weeks which will lead two future posts on efficient low water garden and orchard irrigation.

Spring Planting and Harvesting (water)

Inge and I worked Die Weide today, catching some sun and beautiful weather along the way. This week we saw the forecast for rain most of the week so I decided to set up the donkey shed water harvesting system to feed the 330 gallon tank. This picture shows the finished result.

Donkey Shed Water Harvesting

I cobbled a few bits together here but it will collect water until I can fix a few things. I need to pop a few rivets in the gutter and if you look closely you will see the first flush diverter system is propped up with a two-by-four because I ran out of strap to tie it to the shed. I had a new piece of left-over 10 foot 3 inch PVC to build the downspout stuff and diverter, but when I inventoried the PVC remnants from previous projects I found everything I needed so I returned the 10 foot section for some money! Also, I checked that the hayloft door will open but I'll need to build a stop to prevent the door whacking the PVC. The shed roof is 10' by 12' giving 120 square feet. At 1/2 gallon of water per square foot per inch of rain that runs to 60 gallons per inch. So 5.5 inches of rain will fill the 330 gallon tank. I plan to run a drip irrigation system off this tank to water asparagus, grapes and watermelon this year.

Gutter installation photo.

Today was gardening day too. Inge did most of that work while I worked on the harvest system. In past years, I used a broadfork and rake to prepare the soil for planting. However, this year I decided to add one rototiller run to the broadfork work. A few weeks ago I broadforked the garden. The broadfork really loosens the soil to a deep, 15 inch level. This permits the rains to deeply penetrate the beautiful Blackland Prairie clay-loam soil. But it also leaves a lot of clumps on the surface so I decided to attack the clumps with a tiller. Wow! It only took 40 minutes to till 360 square feet of garden and after Inge raked it out the soil looked fabulous! After that she planted the peppers I started from seed (Jalapeno, Habanero, and Tobasco peppers), about two dozen plants. I hope to sun dry the Habanero and Tobasco peppers to make pepper flake packets for friends. She also planted six 10 ft rows of green beans. (We harvested the most delicious, tender green beans last year that I've ever eaten.)   Finally she planted 8 rows of black-eyed peas. All of the beans, peas, and peppers I plan to drip irrigate from the new 1525 gallon water tank. Below is the picture of the garden at the end of the day.  (In the background you can see the new 1525 gallon tank.)

Garden planted with peppers, green beans, and black-eyed peas.

Someday I'll fork over the five grand to hook into the city/rural water system. But the first choice will always be to use harvested water before resorting to the delivered water.

Finally, all that hard work requires a sufficient quantity of calories to maintain energy and what better way to fuel up than fire up the fire pit and grill up a pair of steaks and some foil-packed veggies. Here are a few pictures of our lunch time fuel replenishment.

Firing up the pit. Mostly Mesquite.

Steak and veggie alu-foil packs.

Campfire and hungry onlookers.

Costco Steak, veggie pack of potatoes, broccoli, carrots, onions basted in olive oil and Italian seasonings

Long Overdue Gruene Weide Update

I looked at the blog today after sending the link to a friend and found it's been 10 months since I last posted. That is way too long. We never stopped going out there and caring for Die Weide, I just stopped writing mostly due to very busy work schedule and our youngest daughter's German wedding in July.

So what's changed since May 2014? The biggest change was the purchase and installation of a new 1525 gallon water tank. I had pictures of the event on my cell phone but I dropped it which fatally resulted in losing all my data and pictures. The new tank picture below was taken this Sunday and shows the intake dripping water because the 1525 gallon tank overflows the intake pipe.

Water tank runneth over.

We moved the original 330 gallon tank next to the donkey shed but haven't hooked up the gutters yet to harvest the rainwater. That's a project scheduled by end of the month. Next week we will roto-tiller the garden to plant three pepper varieties (Jumbo Jalapeno, Habanero, and Tobasco) and we'll plant green beans and black-eyed peas. We already have garlic and asparagus growing there.

This past year we lost one peach tree to deer browsing so we planted a new one along with an additional plum tree, three blackberries, and four blueberry bushes. That brings the orchard to a dozen fruit trees, 10 blackberries, four blueberries, and one raspberry (the 2nd one died last year.) Here are a couple of pictures of the new additions:

Newly added peach tree.

Four Blueberry Bushes.

New plum tree in foreground with red wrapping and two year old apple tree blooming in background.

Of the original six peach trees planted as seedlings, one was completely killed by deer, another appears to also have been killed but we're waiting for spring to be sure, and the other four look healthy and in fact, this year was the first year they have bloomed! It would be so cool to get our first peach this year, but we have to wait and see. Due to the deer eating the trees I built and installed a solar powered electric fence. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to keep the deer from eating the trees. It did keep Herbie the donkey out of the orchard, but last fall we surrendered Herbie to our neighbor's care because our once weekly visits left Herbie lonely. They're herd animals and we felt it wasn't right to keep Herbie away from other animals.

The next big ticket item I'll tackle this year is to put in drip irrigation for the garden and berries and bucket irrigation for the orchard. I plan to tackle that update in April.

For the final picture blast I show the compost heap I built several years ago. I worked this weekend to completely scrape it out and re-fill it because it has never generated compost. The material we added was too dry and it turned out one of the upper-most layers was a thatch of straw we used as mulch in the garden - the thatch kept any rain from entering the heap, thus inhibiting composting. I mixed and put material back in with soil and compost added to hopefully get the heaps generating soil amendments. Our compost heaps at home always generate wonderful compost which has made the backyard garden very productive. I want the same compost generated for Die Weide!

Dual compartment compost heap, refilled.

 Finally, here is Penny in a trough. Her biggest joy in life is to come out to Die Weide and chase balls we throw and jump in the trough when she gets thirsty. The water was clear when we got there but she tracked in the mud.

 I'll try not to be so frugal with the writings this year.

Low Energy Garden Maintenance

The following images shows two ways we regularly maintain the orchard and garden at Die Manchmal Gruene Weide.

Plum and Apple Trees in Orchard

Above you can see the lower half of the orchard where we planted and maintain two apple trees, two European Plum Trees, one North-American-Native Mexican Plum tree, which produces rosa-green tinged soft, mildly sweet plums. There is more room below here in which we plan to plant pear trees next year.

Peach Trees and Blackberry bushes (to right)

Above we planted six (of which one died from deer eating it to death) peach trees. I named the healthy one in the lower right corner, "Inge's Peach Tree" because when I trimmed the other peach trees she insisted I not trim at least one tree and thus this tree remains untouched by any cutting implements. It is also the healthiest peach tree which Inge repeatedly reminds me that its healthy state directly results from its untrimmed state. 

Special Deep Cycle Truck Battery powers water pump for orchard watering.

First order of business after feeding and watering Herbie the donkey was to water the garden. I purchased a 12V battery powered pump a few months ago and used my truck battery to pump water for the orchard as you can see in truck picture below.  Originally I left the truck running, wasting gas. The battery didn't last long under the strain of using the pump, so I replaced the dead battery with a special deep cycle/cold crank dual purpose battery. Now I can water the garden with the battery alone (no truck running) and all our water barrels (only two of five brought and used today) for over an hour and the truck still cranks and charges the battery. I have all the supplies I need to build a solar powered battery charger but I haven't wired it up yet. Future project.

Water measuring containers for pump test today.

Today I decided to measure how long it takes to pump the well empty and measure how much water returns after 10 minutes of rest. It has not rained much this winter, far below average, so the water table is very low. I pumped the well empty after only about 62 gallons (235 liters) which just filled up the water trough. Last year I emptied it pumping about 80 gallons (302 liters). I waited 10 minutes and pumped it dry again which only took 1 minute and only pumped 2.5 gallons (9.5 liters). That gives a recharge rate of 1/4 gallon per minute - very very slow. When we had abundant rain I had roughly measured a recharge rate of about 4 gallons per minute so it appears the drought also affects the recharge rate as well, which makes sense.

After 10 minutes pumped well empty on 2.5 gallons water - not a strong refresh rate!

Overgrown Garden area and low power tool - a Sythe!

 We planted few vegetables this year because we plan to travel to Germany this summer and we don't have all the water we need to effectively care for the garden. We grow Asparagus, Green Beans, Jalapeno peppers, and lots of garlic this year. Above the non-planted area has become overgrown so I pulled out the scythe to trim out the garden. Two pictures showing before and one after scything images follow. Hot sweaty work but the tool works quite well. A mower is far more efficient at cutting to a uniform height, but there is a great deal of satisfaction in demonstrating that in a world of very high fuel prices, I have the wherewithal to maintain the garden without needing fuel.

Another view of Greenbeans and overgrown area we didn't plant this year.

Garden after sweaty scything session.

Die Weide Photographic Creek Survey

I get lax about writing in the blog over winter. We visit every weekend to feed Herbie, but not much of import takes place. However, there is news on the bee front. In December, the hive had so few bees that I didn't think it would survive winter. I saw several times that robber bees would come around when we put sugar water out. But last month I was surprised to see the hive very full of bees! I learned though that these may be different bees than the original because they were much more aggressive around the hive than before. But I saw lots of combs filled with fluid so we have hope of getting honey this year!

 

Liquid seen in combs - soon to be honey?

On to the topic of the day. I planned a short visit to feed Herbie, but remained for over two hours because the temperature, though cool, was pleasant and the grey skies lightly sprinkled me with rain. I decided to explore and along the way found new donkey-created paths near the creek. It was then I decided to follow our wettest creek (last to dry and first to fill) from property entry to property exit, snapping pictures along the way. Part of the inspiration was seeing many fish in the pond, some longer than my middle finger. Given the pond dries out nearly every summer, I was astonished to see so many fish there. Reflecting on the size of the fish made me realize that the pond has been filled for a longer period than any time since I bought. Die Weide. The land looks vibrantly alive in early spring when enough moisture is present.

I present the following photographs in geographical order, from the west fence entry into the property, through many turns, into a pond, around a sharp bend and on to the exit out the north property fence. I hope you enjoy this photographic survey of one of Die Weide creeks.

West Fence Creek Entry (upstream facing West)

West Fence Entry inside ~20ft (downstream facing East)

Near creek junction (upstream facing West) Notice riffle section similar to previous pic

Creek Junction. (downstream facing ENE) Same spot as previous pic reverse direction.

Taken on Pond Dam (upstream facing SSW)

Pond Dam with overflow (upstream facing WSW)

Pond Dam with overflow and creek (downstream facing ENE)

Big Creek Bend (downstream facing ENE)

On top of Big Creek Bend gully (downstream facing North)

 To the North of this area a bramble jungle surrounds the creek. After the time spent listening to rain falling in the creek, I know our next bramble hack attack will be to make a path next to the full length of the creek.

Deadfall on creek (downstream left-to-right, camera facing NW)

Creek exit North Fence, low angle from gravel riffle. (downstream facing North)