My Summer Project

Apart from a more commercial take to gardening, I had a space in the yard near the house that we had tried to grow grape vines in.  It seemed to be good for the first two years until winter got the upper hand on things and the vines died.  To be honest, they had not gotten very large, the weeds had tried to choke them out on more than one occasion and there was only three plants to begin with.

I decided to take the little area and re-use it for something else.  I ran the roto-tiller through the area, creating a spot about 4 feet by 10 feet.  I added some peat moss to loosen this soil being it was high clay content and then planned out 3 rows.  The two outer rows for pole beans, the center for a row of corn.  I built 2 frames on which to string up some twine for the pole beans, assembled them and set them in the ground.  The frames are about 6 feet high and 8 feet long.

So the one row is a specialty heritage bean called and Annie Jackson.  It is the type of bean that you let dry on the vine then hull the pods and save the bean seed for making baked beans.  They are a mottled beige and burgundy bean so they even look nice as a kitchen display when put in a sealer jar or the like.  The other pole beans are a purple pole bean, good for eating as a string bean, but they grow quite large, almost ten inches!  They don't seem to get tough and being the purple variety, they turn green when you cook them.  Also, I filled in the last few spots with the Sadie's Horse Bean, a Hummingbird attractor with white and red flowers that makes huge pods at maturity.

In the middle, we ran a row of ornamental corn from a leftover seed packet.  It is going well, with the tallest stalk being about 8 feet high!  Since the beans can fix nitrogen into the soil they are a complimentary crop for corn which is a high nitrogen consumer.  I think this is what has caused the enormous growth for the most part, though it is all close to the house and that may be boosting the daily heat levels.  Well enough write-up, I will add some photos to help explain our project that anyone can do with any number of pole bean and corn varieties.  Happy gardening!

Our son at 5'11" picking the purple beans.

Annie Jackson side.

Purple beans and Sadie's Horse Bean side with the corn towering over!

 

Sadie's flower and pod.

Purple bean!

Early pod and white flower of the Annie Jackson.

Always a Job to Do

The last few days we've been repairing the old horse trailer. Lots of rusted out pieces in the front of the trailer so we cut them out and replaced them with plywood panels. Also ran new electrical front to rear and did a bit of welding, riveting and such to fix up some other things like the tack manager door and loose wall panels. There are still a few things such as the fenders which will need replacement, a good scrub and a coat of paint, but it is now functional for the rest of this season.

A short post today, the photos show alot of what is done.

Old fenders and new tires

Wiring renewal

Old sheet steel removed

New manger deck

Repaired Tack Manager door

Tack Manager Floor

Heyday...Hay Day...Hay Week!

Last week we were busy cutting, raking and putting up hay for the winter.

A generous neigbour offered his field of about a six acre size.  The field is unused for the most part, though he said he ran a brush hog through it about 4 years ago.  Quite a few ant hills, lots of little alders or willows and the East end of the field is very wet, though not muddy.  The grass content is low and the weed content high since it is not managed.

I started out cutting the West end and ran into all kinds of issues with the thick undergrowth and some poor mower maintenance on my part.  After taking the contaminated oil out of the slip clutch on the mower and realizing the need to run the mower at a higher RPM, things worked a bit better until the wooden pitman arm broke.  Thankfully, I was able to make a new one quickly in the shop, replace the broken one and carry on.  After that, it was all about learning the grasses, watching the changes in it and listening to the mower labour.

Raking was easy, but needed to be done over 2 days since mowing was done in 2 batches.
We loaded all this raked hay into the wagon by hand as we do not yet own a baler.  This will probably be OK in the long run as a baler would have been hard to run in this field where it was wet.

We have a line on a baler but the current owner is on vacation and we have not been able to make the purchase.  In the meantime, we did buy an old hay elevator (designed for bales) and have it good running order, ready for use.  With loose hay, the elevator is not the right piece of equipment except that I have made a special bucket which loose hay can be put in and sent up the elevator.  We will be trying this in the next day or two, hopefully it will do what we want.

The hay that we have brought home already we just dumped in the main level of the barn.  We will handle it again to get it upstairs but this will ensure it is turned and dried as we don't want it to go mouldy.

In the end, we brought home 11 loads of loose hay, somewhere around 3 tons!