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I Heart Trees



This weekend it was all about the wood at 5R Farm. We built cedar raised beds for the garden, planted trees, and gathered logs for firewood. The first chore on the to do list was building the raised beds for the veggie garden. We decided to build them with cedar after Sean found a good deal on rough sawn 2×10’s. The vegetable garden is really starting to take shape after a day of raised bed building and composted horse manure shoveling. There are four 4×8 foot and three 4×4 foot beds for growing the smaller veggies which will include swiss chard, bok choy, lettuce, spinach, asparagus, strawberries, onions, leeks, garlic, and basil. The larger veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and peppers will be grown in less formal raised mounds, and of course we’ll have a big patch of raspberries and a patch of blueberries.

While the boys were hard at work building and filling the raised beds, I was planting native trees and shrubs. As you may recall from a previous post, I ordered  several dozen bare root plants a few weeks ago. We picked them up on Saturday, so this was the weekend to get them in the ground. We planted 10 cedar, 5 noble fir, and almost 40 flowering shrubs. The planting took longer than I initially thought it would when I ordered them since many of the plants had surprisingly well developed root systems for $2 plants! Luckily, Sean realized that I would need some help planting all of these plants, and he didn’t even tease me about my plant purchasing frenzy. We got most of them planted this weekend, but I’ve still got a couple dozen Oregon white oak, Nootka rose, kinnikinnick, and bleeding heart to put in next weekend.

The last chore of the day was loading a dozen or so large log rounds from down the road and bringing them up to our place to be used for firewood next season. Our neighbor cut down a couple of dead trees last week and graciously offered to split the wood with us and the other two neighbors on the shared private road. We were glad to have a free source of wood since wood is our primary heat source at the farm. The other two neighbors got to the wood first, so of course the rounds they left for us were the biggest and heaviest. Sean made quick work of splitting the log rounds with a wedge and a sledgehammer and hauled them up to the woodshed to be cut another day. By this time we were ready to head back to Portland, tuck the chickens in, and get in some R&R after a hard weekend’s work!

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