Slope stabilization and barn columns - Check!

On Sunday, 3/27, we finished the slope stabilization/erosion blanket project. Turns out that we had only gotten about 1/3 of it done on the first day. At first we were laughing and joking about the project but by 2:30 or 3:00 we were exhausted. Bill is in incredible shape and can climb up and down hills in mud all day long - he is going to be a great farmer!

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. This was a lot of work, effort and expense - so we are hopeful that we can stablize the slope AND get ahead of the invasives. We're going to have to learn how to do a burn because there is no way we can mow this area. Additionally, Bill finished the columns in the barn and has started cabling it together. Using wire rope and come-alongs he is pulling the areas with broken columns back together. I wasn't there when he was doing it (was working at the church/house) but he said it was creaking and groaning. I think I am glad I wasn't there!

One of the new concrete footings

We are in the upper part of the barn and sliding the beam down thru a hole in the floor to rest on the footing down in the lower barn.

This is all the siding from the summer kitchen that I took down a couple of years ago

Most of the beams that you can see in this photo are new

(Great light coming thru the slats!)

Bill is standing on the scaffolding and chain sawing through one of the old oak timbers to install the new beams

Photo of the beam resting on the new footing

Rural Landowner Conference

On Saturday, March 26th there is a rural landowner conference in Grant County. We have two friends that will be presenting one of the breakouts. (Driftless Market and Two Onion Farm) Other items of interest - Barbara Ingham, the guru of food preservation. A very exciting opportunity that we are looking forward to - especially since we missed MOSES this year. http://grant.uwex.edu/files/2010/12/RLC-Brochure.pdf Our MOSA application has been mailed! It is very exciting to be pursuing organic certification. We are in Wisc and tomorrow we try some frost seeding of a slope stabilization native mix. We don't want to re-create this previous mistake. Over the seed we are installing an erosion blanket. It will be a long hard day of work - can't wait! And the Family Farmed Expo is next weekend. Hope to make some connections for future sales.

It begins for real

Bill has turned his steely-eyed attention to the farm with a vengeance!

Last week our little farm saw the excavator who prepared the new home site and trucked the soil to the new workshop area as well as trenching the driveway.

We also had an electrician remove our overhead lines and bury them in the driveway trench. New 220 service to the barn. New panel in the small house. The rural electric coop also came out to reconnect our service.

Additionally, a concrete truck with 4 yards of concrete. Got the footings poured, reinforced the culvert and the hoghouse. We did not get the buttresses done.

As we pulled out of the driveway on Friday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. - it started to snow. We finished with no time to spare.

We have a future home site!

Small house with cleared future home site on the right

New homesite tucks into the bluff - we hit stone

Excavating the driveway to bury the electrical lines

Concrete truck

Poured excess concrete on the high side of the culvert to control some erosion

Additional extra concrete was poured around the stone foundation of the hoghouse - this area occasionally has high water (isn't it funny that I have never noticed that bad paint job until I looked at this photo?)

Trenching the driveway

Trench for the electric

Scenic Rivers arrives (our electric co-op). They reconnected our electric service to our new box and panel

New service

No more overhead lines!

The next morning it looked like this -

A learning experience (aka a Mistake)

The seasonal creek has been flooding badly the past several years. It flows from several high points and the creek runs underneath the driveway through a culvert. This culvert was old, small and a bit crushed. We hired an excavator to clean up the creek area, dig out the old culvert and replace it. We put in a huge culvert.

Here's the problem though. It rained a lot late last fall so his work got put off until early November. He did a great job but now we have blank soil on the creekbed and had no time to get anything planted before the spring melt rushes through. Sigh... it will take more of our soil downstream.

I am investigating a prairie mix for wet areas. Perhaps incorporating a straw mat or even a erosion mat - although I'm not hip about burying a poly-tye of material in the soil. Spring will be interesting.