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a machete is a girl’s best friend

where's the homestead?

Have I bought forest or jungle?

It’s been more than a month since my last visit and the undergrowth has taken over. I got halfway down the trail to the homestead site and… completely lost the trail. A sea of some kind of crop confronted me, waist high and swarming with ticks. Fortunately I had invested in a machete before making the trip and so I was able to cut myself a path through this jungle. I’d never wielded a machete before, but when faced with the choice of wading through tick-infested weeds or walking a nice mown path to one’s cow barn, one quickly learns the way of the machete.

a way in

As I hacked my way through, all sorts of interesting flora and fauna were revealed. First some wild strawberries, hiding in the grass. The fruit was round, bright red and ready, though not very sweet. Still, that firms up one plant identification! (If you remember, I thought I recognised strawberry leaves back in March.) The fauna was much more of a surprise. I was swinging my machete, and oh!

 

turtle in the grass

So nice to see this turtle (probably an eastern box turtle) – it made up for all the ticks. And even if it turns out to be a snapping turtle and will one day get big and vicious, today he/she was very calm. In fact the little beast stuck around for quite a while as I admired it, photographed it (sorry about the slightly wobbly picture quality – my arms were so tired from swinging the machete), slashed my way past it and on to Base Camp.

 

base camp established at the cow barn

You can see the trusty machete leaning against a tree to the left of my pink backpack. The green bucket contains my (by now very decomposing) compost… oh no, I was NOT going to waste that compost.

In the relatively tick-free environment of Base Camp, I ate lunch, and wondered whether to call it a day. But where would I put the compost if I left now? No, onwards and into the homestead site… where I managed to uncover half the fire circle. Note the crop around it, but mostly grass inside.

 

fire circle, grass circle

By now I was getting really tired, but that compost needed to go somewhere. I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to machete my way round to the official compost bin. Instead, I decided to clear a path to the tyres (still waiting for me to plant them up with herbs) and leave the compost in one of them.

 

clear to the tyres, but then...

And that is where I left it. I need to go back in a day or two and cut away more undergrowth. I think I’ll also plant out my tomato and pepper plants in the raised (tyre) beds. Some herbs can go in with them too. That’s a huge simplification of the original plan, but I think it will be more manageable… especially given the time I’ll need to spend taming the vegetation.

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where to start?

Where do you start, when there’s everything to do? I’ll start with some pictures…

the homestead site

This is the homestead site – about half an acre of relatively clear space. From the little I’ve read about permaculture so far, what I should do first is nothing: just watch and wait to see what happens naturally. But I also know that I’d like to start growing my own veg, and eating it this year. The seeds are already starting to arrive… Lovely corn and beans, squash, zucchini, tomatoes: the three sisters survival pack from seed living. So one task I’d set myself for Sunday was to prepare some raised beds. Not that I’ll grow everything in raised beds, but…

discarded old tires

… I have a number of old tyres lurking around the site. Here are two tractor tyres as I found them – one of them is somehow leaning against a sapling; and there’s a third not visible in this shot. They’re all about 4.5′ in external diameter, and while that’s not huge, it’s good enough for raised bed frames, I reckon.

tyres in a new place

These guys are fairly heavy, so I rolled them only as far as I needed to get them into a sunny, open spot. Here they are, in a triskell arrangement, just in front of the only old building still sporting some kind of roof. (Where it overhangs on the outside, I’ve started a wood pile!) Two of the tyres still have a metal inner ring, which bothered me a bit, until I found a site with great advice on using tyres in your garden. (I *love* the internet!) Next week I’ll cut the sidewalls out of these tyres, and finish clearing the ground inside them. For now, it’s partially cleared with some old grain sacks (again found on site) covering the earth to help prohibit new growth.

I also did a bit more clearing up because I kept noticing more and more old bottles and cans, and – weird! – groups of socks knotted together. What’s that about? I’m also a little worried about one of the oldest trees on the site. It’s a beautiful old tree – I’m attached to it already – but it’s dripping water. I can’t tell what kind of tree it is yet without leaves to help identify it, but it may have insect damage… small holes in the area where it’s dripping. And yes, they look D-shaped, so I’m really worried that it might have some borer beetle infestation.

close up of the dripping tree

There are three or four holes visible here if you look carefully (Click on the picture to see full size, and then you can probably zoom in further). I couldn’t capture the dripping in photos, or even that this section of the tree is damp all the way to the ground. But it is. I’ll keep an eye on this. If anyone has any idea what might be happening, please leave a comment.

lovely old tree

And here’s a pic of the whole tree. The ladder is part of an old hunter’s stand, but makes me think of tree houses!