Demolition!

We're getting down to the last of the demolition projects on the farm. This old shed was near one corner of the front field. The wooden supports had been eaten by horses and the siding was just particle board that had been painted. It didn't have any foundation, just some old treated telephone poles and was not able to be moved to a location where we could use it.

So we tore it down. After sawing it in half Ken pushed it over with the tractor so we could reach to tear it all apart into pieces that will fit into the small construction dumpster. Ken filled up one dumpster and we've got maybe 1 or 2 more loads before it's all gone. None of the parts were able to be salvaged, they were all rotting and in very bad shape.

Once this is gone there is only one more real demolition job, the removal of the old apple cellar that is caving in. That may take several more years, it's going to be a big job once we tackle it.

More Disking

Several passes later and the front field is looking pretty good. Still need to disk it once more to break up theclods but we should be ready to plant later this week. As soon as it's planted and marked we'll have to hurry to get the irrigation pipes set up and get water on it.

The field below the guest house in the old pear orchard is also coming along. More rocks turned up there. The horses are still in that field and they were not to happy with the tractor work.

Disking the Field

Our front west field is being disked now to prepare it for planting. We don't have a big enough tractor or disk to do this sort of work on the fields so we hire the job out to custom farmers in our area.

We're going to put it back to permanent irrigated pasture. We will be planting a mix of grasses this year that we can either graze or hay as needed. It's unlikely we'll get much feed from the planting this year but we can let it grow all summer and then graze it off this fall after a major frost and it stops growing. We will eventually add in clover but not this first year in case we have to do any spraying to kill broadleaf weeds. We can always frost seed clover in the spring if the weed load isn't too bad.

We had originally hoped to be able to do rotations of grass and various annual forages but all we do when we disturb the ground is plow up a nice new crop of rocks so for us a permanent pasture is the only viable option. It will be nice to have this all done though. It will give us many more options for grazing for the sheep and we might even get a bit of hay in some years. Our front pear orchard field will be done as well.