Life goes on - Summer 2018

That is a nice looking garden Al, how long have you been using the cinder block beds? I came up with the same idea, and it seems to work well. It ends up being cheaper than wood sides, especially with the narrow 6" blocks. I assume they will last a long time, but I am only on my first season in my new garden area. I like the idea of mulching over the winter, too, I will have to try that.

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I bet you don’t do rolls in that hilly terrain :smile:

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Hi Jo, I live in West Virginia,aka ‘‘the mountain state’’ we roll up hay here, 4wd tractor, bale up, and down the hills, just have to be careful where you unload, or it will end up clear at the bottom, likely through a fence. :weary:

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Hi Al, our Norwegian neighbours have the “through the fence” problems here :smile:
But looking closely at @KristijanL’s pic I now realise he was aiming at the rain. Like @kmrland said, we could use some of that up here even though we’re far from @Wayne’s drought last year.

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Yup that rain looked like a sad day to me the hay already looks pretty brown too… like it wasn’t the first rain storm.
Some of my neighbors where haying the other day I haven’t started yet probably will cut on the next spell of good weather though.
My biggest hat customer just closed down his horse riding business and is selling their horses so I guess I better either find some other hay customers or some money to buy more beef cows… and fix a barn to put them in… too bad I was selling most all of my excess hay 2 miles up the road.

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A few pictures from South Korea. Plenty of trees. A few billboards got in the way LOL interesting city .

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Hello Robert .

Thanks for the pictures, also was great getting to meet you and your Dad at Argos :grinning:

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Ha, you wuld be surprised :smile: (baling on hills that is)

Dan, good eye! Its true, the hay was already pissed on once. I just finished turning this one when the storm came :cry: today its gona be all fox colour and only good for bedding…

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Althugh this year is not wery hay making friendly, its preety much ideal in other ways. Good winter, warm summer and enough rain every other day to keep it all well watered. If all proceeds at this pase, we are looking at record harvests. Apples, potatos, mushrooms, plumbs… and l must say l think l ever saw cherrys so full and healthy!

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It was great meeting y’all too!!! It was a real shot in the arm for all of my family to be able to see woodgas in action! I’m never going to forget my first woodgas ride.

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Those are some nice looking cherries. One thing I want to do is plant an orchid here. We are in the middle of a spell where there is one nice day and 2 rainy days and repeat here right now. It sure does make it hard to do too much outside.
But it is pretty typical for June to be a rainy month and hard to hay.

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The first year I’m getting pears. I expect they will grow quite a lot yet, they only flowered a month ago. I’ve waited 8 years to see fruit, the tree is probably 15ft high. If we can grow apples, pears, cherries, plums and apricots up here, you should do alright investing in some fruit trees.

On the other end of the scale, anyone hear of haskap / honeyberry? The earliest producing berry around, comparable to blueberry in taste. They are thriving on poor soil in severe climate up on my land.

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Those are one of the fruits I want to try because I think they would work well with rhubarb like strawberries do. My rhubarb tends to go by before the strawberries are ready

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Based on my experience, I would say definitely give them a go, they are as tough as could be, but will benefit from cardboard to block out competitive growth while getting established. Unfortunately there will be a southern limit to where they can grow, but those folks have peaches… :slight_smile:

Some reading tells me that June softwood cuttings root fairly well, so they should be similar to currants or gooseberry, you could make a hedge…

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I always wished we could grow such things, but except for some goose berries on the mountain, we’re pretty much stuck with blackberries, dew berries, mulberries, and elderberries.Most of our fruit won’t make it most years other than those, due to the warming/frosting cycles here.

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I guess we should maybe start another thread for this topic, but I won’t yet. Probably let Jakob do that. But he got that Dakota the other day before Argos. My dad who took him to get it should have known better, but they did not take the drive shafts out before towing on a car dolly. SO the transmission is messed up now. Not sure why he didn’t do it, but my dad seems to forget things since he went through a diabetic coma a couple years ago. Anyway,

Does anyone happen to have a workign trans and possibly a transfer case to fit a 92 dakota extended cab you want to part with?.

Well with mulberries and elderberries you have 2 of my favorites. I have both and they make great jelly.

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It is a small field beside my house so I only got 60 bales but I pulled all my equipment out of storage and the only issue i had was a broken yoke on the baler pto shaft which I was able to get locally and replace today. The baler didn’t even miss a single knot you couldn’t ask for a better start to the haying season.

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They both grow wild all around us, you don’t need to plant them. Just go picking when ripe. Blackberry bushes are along the river. This year will be a bumper crop with the high river water lasting so long.
Bob

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Yup here elderberries and grapes are wild all over my property. I have a mulberry tree but I don’t think it is long for this world it seems to be unhealthy for some unknown reason. I will have to get a cutting of the new growth and try to start another one. Black cherries which are small and bitter are another wild fruit here which is great for jelly.

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