March was a blur for me. It was buying, selling, and moving homes. I got so little done. But April I started the month overwhelmed, and slowly found my way.

It started rainy, and ended rainy. And in the middle we actually had some nice, if very windy, days. It feels odd to leave the island, now that we are back. Sometimes I do have to go off island, but all I want is to be back home. With the first week all rain, I spent that time unpacking, as fast as I could.

One of the frustrating parts of moving is not having appliances hooked up. At least I had a washer. Hand drying…well, while I can do it, I don’t exactly miss it. It’s easier in summer to say the least.

On the sunny days we started noticing the many tiny lizards, which are native, and in most areas are threatened by development. Each corner outside, even in the fields, has its own lizard. At the end of the month we spied one tiny baby lizard as well. Noted also were natives snakes (they are not poisonous) and many, many fat worms.

Alistaire and a lizard skin we found. The little feet are the best part.

We finally found the missing blue box of cords, and we got our solar panels back into work. I had missed it, feeling guilty while charging phones off the wall.

With the greenhouse set to be so far from the house, we upgraded the main deck box and picked up a new one (by Keter, similar to this one). The old one will be at the greenhouse, with one panel and one of the deep-cycle batteries, so we can run the fans off of it. It’s also nice, because unlike the Rubbermaid one we used the past 3-4 years, this one is rated for multiple adults to sit on top of it. Being near the house, that is a bonus. The “wood” is also paintable (we picked it up at Costco).

Epic Tomatoes, you say? Hard to pass up that kind of title!

The beehives were put out in April, finding a level spot was the first part. We brought our handcrafted wooden bench with us from the old house. It gets the hives off the ground and is more stable than cement blocks.

Stinging Nettles, something I can find easily here, especially by the well head. Once we picked what wanted, they got cut down, as the field was over grown.

In the final week of April, the giant maple tree awoke for spring. Near it is where we put in the compost center, and the temporary home for archery practice.

Madrona Tree in bloom. Many of the madrona trees have a blight, but they still flower amazingly.

Near the house, I noticed a few small and sad trees. I pruned the three trees, and fertilized them, something I have to think had not been ever done. The reward is one is a Lilac, which just started opening. With some care, I hope it takes off and grows strong.

Native Lupine, growing wild. It grows in sunny areas, especially in ditches.

And if anything, April was the month of learning to build fences.

To keep these little friends out. And their cousins, the deer.

Other items done? We got in fenced mini-beds for blueberries and golden raspberries, cleaned up the patio garden and planted herbs. Got in a small tomato bed. Started the work for the new location for the greenhouse, and measured out the first “big” bed down low, in the fields. We got a lot accomplished in our first full month on the homestead. Even if it feels I did nothing at times.

As we come to our first month on the new homestead I still have a ton of boxes to put away, pictures to hang and a groove to find, but I can at least say I have completed another farm project for the homestead. While I haven’t seen them yet, there is plenty of evidence of the local island deer (a ton of poop in the grass field over the septic field).

The area to be worked is close to the house, so less deer traffic. It had a severely unkempt strip of forest between it and the driveway. I am still working on that issue. We did at least get the lowest part started on cleaning out. The forest was over the well house, and that was an issue we couldn’t put off. A few more trees will be coming out, with many more branches cut back. The goal is a perimeter around the well house, and no branches below 7 feet off the ground, so we can walk through the forest.

I had already been working when I realized there were no before photos. The ground cover is a mix of Salal, native blackberry vines (the ground trippers), evergreen huckleberries, nasty holly bushes and a few other items. The forest is ultra thick – no thinning – as it grew the past 12 or so years. No light gets in, so the interior is dark in daylight and everything is dead. Only on the outside is it green.

Heavily cleared out, suddenly one can see my brother’s car parked by an outbuilding. We can now see through parts of this forest strip, and see the driveway and outbuilding finally. My brother has been a huge help to me, with clearing it.

The house is built on the high spot on the land, and it runs downhill sharply at first. The patio off the house is the first level, then a drop to a second level, then a sharp drop to the third level (which then it gets mellow). For now I have a growing branch pile on the side of the well house, we have a chipper coming that attaches to our BCS tractor. When it shows up, then the real clearing activity will commence.

For now, we have opened up the forest to about 6 feet into it, and 7 feet high. It’s amazing how just that little lets in light.

Lets start with the steel head fence post driver. If you are putting in U posts or T posts, even just a few, the driver is more than worth the cost. In our old house, I used mallets to pound forever on posts, with aching arms. The driver? It sinks them within a few easy bangs. And more so, no missed blows. The posts go in straighter, and no smooshed thumbs.

When we moved I brought in a number of Golden Raspberry and Blueberry plants with us. The GR I had started from spring starts last year, from older plants I left behind (some were 4 to 6 years old). 6 were ready to be put in the ground, and will produce this year.

U posts lined up.

With these beds I am being lazy. It’s mostly moss, due to the trees having shaded so much before cut back happened. So we dug holes and planted. I like to add in small tomato cages, preferably coated ones, for GR’s. They grow upright, and don’t need to have canes trained, but the young canes can use some support.

A great use for the piles of cardboard that keep coming out of the house daily. Many boxes I gave away, but there are so many….I decided to use them to weed smother. I lay a layer, then add a few more layers. Thankfully we had rain over the past few days, which sogged it out, so less likely to shift. Still, we used stones on top to weight out.

On the middle level we planted blueberry plants, dropping in 6 there (for a total of 12 plants brought with us). We dug holes, and planted.

Again, we used cardboard to smother.

Since the berry beds are near the house, I used shorter fence for now. I am not worried a ton about the deer there, and I’d also the gardens to be dog free. If we had aggressive deer, the fencing would be MUCH higher. In this case I used metal gardening fence, similar to this. I used 6 4-foot high U posts per bed. This plastic would also work well.

I used zip ties to attach the fencing to the U posts, cinching tight, then trimming the ends.

Now then, how does one put in a gate? That is easy and cheap? At our local hardware store I was chatting with one of the ladies in the garden section and she mentioned she had seen an idea online using bamboo trellis and I realized I had brought 2 of those with us during the move. I had used them last year for trellising cucumbers.

I attached one side using a ton of zip ties and can open and close the gate. Is it classy looking? Well, no. But it works, and I can get in and out easily, as needed. Since I wont need in often, I closed the other end for now with a loose zip tie. I will replace it with a Velcro strip later or something else, once we are in picking season. All I cared is the plants were fenced off and I was done!

The final tasks are more cardboard (maybe I should go unpack more boxes….) and once the chipper is here, I will produce a ton of mulch, and smother the cardboard with it. It will look nicer then, more complete.

As we moved into our new place, I felt overwhelmed on many levels. Where do you even start, when it is ALL overgrown? To put it bluntly, the owners had done no maintainance for years outside, no matter what tales they spun during the sale (which, yes, we knew). My theory says it had been 5 years or more since anything had even been trimmed back. Looking at sat views, at one time the entire land had been cleared, most likely as they started building. Since then, the lack of forest stewardship had been bad.

I had brought up a truck load of plants with us, from our old house, ones that I didn’t want to leave behind (though most of it was left behind).

The plants ranged from blueberries I had pulled out of the ground last fall, to golden raspberry plants I grew from my master plants, to herbs I grew from seeds. The plants had been sitting on the stone patio, waiting for me.

Gnarly old bushes. Some I could ID, others not so easily. The one thing I felt bad about was pulling the spring bulbs. It wasn’t easy to save them though.

The patio was overgrown, with evergreens hanging over one side. Various old bushes and extremely thorny rose bushes. Moss everywhere, from a lack of sun.

The wooden railing fence was a nightmare waiting to happen. It was rotten and just resting on the posts. This was one of the first things we removed. I didn’t want the kids, or guests, to think it was safe to lean against. And yes, that was field grass growing there.

Then the removal of 5 to 10 years worth of weeds started. They had layed down yard fabric, and put soil over it. Not mulch. Soil. So I had to pull back roots, heavily matted, first, remove rotting fabric, then more roots under. Yard fabric isn’t an evil, if used right. It wasn’t here.

Progress made. We were going to pull out the shrub and found it had roots under the patio, so much hand work was required. In the far right, the green stuff being ripped out was Salal. It’s native and does a great job of hillside stabilizing. Meaning? It has awful roots to pull out. It had grown up the retention area, and taken root into the bed.

Shrub removed, and plants going in.

Finally coming into looking good.

There is still more to do on the far side. One giant bush remains, as does much moss, and over hanging trees.

However, in the end we got in 6 blueberry bushes, and many of the herbs that were brought along. I have even picked up a few replacements, of things left behind. (For example, I had to leave behind 4 beds of garlic and 1 of shallots, so I planted 4 garlic and 6 shallot bulbs I picked up. Not enough of course, but just to have some will make this summer better!)

There is something about getting this small project done. It makes me feel better and more in control. There is so much the land needs done, but at least I can say I got something done! (And got plants in the ground so they can make roots) And more so, the front of the home looks nicer. And I won’t lie…the patio will be wonderful to sit on now come summer time.