A Time for Doing

Note the quarter in the foreground on the left for scale.

There have not been many blog entries, because we have been occupied with rushing around trying to batten the hatches for winter. We've had a series of projects, some of which have been caused by major setbacks.

I'd been working on the paths crossing the bottom of the hill since early September. They are finally on the very edge of being complete.

The garlic needed to be planted this week, which necessitated fencing in one of the moved 4x4 raised beds to keep the squirrels off. But that's done.

You can clearly see the garlic here underneath the two inches of leaf mulch

One thing that we were not planning on doing was moving three raised beds that we'd built next to the garage. You see, we have been facing a mouse infestation. The pest control people suggested that putting the beds there gave them shelter. You could clearly see the little neon signs pointing at cracks in the pavement and the bricks at the foundation that said "Eat at Joe's" and "Girls! Girls! Girls!" with arrows pointing into our domicile. 

So we frantically unpacked and moved those beds, as light dwindled and other projects remain unfinished.

Over the past two days, Kiki and I received two dump trucks containing four full cords of split and cut oak firewood. It turns out that, according to the U.S. Forest Service, "A standard, full cord of wood is a volume of 128 cubic feet, measured as a pile 8 feet long, 4 feet high, and 4 feet wide. A full cord can weigh up to 5,000 pounds."

We thus moved about 20,000 pounds of wood from our front to our back yard.

This is twice as much wood as last year, and we hope that it will be enough to heat the house from November through to April. Take that Xcel Energy.

And there's much, much more to do. The beds have still (mostly) not been prepped for next year. There are a couple of squash, lots of beets and carrots that need to be brought in. And it grows darker earlier every day.