Our friend John went deer hunting on the east side (over the Cascade Mountains to eastern Washington) and left Rick the keys to his excavator. Those of you who have read the blog before know that our soil has LOTS of rocks. Big rocks. Digging holes by hand in those rocks is not fun. We had a whole list of things needing to be done, so we decided to make good use of the equipment while we had it.
Rick is digging the hole for a new apple tree. It will be a pretty big hole, but that will give us room to put in amendments and fertilizer. And best of all, the rocks are already out!
There is a group of small pine trees growing out into the area we use as a driveway to the back. We wanted to take them out to make more room to drive to the back pastures.
Pulling out the pine trees.
Hiding among the pine trees is a huckleberry bush we wanted to save to transplant.
Rick scoops it up very gently.
And the wild huckleberry is ready to plant in the orchard area behind the fence. Hopefully that will keep the bears out so we don’t have to share all our berries with them.
We also had a couple of pine trees along the driveway we wanted to take out.
Rick is very excited about getting it out in one piece.
With the pines out of the way we have room to plant some Japanese Maples to give us some more fall color.
We are going to put a row of berries along the orchard fence. So far we have four blueberries, a gooseberry and the wild huckleberries we will transplant. We have never tasted a gooseberry, but folks around here say they are very good.
It was almost dark, but he had time to dig out the two rows for asparagus and rhubarb. So, we got a lot of holes dug that would have taken a very, very long time to dig by hand. John may never leave us the keys again.
Heck, I’ve never taken the keys out of ANYTHING on the ranch before… and I’m starting to think maybe i will now! Jeez… Would it fit on a trailer behind my pickup? mark
Rick looks like a man on a major mission in the pictures. I assume Brenda was standing way off in the SAFE distance!!!! Your garden area looks like it is going to be very nice when you get it completed. Filled with lots of good things to eat!!! Make sure Yogi does not come and fill his picnic baskets up when you not looking! It looks like you have a lot of rocks to work with. People back here in Indiana pay big $$$ for rocks like that to landscape with. Your ranch is looking great!!!!
Okay, John did actually bring the excavator to me to use. It was just sitting in his yard doing nothing so I thought a little excersie would do it some good!
I do have the trailer and the keys so if you can use it and get it back in two days I would be glad to sub-lease it if the price was right!
Opps! John just came back from the hunting trip and he is not in a very good mood, No Deer! He is wanting to shoot something, borrow at your own risk!!