To work the Land

It is summer, 2015.

I live in Rhinelander, Wisconsin now. It is the town I grew up in.  Much different in many ways than I recall.   I decided to begin my blog again as a way to record my first summer of really trying to get into living life here and managing my parents' land.  While I spend last summer living here, I was swirling with the task of adapting to a new home and so many adjustments. I was overwhelmed.

This summer, I can use my time and energy to garden, maintain, and get to know the beautiful property that my parents have enjoyed for 30 years now.

Wild Irises have always been my favorite.

Today I arrived before 7:30 to start a beautiful day of work, intent on finishing the work of putting in the garden. Before I got to work, I enjoyed seeing a family of Canadian geese (two adults, 6 very large kids) walk along the grass by the dock before entering the river to swim away.  I went down to get a good look. It isn't often I've seen families of geese in the Wisconsin River up here.

Today is June 12, 2015 and it was sunny and mid-70s.  Beautiful after yesterday's rain.  

The garden soil is quite sandy and easy to work.  I hauled several loads of compost from the trusty pile behind the shop (any guesses how old that pile is?) to boost the nutrients in the soil.  Today, I got in corn, beans, and several types of potatoes to compliment the onions, peppers, basil, garlic, tomatoes, lettuce, beets, and chard.  Additionally, I planted the squash and cuke plants.  I'm using landscape fabric to combat the weeds. Looks nice now and I hope it does the trick.

Pete stopped by and let me know that he and Randy would be over shortly to net fish in the ponds.  The real motive was to collect minnows, but Pete was hoping to discover trout.  He indicated that Dad had stocked trout in the pond around 2012.  The minnow gathering was entertaining.  We found no trout or any other game or panfish, just minnows that Pete called Dace, both green and yellow.  New to me.

Pete and Randy mostly collected in the big pond near the road.  It was pretty deep and Pete fell in over his waders and we all got a kick out that.  Since he has fallen through the ice twice already, I wasn't too concerned. 

Pete and Iozi decided to see if we could start a blue gill pond, and committed to adding them to the first pond as we catch them. 

Before I left for the day, I needed to get a watering system going and re-fence the garden.   Given that both pumps were broken (cracked from not being properly winterized), I used a hose from the spigot near the birdfeeders.  It worked great. 

For now, the fencing consists of a rabbit fence which is made of green plastic and 24" high.  An electric fence at eye level, and some mylar ties to hopefully scare deer.  The fence has 3 sides of actual 48 inch mesh, topped with electric.  The side facing the apple trees is the one that is suspect.

There was one set of deer tracks in there where I arrived today.  Let us hope it is the last.