The answer is blowin' in the wind

The recent prepping of a half acre field introduced me to a somewhat unexpected challenge with weed cloth - wind.

In September, with the help of my grass seed farming friend, Zach, I burned the field to kill the weeds. Controlled field burning is a common, and sometimes controversial, practice in Oregon. It's used to both kill weeds and to reduce straw, left from combining, to ash which can be absorbed into the earth. And, it's amazing to watch - hundreds of acres up in flames and then done in minutes (I admit, I like burn season). My little burn wasn't nearly as impressive, but still exciting.

After the burn, the soil was tilled and I spread dolomite lime to increase the pH. We don't have the proper spreader for lime, so I improvised - throwing 500 pounds of dolomite from the back of the truck by hand. Really, it only took a few hours and wouldn't have been bad at all, except the guys across the road were also spreading lime on their field with a gigantic tractor that can do hundreds of acres in a few hours. I saw them sitting on the back of their truck watching me and I knew they'd have a story for their wives at dinner - some crazy chick spreading lime out of the back of her truck by hand! This is not the first time our little farm, in the middle of huge grass seed and Christmas tree farms, has been the source of amusement for our neighbors.

Finally the weed cloth. I marked out the rows, 24 each and 110 ft long, and we began rolling it out. Nothing too difficult - get it straight and pin it down every 3 feet with U-shaped clips. It's a lot of bending and stooping, but four of us finished in a day. November came and so did the wind -30 mph wind. The weekend of our Autumn Market, a bit of cloth pulled up, then some more, until long sheets were just whipping around down there, hanging on by four or five clips. Over Thanksgiving and my dad and I repaired the damamge - more clips and closer together. Looked great and I was certain it would last.

It did, until the wind returned over the holidays. More weed cloth streamers whipping around right where anyone driving by could see. Comments from a few neighbors and I knew folks were watching and waiting to see if it would just blow away altogether. A few weeks ago we pinned it down again. And, this weekend the winds returned... so far so good.

Christmas finally ends with a chain saw

Silverton's Christmas traditions are right out of a Norman Rockwell painting and we could barely believe it the first year we were here, but now we're hooked and seem to get deeper into it each year. Right after Thanksgiving, a huge 60 foot tree is erected in the middle of Main St (right outside Tom's office window, as it happens). There's actually a manhole in the middle of the street for the trunk (chain saws needed to trim it to fit) and all kinds of wires connected to near-by buildings for stability. It is decorated and the town gathers on the first Friday in December to sing carols and officially light the tree (think Santa in a cherry-picker waving magic fairy dust). In addition to this program, another tree is decorated at the "Santa house", where Santa holds court for the month of December. This tree seems much smaller and it is. But, as I found out when they were looking for a volunteer to remove this smaller tree, it's not all that small. Foolishly, I offered to haul the Santa house tree up to our burn pile - "I'll just throw it on top of my SUV on the way home". Ah, no the tree is 20' - you'll need a chainsaw and your truck. Well, we had a chainsaw and a truck, so I'd get Tom to help me. Yesterday, we sawed the thing in half, sawed off the pallet and supports that were holding it up and barely fit it into 2 loads, up to the burn pile - the base of the tree was almost 12" across and it weighed a ton! All this was just prep work - next year we'll help put up and take down the big tree on Main St... guess I'd better learn how to use the chain saw!

follow your dream...

Confession #1 - I have no idea what I'm doing with this blog. Well, not exactly true, but I do feel a bit awkward about this first posting (and I'm sure I will for sometime). From the beginning I will also confess that I wont post every day - often, but not every day.

In the fall of 2001, Tom and I and our two dogs, Eloise and Bogart, left life in Denver to pursue a dream of farm living and small towniness in rural Oregon. Admittedly, for all the research we did, nothing could prepare us for what living in the country would really be like. It turns out life on a lavender farm suits us well... we've learned a heck of a lot about farming (in case you're wondering, it's an incredible amount of work), made many good friends we love as family and have had many mis-adventures along the way. Hopefully, you'll laugh along as we continue the journey, learn more than you ever wanted to know about lavender and share inspiration for keeping life simple while enjoying the ride.