Six Plantings -- 2 May 08 -- I was dreading this trip to the land, because my last trip was such a disaster. But I had to go because my seedlings from St. Lawrence came: two black walnuts and two highbush cranberries, plus I had left two Amelanchier x grandiflora in a pot up there because the place I wanted to plant them was still under two feet of snow.
This trip went a lot better. I knew that I could drive more than a mile in before I had to get out and walk, I found a nice place to leave the car, and most of the snow was melted off the access road. This time, instead of being covered with snow, the land was covered with water -- the central trail was a stream and there were pools everywhere. One of the places I had planned to put a walnut was totally submerged, and the other was awfully wet.
I went ahead and used the less swampy spot, and I dug a new hole in a much drier spot for the other walnut. Last spring the walnuts survived the wet -- it was the dry summer that nearly killed them all. I might use the plastic milk jug with thumbtack trick this summer. I figure if I can get them through two or three years their taproots will find ground water.
The highbush cranberry is a species I specifically selected to go in spots that are swampy in the spring, so I planted both of them in holes of water which I then filled up with dirt and compost. And I put the Amelanchiers on either side of the path going up to the hut site from the trail. They're probably the most decorative thing I've planted, but still with good fruit.
Also I walked around and checked out the other plants. The good news is, all six apples and four cherries have a shot at survival. The worst off is the Ashmeads apple, which would be finished except that last summer it made a sprout from the bottom which I didn't cut, because I planned to use a rooter pot to separate it from the main tree and see what happens if I grow Ashmeads on its own roots. Now I'll have to leave it as the last surviving part of the tree!
The bad news is, both peaches appear to be dead. I've grown Veteran peach from two nurseries in two locations and both died, so I won't try that variety again. But the big surprise was the Reliance peach, which had doubled in trunk diameter since I planted it, and last year produced five delicious peaches. It didn't seem to be sick, and this winter was not especially cold, just super-snowy. So I have no idea what killed it. Both peaches were also from bargain nurseries, so I will continue to try peaches but next time from Raintree.
Epic -- 14 April 08 --
"Epic" is a rock climbing term for a climb that has unforeseen complications and takes much longer than expected. This is the road on the way in, which I did expect, so I had parked the car back at the edge of the pavement and set out on foot over two miles of dirt roads. At this point I was still barefoot, but a bit later the road passed through a shady area and was covered with ice, so I had to put boots on.
Then, after another muddy stretch, I came to something I did not expect. With a half mile to go, the road ended -- there was nothing but a foot path through the snow. At the final fork, the path went the other way, and I was walking through two foot deep snow where no human had passed in months, only a moose. Sometimes I could stay on top and sometimes my feet sank in. The strange thing was, it was a warm sunny day, at least 60F (16C) with occasional wind that felt like 75.
When I came in sight of the land, the snow was gone off the north hill but still deep in the low areas. Here's a detail from the photo I took. The outhouse is looking good, the tarp is still covering my wood, but to the left of that is the dead fridge I use for storage -- on its side! Apparently it was knocked over by a bear, maybe months ago.
I pushed it back up, and now I just had to open the combination lock. I had put it on as a purely psychological deterrent against human thieves, and I had written the combination on the back, in case I forgot it, and so that smart thieves wouldn't break the latch, which would only take seconds with a hammer. But I didn't want to break the latch, and the ink on the back had been dissolved in melting snow, and now I couldn't remember the combination!
I know a trick for opening Master locks -- you can feel out the third number, and the first two numbers have a certain mathematical relationship to the third, so you only have to try less than 100 combinations. But the lock was partially corroded so I couldn't feel the third number. I thought I remembered it was 18, and that at least one other number was in the 20's, so I tried a bunch, but nothing worked. Then I tried making a shim with a calendar card from my wallet, but it was both too thick and too weak -- you really need an aluminum can, which I didn't have. Finally, I noticed that the back plate was flimsy, and I pried it off with my Hori Hori digging tool. Behind that was a much stronger plate, but there was an opening through which I could look in and see the wheels, so now I could get the combination by turning the dial until the gaps lined up in the right spot. 6-16-38 -- my memory had completely failed!
Inside the fridge was a mess. Everything was wet, I had about $30 in books which were ruined, all the cardboard was moldy, and the silica gel crystals I was using to keep it dry were scattered everywhere. Luckily, most of the food was in glass jars, which were all intact and sealed. The bear had also found my smaller Coleman cooler, figured out the latch, and scattered its contents all over the ground, but that food was also in glass jars, which the bear couldn't open and wasn't smart enough to break. Praise the jar!
Dealing with the bear damage probably took two hours, and then I still had to plant the trees: one Arctic Jay nectarine, one Tomcot apricot, two Autumn Brilliance serviceberry hybrids, and a goumi. But the holes I dug last fall to plant them in were still hidden under three feet of snow! For the nectarine, I just dug a new hole in a snow-free location where my Veteran peach died two years ago -- hopefully it wasn't the location that killed it! But for the apricot I had to find the hole.
I started digging where I thought it would be, and it wasn't. The snow was soft and wet -- easy to dig the shovel into, but pretty heavy. And I didn't have a snow shovel, just a regular shovel. There was no way I was going to dig up a whole 20 by 20 foot area, and anyway nowhere to put the snow. So then I got the idea of using one of the copper pipes left over from the spring project to probe for the hole. It was like playing Battleship. But I still couldn't find it, and I started to doubt my memory of even digging the hole. I persisted, and when I finally found it, I should have trusted my past self, because the location made a perfect equilateral triangle with the two cherry trees.
Here's the apricot in its new home. The goumi hole was easier to find. But another problem was filling the holes. Both of them had mounds of fill dirt piled nearby, but I didn't know in which direction, and I wasn't going to dig three foot deep snow in a three foot radius to find them, so I had to haul in dirt from other places. Also, I had planned to improvise the locations of the serviceberries, but I couldn't do that in the snow. Luckily they were both small plants, so I put them in a pot with soil, where they should do fine for another month.
I almost forgot the worst news: my apple trees were nearly destroyed. As far as I can figure, it happens like this: snow falls six feet deep, the limbs of the young trees are embedded in the snow, and then over time the snow compacts, and the limbs get pulled downward and broken off. Almost all the side branches on the apple trees were broken off where they met the trunk, and I lost a few cherry tree branches too. I don't even know how the smaller plants did because they're still buried. My whole orchard project might be like a suicide military invasion, where I just keep throwing plants in the ground year after year, and eventually a few lucky and strong ones will make it through.
Like everyone, I wish I knew just how hard and how far this system is going to collapse. Because if it's hard or deep, the land is too valuable to give up for any price, but if it's slow and shallow, homesteading is too much fucking work, and I should wait a few years for the dollar to stabilize, sell the land to some rich person from Asia, and use the money to buy a little house in the city. All I ever really wanted was to have my own place.
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Epic -- 14 April 08 --
"Epic" is a rock climbing term for a climb that has unforeseen complications and takes much longer than expected. This is the road on the way in, which I did expect, so I had parked the car back at the edge of the pavement and set out on foot over two miles of dirt roads. At this point I was still barefoot, but a bit later the road passed through a shady area and was covered with ice, so I had to put boots on.
Here's the apricot in its new home. The goumi hole was easier to find. But another problem was filling the holes. Both of them had mounds of fill dirt piled nearby, but I didn't know in which direction, and I wasn't going to dig three foot deep snow in a three foot radius to find them, so I had to haul in dirt from other places. Also, I had planned to improvise the locations of the serviceberries, but I couldn't do that in the snow. Luckily they were both small plants, so I put them in a pot with soil, where they should do fine for another month.