My Garden Paradise - Part 2 Fence

          

www.gardening-inspirations.com

www.asoftplace.net
I've been thinking lately about my perfect, ideal garden and what it would look like.  I know that gardening is not the normal thing to be pondering at Christmas but if I start now, I might actually be ready for spring planting this year.

The fences in the above photos are beautiful, both the wooden rail fence and the white picket fence.  There are other styles and building material of course and lots more choices in colour but I have a thing for the traditional white picket fence. 

I've had a few gardens over the years but none have ever had a fence even though they certainly needed one.  We lived on our first farm for 9 years and every year, without fail, DH would leave the barnyard gate open and the entire dairy herd would find their way to and through my garden 5 or 6 times each year.  There were other directions that they could have headed in but it was always my garden.  The straightest path of least resistance perhaps?

DH had torn up all of the lawn in order to level the land and put down new grass seed.  We couldn't afford turf so we had to do the longest, slowest and cheapest way that we could but it was fine since there were only 2 of us at that time.  The instructions were clear - DO NOT walk on the seed-covered dirt until the grass had grown in enough to hold the weight.  The only problem?  The cows did not get the memo!  They left deep hoof prints in the soft earth and DH filled them in the first few times but then gave up.  Those holes are likely still there 25 years later, filled in with grass and waiting to twist an unsuspecting ankle.  A fence may not have saved my garden and new lawn every time but it would have deterred the cattle more often than not. 

Our second farm had a white picket fence that the previous owner had taken down.  He knew that he was only going to live there for 1 year so I'm not sure why he had to destroy it.  When we were moving out 11 years later, we found an old farm photo from the '30's or '40's that showed the fence and the original owner told us that the fence had always been repaired, replaced as needed and repainted.  Such a shame that it was gone.

When we moved to this farm 2.5 years ago, I quickly realized that there no good spot for a garden.  There's only 10 - 15 feet on one side of house and about the same on the other side of the driveway and the rest was field.

Not much room beside the house.  The field to the left is where I had my second year's garden.

The previous owner of this farm had let the whole farm go for a few years due to a divorce and everything was in tough shape - the house, the barns and the fields.  Since every acre of the 150 acres was old hay and needed help, DH decided to leave certain fields alone in order to concentrate on other
 fields.  He gave me the corner of one field on the far side of the driveway for my garden that turned out to be fabulous soil because it had been left alone for so many years.  Our feet would sink deep into the soft dirt and it was stone-free, a real rarity on any farm.  When DH heard all of this, he decided to use this field instead of leaving it alone for an extra year so there went my garden. My revenge?  It turns out that only my little gardening corner of the whole field was stone-free!  Happy stone-picking!

The second year, I put my garden in the field in the above photo, right next to the house.  The good thing about this location was that it was easy to pop out to pick the veggies and weed, even if only for a few moments.  Water was available here and I could look out through my kitchen window and see if weeding was needed, whether the kids were doing their weeding or picking or not or just to enjoy watching the garden grow.  The negative?  It was easy to see if weeding was needed!  Immediately after moving in, DH started working with our next-door-neighbour farmer who loves to spray - extra - and the spray would always waft over onto my garden, guaranteed.   My gardens have always been free of chemicals (except for one year, many years ago, when I put some powder on my potatoes to get rid of Colorado Potato Beetle) so I don't appreciate it much. 

Putting a garden on the edge of a field does not spell permanence because, in my case at least, it means moving said garden each and every year.  My 3rd. summer here (this past summer) I decided not to have a garden because of the whole 'location, location' problem and not sure yet what I'm going to do this upcoming summer.  For me, a garden with a fence means stability and commitment because who wants to move a strong, solid fence around, year after year? 

www.idealbuildingconcepts.com  describes this fence as:

Recycled Branch Fencing

"A unique garden fence designed from detached tree limbs"

www.123rf.com

www.favim.com+

www.veddw.com

Even though I usually like order and symmetry, there's something about the unevenness of each board that I love!

www.star-foreveryoung.blogspot.com

www.khakidevil.co.uk

Now THAT'S a garden fence!!

For Part 1, click here.

For Part 3, click here.

More Random Farm Photos

My daughter informs me that her friend wants 'farm action' photos.  Well, um...it's kind of late in the season for 'farm action'.  The crops are long gone and the fields are worked up for next spring so there's nothing going on here.  The 12 + 1 calves aren't doing anything too exciting...just eatin, chewing, pooping, making more mess in the barn...that's it.  No real action. 

So I'll just have to post more random photos even if they're boring.

DH waving hello to photographer daughter.

DH emptying round hay bales from an extra shed to move into the main barn.  

Feedin 1 hay bale to the new calves.  

Second Farmhouse - Bats and Renos

Hubby had hoped to leave renovating this house for some time in the future - the distant future, like maybe NEVER!  There was too much work in the barn and the fields to be spending time on the house.  The fields and the barns are where the money is made so it would be like a store owner or manufacturing plant owner saying that he would put off opening the store for a year or getting the plant up and running a year from now while he instead gets his house fixed up.  He would still be needing to make rent or mortgage payments, not have any income and any and all investors would be slightly pissed.  For generations, it seems that ALL of the money went to the farming aspect and none to the house.  Just look at the farmouses of the past century - the wives considered it a big deal to FINALLY get a washroom!

The upstairs bathroom and my toddler son's bedroom were definite must-do's but unfortunately, we had to add a third room.  Something flew past my head one night and scared the crap out of me and my screaming scared the crap out of the poor kids (ages 8 and down).  Hubby was in the barn and there was no way that I was doing anything to get in the way of that bat.  That bat was free to fly anywhere he (she) wanted.  Far be it from me to interfere!  Until hubby got in from the barn, that is -- and then he was even more scared the rest of us!  But being the man of the house and all that - ah forget that.  If he could have left that bat hanging somewhere, he would have but he didn't want to get woken up in the night from one of the kids screaming (or me!) and he didn't want to find it in our room in the night so he got brave and went after it. 

Like lots of people, he'd heard that a badminton racquet would work well.  Wrong!  After trying that method for a while, he gave up and grabbed a towel, swung it and brought the bat down quite easily.  Flushed him down the toilet and that was that -- so we thought.  Over the next few weeks, we got 10 bats and our housecat got 1.  The kids and I were hiding down behind the kitchen peninsula while yet another bat flew back and forth overhead and hubby was, of course, in the barn again.  We were down there praying that bats like to fly high only and never along the ground.  There was no use trying to hide in another room because bats can squeeze into any tiny space and besides, we wanted to know where the bat was when hubby came in because they can be hard to find if they land.   We would peek around the corner of the kitchen cupboards occasionally to keep an eye on his flying progress.  We found him on the floor being eaten by the cat (one good reason to run right out and adopt a cat from a shelter, as if eating all the mice in your house wasn't already a good enough reason!).  There's no way that the cat jumped into the air and caught him so we figured that the bat must have flown into the ceiling fan in the dining room and been knocked to the floor.  I still give full credit to the cat because if he hadn't been there, I would have had to do the dirty work and no thanks! 

I don't believe the old story that bats try to avoid people.  I'm quite convinced that 'our' bats loved to dive-bomb us outside, expecially if we were on the trampoline.  The kids didn't pay much notice to the bats outside but the first time that I got brave enough to jump on the trampoline near dark was also my last and no one can convince me that they were not after me!  Anyway, after 5 or 6 bats, we got to be old hats at bats flying around, we had stopped screaming every time we saw one and we learned to walk around with our heads held high (meaning we were looking up!) while scanning the ceiling and top halves of every wall.  I still get squeamish to this day however, if I hear anything resembling the sound that they make.  If you make 'fish lips' with your lips then make a smacking sound or put your lips and your hand and make a slight sucking sound (I know, I know - that sounds weird!), that's how bats sounded to me.  And I still hate them. 

It took us a while to trace their entrance hole into the house.  We knew by then that there were plenty of them living up in the attic but there were so many places in this old house where the lath and plaster was broken or missing that it was impossible to tell just where they were coming in.  The mystery was solved when hubby saw one actually come through one of many holes in the bedroom adjacent to the upstairs bathroom.  This entire wall had been covered by nice enough looking floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall cupboards and it was only when this bat came out from behind these cupboards that we found the holes (and the beautiful orange and green 60's wallpaper).  So this room also had to be redone at the same time as the other two so in the end, I guess I have to say thank goodness for the bats because now we were renovating a third room!

Sorry, no photos this time.  I figured that you could find your own repulsive photos of bats if you wish.  I just don't have the desire to look at them right now.  They still have that 'ew' factor for me!  I might have stopped screaming every time one flew by but...