Recent activities

Enjoying wonderful homemade cinnamon rolls

Admiring autumn color

Baking oatmeal bread

Preparing firewood

Forest management case study

Getting more sunshine to red oaks remains the primary forest management goal on Hardwood Hermitage. Work with an axe after a long walk down the hill should bring a sunnier future for several young oaks. Previously, a balsam fir cast much shade, while an ash crowded the western side of one oak while also covering the preferred tree's crown. The work is hard, but very pleasant conditions this week helped move things along. The large coastal storm has brought some wind gusts today, but no measurable rain has fallen yet.

Fall color continues to pop out, with birches really showing their yellow.

Season's final beet and onion harvest

Wow! What great color today from the final beet and onion harvest. We'll have the lowest temp of the late summer overnight, but will probably avoid frost. 

 

Tomato soup: Before/After

With all the main ingredients grown on the hill, some excellent veggies were roasted yesterday. They became the best tomato soup ever after a day in the crockpot.

90 minutes of splitting

We had another wonderful morning for our favorite exercise in the woods: Splitting!!! We've been processing some white ash, paper birch, and hop hornbeam.

Beautiful morning for work

The first two pics from today are a before/after of the cutting we completed, mainly yellow birch. Then there are two more pics of our wonderful wood. The conditions were splendid. Low was 52 degrees.

Harvest color variety

Joy arrives with every harvest, regardless of the colors involved. We recently got some corn and cucumbers from the neighbors. This green and yellow looks spectacular!

How about the beauty of these very tasty, albeit small, onions from our raised bed?

The last bit (and biggest wood) from the yellow birch project came up the hill today. This harvest won't deliver taste, but rather wonderful heat from an excellent firewood.

Recent activities

These photos show some of our recent activities. Temps and humidity haven't been too bad for this time of year.

Craft color planning

Wood cutting/moving

Berry picking

Microburst cleanup

That intense storm a week ago Thursday likely brought a microburst to the hill. Several paper birch became the victims. It was a strange site, with so much damage in an incredibly small area, with neighboring trees totally unaffected -- not even any branches down! 

We cleaned up the birch on a truly beautiful morning. The low was 55 degrees. Losing some nice young birches has a downside for sure, but several other trees, especially a really lovely young sugar maple, will now have more sun. And we'll have some more excellent firewood.

Big wind, falling pines

Another big wind storm dropped more pines, an unsurprising result.

More red maple thinned

We helped out some oak and birch this a.m. with another session of cutting and splitting red maple. The spot is only about 250 feet from the house, so there will be less moving of the wood before some additional splitting and the final cutting. The first pic shows the two maple stumps, with some of the oak that will be assisted because they'll be living in much less shade.

It was a beautiful morning. Temps will get much warmer for a few days before Independence Day.

Colors of the season

It's mid-June, which means daisies and lupine are standing tall and proud. 

This is the second harvest of kale, lettuce, and radishes.

Maple project completed

There's still some room in the cord-and-a-half area north of the main garage, but we added nearly three-fourths of a cord today, mainly from the large red maple taken down at the end of last month.

Later, on a walk, sunlight was captured by one of our many wonderful yellow birches.

Cool end to May

The morning low was 39! A great time for some more work. We took down and started processing a large red maple. 

Before/After Satisfaction

We completed the birch processing project this morning! A before/after duo of pics provides much satisfaction. Rain expected this weekend, so we wanted to get the job done.

Birch processing

We accomplished much in two hours today. The low was 45, with a freeze warning in place for tonight. The cool weather makes for glorious times processing firewood. A lovely birch about 200 feet north of the house didn't bloom out this year. It appeared to suffer much last summer in the heat, with leaves turning from green to tan well before color season. Even the most beautiful things can't live forever in the forest.

Lots of cutting on lovely morning

We completed the cutting and stacking of the birch project this morning. Most of what went into the sawbuck can be seen in the first photo. The small shed went from empty to full in just over two hours! The space filled amounted to nearly 40 cubic feet!

Birch processing project

Paper birch sure looks great. Sometimes the state tree grows in places that guarantee a short life, like on the hill south of the house. Several of them also were growing diagonally toward the house, another reason to do some thinning. We'll get about a cord of wood out of the thinning, which will help several small oaks find more sun. The first two pics are a before/after. As the third pic shows, we've been processing a good deal of the excellent firewood.

Eating local

Tonight's great meal: Hill-grown beef meatloaf, hill-grown parsnips (over-wintered at neighbor's), town-grown maple syrup on parsnips, Vermont-made roll. Wow, this was spectacular!