SPRING BREAK 2016

Well Janice was needing to go down and visit her parents this year and since I can not reach my left foot, one of my Grand Daughters, Natasha, came to stay with me while Grandmother went to California. Natasha and I enjoy doing projects together so I had already decided that we needed a new incinerator door and frame.

 As one can already tell the first door and frame were made from scrap steel, and after being in place for almost sixteen years they needed replacement badly.

At first I thought that I would only need to replace the door, wrong, the frame was just as badly rusted away.

 Natasha really like to do photography also. So she caught me fitting the door to the frame

 Natasha did a good job of catching the sparks off of the grinder.

 This is one of the hinge tubes Natasha welded on, not bad at all for a first time welding.

 The design for the new door and frame really didn't change much, although I had decided to add a handle connected to some linkage, in order to work the door latches. Natasha let me know right away that I should have stayed with the old design, but my reply was "we had to make it interesting."

OK, OK so she caught me smiling.

 Toward the end of our project Janice had gotten home and was in the basement with Kaitlyn painting, so Tasha took our knob in and put this spiffy new paint job on it.

 Got all of the old caked on ready to install the new frame and door. scraped off of the incinerator ready to install the new door and frame.

 As you can see from this picture I even designed a couple of damper vents into the new door.

Natasha was correct from the start. Because of the allowance for space in the joints so the linkage would not rust tight, the whole setup was too loose and I had to remove the linkage and go with separate handles.

All in all the visit with Natasha went very well, I really enjoyed her visit. We did get into a little trouble when I told her Dad, I had taught her to do "cookies" in the jeep.

LAST BABY OF THE YEAR

Well, a week ago tomorrow our last nanny kidded, giving us another little buck baby. That is three bucks and one doe this year. 

He didn't really choose the best time to be born as it was stormy and nasty, he was born just outside the door, and with all of the people coming and going as our eldest son and his family were here over the weekend. Meg, the mom, didn't have a good chance to bond with the baby until Monday.  Our youngest grand daughter loved being able to see the new baby and hold it, but we were all very worried that at first the baby and mom were not bonding and the rest of the herd were picking on Meg. 

But mom and baby are now bonded he is growing and even traveling down to the pasture with the other goats.

 Meg and new baby

 Meg keeps good track of her baby now and is yelling for him most all day.

 Momma and baby just hanging out in the sun.

 This is a picture of Brownie, her two babies this year and the two first year nannies which were Brownie's little ones last year, Ginger and Meg, and of course the new baby.

 Ghost is our oldest goat, who we retired last fall when she was done milking. Ghost is also the mother of Brownie, who is the mother of Meg and Ginger.

This is Ginger's little boy from this year. He was the first baby we had born this year.

NOTE ON GRAFTING

Well I tried six Cleft Grafts last year, only one out of six were successful. I know that this is a low percentage graft, but I think some of the failures must have been because of something I did or did not do. 

Also, we had to move an apple tree and some roots made small unknown trees, so like any determined gardener, I re-potted them.
This spring, actually just the other day. I grafted these small trees. most were grafted with the purchased tool, but I did do two whip grafts. Three of the little trees were already grown into small branched trees, and with these I top worked, or in other words did multiple grafts, on the smaller branch wood The pictures below are some of the grafts That I just completed about a week or so ago.

All of other grafts look to be taking thus far, I grafted them all to honey crisp, just because I like that variety. The large tree in the yard that was a Spartan appears to have those grafts taking hold also.

. I will try to keep everyone updated.

NEW RESIDENT

Well Grizzly Mountain Gardens has a new resident. Her name is Sadie, and she is just over a year old, still a puppy. New resident besides the new baby goats. We adopted her from the local Shelter and feel so very lucky to find such a wonderful pure bred dog. Part of the fees from the shelter was license and micro chip implanted.

Thus far she is adapting very nicely into our family, except the cats are not real happy. Shadow the African Grey Parrot is not too sure of her yet either. The two of them have been nose to nose and she hasn't been bitten yet, and she has not tried to eat him either, so that is a good thing. We stopped at Woof's Dog Bakery on the way home with her and picked up food, bed, leash, etc. 

Currently she is a companion for Janice and I want to keep it that way, although she shares time with me also. She is a really GREAT watch dog, and so far the deer don't like her either, so are staying out of the yard.

Here she is just getting used to the place, She has already made friends with Grizzly and Star our boy goats. Sadie has her outside and inside toys, and she claims sticks out of the kindling basket. She goes almost everywhere with us and is liking the going quite a lot. She still needs to learn the chickens are not for her to chase.

Sadie loves hugs from Janice or I. Sadie started life down in California, apparently the folks who had her had the parent dogs as well and she was bred, too young, by her sire. She aborted the puppies but was so young her body could not rid itself of the aborted embryos and she got terribly infected and almost died. She was relinquished to the shelter in order for them to pay for the surgery and Spay operation.

SPRING IS COMMING

I decided that since spring is close to coming, I should get another post done for our blog, so here goes. Today is sunny and clear, a little chilly  but not too bad. Janice and I have been pruning trees, shrubs, and vines.



 We have the Filbert trees at the top of the yard done and they look so very much better. We have removed one rooted sucker and still need to remove two or three more, and will give to the kids.

 While pruning the filberts, we dug up the strawberries and after we finish filling the area with soil we will re-plant them.

 This Spartan Apple looks so very much better since it got it's hair cut.

 This Asian Pear looks weird because the tree still has two varieties grafted onto it. When I bought it the tree had two Asian and two European pears grafted to it. Needless to say that is the last multi-varietal tree I purchase as I don't care for the look of the trees, and they are extremely hard to prune.

 In this picture the little tree in the fore ground is a Honey Crisp, then the Bosc Pear at the end of the greenhouse and another Asian Pear behind the garden shed. The two Pears are pruned, I have not pruned the Honey Crisp yet as I want to use the trimmings for Scion Wood for grafting some root stocks that I have as well as the large Spartan I am top working.

 Well if you remember from the last post the plum tree that was horribly over grown, is now pruned and looking better. The Spartan in the fore ground was cleft grafted last year, but only one graft took, so I am going to graft most of the brushy twigs this year and then choose which to leave later.

 The Kiwi are cut back to the top of where we are building the Pergola, and back to single stems.

 Unfortunately when you prune plants you get lots of waste that will need to be chipped or burned.

 Just another pile of chipper food.

 The pond this time of year is very nice, clear and full.

 I truly love the pasture this time of year, but we still need to cut the fallen tree and branches.

 The other day Janice and I dug out a small clump of bamboo (see second from the bottom) that was too far out the other side of the group, and re-planted it into an opening where it is seen now.

 Janice's Linton Rose is blooming to beat the band right now. It usually continues for a long time in the spring.

This is Janice's over grown herb garden and the contorted Filbert it has as a center piece. If you look close at the Filbert's branches closer to the Bay tree, you can see some Catkins (blooms). It will be interesting to see if it produces nuts this year.

 Another sure sign of spring is time for babies. This is a little buckling born last night to Ginger, one of our babies from last year.

He isn't named yet but he is friendly and so very cute, makes you want to just hold him forever.

Our little Ginger looks like any other mommy goat now, but she is unsure of things. but taking great care of the baby.

The little one weighed in at seven pounds. The next one due to kid is Brownie (Ginger's mother) and then Meg, Ginger's sister is due to kid last.

While out there, I have been wanting to remove three small Hemlock trees from the Bee Yard, so that was completed as well as Janice pruning most of the lower branches on the Cedar trees in that end of the property. I took the Hemlocks and gave the two lightest ones to the girls (goats) and the fullest one to the two boys.