Happily making a mess

The odd thing about this patch of land is not that, as old pasture, we stir up the smell of old cow manure, but that the cow manure we are smelling is over one hundred years old.  Well fertilized, we guess, and nicely sloped, perfect for apple trees.  It's just these dang rocks that get in the way, and the stumps of white pine left over from our logging expedition a few years ago.  We've slowly been working this land into a field for a while now, and so when we come across a patch of blackened earth we remember old brush fires we've had, including one raucous party where bag pipes got involved.  Oh yes, and here's the one where the fire department came in; you know, that day where the permit situation had changed in the afternoon and we had started the fire in the morning?  And how the whole fire was nestled in a crater of six-inch deep snow, practically sitting in its own lake, but the fire department emptied out their tanker anyway?  "Good practice for the boys," the fire chief said good naturedly.  Yes, that was amusing.

We've gotten cords and cords of wood off of this piece of land, which has heated us well for the past few winters, and also given us our sugar wood, the left over white pine which is no good for anything else, and eventually we'll actually have to move our firewood operation elsewhere.  That in itself will be a milestone.

But for this week we are simply trying to make this into a mowable, plantable field.  Really, I don't blame our forefathers for abandoning this piece of land at all.  It's great soil, and it's a great place to plant things.  It's just that it's a pain in the ass to tame it.

tags: wannabes  if you build it