And so it Starts - The Starting Stock
This is a woodworking website, so I'll try to limit this blog series to mostly wood related entries.
Many people have expressed their desire to move to a farm. Well, we have that opportunity, and we are grabbing it with all hands.
Just a little introductory background:
A couple of years ago, I was going nuts because the project I was on had been on hold for several months, and got delayed for another 12 months, so I resigned. I decided (with my wife's approval) to work out of country for a while to get tax-free income, and return to the project when it kicked off again. We have come to like the tax-free income (who wouldn't), and we are now buying a farm. (Can you imagine what you would do, if you did not have to pay income tax?) Our plan is to take this uneconomical sugar farm and create our own Haven - LOML and her horses, and me & my wood. With careful planning and lots of sweat we will go largely self sufficient. We'll create our own electricity & fuel, and feed (and hopefully clothe) ourselves. (that's the plan anyway)
The farm straddles a main road, with the homestead in the south-west corner of the southern 1/3. The homestead has a lot of lush bush with many trees (I love it), but it is somewhat overgrown.
A few weeks ago, we started the move. It is only 7km from where we now live, so we are largely moving ourselves. I keep saying "we", when in fact it is LOML, son, nephew, and the occasional day-labourer doing the work - I'm not there.
I wanted to remove 2 or 3 of the larger trees to open things out a little, but my wife refused, wanting to keep all the large trees. I wouldn't have minded having a few extra trees to slab & dry, but the lady generally gets her way.
Anyway, we called in an indigenous nursery to clear the fence lines, remove the plants poisonous to animals, remove all small invader plants, and tag the larger invader and non-indigenous plants for us to remove later. Guess what? They identified two large invader trees that have to come down immediately, as they are ruining the soil. One of them is one that I wanted out.
So I now have the logs rescued over the last couple of years:
Avocado Pear
Jacaranda
Norfolk Pine
Wild Plum (Harpephyllum Caffrum
Cape Ash, Dog Plum (Ekebergia Capensis)
Forest Natal Mahogany (Trichilia Dregeana)
AND
The logs rescued in the last two weeks:
Natal Mahogany (Trichilia Emetica) a few trimmed branches
Flamboyant (Delonix Regia) a whole tree
Wild Fig (Ficus Benjamina) a whole tree
There are more piles than shown here, these are just examples.
This is what was left of the Flamboyant, so you can imagine how much wood I have to slab next time I go home. In the WoodWhisperer's words, "It's a good problem to have."
BTW that's my eldest son leaning against it, and he is over 6 foot tall. A large chunk of this will be turned into a pedestal for horse training.
There are also a few dead trees around the property that will be identified and harvested later. My starting stock is quite a lot for a guy who has only ever had a single garage workshop before.
Yeah, a good problem to have.
In the next episode I'll try to get into the plans for processing the wood, and maybe the planned workshop.