Getting to know our land

 Apparently I should remember more often that I started a blog!

Pretty much as soon as we signed the papers, we started enjoying our land. We set up a "camp"  with a fire pit, Sid's hammock, and an old picnic table, and hosted a few cookouts for family and good friends, and started getting to know our land.

Did I describe the land before? It's almost 8 acres. It's the NW corner of a standard 40 acre farm section, so the west and north sides are straight, but the SE side is a wiggly diagonal, which is deliniated by the tractor access road. The survey stakes show that this road wavers back and forth across the property line, so we figure that give both us and the tractors access to it. There is also path from the back side of the building site down the hill to this road (actually 2 wheel tracks in the grass) so we have driveable access around most of the property, particulary to the garden. Across the middle of the property is what the listing called a "seasonal creek". It's more accurately described as an overflow drain from the lake west of us to the swamp east of us. It flows in a deep ditch at the bottom of the valley, from a large culvert under the road to a straight ditch that follows the edges of the fields behind us to the swamp about a mile east. One of our first jobs accomplished was a bridge over the creek for easier access to my garden on the far side. (I thought I had a pic of it, but I guess I need to take one and add it here later.)

The plant life here has been a fun aspect to learn about. We have 4 trees that are probably 100+ yo. Three oaks, and a maple, plus the dead stump of a 5th one. Two of the oaks are very near the driveway location and the septic route, so work is being planned to attempt to minimize the effect on them as we get things done. The valley was filled with a plant that a friend called "itch weed", which gardening friends IDed as "wood nettle".  Sid cut most of it down with a swing blade, but it will probably come back up this spring. Mowing and pulling should eventually take care of it. The other big issue is buckthorn. Everywhere. Extremely invasive, and a long-term project to eliminate it. Big ones will get cut/poisoned as soon as it wakes up; the little ones are easily pulled; the medium sized ones will be the long-term part. The one good aspect of buckthorn is it's ability to be a good windbreak, which means we need to replace it with better trees in the areas where we want that quality. 

I've had fun finding all the edible plants. There are several small patches of raspberries and some wild grapes- I found one patch that was bearing fruit this year, and there are many dead vines. There is one crabapple tree at the top of the driveway, and a second behind the house location. That one will probably have to come down when we build a deck, but for now it's a God-sign for me. We had 2 houses in Grand Forks that had a crabapple tree out the kitchen window, and when we bought our current house we planted one outside this kitchen window. This one is right outside where the dining room window will be- about 15 feet west of the kitchen window. For me that was a sign that this land is a gift from God.  We have high hopes for morrel mushrooms as there is a lot of dead elm on the property. The search for that will begin as soon as things begin to green up. We also have a baby apple tree planted by the previous owner, which will soon be joined by a few other fruit trees. 

The southern half of the lot is mostly hip-high grass, with a line of trees down the middle, shading another section of creek. My garden will go on the SE side, across the valley from the house, with the trees providing plenty of wind protection on the north and west sides and full sun all day. It's going to be a big job to get it going this year though. Those grass roots ought to be real fun to deal with. :)  It's a good climb up the far side of the valley, so I made a few steps at one of the steep places. When I was little, my grandparents had a flight of similar stairs that went from the yard to the river, so this is a little bit of my childhood at our new home.