Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Fall Day at the Long Shot Farm

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view of pond with blueberries

We spent most of the weekend visiting family in Pittsburgh and Ohio, celebrating Opa’s birthday on Saturday, and Toben’s birthday on Sunday.  Samantha however had to be back to work in Carlisle, so she left early and spent part of Sunday and Monday painting the barnyard fence by herself.  She finished the entire fence and took some photographs of a beautiful fall day as well.

backyard flowerbed

Fence Repairs

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We spent all afternoon fixing the “barnyard”.  This included fixing and painting the fence by the blueberries and moving lumber and rocks. 

We moved our pile of pressure treated lumber, which had been stored in the barnyard,  to the back of the blackberry field, and moved 3 tractor buckets full of rocks and slates over to where Tina is still trying to build a stone wall.

Lars and Tina pulled off the roughest and broken fence boards and replaced them with newer (and straighter) boards.  They also pulled out all old nails and various hardware still attached to the fence-rails from the days of an electric fence.

At the same time, Grace and Sam worked on painting the repaired fence parts white.  It is looking so much better already!!!

Stone Masonry Work in the Barn

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wall after power-washing
For the past week, Jeff continued to pressure wash all the old mortar and white-wash off the stone work in the bottom of the barn.  He dresses in his hunting rain poncho with goggles, to avoid getting completely soaked by the mud that flings off the walls.  The barn is now probably two thirds washed, and this weekend we experimented with “pointing” the stones.  Luckily YouTube has a lot of very useful videos to help novices as us.  We used something like a pastry bag – only for mortar, which got pretty heavy pretty quickly.  We also had a large assortment of differently shaped trowels.  The pointing process will be very, very slow – but definitely worth it…and there is a long winter coming up to give us time to improve our skills.



wall before power-washing



 




New Blueberry Patch Planted…Finally

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We had to wait a couple of days for the ground to get dried up enough so that we could finally plant our blueberries.  But after two sunny days, we finally were able to finish planting the new patch this evening.  We now have 3 rows of 14 blueberry plants, 10 feet between rows, and 6 feet between each plant (just like our blackberries).  This patch is right next to the fruit trees, and above the elderberries – and there is still enough space for some other fruit or more trees.  Playing with the idea of some currants for next Spring – to make some different kinds of jam.   Also tranplanted more blackberries and got some carrots from the garden!