It was a great day yesterday, Tuesday, September 29 to get some more work done on the farm.  We have focused in one particular area this past summer, adding a 3′ tall locust log wall for hillside erosion.  And, we are using the locust logs for a wall behind the greenhouse.

It’s been a few months of collecting cardboard for sheet mulching, and today was the day for digging out a sidewall of dirt around the horse corral and moving a big pile of wood chips.

Darren from Small Tractor Services in Ben Lomond worked from 10:30am – 2:00pm to dig out dirt and add wood chips.

Dirt cleared along the edge of the pipe corral and moved to the driveway where we plan to add a parking pad.

Darren driving his tractor.

Before the logs were added, the soil would consistently move into the ditch/walkway, especially from gophers.  The soil is dead and nothing can be planted in it.

Digging out a tree that never produced fruit. We are going to plant one of our own apple trees here.

The goal for this smoothed space is to not use cardboard sheet mulching, but instead lay down redwood mill scraps as the base and then coat with wood chips.  Now, it’s easy access to wheelbarrow the horse manure compost into the garden.

Wood Chips

First step was dumping many loads of wood chips to the upper area to go around the greenhouse.

We are in the process of adding long 6′ – 7′ cut pieces of locust trunks.  They had to be cut in half for us to move, and now we will add 4×4 redwood posts.

Darren had a fantastic idea to use our older and “less attractive” wood chips on the bottom layer, and then coat with the beautiful finely cut wood chips.

Looking pretty!

We reached a stopping point.  Darren had to go at 2pm, and we ran out of cardboard. We are almost done with the bottom area.