Since moving to our farm last year, our vegetable garden has been nothing more than a 20’ x 40’ section of dirt next to our girls’ playhouse. That all began to change this week. On Monday morning I tilled the soil in two directions. On Tuesday morning I set down 900 square feet of weed blocking fabric. Then I ordered 16 yards of mulch and busied myself with other projects until the scheduled Friday delivery date. The mulch arrived at 9am sharp and soon I was dumping big bucket loads of mulch on the fabric and soaking up the wonderful smell of hardwood mulch. With a “couple few” inches of mulch covering the entire garden area, it was time to begin fence construction. To prevent our two dogs – and the many transient four legged critters in our neck of the woods – from laying waste to the garden produce – a sturdy fence is in order. To that end I’m building a picket fence, 4×4 posts 48” tall, two 2×3” backer rails, 1×3” pickets 45” tall. I’m using 1×3x8 furring strips to make the pointed pickets and will be setting them so that the open spaces are +/– 3” wide.

Before long I had my four corner posts set in concrete. I’m pushing to get the fence built in seven days. Wish me luck!

I’m in Boston this week attending the WebMasterworld PubCon – a gathering of folks who are hungry to learn more about the art and science of web site advertising and marketing. Day one began with a brilliant keynote by Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Tipping Point” and “Blink” – two books that explore human nature as it relates to Marketing, Social Networking and many other important aspects of society. I’m reading Tipping Point and highly recommend it. I don’t generally read business or marketing oriented books because I consider many of them entirely too indulgent, but Malcolm is a journalist and historian with a brilliant mind and he helps conceptualize human behavior by analyzing historical moments in a way that even the poster boy for ADD can understand.

The first day sessions which I attended were somewhat educational if not entirely enlightening. As an extremely accomplished internet developer, however, it is still very important to learn how other professionals approach problems. With that said, new entrants into the world of internet marketing should consider the PubCon a must-attend event. You’ll come away from the convention with a shinier and sharper set of tools that will still be of service several years down the road.

On other web-related news, NewHorse.com has not yet been online for two weeks and it is now enjoying over 300 visitors daily. Over 300 equestrian professionals have requested a listing and more visit every day to add their web site. There is a desparate need for a quality geographic guide to the equestrian industry and I hope to address that need by building what will grow into the defacto guide for horse folks who need to find equestrian products and professionals in their area.

Time to head out to day two of the PubCon!

I finished the freshening up of our “Secret Garden” Trellis. In the last week of April I’ll be building and installing a decorative fence. And hopefully by August we’ll have lots of established Clematis vines growing up the latticework, and a good mix of perrenials thriving in the garden bed. As you can see, our lawn needs some TLC but it’s low on my prioritized list.

Yesterday, among other things, I did some Spring maintenance on our outdoor riding arena. Using my 3520 I scaled up and re-spread the top 1–2” of footing, which effectively removed all of the established weeds and worked up the top layer of compacted footing. After an hour of levelling the arena in all directions, it was looking mighty fine. I measured out locations for Dressage letters and painted marker lines on the backside of the ring fence for future reference. I put out the pylon markers but will need to stop by Lowes today to get the adhesive letters so I can label them. A photo is forthcoming. Happy Easter everyone!

Small projects are a rarity on our farm. And so it goes with the main Trellis in the quadrant of our yard we call our “Secret Garden”. The Trellis is pretty outstanding, it has five 6’ wide by 10’ tall sections with 6×6 posts capped with wood turned finials. But when we moved here in May 2005 it was completely covered in Virginia Creeper, which was busy killing off the Clematis and Morning Glory vines and swallowing firethorn shrubs located on the other side of the Trellis. Another invader was a 20’ tall paradise tree which had planted itself on the other side of the trellis. Not a small feat when you consider that there is only 6” of room on the other side between the trellis and the top of the semi-circular 12’ tall brick retaining wall. Another invader was a 12’ tall Maple tree located just about where I am standing in the photo below. And to top it off, the 21 year old paint job on the Trellis was in really bad shape, and sections of latticework had fallen out, and several 2×2 cleats holding other latticework in place were separated from the rails. So…….. After several days of removing hundreds upon hundreds of feet of sucker vines from the Trellis, a half day of tree removal, a half day of belt sanding the entire Trellis (including the face of the latticework), and two days of painting….. I’m ALMOST done! The front of the Trellis visible in the photo is fully painted and 100% finished off; I’ve got another half day of painting the back side before I can call the Trellis project officially complete.

After obsessing at Lowes over color choices, I selected a slightly different color than the originally applied paint. The color chosen was from the new Biltmore color family. Named “Soft Ivory”, it’s a pleasant old world yellow tone that seems to fit perfectly in the landscape. I had the color mixed into the last remaining Olympic Oil/Alkyl paint product that Lowes carries. Oil paint is being phased out slowly for environmental reasons. However, oil paint lasts about 400% longer than exterior latex so I’m of the opinion that painting something once every 20 years with oil is better for the environment than painting it four times with exterior latex. Oh, and what is latex made from? Oh, that’s right. It’s made with oil!

It’s impossible to see in the photo, but for over half of the Trellis I stapled plastic sheeting across the top and hung it down on the back side, securing the barrier along the bottom. Putting up this barrier behind the Trellis allowed me to spray paint the Trellis with my HVLP gun – without also painting my retaining wall and house – a big time saver. For the two right-most panels, and the top rail and finials, I used a roller and a brush in order to avoid painting the Firethorn bushes that were growing through the Trellis  

So, now we await delivery of a variety of Clematis vines from California! I’ll be building a decorative fence around the flower bed that sets in front of the Trellis, primarily to keep our dogs from napping on the flowers.

It was great fun taking a break from farm projects and doing some more home improvement!

Springtime in west central Virginia seems to last much longer than Springtime in Vermont. Actually, in Vermont, Spring was unaffectionately called Mud Season. So as a transplanted Vermonter I find myself entering a state of euphoria whenever I’m out of doors during the day – which is most of the time. While Moira and Chloe spent a lazy afternoon playing in the yard, I was doing some weeding and light landscape work with my camera in tow. Here are some of the photos I took today.

Also known as the George Taber Azalea. At least I believe that is the identity of these spring blooming shrubs in our garden. In any event, they’re awful purty.

Here is a close-up view of the flowers.

They bloom in unison with the surrounding Dogwoods!

In non-horse farm but horse farming related news, I published NewHorse.com today. There aren’t any listings as of yet. It’s a brand new site and – like my other web properties – the web site relies on vendors to submit their own listing. A little over a year ago I published InspectionZone.com, which now has 1,696 companies listed. About four years ago I published Marketingtool.com, which now has over 65,000 companies listed. Snowballs rolling down the mountain tend to get bigger over time

NewHorse.com represents the first web site powered by my newly modularized code, capable of powering multiple sovereign web sites. Not only does this new architecture speed up maintenance and improvements, it also speeds deployment. I hope to be releasing a new directory site each week, for the next several months. Exciting times!

It was a good Saturday morning to be out doing chores. A mix of sun and clouds and winds aloft meant shadows came and went quickly. It felt as though I could feel the shadows race toward, over and past as distinctly as my eyes told me it was so. I snapped this photo of our white birch and our mystery tree during a brief moment of sun.

I think I may have labeled this tree a Cherry Tree last summer. We moved to the farm last year and weren’t privy to these delightful deep red blossums. If it’s a cherry tree then I have no idea what variety it is. Time for a closer look while clutching all of my tree books! Once I identify it I want to plant, oh, about a million of them. That should do nicely.

This trellis was originally the battleground between several Wysteria vines, trumpet vines, virginia creepers and one very militant cherry tree bent on pushing over the trellis and breaching the roof of the garage. Since the cherry tree is long gone – it’s trunk and root system removed – and the creepers removed also –  it’s looking a bit more civilized. All that is left to do is to make some cosmetic repairs to the trellis and give the vines a trim up top once they’ve finished blooming in the summer.

I removed the barbed wire from the fallen down fence on the left, the last bit of damnable barbed wire left on the farm proper. The rock pile barely visible on the left is what was removed from a half acre after grading and raking. It will get put to good use in one of our new pastures, to help fill in an age old hole that is entirely not horse-friendly.

That’s all for now. We’re taking it easy this weekend. I’ll be back to the grind on Monday morning with lots of farming projects that need to be finished by the end of the week.