Project completion feels sooo good!

I completed the last 8 feet of the fence today. It's nice to be able to cross that off the list. The final piece doesn't match exactly, but I can't be too picky since I bought my supplies at different times from different stores. Like most of my projects, it isn't professional, but I'm satisfied. Now I have some grading to do to the yard near the fence and eventually I will attempt to grow grass back there.

I have a small part of the garden extension in progress now. I dug my root bed hole 10" deep and I built a cedar box to contain the amended soil. This, paired with the 8" high walls of the raised bed will provide 18" of good growing soil for carrots, radishes, onions and either parsnips or turnips this summer. I also just acquired a 5 foot tall upright chest freezer for storing all our frozen veggies at the end of the season. I got my grid set up in my primary bed and I transplanted the garlic that came back from last summer.

The next image updates will show the grid in the primary bed as well as the new raised beds I'm in process with now. In the meantime, I have to get some seed in the ground in the next week or so and then keep my fingers crossed for no hard freezes after the sprouts start. I have a couple of cucumber plants and about 7 tomatoes as well as a small variety of herbs growing under my shop light in the basement.

I think the seed tray warmer has been both a blessing and a curse. While it does seem to be making the plants grow well, it causes the moisture to leave the peat quite quickly, making it a bit of a chore for me to keep them all watered. I plan to find a way of rectifying this situation in the future, but for now I just check everyday.

Here are the pictures of the fence:

Before:

From Stuff I Made

After first section:

From Stuff I Made

Finished product:

From Stuff I Made

I am now 43 pages through the total 178 (not included appendices) in the Introduction to Permaculture and my mind is just swimming. There are events in life that cause a person to change the way they look at the world...reading this book is one of those events for me. Everywhere I look I see the layout of the landscape and think about how each element connects with it surrounding elements. Learning about this stuff has truly been life altering for me.

Fence Progress/Permaculture Study

  The fence is coming along swimmingly. I got 12 feet of the total 20 finished and leveled. I opted to do 12 feet all at once instead of splitting it up into 2 - 8 foot sections and a 4 foot section because I had 12 foot 1x6s already and I found it to be much easier to level one large piece than several small ones as I have done before on other fences.

  Once I get the 20 foot section finished, I will put up a gate perpendicular to the rear fence and I may even build a temporary fence across the 12 feet of cement left from the garage. Here are a few pictures:

From Stuff I Made

From Stuff I Made

  12 feet down, only 8 to go...and then possibly 4 more...and then possibly 12 more.

  My final note:

I recently decided to do some deeper research on this "permaculture" topic and found that there is a farm near Sydney, Australia that teaches the method during a 2 week course. In reading the farm's website I found out that they use a book called Introduction to Permaculture as their textbook for the course. Amazon doesn't sell this book, but some of the marketplace vendors do so I ordered it. It ran around $40 and I have to say, it was worth every penny. The author is Bill Mollison, the man who coined the term "permaculture" and the information within the book is simply mind-boggling. He has at least two other books devoted completely to the idea of building self-sustaining systems and this farm in Australia teaches his methods through practice. Anyway, here is a picture of me loving the book:

From Stuff I Found

  I haven't found a part of this book I don't like yet. My hope is to one day implement as much of this theory into my everyday practices as possible and maybe even teach it to local urban farmers and even possibly the environmental sustainability commission here in Ferndale.

  My next update will provide some information about the square foot gardening plan for this year. I've already posted images of my beds in the Stuff I Made album. I am getting close to splitting the albums up due to the variety of work I am doing around the house now. There was never a need to have things separated before, but I need to archive some old stuff and separate the house projects from the permaculture plan and the gardening. So that is what is coming.

Building a fence

So instead of a driveway, the last 3 or 4 houses on the block (ours included) have an alley that runs behind the houses. We used to have a garage and a full privacy fence that separated our yard from the alley, but the garage was torn down before we moved in and the renovators didn't bother to fix the fence in the back, just the one separating us from our eastern neighbors.

Last year in May we nearly had a home invasion incident and I'm not interested in having that happen ever again. So I'm building a new fence across the back of the lot to keep people from wandering out of the alley and into our yard. It's a private alley, so you wouldn't expect people to generally just end up going down there, but you'd be surprised.

I bought cedar fence planks from our local big box home improvement place as well as 4x4 posts, cement and 12' 1x6 planks as well. I'm using two 1x6 boards to hold the cedar together and then once I have the panels built, I will hang them from the posts. Here are some preliminary images of how the project is going.

From Stuff I Made

From Stuff I Made

As you can see, I leveled the posts and cemented them in. I have a bit of digging to do since the middle posts are in an area that rises up. I was going to build sections of fencing to fit each space, but now I'm thinking about just doing 2 pieces, one 12' long and one 8'. The cedar planks I bought won't fit perfectly within an 8' section and I've already set my posts. If I have to overlap using one plank and nailing it after the whole fence is hung, I think that would be easier than splitting those planks to fit or trying to piece something together.

I've never built a fence before so I'll be honest for anyone in my position. It wasn't easy, by any means. I used the 12' long 1x6s to attempt to get them all the same height. They aren't, by the way. The bubble on my level is within the lines on all of them, but there is one that is slightly higher than the others.

The hardest part was getting them all lined up straight. In the end I had to simply eye it to make sure all the 4x4s matched up. Then the leveling from the sides and the cementing went quick. I chose to ignore the instructions on the bag and only dump about 1/2 a bag of cement per post. This worked well since I also didn't dig my holes 3 times the diameter of the post. They will set for 24 hours and then I can hang the fence. You can sort of see the panels I'm lining up all the way to the right of the second picture. This project will be totally worth the effort as long as I get the fence up straight. I'll post new pictures as I finish.