The wood pile goeth

So today was a major milestone for us...I finally got rid of the rotting pile of logs! I moved about half of it to make room the flagpole about a month ago, and today it's completely gone!

This is the pile this morning...

And this afternoon!

Actually, an awful lot of wood has been moved recently...I've been clearing out an area for us to hopefully put a home someday (soon?).

Where, you might ask, did all the tree tops and rotten logs go? Well, that question deserves to be answered with a picture:


It's a berm we've put between the raspberries and grapes, made up of layers of brush and rotten logs. Eventually we'll dig a small swale on the uphill side of the berm and just shovel the dirt onto the wood pile. It's something called hugelkultur, apparently it's existed in eastern Europe for millenia. The idea is that you bury wood, and then plant stuff on top. The wood as it decays attracts composting organisms and holds moisture for extended periods of time. A lot of people worry about the carbon rich wood consuming nitrogen in the soil as it begins to compost, but as far as I've read, no one has had any problems and nobody knows why this is the case! We hope to eventually plant many things on our hugelkultur berm, but we either need a lot of soil to cover the berm with or lots of time to let it compost on its own.

While Sarah and I were working, Roscoe was chewing on a golf ball. When we were done for the day, Sarah went to play with him. He is so bad at catching!