Total chaos
Our single most anticipated undertaking in this whole adventure has to be the vegetable garden. In the three years before we moved here, Janne and I crammed all manner of seeds into tiny pots on our patio with varying degrees of success. We’ve yet to see a squash plant develop anything beyond a gorgeous flower, and I still regret not trying that batter-fried squash flower recipe (maybe this one will become a real squash?). But ahhh the beans, the greens, the corn. Now, they were divine.
Ever since we decided to take the leap into country living, we’ve been dreaming of the beautiful garden that could be, and the past few weeks have seen us eagerly embarking on the long path to vegetable realization. Our future veggie patch can currently be divided into roughly two zones: the twiggy tree forest and the wild weed jungle. So we’ve been wearing our lumberjack hats and taking on the twiggy trees (I’m not sure which hat we should wear for the weed jungle). These are mostly aspen saplings that are ganging up on the fruit trees and nipping at the ankles of some the bigger beauties—birch, pine, fir, and juniper, to name a few.
Depending on the size of the tree in question, Janne fells it using either the ax, the saw, or his beloved machete (which I suspect he just likes wearing on his hip). Then it’s time for some butchering. I drag the tree away, lop off its limbs (taking great care to avoid dismembering the dog along with it), and stack the tree trunks in a pile. If the size of this stack were any reflection of the sweat that built it, we could present you with enough logs for a grand cabin. Instead, it looks like this:
All those skinny tree trunks will be chopped into neat mini logs and left to dry for the summer. Come winter, they’ll be fuel for the wood stove.
And I can’t forget the dog’s contribution. Väinö does his bit by barking frantically, toppling all the piles of branches I make, and stripping the bark off whichever bit of tree happens to be closest to him. He is indispensable.
No more twiggy trees here!
