Garden on Corliss Homestead Journal

Well, that's one way to meet the neighbours!
Glad to know your chicken protection is working. Hopefully they can keep the dog safer in future. Lucky for you she was a good natured dog though!

Rescue Dog Update

Our new Dachshund Loy (Also known as Noodle) has been both a joy and challenging. We have given her a home at the age of three after being used as breeding stock for a local Amish family. She is all about people. Her biggest desire in the day is to lay near you and accept all the affection you can give. Her personality has been progressively coming out and it has been amusing to watch. She enjoys barking at the mailman as he walks by each day, but won't bark at other walkers in the street. Loy has some prey drive to her and has proudly brought me a chipmunk once in her mouth when I wasn't keeping an eye on her as best as I should of been. She also is a serial carpet pooper which has been a challenge! It has been accident after accident, mostly at night while we sleep, and my first few tricks have not worked.

Dachsund on the wife.

We made the decision that we will start a crate training protocol to try and help her control her bathroom urges last night. I have a crate that we used on her 'sister' who is a much bigger Plott Hound stored up in my crawlspace that I got out and brought downstairs. Luckily there is an insert so I can limit the floor space so she doesn't make a potty spot and a laying spot. Anyway, I did not get the crate setup last night as I need to clean it up. What I did do is close the dog into the bedroom with me last night. I fully expected to wake up to a mess but low and behold there wasn't any issues! She did her business outside when I got up and she got a little treat.

Dachsund and a Bully Stick

We will see if we can get a second successful night...

Finally got some time to go fishing this past weekend.

Fishing in New York

There is a turn off from a state route near me that hosts a large segment of water that is a remnant of an old lock system. Hawks, eagles and ospreys are commonly seen here so the presence of fish is likely. Walking up to the shoreline had a number of frogs spooked which was a good sight.

Originally I planned to fish with some worms as bait but I forgot to get my hands on some. Instead, we settled with corn on a #6 barbless hook.

We had plenty of nibbles, but no luck landing anything. I suppose that is why it is called fishing and not catching.

When my husband and I get to fish this is how it always goes, lots of fishing, no catching haha.

I am in my third growing season utilizing mulched paths between my raised beds. I have decided this fall that I would start harvesting the generated compost in these paths to top dress my growing spaces before the freeze sets in.

Raking back layers of mulch

I started by raking back several layers of mulch material (Woodchips, sawdust, leaves, other organic debris) until I reached a layer of fine textured compost and soil. I setup a wheelbarrow with some soil sieve so I could just shovel into the sieve and pick out large chunky pieces. I ended up needing to break up a lot of the material because it formed into clumps. I was surprised with the sheer amount of mycelium I found so I made sure to leave untouched areas around to reinoculated the dug areas next year.

Sifting pathway compost

I'm thinking of building a finer sieve insert in order to get rid of some of the more coarse material that still got through my half inch sieve.

Sifted pathway compost

This material works great for top dressing, I imagine it will provide some mulch benefits as well as being a compost. I'm rather pleased. Instead of paying to import compost like previous growing seasons, all I need to pay now with is time and effort.

Topdressed bed

This weekends random project was to aggressively thin my forsythia hedge. I annually thin my forsythia for biomass and have realised that I have become rather proficient in the process over the years. While I usually take around the oldest third of the hedge, this year I took closer to two thirds in order to address some burrows that exist close to the base of the plants. In previous posts I have mentioned that I have adopted a dachshund and she has shown her willingness to explore these holes. Now, if she decides to explore, I can at least get to her without being poke and prodded by a bunch of branches.

After thinning, I take the time to hand process the branches to make sure that they are straight pieces without other branches coming off. By pre-sorting the branches into a pile, I can put them through a small chipper to turn them into mulch. Small branches and branches too big for the chipper end up in a separate pile to be burned. This will be turned into ash and/or biochar for other projects.

Another weekend, another step of an ongoing project that can be completed. We are on the tail end of the annual shrub/tree thinning project for 2025. In my previous post, I wrote about how I prepped the trimmings for being processed through a wood chipper. This weekend, I fired up my chipper!

Branch Pile Gone

Over just under an hour, I methodically fed the branches into my chipper and let the chips spread across a hillside that I've been working on stabilizing. Around the thirty minute mark, something happened and the chipper started to vibrate loudly. I believe the spinning blades became unbalanced so that is something I am going to eventually have to look at. Even with the enhanced vibrations, I finished up the pile without further issues.

Fresh Woodchip

I had to unbury my damsom plum but I got some volume of chip to accumulate. In the spring, I plan on getting some Winecap tops to spread spores into this newly chipped area. The mixture of forsythia/maple/sumac should be decent feedstock for the fungus.

An observation.

When my hound does not feel well, it is not strange to see her chew on some grass or a leaf for her tummy. Recently, she chewed on my Bocking-14 comfrey patch and now goes straight to it if she doesn't feel well. There are no substitutes, she targets that plant.

A second observation.

She specifically targets my Bocking-14 patch and not the Bocking-4 patch.

A third observation.

My dachshund has picked up this habit a while later. Same specifics for the Bocking-14 as well as not using substitutes.

Raw Fleece

I started a thread about the technique of skirting a fleece a few days ago due to an opportunity that struck. I got my hands onto a shetland fleece to learn with on my quest to create some dryer balls. The first thing that I observed when spreading out the fleece was the distinct smell of sheep and barnyard the emanated from the fleece. It was not an overpowering scent but it is a distinct one. I believe the sheet whose fleece this was sourced from must of enjoyed rolling around in their hay. There are so many fine pieces that I have been picking out while I go through skirting the fleece.

It is really incredible the amount of lanolin that is in fleece. I felt like I only handled it for a short time yet my hands had a distinct sheen to it. I really wasn't expecting that! I have to start reading up on the washing and scouring process. I'm nervous yet excited to see what this wool will look like when it is more on the cleaner side of things. I currently have it spread out on a 1x10 board as I continue to work my way around it picking off bad bits. I already have a brown bag full of skirted material destined for the compost after my first attempt.