Thursday, July 22, 2010

We Bought the Farm

I know that phrase has a double meaning but I use it in the best sense.

We bought 1 1/2 acres with a house, shop, 'manger,' and 5-car carport in Arlington, WA. That's the address, actually, if you google 'Smokey Point, wa' the pin will come down exactly in the middle of the property, although it is in a neighborhood I would call Lakewood because of the post office location there.

The house is about 90 years old and was one of the original houses in the area. It is in pretty good shape and will be available to rent as soon as the seller moves out. He is a retiring Boeing Engineer who has lived in the house for 27 years. We would like to rent the house to someone who could also make use of about 1/2 acre on land -- for a horse or other animal(s) or a large garden. I expect the house will be available around the first of 2011.

We plan to utilize the shop (for storage and as a workshop), the manger or barn for tool storage. The large carport can be used for vegetable drying, vehicle storage (anyone wanna park an antique car?) and we may enclose part of it.

Our primary interest is what has been a 1-acre pasture for 20 some years. The previous owner kept a couple of beef cows and produced calves. The pasture is currently in tall grass (about 3 feet tall). I plan to first mow the whole pasture and then decide which parts of it we will till first. Probably, we will make one application of Roundup on about 1/4 acre or slightly less to kill the grass and then till it so as to be able to make a fall planting of garlic, shallots any some other over-wintering crops in October.

We will fence half the pasture (after mowing) in preparation for a tenant with animal(s). I already mowed a small portion of that pasture that had a healthy stand of thistles which had not gone to seed yet.

We also plan to purchase an RV and park it on the property to give ourselves a little weekend-vacation spot not too far from home. We'll start by bringing the travel van in which Jennie has half interest down from Anacortes. That will give us somewhere to potty and get a drink and even sleep if we want. Eventually, we plan to sell our large boat (37 ft trawler) and use the proceeds of that sale to buy a larger RV which we can use on the farm and for travel.

So the first order is mowing. I have ordered a new blade assembly for my Troy Bilt sickle bar mower. The old blade is quite worn and dull. The mower gets bogged down easily. It would take me weeks to mow the heavy grass in the pasture with that old blade. The new blade should get it all mowed in a day.

I will start a new blog for the new farm as soon as we think of a good name for it. Any ideas?