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Leveling for the Picket Fence Garden

September 4, 2015 by Ashley Hackshaw

The Old Depot Project is underway with a master plan:

The first step of our project was to prepare the area for the garden and fence because the depot sits on the edge of a hill on our property. The rectangular area that I wanted for the garden actually dropped about 2.5 feet from corner to corner but my preference was to have a level fence all the way around (i.e. not tiered). This meant that we would have to level the dirt enough that there was still drainage but so there wasn’t a huge gap under the downhill section of the fence. At first this didn’t look like it was going to be an easy task, our dirt is hard packed red clay:

I thought maybe we needed some heavy machinery and asked around to see if anyone had a small earth mover. A friend was willing to come out and help but we would have to wait a few weeks and I’m really impatient. We decided it would be just as easy to do it ourselves with a little elbow grease and it actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

First, we borrowed a tiller from a friend and tilled up as much of the top soil as possible to move it to the back corner:

These are my four must-have tools for moving large amounts of dirt with minimal effort:

1. Use a post hole bar. This is your best friend. It weighs about 16 pounds and will break dirt away from the ground just by dropping it. It looks like this and typically comes in 69″ or 72″ length.

You can come at the dirt from the top or any side angle. The bar works wonders for shaving off small or large amounts or hard packed dirt. It also loosens rocks and cuts roots with one shot. The great part is that the bar has multiple uses for other things like lifting up heavy logs or prying out large roots (remember your physics classes on force?).

2. A metal garden rake: Use this to rake all the loose dirt into a long, short, continuous pile.

3. A snow shovel. Seriously a snow shovel is your best bet for moving dirt for three reasons: it’s lightweight, wide, and thin. The result is that there is very little resistance when shoveling. Why work harder than you have to?

4. A Gorilla Cart: We have a wheelbarrow but I prefer the Gorilla yard cart with the dump feature. It is easier to pull heavy loads because of its 4 wheels, and it works like a miniature dump truck. You can also tow it behind a 4-wheeler or riding lawnmower if you have one:

So with those four tools it only took us two mornings to completely regrade this part of our property manually. The below photo shows the progress after 1 or 2 loads as we started to build up the back corner:

Once the area was flattened and leveled we did a quick rough estimate of where the fence was going to go it looked like this one side of the hill was going to end up too steep to have the front gate at:

But…I really, really wanted the gate in front of the door of the depot so we decided to carve it out and add a few steps. Using the post hole bar it took about 45 minutes to completely carve out the hill:

Flattening out the area for the first step:

Placing the first wood step into place. This is an old railroad tie we had laying around. Railroad ties are typically treated with a chemicals which shouldn’t be used in a garden, but these are far enough and drain away from where the raised beds will be so I’m not worried about contamination if it does end up having some chemicals in it:

Carving out the second step:

Placing the second rail road tie in place:

A few hours later we were ready to start measuring out for the fence:

I know it looks like Brett is doing all the work but someone has to be the photographer. Stay tuned for the next post to see the progress.

Read more about the Old Depot Project here!

The Old Depot Project is sponsored by Lowe’s Home Improvement.

The Evolution of Home

September 4, 2015 by Ashley Hackshaw

This is my mother’s Joy of Cooking and my grandmother’s Joy of Cooking:

Every wonder who wrote the first cookbook as we know it?

“Up until the middle of the century instructions in cookbooks were always wonderfully imprecise, calling merely for “some flour” or “enough milk.” What changed all that was a revolutionary book by a shy, sweet-natured poet in Kent named Eliza Acton. Because Miss Acton’s poems weren’t selling, her publisher gently suggested she might try something more commercial, and in 1845, she produced Modern Cookery for Private Families. It was the first book to give exact measurements and cooking times, and it became the work on which all cookbooks have since been, almost always unwittingly, modeled.” -Bill Bryson, At Home

I feel like I’m an expert all the sudden in where things came from after reading Bill Bryson’s At Home. I’ll have to try to keep most of my new knowledge to myself though because I can imagine I could be very annoying at my friend’s houses throwing out:

Want to know why we call this the ground floor?
Did you know the U.S. used to ship ice to Bombay? And without refrigeration, just sawdust to keep it insulated.
A machine that cut fabric sparked the first idea of mowing grass. That was in 1830, before that no one cared if the grass was cut.
Must be nice just flicking that light switch…in the late 1800’s they actually had to connect the wires.

If you are looking for a new book recommendation, and haven’t already read this oldie but goodie, I loved this book. It’s an entertaining tour through the evolution of the modern household:

On Bryson’s At Home:

“As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture. Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and his sheer prose fluency makes At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.”

Another book on the evolution of a specific home that is definitely in my all time top 10 favorites: The Big House by George Howe Colt.

On Colt’s The Big House:

“Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt returned for one last stay with his wife and children. This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt’s final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, The Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer’s ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.”

Every since I read The Big House for the first time I’ve wondered what it actually looked like in real life. Don’t peek until you read the book but there’s a photo at this link (along with a great article on preserving family summer houses.)

Transforming the Old Train Depot – The Plan

September 3, 2015 by Ashley Hackshaw

I’ve been working on something called “the old depot project.” Earlier this year Brett stumbled upon this old building that needed to be moved and of course I fell in love with it immediately, before I even knew how I was going to move it. I instantly thought:

Restoration!
Tiny house!
She-shed!
Potting area!
Art studio!
Guest house!

So I jumped on it before I had even figured out how to move it 50 miles to our property. That’s a whole story in itself, and I think it might have had something to do with the cute gingerbread detail:

The depot sat through most of the summer waiting for attention as I brainstormed what direction to take with it. Over time it will morph into different things but right now it’s going to be an organic gardening area with something I’ve always dreamed about: a picket fence. The building itself will be a studio/she-shed with an area for potting as well. I started sketching out an initial sketch:

We are working on raised garden beds, pea gravel walkways and a picket fence connecting to the depot:

Any project this scale seems like a really big project until you break it down into smaller projects. In small stages it becomes a fun manageable project. I like to have a grand plan in place: 50% reality and 50% dream, then I can take my time implementing it and researching all the little smaller parts. Everytime we finish something like this our reaction is:

We did this! We can do anything!

And it’s true….Brett and I aren’t an experts at any one thing, but we can figure things out for myself with a little research and determination.

Most of my dreams these days lean toward self-sufficient living. And most of my research leans toward affordable, eco-friendly, and small imprint living. I hope you’ll be inspired by the projects coming up as part of the depot project.

The Old Depot Project is sponsored by Lowe’s Home Improvement.