I used to have a neighbor, George. Lived about 3 football fields from the house...the trailer is still there. Not lived, I guess, visited. He came from somewhere in the Philly area. He would pack up his car, his wife and sometimes a few of his teenage kids, drive up here and shoot guns. I got to know him cause almost from the day I bought the place he would visit on his ATV and monologue me to death. The man could talk.
Not more than 3 months after being here, he warned me that others were hunting on my property and in an effort to 'protect me', he posted my ground. Big white ugly signs, all over the place that indicated this property was mine. The reality was George was posting my land so that he could trespass on it all by himself. I didn't really care. I was rarely here and if he wanted the land to hunt on all by his lonesome, so be it.
Then about 2 years ago I had a phone call from my other neighbor, Jason. George's body was found on my land at the bottom of a steep cliff, with his ATV rolled over ontop of him. It seems that George had decided to take a tour of my property in the winter when a slick ice patch had glazed over one of the steep logging trails. Once George drove over it, his tires slipped on the ice and over the edge he went. The death was instant.
The ice patch is part of a swift, seasonal stream that tumbles down this intense slope and when I saw that George's body was found at the bottom of it, I decided to call the stream George Falls. Morbid, but memorable.
So yesterday, I'm sawing wood up in the same hills, got to by the same trails as those often walked by George. I was thinking about the dangers of steep hillside and about George's death when I took a turn further up from George Falls and heard something break loose.
The 300 pound wagon that I was pulling with the ATV to collect the wood gave way and the carriage commenced to race down the summit. The pin holding it had snapped and now the wagon was charging down the mountain on its own. I was actually shocked to see it travel the distance it did on its own before, as though cued by George himself, it took a sharp left at George Falls and threw itself headlong into the abyss. The remaining journey I could only chart with my ears. Three loud, terrible bangs and then an agonizing silence. When I peered over the edge of the cliff to look, I saw the wagon, badly dented, flipped on its back and wedged in a deep ravine. After a few attempts to get it out, I left it for today when I could attack the situation with renewed vigor. Three scotches and a good night's sleep later, I used the winch on the ATV and three long chains to pull that poor, bruised bastard of a wagon up. And damn if the thing still wasn't in good working order.
On another note, I finished a THIRD garden row and see that there is room for a fourth. I don't get to play outside today though, I have to spend the entire time inside working on my 'real work'. As you can see, I'm gearing up for it now.
The old garden...and I'll post pictures so you can see, is four 100 foot rows. One with asparagus, another for strawberries, the third for red, gold and black raspberries and the last for whatever I feet like growing (potatoes, arugula, spinach, etc). I've decided to give a break to this last, over-used row and in preparation covered it with about 4 inches of raw manure. Next spring, I'll turn the manure under (I read somewhere that it's best to turn the soil in the spring since the fungal hyphae systems you upturn release valuable nutrients.), then plant the row with early spring crops of spinach, peas, scallions and radishes before turning it under again in July. After the strawberry row produces (also around July), I'll move the suckered strawberry plants to the newly turned row and dig up the old strawberry row to be the new misc vegetable row for 2012.
Oh brother, there goes the alarm. Time to go work. See you in the fields, friends!
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