It’s been over a month since I got a post up. The reality is that there hasn’t been a lot to share. With the rise in COVID rates, BC instituted a more strict travel ban, and so we really haven’t been able to get over to use the cottage. We did make some progress last weekend, so I thought it was time for an update!

One of my main goals for this spring was to start an orchard of fruit trees and to build out a garden. Both are relatively ambitious projects, and the travel restrictions from the pandemic have made it difficult to manage. Over the past month, we had bought a lot of trees, ordered materials for the garden and got in a position to put it all together.

A few weeks back they provided some advanced notice that there would be travel restrictions coming. We’ve generally tried to do the right thing and follow them. Knowing that it might be my last opportunity to get ahead on the orchard, I took the day to drive out to the Valley, and buy the fruit trees I wanted. I had found a smaller nursery that had good sized trees at reasonable prices. As the trees are a little big for the car, I rented a truck for the day, and used it to also pick up a few other large items we needed.

As we were hoping to keep the grass tamed this year, I also picked up a lawn mower. We had done a lot of research, and wanted to go battery powered instead of gas. So we went with the steel-decked Ego (it universally got the best reviews) model. I’ve never used a battery-powered mower, but I have high hopes (and hopefully less maintenance). By the time I made all my purchases, it had been an expensive day and I had a full truck!

Home Depot has had a good deal on half barrels - so I bought a couple to take over.

It was a long drive from Abbotsford to the ferry, but as I started the day early, it didn’t feel rushed. Plus, I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me still.

It was close to 9:00 by the time I got to the property. As I needed to protect the trees, the plan was to use some cheap deer netting around the posts of the garden, as a (hopefully) temporary measure. I also ran an irrigation drip hose to keep the trees well-watered until we could come back and plant them properly.

It was a busy night - it was almost midnight by the time I had it all to a state I was happy with. The early morning ferry was going to come way too soon! It was a successful but short trip.

The temporary set-up, in the safety of the cheap deer fencing. I was hoping it was enough to protect our little orchard!

Sadly, the broom is in full bloom. But it makes a great backdrop for the white-crowned sparrows.

The bird songs are amazing this time of year!

Fast foreword a few weeks… Last year, I had some success with buying trees from a company called Tree Time Canada. The trees are small - generally a year old- but as a result relatively inexpensive. They put their stock up for sale in November, and you pick a spring delivery. I had picked the first week of May. As a result, I had more than 50 trees being delivered in a state in which they needed to be planted within a week or two after being delivered. That wasn’t really working with the travel ban.

As we were prepping for a time when we could go back to the cottage, we also planned to have a bunch of material delivered to build our garden boxes and do the proper deer fencing around the garden (and eventually around our fruit trees). We also have a few yards of soil, mulch and gravel delivered to complete a number of projects.

The wood for our garden boxes being delivered. Really nice cedar!

In order to make sure our trees (and all the veggies I had started as seeds at home over the winter) survived, we went over for Saturday and Sunday. It meant that we had a very busy couple of days ahead of us. As it turned out we planted almost 40 trees over the two days.

The first project we tackled was the orchard planting. I had bought 12 trees - 4 cherry, 4 pear and 4 apple. I’m very excited to see how they grow over the years. A couple of them have small fruit already started, so we’ll see how they do. Digging 12 holes in our rocky ground is challenging - but the neighbor’s Hilti came through and saved us a ton of time! We got the fruit trees, plus about 30+ of the small trees planted by around lunch time. These included ponderosa pine, blue spruce, Douglas fir and a variety of shrubs. We were pretty happy with the progress.

The project (to start) the afternoon was to work on building the garden boxes for the garden. We had very nice cedar delivered, and so started to build. Building the boxes wasn’t hard - there was very little cuttings to do, so they went together quickly. We had a choice as to what to work on next - deer fencing the fruit trees or starting to fill boxes with soil. We chose the soil, which in hindsight was a poor choice.

We were sore and exhausted, but we had really made a lot of progress!

As we were checking out around the property earlier in the day, we noticed that our neighbor’s rake, hung on the side of his shed had been co-opted…

It seems that momma robin thought the rake was a great place to raise a family. She’s sitting on three eggs!

Sunday morning came way too soon, and we were both pretty sore. We also knew that we had a lot of work to do. Sadly, our poor decision making became evident - the deer had eaten the bottom half of all our fruit trees over night! We couldn’t believe it. I never thought that they’d find them and browse them clean in one night! Fortunately, all the input we’ve received since indicates that the trees should bounce back. Let’s hope. So we quickly focused on fencing the trees. We needed to keep what was left safe from the little bastards.

The first task of the day was protecting what was left of our poor fruit trees.

After that, we focused on the garden boxes. We wheeled over a lot of soil, and got 3 of the 4 filled. I was also able to plant all the veggies I had started in the city. I combination of delicata squash, peppers and kale. Justine has the two low boxes to plant flowers. We do that the next weekend. We are also counting on the temporary fencing to keep the gardens safe.

Garden boxes filled, and some of the plants transplanted.

We were treated to some nice sunsets this weekend.

BY the end of Sunday we where exhausted, but really happy with our progress. The damn deer eating our trees was a set-back, but it could have been worse. We’ll be back for my birthday weekend to pick up the projects that we didn’t quite complete.