Sowing the seeds

 Almost finished the second row now... also broadcasted seeds in the first row and covered with a very thin layer of soil mixed with fertilizer. And just to be safe, put a net over the whole thing to keep safe from birds and stuff.

30 meters of net was not enough though

The seeds are cover nitrogen fixers and some grass to act as mulch. Hairy vetch, white clover, italian rye grass and some barley grass.

All this digging in the sun has given my cap a very beautiful design in form of misty majestic mountains made of sweat.

Design by nature

Once I finish the second row, I will put in seeds there, and then get the saplings in place. After that, I will go and hunt down 20 more tatami mats and start digging my way through the 3rd row... 

Halfway.... waiting for the weather

Line 2 is ongoing. I have come halfway, and it is pretty easy stuff. Checking the weather report it seems to get real cold again in a week, so I decided to wait just in case there is going to be more frost. After that I will plant the cover crop seeds in the first row.

It is starting to look neat

Moving on...

 So after cutting the leaning tree my pile of branches and stuff grew and I have more material to put under the tatamis. Also Mr. K came by and asked if I needed more tatami and gave me a dozen. They are pretty crappy compared to the ones I got from the tatami store for free but it's not like I'm gonna use them to sit on anyway.

Ex-leaning tree

Remember the first row had a real narrow section which bothered me? 

Not good

Well it bothered me so much that I got a 10 meter root barrier and put alongside it, and backfilled with soil. so now it is no longer so narrow. Yeay, I can plant trees all the way in the first row.

Widened

I am now filling in with soil in the second row.... slowly. And adding tatamis as I progress.

Almost 25% in

The nights are still cold and frosty. As soon as the weather starts getting a bit warmer, I will sow the ground cover seeds and order tree saplings to plant in the first row. And hopefully not long after that I will be finished with the second row too so I will do the same there.

My ground covers are vetch, ryegrass, wheatgrass and clover.

The leaning tree no more

I know, I know, I kept thinking that I would just leave the leaning tree and that it wasn't really such a bother, but the more I work on my fields the more I feel it would be a big shame if the tree some day fell on it. So one rainy day, I decided to go and buy myself the cheapest handsaw I could find with long handle, in order to cut the tree down while maintaining a safe distance in case it would barber chair.

I found a saw with 3 meter long handle but just doing a few minutes pretend-sawing with it in the store showed that the length makes the head really heavy and cumbersome to work with. It almost killed my arms. So I opted for the even cheaper, shorter 2 meter long one. I think it is mainly meant to be used for trimming high branches. The head is almost 30 cm long.

As I got back home the rain had stopped and the clouds had dispersed. It was just around noon, and I thought why not, let's do it right now.

Before

I started sawing and sawing from a couple meters away. It was very tiresome to put any force behind the saw head from distance. But after half an hour I gradually got through the trunk. For the first time, I assumed that the lean will make the tree fall on its own, plus I didn't want to waste a lot of effort cutting through the trunk 3 times so I didn't make any notch cut at the front. Big mistake as it later turned out.

Almost halfway through

I had thought the tree would fall after I reached its middle, but noooo it didn't show any signs of even wanting to move. So I inserted a peg in there and hammered it in.

The trunk was thicker than the saw head so I kept cutting from 2 meters away on one side, then on the other side, and then checked from above (where the pictures are taken) if my cuts met. All the while being very very careful and keeping listening to any tiny noises the tree may make to indicate it is starting to break, and all the time ready to leg it.

Peg inserted

With the peg, I managed to open the trunk a little, but despite the big lean it apparently wasn't heavy enough to want to break. So I had to keep cutting even deeper underneath the peg.

Taken from where I stood sawing

By now my arms felt like jelly and full of pain. It took so much effort to add every few millimeters. But I kept taking breaks and kept sawing and hammering and hammering. there was absolutely no wind, so the tree had to fall on its own. I started to hear small crackling sounds when I was hammering but they would stop as soon as I stopped hammering. Finally I sawed so deep that the peg went all the way in. But still no sign of tree surrendering. I double checked both sides that there was nothing holding the tree up. Very strange. By now I had worked on the tree for almost 3 hours straight. I kept regretting that I hadn't made the usual front cut first.

Absolutely exhausted, I took a big big risk and used the chainsaw while hiding myself behind the thick bamboo trunks nearby, to just give the tree an extra centimeter of cut right next to the peg where it seemed impossible to get through by hand due to no energy. Plus right in the middle of the tree the wood was compressed, fresh and wet and very hard to cut trough.

I only had to brush the chainsaw against the middle part and it seemed to do the trick, the tree started to crackle, and I ran away as fast as I could, expecting the worst.

Hooray

No barber chair though. The tree just kind of tipped over, and it spared almost all the trees in Mr. O's land too. I cut it into pieces with the chainsaw and tidied up. While getting cleaned up it did fall over my tatamis so at least I saved myself that trouble in the future.

From the side

From below

After cleanup

While heading home I used the remaining fuel in the chainsaw to cut down 3 of the smallest sugi trees in my other plot, just for fun.

My other plot. It's opening up

My piles

Without actually having planned it, I have since before made separate piles with bamboo chops and tree branches. They now come very handy when I need material of different shapes and sizes to fill in under my tatami paths. So the piles are shrinking and shrinking.

Branches

Bamboo

U-turn