Starting to Work on Stuart's Gift

This past Friday, my Dad and I began work on Stuart's graduation present.  That's right.  This coming August my husband, Stuart, will have completed the six tyear journey for his MBA.  We are sooooo ready for him to be out of school, and I am sooooo proud of him for getting through it.

As a gift, I'm working with different members of our family to clear the 'back 40' in our yard and put in a raised bed garden.  Ever since I've known Stuart he has shared stories with me about his own Dad's vegetable garden, and how much he loved going out to pick the veggies himself.  So for his graduation gift, we're all chipping in and helping him get his own garden started.  Here's the progress so far.

Here is what the back corner looked like when I did my last major yard project.  This is when I should've cleared the trees out.

Here is what the back corner looked like right before Dad and I started worked on the trees.  Not too smart of a plan to wait until they get all their leaves back, but whatever.

After only about an hour, Dad and I had all 5 trees down and cut into some good sized chunks.  It's amazing what you can do with a hack saw.  Please note: these were junk trees busting down our fence.  We were supposed to take them down when we moved in over a year ago, but never got a round to it.

Since our gate is on the other side of the house, Dad and I decided to take down one of the panels in our fence so we could more easily haul out the brush.

The view from the front.  It was weird to basically 'destroy' my fence, but so worth it.  Made pick up way easier, and it wasn't hard to put it all back together.

Dad made my neighbors incredibly nervous when he brought the trailer up on our yard. You can see their brand new sodded yard in the bottom left-hand of the pictures.  No sod squares were harmed in the making of this blog.

How do you fit five trees into only two loads in a trailer? Have you Dad jump up and down on it repeatedly.  Now that was fun to watch :)

Us down at the brush recycling center.  It only took us two load to get everything down there, but we weighed in at 620 lbs of brush total.  We were a little tired after all this.  Trust me.

Here is the back corner as it looks now.  Next steps will be to kill off everything growing back there using a 9% vinegar solutions. We will then install three 8x4ft raised beds, install a white picket fence at the front of it (with gate), and get to growing!  I can't wait!!!