Wow! You know that old saying that it never rains but it pours?" Well, that has definitely been the case for The Book Farm these past several days.
About 3 weeks ago, our septic tank started having issues and needed to be pumped. We were warned at the time that the tank was probably going to continue to have issues and that we should look at connecting to sewer by spring.
Then, last weekend, a pair of trees (pictured) collapsed on the property overnight, during a windstorm. They were Black Locust, a personal favorite tree of mine (whenever those trees blossom in late spring / early summer, it always means that hot weather has arrived in Boise to stay for the summer). Realizing that one tree had fallen and pulled over a second one nearby, I started to wonder if the root system in the circle of trees had been impacted, and decided to have an arborist check it out.
So one thing I didn't know about Black Locust trees - they are highly susceptible to boars. In the case of these trees, the board had infiltrated the entire lower trunk and created a hollow shell. The worst part of this news is that we have 28 large Black Locust on the property and we don't know which can be saved, yet. We do know we need to get rid of the ones that can't, or risk more falling incidents. Hollow or not, those trees could kill if they fell on someone.
So just as we were digesting that and creating our game-plan for the trees (I'll post on the trees specifically soon) the septic tank began to show signs of failure again. So now I have three large issues to deal with for Spring: Fire danger mitigation, which we will resolve by panting the grapevines, fruit trees, berry bushes and lawn (and a big thanks to Ken from Owyhee Mountain Fiddle who has offered to help me install the drip irrigation system), Tree safety, which we will resolve by working with Idaho Tree Preservation to salvage the ones we clearly can, and someone still to be deterimned to cut down the ones we can't, and sanitation, which we will resolve by connecting to Boise City Sewer sooner -- much sooner - than we expected. In fact, THAT process has already begun.
In the interim, I've made the decision to cancel all Book Farm classes and events until we have these situations resolved. In a way, I guess it is a good thing to have our hand forced -- even though we are getting a big setback before we really even get started. But, I will keep updating this blog as we progress, and, as always your comments are appreciated.
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