Our latest WWOOFers Jon and Bea left a permanent (and great) mark on Draco Hill. Jon had taken a timber framing course and was eager to get to work on an arbor that would help guide our guests into our backyard. (That advice from Ben Falk.) The cherry posts I had saved from our orchard project weren’t good enough though. Jon said locust would hold up better in the soil, so against my usual wisdom, we pulled out the chainsaw gear in mid-summer and took down four honey locusts. Thankfully the weather has been kind for such lunacy.

This gave me the opportunity to teach Jon how to use the chainsaw, and he was a natural!

He then dug holes with handy tools borrowed from our neighbors Margaret and Dan, and planted those poles three feet deep on and in gravel and dirt.

Using mortise and tenon construction, he mounted the cross beams. He then drilled holes for the side branches he found among the slash from the locusts.

We’ll be planting hardy kiwi as soon as we can onto this beauty!

And we’ll be doing a lot more planting thanks to the sheet mulching they both helped us finish in the front yard. We now have pathways and large beds where there once was just grass growing tall and falling over onto our other plantings.

Here’s Bea chipping wood (slash from the orchard) for our sheet mulching effort.

And Jon hamming it up.