We'll be closing on the new farm on May 6th it looks like, and I'm spending some time at the new property to make sure that things are secure. Since I was there anyway, I moved my trackhoe up, and spent the day playing blackberry bingo.
Blackberries (which are actually either Rubus armeniacus or Rubus discolor or Rubus laciniatus) if you want to get technical, are the northwests version of kudzu. They grow everywhere like weeds, and if they're left unmolested they monopolize huge areas.
Whenever I look at a farm around here, and I see blackberries, I know there's something under that bush. There always is. The backberries grow there initially because something got put there, and then keep growing until everyone forgets whatever it was, and that's that.
Under this particular blackberry bush is 1 white-painted round fence post in pretty good condition. 2 10' pieces of channel, suitable for hanging a sliding barn door -- very useful -- one white chore bucket -- useful and a bunch of rotten lumber, carefully stacked on timbers; it was probably good for the first 5 years, and then kinda just rotted there. But the rest of the stuff is pretty good. Blackberry bingo!
Lets look at other discoveries today
A capped well. This sort of cap is usually put over a hand-dug well. The water rights for this farm date back to 1832 (before washington was even a state!), and there is another hand-dug well a couple of hundred feet from this one. Bingo!
Three treated round posts. I think I'm going to end up with quite a bit of fencing just by going around and collecting it all into a single location. Bingo!
Something white. Looks promising
Two pieces of white PVC pipe, about 8" in diameter and 20' long. A whole bunch of rotten lumber carefully stacked.
My uncle bought 10 acres outside of Corvalis several years ago. When we tore out the massive blackberry bushes we found, among other things, 8 cast iron bathtubs, 4 cars, and a BARN that we didn't know was there!
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