HOMESTEADING IN TENNESSEE

Bringing Rita Home

2012-01-26T06:59:00.000-05:00

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The vet confirmed on Friday that Rita was bred. We were going out of town on Saturday, so Sunday was the earliest we could go pick her up.

Rachel and I worked all Sunday morning into the afternoon on a stall for her in the front right corner of the barn. We decided to do a board stall, with 2x6's around the outer stud walls, and 2x8's in the interior where there's a 12' span to a central post. I put in one treated 4x4 post at the center of each of these 2 long spans to break it up into 6'. I dug down 30" with a post hole digger till I hit hardpan, then centered the 8' post inside and filled the hole with mixed concrete.

Rachel left around 1 or so to go pick up the cow. The friend who'd showed us how to hand-milk was bringing her horse trailer to pick up the cow [we later cleaned out her goat house on a work-exchange].

I worked fast to finish the stall while they went to pick up Rita. The front of the stall has 2x8 boards that slide open and shut and lock with bolts. It took a while to get all this assembled as I was as usual making it up as I went along. I got everything but the blocking done on one of the small inside posts which the boards slide through.

They backed the trailer pretty close up to the barn. Rachel led Rita out of the trailer to her new stall. Rita pitched a small fit pausing and bucking as she was led to the barn, but it was momentary, then Rachel led her in to her stall.

Rachel has years of experience with big animals having had different horses. I've never had any experience with big animals, so Rachel helped me with what to do and not to do around such an animal.

We locked Rita in her new 12' x 12' stall. They say cows can become plaintive and unhappy in a new place and will bawl for hours. Rita only mooed once or twice. The one time I asked her, "So do you like your new home Rita?" she immediately threw her head up and let out a terrific moo - which I guess meant 'HELL NO!' And I think she mooed once more the following morning. But since then, never got a moo out of her.

We used our large galvanized washtub for water for her. We'd gotten a heavy-duty bin for her feed from Tractor Supply which hangs on one of the boards of her stall. Her previous milking schedule was 5:15 in the morning and evening. We milked her at 7 the first night by flashlight - we wanted to move her to a 7 and 7 schedule, she didn't have a lot of milk, and by what we saw at her last place, where they practically dragged her from the pasture into the barn to be milked - she was in no hurry to be milked.

Rachel tied her up with her lead line to the center post and went in to milk her. Rachel had had the best success training to milk on the last cow, so we thought we'd put the best person on the job for milking to keep Rita's production up [milk production usually drops 50% when the cow is moved]. I doled out the feed from outside the stall while Rachel milked.

Rachel first cleaned out her stall with a manure fork. She started grooming Rita with a brush which Rita hated and resisted. Rachel washed her udder and teats with a warm water vinegar solution. Then the milking began.

To give Rachel plenty of time to milk and preoccupy Rita, I doled out the feed one scoop at a time into her feeding bin. Rita fidgeted and kicked at the milk pail with her left foot this first milking [we milked on the left side as that's how Rita was milked before, and cows are obsessed with routine].

The next milking Rita went from kicking at the pail to kicking directly at Rachel. Rachel got kicked once in the shin, and from thereon brought in a long piece of plastic electrical conduit to whack Rita on the hock every time she kicked. The first milking was a series of a few squirts, kicking, Rachel whacking her, then a few squirts again, over and over. Rita kicked like a demon. The whacking seemed to have little effect. After around 30 minutes, Rachel got 3 cups of milk out of her.

Rita's behavior in the evening was the same. The plastic pipe seemed to have no effect on her, so Rachel got an old split wooden rake handle. This Rita seemed to feel, and she began to get the message. She still fidgeted, and kicked, but not quite so freely.

Rita kept knocking the bin around with her head and for a while I'd thought this was the wrong feeder for her - that we'd be better off with a tub on the ground. But we made some changes to everything which improved the situation. We got about a quart in the evening, and a half a gallon a day seemed to be all she had or would give.

From then on we chained Rita up to the back corner of her stall with a heavy-duty chain and clip, allowing only enough head motion for her to eat from her bin. I buried each scoop of her feed in hay in her bin so she had to dig around with her snout for it - buying us more milking time. Rachel 'shooshed' Rita over to get her to line up against the back of the stall - she used the command "Shoosh Rita!" and pushed on her hip to move her back end over to line her up against the wall. If Rita's being stubborn and won't move or takes a step or two then leans back, Rachel takes her broken stick handle and pushes on her hip with this - it tends to be very effective.

We'd gotten a long tough rope for tying up her kicking leg to the other side of the stall. She fought the rope madly at first, kicking and flicking her hoof - she got it off once - but eventually Rachel got the loop positioned just right around her shin and Rita couldn't get it off. Rachel made a loop at one end of the rope, the rest of the rope pulls through it around Rita's leg, and is tied with a saftey slip knot to the post. The loop tightens when she kicks but loosens when she stands still.

Rita now tried to kick, but with her left foot tied there wasn't much she could do. So she tried to kick a little with her right foot, at least across at the milk pail, but these kicks weren't dangerous kick-in-your-head kicks and more of a nuissance. With consistent reprimands for kicking and occasional whacks, the kicking began to lessen to more just fidgeting. And Rita definitely came to respect the stick - just the sight of it usually is enough to get her to calm down and do what she's asked.

When Rita gets restless and fidgety and kicky Rachel milks her with a tin cup and sets the pail off to the side so it doesn't get kicked over. She periodically dumps out the cup. With the cow producing only a quart per milking, the cup works fine.

The feed they had Rita on was a cheap bulk cattle mix at $7 a 50 pound bag - not even the right food for a dairy cow. But it takes time for a cow's rumen to adjust, so we've had to wean her off slowly from it and bit by bit introduce alfalfa and beet pellets, corn and oats. Sometimes she gets leftover cream of wheat from breakfast, or vegetables from the garden. She loves any kind of Brassica leaves.

Rita began to improve behavior-wise . . . to kick less, tolerate grooming, stop shaking her head at us and stomping in her stall. We wanted to try tethering her so she could have some outside time to graze. Rachel attached a heavy-duty chain to the front of the barn - not one of the main posts deep in the ground, but one of the doubled studs only attached to the sill plate with a few screws.
Rachel opened the stall and lead Rita out with her line to the front of the barn and attached her to the chain. The chain is over 20', but Rachel tied it up so Rita would only have half that to start - enough to wander a little and comfortably reach the ground to graze.

Rita bit at the grass nervously a few times. Then she did a few twitchy kicks with her right leg - something I'd see her do later when coyotes howl - it was some kind of nervous tic of hers. Then out of nowhere Rita turned and charged at a dead run to be free.

The chain yanked her back, and she tried again and again. The last time I saw the doubled stud move on the sill plate, as we should have attached the chain to a main post, and we knew that was enough tethering for Rita. Rita even tried to hurry back into her stall once. So Rachel unclipped her and led her back into the stall with some hesitation and stubborness from Rita but eventually she went in.

The whole experience had really terrified Rita, and she was perfectly content once back in her stall. So we decided to not bother with tethering for now.

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Rita's almost a completely different cow now a month later. She loves to be groomed, and grunts, and buries her head against me while I'm grooming hoping it will go on forever - and insisting I scratch her head. Her milk production has doubled to a gallon a day - sometimes a hair less depending on how much water she drinks and hay she eats. Rachel has the milking down and milks her out rapidly with both hands in under 15 minutes. The milk cup used for the wild Rita has been basically retired - Rachel milks into the pail and Rita only gets fidgety and a little kicky once she's out of food.

I still don't enter the stall unless she's tied up. She's too unpredictable. Rachel will just to muck out her stall quick or something. Sometimes Rita still has cranky days and shakes her head at us and stomps, but she's become far more managable than in the beginning.
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Rachel's Corrections

2012-01-26T06:05:00.002-05:00

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Rachel had a few corrections to the last post:

The lady said a little under a gallon each milking (as to the confusion). We asked if she meant a gallon and a half a day she replied yes.

The milk machine was not retro fitted with weights. She simply pulled down on it to "open her up" to milk her out faster. She did turn up the vaccum and changed out the claw.

It is a tablespoon of bleach per gallon not teaspoon.

Rita

2012-01-04T06:46:00.006-05:00

Rita was listed as a jersey/guernsey cross at $800. When Rachel called about her, we found out she'd been recently bred to a guernsey bull, was due to calf in July, in milk, 5 years old, halter-trained and able to be led. When Rachel asked how much milk they were getting, the woman said 'a little under a gallon'. We decided to go out and look at her the following day as she was out in Robbins and only 20 minutes away from us. The last cows we'd looked at were dry, so this was at least something. After drinking the raw milk for a while, we really couldn't go back to store-bought, and we definitely wanted a cow that was in milk.

Rachel called for directions the next day. This time the woman said that maybe there was some confusion, but that she was getting up to a gallon and a half at each milking. That's a big difference from 1 to 3 gallons a day. But she seemed very shifty on the phone about it. Low-producing milk cows are apparently hard to sell.

Rita was out grazing with a few other cows on a large flat waterlogged pasture surrounded by electric fencing. She was led in to their unfinished barn and given some grain to occupy her while we looked her over.

She's a beautiful animal, in good condition, but not overly friendly. Her teats were small and close together. Rachel noticed they felt rough and chapped. I felt around her udder, or 'bag', as they call it, and it was very hard for me to believe there was any milk in there at all let alone 1 1/2 gallons. It was either a perfect udder attachment with all the milk up high, or we were being told a story about her production.

Rita's owner seemed frank about everything except the milk. She got tense with long pauses any time we asked about Rita's production. I asked to try some of the milk, and the woman again paused for a long while, looking at us . . . and I started thinking to myself . . . is there even any milk around to taste? Is she racking her brain to think where she can come up with some milk for us? But she did end up saying sure and inviting us inside to try some of Rita's milk. Rachel later thought it might just have been a fear of an inspector or something and all the ridiculous laws surrounding raw milk [in Tennessee it's illegal to sell it, trade it, or even give it away].

Rita's milk had a little guernsey yellow to it and the flavor was okay but not as good as the cow we'd learned to milk on. Rachel thought there was a slight 'off' flavor - this could have been the cheap bulk cattle feed she was on, or maybe the tubing in the milk machine wasn't perfectly clean. Rachel and I walked outside to discuss it for a while. We'd also noticed after Rita'd been led back out to pasture she licked obsessively at the mineral tub - so something was definitely lacking in her diet.

Our biggest concerns were the small chapped teats and questionable milk production. We decided to ask if we could come back at 5 for her evening milking - it would be good to see Rita's routine, and it might clear up some concerns on the milk issue. We also had a couple hours to kill so we drove up to the library in Oneida to research chapped teats to see if it's reversible.

There seemed to be a lot of evidence online that machine-milking can lead to chapped teats. Especially if the vacuum setting is too high. The owner of Rita had always had goats and her machine was for milking goats. She'd had to retrofit it with weights to get it to work for milking Rita. So maybe since goats are easier to milk than cows she turned the vacuum setting way up to get it to work for Rita.

It did seem like the condition was for the most part reversible.

It was dusk when we got back. Rita's owner invited us in and showed us how she makes Rita's udder wash - she put about 1/4 cup of Chlorox bleach in a quart jar, then added water to mostly fill the jar. Rachel has gotten chemical burns from bleach before and thought this proportion for an udder wash was way over the top - Rachel had read you usually do only a teaspoon of bleach to a gallon of water - not a 1/4 cup to a quart. This constant burning with bleach might also be contributing to the chapped teats.

Her husband had to go out and lead Rita in from the pasture for her milking - and Rita threw a small fit jerking her head back to avoid going into the barn to be milked. So she was in no desperate hurry to be milked - again, maybe because there wasn't much. But she did want her grain.

They dumped her grain in front of her, hooked up the milk-machine, and it was all over in less than 10 minutes. We definitely saw milking flowing good through the tubes - so she had milk. I highly doubted 1 1/2 gallons, but maybe half that.

The milking was very sort of 'get it over with'. There was no grooming, little communication - only dunking each teat in the bleach solution. The machine-milking seemed like a cold medical procedure - without the 'hands-on' interaction of hand-milking. It also fit in strangely in the dark half-finished barn with no power and only a flashlight to see with.

Rita didn't kick or fuss, and at the end nosed her owner a little, the husband, so it seemed maybe she might be friendly, but possibly didn't get enough attention. They'd put in some blood-work on Rita to see if she had set, and we told her that as soon as they hear back from the vet that she is indeed bred we'll come out and pay for her and pick her up. We never bothered negotiating over the price - $800 is cheap for a dairy cow.
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1/3

2012-01-03T20:03:00.002-05:00

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Never got above freezing today, and there's a 2" thick layer of ice over all the water in our water barrels. We had to bust through it with a hammer. We took hot water from the stove out for the chickens, bunny, and cow so everybody had something to drink. Rita will drink more water if it's warm with a little molasses in it.

Rita kicked a little poo off her hoof into the milk pail at tonight's milking. So it'll go out to the chickens.

The wild guineas are spending the night in our coop again. They may be here to stay. One of our guineas however is spending the night in the oak over the coop - I guess having forgotten the lesson of a night out in the cold with the possibility of a great horned owl swooping by.

Got the french door opening framed on the upper story of the barn. Have 2 more doubled studs to put in, then I can put together a materials list and order the wood for girts to begin siding the building.
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1/3

2012-01-03T06:52:00.002-05:00

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Bitter cold yesterday with flurries and 20 mph winds. I barely got anything done construction-wise on the barn. The snow began to stick towards evening and now everything is covered in an icy white crust.

Brooke and Rachael and I went up to shut up the chickens at dark, and Brooke said, "I wonder if the wild guineas will be in the coop." And they were. The dark adults panicked when we came up to shut the doors, one flying towards the main door and ending up roosting above the light. The young ones were all calmly roosting on steps of the ladder. So last night we had 16 guineas. They'll probably go back home tomorrow.

I screwed up a few sheets of OSB to Rita's stall to give her a small windbreak for the night. We also set the stock tank on its side and moved over a cage with hay bales on it to give her an additional windbreak. She was pretty jittery all day. When the chickens wandered into the corner of her stall where she's fed to peck up spilled grain, she lost it and drove them off, thrusting her head under the stall boards to get them. Once she'd succeeded in driving them off, she bucked and ran in a circle in her stall several times, stamping her hooves and snorting. I guess she was making a statement.

Last night's milking was especially brutal with the cold and wind. Rita's milk froze to the outside of the pail.
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1/2

2012-01-02T06:29:00.003-05:00

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Rachael took a bunch of photos with her ipod - the quality isn't great, but I'll post them soon.

Everything is so phenomally busy I hardly ever get time to even think about sitting down to post though I know I need to.

Rita gets milked twice a day, is improving slowly, Brooke and Rachael are here, I'm beginning to side the barn, right now getting a materials list together and will probably order wood today or tomorrow.

As far as the tunnels, the next two days of below freezing temps will test how well the plants inside can hold out. For our area, we should be switching to cold frames for the middle of winter, but it has been a pretty mild winter so far, and everything in the tunnels is doing okay. Some losses, like chard, or lettuce not shut up early enough in the night. Some plants are mostly dormant or growing incredibly slowly like spinach and all our seedling crops in beds 8 and 9. If they can just survive the winter they'll make a great early spring crop. Most of the brassicas and especially the mustard greens are doing great in the tunnels.
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Christmas Day

2011-12-25T20:07:00.003-05:00

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Still no pictures - I'll try to get some tomorrow morning.

Spent all of Christmas Day under the cabin insulating the addition floor with fiberglass batts. Fun.

Beautiful sunny weather today - nothing like what it should be for December. Looks like a mild winter.

A lot of things to catch up on - let me start with the birds. Have switched them over to an all-natural diet of sprouted grains and lentils which has worked out very successfully. I take a half-gallon of 7 grain scratch, 1 cup oats, 1/2 cup thistle seed and soak it overnight. It swells up tremendously, then is sprouted for 1 day. I add to this a half pound of well-sprouted lentils with good tails. The birds love it and over the course of the day polish off every morsel.

The lentils are there to raise the protein content [soaking and sprouting the grains may raise their protein content a little also, as scratch is only 8%]. Soaking and sprouting dramatically increases the volume of food, it's more digestible, a whole natural food, and there's less waste as the soaked sprouted grains are much larger and not easily scattered.

I screwed in some small metal containers in the coop and filled them with grit and oyster shell. The birds aren't consuming quite as much grit now that the grains are soaked, but they're definitely hitting the oyster shell hard [we ran out of their old eggshells which we'd roasted and ground, as production's so low], and this makes sense as now that they're off layer pellets they need additional calcium.

Since only Rosy's laying there's plenty of room to experiment with diet without affecting production much. Rosy has continued to lay dependably, a guinea is laying now and has 3 eggs in the coop [unrelated to the diet change], and we're pretty sure the ducks have started laying or are at least looking hard for places to lay and flirting with the idea. The guineas and ducks are all mating like crazy as if it's springtime - probably a combination of the light in the coop and the warm sunny weather we're getting.

I'll have to tinker with the poultry diet and see how it goes - but so far I think it's going great. One of the reasons why I think it's feasible at least for here and now is that the birds free-range add day across several acres, there's still plenty of fresh weeds and grass and grubs to dig up with the mild winter, and the grains and lentils soaked and sprouted are just more usable and energizing than the standard factory fare of layer mash/pellets. I'd always wanted to get the birds on a more natural diet but when the birds were laying well I didn't want to mess with it, and we were also concerned with cost. It's maybe an extra buck or two a week to go all natural - but I think it's worth it. And if we're ever able to get the raw ingredients cheap in huge sacks, it may actually end up cheaper than layer pellets.

Garden in the low tunnels is doing well - little warm for the brassicas, cool for the spinach and downright cold for the chard/beets. The mustard greens are doing fabulously though. Lettuce decent - usually the unheaded frilly types and red lettuces seem far more hardy and are doing best in the tunnels.

The loft ladder's been rebuilt at a steep angle against the east wall. The girls' room is finished, almost totally insulated now. We'll have a living room soon where the old kitchen was. Have a large couch and rug so far, and floor lamp. Still need an armchair, rocking chair, and small coffee table. The last bit of insulation that needs to go in is under the main floor of the cabin. The insulation has made a huge difference in heat retention.

I'm picking up Rachael and Brook on Wednesday and they'll be here for 10 days which is exciting. They haven't been up here since July. They'll be a lot of new things for them to see, the ducks, rooster, low tunnels, how far along the interior of the cabin is, the bunny, and the cow.

Remember the jersey/guernsey cross we were going out to look at in Robbins? It's out in a stall in our barn. We brought her home last Sunday.

Her name is Rita, and she's pretty small for a cow, even a dairy cow, at a little over 800 pounds. We paid $800 for her, dropped a hundred on boards for her stall, and another hundred on large animal paraphenalia as well as feed.

This last week of twice a day milkings of our semi-wild cow is a long story which I'll cover in the next post.
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Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T06:43:00.001-05:00

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Brought home what ended up being a rather wild dairy cow a week ago. Very busy trying to gentle her and increase milk production. Will soon have pictures and a full update.
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12/15

2011-12-15T06:07:00.003-05:00

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It's so warm up here for the middle of December we're not even running the stove at night. Thunderstorms are forecast for today.

Putting the insulation in is nearly finished. There are a few pieces to put in in the walls, and all that's left is the floors. We're going to use the same R 19 for the floors because even though the framing's thicker and could accomodate R 30 [2x10 floor joists], the floor heat loss ratio is the same as the walls - 10 to 20%. Only the ceiling is higher at 30%. But with the cathedral ceiling and 2x6 rafters R 19 is all we could fit in the ceiling. Using R 19 for the floors instead of R 30 will save us a little money, it's faced which gives us a vapor barrier, and for a horizontal installation stapling it in place is infinitely preferable to using the metal wands [tiger's teeth] which over time cause the insulation to sag between the wands while it's compressed above the wands.

I've moved the bookcase over to the northeast corner and built a wood box out of scrap lumber for storing firewood inside relatively close to the cool oven side of the stove.

The next step is building the new loft ladder at a steep angle against the east wall. The ladder will be built of 2x6 boards, and will have a handrail along the wall. Since we're moving the ladder to the loft we need to redesign where furniture is upstairs. Right now we're considering sort of making two rooms up here - a bedroom with bed, dressers, toilet area and computer on the west side, divided by the couch with bookshelves behind it so the east side is sort of a library/plant nursery. We'll have to move everything around to see if it works.

On Monday we drove down to visit a friend who invited us to down to learn how to hand-milk her jersey cow for free. It took Rachel and I a while to get the hang of it, but ultimately we were able to milk out a gallon and a half. The lady sent us home with that milk, another gallon she'd milked out the day before, and one of her roosters for our hens - all for free. We're going to go back down on Sunday and take her some home-made bread and try milking her cow again. Until we have our own cow we're going to exchange some work around her farm for milk.

When I first tried the jersey milk once we got home it was still slightly warm - very rich and creamy, seemed like slightly less sweet than store-bought, with a strong dairy flavor. But once it was completely chilled I tried it again and it was just about the best thing I'd ever tasted. We all did blind taste tests between the organic store-bought milk, and the raw jersey milk. For Rachel and I the difference was unmistakable. The 'cooked' store-bought milk is almost undrinkable in comparison to the raw jersey milk. It tasted old, flat - almost like canned milk in comparison. We've been guzzling the jersey milk with every meal, and making raw smoothies with it. Like any raw food, it's high-enzyme, energizing, and digests effortlessly. I've noticed it even makes any meal far more digestible if we drink the milk with it.

Interesting that in the state of Tennessee raw milk is illegal to trade, sell, or even give away. I guess someday they'll make it even illegal to ingest. Just another example, in a long, long list, of how government is there to hurt you, not help you.

We're going up to Robbins, TN today to look at another cow - this one's a jersey/guernsey mix. The only negative thing about her is that she's currently only producing a gallon a day. We'll have to look at the conditions she's in, her pasture, feed, etc., to see if maybe that could be improved. She was bred to a guernsey bull, and is due to calf July 11th, so if we got a heifer out of it that would be awesome, though it's just as likely it'll be a bull, which only sell for a hundred bucks. The heifer would be worth keeping.

We still haven't named the rooster yet. He's a marin/cuckoo mix, with the same black and white barred coloration as Claudia. We started with putting him in the bobcat cage up in the coop. But he kept calling and terrified all the birds in the run which refused to go in and check him out. We then let the rooster out into the run - and he's a big bird, roughly twice the size of Claudia and Rosy . . . and that didn't go so well.

Claudia went straight to the ground desperate for a rooster and all he did was briefly attack her - maybe confused by her coloring and thinking it was one of his fellow sibling roosters he'd always been competing with for hens. Then one of the white male teenage guineas started attacking him, and he flew and pecked back - no injuries, just a short scrap. But we decided to open the coop door and herd everybody out of the run . . . maybe things would go better out of confinement. A fight between one of our guineas and the rooster in the run would have been the end of the guinea . . . but outside if they don't get along the guineas can at least run or fly off and escape.

We were able to get everybody out of the run except the ducks and the rooster. The ducks simply for sheer stupidity - the rooster because he was terrified of the run door and wouldn't go through it [it's a bit of a tight fit for him also]. He's a good 2' tall.

Eventually the ducks found their way out and only the rooster was left in the run. I locked him out there for the night with food and water so there wouldn't be any fighting with guineas over roost space in the coop. I walked up late to check on him and he was hunched up against the run door for bed and looked pitiful - like he really wished he could go in the coop.

The next day we let everybody out and the rooster quickly found his way out of the run and the coop. He spent most of the morning following the ducks around - I guess they were non-threatening, and he'd built some kind of bond while they were all stuck out in the run.

But eventually he started following our hens around, and the next morning he was mating with Claudia and Rosy right outside the front door. Little Bit's a tiny banty and a little too small for him - though we did hear her squawk once where he may have jumped on her. Sometimes the girls like a break from him and go hide under the cabin. He's a little too tall to follow them in there, so instead he stands guard.

He's become a great friendly rooster, following and guarding the hens, eating grain we throw from the front door, and no conflict with the guineas whatsoever. The first night in the coop he followed the girls up and climbed up beside them. With him towering there on the roost, the guineas milled and called and were reluctant to go in the coop and roost beside him. But eventually they did and there were no problems.

The rooster crows quite a bit, especially in the morning. It was really neat the first morning when he was stuck out in the run - there was a heavy fog, the lights were on in the coop, and he was crowing loud and clear through the fog . . . I didn't even hear it till I opened the front door now that the cabin's so sealed up.

The ducks are now herded down to their pens with their nest box as they should start laying soon, if they aren't already [the squirrel could have been stealing a guinea egg]. The drakes are constantly pouncing the females, so they're definitely sexually mature. I have to say raising 3 types of poultry, that the ducks are basically pigs with bills. They eat constantly, and make a huge muddy mess wherever they go, and shit everywhere. And as far as intelligence goes . . . they're on the bottom of the list. They're very entertaining to watch if there's a pool of water around, but otherwise they just don't have the big personalities of chickens. Of course if they start laying well my opinion of them will dramatically improve . . .

Already getting windy and stormy today - 70% chance of rain.
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12/11

2011-12-11T07:21:00.002-05:00

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It's been an incredibly busy week - let me try to summarize it all.

The birds have been out free-ranging with no losses so far. The trap is set out beside the run and I just noticed the other day the bait is missing - something must have run off with it without setting off the trip plate.

The 11 low tunnels we have up are working great. We've had hard frost every night - low to mid-twenties, but the plants are fine. They take a good bit of monitoring though on sunny days to make sure the tunnels are well ventilated. The chenille method allows us to tug up the sides, and the tension on the twine generally holds them in place - though adding a few clothespins to hold up the plastic always helps. No matter how cold and windy it is, if it's sunny the tunnels quickly get up to 80 degrees. And once the sun begins to go down, the temperature in the tunnels plunges fast. Usually they need opened a couple of hours after sunrise, and closed a couple of hours before sunset.

We had our first snowfall last week. The snow covered everything, but there wasn't much accumulation before it started to melt away. By the next day it was mostly gone.

About 3/4ths of the cabin is now insulated. It makes a huge difference in heat retention inside. If Rachel's baking and needs the stove good and hot, the cabin gets so warm especially up in the loft we open a few windows. We have a fan upstairs above the stove we run constantly to blow the hot rising air back down into the kitchen and addition. It actually works pretty well - without it most of the heat just sits up in the loft and downstairs is far cooler.

Only the southeast facing wall and floors still need insulated.

I've built an improved kitchen counter over on the northwest side of the cabin. I put in the large cast iron sink that's been sitting under the building for years - it's not hooked up to running water, but we just bucket in rainwater for wash and drinking, and will put graywater buckets under the sink for drainage. The garden out under low tunnels still hasn't needed any watering yet, so the graywater/duckwater mix for now is going out to the perennials in rotation.

Once the new kitchen's finished, I can move the loft ladder over against the southeast wall at a steep angle with a handrail - more of a stairway. This will be far more convenient than the ladder we have now which is out in the middle by the stove and vertical. Rachel fell from the ladder the other day and her back landed right on the corner of the wood stove - her back hurt for a couple of days and she had quite a bruise but she's okay.

All of the perennials are protected in some way from deer pruning. I ended up stringing fishing line for the large lower blueberries, strung between sapling stakes pounded into the ground every 10 to 20 feet or so. So far it's worked great, though the bottom runs of line I put in to keep the chickens out occasionally rip loose - probably the chickens.

Almost all the caution tape is up around the property - there's only one small section to finish along the road. There's no question it works. We haven't heard or seen any deer since it went up. One of the A frame bird netted setups over the blueberries up at the swales got torn and blown down - I thought maybe a deer had trampled it but after checking it out it was more likely just the wind. It took a only a few minutes to set back up.

We looked at a couple of jersey cows the other day a few miles down the road. One was very gentle and 5 years old but dry and bred just a couple of months ago. The guy doesn't really want to sell them and wants a $1,000 per cow. We're going to keep looking online a while longer till we get the pasture fence up around the lush hillside down from the barn - the pasture is about half an acre and will include some of the creek and woods and will also be used for free-ranging the birds. Rachel found a woman online about an hour from here on a family cow forum who's invited us down Monday morning to learn how to hand-milk . . . this is very generous and helpful as neither of us have ever had a cow though Rachel has milked goats.

There was some interesting mouse drama last Thursday. Rachel and I were out cutting and splitting wood in the front yard. One of the logs was hollow. Once we'd carted up the wood in the wheelbarrow to the front door we kept hearing squeaking sounds while unloading it. We eventually found two baby mice who'd been nesting in one of the hollow logs.

Rachel put them in a small plastic container with bedding inside to keep them warm. They were still blind but had fur - so were about 2 weeks old. We set the container up under one of the lamps to keep them warm.

We went to Gwen's play at the school and stopped on the way home for ingredients for a baby mouse formula Rachel found online. At home Rachel worked with trying to feed them using a dropper - she got them to take a little milk though they were pretty stubborn and resistant. It was amazing how frisky and active they got once warm even though still blind.

I went downstairs and saw a mouse shooting around under the couch, and asked upstairs - "Are the baby mice where they should be?" They were and it was the mother darting around looking for her babies.

So we took the baby mice and set them on the bedding in front of the wood pile. We then all backed off to watch from a distance. The mother kept darting around everywhere looking for her babies. Eventually she went back to the wood pile and found them. She grabbed one and rushed into the hollow log they'd been living in. Then she found the other and took that one in. She grabbed all the bedding and packed it in around them. After an hour or so we took the log and set it in one of our plastic bins with a big piece of insulation, and carried it down outside to where we'd gotten the log from.

Country living . . .
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12/4

2011-12-04T08:15:00.005-05:00

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A spell of beautiful warm fall weather has hit and should last a few days though the rest of it should be rain starting tomorrow.

It turns out the 'wild guineas' are actually owned by a neighbor and they roost in one of his pines at night. So we'll stop trying to catch them. But it's still good they spend so much time here and hopefully they'll interbreed with ours.

We've been extremely busy lately, finishing the low tunnels over the garden [11 total] and insulating the walls of the addition. Every time we put more insulation in we notice a big rise in retained temperature inside. We need to insulate the rest of the cabin before we can start working on siding the barn.

Before the last string of freezing nights we drained the well water out of the hose and overflow tank and shut the well-pump off. Dishes are now done inside with hot water from the wood stove. The garden plants in the tunnels have very little need of watering and the perennials are going dormant so we don't have much need for graywater right now. It's always best to wash out the toilet buckets with the jet from the hose, but for winter we'll just have to rinse them out with buckets of rainwater and air them sufficiently.

I cleaned the coop out and got nearly 3 full wheelbarrows for the compost bin. We'd put in an underlayer of sawdust with a grass/leaf mulch on top, which works very well, but we're down to only 3 bags of sawdust for the toilets so I just did 2 wheelbarrows of grass/leaf clippings for fresh bedding in the coop. I put dried hay in all the nest boxes. Rosy is still laying dependably, but her eggs are about all we're getting. The ducks are definitely sexually mature, but either laying sporadically or the squirrel is stealing them. We've gone back to free-ranging as we were unable to trap the bobcat and he seems to have disappeared for the moment, though the same neighbor who owns the guineas says a bobcat wiped out his chickens.

We did catch Claudia [our barred rock chicken] in the bobcat trap however. We happened to be up at the coop when she wandered in to it and set it off. I guess she'd thought of checking out the chicken bait, but once the trap door shut she just started pacing and complaining till we let her out.

We got a lot of wood cut and split yesterday from small standing dead trees and dead boughs well off the ground. Some of it burns very well, some okay. Rachel started using a creosote remover product to keep down a buildup of creosote in the chimney since we're not burning ideal wood - just whatever we come across that looks dead and reasonably dry. It seems to have helped and the creosote layer in the chimney is only a paper thin film.

A few days ago I put in bird netting over all the blueberry bushes up at the swales [there are 21 plants]. The easiest way to do it ended up being driving a 6' sapling at either end of each bed [there are 5 to 6 shrubs per bed] - which is two saplings for each 30' bed. I predrill a hole for the sapling by pounding in some PVC pipe then remove it. I drive in the sapling at an angle away from the bed so tension doesn't bow it in, then run masonry line or twine between the two saplings and pull it very tight. I cut a small notch towards the top of each sapling so the line doesn't slide up or down. Then I just lay the bird netting over this sort of like an A frame tent. One 15' x 45' piece covers each bed to the ground from the line on either side well - I used one piece per bed. This will not only protect the shrubs from being bitten down by deer [something that's kept them stunted the last few years], but also from our own chickens wandering in and digging up all the mulch and dust-bathing in cavities around the plants, and also any birds trying to steal the berries of course. The last thing I need to do is give them a very thick leaf mulch.

Today we'll get the rest of the caution tape up - it seems to be working and we haven't noticed any deer.

Very windy this morning - usually a sign of a storm on the way.
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11/28

2011-11-28T21:25:00.003-05:00

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Very heavy rain the last two days. Schools closed at noon due to flooding, and buses are running tomorrow on a 2 hour delay. Light snowfall is expected tomorrow.

We'll have to finish the low tunnels in the snow tomorrow. And once the weather breaks, we have a lot of wood to cut and split as we're almost out.

Rachel and I drove out to Knoxville today to close on the Sunbright property. After a year-long struggle, we now own it. We celebrated by buying an Ebbing's silverberry, the same shrub all over Atlanta covered in tasty red speckled berries. It's a great permaculture plant and forms a dense hedge. We'll probably plant it on the west/windward side of the garden.

We also bought a car-full of insulation, layer pellets, a squirrel trap, bird netting for the blueberries, and returned the mop bucket.

Over the weekend while walking up to the coop I saw a squirrel running from the chicken run with something white and round tucked up under his chin. I chased him into the woods but he never dropped it and eventually I lost him in the woods. Since none of our chickens lay white eggs, I assumed it must be one of the wooden eggs. But all were accounted for in the coop. So the only conclusion is that the ducks are now laying and he'd stolen a duck egg. I'd have never have believed it without seeing it with my own eyes, but he carried that egg tucked between his chin and chest while bounding across the grass and through the trees. I'll set out the trap tomorrow.

We'll have to use the cellphone temporarily for future photos as the picture-taking button on the camera's broken. Rachel had handed the camera up to me on the top of the ladder, it got caught on her pinkie and went crashing down to the floor. Outside of the picture-button, the camera seems fine. Maybe we can get it repaired.
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11/26

2011-11-26T18:22:00.002-05:00

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Today was a long hard day of putting in low tunnels. Rachel and I got most of them in. There are a couple of stretches of Brassicas that still need covered, and some of the tunnels still need end flaps, but we're close to finished.

Yesterday a large bobcat was terrorizing the birds up at the run. We had let them out earlier to free-range and fraternize with the wild guineas. But one of our guineas launched into the air behind the run, and we spotted a bobcat trotting off into the woods. I caught and carried Rosy and Claudia up to the coop, and we herded our guineas in. Once we had them all penned up, I saw the bobcat running and lunging at them at the front of the run, and went up and ran him off. This cat is much larger than the last one.

I set up the trap last night beside the run with some chicken for bait, and a bed of leaves to conceal the cage floor and trip plate. This morning I walked up to check the trap, didn't see a bobcat in it, but the trap was shut and some of the chicken had been eaten. I assumed the bobcat hadn't gotten in to feed, set off the trap, but was so big it shut on his back and he was able to get out.

So I opened the trap door and was about to reach in to fix the leaves inside. Suddenly I saw an opossum, right in front of me at the edge of the door, and quickly shut the door back up. It was a small opossum, and he just sat there and stared at me. There's always the possibility an opossum has been getting the eggs, and since I already needed to go out to Jamestown for supplies for the low tunnels, I thought I'd go ahead and relocate him.

On the way out to Jamestown the road passes through Big South Fork Area. I pulled in at a picnic site off a large creek to release him. After I opened the door the opossum still just sat there, so I had to tip up the trap higher and higher to get him to slide out. He kept hanging on to the cage floor to keep from falling out, but finally he did slide out and waddled off into the woods. Very cute . . . with a tiny little rat tail.

For the tunnels we're using 4 mil plastic [though I did get some 2.7 I found at Walmart cheap in case we ran short], schedule 40 1/2" plastic electrical conduit for the hoops, and 1/2" rebar to cut into stakes to slip the ends of the hoops down over. I cut 20" stakes and leave about 9 to 10" exposed to anchor the hoops down on. The beds are up to 5' wide and irregular, so each hoop has to be a custom length.

I burned through metal blades for the reciprocating saw in no time cutting the 1/2" rebar. I ended up going to the circular saw with a diamond tip blade with sparks flying everywhere. It nearly melts the ends and i have to pound them smooth so the conduit still fits snugly over it.

I drive in the rebar stakes from 4 to 5' apart at the edges of the beds, slip a keychain over each stake [or modify some other kind of metal loop once we run out of keychains], then put in the 10' lengths of conduit down over the stakes. The height of the hoop at the center we're shooting for is 30", so I just measure the difference, and cut off double the amount from each piece of conduit so it's the right size [think of it this way - taking off 1" from each end of the conduit will cause the top of the hoop to lower 1" - so 2" must be cut off to drop it 1"].

Once all the conduit's in we get out the right size sheet of plastic - 10' wide, and a couple of feet longer than the end hoops of the actual tunnel for overlap. I make a secure connection at the central ends of the plastic so it can be tied down tightly at either end of the tunnel. I find the center end, and roll in a small flat piece of wood and attach it with U nails [I cover the plastic with duct tape on both sides wherever I penetrate it with a fastener]. Once the piece of wood is rolled in snug I drill through the center of it. I knot off a piece of masonry line and feed it through the hole - this is then tied down to a cutoff piece of conduit driven in at a 45 degree angle at either end of the tunnel.

A small sheet of plastic is tucked around the end hoops to serve as an endflap. When it's warm the flap is rolled up and pinned up with clothespins. If weights are necessary to hold down plastic at the tunnel ends or between the hoops to keep it flush with the ground, we use old milk or water jugs with the top cut off full of gravel or rocks pulled from the garden beds. The jugs can be cut so the handle remains and are easily transportable. It's a convenient free alternative to buying sandbags which are a pain to lug around.

We use the chenille method as a way of fully securing the plastic down over the hoops. Twine is threaded through the keychains at the bottom ends of the hoops and run diagonally over the tunnel from hoop base to hoop base. This is far preferable to burying the ends with dirt or laying down sandbags. If the twine is in contact with dirt at the base of the hoops, it's good to go with something synthetic like masonry line rather than jute or cotton so it lasts. We started out using a pack of keychains we picked up at Walmart, but Rachel found tying a keychain clip with masonry line to the stakes right beneath the ends of the hoops works better and it's easier to run the twine through. Just about anything will work.

The chenille is great because it not only secures the plastic nicely down over the hoops, it allows easy access at any time the garden bed by just tugging up the sides - the tension from the twine holds it in place. Though we ventilate this late in the year only at the end flaps, if it were warmer hold sides could be tugged up to keep the bed from overheating.

Wonderful warm weather today, but ahead is 3 days of rain, cold, possible snow showers, and once the rain is over, a week of winter temperatures, every night below freezing. That's why we're in such a rush to get these tunnels in. They should have gone in a month ago, but we've had so much going on.

Today was our second failed attempt at herding the wild guineas into the coop. We can corner them very close to the door, but getting them to wander in is very difficult as they just mill in a panic along the run. Eventually they fly straight into the air to escape. We'll keep trying. Our birds have to stay strictly penned up till we catch the bobcat.

Using only rainwater now for everything - drinking, dishes, laundry. We'd harvested 330 gallons last rainfall. We've only gone through half of it, and rain is coming, so all the barrels will be filled again.

Eating Thanksgiving leftovers the last two days. Probably another week's worth.
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The Stock Tank

2011-11-24T18:23:00.002-05:00

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We got a 110 gallon stock tank from Tractor Supply yesterday. By heating water in stock pots on the stove, plus the hot water in the stove's reservoir, we had a nice long hot bath. And inside . . . we haven't had the luxury of a hot bath inside since February in Atlanta. The tank is made of an insulated material so the water stays warm for a long time - it was still relatively warm in the morning, and it had been a cold night.

It didn't take long to bucket the water out - since it has some soap I distributed it across the front yard.

Thanksgiving was a very busy day for us. I mowed some, mulched bed 9 that has a low tunnel over it which is almost finished - washed 3 loads of laundry - the commerical mop bucket and wringer wasn't any better at wringing out the clothes than the bucket press method we've already been doing - so the mop bucket will have to be returned. I also did the usual chores for the animals and cleaned the bedroom top to bottom.

Rachel worked all day in the kitchen cooking food on the stove. Everything came out great - Rachel thinks food cooked on a stove comes out better than a conventional appliance - the oven retains more moisture, and everything seems more flavorful. We had cranberry sauce, roasted butternut squash, pumpkin, apple, and sweet potato pie, turkey, mashed potatoes and turnips, bread with acorns, rolls, turnip greens, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, and Vic and Jo came by for our Thanksgiving dinner and brought corn salad, wine, stuffing, and a pineapple cheese dish. It was a great meal, and the stove performed wonderfully.

I let the birds out today as the wild guineas were up at the run hanging out with our guineas. It took a while for all the birds to make it outside after I'd opened the coop door [especially the ducks - they didn't figure out how to get out till an hour before dark, though they've used the same run door over a 100 times]. The guineas all seemed to get along well and spent more time together.

Had an egg from Claudia today - cream-colored with dark speckles. Both Rosy and Claudia laid yesterday.

One of the female rouens was walking across the back of another female rouen in the pool today, once I put fresh water in. Either they're confused . . . or it's their way of bullying one another out of the small pool.

We have a tremendous amount of leftovers and don't need to cook for a week.

Heavy fog this morning, but warm and sunny all afternoon.
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11/23

2011-11-23T08:12:00.003-05:00

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Rain all day yesterday.

Put up more caution tape around the property boundary. I caulked and insulated the windows of the lower story. I started working on shielding the small upper blueberries on the berms. I'm pounding 6" sections of PVC into the ground around each bush, at all four corners, then cutting long saplings to arch over the plant and anchored in the PVC [as I pound it in I take it out and poke out the dirt so there's a good cavity to lodge the ends of the saplings in]. Where the saplings cross above the plant I'll tie them together so there's an even dome over it, then place a piece of bird netting over it and tie it down at the 4 bases of the saplings. The domes are made big enough for next year's growth. It's a long process, with 25 plants to do, but cheap, effective, and practical.

The wild guineas spent most of the afternoon up at the run congregating with our guineas, so we decided to let all our birds out and see how everyone got along now that Bergack has simmered down since his mate Chi Chi's gone. There were lots of fluffed up feathers and bluff charges and angry guinea fighting merry-go-rounds, but once everybody's place on the pecking order was established they all got along quite well. If we could only lure the wild guineas into the coop and shut the door we'd have more guineas and guaranteed good breeding stock. But they're wary about going in the coop, and getting the door shut in time would be difficult considering how skittish they are.

Today we'll get the supplies for the low tunnels and put them in. Rachel's got bread and rolls and 3 pies to bake in the cook stove for Thanksgiving. Last night she was up late shelling acorns to put in the bread.

Watched a great film the other night, Aaron Russo's AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM. Been reading lots of Dave MacGowan's articles also at Center for an Informed America.
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11/21

2011-11-21T19:21:00.002-05:00

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Heavy rain all day today. We had to run out to Oak Ridge for a dental appointment and to get some things from Home Depot - bird netting for the blueberries, insulation, more caution tape, an industrial mop bucket with wringer, caulk, carbon monoxide tester, etc.

After reading several negative reviews about the expensive hand wringers available, we've decided to try the less expensive route of a commercial mop wringer [$35] for wringing out clothes. Some of the hand wringers out there cost up to $200, and according to many people are either incredibly inefficient at wringing out the water, or tear up the clothes.

The last 2 days have spent running caution tape along the property boundary. Originally we were going to just run it around the 4 acre clearing, but following the property line will keep the tape away in the woods and less visible, and help us with ultimately siting a fence line down the boundary. The property was surveyed in 1999, and the corner posts and tree blazes are still present and clearly visible. One upshot to this work, whether it keeps out deer or not, is that we've discovered I was mistaken about the western boundary line of the property. It's much, much further back - we've realized we actually have nearly a third more land than we thought, encompassing the entire ravine area to the west. This will be a good area for goats to clear, and of course another resource for firewood as well as nice buffer to neighbors.

The caution tape so far is strung at 2.5' and 5'. Haven't heard or seen deer in a while. The long stretches of tape bounce constantly in the wind and may wind up an effective deterrent, though of course it's not the most cosmetic approach. Eventually the property line will be strung with 3 runs of unbarbed wire, and I'll weave cut brush and saplings through it to make a sort of wattle fence.

All of the birds spent the night in the coop last night, but tonight the ducks are staying out in the run. Getting an egg every day or two from Rosy still. We actually had to buy eggs today for Thanksgiving - something we haven't done the entire time up here. Next week we'll try a hatchery for increasing the flock.

Tomorrow we'll get rebar and plastic conduit for the low tunnels for the garden, as temperatures will soon be drastically cooling off.
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11/20

2011-11-20T07:15:00.003-05:00

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Nearly 60 degrees this morning. The forecast is for 3 days of thunderstorms with temperatures up into the 70's - barely below 60 at night. Then a long spell of cold. The last couple days have been moderately warm but very windy. Today the air is still.

We worked on fencing and mulching more perennials yesterday. The jujubes, persimmons, bush cherries, and goumis are now done. The little mulberry up by the coop got a tomato cage surrounded in chicken wire. So did the sassafras I'm trying to let grow off the path to the coop [beautiful understory trees with edible leaves]. I've got maybe half the property mowed so far.

The large mulberry and cornelian cherries will become part of the fenced-in cow pasture downhill from the barn - so they don't need protected immediately. All the small perennials down from the barn along the berm made from soil dug up behind the barn - hawthorns, juneberries, currents, a medlar - they didn't do very well last year and will all be transplanted. Either they didn't get enough sun, were too wet, or constantly fighting the tide of blackberry rising behind them . . . they will all be transplanted to what will become the fence line for the pasture from the barn to the oak by the fireplace to the stump by the blueberries. We'll wait till they're all completely dormant to transplant.

All of the blueberries still need protected from deer - fencing would be too expensive. There are about 40 blueberry shrubs. We're going to try throwing bird netting over them. If branches poke through everywhere, or the netting doesn't stay in place, we'll find a way to cage it or stake it down.

We cut and split another round of firewood today up past the upper blueberries. I also cleared some of the saplings and brush in the area where we were working because it was choked with growth. There was a large dead tree fallen a couple of feet off the ground - one end up on a log, the other wedged between a couple of trees. It looked like good wood so I had to figure out a way to bring it down and start cutting it up.

They call it bucking with the chainsaw when you're cutting logs laying horizontally - underbucking is where you cut from below. I made an underbuck cut about 1/4 of the way in, heard the tension break, then from above cut a large wedge with the saw so when the log caved the saw didn't get pinched.

It worked well - just like in framing, where a rafter or joist is in tension on the bottom, and compression along the top, once the area in tension is cut along the bottom of the log, like snipping a cord, it's just a matter of cutting out an area on the upper surface so either ends of the log can fall to the ground. A wedge cut keeps the logs from pinching the saw as they go down.

The garden has had a lot of frost damage from that 20 degree night. But it's still going. Hopefully once the low tunnels are in many plants will recover. I'm going to try bending 1/2" metal conduit for the hoops - I'll use plastic conduit over the bed to get the right size hoop, trace a template of it on OSB, cut this out and lay it on the ground, driving 3/8" rebar stakes every 18" along the arch. The first 2 stakes will have matching stakes 1/2" away from them, so I have a place for the metal conduit to get lodged as I slowly bend it around the rest of the stakes and arch. Though I'd prefer to use 1/2 rebar for the stakes, I don't think it will fit inside the tube of 1/2" conduit.

After a good bit of research on using caution tape to keep out deer, we're going to start with 2 runs of it at 2.5' and 5'. If it appears deer are leaping it, we'll do another run at 7.5'. It's more of a psychological barrier as the tape hums and whips and snaps, than an actual physical barrier. We've got 3,000 feet of tape, we'll see how far that goes.
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21 degrees

2011-11-18T07:57:00.004-05:00

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21 degrees this morning. The forecast was for 28.
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11/17

2011-11-17T18:49:00.005-05:00

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Hard frost tonight. We got another sheet of 4 mil plastic today so are able to give an emergency cover to two more beds. We also used sheets for the collards that seem sensitive to a good frost.

We went to Jamestown today for caution tape and materials for the low tunnels. They had a roll of 9 gauge wire cheap and bought it thinking we'd try Coleman's design for low tunnels, with wire hoops instead of conduit. But after getting home and researching it, it doesn't seem that compatible with our broad 5' beds. So we'll go back to Jamestown at some point for conduit and rebar stakes. This will be more durable. Though we've planted right to the edge of the beds, and the arch of the hoops at either end will crowd the plants, we'll harvest from the outside of the beds successively and next year not plant so close to the edge.

I'm using 3' rebar t-stakes for fencing the perennials. Where the plant is big enough to call for 4' fencing, I wire a 4' sapling to the stakes to extend them to the right height - it works for such a light application. The jujubes are now fenced and mulched. I'm now working on the goumis [silverberries] at the front of the house. Next is fuyu persimmons.

Going to get a dozen hens soon as we're down to an egg a day at best. Tonight the guineas and ducks are out in the run refusing to go to bed. I guess something's spooked them again in the coop or they're just stubborn [or stupid]. Tonight will be very cold. I've left the run door open in case they decide at some point to go in. It's nearly impossible to herd them into the coop from the run.

Very cold and windy today. It's good we installed the support brackets for the chimney last week, or this wind may have torn it off. The brackets work great and the chimney's immovable.

After having moved all the barrels to the front of the cabin for the last rain, we now have nearly infinite water for drinking, dishes, and laundry. We've hardly made a dent in the 330 gallons we collected. But I'll do a few loads of laundry tomorrow - I use about 25 gallons a load with a wash and double rinse. Heavy rain is forecast again in a few days. Storing the water long-term was an issue for us over the summer, but now it's so cool and the barrels stay covered so the water keeps well.

Cranes calling and flying high overhead tonight. There was a screech owl calling up near the coop.

Creosote is building up quickly in the chimney with all the subpar wood we've been burning. We got a cresote-remover product today. We'll see how well it works.
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11/16

2011-11-16T16:11:00.003-05:00

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Heavy rain all day today. I moved all the barrels to the front of the cabin. When the ones below the gutter ends got full, I bucketed it into a barrel beside it. It only took a minute to bucket water from one barrel to another. This strategy got us 330 gallons today. When the siding's up and downspouts attached I can use a small piece of flexible corrugated pipe at the end of the downspout to move from barrel to barrel when one is full.

Cooling off rapidly now that the rain is ending. Another hard freeze forecast for tomorrow night.

We're going to get 'caution tape' tomorrow and run two bands around the clearing to try to keep deer out. There's a lot of evidence it works. We'll put one at a deer's knee-height and one at chest-height. The tape is very cheap - $5 gets you 1000 feet. 6 rolls should do both runs.

I've been working on fencing the perennials. I've tried using saplings for stakes as saplings are free. But they're hard to drive into the ground and want to split all over the place as you pound them in. I'll try sharpening the driving end into a pencil point, and get a metal cap to place on top of the sapling to keep it from splitting apart as it's pounded in. I'll also stick with thicker saplings, a good 1.5" to 2" in diameter.

The cheapest option for long-lasting stakes for something as light-duty as chicken wire is 10 foot lengths of rebar. 3/8ths is $3, 1/2 is $4. Each rod split in half makes two stakes. But I'm trying to keep fencing the perennials a low-cost effort - we've got nearly a hundred young fruiting shrubs and trees, and fencing material is most definitely not free.

Rosy's the only one laying up at the coop. We're getting 1 egg every day or two. We've put the birds back on layer pellets because we found some at the Coop at $10 for a 50# bag and the ingredients aren't that bad. The birds weren't eating the alfalfa, so the protein content of our homemade mix wasn't working. We've found a guy an hour south of Knoxville who has 50# sacks of organic peas and grains - price-wise it will never compare to the 20 cents a pound of layer pellets, but it will be better for the birds and the eggs. We have to get the cash together for a large order because he's 2 1/2 hours away from us.

Once we get the caution tape up and fence a few more perennials [working on the jujubes and fuyu persimmons now], we'll move on to the low tunnels over the garden. It's certainly getting cold enough soon to need them - temp tomorrow . . . 49/30.
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November

2011-11-14T09:19:00.007-05:00

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The garden heavily mulched. Eventually we'll mulch and plant the interior perimeter.

The juneberries fenced and mulched. Eventually all the young fruiting perennials will get this treatment to keep deer and birds and chickens out. We'll lay cheap bird netting over the top.

The fig tree. This needs heavily protected from winter cold.

The growing wood pile in the barn. We spent a few hours yesterday cutting and splitting dead wood at the front of the property for the next cold spell. The wood seasons so well here on the south-facing side of the barn protected from rain - I think eventually we'll attach lean-to sheds on either side of the driveway for wood season and storage.

Very windy yesterday but warm. We can occasionally hear the chimney creaking in its support box socket. Hopefully the extended support brackets come today as it's forecast to be just as windy today [right now though it's rather still and sprinkling].

Birds are doing okay locked up. Going in to roost in the evening no problem. I take them up a bucket of weeds from the garden every morning and throw it into the run. Not only do they get some stimulation and nutrition here, the weeds will ultimately help to build the soil of the run so it rebounds faster after they've trodden it down when locked up.

Didn't even need to run the stove yesterday, it's been so warm.

Just noticed all the potted pepper plants on the table behind the computer are full of red ripening mini-peppers. It was an experiment to see how viable were the seeds in a bag of mini-sweet peppers we bought at the grocery store. So far they've done very well. They get water with the same duckwater/graywater fertigation mix as the garden.
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11/13

2011-11-13T06:03:00.002-05:00

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A warm cloudy night in the 50's. Windy. Winds today should hit 30 mph. Our chimney support brackets haven't arrived yet but I think the chimney will be okay as long as there are no gusts.

We have a couple days of rain starting on Tuesday. We'll get two more rain barrels tomorrow to set up beside the others at the front of the house. Till we put in downspouts I'll just bucket the rain from the full barrels to the empty so each rain brings us 220 gallons.

We also need to get a smoke alarm and carbon monoxide tester. We've felt a little sleepy with the stove going all day and windows shut and we need to make sure it's not carbon monoxide.

Yesterday was a long day of mowing. I mowed around the lower blueberries and the lush hillside which will soon become the pasture for the Jersey cow. I got over 10 wheelbarrows of mulch. I finished heavily mulching the garden, and piled up the rest in front of the compost bin for cover material. I also fenced around the juneberry beside the bin with chicken wire, and heavily mulched it with grass clippings. It should produce well next year.

Only 1 egg yesterday, Rosy laid. Something must have startled the birds in the coop because they stayed out in the run and refused to go in and roost for bed. Only the banty Little Bit was up on the roost. Rachel was able to call in the other chickens with corn - Rosy and Claudia. But we could not get either the ducks or guineas to go in even with banging on the run with crutches and long branches. Rachel tried crawling into the run to shoo them inside, and the guineas just went berserk - 'popcorning' everywhere [when they try to fly and bounce of the chicken wire ceiling we call it 'popcorning']. Rachel kneeled down and held her head concerned they'd fly into her face. We had to give up and let the ducks and guineas spend the night in the run with the run door open. Sometimes it feels like we have the dumbest birds . . .

I tried to dig up a couple of grounding rods that stuck up in the yard as one caught the mower. But they're in too deep - I had to cut them low with the reciprocating saw.

I put up the pool and tarp beneath it into the barn. The pad under the pool is like concrete from all the compression of 4,500 gallons of water.

We're starting to get low on wood so today we'll cut and split a bunch more from the front of the property. There are huge piles of seasoned trees and branches laying in a maze that will make good firewood.

Rachel made banana pancakes yesterday with sprouted wheat berries on the stove - very good. We finished off the potato soup for dinner, and played 'Guesstures' with the kids [a type of charades].

The compost bin is slowly falling apart from all the weight and moisture. Next time a chamber's empty it will have to be rebuilt on the inside with some durable nontoxic material. Synthetic decking would be ideal, but it's $20 a board.
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11/11

2011-11-11T18:20:00.002-05:00

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27 degrees last night. Everything that was covered did fine. A patch of mature chard that only had a thin sheet of plastic over it was a little wilty. The broccoli and cauliflower that was left uncovered also got a little wilty.

Last night a few guineas roosted in the oak over the coop. I thought I'd counted 3 out of the coop, but it was actually 4. Rachel and I stood out on the doorstep about 10 at night and saw 2 guineas suddenly take flight way across the property to land high in other trees. This usually means a predator. I hurried up with the flashlight to see if it might be a racoon or something but there was nothing, no animal, no dead bird. But I only spotted 2 guineas in the other trees with the flashlight. I then recounted the guineas inside the coop and realized 4 were out.

The next morning I noticed only 3 guineas up outside the coop. So we lost another bird. The only conclusion I could come to was that a great horned owl took one. If it were an animal in the tree I would have either spotted it or found the remains of the guinea. Whatever took it took it from the air and disappeared with it - only a great horned owl is probably capable of that. I looked it up online and apparently many people have had their entire flock of guineas wiped out by great horned owls.

It took hours for the frost to clear from the grass. We watched AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS while we waited for it to warm up. I replaced the blades on the mower and mowed for hours. It's the final mow of the entire property before I won't be able to mow again till spring - we need the cover material. I was able to get about 10 wheelbarrows of shredded leaves and grass clippings out of the front yard. 1 wheelbarrow went to the coop over the sawdust, and the rest went out to the garden beds - some areas needed a heavier mulch, the big brassicas needed mulched close around, and the large areas where tomatoes and peppers were pulled needed remulched. I got about half the garden mulched so far. Once it's finished the rest of the clippings will be piled up for cover material for the compost bin. It won't last all winter though. We need to score some cheap old rotten rolls of hay.

While going down the driveway with the wheelbarrow I spotted a large cat right in front of me, trotting down the driveway. At first it looked like a large gray feral cat - then I noticed the lack of tail. Another bobcat. It went off into the briars but not in any particular hurry. These bobcats are bold - middle of the day, out hunting right under my nose. It may be just the season though, when predators get a little more desperate for food.

I walked back to the house to see if Rachel could keep an eye out outside while I kept mowing as I was down by the road and all the birds were out - but I'd had to wake her from a nap and she was slowly waking up. About 20 minutes into mowing I heard the birds hollering and knew somebody'd been killed. All the birds were together and looking around and Goldie was missing. We just put up the birds this evening and Goldie is definitely gone. She'd been an excellent layer.

We were able to herd all the guineas into the coop tonight - I shooed 2 off the roof with a crutch and we got them in. This is good because all the birds need locked up again while we try to trap and relocate yet another bobcat.

Tonight we'll have frost again so the fig and garden is covered. Rachel spent much of the day wrestling with the stove to improve its draft. She says it's better now.

The mower is still really shaky and clunky-sounding. Something is loose somewhere and out of balance but I can't find out what's wrong with it - we may just have to bite the bullet and take it to a dealer for them to take a look at it.
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Hard Frost

2011-11-10T18:18:00.002-05:00

A hard frost is expected tonight. We jugged out the small vulnerable plants, those too big for a jug went under plastic or in plastic bags, and beds 8 and 9 got covered in a large sheet of 4 mil plastic - this will be used for the low tunnels over these beds once we get the frames constructed.

The fig tree is in the background covered in a pink comforter. I used three stakes and chicken wire to make a broad cylinder around it, filled it with 11 large bags of leaves, and covered the upper shoots with buds poking up from the leaves with straw and an upside-down bucket. This keeps the blanket from bending and crushing the upper shoots and buds. The bucket and blanket will be used only on very cold nights, till winter really hits - then we'll cover the whole thing with a tarp and tie it down.

I put up old sheets of plastic over the coop windows to keep the draft out of the coop. Plexiglass would be ideal, but it's very expensive. The west window which really brings in the cold and wind is covered with rigid 1/2" insulation. Once we get a glass cutter we'll start cutting whatever glass we need from storm doors at the thrift store.

Today was cold and gusty and we ran the stove all day. I did two loads of laundry with the breather washer, washed dishes, fertigated the garden, and we disassembled the pool and drained the water in the bottom, hosed it off and laid it out to dry. It cleaned pretty easily. We'll pack it up before the next rain.

Big salad from the garden today, and arugala is growing like a weed - coming up in cracks in the concrete like dandelion. We also had eggs and toast cooked on top of the stove . . . somehow more flavorful, like cooking over a campfire [maybe the slow-cook in cast iron].

The two mixed runner drakes were mounting the crippled rouen today. This rouen has a terrible wobble to her walk and constantly shoots her head down and to the side like a nervous tic. She has all the colors of the male but no drake feather, so we weren't sure of her sex. Either the drakes are confused or have figured it out. She may be now sexually mature and start laying. That would be nice since we're averaging only 2 to 3 eggs a day. We could never breed her with her disabilities, but eating the eggs'll be fine.

We're catching deer out on the property every night, probably biting down fruiting perennials. We need to get them all protected with chicken wire. A neighbor suggested surrounding the forest line with two strips of 'caution' tape - apparently it works for hunters trying to funnel deer into a certain area. May be a cheap solution if it works.

Last night I heard a noise out by the dishes and took a flashlight to investigate. It was Rosy pecking at a pot. I guess she got suprised by the dark and decided to roost in the dishes. I carried her up to the coop and found the ducks all nestling down on the hillside. I herded them in. It's partly the birds getting confused by the early dark outside and late light inside the coop, and also I've been shutting the front door to the coop and leaving the new run door open to encourage the birds to use it as a way in and out. It takes birds eons to learn a new routine. The ducks have yet to figure it out.

3 of the 12 guineas are roosting in the oak over the coop tonight. At least the other 9 have sense enough to seek shelter for a long cold windy night.

11/9

2011-11-09T17:57:00.002-05:00

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A hard frost is expected tomorrow night. We'll have to cover 2 beds in plastic again, jug out the lettuce and chard, and heavily mulch the fig tree.

We couldn't get the oven in the cook stove hot enough to bake. Rachel read over the manual, and yesterday took the panel off the oven side of the stove to clean out ash over the oven. There was a huge buildup of ash on top of it interfering with the draft. We cleaned that out, and sealed every joint in the stove pipe with fireproof caulk. It looks like it's worked, because the oven is already at 350 degrees.

The next thing on the list for increasing the efficiency on the stove is to replace the firebox door gasket. The fireproof rope can be bought in a roll at the hardware store.

We ordered the extended roof brackets to help support the chimney as it has some play in it. It's possible a good gust could tear it off. They say no additional support for a chimney under 5' is necessary if using a support box - but the chimney shouldn't be able to wobble like that. It's locked tight into its socket in the bottom of the support box, but the sheet metal at the bottom of the box is not that heavy gauge and is allowing the chimney to move.

A hawk perched on the run yesterday, and all the guineas hollered at it. All of our birds right now are too big to be bothered by a hawk. It eventually flew off.

4 eggs yesterday. Everybody laid. 2 today - Goldie and Claudia.

Light rain on and off today and cloudy skies. Will be much cooler tomorrow.

We got the insulation finished in the addition ceiling this morning, and cleaned the kitchen. The girls' room is much warmer.
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11/7

2011-11-07T18:28:00.002-05:00

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So warm today we've got to open the windows while running the cook stove. We could go back to appliances, but the wood is free and everywhere, electricity isn't.

We watched Zeitgeist today, and had a long day of caulking and insulating the ceiling of the addition. The caulking and 4 rolls are done - we have 2 more rolls to put in.

I was up late last night researching how to evenly distribute heat throughout a home with a wood stove. The first thing is to seal up the building well and insulate [though of course not airtight], the next thing is ceiling fans in the cathedral ceilings to mix heat around. Structural changes if possible like removing transoms. And if necessary room-to-room fans installed in the walls to move heat from one room to another. We could install 2 in the lower wall of the loft to blow hot air into the addition. They're about $50/$60 a piece.

Tomorrow we're going to Knoxville for Harley's dental appointment, will catch a bath here and catch up on chores through the afternoon, then in the evening there's a meeting at the school for Harley's Beta Club. It'll be a busy day and we'll keep the birds locked up till we get back from Knoxville. We'll let the ducks out though and put them in the pen - they make an absolute mess in the coop sloshing water and drilling.

Beautiful full moon and Jupiter is bright in the eastern sky.
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11/6 Night

2011-11-06T18:31:00.002-05:00

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A warm beautiful fall day today. The next two days are forecast to be even warmer. Rain and cooler weather starting Wednesday.

We got up about 2 AM last night and put wood in the stove. When we woke around 7 or so the fire was out as we'd only filled it half way with the small wood we had laying around. We started a new fire and the cabin warmed quickly. Rachel made oatmeal on the top of it. This evening she's going to try sourdough biscuits in the oven.

We'd intended on keeping the birds locked up a full week to give the predator a chance to move on, but while letting out the ducks through the front door [they're reluctant to go out the new run door as birds hate anything new] two guineas flew out over her head. So after keeping the hens up long enough to lay we let everybody out. No mishaps. Rosy came into the house to eat barley from our hands. She'll jump up into the air to get it if you hold a grain in the air and it's funny to watch. 2 eggs today.

We fired up the new 18" Homelite chainsaw today and spent a few hours cutting and splitting dead wood for the stove. It took a while to get the saw adjusted to the right idle speed and chain tension, but once we did it cut through everything very easily and we piled up nearly half a rick. Rachel and I worked together which makes chainsaw use safer, as well as more efficient, as she can move small logs along a prop for each cut and all I do is cut. Most of the pieces split easily [especially when struck right] with the 6# splitting maul. We do need a good stump to split on - the 2x12 board got split to pieces, and splitting on the ground is not very efficient and too low for a good precise whack.

Vic and Jo stopped by to see the new stove installed. We had a salad from the garden for lunch - lettuce and radishes with grated cheese and hard-boiled eggs and homemade blue cheese dressing.

Tomorrow we're insulating the ceiling of the girls' room so their room will better retain heat - it's the coolest room in the house. If that doesn't solve the problem, we'll install a series of wall vents in the lower loft wall which we share with the upper wall of the girls' room. This will help air better circulate through the cabin, instead of heat coming up from the stove and getting trapped in the loft.
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11/6

2011-11-06T06:23:00.006-05:00

WE HAVE HEAT!

We worked all day yesterday to get the chimney and wood cook stove installed. There was heavy fog up until 11:00 AM, so we had to wait till then for the metal roof to dry to get out on it.

For the roof cut-out, I marked it from below and drilled out the corners so it could be marked from above. I then cut out the metal with tin snips, the roofing felt with a utility knife, and the sheathing with a circular saw. The tin snips left a very jagged uneven cut, and took nearly a half hour to do. If I had to do it over again, I'd use a circular saw with either a demolition or diamond-tipped blade to cut through the entire roof from above. I'd also cut the square out a little bigger than necessary to we wouldn't have to wrestle with the support box to get it into position.

The support box was not that difficult to install perfectly level, and was mounted to a box framed around it using headers and mini-sections of rafter to support where I'd cut out a rafter to center the chimney.

The 5' chimney locked into place reasonably plumb, but has a wobble to it as the bottom of the support box is not a very heavy-gauge sheet metal. Installation guidelines say only a chimney over 5' needs supported with brackets to the roof - but the chimney has such a wobble we worry a good gust would tear it off so we'll have to order the support brackets [another $100].

The rubber boot gasket was not fun to put in. We cut it so it slid tightly down over the chimney so there would be a good seal. But because of the angle of the chimney versus the roof, the 17" boot hardly covered the 13" roof hole for the support box. And when we sealed it down with polyurethane and rubber-gasketed metal screws every inch or two around the perimeter after molding it to the ribbed roof, the boot pulled the chimney out of plumb. Next time for sure we'd order a larger boot. But the boot itself has some manufacturing errors. For one the flat base of the boot should extend longer on the down slope side like conventional flashing. The other is that though the gasket part of the boot is labelled for where to cut according to your chimney diameter, it should also have marked how to cut for the chimney-roof angle. An oval cut would keep the boot-gasket from pulling the chimney out of plumb. If we'd cut a little deeper on the up-slope side the chimney would not have been pulled up-slope.

Anyway we got it in and also got covered in sticky polyurethane [supposedly longer-lasting than silicone]. We also sealed the top of the boot against the chimney with a fireproof Metacaulk - a red non-toxic putty, than when moistened with spit smooths out nicely. The chimney cap just took a moment to lock on to the top of the chimney. The support brackets with not only support the chimney but pull it back to exactly plumb [it's not really visibly out of plumb from below, so it's not that bad].

The girls gathered firewood, I positioned the sheet of Durock we got from Vic and screwed it to the floor marking the exact stove position so the flue outlet-chimney position would be exactly plumb. We'd researched all kinds of different insulated hearth ideas till we talked to a retailer who dealt mostly in these types of cook stoves. He said it doesn't get hot underneath the stove at all - his cat sleeps under it. He had a balloon at a party get stuck under it and it didn't even pop. So we opted for a temporary sheet of 1/2" Durock and 4 tiles 1/4" thick to get the right stove height [the entire lower story when it is floored will have some type of tile].

Putting the pipe together didn't take long, the gaps in the oval flue outlet were caulked with Metacaulk which requires no curing time so we immediately fired up the stove. It works like a dream. No smoke, the cook surface got very hot very fast, the water in the reservoir started heating up, and the loft part of the cabin went up to 75 degrees [35 outside]. The girls room did not get nearly that hot though as heat rises from the stove and tends to get trapped in the loft.

We're going to try several ways of fixing this. First we're going to insulate their ceiling to hold the heat they do get in. Keep the french doors wide open to see if over time their room gets warm. If this doesn't work we'll install vents in the lower loft wall that we share with the girls' room. This way heat can move through here to them. Ultimately the entire wall needs removed between the main part of the cabin and the addition, which of course would help tremendously. We'll take it one step at a time.

Rachel got the stove going this morning. A light frost outside, and already sixties inside. Very nice. The stove burns the wood very efficiently - nothing like a campfire.

Today we're going to straighten up the kitchen after yesterday's construction, stockpile wood in a corner of the cabin, cut more, and start insulating the ceiling of the girls' room.

Wild Guineas

2011-11-05T07:00:00.004-04:00

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The wild guinea family hung around most of the day. Above is a picture of them up at the coop. I had to zoom in all the way from the cabin - otherwise they might have run off.

The parents are a dark slate gray, the three immatures are a much lighter gray. We've seen them on and off all year.

This was the first time they were bold enough to come all the way up to the coop to snack on spilled grain. Bergak [the white male we brought with us from Atlanta] has fought on several occasions with the wild guinea male and driven him off. But now that his mate Chi Chi is gone [taken by the bobcat], he's mellowed some. Our birds have been locked up for a couple of days due to predation so this was an opportunity for the wild guineas to come closer.

We're down to 12 guineas now. The males fluffed themselves up at the approach of the wild male, who ran a few times at the run in a little guinea charge. The females stuck in the run meanwhile called desperately for him.

We wish we could get the wild ones to join our flock. But Bergak may continue to drive the male off. If only we could get our young and their young to interbreed we'd have a much bigger future flock and some genetic diversity. Our 11 immatures are all from the same parents - Chi Chi and Bergak.

These wild guineas abandoned Brian and Leslie's homestead [where we got the ducks] about 2 miles up the road and have been hanging around here ever since.

Yesterday we ran a few errands and I started on the roof - removing a section of rafter to put the support box and chimney through. I started the cuts with a circular saw, then jigsaw, then camp saw, and finally hand saw to finish as I ran out of room up against the roof sheathing. Nothing quite like cutting wood upside down by hand in a tight space while standing 12' up on top of a shaky ladder. Today I'm waiting for the metal roof to dry so I can get out on it and cut through it to install the chimney. It may be a while. Right now we're socked in with heavy fog.

The ducks, I guess from watching the guineas so much, are constantly trying to fly. They run around on tiptoe beating their wings. Occasionally they'll get a few feet off the ground. When we went to put them up for the evening yesterday one of the female rouens was standing up on top of the nest box.

Three eggs yesterday, from Claudia, Rosy, and Goldie. Little Bit almost never lays so for the chickens we have left it was 3 for 3, a good egg day. It's interesting how egg production always seems to rise when the birds are locked up. The only conclusion is that when free-ranging they don't necessarily lay where they're supposed to.

The 4' piece of HeatFab stovepipe should be delivered today, and Vic has a sheet of cement board and 4 tiles for the stove to temporarily be positioned on so we can get the right connection height. If all goes well, we could possibly get the stove installed and fired up this evening.

But the fog needs to burn off before we can get started.
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11/4

2011-11-04T06:41:00.002-04:00

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Rain all day yesterday. Much cooler.

The UPS guy delivered the rubber boot flashing two nights ago. Rachel explained exactly where to turn around, but in the morning we saw he'd run over the artichokes. One mature plant and two seedlings were killed. We let UPS know. The driver returned yesterday to look at the damage and was apologetic. He said he'd prefer to pay for replacing the plants out of pocket than file an accident report which would go on his record. We tried to calculate the price of replacing the plants online with shipping and came up with $40. We let the driver know. He was abject at the cost, but said he'd bring the money by early next week. We feel bad for him, but at the same time, these guys need to fix the damage they do when they rush these deliveries. I'd had a sumac run over by a dumptruck delivering gravel a few years ago in the exact same spot. The spot is cursed. We'll have to fence it off. So much for next year's artichokes. After dying off over the summer they'd recovered nicely with cooler weather and heavy fertilization [full buckets of straight duckwater].

We set the stove in position yesterday and marked it on the floor. We dropped a plumb bob from the ceiling to mark exactly where the support box and chimney needs to go. I also put in a few braces to support the rafter temporarily that must be cut in order to center the chimney in the cabin.

I organized the tools in the shed yesterday, and built another run door on the coop, the south side, that leads to outside instead of into the run. This way in the morning we have an easy way to release the ducks while keeping the other birds in. We may eventually use this door as the only entry to the coop for the birds once they go back to free-ranging, and leave the front door shut.

I think we'll wait and install the chimney tomorrow. Today would have to be rushed. We've got to take a trip to Wartburg for silicone, screws, get caught up on cleaning, dishes, and fertigation after yesterday's rain, and have a get-together dinner at Vic's tonight at 5:30 with a few neighbors.

No eggs yesterday. I went to check for eggs a little before noon yesterday and found Rosy pecking and eating the blue egg Goldie had laid. This is very bad chicken behavior - Rosy has always been a pig, maybe she's not getting enough protein, it might be because Goldie laid in the duck box on the floor and an egg on the ground is more vulnerable to being eaten. Maybe Rosy has been doing this kind of thing for a while and that explains the missing eggs when we know the girls are laying. The bottom line is the last of our donated chickens are doing next to nothing productivity-wise . . . we soon need to get a whole flock together of birds we want to raise and breed. Probably Welsummers.

The ducks have not yet started to lay and are about 5 to 6 months old now. The two mixed runners have gotten their upcurled drake feather - so they're obviously not laying. We think the bobcat got the only girl. The mixed rouen drake still has major neurological problems, with a crippled walk and a nervous tic that makes him constantly throw his head down and to the side. The four female mixed rouens are filling out more like meat birds than layers but we'll see what happens. All the ducks are sort of 'rescue' birds we got for free from a nearby homesteader who's moving soon. It's more been for the experience and learning than anything else. When we start raising ducks in earnest it will probably be Harlequins or Khaki Cambells - good layers.
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11/3

2011-11-03T07:22:00.003-04:00

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Very sunny and warm yesterday, 71 degrees - a beautiful fall day.

All 5 windows on the west side of the cabin are now insulated and boarded up. There was a 1/2 off sale on lamps at the Habitat and we picked up 2 floor lamps and a table lamp for under $20. We also found a lot of cheap white cotton material for facing the insulated curtains. Rachel will start on that once she's finished the wool gloves she's knitting me.

The chickens and guineas were locked up all day to keep them safe. Claudia laid a strangely-shaped pale egg. She might have just started laying again - or has been laying elsewhere for quite some time. Rosy also laid.

We herded the ducks down to their pen at the north end of the garden and put back up their orange mesh fencing with step-in posts. Herding them out of the coop in the morning is a production. Today I'll install another run door on the coop for easy release of them without going in and stressing all the birds trying to herd them out the front door without any chickens or guineas escaping.

Our rubber chimney flashing boot came yesterday evening. All we need now is silicone caulk to install the chimney. Rain is forecast for today, so we'll cut the hole in the roof and put in the chimney tomorrow.

We drove over to visit some neighbors whose yard I mowed. They want me to start mowing on a monthly basis beginning in the spring. There's a tree they need taken down also - but it's tall, leaning, rotten, and beside a power pole . . . it would have to be winched down rather than cut - a risky, labor-intensive process.

Rachel made sourdough biscuits last night. The first batch that went directly into the oven after cut-out turned out perfect. The ones allowed to sit for a bit turned out almost like rolls. It's amazing how fast the sourdough starts acting on the dough.

It's windy this morning, building up to rain. Rachel drove down to the bus stop to meet the driver to pick up a 25# sack of whole wheat. The bus driver's a Mormon and had picked up an extra bag for us since she knew we were interested in finding sacks of whole wheat berries. The cost was a little over $12. We ultimately want to get a good manual grain mill for grinding our own flour for bread. They're around $300.
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11/2

2011-11-02T06:32:00.003-04:00

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35 degrees outside this morning, and 50 inside. The insulation has made a huge difference.

Yesterday I insulated and boarded up 2 more windows on the west side. I cleaned out the stovepipe sections that came with the stove with a 7" chimney brush. We're still waiting on one last section of 4' HeatFab stovepipe from Selkirk. The rubber boot flashing for the roof should come today. Thursday when it rains we'll need to get 2 sheets of cement board to put under the stove and high-temp silicone caulk.

We lost another guinea yesterday. We heard the chickens and guineas hollering. I looked out the window and saw three of our chickens in front of the house looking up towards the coop. There was a chicken squawking up the hillside out of sight. I wondered if it could be Buffy. I saw the guineas panicked and scattered up by the coop. I hurried outside.

The squawking was coming from Little Bit up behind the shed. Up at the coop I found a pile of guinea feathers beside one of the white oaks. Guineas were slowly flying down from the trees. They usually only take to the trees when something really scares them.

I spotted a couple of small guinea feathers at the edge of the woods behind the coop. Rachel and I followed the trail of feathers through the woods. Eventually it led to the kill site. There was a great pile of feathers and fresh blood. We followed the trail of feathers from there but eventually lost it and never found either the killer or the guinea.

We think it's a coyote. A bobcat would have abandoned the kill with us coming after him. It also could have never completely ripped the guinea apart that fast. It had to be something big enough to make a fast thorough kill, able to flee through the woods with it in its mouth, and wolf it down almost completely even though we were after it. We hear plenty of coyotes around here, but never seemed to have any predation from them for some inexplicable reason. While wandering the woods beyond the coop we also encountered two old remains of guinea kills.

Well it's clear now what happened to Buffy. Maybe she wandered off to the woods to set and got eaten. Then the predator decided to get bold and go after more birds. That's 2 in 4 days, which means something that will stick around for easy meals.

We tried to herd all the guineas into the coop at evening but most took to the oak over the coop. The birds must be locked up in the coop and run for at least a week. If anything bothers them in the run we'll set out the trap. Today we'll have to find a way to herd the rest of the guineas into the coop while temporarily locking the other birds out in the run.

The ducks must be let out though. They make way too big a mess in the coop with water and drilling. Usually I go in and herd them out the door while Rachel quickly opens and shuts it so no other birds can get out. It works but is a lot of stress for them. What I need to do is install another run door that leads to outside. The ducks would be the first ones out then we could simply shut the door.

We'll set back up the ducks' pen with orange mesh fencing by the garden. This particular predator is sticking to the woods, so the ducks should be fine down in the open not far from the cabin.

Eventually we'll fence the entire perimeter of the property and this should alleviate some predation. We've thought of raising Pyrenees dogs with the chickens to protect them, but they're large dogs requiring a costly upkeep and only a large flock with good egg sales would offset it. We're not there yet. We've haven't even got enough eggs for ourselves.

It's always discouraging to lose another bird. But this is sort of inevitable with free-ranging.
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More Garden Pics

2011-11-01T08:36:00.006-04:00

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These pics of the garden are from 2 to 3 weeks ago as I had such a hard time loading them to Blogger.

Here is the compost bin. We're filling the left chamber now. The center chamber will be ready to use next spring, and the right chamber will be ready next fall. The bin itself is now 4 years old and falling apart. I wish I could think of some non-degradable nontoxic material to rebuild it with:

Lettuce, Brussel sprouts, and what was left of the tomatoes after devasted by blister beetles and frost. The tomatoes have since been removed:

A patch of luxurious turnips. Some are now ready to pick:

Mustard greens. Have always been mild for us throughout the year, though rather holey from flea beetles in the spring:

Chard. Once established, very durable and able to be picked over and over. Wonderful raw in a salad, and one of the best boiled greens with a little salt, pepper and butter. A perfect winter greenhouse plant. Hit hard and almost totally defoliated by blister beetles in late summer, but rebounded well. Doesn't like much frost though:

Cherry belle radishes. Have done very well for us here. Got very spicy when big over early summer. But this time of year, mild even when huge. The yellow frisbee marks where I am in my fertigation rotation:

Brassicas, with peppers in the background before dead and removed. The Brassicas are much larger now and growing fast with almost no predation from bugs. They get heavy fertigation with a deep grass mulch:

The plant stakes are made from cut-up Venetian blinds and labelled with permanent marker:

More Brassicas, mostly broccoli and cauliflower. One of the broccoli's is now heading up nicely, about 3-4 inches across, very dark:

The last of the highly productive peppers before removed after the killing frosts:

Lettuce, with some young chard and kale behind them. Lettuce has grown fabulously for us here, never a blemish on it and very mild. We fought it going to seed in early summer due to the heat, but this time of year it fills out nicely. It's astonishing what perfect lettuce we can grow here in the midst of so many destructive bugs - they never touch it:

Beds 8 and 9, the summer beans and corn beds. Now full of seedlings. Will be covered in low tunnels soon. Everything is planted in deep furrows between high mulch rows. This allows water retention during the typically dry fall, and shelter out of the wind. There are red and golden beets, spinach, turnips, mustard greens, lettuce, etc:

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11/1

2011-11-01T08:26:00.002-04:00

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Frost this morning. Nothing got covered but it was a light frost. Plants look okay.

Buffy is gone. It's possible she died of natural causes as she often acted sick over the last week and was unable to lay. It could also have been a predator. Impossible to say right now. She was not the friendliest chicken [except when raising the guineas], but a very good dependable chicken. We're now down to 4.

Halloween was interesting last night. Because homes are so far apart, all of the roads were full of traffic, cars crawling with the hazards on and letting kids out at each place that had a light on at the porch. The girls got a pretty good candy haul. It was another side of Sunbright I hadn't seen before.

The ceiling insulation is done. It's made a difference, but it's still only maybe 10 degrees warmer in the cabin than outside without any major heat source. The rubber boot for the chimney should be here Wednesday, rain is forecast for Thursday, then a string of dry weather, so we'll try to get the chimney completely installed on Friday. The last section of HeatFab stove pipe hasn't arrived yet, but we can at least get the chimney done.

There are three more west windows to insulate and board up. There's plenty of more caulking to do. I need to clean out the stove pipe today with the 7" chimney brush. Bunny got clover from the garden this morning and loves it. She's getting accustomed to living solely in her play area now and has a designated bathroom spot. I was able to pet her a little while feeding her.
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10/31

2011-10-31T09:56:00.002-04:00

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We had a good frost 2 nights ago. Laying out plastic over beds 8 and 9, jugs around the lettuce and young chard, and plastic bags around other vulnerable plants worked well - no frost damage. The mature beets and chard that went uncovered looked slightly affected by the cold but nothing major. The fig tree dropped all its leaves. We'll have to bury it in straw before the real cold hits.

Yesterday we put in 2/3 of the R 19 insulation in the ceiling and it made a huge difference. About 9 at night it was 18 degrees warmer in the cabin than outside - 61 inside, 43 outside. We'll finish the insulation today. I also caulked a few more windows, and will continue insulating and boarding up all the windows on the west side of the cabin - 5 total. Next year we'll have closed shutters and interior insulated curtains.

I got caught up on the dishes yesterday and fertigating the garden. We ordered a high-temp silicone boot for flashing the chimney to the ribbed metal roof this morning. $95 with shipping. It should be here on Wednesday. I called the chimney manufacturer DuraTech to confirm this boot could be used with their double-walled chimney. The guy said that is the $64,000 question - it hasn't been tested. But the silicone boot is rated up to 500 degrees - it's hard to believe the outside wall of the chimney would get near that hot. And in case of a chimney fire, you've got much bigger problems than the silicone boot.

Buffy is missing. Didn't see her all day yesterday and last night she was not in the coop. Buffy is our white aracona with potential 'chicken of the year' status, laying a blue egg in the nest box nearly every morning, able to fly without flight feathers, and a great mom to 17 guinea babies. She's either broody or been eaten. Or both.

Her behavior all last week was suspicious. She'd sit on eggs for a while but not lay. She was constantly in and out of the coop - usually she ranges far and wide. Maybe she was laying in a spot in the woods, maybe Claudia laying there too, and now she's got enough eggs to set on. Since we've been gradually increasing the daylight up to 16 hours with the light and timer she may think it's spring even with the cold and time to set.

We're hoping if she is broody to catch her off the nest coming to the coop for something to eat or drink, then watch her closely to see where she's setting and go get the eggs and lock her up in the coop for a while. We'll have to do a deeper search for her today than we did yesterday. But it is possible she's been eaten, and she's extremely vulnerable setting out in the woods. We need to find her today.

Had an incredible dinner last night - vegetables from the garden, boiled collards, steamed potatos, carrots and squash; buttermilk cornbread; and for dessert, toasted sweet potato bread with butter and whipped honey.

So far cold and cloudy today.
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10/29 - Night

2011-10-29T20:15:00.002-04:00

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Our chimney parts came today via FedEx. A 5' piece of stainless steel DuraVent chimney pipe and a support box. We spent a while going over the installation manual to figure out what would work best for our application. There's one more part we need - a high-temp silicone boot to flash the chimney that will mold to the ribbed contours of the metal roof. Found one for $80 and will order it Monday. Hopefully it'll be here before another round of rain begins, but if not we'll wait.

Sunny today so the cabin is relatively warm. But tonight will be a good freeze. We covered the lettuce and young chard in cut-out water and milk jugs. A few patches of plants got torn-open plastic bags. Beds 8 and 9 were covered with a big sheet of 4 mil plastic. It's weighed down with jugs of rocks I pulled from the beds while tilling. The mature Brassicas should be fine. I also put in a 1/2" sheet of foam over the coop's west window to keep the wind out. It had to be screwed down with large washers to keep the screws from going right through the foam.

Had a lot of dishes to wash in freezing cold water, and a lot of fertigation. Bunny got a fresh batch of weeds - mostly grass seed and thistle and dock. I was going to give her a cup of rolled oats but forgot. I'll do it tomorrow.

Didn't get any time today to continue putting in insulation. We'll have to finish the ceiling tomorrow.

We took the girls this evening to a Halloween festival in downtown Wartburg. But it was pretty small with not much candy. We'll go trick-or-treating on Monday.
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10/29

2011-10-29T08:10:00.002-04:00

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37 this morning - inside. Usually not much different from outside.

We had rain all day yesterday. The barrels are full. Today is supposed to be sunny but never hit 60. I think tonight will be a hard freeze. The forecast for the fairgrounds tonight is 32, but we're always a few degrees cooler here, sometimes as much as 5, and it just feels like the right conditions with a clear sky and the cold the rain brings.

We ran our errands yesterday and got about 1/4 of the insulation put in for the ceiling. We ran a space heater a little before bed to take some of the edge off the cold. I was going to get an electric stapler for putting in the insulation, but I already have a Porter Cable compressor and set of trim guns. The stapler gun with 18 gauge 1/2" staples works great. The compressor hardly needs to kick in at all while using the gun. A fine mist of fiberglass gets everywhere even though the rolls are faced but that can't be helped.

I'm trying to get some photos of the chicken coop uploaded but having trouble and the DSL is incredibly slow. I may try uploading them in two seperate posts.

There's a ton of things to do today. I've got a lot of fertigation to catch up on after the rain, a massive amount of dishes to rinse and soak, the rest of the insulation to put up, we need to take a trip out to Jamestown for the 7" chimney brush and a bolt of muslin for facing the insulated curtains. Also our chimney order says the rest of the parts should come today - if they do we'll have to drop everything else to get it installed as we have a string of sunny weather for cutting a hole in the roof and not worrying about rain. Then with the hard freeze tonight we've got to cover all the lettuce and young chard with plastic jugs, and stretch a plastic sheet over beds 8 and 9 since we haven't had a chance to construct the low tunnels over them yet.

Yesterday we took Kitty to the animal shelter in Oak Ridge. We never had any luck with the ad we placed for her - nobody in the country wants stray cats or dogs. Usually shelters I avoid as euthenasia dens, and would prefer to drop an animal off in the city where they've got a good chance of being taken in [city people are far more pet-oriented then country people who are more livestock-oriented]. But this particular shelter was very friendly and pro-adoption . . . a woman took pictures of Kitty and they let her wander around . . . the animal-control officer at the desk had a kitten perched on his shoulder. It was $20 to surrender the animal. Not an ideal solution . . . but not much is when it's so common for people to drop strays off in the area and we in the country have to figure out a way to deal with them. We had Kitty for about 4 months, got rid of her worms, but she was never able to fit in here very well. She's an inside cat for sure, and in this small cabin we can't really offer her that. Besides her getting in to all the food on counter and table, peeing and pooing everywhere especially potted plants and chicken food, she climbed the building continuously and tore up the housewrap and screens, dug up and shit in the garden, and terrorized the birds. Yesterday we found a pile of duck down by the shed where she may have pounced one of the ducks. Hopefully they'll find a good home for her - we can call and check.

Well . . . too much to do today, got to get to work.
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10/28

2011-10-28T07:10:00.002-04:00

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The forecast has improved and it's only 48 this morning. Rain today and a cold night, then a long string of sunny days with average temperatures - 60s/40s. Tonight we'll cover beds 8 and 9 with the 4 mil plastic to be safe. The low is now forecast for 35 tonight so it won't be a hard freeze - may not freeze at all.

Yesterday was cloudy with a light on and off rain all day. It progressively got colder as the day went by. On rainy days the garden doesn't get fertigated, dishes aren't done [they're set in a bin under the roof by the door to collect runoff and soak] - very little if any work is done outside so it's kind of a break from the usual chores. So instead we worked on cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen, and taking anything we don't use and storing it in boxes out under the barn. The kitchen is being step-by-step permanently moved over to the northwest side of the cabin under the bedroom side of our loft area.

I've finally got a pretty good gameplan of how to develop the lower story of the cabin, with built-in counters and open shelves on the garden side of the kitchen; the fridge along the west wall; then a U counter on the addition side of the kitchen. The chest freezer will be put on casters and will slide under the counter to take less space. The one stretch of counter that comes out from the addition wall towards the cookstove will have an overhanging corbelled counter with barstools for eating; the kitchen table we hardly use will go out to the barn; the loft ladder will move over against the east wall and be put at a steep angle rather than vertical as it is now; the corner where the kitchen is now under the 'library' side of the loft where I'm sitting will become a small living room with 2 couches, coffee table, and rocking chair. The french doors out to the addition will be removed, and the walls on either side out to the addition will be cut down to demi-walls [with the post and beam frame none of the walls are load-bearing].

Since we have composting toilets in both bedrooms, there's no real need for us to build a bathroom - I'd like to get a rubber 30 gallon stock tank I saw on one farm website [only $37], and just bring it in and set it in front of the stove when we want to bathe like they did in the old days. The galvanized stock tanks are not shaped very comfortably like a tub and all the galvanized stuff we have tends to rust up rapidly. There are a couple of nicely shaped heavy-duty plastic stock tanks that look much like a tub but I hate the idea of bathing in plastic [hot water and plastic usually a toxic mix]. We may have to special order the rubber one I found from a Co-op since Tractor Supply doesn't carry it. Once the large porch is built along the garden side of the cabin we'll store the tub out there - might make it permanent out there if the porch gets screened in.

Opening up the addition wall will make the inside of the cabin feel more spacious, and allow a better flow of heat from the stove. But the girls may not be thrilled about less privacy even though we'll build them canopy beds [of course we don't have any more privacy up in the loft with only the loft railing]. The girls ultimately want to move out to the upper story of the barn once I get the board and batten siding up. I could frame out a couple of bedrooms for them out there with a safe baseboard heat. I don't know, we take it all one step at a time . . .

When the addition is not used for bedrooms, the east side of it will be an indoor greenhouse for seedlings, the west side a living room, and a large kitchen table will go where now we plan on having a small living room. I'd often thought of adding on a whole wing to the cabin coming off the addition to the west for a master bedroom, with patio, and french doors - but who knows, just an idea. Depends on where the barn is.

It's raining and probably will all day [70% chance]. Today we're going out to Oak Ridge for Home Depot, and to Walmart for muslin to face the insulated curtains. Here's the list:

Quadra cut mower blades 25

Case of caulk 15

12 rolls of R 19 insulation 180

Staples (18 gauge) 5

Gauge for chainsaw sharpening depth 5

Truck air filter 5

Insulation wands 5

Tobacco 20

Bolt of muslin 20

[280 + tax = 310]

GROCERIES

Vegetable oil
Butter
Tortillas
Milk

After a lot of back and forth emails and phone calls with Northline Express, our chimney order is now almost entirely shipped. The 5' DuraVent 7" stainless steel chimney pipe came on the truck yesterday, the DuraVent support box had been sent to them but was in the wrong box and they didn't know they had it - now shipped. The HeatFab stove pipe Selkirk had said they sent, but hadn't, and is now going to be directly shipped to us from Selkirk. So the rest of the chimney parts should be here early next week and we can install the chimney. I'm nervous about cutting a hole in the roof, and the support box should be interesting to install with the ribbed metal roof - I've also got to reconfigure the rafters to center the stove. Connecting the stovepipe to the chimney once the pipe is here should be a breeze. Then we can finally start heating the building - though as long as it's sunny with all the windows the cabin is warm.

We took two loaves of bread over to Vic and Jo and visited for a while - potato and sweet potato. Both came out very well, but the toaster oven is almost dead.

Rain is light now, hopefully it'll get heavy at some point and fill up the barrels.

10/26

2011-10-26T20:11:00.003-04:00

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Been a very busy last couple of days. Besides the usual taking care of animals, greywatering the garden, washing clothes, etc, I cleaned out the coop and put in three bags of sawdust since we're presently out of cover material with the mower down. I'll add grass clippings later.

I put a hinged door in bunny's hutch between her secure 'bedroom' area and her open 'play' area. Usually a rabbit will not go to the bathroom in their bedroom area. But since where we bought her she'd always been kept in a small open cage, she sees her bedroom as a latrine and only pees and poos in there and it piles up. So I cleaned out her hutch and put a door in. I'll leave it shut for a couple of weeks while her bedroom airs. Hopefully she'll develop a new habit of going the bathroom in a corner of her large play area. Then when her bedroom's reopened she'll keep it clean. Her play area has only lath, but her bedroom is solid plywood to keep her warm. But she'll never sleep in there with it full of waste.

Bunny's also become slightly aggressive and territorial, grunting and pouncing her paws at me while I'm cleaning her cage. Rachel thinks it could be that she's reaching sexual maturity and might henceforward be 'difficult' in the hutch. The other reason for the operable door to her bedroom is to shut it when we bring her weeds so we can try handling her a little and 'gentling' her. Once we have no trouble handling her we can go back to letting down the ramp attached to her bedroom so she can run about the barn for a while. We'd done this before but she wasn't suitably domesticated and was almost impossible to catch to get her back in the hutch. Then one night she escaped from the barn and we woke to her out in the grass. Luckily we were able to herd her back to the barn and catch her later in the hutch when she was thirsty to shut her in.

This afternoon I mowed a neighbor's yard for some cash. I was hoping to get some cover material out of it also, but the yard was almost no grass and mostly leaves. I did bring back about 20 bags of leaves.

The mower's missing one set of blades till I get a chance to replace them so it doesn't cut the mulch very fine and is far more inefficient. But with the next 2 days of rain we'll get a chance to go to town and pick up more blades. There's a few areas here on the property I could still mow for cover material before winter sets in. We're trying to find some cheap rolls of old hay that we can get delivered so we never run out of mulch.

I cleaned out and organized the area under the cabin - a big job. I needed to organize all the OSB scraps by size and shape as I'm using them to plug up all the windows on the northwest side of the building till we can put in shutters next year. I've done 2 windows so far up in the loft, on the northwest side of our bedroom.

I cut a piece of cardboard to fit the inside of the window frame exactly, and push it in against the glass. I fill the frame with R 13 insulation, then screw a sheet of OSB down over the opening to seal it up. I've only got scraps of OSB left so I have to use 2 pieces for each window and will have to caulk the butt joint. It's not that cosmetically appealing, but it works and will keep us warm - those windows never get direct sunlight over the winter and just leak cold air. Next winter those windows will have closed shutters on the outside, and inside insulated curtains [we're currently buying up old pillows from the Habitat - $1 to $2 a piece - for filling for the curtains since new fill is a fortune and used comforters aren't all that cheap and most are thin and worn out] to match the look of the rest of the windows.

We've got all the laundry and tents and blankets airing put up now that they're dry. Rain is forecast for the next two days, and much cooler temperatures. Friday night could be a hard freeze.

Rachel's been baking a lot of bread in the toaster oven as the last few days have allowed the sourdough to rise. The sweet potato bread with butter and whipped honey is incredible. Tonight she baked two beautiful loaves of potato bread. Like most of our electric appliances, the oven is on its last leg and runs loudly about 100 degrees below what it should. But the cook stove has an oven, and most small appliances can go in the trash.

We're getting only 2 to 3 eggs a day from our chickens. It could be the diet, could be they're laying elsewhere, could be they're getting stolen [either a rat or a squirrel - something was bothering the birds up at the coop this evening after dark - only a rat would be about then]. The chickens love Kitty's raw chicken if given the opportunity. They have high protein needs laying nearly every day. We'll have to figure out something till we can find cheap sacks of peas.

We still haven't received our chimney yet and we've waited now a month. They'd said up to 21 business days. That's about run out. Rachel's called and been stern with them to do something and hopefully that will be productive. Otherwise after we insulate we'll have to run a space heater. It looks like we'll get another hard winter - last winter there was a whole week where it barely got over 5 degrees, and kids were out of school a month due to heavy snow.

The lettuce and young chard had some frost damage from the last cold spell. We'll cover all the plants individually in gallon milk and water jugs before tomorrow night's freeze - you just cut out the bottom of the jug and set one over a plant. We've got nearly 100 jugs piled up by the blackberry and old cucumber bed.

The arugula we planted in spring reseeded and is doing wonderfully right now - much milder than the spring plants. The radishes no matter how big they get are completely mild. That's one nice thing about the fall garden - as well as less bugs - though Rachel found a bunch of cabbage worms in one cabbage and had to pick them out with a chopstick. We have one patch of turnips so thick with emerald-green foliage they're hard to water. We're waiting for the turnips to get about baseball-sized before harvest.
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The Chicken Coop

2011-10-26T08:07:00.005-04:00

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The chicken coop was built in March in the rain and snow when Rachel and I first came up. We needed to get it built in a hurry because her mother was giving us her 9 laying hens and a mated pair of mature guineas. I picked the gazebo site because there was already an existing pad, and the large white oaks would offer the birds plenty of shade and keep the coop cool during the hot summer months. It's 8'x8', with a scrap metal roof pieced together from scraps I already had under the cabin:

The birds are following me up to the coop for a treat. A guinea's in the distance, and Goldie's on the far left. She's an aracona and lays blue eggs pretty dependably. She became very ill after the move up and we thought we might lose her. But she recovered and is doing well. She has the typical aracona skittishness and is difficult to catch. Rosy's in the foreground with a guinea - our friendliest chicken, and dependable layer. She often squats when we come nearby because she's desperate for a rooster - sometimes makes pretend clucks to chicks while she's eating. She'll also wander into the cabin to peck the floor if we leave the door open [sometimes pecks the door to be let in]:

This is the new run - cheap t-stakes from Tractor Supply, 3' chicken wire, and the gazebo wraparound screen now used for shade. The original run was just a strip in the back. We added on to it as the flock increased and we needed to take occasional trips to Atlanta and the birds needed more runaround space while we were gone:

A closer look at the coop and more guineas. The windows are covered with metal lath. The trim around the windows will be used to staple 4 mil plastic to when winter hits. The coop is south-facing:

A look inside. Claudia, our largest bird, a barred rock, is nesting in the biggest most popular nest box. Little Bit is in the plastic tub I put in for a nest box for the ducks when they're ready to lay. Little Bit's a banty and lays maybe 1 egg a week that is pure yolk. The tray is used to collect spilled feed, the homemade feed's in the trough, the little plastic containers attached to the wall have dried ground eggshell and grit:

The loft ladder and double roost. I added the lower roost after the second batch of guineas raised by Buffy started to grow. The guineas still however argue every evening about whether to sleep in the coop or in the white oak over the coop. Usually 2 or 3 will sleep in the tree. Especially if it's nice weather. They can fly very well and sometimes land even on the cabin roof:

The run door. Works very well and the latch is racoon-proof:

The back of the coop. A rain barrel to collect rain off the roof for their water. OSB shade to keep it cool. The metal can contains the raw ingredients of their feed, the plastic the mixed ready-to-use feed:

Another view of the back. I piled up random pieces of wire and lath to keep the bobcat or anything else from messing or digging on that vulnerable side of the run. If you look hard to the left you can see the rocks and concrete block that were used to hold and stabilize the trap we used to catch the bobcat:

The view down over the property from the coop:

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10/25

2011-10-25T07:27:00.002-04:00

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The days have been much warmer. But rain begins on Thursday and with it temperatures will drop 20 degrees.

Yesterday was a long, busy day. Besides doing the birds, and fertigating the garden, rinsing and washing the dishes, we cleaned the house, did more laundry with the Rapid Breather Washer while it's sunny and clothes can dry on the line; we went out to Jamestown to pick up the mower, get a car battery, a 1x2 to replace the bent up curtain rod in the girls' room over the french doors, a new end for the hose to drain the pool, and some R 13 insulation for plugging up northwest facing windows. Then the new curtain rod was installed, I put the new battery in the car and started it up. We also watched THE COLOR OF MONEY in the evening, and late at night went over our Fall List to remove a few noncrucial things and repriortize what needs done in what order.

We're hoping to close soon on the property and get that matter resolved.

We'll wait for rain to take the trip out to Home Depot for insulation for the ceiling. We may also pick up the rebar and electrical conduit for constructing the hoop houses over beds #8 and 9.

Goldie and Rosy were the only birds that laid yesterday and they're the only two who ate some of Kitty's raw chicken. Obviously the protein factor is important, and the birds are not eating the alfalfa pellets, even soaked in milk. It smells, and I would imagine tastes, exactly like grass - and there's still plenty of that available.
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10/24

2011-10-24T07:39:00.002-04:00

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Not nearly as cold this morning - 45 degrees inside the cabin.

Only 2 eggs yesterday. Little Bit sat for a while but never laid. Buffy also sat for a while but didn't lay, and has diarrhea - Buffy's been a candidate for Chicken of the Year and usually lays nearly every day. She also can fly without flight feathers, and raised a whole flock of baby guineas when their mother was clueless. The guinea mother we brought up from Atlanta [Chi-Chi] started laying again off in the woods and was eventually lost to the bobcat.

The birds aren't eating the large alfalfa pellets. We'll have to try another high-protein source in the mix.

Yesterday I made a fire and we had a long hot bath outside. We also watched the sequel to MONEY AS DEBT - PROMISES UNLEASHED.

Vic brought over a food processor and a loaf of poundcake.

We'll get the mower back today and buy a battery for the car.
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The Barn

2011-10-23T19:25:00.004-04:00

The upper story and roof took over a month to construct.

The door to the lower story - Rachel's design. We'd surrounded the lower story in chicken wire for a large run for the chickens once the bobcat predation's begun. But Buffy and Goldie [our araconas] kept flying over and escaping. Even with their flight feathers clipped and the barn braces greased Buffy was still able to fly out to head to the coop to lay. The chickens were also too difficult to herd down to the barn, so we had to pluck them off the roost every morning and carry them down in bins - additional stress on the birds and a pain in the butt. We eventually abandoned the idea.

The temporary roost and ladder which the birds never used.

Bunny's hutch which I built for Gwen's birthday.

Where the sawdust for our composting toilets is stored to keep it dry.

We gather a season's worth of sawdust at one time in plastic bins and garbage bags at the local mill in Sunbright. The sawdust is free - there's a mountain of it behind the mill.

Looking up at the construction of the roof. The sets of rafters with crossbrace settled 1/2" once the sheathing went on, so I constructed modified beams to help take the weight in case we got a heavy snow load.

The table and chairs my parents gave me with our sprayer for watering seedlings, and one of the many bunches of onions we grew and later cured hanging in the barn.

Black walnuts gathered at Sunbright's city park, drying on the barn floor.

Acorns also drying. Most are chestnut oak acorns gathered at Pickett State Park.

Storage on the lower story. Presently trying to sell the appliances, as the cookstove, Rapid Washer, and drying clothes on the line make the gas stove, washer and dryer unnecessary.

The beer bottles will be used as an insulating layer in next year's cob oven.

The duck pool for when we first got the ducks. It only lasted a month before leaking everywhere. It was a huge job to bucket out all the duckwater for fertigation. For now the masonry tub works for us as the ducks mostly free-range. Eventually we'll dig a pond.
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Shed and Fireplace

2011-10-23T10:17:00.007-04:00

. The shed has become our major storage areas for things that must be kept dryandcan'tbekeptunder the barn. It's a little full and disorganized at the moment as I just moved my tools out there and need to go through them

I've laid down sheets of OSB underneath the tools to keep them off the moist gravel floor:

Here is the fireplace area - now where we wash our clothes, wash and air dishes, take baths from water heated on the fire, mix our duckwater/graywater fertilizer, and settle the iron out of the well water in barrels to use it for various outdoor tasks:

I built a level pad for the bathtub out of a sheet of flooring and sealed it. The bathtub we brought with us from the house in Atlanta. The stump is a counterweight.

Our dish-washing method starts with rinsing dishes with the powerful jet on the hose into the large blue bin. This provides some of the graywater. The dishes are then soaked in the galvanized tub for a couple hours in well water that's had the iron settled out of it, then washed in minimal to no all-natural soap [more graywater], rinsed in the clear bin, then set out to dry in the sun on the concrete wall of the fireplace.

There are three 55 gallon barrels to settle out well water because it takes about 48 hours for the iron to oxidize and settle to the bottom. The iron before it oxidizes appears as an oil film on the top which I skim off with my hands. Once a barrel's down to it's last 5 to 10 gallons I dump it out because it's full of iron crumbles. It's then rinsed with the hose and refilled with well water. It's a system that works well till we can afford a greensand manganese filter for the well - at least $500.

The Fall Garden

2011-10-23T09:38:00.002-04:00

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Here's a view of the garden from on top of the barn. The summer plants are dead and gone - the massive sunflowers are now hanging from the ceiling in the cabin to dry. The corn is gone - only Brassicas and root vegetables and chard and peas and lettuce are left:

A view from the duck pen. The masonry tub is the ducks' pool which they bathe and shit in and my source of high-nitrogen duckwater:

Here you can see the duck nest box which I built for when they're ready to lay. Wooden eggs are inside on a nest of mulch:

Brassicas. Cabbage, kale, collards, brussel sprouts, etc. The green beans in the middle are dead, soon to be pulled. This is a bed that was added onto the garden for potatoes in the spring. The potato harvest had been seriously reduced from flea and potato beetles, and a late May 4th frost. The newspaper and cardboard keeps the weeds down beneath the fence line:

Inside the garden - Brassicas and chard and peas. You can see I've wrapped the raised beds in plastic using old tarps secured with long U's of wire. This reduces erosion and keeps weeds down. There is a heavy mulch layer of grass clippings across the beds . . . a very successful garden strategy, keeps weeds down, softens rain, reduces erosion, fertilizes the beds, evens temperatures and keeps them moist. The chard was slow to get going but once established nearly indestructible - can be cut from again and again:

More pictures

2011-10-23T08:23:00.003-04:00

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Here's a picture of some of the guineas and Rosy [our Rhode Island Red] in front of the garden:

Here's the swimming pool that we soon need to drain. Rachel's in the background washing dishes:

The blueberries. After weeding, heavy mulching, disentangling blackberry roots, fertilizing, and being in a rotation with all the other perrenials getting a duckwater/graywater mix throughout the summer, some of them reached 6 feet high. I also hacked out and mowed a wide swath behind them to keep the blackberry back:

Our simple rainwater harvesting off the front of the cabin. The metal ceramic-lined barrels were used to ship dried tomatoes and we picked them up from the Co-op for $15 a piece. The gutter has a slightly steep angle from the center to the corners to keep the gutter clean and free of debris:

Guineas in front of the cabin. Sourdough is warming in the sun on the chair:

10/23

2011-10-23T07:39:00.002-04:00

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34 degrees inside the cabin this morning, but it doesn't feel quite as cold as the air is much dryer after yesterday's sunny weather. Only the top of the garden is covered in frost, and that mostly the mulch.

Today we're going to fire up the chainsaw and start cutting firewood - mostly from standing dead trees that have no bark as we don't have time to season it. Rachel insists I read the chainsaw manual first before I start operating the saw. I will but I hate manuals.

Yesterday we did several loads of laundry with the Rapid Washer. It's basically a modified plunger with holes on the bottom and a vent cap on top. You plunge the clothes for a while in slightly soapy water, wring them out, plunge in fresh water, wring, plunge in fresh water, wring out and hang them up on the line. It works great and the clothes come out astonishingly clean. There is a spot though in the middle of my upper back that hurts from plunging all day - hopefully it will work itself out soon.

The bucket wringer method using 3 buckets all placed inside each other with the top one pressing down on the clothes with your weight on top of it - a method we found online - doesn't work any better than hand-wringing. We'll have to order an actual crank hand wringer with rollers at some point - it costs over $100.

The birds are eating everything in their new homemade all-natural diet except the large alfalfa pellets. I tried soaking them in milk but they still won't eat them. We'll have to give what they don't eat to bunny, then with the next batch try breaking them up with a stick or running them through the food processor. They're an important nutritious high-protein part of the diet . . . the only thing to replace them with would be more peas but at grocery-store prices that's expensive. Once we can get peas by the 50# sack that's more realistic for us.

Kitty finally broke down and has started eating the raw chicken which I cut up small for her.

The lettuce and chard had some slight frost damage but otherwise all the fall plants did fine. Rachel harvested some huge collard greens and for dinner last night we had them boiled, with potatoes and a little cheese, steamed squash and biscuits.

2 eggs yesterday and we made several trips to the coop. Hopefully the theft of eggs was a one-time event. Today should be a high egg number so we'll have to watch the coop carefully.

Rachel cut down the peppers and tomatoes in the garden yesterday and put them in the compost bin. Our legendary yellow pear tomato that had spread 10 feet in every direction and produced at least a thousand tomatoes had a root like a tree. She could barely cut it with the pruners. She's saved seed from it for next year. The last of the unripe peppers all had frost damage. But our peppers had done very well for us, producing a great quantity of red banana, bell, and poblano peppers. They seemed to love the duckwater/graywater fertigation.

All of the seedlings in beds #8 and 9 are doing very well handling frost as they're planted in deep furrows between hills of mulch. These two beds will soon be protected with hoop houses. The lettuce planted elsewhere we'll get a little extra time out of by placing milk and water jugs over them with the bottoms cut out.

I finished the caulking of the upper story yesterday. Tuesday we'll pick up R 19 fiberglass insulation and insulate the ceiling. We'll also start making our insulated window coverings - insulated OSB plugs for northwest facing windows, and operable insulated curtains for windows that get direct sunlight. Brooke left her comforter out in the woods when she was here for the summer - they had tied it up as a hammock and forgot about it. It's ripped and stained from being left out in the woods. We've been airing it out and will soon cut it up to start making the insulated curtains. It's a pretty thick comforter so two layers should fill out the inside of the window frame - it will be quilted to light-colored sheets on both sides.
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Cabin Pictures

2011-10-22T10:01:00.000-04:00

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Here are pictures from the lower story of the cabin.

Here's the temporary kitchen with another OSB counter added. The permanent kitchen will be moved over to the northwest corner of the cabin:

This is the Amish-made Ashland New Decade cook stove. Not yet operable as we haven't received the chimney yet:

Here is the water station where we filter rainwater for drinking and general household use. I bought a 2 gallon coffee thermos, all stainless steel inside, and filled it halfway with activated charcoal. A funnel with a muslin cloth sits at the top of it to prefilter out any small debris in the water. Once we pour the rainwater in, we let it sit with the charcoal for at least 20 minutes, before opening the spigot and let it run out into the metal container beneath. The water's then stored in the 7.5 gallon plastic jug with spigot. We've also got one filled in the freezer for emergency use:

This is the fridge and freezer now plugged in as we have electricity in the building. The freezer's over half-full with stored water, produce from the garden, and many, many bags of frozen wild mushrooms - comb's tooth, oysters, puffballs, and chicken of the woods:

A view of the loft ladder and railing. Eventually I'll either relocate or bump the ladder out to a steep angle so it's easier to use. But for now it works for us:

Loft Pictures

2011-10-22T08:42:00.000-04:00

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All these pics are from the loft upstairs, Rachel and I's bedroom.

This is the 'library' - the desktop picture is of the bobcat we trapped:

Here's the middle of the loft, with our dressers, 'tea station', and a map on the wall with pins for places we've lived:

Here is our 'living room':

The bedroom:

A view downstairs from above:

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First Frost

2011-10-22T07:50:00.000-04:00

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Today is our first true frost. Besides the mulch and Brassicas being covered in frost, there are thin shards of ice in the duck pool, and all the water containers up at the coop are frozen shut. I tried to take a picture of it, but as always happens to me, there's no heat in the cabin so the batteries in the camera won't work.

Most everything out there is cold-hardy fall plants. Beds #8 and 9 will need mini hoop houses when we've got the money to put them together. We may beat the cold and we may not. We've already got the 4 mil plastic sheeting we bought at the hardware store - we just need electrical conduit for the hoops and rebar for stakes to hold them in place.

It's currently 32 degrees inside the cabin.

Yesterday was much warmer and sunny, a little over 50 degrees. With all the windows it probably hit 70 inside the cabin. Beside the usual chores I caulked about half of the upper story inside. I'll try to finish caulking the upper story today. Early next week we're getting fiberglass insulation for the roof - R 19 - then we can at least run a space heater up here with some efficiency till the chimney arrives. The girls run a space heater in the addition as it's already reasonably sealed up though not insulated yet. The addition also gets very warm with all its south-facing windows. Up in the loft most of the heat passes through the opening at the vent-cap on the roof. Insulation will block that.

Yesterday we got no eggs even though I took several trips up to the coop and saw hens laying and heard them cackling after they'd laid. We've now confirmed something is definitely stealing the eggs out of the nest boxes. Since the wooden eggs were not taken, up to 5 went missing in one day, and no eggs went missing when we were away in Atlanta, we're almost certain it's not a snake. It's something smart enough to avoid the wooden eggs, big enough to carry them away and stash them, and at the same time not big enough to attack the chickens themselves. After some research we believe it's either a squirrel or a rat. We've seen a squirrel up there before eating from the chicken trough, and the guineas gave it a wide berth without harassing it. On my last trip up to the coop yesterday to collect eggs the guineas followed me cackling which was a little unusual. They might follow me for a treat, but with all their alarm calls it seemed like they were communicating that something was wrong - so maybe they saw what was stealing the eggs.

We'll have to be super-vigilant and take many trips up to the coop each day to collect eggs, even if someone's laying and we wish not to disturb them. Hopefully we'll catch what's taking the eggs and then figure out how to trap it - or destroy it if we must. Our 2 problem animals this year were a raccoon and a bobcat - the raccoon had destroyed most of the corn - but both animals we successfully trapped and relocated a half hour away to Big South Fork National Rec Area.

It seems rather surprising to me that a squirrel could carry off our large chicken eggs, yet there are countless stories of such a thing happening on the internet.

Yesterday we also watched THE FLUORIDE DECEPTION and MONEY AS DEBT. We have to wait for movies to load with our slow DSL but they do load after a half hour or so.

Hand wringers are quite expensive but we're still looking. We came across a bucket within a bucket within a bucket method for pressing the water out of clothes which we'll try till we can either buy or construct an efficient hand wringer.

Crows will also steal eggs, but outside of a few times spotting them in the little valley I haven't seen them lately and they'd be hard to miss.

I went around and took photos of everything yesterday and will try to get them uploaded today.

Rachel thinned the seedlings yesterday and we had a big salad for lunch with bread and garden vegetables for dinner. It's been too cold for the sourdough to function so we've had to buy bread.
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10/21

2011-10-21T06:24:00.000-04:00

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43 degrees inside this morning.

Cold, rainy, and windy yesterday but the rain finally ended by afternoon and we saw a moment or two of sun. The forecast is for sunny weather and gradually warmer temperatures over the next 6 days. Then cold and rain again. Chimney should be here late next week.

Rachel and I watched THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE yesterday morning. I downloaded another video for her to watch today - MONEY AS DEBT.

We ran errands again yesterday as it was miserable weather.

We looked for used comforters at the Habitat to use for our insulated window curtains idea, but the only ones they had were thin and not cheap. We took our trash to the transfer station in Sunbright. The old guy there wanted to borrow a lighter to light his gas heater in his little blockhouse. There was a David Lynch moment where he needed me to go in to the blockhouse with him to help him light the heater. I ignited an end of curled up paper he was holding, while he pushed it in to the front of the heater while holding open the valve for gas on the stove. It would occasionally puff blue flame - but seemed maybe out of gas. After several tries with burning paper shoved in to the front of it it ignited and the flame burned steadily. I was happy to get out of there without a fireball having consumed the both of us inside the little dark blockhouse.

We picked up organic tobacco at the tobacco shop in Wartburg, as we roll our own organic cigarettes. Rachel's always smoked, but I picked it up last year after all the emotional turmoil of separating with Patty and not seeing the kids and moving out and fighting over the Tennessee property. Haven't smoked since I was 19.

I paid the electric bill and Rachel picked up a prescription for Harley's tooth which is hurting her and we looked at what grains and scratch they had at the CO-OP - none of which were really all-natural and suitable for our homemade poultry diet mix.

I returned the 8" chimney brush at the hardware store and the guy was being difficult because I didn't have the receipt. These guys have known me at this local hardware store for 4 years and I've spent a lot of money there, always preferring to support them over a big box store - and he's the one who recommended an 8" brush would work in a 7" pipe - well it doesn't . . . the brush goes in, but is too big and stiff to come back out. I told him I could go home and find the receipt if he wants, but his receipts aren't itemized and of such cheap ink they usually fade out and become illegible in a couple of weeks. He said he never charges the price on the item so he doesn't know how much to refund. But he eventually gave me the price of the item plus an additional dollar for tax. I'm determined to find the receipt and give him any difference if he overpaid and slap it on the counter the next time I'm there. I've never had a problem before with this store and wonder why the guy's decided to make an ass of himself now.

We went ahead on to Oak Ridge since it was cold and only 25 minutes away, and we needed the HomeLite chainsaw at Home Depot and to deposit a check at the bank. We also looked for a Toyoto dealer to exchange the battery from the car that we had tested at AutoZone and found dead but was still under warranty. There wasn't any Toyoto dealer in Oak Ridge, and over the phone they told us battery warranties are pro-rated and since ours is 59 months old we probably won't get anything for it. So we called around and found a new one for $64 in Jamestown. We've got to get the car back up and running as gas is too expensive to be using the truck for errands.

We got the chainsaw with an 18" bar at HomeDepot, oil and a stone for sharpening knives, a 6 pound splitting maul, a set of chisels for sharpening the chain, and paid $25 for an additional 2 year warranty on the chainsaw since we know it's going to get abused cutting wood for heat year after year. And I learned a lesson in not having got an extended warranty on the mower and it's already broken down.

We also looked at the price of fiberglass insulation. After some sticker shock I spent the evening looking in to cheap alternatives for insulation and researched sawdust for a while since we have an infinite free supply of it down at the mill [Rachel and I go down there once a season to fill the Explorer to the roof with bags of it to use in our composting toilets - it only takes us about a half-hour to gather a season's worth of it. We store it in the barn to keep it dry.]

I've ultimately come to the conclusion to stick with fiberglass because I'd have to immediately put interior walls and ceiling and something under the floor to hold the sawdust in. The R value of sawdust is debatable, and you've got to put some price on your own personal labor for putting it in which is intensive. If we stick with fiberglass and do one area at a time as we can afford it we can leave the walls exposed on the interior and cover them later.

The lesson here is if you're a DIYer/potential homesteader and don't have an infinite supply of cash NEVER USE MODULAR CONSTRUCTION TO BUILD YOUR HOME. The cost of everything is astronomical. Use any inexpensive local material you can get your hands on, whether earthbags, adobe, cob, cordwood, logs, sod, block, stone, straw, etc. - anything but kiln-dried framing lumber and all the costly manufactured materials that go with it purchased from a home improvement store. Considering the cost of straw and wet climate, if I had to start over I'd do earthbags - nothing's as long-lasting and cheap as dirt, and once constructed structure/interior exterior walls/insulation via thermal mass - all are completed in one inexpensive step. Tedious to build . . . but cheap, functional, beautiful and durable. Rachel would be happy with a little sod hut on the plains. Well . . . maybe if we ever move. I'd be fine with a wigwam.

Rachel mixed a half-batch of the ingredients together for our new poultry diet. We put it out in the trough in the coop last night. We let Rosy try the roasted lentils and whole oats and she loves them. The chickens also devoured the raw chicken that kitty refused to eat in trying to get her on a raw-meat diet [chickens will eat anything].

Oh and as far as kitty goes, we're going to put an ad up on GOLSN and try to find another home for her. She climbs the housewrap and window screens on the cabin and tears them up, stalks and harasses the birds, tears up newly planted areas of the garden and shits in them, constantly gets into food in the house like licking the butter, shits in the pepper plants, and yesterday when we came home from errands Rachel left a bowl of lentils on the table which she'd spent all day roasting for the chickens. Kitty had pissed and shit in it. We had to wash it and redry it. That was the last straw. She's cute and friendly, but totally incompatible with what we're doing and a nightmare on a daily basis. I'm also allergic to cats and her dander's everywhere. Anybody want a cat?

We have a lot of chores to catch up on today now that the rain's over. Then we can get out the saw and maul and start making firewood.

[Kitty's meowing at the door desperately to be let in]

Time to let out the birds . . . and get bunny her weeds . . . and fertigate the garden . . .
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10/19

2011-10-19T20:28:00.000-04:00

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Still sick with a cold today but not as bad as yesterday.

Cold, rainy, and windy all day. The forecast says only 42 tonight but it barely hit 42 all day. Rain and cold forecast for tomorrow also, but then sunny weather ahead which means at least the cabin will be warm with all the windows - though not at night. Still no heat source till the chimney arrives. The girls have plugged in a space heater. We wear several layers of clothes. And drink hot tea.

The ducks don't mind the cold or rain and free-range happily all day. The guineas after last night in the trees in the rain headed to bed early in the coop. At least they have that much sense [a guinea, compared to a chicken, is an imbecile - the semi-domesticated ones at least. The wild slate-colored guineas that live around here seem rather intelligent and raised a batch of keets successfully even while the bobcat was killing right and left].

The ducks make a mess of their food and dump it everywhere. We started them on a homemade diet of mush consistency which they did well with [they like their food wet]. As they got older we switched to high-quality layer pellets which the chickens were getting. We're now trying to get away from kibble-style factory food and do a homemade diet for all the birds. We've put a lot of research into creating the right homemade diet for poultry. It will have to be adjusted seasonally. We just picked up the ingredients today at Tractor Supply and Walmart. A 40# bag of alfalfa pellets, a 50# bag of whole oats, a 50# bag of bird seed, 5# of lentils, 5# of peas, 8# of thistle seed . . . we already have flax seeds, cracked corn - here are the proportions we worked out:

Alfalfa Pellets
40#
Bird Seed Mix
50#
Oats
15#
Nyjer Thistle Seed
2#
Lentils
7#
Split Peas
6#
Flax Seed
2#

It uses basically ingredients we can presently get at a moderate to low cost. The protein content is 14%. Laying hens must have a minimum of 14% and ideally 16%. This is usually achieved via free-ranging with the high protein content of forage and insects. But it's nearly November now and the bugs are almost gone and forage is reduced. Protein is usually boosted in the homemade diets using some type of field peas. If we didn't wish to keep the birds laying through the winter we could simply put them on a low protein (12%) maintenance diet. But as it is we need eggs and have a light on a timer on the coop so they get 16 hours of light a day. We got 4 eggs today from 5 birds [one of whom a banty almost never lays] so it's working. Ever since we got off layer pellets and went from a 50/50 diet of rabbit food and scratch [simply because we ran out of layer pellets] egg production increased.

We'll have to see how well this diet works for them . . . eventually we'll get sacks of organic grain from a supplier an hour south of Knoxville for mixing their food. The ducks will go on the same diet as the chickens [two are mixed runners, 5 are mixed rouens - probably not ideal laying breeds but we picked them up for free sort of rescue ducks from a fellow homesteader moving soon to Texas]. I'll try soaking the food for the ducks so they can eat it better and not make such a mess of it. It's a little bit of a juggle raising three completely different types of poultry all living together in the same coop.

The cat is going on a raw meat diet and the bunny is being switched from poor-quality grain-based rabbit pellets to alfalfa pellets. She'll also get some grains, hay, and I give her a big batch of weeds every morning which she always eats. Sometimes food scraps like carrot tops and peels. Bunny's just a pet for the girls though we do use her fertilizer. She's not breeding and not to be used for meat [we're vegetarians].

We cleaned the kitchen then dropped off the mower today at a small-engine repair shop. A cold wet day is a good day for errands. We'll probably go to Oak Ridge tomorrow for a Homelite chainsaw and splitting maul. We have a lot of wood to cut and stack. Ordered a 7" chimney brush from Ace Hardware - will be here next week.

Too cold and wet to do anything with the garden today - though the seedlings need thinned, desperately, especially mustards. The brassicas are growing wonderfully. The combination of deep mulching with grass clippings and fertigation have made the garden do very well. I take the daily water from the small duck pool in the masonry tub, and mix it in a bucket with graywater from the dishes - about 1/4 duckwater to 3/4 graywater - and distribute it in rotation through all the garden beds.

Rachel's roasting lentils and peas in the toaster oven for the chicken food. With the next batch we'll soak and sprout the legumes before toasting them dry so it's more nutritious and digestible. Right now we're crunched for time running out of the old 1/1/1 mix of rabbit food, cracked corn, and scratch. The birds also have a granite grit in a container in the coop and their own eggshells dried and ground for them to eat as a calcium supplement.

Had stewed root vegetables and bread for dinner.

Master List

2011-10-19T09:53:00.000-04:00

Here is the master list of everything that needs done up here by winter. Items that are dated have already been done.

FALL LIST

Plastic sheet over coop windows

Insulated strips for coop door and run door

Ad for gas stove on GOLSN [ASAP] 10/1

Get Homelite chainsaw, 6# wood-splitting maul [ASAP] [ATLANTA]

Cut and stack wood [ASAP]

Construct hoop houses [ASAP]

Plant garden [ASAP] 10/10

Insulate cabin

Caulk cabin, plug holes

Finish wiring

Install chimney [when parts arrive] [ASAP]

Move loft ladder

Get Hardiback for cook stove

Build duck house

Build duck nest boxes [ASAP] 10/8

Get duck pool and pen area

Plumb house

Remove French doors, interior walls

Make insulated window drapes

Transfer compost in bin 10/2

Fence perennials

Sand chairs [ASAP] 10/8

Build insulated cathouse [ASAP]

Reconfigure rafters for stove pipe [when parts arrive] [ASAP]

Change car air filters

Amend Rachel’s taxes [ASAP] [unnecessary] 10/7

Drain swimming pool and put up

Trap bobcat [ASAP] 10/4

Dust cabbages with repellent [ASAP] 10/7

Pay phone bill [MONDAY 10/10] 10/7

Pay electric bill [MONDAY 10/24]

Play it Again Sports for Harley’s cleats and glove 10/14

Gather walnuts [ASAP] 10/6

Repair shoes [ASAP] 10/6

Order Amish manual for stove [ASAP] 10/7

Clean bunny cage and fertilize artichokes [ASAP] 10/6

Air tents [ASAP] 10/9

Clean pruning shears

Make garden door

Call Northline Express about shipments [MONDAY 10/10]

Return or repair mower [ASAP]

Buy and paint wooden duck eggs 10/13

Gather acorns from white and red oaks on property

Find hand wringer

Put gas stove on Craigslist [ASAP]

Put washer/dryer on GOLSN/Craigslist

Move light in coop [ASAP] 10/17

Order Rapid Breather washer [ASAP] 10/16

Deposit check at Suntrust [ASAP]

Gather rest of walnuts [ASAP]

Sand/paint wooden eggs and place in egg boxes [ASAP] 10/17

Rearrange girls’ room [ASAP]

Call Northline Express about order status [ASAP] 10/17

Mail cell phone to the girls [ASAP] 10/18

Air out tents from camping on Pigeon Mountain [ASAP] 10/17

Return chimney brush

Get 7” chimney brush and clean out stovepipe

Buy round hay bales

Buy car battery
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10/18

2011-10-19T09:40:00.000-04:00

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10/18

Sick today with a cold.

Cloudy and cool through the morning but mostly sunny and warm with some wind through the afternoon. Supposed to rain soon.

Did the usual chores, watering, got 3 eggs today – both araconas in the big box and Rosy in the little one. Many guineas still sleeping in the trees. Acorns cover the ground up by the coop under the white oaks.

Cleaned Bastian’s stuff out of the girls’ room and put it up on a skid under the barn. Kids’ room loaded with roaches and flies. Cleaned out the truck from camping.

Researching getting dairy goats.

Rachel processed lots of garden food, picked the garden, did all the dishes, etc.

All the blankets and sleeping bags hanging up in the upper story of the barn to air.

Located a guy in Jamestown who may be able to fix the mower cheap.

Artichokes have recovered well after bucket of duck water and dying off in late summer.

Had granola for breakfast, stewed reduced garden tomatoes with crackers for lunch, quesadillas with mustard greens for dinner.

['Rosy' is our Rhode Island Red who is so friendly we thought of putting a chicken diaper on her and letting her spend time inside - she often wanders in when the door is open.

Rachel's convinced the roaches are not roaches but some kind of wild relative. In my opinion if it looks like a roach and scurries like a roach it's a roach. But where they should be most common - the kitchen, where all the food is - there aren't any at all. They're only in the addition and out in boxes in the shed.

The flies sometimes inside become quite abundant. We've got flypaper hanging up in front of most windows. It is considered unsightly, but is very effective at eliminating them. We're used to the flypaper and infinitely prefer the sight of it to flies landing on us.

My favorite meal up here is boiling down garden tomatoes into a thick stew to eat with crackers. It can also be frozen in freezer bags for later use in meals like squash lasagna. The cherry tomatoes become so sweet when boiled down they make a rich aromatic jam.]
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10/17/11

2011-10-19T09:04:00.000-04:00

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10/17/11

Hot and sunny, some wind. Put out all the wooden duck eggs [12] we picked up in Atlanta [Michael’s - $.79 – painted white] in the 4 nest boxes in the morning. The same two in the coop, one made from a plastic bin on the floor for the ducks, and one I built of wood/osb sitting out in the duck pen. Out of 5 hens we got 4 eggs – 2 in the big popular box, Little Bit the first to lay in the duck box in the coop, and one in the small box. So the eggs work if not just to motivate the birds to lay in the boxes, but also to try different boxes they’re unfamiliar with laying in.

Had a massive amount of duck/graywater to distribute throughout the garden from having the birds cooped up while we were gone [5 days – 5 chickens, 7 ducks, 13 guineas].

Girls barely made the bus by Harley running ahead of Gwen to flag down the bus.

Aired out the tents from our camping trip. Rachel’s tent still wet and she hung it up on upper story of barn.

Took a trip to Sunbright and picked up a small piece of pipe for a garden door, popcorn bowl, rubber spatula, small knife, and two bookcases [$15 a piece]. Had the truck to fit it. Also mailed the girls their phone they left in the back pocket of the seat in the truck [$6}. Didn’t get walnuts – too much to do at home. Also bought milk and ice cream treat.

Rachel picked tomatoes from the garden and lettuce, kale, chard, pepper, and radishes for a big salad which we had for a late lunch. Used up the rest of our blue cheese dressing – need to start making our own. Rachel made croutons from homemade bread and we also added roasted sunflower seeds.

Wasps and ladybugs were everywhere in the house especially upstairs. I had to swat 30 wasps to make it livable up here. Rachel got stung in the foot when one got trapped underneath her sandal. Wasps were milling everywhere underneath the eaves. We can only guess they’re waking up with the warmth or looking for a place to hibernate before the coming cold front - which will probably be our second stretch of light frost.

Coyotes yipping late evening.

Spent hours reorganizing the loft to fit bookcases beside the computer table – had to cut a wedge out of nonstructural stud to fit it all. Brought Bastian’s dresser up here. Put the toilet along the loft railing. Looks good with much more storage space. Put up magazines [Mother earth, Countryside, etc] in one case, books in other. Cleaned and vacuumed. Room now microorganized with library, dressing room, bathroom, tea station, living room, and bedroom. Need a floor lamp for the library area – hard to find cheap.

Read Rachel from A FAREWELL TO ARMS at night. Talked about history.

Rinsed and later washed the dishes in the morning. Cleaned out the truck some. Car battery dead from the trunk having been left open while we were gone. Rachel organized produce in kitchen.

Called Northline about chimney order – shouldn’t expect anything until late next week.

Looking in to ordering rolls of hay to mulch on massive scale especially since mower is currently not working. An ad on Trade Times says $10 - $15 per bale . . . will call.

Brought back helpful things from Atlanta – Rachel got 2 big roles of unbarbed wire from her mother, a ricer, large metal bowls, magazines, 2 big pots, and I got a $100 check for my birthday and $25 gift certificate.

[We've had many issues with chickens laying outside the coop who knows where. There's also the possibility a snake is getting the eggs in the coop. The clutches of wooden duck eggs in each box should help both problems.

The Habitat for Humanity thrift store in Sunbright is an awesome place to score just about anything.

We camped up on Pigeon Mountain with Rachael and Brooke at the end of our Atlanta stay last weekend - they left their phone in the back of the truck.

Sebastian is Rachel's 17 year old son who moved up with us in March. He just got his GED up here and moved back down to Atlanta permanently last weekend. Harley and Gwen are Rachel's 13 and 9 year old daughters who live with us up here and go to school in Sunbright. Their bedrooms are in the addition.

The city park in Sunbright has an almost unlimited supply of black walnuts. We've gathered two trunkloads so far and have them drying up on the upper story of the barn. They so far cover a space 12'x24'. There's another trunkload to get. We also have a good amount of chestnut oak acorns up there we gathered in Pickett State Park about an hour from here.

The loft now has a railing and is Rachel and I's bedroom. I've joked that it's our headquarters for 'Operation Homestead' as we have a commanding view over the entire property.

One of the guards came loose under the deck on the mower, and the blades caught it and tore it up. We have a nice Honda Quadra-Cut mower that cuts a very fine mulch. I replaced the gaurd but now the vibration's so bad we're worried the blades are either out of balance or the crankshaft is bent. We found a small-engine repair guy in Jamestown to look at it. While the mower's out, and until we can obtain some large hay rolls, we're out of cover material - just have to take mulch from future garden beds.]
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The New Plan

2011-10-19T08:51:00.000-04:00

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Changed my mind. Drafting a new blog is entirely too much trouble and the DSL is too slow. I'll post here.

I'll do daily journal entries in italics - these are mostly shorthand and I'll add additional comments in regular type to further explain entries. I'll also post the 'master list' of what needs done up here by winter. Periodically I'll do a post on a particular topic with a few photos - such as the chicken coop, or barn, or garden, or rainwater harvesting . . . that goes into depth on our experience with it and how it's worked out so far.

I'll slowly incorporate new photos to the sidebar of what it looks like here now.

The overall goal of self-sufficiency and grass-roots living hasn't changed . . . if anything it's accelerated dramatically by having someone on board with what I'm doing up here.
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Homesteading in Tennessee II

2011-10-18T21:52:00.000-04:00

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I'm going to build a new website with the above title. Up here in Tennessee the internet is so slow the old site takes forever to load. Too many pictures. I'll put a link to it under 'Year 4' at the top once it's ready.

The new site'll be simple so it's easy to load, with less pictures, and more day-to-day information. I'll keep a daily journal there so you get an idea of what our homesteading lifestyle is really like.

To fill in with news . . . got married February 12th, moved up to Sunbright March 1st to live permanently.

I'll post current photos of how everything looks now. My wife Rachel and I built a coop up in the old gazebo site under the white oaks, we put a roof over the barn, tilled all nine beds of the garden area, with a few outside the fence and planted just about everything. We put fascia and soffits and gutters on the cabin and harvest rainwater, put in a loft railing, more counter space, put in electricity, wired the building, have a fridge and freezer . . . weeded and mulched and fertilized the perennials and most have tripled in growth . . . have currently 25 birds - five chickens, 13 guineas, and 7 ducks - just trapped the bobcat and relocated him to Big South Fork National Rec Area so we can get back to free-ranging all the birds [he'd killed 11 guineas, 4 chickens and 1 duck]. We also have a rabbit out in the barn in a hutch I built, a cat who hopefully someday will make a good mouser to deal with the voles in the garden but is currently an out-of-control kitty in to everything. We'll soon get dairy goats, and at some point horses. Maybe a Jersey cow.

We just bought a used Ashland New Decade wood cookstove for $700 [new they're $2,500]. We're waiting for the stainless steel chimney to arrive to fire it up. This stove is Amish-made, and will heat the cabin, has a hot water reservoir, a large oven, firebox, and the top can be cooked on just like a range.

When I get a chance [homesteading is endless work] I'll take photos and post some information beneath them to fill in everything that's going on.
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Finishing the Addition

2010-06-13T07:56:00.000-04:00

We spent 2 weeks up in Tennessee finishing the addition. We also put in a fence around the garden.

The grass when we pulled up was over 2 feet high. We had to mow over and over the same rows to bring our yard back.

Some of the grass clippings I use to mulch around the fruiting shrubs and trees. I also begin sheet mulching some bare spots in the garden beds:

We lay down newspaper and later cardboard and pile on the grass. In April I'd leveled the beds, so the former high sides had lost much of their topsoil and some were down to bare clay. These are the spots I start mulching first.

Sheathing the walls takes a while as I have to put in a lot of blocking at the seams. And the only fasteners I have are the leftover galvanized 8d ringshank nails. The second I hit them slightly off they lay right over. I'm going to have to get a compressor and light-duty framing gun at some point for putting in sheathing. Especially for when I move on to the barn and its much bigger scale. Banging in all those nails by hand every 6" takes forever:

Our humanure compost that is aging this year is full of growth. On the right is a weed that pops up everywhere around where I plant. On the left are potato sprouts that have come up from old rotten potatoes we dumped here:

The left bin we're presently using is full of huge volunteer tomato plants. In fact I find tomato coming up where I'd fertilized the young shrubs and trees. But it doesn't get big and I pull it out.

The sheathing takes about a day:

Here's where I am at evening:

Rachael and Brooke have brought their gerbils along - Ricky and Jasper:

They're very intelligent and sociable and fun to watch. Gerbils are a species of Mongolian desert rat. They often stop and stand to look around. We let them run free in the addition once the sheathing's up. The girls set up a few obstacles and things to check out.

Mishka is separated by closing the french doors. He just stands at the door and watches them intently.

Mishka is basically an 'inside dog' while we're here. He gets to go out occasionally for supervised play. He's starting to realize there are some rules up here outside, and if we yell his name he runs to the door to be let back inside in self-punishment. Maybe gradually he'll learn to not leave the property - especially not head towards those chickens.

The metal for the roof is delivered on Thursday - our forth day here. It goes in easy, as I've done it before. But it's unbelievably hot standing out on the roof in the afternoon. I guzzle water and use a spray bottle to mist my face. After I install each piece of metal, I get down and soak my head in water and dunk my hat and wear it soaking wet.

I screw up a little in that I run the roofing in line with the cabin wall instead of the outer rafters - I wasn't sure which to trust for square. If it wasn't so hot I would have been more rational and measured the roof length at both the cabin abutment and eaves to get everything perfect. Instead I ran the sheets a hair cock-eye . . . it's not that noticeable and easily hid with the soffits - but it's still annoying.

The 'transition' flashing piece that comes with the roof for a shed-roof addition is a pain to put in. It's hard to shove it up against the wall and hold it there and fasten it at the same time:

It's pre-bent for a much steeper roof.

I'm not sure whether to run the flashing out beyond the wall with the roof overhang or not. Ultimately I decide not to. I'll have to figure out another way to flash my barge rafter overhang.

Here the roof is on, the addition walls are up and wrapped:

Someday there'll be a wraparound deck to hide the piers.

Here's a shot of the inside:

We've decided to do Mexican tile [or something similar] for the cabin floors, drywall for the walls, and lacquered tongue and groove boards for the high ceilings, with ceiling fans. I'll leave exposed and lacquer some of the post and beam frame - such as the center posts and beam and loft beams and joists.

The blueberry we planted two years ago is doing very well. Some have a lot of ripe berries:

The flavor is as sweet and rich as wild blueberries. I've had some cultivated blueberries before on huge shrubs that were weak in color and not that sweet. But these varieties . . . half a hardy species I got at Hidden Springs Nursery, and half from a local nursery, have excellent berries, no different from the ones we gathered up at Graveyard Fields in the Appalachians.

Some of the plants are almost waist-high. All have new growth. We've had a wet spring this year, which I'm sure helps.

But I notice once we've mowed and weed-whacked the high grass some of that new growth on the blueberries begins to wilt. I guess the high grass was keeping them in partial shade and conserving their moisture.

All I can think to do at this point is to begin mulching and surrounding the plants with pine boughs. I have many unwanted pines, especially up above the swales, and the needles should help keep the soil acid which is what blueberries like:

I bend and cut the pine boughs with my camp saw - it's a great cheap tool.

Literally the day after I begin to mulch the blueberries the new growth perks right back up.

We also get a full day of rain which helps.

Here I've mulched the blueberry up on the swales with pine boughs:

Some of these clayey berms not shaded by high grass were very barren and dry.

The barn floor has grayed but is still in good condition. I pour a little water on it to see how absorbent it is and whether it needs sealed again. The water instantly scatters into many droplets that sit on top of the surface. The kids play with the bubbles and split them and move them around, like little molecules. The wind wicks them away before they ever sink into the floor - so I guess it doesn't need sealed yet.

Here are two shots from the top of the barn:

Patty comes up for the second week. She brings the windows. I immediately start putting them in:

They're easy to install - new construction with nailing fins. We've bought seven 32" x 54" windows at Builder's Surplus here in Atlanta for $129 a piece. They're standard modern efficient windows:

I kind of realize how nice the original cabin is with its custom windows. It makes a place feel more unique. But these windows I think are fine here for the addition. This 12' x 25' room [really 2 rooms, dining and living room] gives us a lot more space. I'll eventually remove the exterior french doors to the addition and use them somewhere else, so there's a nice open space throughout the building.

We next put up a garden fence - a low-cost easy project in the heat that everybody can help with:

We buy 28 5' metal stakes from Lowe's and 200' of fencing. In all it costs about $300.

This fence will serve a lot of purposes. For one it will shield drying winds from the garden - it gets very, very dry in the intense sun on this south-facing slope up here.

The fence will also help keep animals out. And we'll plant vines and bushes all around it. I'll put in more grape, try some kiwi, and plant one 80' stretch completely with blue honeysuckle - a plant that is all the rage now, hardy, productive, evergreen, with good abundant fruit. Vines and bushes grown all around the fence will further shield the garden and make the fence itself more attractive. We leave three 4' openings for bringing a wheelbarrow in and out - they'll eventually have gates.

Here's a shot inside the addition with windows in as well as some castoff furniture:

It's actually nice and cool, with the large roof overhang, rather than a sunroom. This is good because what we really needed was more living space.

In order to run the fence along the back of the garden we have to move the huge rusted lawnmower that burned in the fire. I'd tried to move it and take it apart 2 years ago and gave up. But with Patty's help we're able to roll it out of the way and back by the juneberries:

I think I'll leave it here, as a memento from the fire. I wish I'd kept the bowling ball also - it had shrunken to half its size and become misshapen and lost all color like something out of the Flintstones.

After a heavy rain Rachael sweeps water off the upper barn floor where it's puddled up:

Someday [hopefully soon] this will be a large enclosed barn for animals/workshop/storage/studio/living space, etc.

Here's a shot of the garden fence in:

Even though we're not watering, the mint has gone crazy in the garden and sprouted up everywhere. There's both basil and peppermint:

We buy some topsoil and Patty begins transplanting it out of the garden and around our fruit trees. The stuff's so hardy it barely wilts from the transplant, even in the extreme heat, and begins to look like it was always there.

She surrounds one flowering peach with basil, and the other with peppermint.

We try to think of more low to zero-cost projects while we're altogether up here. That one lone sickly red oak standing right on the south-facing slope where one day our passive solar home will go is still in the way. I wonder if I can take it down with an axe. We don't have a chainsaw. It's about a foot in diameter, and 60 feet tall:

I happen to have a comprehensive book on cabins which illustrates how best to cut down a tree. New science, the author says, shows that the old 30 to 60 degree notch is incorrect. A 90 degree notch is best - then there's no risk of the tree pivoting and falling to one side.

It's an incredible workout whaling away with the axe. It starts to drizzle. After 30 minutes I've cut out my notch and am working on the back side. Patty sees lightening and sends Rachael out to bring me in - Patty's worried I'm going to get struck by lightning. I'm drenched in sweat, and rain, and exhausted, but I'd like to finish the job. I go inside for a while to take a break.

I joke to Patty that it's 'Man vs. Tree' out there. She can see the notch from the cabin.

After a short break I go back out and take it down. Only 5 more minutes and it creaks and goes down. They all run to the window but miss it fall:

She says I was supposed to yell "Timber!" Instead I just yelled, "Woah! Hey!"

Here's a closeup of the stump:

The tree fell exactly where I wanted it to. I have complete awe for guys that did this on a daily basis for a living. People were a whole different breed just a hundred years ago.

I think of Laura's husband in 'Little House on the Prarie', just after they'd moved from the Dakotas back east to Missouri to homestead on an apple orchard. To make a living he chopped trees down on the property and split them into firewood and sold it in town. He worked all day, and did this for months. In one book they'd said it was embarrassing to a man to have any difficulty hauling a 150 pound sack of wheat over his shoulder. They were in incredible shape, and lived in to their nineties.

We need a table so I throw one together one evening out of scrap boards and a small piece of flooring - it's about 4' x 4', 20" high - flat and sturdy:

We find a wonderful swimming hole two and half miles up the Obed River from where the rope swing was cut down. We hike the Cumberland Trail out to Alley Ford. The place is a Garden of Eden - the river's beautiful, clear, warm, there are huge sandstone cliffs, and a bottomless pool of water we can dive into over and over off a sandstone boulder. It's very lush on the other side of the river with moss and ferns and springs running across the rocks. The water's hot as it runs off the rocks - almost like a hot spring.

We'll definitely come back here. Maybe next time we'll bring intertubes and tube back down to our car. I don't know though . . . Patty hates rapids.

We paddle 4 to 5 miles up the Emory River:

The water's still here - backed up by the lake. We paddle upstream until we hit current. We forge up one set of rapids. But Patty gets upset as we're near the top and losing ground and drifting towards the rocks - we ferry to the near shore and ride back down.

It's exhausting paddling up just one set of rapids. How did Patty and I once do this for 500 miles up the Susquehanna River? We must have been machines. We did mix it up a lot though . . . with lining, portages, chasing eddies, and periods of dead water.

I love canoeing, and feel like I could paddle all day. I tell Patty we could take the Emory down to the Tennessee and all the way to Montana. She isn't interested.

We eat some of the mulberries from the tree leaning out over the river we ate from last year. But we're sort of in a hurry as it's thundering and we need to get back to the launch and off the water.

Here's a shot of the cabin from the driveway through the trees:

The next step is the Hardiplank siding - colorwise we're thinking of birch white for the trim and a tea-gray for the siding . . . but we're not sure yet.

I draw up a list of all that needs done on the property and cabin siding is not the next priority. It's getting a roof on the barn:

I've drawn out architecturally what I'm doing and made a materials list. We're going to head back to Tennessee the first week of August to put in the frame. There'll be one more set of posts and beams to support the rafters midway. The lower rafters will be straight rafters. The upper will be in a king post truss.

The reason we didn't stay longer and invest more in Tennessee is that we've bought a HUD house here in Atlanta, so that when we're here working we're not stuck in a shitty apartment.

There are some great deals out there on HUD's - homes way below market value. We're trying to close in a few weeks, then I've got to put in hardwood floors and paint and fix a toilet valve and it's ready to go. Patty's convinced an investment in a HUD here while the market's down will help us pay off our Tennessee place and retire.

I'll make another post on the HUD once we've closed and I've got some photos and begun the work.
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Runaway

2010-05-11T22:30:00.001-04:00

Runaway is finished. It's the story of our 6 month experience in a traveling carnival, working with drunks, thieves, and ex-cons. Patty and I were in our teens and just out of school - it was a great bonding and maturation experience for us.

I took the photo of this carnival at the old Kmart parking lot here in Atlanta on Sunday. I walked through it for a moment, having just finished my book. The smell of cheap generic cigarettes instantly took me back to our life there.

There were mostly rides and ride jocks with very few games. There were a few joints . . . but it was afternoon, the guys weren't ready to start calling and applying the pressure. They were still setting up their joints and drinking coffee.

Patty and I and the girls are all going up to Tennessee for the entire month of June - it's very exciting. We'll finish the addition, side the building, and either get a roof on the barn or begin plumbing and electrical for the cabin. We have to drive two cars, because I've got 7 huge windows for the addition I need to haul.

Mishka isn't going. He'll be watched by a friend. He's kind of blown it for himself up there for now.

The Addition

2010-04-19T18:45:00.001-04:00

. The kids and I spent the last 9 days up in Tennessee building the addition for the cabin.

We had perfect weather and it was a highly productive week. I got it semi-dried in with rafters and sheathing and tarpaper on the roof. The only thing left to do is put in the metal, sheathe and wrap the walls, and pop in windows - 4 day's work. I've already bought the windows at Builder's Surplus. 7 windows at $129 a piece - they're large, new, modern . . . 32" x 54". The addition's a combination sunroom/living room, with maybe some greenhouse space.

The first thing we noticed when we pulled up to the property at night were the flowering peach trees covered in large pink flowers. These are the first things we ever planted on the property, 2 years ago. It's nice to see them thriving, even if the fruit is small.

The next day I finished putting in the joists for the cabin floor:

No problems . . . went well. The boards are 2x10's @ 12 feet.

The girls fertilized the apple trees and a few garden beds with the last of the aged humanure compost:

Once the joists were in I put in 2x10 blocking down the middle - this supports and straightens the joists:

The joists tie directly in to the cabin girder. I needed a nailing surface for the edge of the flooring so I run blocking along this side:

At the end of the first day I've finished the frame and put in the first few sheets of flooring with adhesive and 2 1/4" screws:

Here's a shot of one of the flowering peach trees in front of the barn:

On Day 2 I get the rest of the flooring in - Advantech, $20 a 3/4" sheet, heavy-duty, with a 50 year warranty:

Here are some interior shots of the cabin, a lot more comfortable than the early days of sleeping in the tent, gazebo, and the back of the car:

I can't order lumber for the addition till Monday. So I spend Sunday putting up the rest of the posts in the upper story of the barn - these outside walls are the bearing walls for the roof:

Each morning I grade and level a garden bed. There are 9 altogether. It's tough physical work, so I do one a day in the early morning when it's cold. The strawberry and mint had spread everywhere. There's still some debris from the fire, like broken crockery and rusted pieces of metal.

Here a couple of beds are done:

I order lumber Monday morning and it gets delivered around noon.

I build conventional stud walls for the addition. They're not nearly as heavy as I thought they'd be to stand up alone - even the 12' walls with 2x6 studs are no big deal:

The long 25' wall I do in three sections, two at 8', one at 9'. Here's what I've got accomplished as of Monday evening:

Tuesday I stand up the rest of the walls. The 9' section fits perfectly in between the 2 8' outer sections, both at the top and sole plate - a good sign of a square layout and plumb walls:

The rough openings for windows are next. Since it's only one story with a 3' span 2x4 headers are sufficient - I however box them in with an additional horizontal 2x6 to shim against:

I fill the header box with fiberglass insulation before I seal it. Remember the mice that nested in the insulation 2 years ago, and the photo of the baby mice? This is what I used. No mice now - I guess they've moved on.

One of the most amazing sights on the property are the 2 huge autumn olives covered in flowers. They're full of bees and butterflies coming and going. I wish I could order more, but they're now illegal to sell in Tennessee because they're considered invasive. I'll have to order them from outside the state.

Brooke took several photos of the swallowtails in the flowers. Here's one:

One March we went up to camp on Pigeon Mountain, and the autumn olives there were flowering and fragrant and full of butterflies. In fact that photo of me with the butterfly on my hand was taken that trip. It was a beautiful thing to see, and to create that on our own property is pretty awesome.

Once the rough openings are done, I move on to the rafters:

I first run a 25' stretch of 2x6's along the cabin as a cleat to hang them on. This works great and the cleat's screwed in to the studs. This way I don't need to buy hangers for the rafters:

I put in 2x6 blocking between the rafters. I have to shave a 1/2" off the width to keep them from projecting beyond the top of the rafters.

For the rafters I make a seat cut at both ends, as well as a plumb cut where they tie in to the cabin. To make life easy I clamp one 2x6 rafter @14' against the edge of the cleat and cap plates where they'll run. I draw my lines of where it needs cut, and once the rafter fits just right I use it as a template to cut all the rest. It works great and saves a lot of time. For each later rafter I watch how it fits - I fine tune it as a go, modify a seat cut a hair where necessary, and am happy with the results. Also it's expedient. It takes me no more than a day to cut and install all the rafters - much different from the hell I went through with the rafters on the cabin, and each one's custom cut.

Where the rafter ties in to the cabin, I predrill and screw it into the cleat, the blocking, and the cabin for a secure hold.

I use 2x4 blocking at the cap plate, to allow ventilation out the soffit vents:

Here's where I am at the end of the day:

After several days of morning labor the garden beds are leveled and ready to go. Removing the blackberry was much easier than I thought - most of the roots are shallow. But I'm sure there's a taproot somewhere which will keep sending up shoots.

I'd like to buy a tiller and till peat moss into the clayey soil. But the cost of both a tiller and the moss is high. I can get a truckload of topsoil delivered for about $200. We may do that this year.

I'd love to get a fence around the garden - even a cheapo metal one and grow fruiting vines and shrubs all over it. It would help establish and protect the space, as well as shield it from drying winds. It's the intense sun and dryness that we struggle with most in the garden:

Once I have the 20 common rafters in, I put in barge rafters at either end for the 1' roof overhang. I assemble them on my saw table, then hoist them up with the kids.

It's difficult as my ladders are worthless and the girls don't have much muscle. I end up going back to the old methods I used in the barn to hoist joists - rope and bungee cords, then once it's there, clamp and tap it into position:

I use plenty of screws and nails to sister it to the outer rafter, but I think knee braces are necessary if I really want it to be secure. I'll install them after the wall sheathing's up.

Here the frame is finished:
I cut the rafter tails after the rafters are already in. I run a string along the top, mark the tails, then draw plumb lines and make the cuts with a circular saw from the ladder. I end up with a very nice line for my fascia and gutter:

The only hitch is this awful 3 in 1 ladder that no longer works. The locking mechanism is busted, and I can't lock the ladder in any position. So every time I go to move it it buckles. I need to get a regular extension ladder. As usual, the more sophisticated something is, the more likely it is to break down - and soon. We've only had it a year.

Here's another shot of the frame:

Next is the sheathing for the roof. Here's a view out the french doors once I have the first few sheets in:

After the sheathing, I lay down 30lb roofing felt and secure it with button cap nails. I secure it well, as this felt will be left exposed 2 weeks until I can get up there again and put in the metal:

Here's a shot of where it is at the end of the week:

I think it looks good. It's no architectural wonder, but for having no prior construction experience and Patty and I just making it up as we go along I think we've done okay. We plan on ultimately adding on a master bedroom wing on the left side - I've only put in one window on this wall of the addition, as it's north-facing, never gets direct sunlight, and the window is interior door-sized so when the time comes I can pop it out and put in a door. This master bedroom will have it's own stove, bathroom, and patio. Then the girls will have the loft all to themselves, and can divide it up. There's also a large screened-in porch going in on the opposite side of the building from the addition.

Overall it was a great week. I lost 5 lbs working dawn to dusk and eating small meals the girls prepared, like potatoes and oatmeal or spaghetti. I got very tan, my hair bleached blonde in the fierce sun and cloudless sky day after day. We had one short episode of rain Saturday morning.

We took a couple of trips down to the creek to jump in and cool off and bathe. The girls took a few bike rides. They also helped me with mowing and mulching. Our neighbors from Knoxville brought us ice cold lemonade one afternoon, and fresh-baked bread one evening when we were running out of food. It was much appreciated. There may be even some work prospects for me building french drains for a neighbor - something I've done when I built the patio for my parents.

The only big downer was Mishka. He went next door and killed 2 more chickens. They said if he goes over there again they'll shoot him. So we had to tie Mishka up the whole week and he sat beneath the building. We're not going to be able to take him up there for a while, at least the rest of the year.

I'm going back to the property the first week of May to finish the addition. Patty and the girls and I are spending the entire month of June up there. We'll plant the garden, put up the siding, maybe plant some fruit trees, go canoeing and hiking, and have a great time. We've never all spent so much time up there together - only 2 weeks 2 years before, and that was sleeping in the gazebo.
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The Addition Floor

2010-03-28T17:57:00.000-04:00

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The girls and I drove up Friday morning to work on the cabin. The temperature dropped steadily the whole way. By the time we reached Sunbright it was thirties and gray. There was also a cold wind.

To warm up I began leveling the garden beds:

It's amazing how much loose rich soil there is after 2 years of gardening. The mint and strawberry have spread everywhere.

These beds are still not perfectly level. I'll order a truckload of topsoil and level them with that. One veteran organic gardener recommends tilting the beds slightly to the south - if I have enough soil I'll try it.

Our wood came from Christmas Lumber around noon. I had them drop it off on the gravel pile beside the cabin. I thought this would keep it high and dry . . . but forgot that I need to lay down plastic and gravel on the worksite first, before I begin building.

I'll have to do it later. The addition's high enough on piers that I'll still be able to shovel it in.

I put in my 12"x16" treated sill plates on the piers:

One of the piers was 1/4" lower than the others, so I put down a layer of mortar to get it even with the rest:

Once the piers were done, I built the tripled 25' 2" x 10" girder:

The boards are tripled with screws, as well as 7 carriage bolts, spaced every three feet.

This time the girder went on the outside of the piers, rather than the middle, so rain is shed away from the foundation and the sill plates are protected:

I worry a little about putting all that weight on the edge of the piers, thinking they might eventually tip . . . but the installed floor should anchor them back, they sit on massive footers connected by 1/2" rod, and in conventional foundations the sill plates always go along the outer edge - the weight is not centered. So I guess it's fine.

That night the temperature goes down to 21 degrees. We have a heavy frost:

The kids and I drive to the local hardware store in Wartburg while it's cold. I get a ton of metal connections such as angles and hangers at a great price - the guy there knows me and marks everything down. I'd pay double to triple at a place like Home Depot or Lowe's.

Saturday is hot and sunny without a cloud in the sky. Here's the inside of the cabin:

A shot out over the garden:

The girder is fastened to the sill plates on the inside with staircase angles - heavy-duty metal angles. On the outside where there's no room for angles I use a mending plate where it's flush, and toenail [with screws] where it isn't.

I build the outer band for the joists, consisting of the long 25' band joist and two 12' rim joists. Once it's in position, using the still existing original sitework, I screw the corners down and go on to the joists.

The joists need hung along the cabin's girder. Any time I'm using hangers it slows me down and is tedious work. And where before I'd thought I'd gang-cut the joists all the same length . . . the cabin's girder is not exactly straight so that's not possible. I run a string along the band joist so it's perfectly straight, then cut the joists to length so they fit between the band joist and the cabin girder.

I screw up in one part, getting too dependent on the level, and have to rehang 3 joists. To do it quick I just shim them up in the hangers and refasten them, rather than remove each hanger and reposition it.

At the end of the day I've got a number of joists in, but not all of them as I'd hoped - the hangers and trimming to length are slowing me down:

Here's a look from the front:

I'm so tired of seeing this ugly unfinished side of the building.

My neighbor George stopped by. We patched up the chicken issue, and he asked if I was building a deck. He was pleased to know I was building on to the cabin and going to have it finished and sided this year. And a wood stove and bathtub inside too, I hope.

The next day is rain:

I get a few more joists in, then quit because of rain:

Water is still seeping in beneath the french doors, even though I've caulked everywhere. It'll be nice to have them dried in when the addition's built:

The girls get a wheelbarrow-ful of aged humanure compost. I haul it up to the apple trees for them:

Rachael fertilizes the trees while Brooke takes the picture:

There were lots of baby ticks out on our one sunny day. They don't bother me much, but the girls hate them.

To me that's all part of what homesteading's about - dealing with issues like ticks. We listened to "The Long Winter" - a 'Little House on the Prairie' book - on the drive up. They're all factual accounts of pioneer living. That was some hardcore homesteading in those days . . .
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Fertilizing with Humanure

2010-03-21T19:17:00.000-04:00

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The newlyweds and I went up to Tennessee this weekend and stayed in the cabin. We had perfect weather - 60's and sunny, till the day we left.

Here's Stacy and Luis in the cabin:

My sister and I:

Luis and I dug out several wheelbarrows-ful of humanure compost from the left bin - it's black and crumbly and lightweight, aged for over a year:

I have almost half of it left, after fertilizing nearly 100 fruiting trees and shrubs across the property. We gave each plant from two to three shovelfuls. I'll lay the rest of the compost down across the garden beds once I've leveled them out.

I also planted some tulips Patty gave me in front of the pumphouse:

Here are two shots of the property:

After fertilizing the shrubs and trees, we took a hike up Frozen Head to the top. It's about 7 miles round-trip, with a climb of at least 1,500 feet.

We hiked up the fire tower at the end, and sat in the wind. It was a tough trip up the stairs for Mishka.

Here's a shot of the view:

The tree on the right is a giant apple tree, that once was full of apples.

Here's Stacy and Luis, snacking on trail mix:

And Mishka, so terrified of the height and the wind and the grate he's standing on, he's shaking and whimpering. He won't even eat a piece of beef jerky:

Tub Springs is a half-mile down from the tower, with good water:

After our hike we opened the french doors on the cabin and sat in the sunlight and drank wine. We had a big fire out in the cinderblock fireplace. The stars weren't as bright as the first night because clouds moved in. But the night was much warmer. Many frogs were calling.

This trip really cemented the drive in me to further develop the property. It is priority #1. It's been a dream of ours for many years . . . having our own place, with a huge garden, and becoming self-sufficient. The reality is much harder than the fantasy of course, and there are ups and downs - but with enough work the place has the potential to be everything we ever wanted.

I'm going up next weekend with the girls to prepare the beds for this year's garden. I'm going to level them out, till peat into the clay, order a truckload of topsoil, and use up the rest of the compost. It's 'cheating' to get the stuff delivered, but we've got to fasttrack having a productive garden, with enough food to feed us and store and maybe even sell.

Once the garden's ready, I move on to the cabin. The addition's first.
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My Sister's Wedding

2010-03-02T19:12:00.001-05:00

My sister got married last week. We had the reception at the Fox. For her honeymoon she went to Argentina. Brooke and Rachael were flower girls and are on the right.

Here's a photo of us before the wedding:

DRIFTERS is finished. It's taken years to put together. It's the multi-year story of our experience with the Gila wilderness.

Now the part I dread . . . finding a publisher.

Having an independent income is vital to our homesteading goals.

I'll be working on another book - our 6 month experience in the traveling carnival, called RUNAWAY. I've only done 5 chapters so far. While I'm building during daylight up in Tennessee, I'll spend the evenings writing [instead of reading history, like I did last year].

I'll continue on the cabin in May.

We had another snowstorm here in Atlanta today. It's been quite a winter.
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Drifters: Part II

2010-01-25T16:45:00.001-05:00

Part II of Drifters is now finished.

I think I've come to my senses when it comes to the Tennessee property, and wish I had sooner. I'm done with the barn. I'll go up in March for 10 days and build the addition for the cabin. It's much better to go ahead and finish the cabin and have a comfortable place to live up there than to keep tinkering with the barn. I can always seal the building again if I need to.

The pier foundation for the addition is already finished. I'll frame the floor, put in stud walls, 2x8 rafters, and the metal lean-to roof. Once that's done I'll put up the siding, then plumbing and electrical. The sooner we have the comforts of home up there it'll feel like home:

New Year's in Tennessee

2010-01-01T20:59:00.001-05:00

. Way too cold, and no fun at all. The forecast was I guess for Knoxville. Sunbright never got out of the twenties. And with the wind, it felt like single digits.

Our phone service had been shut off because we'd forgotten to pay the bill. My cell worked enough to send and receive texts, to let Patty know where we were.

Rachael and Brooke rode their bikes over to the neighbors to sell girl scout cookies. Mishka followed them, and killed three of their chickens. Several others are still missing.

Not a good trip.

It was so nice to sleep in after the first night, and the moonlight was brilliant! I cut the notches and doubled the boards for my posts on the east wall. This took half the day. After getting the first post of ten in, and the next brace, and standing in the wind for several minutes . . . I decided to call it quits and head inside. I felt down on everything . . . really it was just the cold. Without heat the cabin's an icebox. The little radiator is useless - the work lamps put out more heat. We decided to come home.

Weather

2009-12-30T05:53:00.000-05:00

Here's the weather forecast for the next 10 days in Tennessee. I guess we're going to freeze to death. But we will see snow! Though probably not enough for sledding.

I've ordered the lumber and it will be delivered Monday morning. The total came out at $938. The cost of lumber has gone up almost 12%. The Tennessee sales tax of 10% kills you also.

I'd like to get the frame for the roof finished in the next 10 days, so that all I've got to do on a future trip is put up sheathing and metal. But it's rather a farfetched goal, considering how slow I work alone, and the span's 36 feet.

Next year by this time I'll have a stove in the cabin.

'Drifters': Part I

2009-12-20T18:10:00.001-05:00

Part I of Drifters is now complete. Drifters is the multi-year story of our experience with the Gila Wilderness.

The girls and I are heading up to Tennessee to continue building the roof New Year's Eve. It looks like we may have a full 10 days - I should get a lot done. The girls hope it snows.

The Barn Roof Begins

2009-11-30T16:37:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we drove up to Tennessee to get going on the roof for the barn. We left Friday morning and the wood was delivered that afternoon.

I've decided to abandon my gambrel roof idea for the barn - though it is the classic barn look. Here's the original drawing:

The faint upper roof line is the standard dimension for a conventional semicircular gambrel roof [except 2 pitches, not 3] - mine was to be modified and a little lower, I wouldn't be storing hay. Something always bothered me about this gambrel roof look, and it's not an easy roof to construct, with the different pitches over such a span [36']. Attaching the sheathing and metal to the steep lower pitch especially would be a hassle.

But it wasn't until Rafael and I went up a few weeks back, and he mentioned the great 360 degree view from the upper story of the barn. Then I got to thinking . . . I could actually do something else to take advantage of that, like simply build an upper story with a gable roof. This is what I came up with:

The pitch is 1/4, just like the cabin, 2x6's 24 o.c. on a 9.5' span. There are four post and beam walls to support the roof, those on the outside composed of doubled 2x6 studs 4' o.c. The inner post and beam frame will support the rafters midway, and be composed of tripled 2x6 posts 12' apart, with tripled 2x8 beams across the top of them. The upper rafters, instead of meeting at a ridgeboard, will be joined in a truss, composed of a pair of rafters, an 18' 2x6 collar tie, with a king stud to connect them midway. This truss will be made on the floor then raised into place. I'll put in knee braces beneath the upper story to take the weight of the interior posts.

Here's a materials list and cost estimate of what I need beyond what I've already had delivered, which was just the wood for the outside walls:

This building's 36' x 36', and at two stories 2,600 square feet. Every step of the way is Herculean next to the cabin. The design I've adopted is simple, straightforward, and something I can build alone. I think it's strong also, and will look good. Continuing the modified post and beam on the upper story will allow us to purchase doors and windows later and fit them in easy - things that at the moment we do not have the money for at all.

As far as the exterior look, I've sort of left 'barn' territory, and it's more of a conventional 'house' - i.e a giant box. But we're still doing the front upper story deck, the large barn doors, and with shed-roof additions / covered patio options for the perimeter, that will make it far more interesting ultimately, as well as functional.

The weather in Tennessee was perfect, sunny, cold the first night, then wonderful, like an Indian Summer. Friday afternoon I put down my sole plates and laid out where the posts will go as well as took measurements for them. It gets dark early, and cold, so I spent the evening shaping my doubled 2x6 studs in the cabin with a 1400 watt work lamp right behind me - they give out not only light but tremendous heat, and it kept me nice and warm. I first cut the boards with my new chop saw I got for my birthday, then cut out shoulders with a circular and jig saw to take the 2x8 beams. I stayed up till nearly 11, but got a lot done . . . and the only drawback was all the sawdust inside.

Saturday morning Rachael and I started putting in the studs. Here's the first:

Here's the view of the cabin as we worked:

A bird had been living in there, it had gotten in via the open soffits. There was some bird poop also - I wonder if she'll try to nest in there? I'll have to close in the soffits soon. It won't be fun putting up plywood upside down 15' in the air, I know that. And there's all the vents of course.

It took us all day to put one full wall of doubled studs up, 10 posts in all 4' o.c., and brace them plumb. Here we're just getting started:

Here they're in, all the way to the back, on the west side:

Here's a shot from a different angle:

It's funny to contrast the upper and lower stories. The lower story's servicable, but it was the first carpentry I ever did - I'd never even cut a board with a circular saw before! I've learned a lot over the last 2 years. If only I could learn how to work faster! I know a pneumatic would help - I'm thinking about getting a trim gun and compressor for when I get to the sheathing - hammering in all those ringshank nails every 6" takes forever. And it's hell on your arm.

Here's the nice view we'll now have out the west wall, with picture windows, instead of looking at the inside of a gambrel roof:

Though you can only see the gazebo now in the distance, under the white oaks, that south-facing slope will one day have a passive solar home built out of dirt [adobe/earthbags]. It'll be a lovely view.

I ran out of daylight, and decided to take the night off and visit some neighbors. We had a great time chatting and eating Thanksgiving leftovers.

Sunday I started putting in the 2x8 boards on the shoulders which will make the beams for the rafters. Here's some in:

For the first time I've ordered the wrong boards. I knew I needed 40' of length for each run of 2x8 beam, and that the joints on either side of the stud shoulders needed staggered - what I forgot was, that the boards needed to be in 4' increments, and as long as possible! I'd ordered only 8 and 10 footers. I can use some of them, but will need 12 and 14 footers to complete the job. A 2x6 top plate will cap the beams once all the 2x8's are in.

I loved how I could use the clamps to pull the crown down out of a board to get it perfectly level. Getting the beams dead level on top will make gang-cutting the rafters and getting a good fit a cinch. Here are some clamps at work:

The end of this 2x8 only needed to come down a hair to touch the shoulder, but there was no brace to attach one end of the pipe clamp to. So I used another clamp tight to the board for the clamp to work off of. It worked great.

Since I'm going to be continuing with the framing soon, I only sealed the flats with Thompson's water sealant - which were the sole plates, the stud shoulders, and the tops of the studs and beams - everything else will shed water. I also put in the sole plates on the east side of the barn, sealed them, and cut to length all the doubled studs for it with the chop saw. The next step here is making the shoulders - it's nearly half a day to cut them and screw the boards together. I ran a line from one set of sole plates to the other 36' away on the other side of the building, put on a line level, and was happy to see they were dead level with each other. I guess using a laser level for the lower story did the trick.

I've used 3" drywall screws for everything. I picked up a 25lb bucket of them for $56 at Home Depot on the way. It sounds like a lot . . . but that's only $2.28/lb, and screws are so much lighter than nails, I hardly made a dent in what I'd bought, the hold is incredible, if something's wrong the screws back right out, and they can be reused. I'm a big fan of screws. The downfall is how slow they are to use. If I ever get a framing gun, it would probably be diffcult to go back to the tedium of installing screws.

Here's where the barn is so far:

I took a shot of the garden, the dead grass and mint, with the old sunflower stalks:

When we first showed up at the property, nearly 50 doves blasted out of the garden - I think they were eating sunflower seeds. Someday, someday, someday, we will have an oasis.

Drifters

2009-11-22T11:12:00.000-05:00

I've pulled 'Drifters' and am rereleasing it in a super-condensed edited version, so that I can fit in all three parts. For what it's about, scroll down the sidebar for the blurb. In a sense it's a sequel to 'June'.

Part I covers the time we were dropped off in the Gila by a shuttle, and hiked in to live off a spring miles from the nearest trail when Rachael was only 4 weeks old, and started a hogan. We stayed three months.

Part II covers our return in a jeep when Rachael's 2, delivering Brooke on our own, hitting every trailhead, hiking in, living off hot springs, blowing the motor fording the river, and run-in's with fellow drifters. Our money lasted about 6 months.

Part III is where we get it down, stick to the river valleys and gather wild food, get together with some truly hardcore inspiring people, pick desert willow seed to support ourselves, sell mushrooms, make baskets, and almost settle down.

Chapter 1 is finished and is called Birth.

Chapter 2 is Cherry Creek.

Chapter 3 is The Spring.

Chapter 4 is Snow.

When I go over this material, and compare it to our present homesteading, I have to admit it was a great life and feel tremendous nostalgia. If it weren't for having older kids, and trying to achieve some kind of compromise, and put other people first, I'd pack my truck and be gone by morning. Where to? Wherever.

Homesteading is rewarding in many ways but also very hard work. And quite expensive. You've got the cost of the land, the cost of development, the cost of taxes and utilities that never goes away . . . and the Herculean labor involved in trying to make it modern and comfortable. I'm not down on it, just being realistic. City life is living in a bubble. Everything goes on in the bubble, you die in the bubble. Homesteading is definitely out of the bubble, but somehow still connected to the bubble, with obligations, and neighbors, and work. The same sort of treadmill, but outdoors rather than in.

Permaculture: Another Round of Fruiting Shrubs

2009-11-16T16:14:00.000-05:00

We picked up the fruiting shrubs north of Cookeville late Friday afternoon. The lady at the nursery's got a puppy she found that needs a home, so we let the dogs play for a while. Mishka actually jumped out the window of the car when he saw the puppy let out of his cage. But he was well-behaved and they got along well.

Friday night was cold in the cabin, even though I ran the space heater on max all night. But we did have good sleeping bags and futon mattresses.

I warmed up in the morning out digging the holes for the shrubs. I decided to plant most of them in front of the large clay berm back from the barn. The soil of the berm is almost pure clay from digging out behind the barn, so it's not really suitable to plant. I instead went with in front of it, where the fruiting shrubs will be south-facing, yet on a cool moist slope that goes down to the creek and is always wet. The berm will reflect heat and shield them from north winds. It's also an 'edge' environment, on the border of woods, which is highly productive in Nature. Here I planted the 2 azarole [hawthorn], the 5 juneberry, the 2 gooseberries and 2 currants, as well as the medlar.

You can see in the photo above the holes I dug with the pick. I poured a full 5 gallon bucket of water in each hole and let it drain before I put the shrubs in. This took about 5 minutes. I turned the sod upside-down and used it on the downslope side to help hold rainwater in. I covered the roots with a mix of the local soil and half a 40lb bag of topsoil for each plant, then tamped around it with my shoe to take out air pockets. Each plant then got wantered with a couple of gallons as the next few days are forecast to be dry.

I'll wait a year before I fertilize them with our humanure compost, as the topsoil looks pretty rich.

Here the shrubs are in:

I planted the 2 goumi [autumn olive] in front of the cabin near the other autumn olives, and the cornelian cherries over by the blueberries and the transplanted mulberry, at the other end of the same slope as the other shrubs.

I then mowed the lawn, and used a bag of grass clippings to mulch each shrub. I had planned on getting some newspaper to lay down first to actually sheet mulch around the plant, but I forgot it at the store. The woman at the nursery recommended sheet mulching an area you intend to cultivate before you plant, rather than planting in raw ground and then trying to amend it after. In the future that is the course I'll follow, instead of just throwing things in the ground and hoping for the best [fast-food approach]. Even if I just dumped grass clippings wherever I eventually intended on planting a tree or shrub that would help. The area would get nutrient-dense, retain moisture, and earthworms and healthy bacteria would move in as the grass decayed. Though I'd forgotten the paper for mulching around the shrubs, the grass has such a matting effect that even without it it tends to keep down weeds and hold moisture in.

I got finished with this late Saturday afternoon and moved on to finishing the floor of the barn:

I should have ripped these thin sheets of flooring down at my father's and created a tongue on each with his table saw, so I wouldn't be stuck doing it up here with a circular saw. But I didn't. Cutting out tongues on the long 8' edge of each sheet of flooring took forever - I even had 2 pieces in a row I screwed up on and cut the tongues right off of. Very frustrating. And then once they were fashioned and ready to go, it's not like I could just pop them in. No, they had to be shimmed all over the place to fit over the modified beams, and stay flush and level with the rest of the floor. And of course my rough homemade tongues didn't want to go in the grooves and had to be beaten repeatedly with the hammer - finally I had to resort to using a clamp and block to pull them in. It all took way more time than it should have, but at least I got through it and can now move on to the roof.

Here the west edge is in and sealed with Thompson's:

Here's the stairway:

I actually ran out of flooring for one part and used 2 sandwiched sheets of 7/16ths sheathing instead. It's fine because a sole plate and studs will go over this - no one's walking across it.

I took some photos of the view off the top but it's hard to see anything over the low-hanging sun - we had beautiful sunny weather and 70's every day. There were ladybugs everywhere . . . and quite a few flies and wasps up in the loft in the cabin, trying to get out the windows.

The view:

The berm with the shrubs mulched:

It was hard to get much of anything done in only 2 days. There's not only the 4 hour drive each way, but the packing and unpacking as well eat up a lot of time. In the future I'll take a whole week off. It's going to be a while though before we have the money saved for the next step - the barn roof. Just the lumber for the framing alone will be $1,200.

We've got to get some kind of bathing situation up there ASAP. Even if it's just a tub out in the grass, or an outdoor shower. Learning to bathe on a daily basis during our camping lifestyle, and gravitating to hot springs, gave us enormous stability. The same thing would happen with our homesteading lifestyle. So after the roof is over the barn and that building's protected, I think the plumbing for the cabin is next. The hurdle is water filtration. If filtering our well water is really going to be 2 grand . . . that's a major expense. I'm going to get it professionally tested first, and get a second and third opinion.

Here are some photos Brooke took before we left. One of Rachael clowning around, probably mocking me:

And one of me feeding the extension cord through the soffit so we don't have to run it through an open window:

To sum up . . . incredibly peaceful, relaxing, a night full of stars, many birds calling, it feels like home the second I get there . . . but still primitive, cold in winter, and no bathing after hard physical labor day after day has to change. We've got to make it more comfortable! How hard can that be?

[And the drive home was only 3 1/2 hours, so I can stop bitching about the 4 hour drive]

November

2009-11-10T18:30:00.000-05:00

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We're heading up to the property this weekend to plant another round of fruiting trees and shrubs. This time I'll have my daughters with me, and the dog. I've ordered 5 juneberries, a medlar, a blueberry to replace the one that died, 2 gooseberries, 2 goumis [an autumn olive], 2 currants, 2 azarole [hawthorn], and 2 cornelian cherries from Hidden Springs Nursery, which I'll pick up on the way.

I've also got a few small perimeter pieces to install for the upper floor of the barn, before I can begin the roof. And if possible we're going to swing by a friend's on the way back down to help him identify the wild edible plants on his farm. I can't wait to get back up there, though I do hate the 4 hour drive [I hate driving period].
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Pigeon Mountain

2009-10-15T19:31:00.000-04:00

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Friday is my birthday [35!]. People I work with wonder where I'm going to get drunk, whereas the reality is I'm going up to Pigeon Mountain to camp in the cold with a friend I met through my edible plant classes. We'll be gone for two days, and I don't plan on taking any food with me. The autumn olives will be in. And of course the walnuts and persimmons.

Pigeon Mountain in northwest Georgia is a wild protected mountain that we once camped on for months. It was the last place in the East we seriously tried to permanently live outside and disappear in. So going back should be an emotional experience.

I won't get a chance to get back to Tennessee to start building the roof till November.

The Barn Floor

2009-10-10T08:28:00.001-04:00

It's a four hour drive up to Tennessee, and I leave Saturday morning. I have a week to put the floor in.

The last hour up highway 27 is beautiful, the sycamore leaves have begun to turn and litter the road. It's cool and windy out.

When I first get up there I'm blown away by the cabin and how spacious it is. I've brought with me a couple of futon mattresses and an old couch my parents gave me - I first move these in and create a little cosy apartment on the bottom floor:

I open all the doors to let the wind blow through:

The cabin's in perfect shape, nobody's messed with it, and the weather hasn't affected it either.

I go for a walk and take some photos.

Here's looking past the garden towards the gazebo:

Mishka in the shade of the truck:

Our sunflowers, which are now full of sunflower seeds. We'll definitely have to plant an entire bed of these every year:

A cherry tomato plant sprouted up in our old humanure pile - it's huge and sprawls everywhere - you can see all the old tomatoes it had beared:

The soil in here is black, crumbly and rich. In the spring I'm going to use it to fertilize all our young fruiting trees and shrubs we've planted. The garden itself is going to get a makeover - we'll order sphagnum moss and till it in to the clayey soil to lighten it up, and top it off with a truckload of topsoil.

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Here are a couple of peppers out in the garden, in the middle of mint:

All of the other bell peppers look like they were eaten . . . maybe the strong smell of mint kept animals away from these.

The various mints in the garden are not only thriving, they're simultaneously flowering and with seed at the same time! Here's a patch of basil:

Here is the pumphouse, still in fine condition, everything inside untouched and dry. I've got the old boards stacked up on pallets beside it:

Well I'm here to tackle the barn. Here it is at this point:

This is the side I'd cut out last year. I used the dirt to build the driveway:

And here is the back I cut out just 2 months ago before we left, and didn't get any photos:

This was a brutal week's work. I used the dirt to build a berm along the border of woods - all in all it's about 100 yards long:

The joists for the floor are still in good condition. They've grayed . . . but there's no decay. The very top of the joists which get the most abuse, from the daily settling of dew to direct sun exposure, show some weathering - but otherwise sealing the boards last September did the job and preserved the wood.

Here's a shot of the joists:

I'd handpicked these boards when I bought them to make sure they were sound, virtually knot-free, with as little warp and crown as possible. It took a couple of hours of picking through a whole pallet of 2x10's at the lumberyard, but it was worth it.

Here are a couple of more interior shots of the cabin - there's so much space I don't even use the loft:
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Saturday I unpack, take photos, and cut the tops off the posts on the barn that stick up beyond the joists. For this I use a reciprocating saw with a demolition blade [cuts both wood and metal] because I encounter a lot of nails. I finish the cut with my hand-held electric planer to get the post down and flush with the joists. I also mow the grass till I run out of gas.

On Sunday I start putting in bits of plywood to bring the modified beams up and flush with the joists. Last year I'd first built the modified post and beam frame. I then hung the joists a little high so they wouldn't be sagging below the beams [I coudn't simply hang the joists flush with the beams all around, as much as I would have liked to, because even with the laser level the beams ended up almost 3/8" off level from one another].

I lay down long planks of both 1/4" and 7/16" plywood across the top of the beams to get them level with the joists. This had been my plan all along, but putting it in practice is more difficult than I'd imagined - the beams are composed of crowned boards and the gap from level changes constantly. I just make the best of it. As long as the beams stay below joist level, I can always shim underneath the flooring where any little gap remains.

I do this for a while until I realize I really need the flooring to see how it's going to lay before I can continue. It starts raining, so I take a trip to Lowe's to get a come-along to winch the sheets up, a couple packs of shims, carpenter pencils, and some platinum bits to try as drivers for driving screws.

Monday morning the 3/4" flooring arrives - tongue and groove Adventech. It's unbelievably heavy. I first build a ramp out of 16' 2x6's to winch them up.

Here's a shot of the ramp and the first few sheets in:

A closeup of the ramp, with the winch at the top:

From the side - these are 1x4's braced against the lip of the concrete stem wall, to keep the ramp from sagging under the weight:

The pieces of OSB keep the ramp boards from moving, and give some lateral support. The whole contraption is ugly . . . but it works.

Hoisting one sheet up at a time is a long process. I try 2 one time and it's nearly a disaster - one sheet falls to the ground while the other pins me to the joists till I can get it securely up on top of the barn.

I'm moving the flooring over to the ramp with a handheld panel carrier (cheap plastic tool). I then create a harness with a nylon strap and bungee cords, which I attach the hook on the winch to. The other end of the winch is attached to a chain which I've wound around and locked to the barn framing.

Setting up the harness is tedious, the winching is easy and slow - the difficult part is pulling the heavy sheet up over onto the floor of the barn by hand once I've winched it up. The whole process takes 15 minutes per sheet.

I use subfloor adhesive and 2" drywall screws to secure each sheet to the joists. This is easy . . . the problem is all the shimming I have to do wherever the modified beams are. The shimming takes forever. The joists are also not quite as perfect as the joists I put in the cabin - the 12' span has a bigger tendency to crown and so it's harder to get everything perfectly flat. But it turns out fine . . . it just goes very slowly. The platinum bits turn out to be a great buy - just one bit never wears at all, even when it spins out in a screw, and I use one for the entire floor. And they're only a buck and a half a piece. I never even got to try my titanium bits that I picked up at Walmart!

Here are a few sheets in from below:

From above:

I use a roughcut 2x4 to ram the tongues of the flooring into the grooves in the other. I'll also use a block and hammer to get them in. Some sheets are easier then others. What really gets old is all the clambering around the joists 12 feet up like a jungle gym. I'm always in some awkward dangerous position.

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Here's the view from the top of the barn:

As the week progresses we have a lot of gray weather and rain. I spend one afternoon hoisting sheets up in the rain so I don't lose time - I'm always worried that at my current pace I won't get it finished by the end of the week. The leaves begin to turn also, and everything looks more fall-like.

Here's a shot overlooking the garden, towards the gazebo:

The sunflowers and pumphouse - you can see the trees changing at the edge of the woods:

There are 6 foot high asters everywhere. They've almost taken over in places. Our front yard is nothing but asters. Here if you look closely you can see how tall two of our autumn olives have gotten - nearly 8 feet:

It's sunny on Wednesday and I get a whopping 15 sheets in (having hoisted up 7 in the rain the day before gave me a big headstart). On Thursday it's mostly sunny again and I finish the floor. It looks great . . . and is going to give us a ton of additional living space once I put up the roof:

Here are a couple of shots of the great view from up here:

I do run out of flooring though, and could have used 2 more sheets. I have to remember to order if not 5% extra, at least a few additional boards in the future. You can see where I came up short:

This is the west side. Below is where the stairway will go:

I have 2 hours before dusk and I quickly seal the flooring while it's nice and dry. I use a 5 gallon drum of Thompson's water sealant, pour it into a painter's tray periodically and roll it out. It only takes 45 minutes to roll it out, and I have just enough to finish. Rain is forecast for the weekend so I rush to get the sealant in now while the flooring's dry so it will soak it up.

That night we have a light wind and no dew so this helps it all dry out and become sealed.

Here's the finished floor from below:

Here I've begun to brace the barn with the few 16 footers I get from dismantling the ramp:

The barn is now starting to look like something:

The next step is the gambrel roof.

On Friday I go around and weed the young trees, and go visit my neighbors. I leave about 3:00 for Atlanta. I've got to get back to Tennessee soon to start building the roof, and plant another round of fruiting trees and shrubs. I think this time I'll try medlar and kiwi. It will be some time in November.

The week up there, besides the brutal work schedule, has been fantastic. We have moonlight every night so bright I could keep working if I weren't so exhausted. Even the waning half-moon is incredibly bright. The frogs are gone (though I do encounter 1 big toad), but there are still crickets, and one night I hear coyotes. There's a bat in the cabin the first night, which is cool. The ticks are gone, as well as most other nuissance insects (though I do get 2 giant hornets in the cabin one night which I have to kill). Mishka runs off 2 stray dogs one evening [he spends most of his time on the couch] .

The property is really taking shape, I'm starting to see how we could live up here (the girls want 4 wheelers - I'm trying to talk them into horses), the only issue which really remains once the major building's done and the little comforts are installed is income . . . once we figure that out we're set.

Tennessee in October

2009-10-02T21:09:00.000-04:00

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I'll be MIA the next 10 days as I'm going up to Tennessee to put the upper story floor in the barn. I've got 39 sheets of flooring to put in, alone, though I'm bringing the dog with me. Once the floor is in I can begin framing the roof.

So long.
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Tennessee in July - Our Last Month

2009-09-27T07:34:00.000-04:00

While Patty's up we visit the Big South Fork National Recreation Area, something we'd been meaning to do ever since we bought the property. The above shot is at the trailhead.

Here's the view at the end of the rim trail overlooking the Big South Fork:

There are ripe blueberries everywhere off the trail, and the area is rather fascinating upland forest.

We hike along the Big South Fork to go see some falls. Along the way we find a cliff with a huge coal seam:

Here are the falls, pretty modest actually, a little chute of rapids:

We're not overall that impressed with the bottomlands along the river and the trail's sort of boring. But the Big South Fork is a huge area - we'll try different trails.

Here's us at the 'falls':

Patty finishes up another pair of moccasins, the colors and design ordered by the customer:

We've made moccasins for over 10 years, and continue to ship moccasins all over the world. It's become slightly more lucrative than it was in the past, as we've raised prices, but each pair of fully beaded still takes a month to make. It's hard to put a reasonable price on that.

In the future we'll focus on plain mocs and DIY kits, though we'll still always offer historical replicas of Native American beading designs - it's just hard to make any money on so much work. However, it's one way we could support ourselves up on the property, so we keep plugging away at it. For a look at our moccasin business, go to Sunbright Originals. There are also several photos of our moccasins on the left if you scroll down.

Here are some interior shots of the cabin.

Facing the kitchen and large crank window:
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The area beneath our bedroom loft, where the kids are sleeping for the moment. This area will ultimately be the bathroom:

Here I've put in a temporary kitchen counter where the kitchen will go. It's made from scrap boards and 2 sheets of OSB:

Here is Annie, the stray dog who showed up in May and who has no plans of moving on:

A lot of people drop stray dogs off back here, thinking they'll 'live off the land' and be 'free'. Dogs are not cats. These dogs can't take care of themselves. They'll either go begging from door to door to be taken in, or bond with a feral pack and raid your garbage. Or starve to death.

Annie showed up all wet and shivering one night and we pitied her and gave her food and water. Then I figured she'd move on. No. She growled constantly at Mishka (who's a big pushover), and tried to keep him from eating or going near the gazebo. We tried not feeding Annie for a day or two, to see if she'd move on - no, she wasn't going anywhere. So we started basically taking care of her.

Her all-night barking was torture right off the bat. We contemplated dropping her off at the park in Wartburg, but didn't have the heart to do it. We just did not need another dog to take care of at this point, especially as we're about to go back to Atlanta and live in a dingy little apartment. There's no pound in Morgan County, and even if we went that route they'd euthanize her within a week. Especially with her game leg. This of course was out of the question.

She's actually not a bad dog, good with training and a real tagalong [outside of the all-night barking at nothing]. Our plan for the moment is to leave her here when we go back to Atlanta, and assume with her pushy personality she'll get another neighbor to take her in. We talk to one neighbor who's known for taking in strays but they've got too many dogs at the moment. If she stays I guess she'll be 'free', and up here every time we come back (which will be frequently), and the girls can see her. I know our next-door neighbor would take her in as he's fed many strays before.
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Here's a shot of the cabin dried in for now [I do get that last window in right before we leave]:

We visit Atlanta for the 4th of July and stay with my parents in Roswell. We actually look at a few homes, as Patty's convinced it's a smart thing to buy a fixer-upper in Atlanta, have a place to stay we own when we're there making money, and ultimately turn it over and with the profit pay off our land in Tennesee, and truly semi-retire. Of course I feel a great deal of ambivalence about this and hate Atlanta - any big city for that matter. It's not where I wish to live or raise a family, even though we've both got guaranteed income there and family.

For the rest of July in Tennessee we're basically broke. I thought the cabin shell would take 3 months, and it actually is completed the last day in June - right at 3 months. Pier foundation work is more labor than cost, so I decide to start working on the foundation for the sunroom addition.

I have to take an axe and cut a few old stumps back once I've done the site work and pinpointed where the piers will go. Then there's the digging, the concrete mixing, laying block, etc. It all goes fine as I've done it before. Here are a few shots from different angles:
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I've only got enough surface bonded cement to do 1 pier, considering how high they are. The stuff costs a fortune, is a pain to put on, and is probably totally unnecesary. I may skip it for the others:
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Once this is done, we are truly totally out of money, so I begin digging out behind the barn. Remember last year when I dug out the 10' aisle beside the barn to give me fill to build up the driveway? Well now the back needs done too, so the land is sloping down and away from the building at all points. This 10' swathe is nearly 50' long, and tons of dirt need removed because the hillside is higher here. It is an incredible workout with a pick and shovel, and sometimes I'm working all day in the rain. I dump the dirt at the edge of our clearing, and create a 100 yard planting berm between the woods and the clearing.

I finish this job just before we leave, but Patty's taken the camera for her moccasins so I don't get any photos.

We also move the gazebo back up to its pad under the oaks, and totally clear out the barn to get it ready for construction. The next step is putting the upper floor in over the joists. I'll deck it then seal it, and when I have the chance begin the gambrel roof framing.

As we move the gazebo, it's hard to imagine having lived in this for months, as we now stay in the spacious bug-free rain-free cabin. The first year we were in tents, then the gazebo with the kids in the back of the truck, and now the cabin. That's really starting from scratch.

Our garden is full of melons this year. We hear coyotes yip and wail every night - sometimes they're so close I swear they're on the property. The power line in front of the cabin which I thought would be such an eyesore, is actually a great perching place for birds, and we can watch them from the windows - goldfinches, mourning doves, etc.

The week before we leave I make the rounds and go visit all our neighbors. It's interesting. There's actually one young couple from Texas raising chickens and goats.

When we pack up to leave Annie's bedded down beneath the building, and I don't have the heart to leave her. I feel like she'll stay and die under there. So I go talk to my neighbor's wife, and she thinks I shouldn't leave her, especially with her bad leg, so I guess Annie's coming with us. She's infested with ticks which we haven't been able to eradicate, with tons in her ears, and who knows what we'll do with her in Atlanta.

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On the way down we camp the night on Pigeon Mountain. We go visit our old thatched hut and hike the trails. The autumn olives are in in huge quantities, and we gather a pot-full. The rain begins just after we set the tent up.