Moving The Homestead

We are officially in our new home.  Technically we've been here since Thanksgiving, but with the holidays and everything that comes with that time of year, it didn't feel like we moved in until now.  Looking out at our pastures and the unfenced in parts of our property, we definitely have some work to do.  We want to change the fencing around so that the paddocks are bigger and fence in more of the property.  There is about 2 acres of grass/hayfield that we want to fence in and just let the cows eat it.

But back to moving.  Everything was pretty easy, then it came time to move the chickens.  Thinking about how are we going to get our chickens from the old homestead to the new one, an hour away, I spotted an old metal dog carrier that we had sitting in the wood shed. 

I waited until dark so that the chickens were calm and in their coop.  They looked a little cramped in there, but in hindsight it was probably perfect since there was really no room for them to move around and get injured during the drive.

We decided not to bring the old chicken coop, since I wanted to build a new/bigger one anyway.  Our barn had a section that was fenced off with gates, so we put up some chicken wire and put the chickens in there until a new coop was built.  I let them out to tour the pasture and eat bugs, but they seem pretty happy in the barn, with plenty of light.

Chickens in Barn

Our new chicken coop is going to be approximately 8x8, like a shed, with 1/2 of it for the chickens and the other half for storage.  I'll start construction this week, so look for a new series of posts detailing the construction of the new coop.

Inheriting Ducks

We just got asked last night if we would like to keep the 4 ducks that are currently living on the pond at our new property.  After thinking about it for a while, we decided that we would.  Some quick research showed that they are good at eating bugs like mosquito larvae.  The previous owner said they don't require any housing either, which I find amazing considering the pond will freeze in the winter and it gets awfully cold in western PA.  So we'll see how it works out.  I have to find out what kind of ducks they are.  I'm guessing Pekin at this point, but don't know for sure.

There is something pleasant about seeing a farm with ducks on the pond.  I had thought about buying ducks for the last couple of years at our old house, but didn't know how they would do in the creek.  Hopefully we can get some nice duck eggs to supplement our current eggs.

Speaking of eggs, we can no longer keep up with demand.  If I delivered 1 dozen eggs to everyone that wanted them, just at my office, we'd have to buy another 6-12 birds.  We're talking about going from our current 7 birds to 12-18 birds in the spring.  I'm leaning toward 18 since the 7 we have now would be 2 1/2 years old next summer when the new ones start producing, and from our experience with Rhode Island Reds, they will be about at the end of their quality egg production cycle.  It is great hearing the feedback from people on our eggs.

"They are so much bigger than store eggs."
"Your eggs taste so good."
"The yolks are so much brighter."

Maybe we'll see a similar demand for duck eggs.

Hunting, Fishing, Homesteading

As a homesteader, and yes, I'm slowly embracing the term (even though I don't agree with being labeled a homesteader), there is one thing that I take for granted, and that is food.  Our freezer always has venison, rabbit, squirrel, wild boar, elk, bear, pheasant, grouse, or goose in it.  It also has a variety of fish usually with walleye, perch, trout, and salmon.  Our pantry and other freezer always has vegetables from our garden.

I grew up with wild game and wild fish being a part of dinner on a regular basis.  Wild game wasn't a part of every meal when I was a child, but it wasn't unusual to have venison 2 nights a week and wild fish 1-2 nights a week.  It was just normal and when I turned 12, I got a gun and went hunting with my dad.  With my own family now, if we eat meat for a meal, it was something that I shot, caught, or grew.  We just don't buy meat from the store.  We aren't raising livestock yet, which is why wild game is a such a big part of our meals, but even after we get our cows and goats, I don't see hunting going away.

When most people think of homesteading or self sufficiency, they envision gardens, chickens laying eggs, goat milk, maybe a dairy cow.  Some may envision raising meat animals, chicken, pigs, meat goats, lambs, or a beef cow.  But I don't think that most people, when thinking about homesteading, dreaming about making a change of lifestyle think about hunting and fishing.  One good day of fishing or small game hunting, can lead to a week worth of meals.  One good day of big game hunting can lead to months or even a years worth of meals for your family.

I would like to make a stand though between hunting for food and hunting for a wall trophy.  I do have a deer head on my living room wall.  I hunted whitetail deer for 20 years and a couple of years ago had the opportunity to take a big, mature buck with a nice rack.  That one deer fed us for 6 months.  His head is on my wall so that I can remember the hunt, the smells, what it's like to be in the woods in the fall.  I can look at that deer and remember all of the deer I've taken, I can remember meals around the table with my family and friends.

When I enter the woods with a gun, my objective is to put meat in my freezer.  It is not to take the biggest animal that would make the best mount.  When my freezer is full, I stop hunting.  We have a deep connection with our food.  When we hunt and take an animal, we give thanks for the meat.

I guess my point is that you may be against hunting and/or fishing, but you should know that most hunters and fishermen are not just after trophies for on their walls; most hunters and fishermen are just trying to fill their freezers with healthy, organic, hormone free, antibiotic free, free-range meat. The same meat that most homesteaders are trying to raise.

New Homestead on the Horizon

It's been a heck of a year.  We threw out most of our garlic last year due to the wet conditions we had. Almost all of it was either rotten or just so wet that when it dried, there was nothing left of it.  That was pretty rough.  So we went into the fall thinking we would plant corn in 2016.  Then, I got a new job in December.  It required me to drive to the city at least 2-3 days a week, and sometimes more.  We immediately decided that it was time to upgrade our homestead and move closer to the city, closer to my wife's family, and closer to our old friends.

We almost bought a 30 acre farm that was already set up for beef cattle, with plenty of woods to heat the house and hunt on, but that didn't work out.  Next up was a house on 17 acres, but it failed the inspections pretty poorly.  Finally, after almost a year of searching, we found a house that we both really like, with a barn, fencing, a pond, and 8.5 acres of land.  There is currently long horn cattle on the property.  We are now looking forward to moving to our new farm in 4 weeks.

And with that new farm comes a lot of new things to learn.  We need to get the pond stocked with fish and make sure that we have a good habitat for them to breed, with a goal of harvesting a good portion of the fish that we eat from the pond.  We want to get cattle and possibly some goats, and learn how to get a small grass fed beef/goat operation going.  We've had so much demand for our eggs just from my colleagues that we need to expand our flock.  And where we are moving to, we could probably sell 2-3 dozen eggs per day.  We need to get a wood heating source for the new house, get it installed, and get a stock of wood as we are moving in right before winter.

There is a lot of stuff to do and a lot new learnings to share.  We're hoping to at least do weekly updates as we learn how to take care of cattle, goats, and aquaculture.

Know Your Mulch

It has been an unusually busy spring, with multiple last minute trips to Seattle, above average rain fall, and above average weeds.

We mulched our garlic with oat straw to keep the weeds down, and it worked really well.  We hardly have any weeds growing in our garlic field.  We do however have tons of oats growing in our garlic field.  In some places the oats are so thick you can hardly see the garlic.  It's sickening to look at.  Lesson learned, buy cleaner straw mulch.  Actually, I'm thinking we may go with leaf mulch next time or if we continue growing garlic and get a new bedder, getting a plastic mulch attachment.  I know I've been against laying down plastic to keep weeds out, but this season might just put me over the edge.

We got our new garden beds built and planted.  It took 51 landscaping ties per bed.  The long sides are easy, three 8 footers with every other row starting with 4 footers to offset the seams.  The short sides however took pieces that were 52 inches long in order to get the 4 feet of space in the middle.  The corners overlap and I drilled through with a 2 foot long 1/2 inch arbor bit, then drove a 2 foot piece of rebar through the corner to hold them together.

There are 3 cross pieces you can see in the picture below to hold the sides from bowing out.  I also drilled through this part and drove a piece of rebar to hold them together.  With 192 cubic feet of soil inside these beds, the cross members are necessary to keep them from falling over with the pressure.

The spacing between the boxes is 5 feet, enough to fit our lawn mower.  The beds are 2 feet high and weeding is SO much easier now.  I think we actually weed more because we don't have to kneel and bend over to do it.

We wound up with extra space this year because of the lack of hot peppers that sprouted, not planting onions, and not planting corn.  So we decided to put in 2x the number of carrots, 32 sq ft or 512 plants.  And we decided to try something new, growing watermelon.  I'm excited to eat our own watermelon, and judging by how well our past crops have all done, we will likely have enough to make some watermelon wine.

We didn't plant the 1/2 acre of corn like we talked about and we didn't put in a pumpkin patch.  We really just ran out of time.  Between me traveling, remodeling our house, and raining 4 out of 5 days, we barely got our garden in.  But therein lies the beauty of doing things yourself, no corn but we have a new bathroom; no pumpkin patch, but we have new raised beds.  And those ideas of corn, corn mazes, pumpkins, fall pig roasts, etc. can all be put up for the next season.

Evening looking across our field

Spring Beginnings

It's been a busy week on our homestead.  With the warmer temperatures and lots of rain, our garlic really popped up. 

Garlic growing

We were really excited to see the garlic coming up through the straw mulch we put down.  And now we just can't wait to see how well it does at keeping the weeds down.  Because we plant in raised beds, we put the straw down really thick in between the beds and about 1 inch thick on top of the beds.  Next year, we want to mulch in the fall instead of the spring.

Today we got our new egg laying chickens, 8 red sex links.  We can't wait to have fresh, organic eggs again.  Since our chickens stopped laying in December, we've probably eaten 3-4 dozen eggs total in 4 months, compared to 2-3 dozen a week. 

New chickens

Now on to the chores and to-do list.  Fences to take down, fences to put up, new electricity in the barn, new raised garden beds, and the list goes on and on.

Starting Seeds

Last year we bought a Burpee XL Ultimate Growing System and it worked very well.
http://www.burpee.com/seed-starting/grow-kits/xl-ultimate-growing-system-prod002628.html

However, it used those expanding peat moss biscuits that were enclosed in a mesh, which I didn't care for.  The watering system though was fabulous.  We could go up to 7 days without watering and we had excellent plants; by far my best seedlings ever.  The cover doesn't exactly fit the tray and is fragile.  I cracked it trying to get it down on the one corner, but it still works well.

This year I decided to use the peat pots with the self watering mat and tray.  We are also trying Jiffy Natural & Organic Seed Starting Mix.  In the past I have used my own compost, but this year it's under 2 feet of snow and frozen solid.

Our seed starting setup

We've grown our vegetables from seed for years now with several different setups but all basically the same.  Hanging above the bench is a $20 shop light from Home Depot with daylight T-8 bulbs.  Then it's one or two flats of cells and a little plastic dome that goes over them (the dome seems to be very important until the plants get pretty big).  Under the trays is a heating pad.  The cells I like to use are the larger ones where you get 36 cells per tray.  With these Jiffy Strips, we get 50 cells per tray.

I will review the starting mix and the Jiffy Strips in the upcoming weeks.

New Garden Design

After gardening with a square foot garden made of 2x6 for several years, and complaining about things each year, I've decided to try use a different approach going forward.

I want to keep with the intensive planting that Square Foot Gardening introduced me to, but improve upon a couple of things.  First is to build my beds about knee high, so roughly 2 feet high.  The hope is to save our backs a little, make mowing easier, and provide more nutrient rich soil to the vegetables. 

With a bed this high, we are planning on using landscaping timbers stacked up and connected with long nails.  We'll see how that goes.  Otherwise we'll connect them with 1/2 in bores and rebar.  But with beds this high and using landscaping ties, we are also planning on making our beds 20 feet long.  This will actually make the foot print of our garden smaller.  Right now we have 4 feet between each box on each side.  So with this set up, we will only need 2 long beds to get the same space as our 9 beds AND our four 1x4 beds!!

Another advantage that going from 13 beds to 2 beds is that an automated irrigation system becomes a lot more manageable and cheaper.  Even without an automated system, watering will definitely be easier.  Our final improvement with the beds is to put hardware netting on the bottom of them to keep the moles out of the beds.  We've lost too many crops to moles/voles over the years.

Our spacing between our beds will allow us to mow in-between the beds.  So maintenance between the beds will now consist of one pass with the lawn mower.

We will continue planting in our intensive, "square foot" way, but will have to think more carefully about where we plant things.  We will also have to get a lot more soil into the beds.

So as I get my seeds started this weekend, I'll be spending plenty of time thinking about the logistics of where things will be planted, how much space they take, etc.

End of Year

It's the end of the year; a time for reflection and planning.  Our homestead feels a little empty with no chickens to take care of.  We started the year with 5 laying chickens, raised and butchered 25 meat chickens, and then butchered our laying chickens when they stopped producing.  We are already planning on getting 6 laying chickens in March.

Right now we are excited about growing two or three pigs in our current fenced in chicken yard.  One pig for us, and the rest for our families.  Our families are excited about the prospect of us growing some pigs for them as well.  These pigs would be butchered right around the time when the new layers are ready to occupy the space.  Although I'm not throwing out the idea of raising them on concrete in the barn as my neighbor does.  One of the benefits would be the ability to collect and spread the manure on our fields.

Speaking of fields, if I had laid out my beds better, I could have got one more bed in the field and used up all of our seed.  Our goal this year is to sell 500 pounds of garlic, which would make the tractor payment for the year and purchase a new raised bed maker from Buckeye Tractor.
http://www.buctraco.com/3%20Online%20Catalog/Model1921-Dx.htm

We are also looking forward to planting a half acre of corn.  After talking with our friends, family, and neighbors, we've decided on a the types of corn and are preparing our seed order.  We haven't yet figured out how we are going to plant the corn.  I've seen 1 and 2 row planters at auctions for less than $300 that need some work, but for only 1/2 acre I could get a brand new walk behind planter.

As the year winds down, we have been spending time looking at more acreage.  Wooded acreage for cutting firewood, hunting, and building a small camp.  Tillable acreage for expanding our garlic crop and raising beef cattle.

Reflecting on our garden and our harvest the last few years, we have to make some changes.  We have raised beds that need repaired/replaced.  Our 1 foot wide beds are going to expand to 2 foot wide for our tomatoes.  Our walkways need to be repaired and finished.  And finally our soil/compost mix needs to be refreshed in all of the boxes.  We've talked about putting up a greenhouse on the south side of the barn so that we can get an early start on everything and even grow some things year round.

We will not get all of the projects done that we envision for 2015, but we've come to realize that is just a part of homesteading.  There is always more to get done than there are hours in the day. 

Overall, we had a good year and we are looking forward to 2015. 

Lawn Mower Fixed

I've always prided myself on being self-sufficient, being able to fix anything that comes up, growing my own food, etc.  That's the way I was raised and it just seems normal.  So when our lawn tractor died, I did what only felt right.  Instead of throwing it away or scraping it and getting another one, I took it upon myself to not only fix it, but to improve it.

The trouble with our tractor started the first summer we had it.  It has always thrown belts, ALWAYS.  Then my wife hit a piece of concrete and ruining the bearings in the middle spindle.  Over the course of 5 years, I've kept the bad spindle packed with grease and have kept the tractor mowing at least decently.  Then 3 weeks ago, I hit a very large stone which shattered the left spindle. 

I found a 2 pack of spindles on Amazon.com for 1/2 the price of one spindle elsewhere.  3 new OEM blades, 2 spindles, 1 belt, and 45 minutes later I was ready to mow.  We mowed our grass once without issue.  Then the next attempt the tractor stopped running and would only run on choke.  So I tore the carburetor off, checked everything, cleaned it up and we were ready to mow again.  However this time, it just kept throwing the belt every 50 feet.

The belt on our tractor is 147.75 inches, so I went to get a belt that was 147 inches, taking out any play.  Unable to find a belt that size, I decided to get an OEM belt and replace the tension spring on the deck. I bought a heavier spring at Tractor Supply, quite a bit heavier.  With everything in place I was finally ready to mow.  Finally, the tractor mowed as good, and actually better than when we first got it, no more thrown belts, no more lines where the blades missed pieces, but finally a good looking lawn.

So for a total of $157 we had working tractor that mowed better than when it was new.  Thinking about not only saving our tractor, but making it better is quite a satisfying feeling.  And for anyone thinking about being a homesteader or living a more self-sufficient life, more important than growing a garden or raising some animals, is being able to look at anything and say, "Yeah, I can fix that."  Once you can do that, you are ready to make your move.