Saturday, November 24, 2012

Winter and Refrigeration

So I started doing the 365 days of photos thing and I have fallen way behind! The stomach virus we got kept us down for two weeks! Yuck! Now we're just trying to get back into the swing of things.

I'm working on a design for a cheese aging shelf to put in my cooler. After doing some reading, I found that though the optimal aging temperature is 50-55°F cheese can be aged at cooler and slightly warmer temps. Cheese can even age in the 20-35° range! However, it takes longer to ripen and the flavor turns out fine but the texture is grainy. I have a bit of difficulty keeping my temps super regulated but I tend to range from 38-47°. I've decided I can live with that. And it's always a little warmer in the top of the cooler.

Maybe I need to explain the "cooler" a little further... We use a deep freezer for our refrigerator. We buffer our temperatures with ice jugs we freeze at a friends house for the time being; at least until we get our complete off-grid system up and running. I look forward to that day... The cooler outside temperatures make this much easier to do but it's pretty difficult to do in the heat of summer. We use the generator to run the freezer to help keep it cool. So this is our current refrigeration situation and we're plugging along to improve it. I also look forward to the day we have a root cellar... I get to have a cheese aging area in it! I'm pretty stoked about that!

Winter seems to be approaching... the weather cycles are getting colder. It's getting colder faster this year. Our grazing is getting dire for the cattle. It's looking like we may have to disperse the beef herd to keep the dairy herd fed. We purposely haven't been selling milk and are looking at having to return to doing so in order to keep the dairy herd fed. The drought has put us in a pickle this year...

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Food Preservation and Fall Gardening

I feel like all I do is can food. I am not one of those who are addicted to canning. I do it out of necessity. When you're off-grid there aren't a lot of easy food preservation techniques out there. Really, the only easy food preservation is freezing. Not an option around here. Dehydration is an option but only solar dehydration. I HAVE a Nesco Gardenmaster dehydrater, which works super awesome, but I can't use it here! It draws 1 kW of power! Too much for my little off-grid system at this point. When I get my big system set up it could probably run it but do I want to? Maybe for dehydrating meats ..

Anyway, I have been canning apples and tomatoes (Picked two 5 gal bucket fulls of green tomatoes the day before a freeze) primarily; some pumpkin but I have a great deal more to do! Still have a number of ducks to butcher and can. I'm hoping once I've waded through the gobs of fruit, pears are next, I'll be able to do poultry.

In the garden, I've got spinach growing as well as some brassica hold-overs and I've commenced garlic planting. I plant a huge amount of garlic because we use it for deworming livestock. I started by putting a layer of rabbit manure on the garlic bed first and this year I'm giving each individual plant quite a bit more room; I planted way too densely last year.

365 Days of Photos: Day 9


Friday, November 16, 2012

Yuckiness...

We have had stomach flu rampaging through. I kicked it off, which is unusual, then my oldest DS. We for the most part are over it though both if us are still weak just in time for the other four boys to come down with it. My oldest DS is awesome! How many 8 year olds would do bucket patrol? My DH is hanging on by his fingernails. He seems to be on the verge of being sick never quite getting there.

Right now I'm snuggling my 10-month old praying he's done with it. It was a rough night for sure ...

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

The Chicken and Egg Problem ..

As I scrimp and scrounge for eggs from my motley crew of chickens, I try to not bemoan the fact that when we moved here we brought nearly 200 hens with us! That first winter was rough. The predation was just plain awful and by the time spring rolled around we had around 20-25 hens. We butchered some free loaders as stewing hens and lost a few more and now sit with 6-7 hens (less the Dorkings) that are like 3 years old. Ahh the frustration! So I'm not exactly rolling in eggs.

The extreme heat this past summer didn't help and now they appear to be moulting. I had a small window of time where I actually got some eggs which was rather nice but now that window is cracked open, just barely, and seemingly ready to slam shut.

It's amazing how wordy I can get when I'm writing! Drives my DH batty... I do like descriptive composition though...

Now I have a small batch of chicks we're raising. And they are looking pretty good. I'm intending to buy some pullets soon. This weekend actually ...

365 Days of Photos: Day 6


Monday, November 12, 2012

365 Days of Photos: Day 5


365 Days of Photos: Day 4


Dorking Chickens

So many times something seems and appears to be a most excellent idea as an addition to the farm... and 75% of the time it ends up being a flop. A huge HUGE flop!!

Our latest, Dorking chickens. On paper, looks fantastic and perfect. Spent a lot of time reading about them on breeder boards and such but sometimes you miss that one crucial question that can make or break you. In their case, it has to do with eggs laying.

When we first got breeding stock we kept them in breeding group pens. That was more our fault because they really didn't get enough sunlight to be productive. So, we let them free roam. The hens were refusing to roost in the coop. It took an owl nearly killing one (we were able to stop the killing process I'm time and chase the owl off) to get all the hens to roost in the coop. The roosters work pretty diligently to gather all of them up as well.

Now they are roosting in the coop but they lay their eggs every where! Once you find their nest, they move it. It's rather difficult to get eggs to hatch or eat if you can't find them. We're just a tad frustrated ...

Thursday, November 8, 2012

365 Days of Photos: Day 1


Brewing Kombucha..

We try to follow the diet set forth by the Weston A. Price Foundation in the cookbook Nourishing Traditions. Unfortunately, as good diets go, it can be expensive and difficult to follow. Right now in our life I can't be completely organic, it's just not locally available and monetarily feasible so we do the best we can. For what we grow, be it meat, milk or veggies, we stay organic.

Anyway, I've, after seven years of using NT as a guideline, discovered the wonders of Kombucha! You can buy it in places like Whole Foods under the brand: GT's. But it's super cheap to brew it at home! I have anywhere from 4-6 gallons batch brewing at a time. I just buy black and green teas and C&H Cane sugar. Most sugar is beet sugar which is GMO unless organic. We work pretty hard to keep GMOs out of our diet. Kombucha is about the only reason we have sugar around. To learn more about it's benefits and how to brew it visit Kombucha Kamp.

Why did I start brewing kombucha? Mainly for my 5yro DS. He has awful eczema that covers his entire body. He was born with it. I was pregnant with him during my Lupus healing crisis. By the end of the pregnancy I was glowing with health. But that's another story.
He drinks about 2-4oz. a day and it has made a remarkable difference in his eczema! I drink it because I crave it so I end up drinking 12-24oz a day. And everyone else just loves it! Soda pop is a poor substitute. The kombucha can be flavored with fruit juices or drank plain. It's yummy and fizzy with a nice sweet burn. And it gives a great energy boost! So give it a try!

The Tractor is HERE!


Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Cat in the Brooder!! ACK!!

Bummer!! One of our cats got into the chick brooder. He ate all but two chicks! I was able to get the last two to a lady to brood them as she was already brooding some baby guineas.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Breeds of Cattle: Ayrshire


Ah, Ayrshire cattle... this is my least favorite breed thus far. Though we were able to obtain good qualiomty cattle their personality was best described as "naughty." I'd have to agree after handling them for the last year. Now, it could be other herds have better mannered animals but I don't know on that part. These cows are the ones that kick the tar out of you! Now, of the 3 pure Ayrshires we have one that is a high producer and throws huge tantrums; the next loves leading the herd where I don't want them to go and the third I actually like. Though she had a few issues she's the most trainable and the best milker. Awesome body type and a beautiful udder.

Herd integration into a mixed breed herd has been poor. They are the bottom and their attitudes and overreactions keep them there. In fact, it makes them the butt of jokes. The other cows purposely bully them for the sheer entertainment value. How do I know this? It's entertaining to watch.

Their milk is meant for cheese. I don't mind drinking their milk but I prefer the drinking quality of milk from my other breeds my favorite being Milking Devon.

Rural Heritage rates the temperament of Ayrshire oxen as "active and challenging." I would say the same goes for the cows. So this is a breed not meant for the faint of heart.

Monday, November 5, 2012

November already ...

We're down to milking 4 cows now. Seems to take less time. I have found our calf, Daisy, to be extraordinarily stubborn. She won't lead, even to the pen with the nurse cow. If milk can't get a calf to lead I don't know what will! I have a love hate relationship with her and she regularly makes me lose my temper. Which is actually rather hard to do. So then the situation degrades and we're both mad at each other.

The drought has majorly hurt us for winter grazing. We like to "stock pile" grass for our hay instead of buying hay. Nothing grew well. Too dry. So now we're facing liquidation of our beef herd. Yuck.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Waffles!


Who'd ever had thought waffles a luxury ... We stay away from Teflon coated cookware so I haven't had a waffle iron for some time. Now I have a cast iron one! Yay! We are in waffles!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Breeds of Cattle: Milking Shorthorn

Something I'll always remember about this breed is what my father said when I'd told him we bought a couple Milking Shorthorn heifers ... WHAT! Are you looking to be kicked to death?! My mother protested and said they were just fine for milking. I'm less than impressed with their kicking skills so far.

Though we no longer have our first MS cows we still have a daughter of one. She's a Jersey X but my best and most favorite cow! Her mother was a pain! Not in the kicking realm but rather the not doing as told. Man she was difficult! Her daughter has her own idiosyncrasies but it makes me want to cry at the thought of selling her. I walk out to her anywhere and I can sit down her untied without grain and milk her! Her lactation curve is very flat and she has longevity. Milked her for over a year once. We have another Ayrshire X we acquired recently. She has similar disposition but isn't quite as calm. I'll let y'all know my thoughts on Ayrshires later.

The biggest problem is that they have been heavily crossed with Holsteins. This hasn't done them any favors. And to find native MS is near impossible. If I had native I'd keep them pure otherwise I view the Milking Shorthorn as an excellent mix in cross breeding with Jersey in particular.

As for their milk, they are a cheese breed NOT a butter breed. I found it good for drinking and making cheese. You will get cream just not like a Jersey.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Garden Activity and Flour

It seems odd planting seeds in the garden right now but I'm giving it a shot on a few things.. I'm trying to get some frost tolerant crops going to see if I get anything from it. Planting at the recommended times of July and August would've been abject failures due to the heat and drought. Now that we have had quite a bit of rain I feel a little more comfortable with the idea. However, it's a race against time.

Harvestwise: I've picked 9 pumpkins with more out there ripening. There are 10ish watermelons out there yet. I'm still getting cukes and summer squash. The tomatoes have lots of green ones all over them. And, finally, the okra is putting on a second harvest.

In other news, we have acquired a 24" stone mill. It needs to be cleaned up, restored a little and a motor matched up but I may be in flour by October. The Country Living Mill we have cannot keep up by any means. The burrs are junk. My new mill can handle bin-run grain as it has a blower and a few screens, which is awesome, and weed seeds won't damage the stones like the steel burrs. Gotta love granite!! 50# of flour per 20 minutes! I'm rather excited about this ...

Sunday, September 16, 2012

The drought seems to be breaking ... we're still a little deficient in our area but it's better. Things are actually growing again! However, our pond is still really low. We'll need quite a bit more rain for that to return to it's normal level. What's impressive about the pond is even with all the water we were pumping out if it for the garden and livestock we still had water. I don't know if we would've made it another month though.

In other news, we've been butchering poultry free loaders in order to get rid of some mouths around here. Organic grain is expensive. And I'm trying to be more aggressive about canning. I dislike pressure canning but it's a necessary evil. I like to eat and I don't have freezer space. What's evil about it? The pressure and heat destroy some of the nutritional value of the food being canned. It does provide calories though. We bought an All American 921 5+ years ago so I already had one to use. I never did much pressure canning with it prior to this but my mother is an excellent resource in that she has canned for years. I can happily say I'm getting the hang of it but it sure puts a dent in my wood pile!

The garden is still putting forth fruits so I have more to do yet. I'm wondering if I plant some carrots if I'll actually get some this year. My tomatoes faired awful in the heat and drought. So we ate tomatoes but canning has been nill for now. Corn was a failure. Potatoes were successful but not as heavy of a harvest as could've been. Beans kept getting ate by some critters. Watermelons have done okay, at least one variety, the other variety has yet to give us fruits. Pumpkins are doing alright.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Breeds of Cattle: Jersey

So we've handled several breeds of cattle for milking. When we first started we got a Jersey because that's what I could find. The interesting part was that I'd managed to stumble across Old World Jerseys. Though our first was conventional genetics our next was not. Granted we obtained a couple of Milking Shorthorns between the two. We were told you need to barn the cows and all kinds of crazy things that a girl from a Montana cattle ranch (AKA moi) looks at you cross-eyed about. Unfortunately, there seems to be something to that advice. What we bought, without realizing it until $$$ later, were Jersey's with the 1950s calf mortality issues among other things. Americans cross bred and graded up for multiple reasons. While I don't have any pure Jersey's left, sold our two 3 yro bulls last summer, we do have two Jersey X cows that we raised. The older being a Milking Shorthorn X who is an amazing cow! Her mother was difficult to say the least but the New Zealand Jersey genetics mellowed that. The second a first calf heifer that is a Milking Devon X. She's a little thing and a bit of a spitfire! She had a heifer calf, Daphne, that is 3/4 Jersey and a remnant of one of the bulls we sold. My crosses are hardy and milk on grass alone but the drought forced me to feed grain. I feed for health, not production and genetics do matter especially when it comes to dairy. Allen Nation once said in his Stockman Grass Farmer column that Americans don't know how to properly grass finish beef.. well, we are awful at 100% grassfed dairy, too! But we keep trying and learning from our mistakes!

Friday, August 10, 2012

The Drought continues....


The heat has subsided some and we've gotten a little rain, less than 1/2", and we're still plugging along.

We got our new water pump set up. It moves a lot more water so we're actually getting caught up on watering the garden. This is bad in the fact we have some failed crops due to poor watering. We've been getting attacked by blister beetles again. Though they are stripping plants they aren't devastating the garden like the striped blister beetle earlier this year. I've finally started harvesting some tomatoes and have been harvesting cukes, squash and okra.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Drought...

It is crispy. Very crispy. My understanding is that we could obtain government disaster relief for the livestock... but we won't do that. The less the government is involved in our business the better. We have accounted 4 acres per animal for our cattle and pigs are primarily in the trees and get grain and milk.

Whatever the case, it has been strange here. 100+ during the day and then in the 70s at night. I remember last year it was in the 80s at night. You almost feel like you need a jacket on after being in the heat all day.

The garden is looking pretty rough. This isn't very good corn country and I have to agree. I'd plant some sorghum but at these temps the seeds would just bake in the ground! So here I am just struggling to keep the garden watered. Well, our pump lost a great deal of it's integrity and can't produce enough pressure. NOW I can barely keep it alive. We're hopefully and prayerfully getting a new pump this weekend!
It's a significantly better pump than what we had.

Please keep us in your prayers! We need rain and good finances to keep us moving forward!

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Morning...

There's this time of early morning that's just lovely ... Everything seems to be waking up and coming alive. The dew is heavy and sparkling in the early sun. The gentle noises and nuisances make you stop and listen. And then an escapee pig comes grunting it's way up to your front porch and your morning truely begins... This used to be more common but we've managed to reduce the occurrences significantly. Usually we have a problem pig not a whole herd. Our pigs do fairly well behind electric fence but after 8 years of raising them we've learned that a couple solid panel pens are extremely useful. A few t-posts and cattle panels are sufficient for building a holding pen.

Anyway, apparently I'm a morning person but unfortunately I'm so tired it's hard to wake up. We work hard all day and I generally get to bed around midnight or later making it difficult to wake up at 5 am. I'm happy if I'm crawling out of bed around 6 am. Enough bemoaning life... lol.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Perceptions of Reality

When I was a little girl
... well, more like a hopeless romantic teenager, I fantasized of a pioneering life. So while my DH and I, with purple fingers, were busy collecting mulberries I recollected such fantasies and shared them. I ended the conversation with this: "I've lived my fantasy now. Can we move into reality?" We both laughed about it.

But what of reality and fantasies? Who's living in reality and who's in their fantasy? I lived the middle class life once already. It feels like a fleeting memory that dimly lingers in the back of my mind. It amazes me how easy I had it and just disregarded it all. Turning on a light switch didn't leave a myrid of worries about the power I'm taking from something else. I rarely have light in the house after dark. We have a strange LED lantern that has a solar cell on top that gives enough ambient light to get around. The hunk of plastic has lasted longer than most things I buy! 2 years now and it looks it! I have a solar cell leftover from building our solar panel I'd like to see if I can build a brighter one as a project with the boys...

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Irrigation

After a month with no rain, a spigot has been turned on!

We had started irrigating the garden before the rains. It was dry as a bone and tilling was out of the question as it was like concrete out there. Our soil contains a great deal of silt. It makes things a little difficult some times and rather slick. We've found tire chains to be extremely useful. The road into our property is unimproved. Little more than a rutted dirt track. It's not uncommon to be mudded or snowed in. Though with the chains we are able to get in and out if needed.

Anyway, back to irrigation! We, happily, have a pond. It didn't go dry in the awful drought last year so we're thinking it has some ground water feeding into it. So a friend gave us a sauna pump. I was humored too. It pumps something like 81 gallons per minute. It seems to be slower than that though. We used garden hoses last year and wasted a lot of gas last year until we gave up using it. This year, we bought 400' of 3/4" irrigation hose from Tractor Supply.


We found that pumping straight up to the height of the highest part of the garden then straight across was easier on the pump. Otherwise, we're looking at a new pump sooner rather than later. A well would be preferred before that so we can quit hauling water from town.

Aside from all that, I've started digging my potatoes from the mid-March planting. They're looking pretty good! Now we need to get our root cellar dug for aging cheese and storing food. It's in the works and going to have ground broke soon for it... I'm pretty excited!

Monday, May 28, 2012

Muuuuulllllbeeerrries!! Yum!

It's mulberry season! The time of year when copious amounts of little purple berries freely and bountifully fall haphazardly to the ground from bushes and trees. Most of my mulberries are fairly large trees. I have one that is a small tree that verges on being a bush. The boys climb that one... otherwise we lay plastic sheeting underneath a couple trees to collect the sweet, little berries.


So what am I doing with them? Making jam and syrup as well as canning them whole. I hadn't really been able to do much canning or food preservation in general the last couple years. Haven't had terribly good facilities and have mainly just been trying to hang on by my fingernails.

Canning on my woodstove has been pretty neat! I like it much better than a standard burner stovetop. I can just slide my pots to a cooler spot and I set my jars right on the stovetop on a warming tray and they stay warm for canning a feat that was always difficult before!


So far I've made 20 pints of jam and canned 11 pints whole. I have to figure out a syrup recipe yet. All I know for certain is that my hands will be blue for awhile.

Still Surviving ... barely.

I have been busy! Well, buried may be more appropriate. We have an overwhelming amount of things to get done around here and we can't seem to get ahead.

My second DS has injured himself far too many times this week. Well the first injury had dual involvement with his older brother and the backside of a splitting hatchet. The second involved rapid decent out of a tree. The boy is going to turn me grey early.

Otherwise, we're trying to get our rabbit proof garden fence done. It seems to be a slow process especially with the heat coming and the ground turning to concrete.

Survival has been busy.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Not a flip flop kind of girl...

I'm not generally one to wear sandals .. let alone flip-flops. But I'm fed up with muck boots! They just don't last! My DH gets, at best, 6 months out of a pair. I'll get any where up to 1 year. Though muck boots are fairly cheap, their quality has only gotten worse. So $1 flip flops from a garage sale it's been... I can handle $1 a couple times a year but not $20 for foot wear. I can say I have no desire to walk through a mucky, stinky pig pen in flip flops. I'd probably lose one...

Monday, April 30, 2012

Where has April gone?

Busy all the time.. you'd think I'd have time to read or something while I'm nursing my 3 month old... but I generally try to doze.

I've been working on making cheese.. seems lime all I do lately. It's even made it hard to get in the garden (and it shows). This is manchego after its first press, getting flipped, redressed and returned to the press.


It's been pretty dry around here lately. But last night it dumped! And poured! We got 6" of rain in less than 12 hours. Now it's flooded everywhere. Not really how we needed rain. Really would've preferred that over a few weeks. But I suppose that's just how it goes.



I've got sweet potato slips coming along! I'm going to have to plant some soon. There'll be a few slips ready before too long.

Whatever the case I just keep puttering along.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Butter!

My electric butter churn... Today was the first time I ran it off our solar panel. It worked just took all of my panel. That's okay though I just know I might be able to catch up with my cream. I'm nearly getting 1 gallon a day.

Washed, packaged and ready for the freezer.


Sunday, April 22, 2012

Apparently I feel like ranting ...

I guess it's been a little while since I posted last... oh well. It's the way it goes some times. I'd say "especially this time of year" but that would be ridiculous because I'm horribly busy year round. There are people who seem to think farmers get the winter off... nope. That's when repair work that was put off gets to occur. If you have livestock you're dealing with a whole host of new problems, frozen water being the first. Anyway, my rant for the day.

We actually had frost the other day and have a possibility of tonight as well. I'm looking at setting out tomato plants today if I get to it. The sun coming in my south window is veritably nonexistent and my starts are showing it.

Later...

Didn't happen. Had to do laundry and deal with pink eye on a cow and bull. The bull was lots of fun... I did get out and do some cover cropping in the garden though.

We do things naturally around here. Well, let's say we don't believe in germ theory. It's fascinating finding out how a lot of problems are generally linked to an imbalance in the body or the soil. The two behave similarly. Germ theory is what has gotten us to the point we are now. Instead of fixing the deeper issue we bandage it with a quick "fix." I personally most commonly get sick after a storm comes through and dumps an unfamiliar toxin/bacterial load from wherever it originally gathered it's energy. I see the same effect in my cows. I'm stressed and overworked so me getting sick is not strange. However, I am Super Mom and don't generally get so sick I can't function... ah well.. most of the time anyway.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Garden Photos

I thought it would be fun to show pictures of our garden for an occasional update of how things are progressing.

We have potatoes starting to bloom in mid-April.


This is our garlic bed. We planted cloves from local wild garlic we harvested last fall.We're curious to see how it will grow in a deep loose soil with some fertilization.


Garden progression.



Building beds...



Friday, April 13, 2012

Laundry Day!

I never thought I'd miss an automatic washing machine and not at the same time. I now have a wringer washer but started with a washboard (used it solely for a year). Ironically, the washer cost me less than the washboard...

What I have learned are these inevitable facts:

1. Cloth will compost.

You put soil, water and carbon you get decomposition. And if you add in poop (I use cloth diapers) it happens at a very high rate. A nice hot compost.

2. Washboarding IS torcher!

I honestly don't know how women kept up on laundry! I sure couldn't! Using a washboard is a very slow process. It probably would've been fine had it just been my husband and I. But we have little boys and diapers to wash.

3. Wringer washers are awesome!

The wringers get a ton of soil out of the clothes that even the automatic washer doesn't. However, you still have to man it to keep it going through different cycles.

4. Keep it dry!

This is actually in relation to point #1. If it gets wet it will compost. So if you don't have an indoor or covered laundry room (which I don't) you have to use other means. For example, a covered garbage can.

5. Don't let it build up.
Trust me. You'll never catch up without extra work. I got a build up and it's taking me forever to get back on track again.

6. Winter time laundry is rough.

Learn how to deal with numb hands. I hate taking the time to start a fire to heat water for laundry but sometimes it's necessary. Drying clothes outside in the winter takes days rather than hours.

7. Rinse your laundry in a separate tub.

I learned this one from a young Mennonite woman. You can keep the washer going and going if you just plunge you washed laundry in a separate tub of water for rinsing. Slosh it around with your hands or a stick and then run it through the wringer. Works great and it halved my laundry time. I'm just too busy to keep on top of mine.

8. Wringers are dangerous.

After I got my wringer washer I heard multiple stories of either themself or a relative whose fingers got caught in the wringers and their arm drug in and tore up badly. Take care and caution! Don't be careless! It could be your arm!

9. You still need a washboard.

Washboards are a useful tool for stain or debris (ie. poop on diapers) removal. So don't toss them aside completely. I use mine in the tub of water I drain out of the washer for prewashing poopy diapers. Seems to work fairly well.

------------

So these are the things I've learned over the past two years about dping laundry off-grid. I'm hoping that some of my experiences help someone do better than me.

Take care and happy washing!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Water, Water Everywhere ...

Remembering that you can't rely on the attentiveness of a child seems to have to be regularly reminded. I sent my 5 yr old to fill water containers and I'm glad I had to go outside and happened to go past the water tank... he'd left the valve on and ran 20ish gallons onto the ground. You see, we take a 250 gallon tank to town about once a month to fill at the water dump station. Takes about $2.00 in quarters to fill.

This probably raises numerous questions about our water situation. Or maybe no one cares, lol, but I'll share anyway. We don't have a well... yet. It's in the works for this year BEFORE we need to water the garden. Last summer was brutal. We were in the drought area with 100+ temps. The garden didn't do well at all. So until then we have a "water trailer" and a pond. I wash our laundry using pond water. For the first year, I had a washboard. Yup, a good ole washboard. Now I have a wringer washer that I run with the generator.

Whatever the case losing my temper was the last thing I needed to do considering that I've ran water out before as well...

Friday, April 6, 2012

Lost Epiphany

Sometimes your most brilliant ideas come to you when you're wandering around the pasture... then by the time you get back to the house you've forgotten you're epiphany due to distraction... fabulous.


I thought perhaps some one out there may enjoy seeing a picture of my hand crank separator.

Monday, April 2, 2012

My South facing window

So these are my south facing windows. And that is my planting table. Unfortunately, the sun is getting high in the sky causing less sunlight to fall on my seedlings. This is problematic. So a cold frame or mini green house has moved up on my todo list. As has making more Warre hives. The bees are starting to swarm. It's a little early for swarms but everything is a little early this year.

What's the other stuff? 80# of seed potatoes in the paper bags. Some sweet potatoes I'm going to use for slip production. Elderberry cuttings in water to get to root. And pots that I started onions and Jelly Melons. I just seeded the Jelly Melons recently because the onion seed in that pot never germed. It was old seed.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Gardening... bah humbug!

I am not a master gardener. Far from it in fact. Nor do I find my garden therapudic. I'm lucky if my garden grows! Last year was a flop as we had a cold, wet spring that turned hot and dry. What did grow was decimated by rabbits. Everyone had trouble getting their garden to produce. People who'd been gardening in the area for years found themselves not having their usual success. I can say, however, they still did way better than me.

Gardening is not my favorite task. It really needs to move up in my favorites but that only works is I have some success. It does seem to be looking better this year so far. I have a good deal of cabbage and broccoli already planted. My tomatoes are started and just now putting out their first true leaves. I need to get peppers started, I've just been busy and limited on space.

My seeds... I don't buy seeds from places like Gurney's. I buy from places that have taken the Safe Seed Pledge or are actively preserving seed diversity. Baker Creek Seeds, High Mowing Seeds, Seed Savers, Sand Hill Preservation Center, others and sometimes direct from other farmers. And then I try to save seeds myself. In pioneering days, they didn't have a store to go get whatever they wanted, they saved their seeds and now it's not unusual to have a seed variety named after the family or person who preserved it. However, seed companies were fun as they'd take varieties like that and then give them some jazzy marketing name. Some history was lost that way. I do dislike it when history is lost...

Monday, March 26, 2012

Look at your lands capabilities realistically

It never seems to fail, a person gets a little bit of acreage and boom!! Big ideas occur. To make small acreages be profitable you have to look at it realistically and realize you're probably not going to be able to raise much grassfed beef. Frankly, you're not going to be able to do much with cattle at all! Though you can graze a steer, it can't be the only thing you do.

The key to success for a small holding is diversity. You can actually "stack" different kinds of livestock. Why? Because different species have different grazing habits. For example, cows like grass and will eat some browse (brush, trees, vines, etc) but goats like browse and will eat some grass. Here's the kicker ... you don't need separate pens for them you need to use them on the pasture together.

Sheep, cows and goats are easy... what about pigs? Most people don't think of pigs as a pasture animal but they are. Granted for it to really work you need a breed that likes forbes. We once got a couple Yorks and put them on some of our best clover... they didn't bother eating the clover they just bulldozed the area. We were not new to pigs at this point. We'd been breeding heritage breed hogs for 2-3 years besides raising feeders. The hogs we raise love forbes. Absolutely love it! They're much happier when they have grass. Do they root? Sure! But they eat the tasty grass, roots and creepy crawlies first generally and THEN root it up. It really depends on their nutrient needs at the time. Otherwise, they do a fabulous job cleaning brush out of treed areas. It's also helpful for keeping the pigs cooler in the summer and sheltered in the winter. In fact, I was watching a sow strip the leaves off of a wild rose bush the other day. I've even used hogs to control wild blackberry bramble. The pigs thin it down so you can walk through it and grass grows between the bushes. They fertilized it nicely as well, got some awesome blackberries from that patch.

If you can't tell, I'm rather partial to pigs... I like all the animals but pigs have proven themselves to be useful on many levels. We used pig "tractors" to break the sod for our garden. It made it much easier to till with a garden tiller.

Anyway, now that I have gone on and on about pigs... back to the subject.

I had 5 acres before my current place. When we got it up to snuff we could get 5 grazings per growing season. We were running 3 dairy cows, 20-30 pigs and 50-100 chickens (both layers and broilers). We were maxed out. We were able to rent land but it never went well. What we never did do was vegetables. A market garden would have been more profitable on such a small acreage. Dairy is profitable but the people can be flaky and laws vary state to state.

I'm still working on those vegetables... whatever the case, realize that the best use of a small acreage is not necessarily to graze a few head of beef. The best use is to diversify and bring income from multiple venues which may include staying away from beef altogether.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Bees and the Warre Hive

Since we don't have money and the last time we bought bees was a terrible loss it was decided the only way we would hve bees would be to catch a swarm. We were settled with that. Then one day while we were driving through town we happened upon a swarm in a tree. I may never forget how we captured out first swarm...

Armed with a cardboard box and a roll of duct tape we surrounded the swarm and taped it shut on the tree branch.
No equipment except a bottle if lemon grass essential oil and the homeopathic remedy Apis 30x. Yup. We were prepared. I still haven't decided if we were gutsy or just plain dumb. We ended up cutting the branch off and taking it with, swarm and all. Whatever the case, we got the bees home with no more than a bee sting each.

The next hurdle was the fact that we had nothing to put them in. I spent the next 24 hours building a Warre hive. Without power tools. It was awful but I got it done and then it was back to handling bees without equipment ... not even a smoker. I need to add two more boxes to the stack very soon...

How we got here

Foreclosure ... plain and simple. Well, maybe not that simple but a major contributing factor. God would probably be the main reason.

We started milking a cow, discovered direct marketing and it was a downward spiral from there. Both of us wanted to farm and this presented the path to get there. But in our young foolishness we got a mortgage and eventually my dh was laidoff. The farm didn't pay enough to cover the mortgage. So we lost our original place and found ourselves hurting for land. Then God blessed us and we got our new place. No mortgage. No money owed to anyone. It would be wrong for me to call it our property because in truth it's His. He provided the money and really the land because we got it obscenely cheap for the market. We've found that any of the neighbors would have bought it for a little more than what we paid. God is GOOD! But that doesn't mean it's easy.

So we ended up with 70ish acres of bare land. I do thank God it did have a perimeter fence that would hold cows at least. Thus the move commenced ...

Monday, March 19, 2012

Sometimes I feel like I have dial up

I am an internet junkie... or at least I was until about a year and a half ago when we moved onto this 70ish acres here in Kansas. Then I went from having high speed internet to... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except a cellphone that I could only use internet on if I had wifi access. Rough. Horribly rough. Now I still primarily use a cellphone but I at least can sit on the homestead and use the internet. Lol

My parents nicknamed me Green Acres. Cell service is pretty awful out here so I often found myself in strange places trying to get uninterrupted service just to make a phone call. My favorite being sitting on a pipe gate facing a specific direction staring into the heart of a honey locust tree. I later found a location where I could stand and talk but I HAD to stand. So what changed? I switched cell service from T-Mobile to Virgin Mobile. I dropped my phone in a mud puddle and it was decided that we might as well change providers to see if there was a difference ... there was.

Unfortunately 3G sometimes doesn't feel any better than dial up. And I do know dial up. Grew up with it. Frankly my parents still have it. But I don't even have a land line to get dial up. So cellphone it is.

Computer wise we have a laptop that we tether using the cellphone. Works pretty well and has saved us money as there is no need to go to town for internet usage.

Now I get to look forward to "throttling" yuck! As if it couldn't get any slower...