Gardening 2012

There's a lot going on around here.  I'll try to show some of it in pictures rather than a wordy blog post.

We had to renew our flock, because a predator carried off our original

 

 

Compost piles are getting started and/or turned

Jake helping turn a compost pile.... I need to get him off the pile, the boys growing like a weed.

 

 

 

Seeds are started and tended to by my lovely wife.

Meat is being canned, this is hamburger.  In the canner tonight is both turkey and ham.

Sauerkraut is being fermented.

The garden is being prepared.

Strawberries are growing, and there's a tone of berries growing on the plants.

Seedlings are being hardened off.

This is a blackberry plant I thought was going to die.

Elderberry, the coffee can was used to keep ants out of it.

Onions in a temporary home.  We'll replant some of them around the tomato and pepper plants to try to keep bugs away.

The watering system is going in.  We lay the soaker hose down, sow the seeds or plant the plants then mulch to keep weeds down and moisture in.

In this picture you can see that I moved the tomato supports to the west side of the garden.

Got our Goats

After a crazy couple of days we got the 2 goats that I wrote about the other day.  After my wife called me at work we started brainstorming what the best material for fencing is.  We had talked previously, about building fencing with pallets, when we talked about doing this though I envisioned having plenty of time to be choosy about the pallets, and having time to collect prime good quality pallets that are in good condition.  Even though we didn't have the kind of time we wanted we decided to build with pallets anyway.  The total project price was probably 50% of the cost that wire fencing would be.

The look of the pallet fencing is pretty rustic, but it gets the job done and pallets are usually readily available.  I even recently heard that pallets were available from a hardware store for free, you just have to load them.  I haven't checked this out, but you can bet I'm going to.  Heck even if I have to take pallets apart and make picket fence panels out of them, it will be worth it.

Knowing how to reuse, recycle and use up is an important part of preparedness.  Previous generations of Americans, did this or many times they did without.  Anyway back to the goats....

The LaMancha's name is Fifi and the Alpine goats name is Rain, although that might get changed.  We got about a quart of milk from Fifi this morning and can probably get more as we get proficient with the milking process.  Below are some pictures of the goat pen, the assembly of the pen and the goats...

Desert Broom, Cement and the Garden

I have been remiss in posting over the last several days.  It all stems from trying to get ready for a craft fair that we went to on Saturday.  You see last week I was trying to get as many pens as possible done, and spending a lot of time in the garden or in the shop, so the thing that had to suffer was the blogging.  So here's a bit of an update.

Last Thursday night we grilled zucchini, I think I posted about that.  For that grilling I think we pulled seven zucchini from the garden.  Then Saturday I pulled two more from the garden, well last night we pulled eight out of the garden.  I think we're going to slice and fry some of them and slice and grill others of them.  We are probably going to end up drying a whole bunch of zucchini in the excalibur this season (again).  The cucumber plants have really taken off and are growing.  I need to get the support up for them to grow on.  The tomato's are growing, although not putting off a lot of tomato's yet and now that the hot weather has set in I'm not sure we're going to get many until September.  Although I might get surprised. (praying for the tomato harvest)

Yesterday we went to scope out a new farmers market, at which to sell our pen's and cutting boards.  It didn't look promising.  I'm still ruminating on whether to branch out to this one or not.  There we only ten vendors there and not many shoppers so not too much activity going on.  Once we got home from that we spent most of the afternoon in the house, as it was 100 degrees outside and the sun was intense, so it was pretty relaxing.

In the evening we went out work on another detail to Jake's fort.  It's gonna have a chin up bar connected to it.  To do that we had to dig a short pole out that was cemented in place next to it.   My wife and son had both worked on it last week while I was at work, and found it.... daunting.  I took a sledge hammer and crow bar and was able to break the cement away from the post and pull it out then pull the cement out in chunks. So that is done until I get cement to put the new, longer post in place.

With that done we started in on removing a desert broom stump.  I took the sledge hammer and crow bar and started breaking chunks off.  It worked pretty well until the head of the sledge hammer came off.  So now I have two things to stop at the hardware store for.  A sledge hammer handle and a bag of cement.

That's the update for now... sorry for no pics.

God Bless!

The Fort - Completion

You want to see an 11 year who is proud of his Fort?  Just look at Jake.  We have to put some preservative on the bottom of the stringers which I will do on Sunday or Monday, and paint the steps but other than that we're done.

Stopped by the dark

Yesterday I was hoping we would get both the rafters and the sheeting up for the roof.  We got stopped by the setting sun.  We got the rafters all up but by the time they were up the sun was setting and it would have been too dark to secure the OSB sheets on top of them. 

While we were out there Trudy found an egg in the chicken run. 

 Notice what's odd about the egg?  There's no hard shell around it.  Just the thin membrane.  This happens sometimes but it's the first we've seen since we had chickens. 

Well, back to the pictures of the project...

The dog had to come check out the progress.

So did the cat

We ended the night with this.

The OSB and the roofing will go on tomorrow(Saturday)

Progress

After I got home from work Jake and I got 2 more half walls framed out on his fort.  I tomorrow we'll put the siding on them.  I have to make a couple of half walls on the side the steps are on, but I think we'll get the siding on the other 3 sides, and make those out of scrap... I don't want to have to buy anymore material if I don't have to.  If I can get the siding on tomorrow then we're going to put the roof framing and sheets up on Wednesday after work, the wind is supposed to die down by then.  I wouldn't have wanted to be moving sheets on the roof with 35mph gusts like there was today.  No pictures today, hopefully I can make up for it tomorrow.

I sure have had fun on this project.  I've also decided that when this is done, I'm gonna enlist my son and we're going to build a goat shed, a pen and a milking stanchion.  I'm going to build it out of as much recycled material as possible.  Probably a lot of pallet wood.

So far on the blog I've talked a lot about this one project and a bit about my garden.  That's gonna change soon and I'll talk about other projects, sustainability, why I choose to homestead, and preparing for the future as well.

Things accomplished Today

First the things we got accomplished today.  Jake and I got out and continued on the project today.  We got the other part of the floor on the Fort then we finished putting the stops in the trap door so it can be walked on safely.  Once we finished that we got two of the posts up that will support the roof.    Here's a picture of where' we're at.  I have to cut those posts down, but, I should have the walls in tomorrow and maybe start roofing. 

Forgive the thumbs my son took the picture.

It got too hot out there today, when I came in it was 93 degrees.

Two Year Old Chicken Coop Project

The project below is about two years old, but I wanted to post it anyway.  Our chicken coop is a repurposed dog house.  The dog house was sitting in a neighbors yard but I never saw a dog in the yard, so one day when I saw them outside I stopped and asked them if they wanted to get rid of it.  The owner said he doesn't even have a dog and it was given to him by his neighbor, so the dog house went to my yard.  The dog that went in this house must have been large, because it's 4'X6'.

The first thing I did was put the dog house on wheels so I could easily move it.   I eventually also made that door smaller.

My wife did all the priming, painting and touch up while I was at work.

 If you look at the door in this picture you will see there's nothing supporting the sheet of siding.... guess what happened during the first windy day when someone went to collect eggs?  That's right, the door fell off, so I made a frame for both doors for strength and stability. 

The coop has held up pretty well.  Currently there's nesting boxes in right inside the large door, the boxes are removable, so the coop is easily cleaned.   Also in the coop is a light that the original maker of the doghouse installed so in the winter the chickens get some light and heat, and we continue getting eggs through the winter.  We put a tarp over the top of the run and that's where their water and food bin goes.  The repurposed doghouse has held up pretty well and is a good size for about 8 chickens with no rooster.  If your wondering the door to the run is never closed, the chickens pretty much free range the property so they're only in the run and coop to eat and sleep.

Fun Day Today

Today I normally work from home but truthfully I needed a break from work.  So I scheduled a vacation day.  This morning I was lazy and loafed until 10 or so, then we went to take a tour of a local cave turned tourist attraction for a homeschool field trip.  That was fun.  

We got home from that at about 2:30 and ate some homemade strawberry ice cream.  My favorite!! After the ice cream was eaten we had lunch, then Jake and I resumed work on rebuilding the fort.  The corner posts that extend past the platform and we toyed with raising the platform up to the top of the posts, but in the end we decided not to.  Jake also wanted a trap door in it so we spent most of the day making the 'escape hatch', I work slow so we only got that done and one side of the floor put on.  I'm not sure if we'll get anything done to the fort tomorrow, but Sunday we should get a lot done.  Below are pics of what we got done today.

That's it for tonight...