You can barely make out where
the left rut here has several cinder blocks laid next to each other in
an attempt to harden up an area that sometimes has running water
passing through.
It's been over 4 years now
and the cinder block mini ford has proven itself to be a long term
workable replacement to big gravel, which has a tendency to spread out
and sink even deeper under these conditions.
The only problem was a 20
degree tilt over time as heavy trucks and golf carts weighed heavily on
its outer edge. I think the angle might even help some of the tires
grip easier in wet conditions, but it's never been a problem.
I
wrote about the resumption
of rainy weather
yesterday afternoon, after Mark drove Joey's truck out to leave it
across the creek and out of harm's way. It seems like we made the
right call. Rain pounded on the roof all night, bringing our
week's total up over 7 inches. By the time I walked Lucy, the
creek had risen from my ankle to my knee.
I
dawdled a bit more than I should have since I knew from the doppler
radar that I only had about twenty minutes between cloudbursts.
But how could I resist trying to capture fog between the hills or a box
turtle catching a huge leech right along the edge of the public
road? My dawdling was worthwhile --- two trucks of tree
trimmers/chippers rolled by and I flagged them down to ask if they
would dump some wood chips in our parking area. They agreed
(although they've agreed before, and no wood chips have shown up), so I
scurried around to move our vehicles out of the way and give them a
place to dump my biomass.
Now an hour had passed
and the rain was pouring down. The muddy creek had risen past the
middle of my thigh, and at the rate the rain is still falling, I
suspect we may attain flood conditions today. I love the
neverending excitement on our farm!
Want to be excited about
being flooded in rather than wading through the water to get to
work? Microbusiness Independence shows you how to escape the
rat race.
Wednesday
morning, the doppler radar looked like this. We'd had 5 inches of
rain already in the past week, the alligator swamp was filling back up,
and the main creek was once more creating a waterfall off the edge of
the ford. Clearly, our three week dry season had come to an abrupt end.
At times like this, I
feel like I'm always a step or two behind the weather, scurrying to
catch up. I'd just gotten into the swing of drying
fruit without a dehydrator and would have liked to
continue my success with tomatoes. I also had another week's
worth of hauling on Mark's agenda. But the weather has mandated
that we shift gears, so we will --- on to weeding and mowing, planting
the last of the fall crops, and maybe finally finishing the shed.
To be fair, drippy
summer afternoons when I'm just barely chilled in a t-shirt and shorts
are probably on my top ten list of favorite times. The rain
encloses me in a cocoon of gray noise and my mind becomes so clear I
can feel deep thoughts gelling in the corners.
Rainy days give Mark time to
work on his inventions, like his homemade chicken
waterer that now
graces coops in every state in the union.
Half
of you are going to find this post ludicrously basic, but I suspect the
other half of you never learned the facts of life from your
mother. Paper towels seem to be the last bastion
of consumer society found in many homesteaders' households, but the
truth is that you already have a free alternative --- rags.
How
to make rags The first step in making
rags is wearing your clothes into the ground. After a certain
point, there's no purpose in mending a piece of clothing --- the fabric
has degraded so much that it will merely rip along your mended
seam. Or maybe your t-shirt now has half a dozen holes that seem
to get bigger every day. Put it in the rag bag.
Once
a year or so, I get around to pulling out the rag bag and taking a
look. First, I sort my old clothes into three piles --- 100%
cotton, partially synthetic, and fully synthetic or bulky. The
last category doesn't have much use on our homestead, so we tend to
relegate it to winter pet bedding, but all of the others will be
used. We turn 100% cotton clothes into fodder for my bees'
smoker, and everything else becomes rags. Underwear and t-shirts
make the best smoker fodder and rags, and luckily they're the pieces of
clothing that wear out the quickest.
Making rags is
simple. Just cut through any turned-under edges, then
riiiiiiiip. (Rag production is also a great way to improve your
mood if you're down in the dumps --- so satisfying.) It's best to
tear off and discard underwear waistbands and t-shirt collars, but
otherwise there are no rules. Just be sure to end up with rags
roughly eight inches by eight inches.
How to use rags Now, how do you use
rags? The first line of defense in our household is the wash
cloth. These storebought items (costing perhaps a quarter apiece
at the dollar store) will last years as long as you use them for gentle
cleaning like doing dishes and wiping down counters. I only pull
out rags when I'm going to be working in more goopy or disgusting
situations, like wiping oil off a machine or cleaning up fecal matter.
What do you do with a dirty
rag? If it's not too filthy, rinse it out in the sink, then drape
it over the side of the laundry basket to dry. Rags can then be
washed with your regular laundry. On the other hand, we reserve
the right to throw rags away if they're too awful --- that's why we use
them for the more disgusting tasks that would retire a wash cloth.
We tend to go through
rags at just about exactly the same rate we go through clothes.
You're probably discarding your clothing too soon and buying too much
of it if you're overrun with rags.
For those of you who
were raised using rags, I'm curious to hear what you'd add to my rag
tutorial. Any helpful tips for the uninitiated? Any uses
for those bulky blue jeans and fleece shirts?
Our homemade chicken
waterer prevents
heat exhaustion during the hottest summer in recorded history.
Perhaps
in other parts of the world, it's not considered abnormally dry when
you've had a steady one inch of rain per week for most of the
summer? Around here it sure feels dry, though, after a month with
abnormal highs in the nineties nearly every day. The floodplain has dried up, meaning that
even though there are puddles of water in the driveway, the ground
between is hard rather than mud. Perfect weather for hauling.
Last winter, when we
were trying to ferry in building supplies through endless muck, Titus
gently noted that she tries to do all of her hauling during the dry
season. So when we realized the driveway was firm enough to allow
Joey's truck to pass through, we dropped everything from the list and
instead focused on ferrying supplies into the farm. That's why
Mark went to town nearly every day last week, hauling in compost and mulch. It wasn't photogenic
enough to post about, but he also hauled out a year's
supply of household garbage --- a truckload and a half
full. We hope to finish
bringing in the year's supply of biomass this week, and also cut up and
haul in firewood from deadfall trees along the driveway. Round it
all out with some lumber for the solar dehydrator and picnic table
projects, and we should be done hauling for a long, long time. I
just thought you all deserved an explanation so that you didn't think
we were on a crazy spending spree.
They're still on the cross
country journey and have visited about 90 farming types.
I'm looking forward to
reading their book about these travels which now has a working title of
"Stewards: Stories and Perspectives From American Farmers".
I've
been putting a lot of thought lately into how we invest the fruits of
our labors. A decade ago, I read a basic investment book that
told me to put 10% of my income in a mutual fund for retirement, and
I've been following along like a sheep ever since.
But investing in a
combination of stocks and bonds means that I believe in a growth economy. Do I? I
certainly don't believe a growth economy is good, and I'm not so sure
that I believe our economy will grow over the next forty years.
On the other hand, I
don't really believe in apocalyptic scenarios either, so I don't plan
to invest in gold. (As Mark pointed out, coins worth over a
thousand dollars apiece are unlikely to be terribly useful in an
apocalyptic scenario anyway.) I'm guessing social security will
be around when I retire, but may only pay out half of what my
statements tell me to expect. Perhaps our best bet is to put our
dribs and drabs of retirement money in some combination of ultra-safe
investments (like CDs) and into farm infrastructure to make our annual
operating costs lower. I'm curious to hear our
readers' take on investment in today's climate. Do you stick to
the rosy view that the economy will rebound, meaning that social
security will fulfill most of your needs and you'll round out your
retirement income with some sort of mutual fund? Or do you think
society as we know it will collapse and social security will be
completely absent, so you'd better stock up on firearms? I'm most
curious to hear from folks who think the future will be somewhere in
the middle --- how do you invest for your old age?
Do you have a neighbor or
friend who keeps chickens? Why not tell them about our homemade chicken
waterer and support
the Walden Effect.
I decided our driveway was in a good enough state of dryness to see if
the parts
Festiva had what it takes to help tow out the golf cart
for some expert repair.
It only got stuck once, which was quickly fixed by modifing the ruts to
fit the bigger wheel base.
I'm pretty sure this is a
once a year opportunity and when the rain kicks back to a more regular
schedule the flood plain will earn its name back. In the meantime it's
nice to have a back up to our much valued golf cart.
As
you can see in this photo of my mom, we've had our Walden Effect
t-shirts for two solid weeks. I've been holding out on you
because I can't seem to figure out whether we'll be able to send the
t-shirts for a couple of dollars as first class mail or if we have to
pay $5 for priority mail. I finally decided to just let the first
few customers buy them at the cheap price ($10), and if it costs more
to mail the shirts, we'll raise the price later. So buy them
while they're hot!
Here are some quick
stats so you'll see whether our t-shirt is right up your alley:
Color is "serene green" --- as pictured. I chose the color
because it's light enough to work in outside in the sun, but earthy
enough that those pesky weeding stains will be less visible.
T-shirt is "2000 Gildan Ultra Cotton", which is 100% cotton,
unisex, 6.1 oz.
Printing is on the front in black and gray. The image is
based on a petroglyph, tweaked to suit our permaculture farm. You
can see a more head-on image of the design here.
Sizes are M, L, XL, and XXL. Be sure to note your size with your order!
I decided to merge the slight additional cost for the XXL into the
overall price, so all of the t-shirts cost $10 apiece (with free
shipping in the U.S.) But I ordered fewer XXL and XL than perhaps
I should have --- if that's your size, you might want to buy now.
(If you're medium or large, you can probably wait a while.)
I hope you'll enjoy our
t-shirts and then email me an image of your Walden
Effect style in your own garden. I'd love to post a collage of
all of our loyal readers on their home turf. (If you hate the
design, though, don't feel in any way obligated to buy one.)
Not interested in
t-shirts? You can also support the Walden Effect by telling your
friends about our homemade chicken
waterer.
We took the morning off to be interviewed by fellow bloggers Travis and
Kacy from the Portrait
of a Farm blog.
They're on a cross country
adventure that will evenutally end up in Ashland, Oregon.
I liked the questions they
focused on and was refreshed by their enthusiasm for this project,
which is to interview farmers and homesteaders along their way back to
the upper west coast with a twist towards permaculture
techniques.
Human
names elude me. Without really trying, I can rattle off the
scientific names of hundreds of plants, tell you their lineage, their
uses, where they like to grow. But present me with a few people,
and they blur together into a sea of faces.
I can just hear what you
want to say --- "I have a hard time with names too." Let me
clarify with a short story. When I was a freshman in college, a
girl sat at my table every day, but for weeks (months? maybe even the
whole first semester?) I didn't know who she was and I mostly ignored
her. Then, one
day, she brought a potted heather plant to lunch with her. "Nice
plant," I said. "Yes, it's a heather, just like my name," she
replied. A light went off in my head --- this girl's name was
Heather, which was a plant, so I could remember her! Now, to use
modern parlance, we are BFFs.
I've been thoroughly
enjoying everyone's insightful comments, especially over the last few
weeks, but it bothers me that I have a hard time remembering which one
of you is the pig farmer and which one lives on the prairie. I
considered asking you all to rename yourselves after plants, but then I
came up with an even better solution! Anyone who wants can now
create an
account on Walden Effect. This will make it easier for you since
your comments will post immediately (rather than waiting for me to
check in and mark them as non-spam.) You'll also be able to
create your own user page, with links to your main webpages, maybe a
photo of yourself, and hopefully at least one reference to a plant or
animal to jog my memory.
Don't want to
share? That's okay --- you can still post comments anonymously or
by typing in your name just the way you always could. Either way,
I look forward to learning more about you!
Revisit the creek crossing.
Maybe build solid, higher stepping stones. Or a zip line.
Or a better bridge. Still pondering this one. The goal is
to get us across the creek during moderate to high water.
Experiment with ways to get
humanure to our fruit trees.
We're considering building a movable "outhouse" that will let us fill
pits with human waste interspersed with leaves and bones. My
goal
is to safely dispose of all of the wastes, but in such a way that
they'll rot down into fertilizer that the trees can grow their roots
into. We hope to develop a method which will ensure that we don't
have to handle the waste. Again, still pondering --- more on this
once I read the Humanure book that I skimmed last year.
Figure out chicken reproduction.
Yeah, yeah, I know all about the birds and the bees. But our
broody hen is a terrible mother, so we'd like to give our electric
incubator another try. But our house has too much temperature
variation for the incubator to work as is (we've tried), so Mark's
going to build an insulated brood box to keep the incubator at more of
a steady temperature. Hopefully we can raise enough chickens this
year to eat some. Whether we'll break down and take on a
free-loader rooster is still up in the air.
Figure out a way to keep a
constant mulch cover over the entire garden.
This may mean buying a chipper or hunting down those utility line
trucks to get a mass of wood chips for longer term mulching (once they
rot down.) Or raking
more leaves. Or getting more serious
about grass
clippings (maybe with a riding mower so we can cover more
territory?) Probably some combination of the above. No
matter how we do it, I want to spend less time weeding so that we can
expand the garden in 2011 to grow some of our own grain. Right
now, we can't expand anything or I'll go nuts during weeding season!
Figure out mushroom reproduction.
As you've read in our mushroom
lunchtime series, we're well on our way.
Find a
temporary caretaker to check on the farm when we're away. This
isn't essential right now but is a prerequisite for any potential dairy
animals.
Start fencing or hedging
pasture areas for potential sheep/goats/pigs. Big
livestock are on our ten year plan, so we'd better get ready for them!
Bathing room. Once
the storage building is in place, there'll be room in the trailer to
make a really nice bathtub with a view of the garden. Maybe I
could even have a supplemental bathing area outdoors for the summer
months too?
Solidify the driveway with more
rocks. This mostly just means money to hire someone to
haul rip-rap for us. And tracking him down to do the
hauling. Then some rock spreading.
Once again, my ability
to count to 10 is in serious doubt. But listing twelve top goals
gives me some wiggle room so that if we complete ten we'll still have
succeeded. It's clearly going to be another exciting year on the
farm!
Just keeping the farm going uses most
of our energy, but we like to end each year a little better off than
the last. I get easily frustrated, though, when the big projects
have to get pushed to the back burner to accomodate planting, weeding,
and the usual cycle of farm chores. The solution? Take the
dozens of big projects we'd like to complete and narrow them down to
the top ten to be completed each year.
I thought you might
enjoy seeing last year's top ten goals (and our status on each
project). This is my version of New Year's resolutions
--- why make a resolution when you can instead make a plan?
Better
steps to the house. We shored up the existing steps and
they work fine.
Fence deer out of the full
perimeter. After some fencing, Mark invented our deer deterrent, which solved
the same problem for vastly smaller amounts of time and money.
Running water in the trailer.
We came close to reaching this goal, burying
about 75% of the water line from the thousand gallon tank to the
trailer. We've still got a bit more to go, though, which is why
our lines froze up and we went back to carrying water.
Irrigation to all plants.
Due to an extremely wet summer, we didn't water much at all. But
we did put
in most of the irrigation infrastructure we'll need. We'll
test it out during the next drought.
Root
cellar. After embarking on a huge root cellar project, we
changed directions and decided
to work on making
a root cellar out of a fridge. We completed it, but the dirt
slumped in a rain and pushed the fridge over. We need to dig it
out and add a roof.
Fix the barn roof. We didn't
get to this....
Build a wider, higher footbridge.
We shored up the existing bridge instead, but it gave
out in early winter.
As you can see, we didn't manage to narrow our goals down to ten, but
we did complete seven and make good progress on another four. Not
too bad for working around all of the little things that inevitably
come up on a farm! Stay tuned for this year's overly ambitious
goals in a later post.
The snow is almost gone, which means mud, mud,
and more mud.
My mom gave us some baby crib pieces back in the summer left over from
an emergency turkey transport she was constructing which have really
worked out well as a catch for my wood splitting station.
It was a real
bummer to watch a nice dry piece of firewood
split its way directly in the mud.
The
old house at the edge of the yard has been on its way out ever since I
bought the property. It was built with no foundation and no
structural elements except for thin walls, and yet it stood for three
quarters of a century. By the time I arrived on the property, it
had developed a bit of a lean and the porch and one room had collapsed,
but we probably could have shored it up. Mark wasn't in the
picture yet, though, and I knew nothing, so I commenced to tear it
down. Here's an animation showing me tearing down the second of
the four rooms:
By
the time Mark stepped in and stopped me, I had torn the house down to
the original two rooms, then had ripped half the walls off what
remained. What little structure the house once had was long gone,
but the house stood for another year or two anyway. Finally, it
developed such a major lean that we were afraid it would fall on Lucy
in the night, so we yanked it down with the hand
winch, but never managed to take the time to disassemble it.
This week, I've finally put house demolition back on the to do
list. Mark's got the homemade
storage building
walls nearly complete, and then he'll be needing a roof. I figure
we can save about $200 by reusing the old tin, and that doesn't even
take into consideration the thick rafters that are already cut to just
the right length. Finally, the old house is worth taking apart.
I have to admit my ulterior motive, though. The old house sits on
some of the richest soil in our yard, ground that I've been eying for
years. By taking the house apart, I'll have yet more garden space!
I think this is the design I've settled on for increasing the load
capacity of the golf cart. You can order the shiny
new metal version for about 350 dollars, or maybe a sheet of
plywood with a few 2x6's could become a nice low budget home made dump
box for your golf cart. Soon this project will move from my imagination
to the Wetknee drawing board once the storage
building project gets wrapped up.
We are thrilled with how the new labels turned out for the automatic chicken waterer.
Anna did a great job on the drawing.
It's good to know someone who knows someone in the label business.
Thanks, Jayne.
The
regular reader may have noticed several changes to our site over the
last few weeks. First, my sweet brother helped me turn our archives
into a much more usable format. You can now browse through past
entries by year and month. So, if you get busy and miss a week of
our blog, it's easy to check back in and catch up in one
gulp. Alternatively, why not read back over last year's posts
to see how much our farm has changed in the last twelve months?
Meanwhile, I put some extra ads at the top of the page. I
appreciate no one whining and complaining --- I hope the ads don't
impinge too much on your experience. Including some advertising
on the blog helps fund our adventure so that we can put in lots of time
experimenting and relaying our experiences to you rather than getting a
real job. If you haven't lately, please go window shopping
on some of our advertising sponsors' sites. (Alternatively, if
you're morally
opposed to advertising, feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed and read
our posts in your own, ad-free reader.)
Finally, I've started blogging part-time over on our microbusiness ebook site.
If you're interested in learning tidbits about starting a home-based
business to fund your own homestead adventure, I hope you'll subscribe
to our home-based business blog.
I'll probably be posting over there two or three times a week.
Okay, now I'll return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of
leaves, leaves, leaves!
It's been almost a week now since we upgraded
the rear tires on the golf cart and the only regret I have is that we
didn't do this as soon as we liberated her from the nice and clean
campground that she came from. I would guess that our ground grippage
has doubled in comparison to the traction cables we had rigged on her
before.
We
got back home Thursday after dark, so I was shocked the next morning
when I stumbled out of bed, looked out the window, and saw huge blobs
of color on the hillside. Autumn leaves!
Sunday, the cloudy weather broke for a few hours, and I took Lucy and
the camera out in the woods to explore. Mushrooms had popped up
all over and freshly fallen leaves were strewn around them.
Closer to home, our shiitake logs were all coated in mushrooms, despite
not being soaked in weeks. I guess this is perfect mushroom
weather --- cool and wet.
And now, Monday morning, the ground is thick with our first frost and
temperatures are in the mid 20s. Surely we haven't skipped
straight to winter?
Mark wants to live in a
round house some day, and I have to admit that the idea has merit every
time I go visit Joey's yurt. The circles and lines in the yurt
always capture my interest and I end up taking photos that could almost
be abstract, like the one on the left.
Joey considered taking the yurt down for the winter, but instead he
bought a Two
Dog Stove, specially designed for safe use in tents. The
stove is so small that Joey was able to carry it in by himself soon
after our most
recent flood. Setup took mere minutes with the ultra-cool
telescoping stove pipe --- no need to laboriously fit pieces together;
just grab both ends and puuuullll.... I'm curious to see how well
the stove keeps Joey warm during his wintry visits to the farm.
Honeymoon, day 1. We drove south out of
the mountains of Virginia all the way down to the flatlands of
Alabama. Roadside pine trees push their way in amid the hardwoods
I'm used to and an unfamiliar grass coats the edge of the
blacktop. We don't stop for me to botanize, although we do pass a
man pulled off on the side of a six lane highway by a lake, fishing
pole in hand.
Down south, the humidity has not yet lifted to give way to a crisp,
mountain fall. I'm a homebody most of the time, but I love the
feeling of covering new territory, even if it is pavement and
buildings. Mark and I sleep fitfully and wake up early, in a
different time zone, ready to explore a Native American mound!
(Nothing photogenic yet on our trip, so this is a picture of the lemon
tree soon after we brought it inside to prepare for our trip.
Huckleberry enjoyed the new addition to his living space.)
The wringer
washer is working again with a small leak, which is a bit smaller
than before.
I think silicone was a bad choice for this problem due to the nature of
the metal in question, but I went for it because it's what I had on
hand.
Next time I think I'll take john wilson's advice and use some of that
fiberglass bondo stuff when trying to merge this type of metal with a
hard plastic.
I found out today that our Maytag wringer washer is the model E2L, the
longest running production of any of the wringer machines. The run
started in 1945 and the last one was made in 1983.
Judging by how brittle our discharge hose was I'm guessing ours is
closer to the 1945 era. I tried building one back from scrap pieces and
2 layers of silicone. Tomorrow will be the test run to see if this
operation is a viable solution without any leaking.
Wednesday night reached
a low of 37 F --- dangerously close to the frost. We're not ready
to light our first fire, so it took a while for us to emerge from our
nightly cocoons. When I did get up, Strider was unusually
affectionate, nestling down beside me as I read my morning blogs, and
even Lucy didn't seem quite so keen on uncurling herself before her
morning walk.
The great thing about sudden cold weather, though, is wildlife.
"Cold-blooded" animals aren't ready to hibernate yet, but the chilly
temperatures make them slow down. While weeding, I got a great
shot of a tiny Pickerel Frog. Usually, Pickerel Frogs are the
fastest amphibians on our farm, pushing off with those long hind legs
and disappearing before my mind even registers "frog." But not
today!
And still yet a bit more of the liquid nails to the time battered roof
of our trailer. Each dab of glue getting us that much closer to a
completely leak proof home.
I was working on a small structure to protect
the firewood today. Stage 1 is to obtain 4 really long posts to work as
the frame. It will be like a mini pole barn without the walls.
Reducing our nearby cedar tree population has been on the list of
things to do for a while due to the fungal disease known as cedar
apple rust.
It's always especially sweet when you can get 2 things marked off the
list with just one task, although we still have several more cedars
that need to come down.
Read all of the entries about
our Firewood Shed Building Project.
The project took a couple of afternoons and cost about $5.
Now
that it's over, I think I understand the point of a wedding. It's
the one time in your life when you can count on the people you care
about to show up together and at least look each other in the eye ---
the bare minimum for community formation. Mark's uncle and my dad
talked about tinkers, my college buddy and my brother talked about
Debian, and every sibling I own came together under one picnic shelter
for a few hours.
Although
to many women, their wedding is their "big day," I now realize that in
a proper world the ceremony is not really about the bride and
groom. It's about forming connections between two circles of
family and friends, hoping that maybe something will stick. After
a week of angst and tearing out my hair, it's pretty funny that I
finally figured out the point of our wedding after the fact!
I couldn't resist the urge to grab the camera for a close up view of my
window spider embraced in a fierce battle with a wasp 3 times its size.
After several tries I got lucky and seemed to have captured the moment
when the spider demonstrates control by securing all the legs of the
wasp into one spot as if he's been handcuffed. You can notice less fight in the buzz of his wings
and an overall feeling of giving up.
If you listen close you can hear the mule garden deer deterrent in the background.
If Mark and I seem a bit flaky this week, it's
because we're planning a big party for four or five dozen of our
closest friends and relatives on Saturday. We figured we owed
them a get-together for running off to get
married in secret last December. My original goal was to grow
a lot of the food for the picnic ourselves, but it seemed that every
crop I earmarked for the party --- tomatoes, potatoes, etc. --- failed
miserably. So we've been buying a lot of food, and tidying up the
farm so that it looks more presentable.
Throwing a party for masses of people where I'll have to be the center
of attention is up there on my list of nightmares (right after being a
long distance truck driver, in case you're curious.) So I've been
using mowing therapy to keep myself calm. My favorite method of
mowing is to spend time up front getting the difficult edges so that I
can then walk in easy circle after circle, ending up smack dab in the
center of the area. I wish it was so simple to find the exact
center of worry circles....
Since this is a homesteading blog, not an angst blog, I'll end with a
little factoid. We took the mulching bag off the mower for my
therapy this week because the grass is starting to go to seed. As
someone (Everett?) warned us when we first got our mower, grass
clippings only make great mulch when there are no weed seeds
involved! If your lawn is made up of cool season grasses, chances
are they're going to seed now too, so put those clippings in the worm
bin or on the compost pile (or just let them fall back down and feed
the lawn.)
When we first moved to the farm we had fantasies of owning our own
mini-tractor. Once we did the math and figured out just how many times
we would really need such a piece of equipment we scaled down the dream
to a golf cart.
I've discovered it's far more efficient to hire out what little tractor
work we need. Today we got 6 tons of crushed cinder blocks for 40 bucks
delivered. The same guy is half way through scooping it up and
spreading it around to troubled spots on our driveway for an equally
reasonable fee.
It sure beats filling up 5 gallon buckets and spreading it around the
old fashioned way.
Like Anna said this morning, we had a few
visitors drop by yesterday, and I still can't get over what they were
thinking as they made the hike back here.
What they heard was a lot of banging from the home made deer
deterrents, what they assumed was that we were "working like mules
back here!"
The nice picture of the handsome mule is from the Blue
Ridge Blog, which has some really nice photos of farm life on a
similar frequency as our own here.
I wonder if our other neighbor within ear shot has the same
misconception of our work day, and if I should make a point to let them
in on the secret to working like a mule without breaking a sweat?
Summer and fall are starting
to intertwine in the woods, just like they are in the garden. Our
"unused" 56 acres really pull their weight, providing us with unlimited
natural beauty and a great buffer from our neighbors.
That said, a few neighbors made the half mile trek back to our trailer
Saturday afternoon, beers in hand. One suggested that we could
sell the siding from our hundred year old barn for $17 per board
foot. This price seems phenomenal to me --- could it have been
the beer speaking? Surely our barn isn't worth tens of thousands
of dollars?
I woke up just before
dawn on Thursday, shocked that the sky wasn't yet awake at 6:30
am. Even after the sun came up, it stayed behind the hill,
settling already into its sulky winter pattern. I was able to
weed in the shade until 11 am --- which I have to admit felt pretty
good given current warm temperatures!
This is our upper garden, where the tomatoes have been ripped out and
replaced by seeds for fall crops. Still, the garden is very alive
with okra, corn, cucumbers, herbs, and next year's strawberries.
Peas and carrots have come up, but I think I may have to replant a
couple of beds due to the cats getting excited by the soft bare soil....
We're in the midst of harvest season on the
farm, gorging ourselves on things like cucumbers, watermelons, and
lettuce while freezing
masses of everything else. So far this week, I've put away a
quart of okra, a gallon of green beans, and about half a gallon each of
pesto and pizza sauce. Still on the horizon for tomorrow are
broccoli and more green beans.
Despite plenty of other farm chores, I stole Wednesday afternoon to
visit the intentional community where my movie star neighbor
lives. There, an ex-nun and I splashed in the river, counting
critters to determine the water quality. Stream sampling was my
very favorite part about my old job, and I was thrilled to realize that
when I'm not getting paid I can do the fun stuff (play in the water and
count the bugs!) rather than just training other folks to do
them. In case you're curious, the river passed with flying
colors, chock full of mayfly larvae.
It was even fun when the ex-nun's car got stuck in the mud and we had
to call the movie star to bring the huge rusty tractor and pull us
out. He and I talked bees while she and I talked blight, then I
headed back home to our own harvest.
I've been feeling autumn
looming all week. Don't get me wrong --- I love autumn --- but on
the farm autumn means that winter will be here soon. No more
drifting through summer. It's time to get serious about stocking
up the harvest, burying our water line the rest of the way, finding
firewood, and building our shed.
For this weekend, though, I'm just enjoying the floral abundance.
The seeds I tossed in the ground this summer are finally starting to
bloom, like the brilliant red zinnia on the right. At the edges
of the woods, goldenrod, joe-pye-weed, wingstem, thistles, jewelweed,
and ironweed are blazing.
In the garden, we're eating our first crisp lettuce with none of the
summer bitterness. Butternut squash vines are dying back as
sugars concentrate in their fruits and the last of our staggered corn
plantings is starting to tassle. Even the air is starting to
smell of autumn --- that first tang of falling leaves. The dog
days of summer are over. It's all downhill from here.
Shame-faced plug: Check out the chicken
waterer that funds this blog.
Based on your assessment
of the property, it's time to make some long term plans. These
plans don't have to be set in stone, of course, but they will
definitely help you prioritize which areas to work on first and will
prevent you from having to move your fruit trees three times.
Start
out with a ten year plan. What are your goals for the next
decade? To grow all of your own food? To live in a forest
garden?
To be running a chicken hatchery as your full time job? What
physical changes to the property will those goals entail? Break
your goals down into manageable chunks and prioritize each one.
Do you plan to build any new structures? If so, where will they
be? Do you need to bury water lines or build driveways?
These steps will be easiest if you put them early in your long range
plan rather than trying to bury a water line through your vegetable
garden, the way we did.
If you want to have an orchard, pasture, or garden, it's best to start
planning them now. If possible, plan your trees where they will
shade your house in the summer but won't block passive solar heating in
the winter. Gardens are most effective if they are very close to
the house so that you can step out the door and pull a weed. Make
a
copy of your map and add your long range goals onto it.
This post is part of our Starting Out on the Homestead lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
When
we finally moved onto the farm, I had spent years dreaming and planning
about what I wanted our eventual homestead to look like. I was so
excited to be realizing my dream that I started planting things
willy-nilly, with the result that a lot of my early effort went for
naught. I wish I'd had the foresight to spend a few days
assessing my property before beginning on any of the projects.
If I could go back in
time, my first step would be to make a map of the
farm. Since most of my property is wooded, I'd just focus on the
areas we plan to to farm for now. Within that area, I'd map
existing structures, water sources (well and creeks), power and
telephone lines, septic systems and/or sewer lines, and
driveways. I'd also keep my eye out for existing cultivated
fields, orchards, or pastures. Fences are very useful --- put
those on the map.
Next, I'd start thinking
about the land as a farm. Which areas
are flat or have little slope? Which areas have good soil or poor
soil? It's very much worth it to send off some soil samples to
the extension service to find out if your soil needs help in certain
areas. But you can also learn a lot by just looking at what's
currently growing in an area --- blackberry brambles are a good sign
because they mean your soil is relatively rich, while broomsedge is
sign of worn out soil. You should use high quality soil for your
garden and orchard, if possible.
This post is part of our Starting Out on the Homestead lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
So we're finally
moving to our little plot of land (an acre in suburbia) at the end of
the month. Now my head is spinning and I don't know where to start. Any
chance you'd do a lunch time series on where to start when you finally
get that homestead rolling?
--- Naomi
That's
a wonderful question, Naomi! The truth is that when I bought our
farm, my head was in a similar state. As a result, it took us
years to actually move here. After that we wasted a lot of time
running around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to figure
out where to start. Hopefully we can save you from making the
same mistakes.
Before we dive right
into the specifics, I'd like to point you to a previous lunchtime
series on the
top qualities you'll need to be a successful homesteader.
I'm going to stick to the nitty gritty in this week's lunchtime series,
but it's worth cultivating the qualities I recommend there too ---
moderate strength, frugality, ties in the community, and pacing.
This post is part of our Starting Out on the Homestead lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
A heavy
duty tarp has a million uses on a farm. Don't waste your time or
money on the lower grade tarps that barely last a few months before
they start showing signs of wear.
We put ours to use today on the roof over a trouble spot that insists
on leaking in the middle of our kitchen. With any luck it will stay dry
long enough to finish up the repair tomorrow.
We installed a new Y splitter to create an
additional sprinkler zone for the garden.
It's made of metal with plastic coating. We started out using one made
entirely of plastic, which was a mistake I won't repeat again.
The plastic version sometimes leaked and eventually cracked.
The goal is to have the irrigation system down to just turning a valve
off and another one on to switch zones. This way we can save more time
for weeding and other wonderful activities on the farm.
I heartily believe that about 85% of Americans
shouldn't have credit cards. If you've ever paid a fee on your
credit card, it's costing you money. If you've ever used a credit
card to pay for an "emergency expense" you should cut it up now.
If you don't obsessively comb over your credit card bill every month to
check every charge, dispute any problem, then pay your bill in full,
you might as well stick with cash. Of course, if you mind having
all of your intimate purchasing details in the hands of a big company,
you should skip this tip too.
But, for the other 15% of you, sign up for a Discover card and start
raking in the cash. Discover has a cashback program which gives
you 1% to 5% of your purchases back as just plain cash. Don't
fall for their affiliate program where you can turn your cashback into
purchases at your favorite stores --- those are impulse buys and you
don't need that stuff.
To make a Discover card work for you, I believe you should have 3 to 6
months of emergency money stashed away in a savings account.
That's the money you spend if something drastic and terrible happens,
rather than pulling out your Discover card.
That said, use your Discover card for every other possible purchase. We keep our expenses
very low, but still end up getting nearly $200 of free money every year.
If you're keeping track at home, that's an infinite return on our
investment since we didn't spend any extra money to get it.
This post is part of our Frugal Living Tips lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
To be completely honest, I started cutting
Mark's hair because I went with him to his hair appointment and didn't
like seeing strange women running their fingers through his hair.
Unfortunately, short-haired folks like Mark need their hair cut every
couple of weeks or they start looking shaggy.
But a trip to the big city every two weeks to shell out $20 and watch
that jealously guarded head become public property was too much for me
to bear. So, instead, I trotted down to Rite-Aid and bought an electric
razor like this one for less than the cost of one haircut. It
comes with attachments which cut hair at several different lengths,
making it pretty simple to keep Mark looking movie-star perfect on the
farm. (Just be sure to keep the blade oiled.) I figure
we've seen about a 2,000% return on our investment so far --- pretty
good!
This post is part of our Frugal Living Tips lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
My day in the sun has finally come --- at
long last, it's cool to be a skinflint. Everyone suddenly wants
to save money, and the simple living magazines are scurrying to tell us
all how to be more frugal. I heartily agree with all of their
tips (which I can't seem to find on the internet), but I know that most
folks aren't going to make huge changes in their lives in the interest
of frugality. Instead, this week's lunchtime series offers four
ways to save money without really changing your lifestyle.
If you put all four of my tips into practice, you could have an extra
$1,000 (or more) in your pocket every year. Whoa! What will
you do with all that extra cash? If you're doing well, why not
tithe 10% of the excess to a charity you believe in? Here are
some of my favorite charities to get you started:
We've just made an improvement to our archive section of
the website. Now you can easily read all previous entries back to back
until you're caught up and feeling the full force of the Walden Effect.
I buy my
freedom with my frugality. --- Vicki Robin
The homesteading dream is all
about freedom. The homesteading life
is all about figuring out what to do with that freedom.
Mark is a great one for reminding me to fill my life with what is truly
important --- family, friends, good books, long baths, walking in the
woods, and petting Huckleberry. Your list may vary.
Follow
your bliss. --- Joseph Campbell
This post is part of our Photos of Homestead Happiness lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
There is
only one success, to be able to spend your life in your own way.
--- Christopher Morely
Getting to experience nearly every day with the person I love is what
makes me truly rich.
Two hour lunchbreaks, excitedly brainstorming project ideas. Full
days in the garden working in synchrony. Spur of the moment trips
brimming with fun and laughter.
I watch our strengths
together bypass our individual weaknesses.
The
problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
--- Lily Tomlin
This post is part of our Photos of Homestead Happiness lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
This grand old toad was hiding under the golf cart one day this
month. As I tempted her toward safety, I could nearly hear the
toad admonishing me. "What's the big rush? Slow down!
Smell the flowers!"
This post is part of our Photos of Homestead Happiness lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
I
get so carried away by our grand vision and the endless nitty gritty it
takes to get there. But isn't the Walden Effect really about the
intangible beauty and serenity of living on the land?
As Guillaume
Apollinaire once said:
Now and
then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
So, this week's lunchtime series is a photo journey toward homestead
happiness. Enjoy!
This post is part of our Photos of Homestead Happiness lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
Remember that book I was typing away at six months ago?
Well, I started it in the rain and I finished it in the rain.
Wednesday's stormy weather gave me the incentive to slog through the
second round of editing, which I hope will be the last time I do
anything major with it. Now it's in the hands of my
collaborators, who will work on formatting and a last round of editing.
I hope to see an actual physical book in my hands by the end of the
summer, early fall at the latest. Even though the book is mostly
local interest (it's a combination trail guide and explanation of
central Appalachian ecology), I'll let you know when copies are out and
looking for a new home.
I finally got around to ripping the bathtub
out of our miniscule bathroom this weekend and lugged it outside under
the sun. By winter, I hope to have constructed a simple bathing
chamber out there with glass walls, a passive solar water heater, and a
simple graywater system. For now, I'm just thrilled to be able to
soak in a bathtub rather than in the washtub. (Yes, I used to
wash up outdoors in the washtub rather than indoors in the bathtub ---
I just don't like bathing indoors if there's another choice.)
Sunday in a
nutshell ---
a plethora of library books to choose between, a purring cat to pet,
double chocolate chip cookies, and a bathtub in the great
outdoors. Is
there really anything better in this world?
I'm
always excited when our readers email me interesting suggestions for
simple living. In fact, I've had three great bits of information
sitting in my inbox for nearly a month, just waiting to be turned into
a lunchtime series. Unfortunately, three never grew to four, so I
kept putting it off.
Luckily, another tip came in just this morning. I hope you enjoy
this week's gems of homesteading wisdom!
This post is part of our Readers' Tips lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
I wandered into Mark's room and saw that he
was listening to the Agroinnovations
podcast. "Tell us more about your back to the land story," I
heard.
Then Mark's voice popped out of the computer. "Well, like a lot
of stories, it starts with a girl..."
Awww! :-) I had to listen to the whole thing, and I hope you will
too. This was the first time Mark had been interviewed for a
podcast, so he was a bit nervous. But I suspect you'll like
hearing his story as much as I did.
As part of our recession-proof income diversification, I've been
leading a group of ecotourists around the area this week. I've
had a blast, getting paid to wander around in the woods identifying
flowers. If I weren't such an introvert that I require an hour of
decompression for each hour I spend in the company of people, I'd do
this more often.
After three inches of rain in a week, the creek finally rose.
Now, I want you to imagine us carrying three boxes of buzzing bees
(screened boxes, not cardboard boxes) across this footbridge.
Then hopping across those stepping stones and scrambling up a muddy
bank. It was quite an adventure!
We
enjoyed a wonderfully rainy weekend. About an inch and a half
fell over the course of two days --- the perfect speed to soak the soil
and sprout those seeds I planted last week.
I also put our house plants outside to harden off in the rain.
Cloudy skies mean relatively warm nighttime temperatures, so I can be
lazy and leave the plants out all night. Usually, hardening off
is a maddening series of carrying your plants out in the day and in at
night, worrying about too much sun and too much cold. Our citrus
in their five gallon pots are not a joy to relocate over and over, so I
am thrilled to get to go the lazy route.
Meanwhile, the US
Drought Monitor tells me that the extreme southwest tip of
Virginia, where we live, has finally popped out of drought
conditions. Awesome!!!! Thanks, rain!
A couple of you have asked me if you can
be notified when new comments are posted on a blog entry. I told
you "no", but it turns out that, unbeknownst to me, there's been a way
to do that all along. When you make a comment on a post, you'll
notice that there's a little button at the top of the completed comment
which says "RSS". Click there and you'll be able to subscribe to
an RSS feed of the comments, just the way you can subscribe to an RSS
feed of our blog. If you want to be notified every time there are
comments on any post, click "Recent Comments" on the sidebar to the
left, then click on the "RSS" button at the top of the page you get
sent to.
While I'm on a technical note, I'm hoping one of you can help me out
with formatting our blog in Internet Explorer. I highly recommend
that everyone use Firefox
(or, really, any browser except IE) since Firefox is faster, free, and
protects you from web-borne viruses. But I'm aware that the 50%
of you who use IE get a messed up format from our blog --- the sidebar
looks twice as big as it should which makes the pictures eat our
words. If anyone out there is adept at finding a way to work
around IE's problems with tables, please drop me an email and I'll send you
our template to look at. I'd be eternally grateful!
Once in a while, I ponder what it would be like to live in the tropics,
where I could grow fresh food year round. At other times, I
marvel over the deep snow of the north. But the truth is that I
adore our seasons so much that I couldn't live anywhere else for long.
Yes, this is another spring adoration post. Trilling toads in the
night! Tulip-trees just starting to put out yellow-green
leaves. White dashes of serviceberry and pink patches of redbud
on the hillside. Dogwood flowers unfurling outside our
window. And the hillsides alive with the sound...er, color...of
trilliums.
Over the next few months,
Mark filled the gaping holes in the trailer's walls with double-glazed
windows which we'd gotten free or cheap over the last couple of
years. We ripped up ancient carpet to reveal not-too-bad
linoleum, hauled out a broken washer and dryer, and mended a few leaks
in the roof. Overall, I'd say we put maybe $2,500 into our 500
square foot home --- $5 per square foot --- and the vast majority of
that went to the trailer-hauling company.
There are two major downsides to living in a trailer. First of
all, your snooty friends will sneer a bit (but who cares?) More
important, the insulation is minimal. However, the positives
vastly outweight the negatives. After our initial startup cost,
we can now live on next to nothing. After all, while most folks
around us are paying rent or a mortgage, our housing bill comes down to
a measly $200 per year that we throw at the county in property taxes.
I consider the trailer one of Mark's biggest strokes of geniuses
because it has let us work very part time jobs and pour our hearts and
souls into becoming more self-sufficient. If you subscribe to
voluntary simplicity, you could do much worse than scouring the
countryside for a free trailer to live in.
This post is part of our Low Cost Housing lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
We were lucky that our free
trailer was small --- 10 feet wide by 50 feet long. Because when
we got the trailer-hauling guys to come look at our property, they said
a larger trailer would have been impossible to move in. Even for
our tiny trailer, we had to cut big openings in the forest at each
curve in the driveway to give the trailer room to maneuver
around. And we had to wait and wait and wait until the driest day
of the year when a bulldozer wouldn't get stuck in our floodplain.
My father was never keen on the idea of me living in a trailer, and
though I have happily ignored that piece of advice, I wish I'd taken
his
advice to absent myself from the farm on moving day. At a rate of
hundreds of dollars per hour, I could see my small stash of backup cash
slipping away with every hangup. I watched our crew jack the
trailer up so that it could roll across the creek, my heart in my
throat, and I gulped as a low-hanging branch ripped a hole in the tin
wall. But, finally, the bulldozer yanked our new/old trailer into
the spot we'd mowed for it between the blackberry brambles. Home!
This post is part of our Low Cost Housing lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Our initial search for a trailer took us far
afield. We hunted through classified ads, looking at trailers in
the $1,000 to $2,000 range. The world was astonishingly full of
trailers for sale --- big ones, small ones, trailers reeking of cat
pee, and fresh new trailers which seemed as fancy as any home I'd lived
in.
Then reality struck. The price of the trailer wasn't the big
consideration; location was. We were going to have to hire a
trailer-hauling company to transport our new trailer and those
companies didn't come cheap, so the closer our find was to the farm,
the better. We stopped reading classified ads and started rolling
down back roads near our farm. Within hours, we stumbled across a
trailer park fifteen minutes away and asked its proprietor if he had a
trailer he was willing to sell for $2,000 or less.
"You can have that one there for free," he said, pointing at a
1960s model, windowless and empty at the edge of the park. "If
you haul it off." And that's how we found our new home.
This post is part of our Low Cost Housing lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
You won't see trailers
discussed much in the homesteading world. Everyone wants to build
their dream home, and I have to admit that I began my homesteading
voyage with a similar inclination. I researched strawbale houses,
earthships, and cob. I drew floorplans and crunched the numbers
on passive solar heating.
And then I crunched some less enticing numbers. Using a very
lowball figure of $20 per square foot, a twenty by twenty foot house
would cost $8,000 to put together, plus months of labor. Neither
Mark nor I was interested in getting a full time job just to pay for
building a house, and we knew that if we jumped into the rat-race we'd
have to hire folks to help us build the house since we'd no longer have
time to do the building ourselves. When I sat down and thought
about it, I realized that what I wanted was to be on the land right
away, to be putting energy into creating a wonderful garden.
"What about a trailer?" Mark asked tentatively. "We could move in
almost right away, and then if we want to build a house later, we
can."
As usual, his suggestion was brilliant. A trailer it was!
This post is part of our Low Cost Housing lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Mark and I spent lunch on
Saturday brainstorming our biggest mistakes made on the farm, hoping to
come up with five "don't repeat our mistakes" for a lunchtime
series. Between my lack of memory and his optimistic bent, we
were unable to list more than three big mistakes though ---
buying mules when neither of us has dealt with equines, planting fruit
trees before we had the infrastructure to care for them, and...was
there something else?
Then we wandered off into a discussion of the top five things we'd done
right as early homesteaders. Our trailer quickly leapt into the
number one position. I know that many folks consider living in a
trailer a miserable failure, but for us it's been a stunning
success. And so this week's lunchtime lecture series is all about
the trailer --- how we got it, why we got it, and why we love it.
This post is part of our Low Cost Housing lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Okay, so I promise you a post with substance tomorrow. Let me
just tell you that in the last five days, the farm has turned so green
it took my breath away.
I got so excited by the
marvelous world of gluten that I forgot to mention that there will be
no lunchtime series this week. Mark and I are hitting the road
tomorrow for a trip to the "north" (Pennsylvania) to visit a bunch of
friends. Blogging will be sporadic until Sunday when we are home
again.
Luckily, my brother is able to come babysit the farm --- thanks,
Joey! The one problem with having 13 animals depending on you is
that you can't just run off on a whim, even if you plan your life so
that you otherwise could. Be forewarned!
In addition to the
napkins Brandy made us, we also bought a slew of very sturdy cloth
grocery bags from her a few months ago. Mark, like Mike, had a
really hard time taking the leap away from paper towels, but for me the
grocery bags are the largest challenge.
People do look at you funny
when you bring your own grocery bags to the store in rural America, but
the really hard part is remembering to bring in the bags in the first
place. We've figured out a few simple tricks which help us steer
clear of plastic:
Keep the cloth
grocery bags in the car. When you live a ten minute walk from
your car and a fifteen minute drive from the grocery store, chances are
you won't go back to pick up forgotten bags stashed under the kitchen
sink.
Put "cloth bags"
on the grocery list and circle it. Nothing like a reminder when
you get to the store.
Put Mark in charge
of the grocery shopping --- he has the memory and is far more likely to
remember the bags!
Good luck --- and
remember that every little step you make away from disposables is one
step toward self-sufficiency!
This post is part of our Drop the Disposables lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
(Editor's
note from Anna --- the sanitary pad article yesterday was by Brandy
too, of course. I just put my name on it accidentally!)
Tell folks you use cloth
diapers and immediately get looks of surprise,
horror and disgust. Yes, I use cloth, but these are not your
mother's
diapers. They're much more absorbent, especially for night-time
--- the
only leaks I've had have been from disposables. There's nothing
creepier in the morning than pulling off a diaper heavy with the
cellulose gel that disposables are filled with. Cloth diapers can
easily pay for themselves in a year or less, depending on the type you
use, and there are few things more gratifying than knowing you will never run out.
If you've got television,
you've most
likely seen the Always commercial telling you how their plastic pads
are going to make your life easier, fresher, and yes, happier. The truth is, plastic
disposable pads aren't all that great--they're
full of all sorts of chemicals, very pricey and make weird noises in
public restrooms. They're also totally not breathable and they're
boring. Yup, I said boring.
Cloth pads make sense in
many ways. They're a much greener
choice--no weird gels to soak up exponential amounts of Aunty Flo, no
pads piling up in your local landfill. They're highly breathable
and I
no longer experience the grown-up diaper rash that I had with plastic
pads. Some women find their periods are shorter and lighter with
cloth
pads, and this has been true for me. Like other cloth items such
as
napkins and diapers, you buy or make them once and use them for
years.
You can even use them postpartum. For less than $200, you can
have
menstrual protection to last five years or more.
When I first suggested to
Mike that we stop using paper towels, he was skeptical. It's easy
to
see why--they're the go-to fix for almost any mess. Tear one off
to
clean up a spill on the floor or use them to drain our beloved
bacon.
It was a hard sell, harder in fact than any other green switch we
made. But really, it's so easy and inexpensive to replace your
paper
towels with more sustainable options....
This post is part of our Drop the Disposables lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
When I was young in the mountains, I sewed
cloth napkins on my 1946
Singer sewing machine. I made red plaid ones for Italian meals
and fun
butterflies for Summer feasts. I carefully packed them away. . .
Now
that I am married and we have our own home, the napkins are being well
used and I've added quite a few more to the collection. Three
years
in,
do cloth napkins have a practical use in the home? You bet!
We love
using cloth napkins and our guests feel extra special when they stay
for meals. They're a simple, frugal solution to multi-napkin
meals
(like ribs and fried chicken) and at-the-table
spills. We're not tired of folding them and when we ate meals
away
from home, I packed them in lunches. They're also a great way to
entertain babies honing their fine motor skills.
We've decided to add 5 medium daffodil bulbs
and some chamomile plants to this month's giveaway.
With any luck your 5 flower bulbs will multiply into a small daffodil
army within 10 years if you take the time to separate them out
once they get big enough to reproduce.
Those of you with long
memories will recall that I was thinking of
printing up some notecards with Walden Effect images on them a few
weeks ago. That got bogged down in my native distaste for
marketing --- I love making art, but the matting, framing, and selling
sides of it drive me nuts.
Then the internet came to my rescue! Imagekind lets me upload
my images, then they turn them into prints of various sizes or
notecards whenever someone asks for them. It's a win-win
situation --- I get to share my art and bring in a little spending
money without having to find a clean, dry place in our tiny trailer to
store boxes of prints and notecards. (Be forewarned that I never
physically touch the art, so I obviously can't sign the prints.)
Best of all, you can set up a free account as long as you don't want
more than 24 images up there.
So, if you'd like to send a little Walden Effect to your friends, check
out our Imagekind page.
And that's it for our monthly dose of advertising.
When March begins, the
speedwells and dead nettle and bittercress start to bloom in the
yard. Then come the first tree flowers --- elm and maple twigs
with little blooms you would hardly notice unless you were looking for
them. But for me, spring isn't really here until the first early
spring ephemerals pop up in the woods. Monday was the day!
I found a grand total of two hepaticas, each semi-closed in the rain,
but I know that by next week at this time the woods will be brimming
with life!
The weather has cooled back down, which is
probably a good thing since spring was starting to feel a bit like a
runaway mule. I haven't pruned the rest of my fruit trees yet,
but the peach buds are already starting to swell and show their first
signs of color (green, not pink yet.) As you can see, the wild
hazels I plan to transplant into my forest garden are already in full
bloom. Whoa, whoa, whoa!
For those of you with fruit trees already starting to bloom (Mom,
Daddy), here's a very useful chart
to show you which temperatures can harm them. It's worth watching
the weather forecast and your fruit tree buds very carefully at this
time of year, since you can often protect trees in an emergency by
covering them with
sheets or even turning on a sprinkler. We can't have a repeat of
last year's fruitless summer!
While Mark finishes up King Corn and I finish up Letters from the Hive, I thought
I'd take this chance to get to know all of our new readers. Time
for a poll! Feel free to add any additional thoughts in the
comments section.
The books say that Eastern
Phoebes don't live in our area over the winter, but birders will tell
you that a lot of them do hang about. I'm not quite sure what
these insectivores eat in the dead of winter, but even I could see the
bugs coming out of the woodwork in the last couple of days. So I
guess it's no wonder that the phoebes also made an appearance, with one
hunting from an old pea trellis yesterday morning and two more
serenading us as we ate supper outside.
I even saw the season's first butterfly Tuesday --- a comma (or maybe a
question mark --- I need a book to distinguish the two.) This
time the book told me that the sighting wasn't too far out of the
ordinary, but I couldn't help being a bit fearful of the big G.W.
(global warming, that is) as we dip down from zone 6 and into zone 7
(according to the National
Arbor Day Foundation's revised zone map.) One of my gardening
friends plants everything a couple of weeks earlier than she used to,
and says that we definitely have dipped into a warmer zone.
Spring has come --- if you forgot to Spring
Ahead last night, now's the time to change your clocks!
Meanwhile, I'm revelling in the beautiful weather. We're only
about 80% through our water-line-burying project, but it's so warm that
our frozen lines thawed out. I was able to fill up the washtub
and do laundry without hoisting five gallon buckets of water out of the
tank! Now that's spring!
Today required a trip into a nearby town for some tire
repair, a spark plug purchase, and a library visit. I discovered a park
down by the river which was jumping up and down while yelling "come and
take some pictures of me".
I'm always intrigued by the waste material that can be found alongside
the railroad tracks in this country. These heavy steel plates are what
seem to hold the actual track in place and I guess they need to be
replaced from time to time? I wonder if they can be used for
anything non railroad related?
Today was very wet. Constant rain is just what
I needed to troubleshoot the intermittent electrical trouble on the
1990 Ford Festiva.
Luckily today was moist enough to provoke the problem, which is the
engine turning over but not starting, or when it does start it
sometimes stalls.
It seems like I fixed it by unplugging the main distributor wire from
the ignition coil and firmly re-seating it back into place. I drove it
all afternoon in the pouring rain with no other problems. I think I may
add a bead of silicone to the connector cover to decrease the chance of
any more moisture getting inside. The real test will be to see if the
problem doesn't pop up again next week or next month.
It seems like this winter has been abnormally
cold --- all of the neighbors agree, although I haven't actually
crunched the numbers to find out if it's true. We were all ready
for spring during last week's stunning bout of sun and warmth.
Time to wash loads of laundry and dry them on the line, rip off our
long johns, and bask in the sun.
Of course, it is still
February and cold weather is with us again. Luckily, spring has
begun and I can let the snowdrops, the singing birds, and the early
morning sun remind me of that fact. Even the daffodils are
starting to poke up. Soon....
I hope you've had fun
exploring the world of barnyard tracks! If you want to learn more
about tracking, here are two of my favorite tracking books:
Peterson's
Field Guide to the Mammals --- This isn't really a tracking book,
but drawings of tracks are scattered throughout. I photocopied
all of the common ones onto one 11X14 sheet of paper ---
perfect for carrying out on the field on a snowy day!
Field
Guide to Tracking Animals in the Snow --- Once again, I photocopied
out one overview page which I carry with me in the field. It
breaks tracks down into walkers and bounders, and then gives you hints
to distinguish species from there.
Enjoy!
This post is part of our Farm Tracking 101 lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
I finished up stage two of the footbridge
repair today by hammering some metal fence posts deep into the ground
to serve as an anchor for the support base.
Some concrete mixed into the holes makes a good bond with the top of
the fence post and hopefully will hold during the next heavy water
incident.
Once you've learned the
cats, the dogs, and the bounders, you've really learned the most common
tracks. Here are a few more common and/or distinctive tracks you
should be aware of. (I had to forage for some of these
images from the internet --- click to see their source.)
The deer is impossible to confuse with any other species (unless you
live in an area with moose or elk.) The divided hooves may or may
not have small back hooves showing.
If you guessed dog for yesterday's mystery
track (shown here), you were right. It's actually two tracks on
top of each other, but not exactly registering, making the track look
longer than it actually is and muddying the shape. But the nails
in the front give it away. Domestic dog!
Now to those pesky bounders. When I see
a set of two or four tracks together with a big space between, I
usually haul out my primary tracking tool --- the ruler. The
teensy tiny bounder tracks are shrews, mice, or voles. Next size
up comes chipmunks, then squirrels, then rabbits. Be sure to
measure both the length of the tracks and the space between each set of
tracks --- both are distinctive. Read more....
This post is part of our Farm Tracking 101 lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Now that you can tell your
walkers from your bounders, let's take a look at two major walker
groups --- the canines and the felines. You'll have plenty of
opportunity to work on telling them apart when you track your household
pets, and the knowledge you'll gain there will carry over into figuring
out if a fox, bobcat, coyote, or mountain lion is lurking around your henhouse.
Basically, large or small, a cat is a cat and a dog is a dog.
I've felt so alive ever since I recovered from
my bout of food poisoning. The world seems brighter,
clearer...and I want to post constantly. Bear with me. I'm
sure I'll get jaded soon.
Tonight is the full moon and I couldn't resist sharing a few of my
first night photos. I haven't quite figured out all the settings
on the camera, but the photos turned out interesting nonetheless. Earlier (in daylight), I
watched a Song Sparrow muddle through its first song of the spring as
it perched on a fencepost. The bird seemed a bit confused,
leaving out the distinctive first three notes and settling into the
warbling part with vigor. The cats even got into the spring
weather, begging to be let out repeatedly. No couch sitters on
the farm today!
With all of the snow
we've been getting this winter, I thought now might be a good time to
talk about one of my favorite snowy activities --- tracking. I've
decided to call this lunchtime series "Farm Tracking 101" because I'll
cover all of the basics you need to tell your chicken tracks from your
dog tracks and to figure out who's been nosing around your chicken
coop. I'll mention my favorite books and tools later, but for
now, let's dive right in!
Take a look at the two photos below. Yup, I've intentionally made
them too small to tease apart the shape of individual tracks. But
you can probably tell they're made by two different animals,
right? Read
more...
This post is part of our Farm Tracking 101 lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Lest you think the simple life is all farm
fresh eggs and sunny afternoons, I have to admit there are darker
days. I whipped up some tuna salad on Tuesday which really didn't
agree with us --- in fact, it disagreed with me so much that I ended up
throwing up at 3 am in the snow. And at 4 am. And at 10
am. And at noon.
Mark was less visibly affected, though still weakened by the bad
fish. He was able to keep the fire going while all I was able to
do was pull on my coat for the endless treks outside. Thursday,
we were each a bit perkier --- I made it to the sofa instead of
spending all day in bed, and Mark even managed to go get some fresh
wood. But we're both a bit under the weather, which is why my
posts have been a bit low on details. I figured you really don't
want a photo of Lucy excitedly licking up frozen vomit....
Even on the darkest days, though, the simple life doesn't lose its
appeal. Sure, I haven't quite gotten up the strength to heat wash
water to bathe with, but I had two warm cats on my chest Thursday
morning who seem to have imbued me with their energy. It's nice
to know that all we really need is someone able-bodied enough to keep
the home fires burning and feed the animals --- everything else is
optional.
Mark tells me that his head
is full of useless bits of trivia from his TV-watching days --- like
the plotlines of Gilligan's Island episodes. My head is instead
full of a different kind of useless trivia. Like how rotting
box-elder turns pink with delicate black lines but rotting walnut turns
turquoise....
I took this picture today in the middle of my evening walk with Lucy.
I've heard from four separate people around here that this bridge is
haunted by an older lady wearing a long night gown, although I have yet
to speak to anybody who's actually seen anything ghost like.
Maybe someday I'll get lucky and snap a picture of said ghost in the
future, if there is actually any such thing?
Another inch and a quarter of rain fell
Tuesday, sending me scurrying to the USGS website to check in
on our drought conditions. Here in southwest Virginia, we're
still in a moderate drought --- I dream of downgrading to abnormally
dry.
We just need 6 to 9 inches of rain in the next month to end this
drought. If drought amelioration were a fundraising campaign, I
could totally work with those numbers, but I'm afraid that my pep talks
will hold little sway over the weather.
I found out recently that you can listen
to the Writer's
Almanac for free at their website and catch up on past shows that
you've missed.
It's a five minute gem of a radio show that always seems to educate,
entertain, and inspire me with its style and content.
I love the way he weaves in yummy slices of historical trivia, for
example, "On this day in 1978, the Commerce Department, which oversees
the National Weather Service, announced that hurricanes would no longer
be named exclusively for women."
The smooth voice of Garrison Keillor
is the host of the show and he
always signs off with the warm greeting "Be well, do good work, and
stay in touch." It's like hearing from your favorite English teacher on
what's got him or her excited that day without the annoying kid in the
back throwing spit balls.
I'm thinking of printing
notecards using some of my recent photographs. It's hard
to choose photos that will look good small since I've seen them all
large, though, so I'm hoping to get some advice from those of you who
can see the images with fresh eyes. Thanks in advance for your
input!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
(Wrapped around both the front and back of the notecard.)
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
(Wrapped around both the front and back of the notecard.)
Want
to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the
RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed.