There's always so much work to do on the farm that we never seem to have time to be proactive, only reactive.  Water is a prime example.  Since the summer, we've had "bury water lines" on our to do list, but it never quite made it up onto the tasks we meant to conquer in any given week.  So when the first really cold spell hit, our lines froze and we were out of water.

Over the next week, Mark and I plan to get the water lines buried and the problem solved.  But in the short term, the dishes were piling up a foot above the sink.  So Sunday afternoon Mark and I set out in pursuit of immediate water.  We loaded some buckets into the club car and drove down to the creek through winter mud --- the kind that sits over half frozen ground and lets none of the recent rain drain away from the surface.

Our journey occurred before Mark installed the ice chains, so it was no surprise that we got stuck a few times and had to work our way free.  Mark lifted up the offending portion of the golf cart with the spud bar while I hit the acceleration and also pushed the cart along with one foot --- kinda like in the Flintstones but with my foot sticking out the side of the cart instead of through a hole in the floor.  Soon enough we'd filled up buckets at the creek and strapped them in place for the slipping, sliding journey home.

When we pulled up at the trailer door, both of us splattered with mud and water, our buckets had lost half of the water they'd started out with.  But both of us were laughing and invigorated from the adventure --- our buckets were indeed half full!

We have had the Super Splitter wood maul for over a year now and it's already showing signs of fatigue. A few weeks ago the maul head came apart from the fiberglass handle. A bit of electrical tape helped it stay put for a couple of days, but now we need a more serious solution.

I have heard good things about Gorilla glue and for this application an adhesive that expands might just be the answer. If the handle was broke or cracked in any way I would switch to something wooden, but I'm willing to give this one a second chance.

The real test will be if it stays put under the intense stress of log splitting?

Day one of my freelancing life --- I would be quite happy if every day was exactly like yesterday.

While the bone from Daddy's Thanksgiving ham simmered into a pot of bean soup, I drew a cartoon of a medical researcher marrying an academic for my first (second?) cousin once removed's medical research journal.  Then I took a break to split some wood, help Mark bring my broken car to the mechanic, and chat over email with the co-author of a natural history book I'll be working on for the next little while.  All while fat flakes of snow settled over the farm.

The late Helen and Scott Nearing, famous back to the landers, divided their days into thirds --- one part for "bread" labor, one part for the arts, and one part for social and civic interactions.  I know that my outlook on life is much better when I similarly divide up my time, though the happiest division for me (since my bread labor more often involves sitting in front of the computer) is one part bread labor, one part arts, one part physical work, and one part feeding our souls through home cooking.  I had lost sight of this happy medium over the last year, and I'm glad to have refound it.

(I admit I'm also thrilled that I managed to pull together some passable drawings of people, which I profess to being unable to draw.  I think I dreamed about that medical researcher last night after tossing so many drafts across the Atlantic Ocean to be perused.)

Tomorrow, we'll be adding dozens of new livestock to our family.  Yup, it's time for worms!!!

Mark has been trying to talk me into worms for months, but I've resisted since I hate to take any scraps away from the chickens and I don't like using up indoors space.  (Outdoor worm bins don't work in cold weather.)  But I was won over by the promise of rich compost tea to help our houseplants thrive, and by the free worms being offered to us by Dennis from Florida.

The simple worm bin I built this afternoon is based loosely on Whatcom County's Cheap and Easy Worm bin, but is only a one tray bin with a large reservoir beneath to collect the compost tea.  Many sites recommend simply placing the lid of the container under your bin to collect the liquid, but that seems prone to spillage and I want lots of tea.  Also note the air holes drilled around  the sides and in the bottom of the worm bin tray.

I filled the bin halfway up with wet leaves, including a few handfuls of dirt and eggshells, then covered the bedding with a wet piece of cardboard.  Once the worms arrive and settle in for a few days, we'll begin to feed them.  I'm looking forward to learning about the wonders of vermiculture!

For future reference, the best way to feed chicken or turkey feet to your dogs is whole and raw.  Unfortunately, the turkey feet I got a week and a half ago came with instructions to cook them for a long time until the meat fell off the bones.  So I did, using up all of the propane in our outdoor cooker's tank then finishing the feet on our kitchen stove where they stunk up the entire house.

Once cooked, turkey feet turn into a gelatinous mass which will stay on your hands until scrubbed extensively with scads of soap and hot water.  I gave up on trying to pick the meat off the bones after about five minutes and threw it all back in the pot to cook some more.  Eventually, I strained off the liquid to add to Lucy's dog food, wasting all of the meat, skin, and bones.  Next time I'll know better!

Still, Lucy adored her dog food, and I was thrilled to have finally taken the time to make a week's worth so that I won't have to feed her dry when I'm too busy to make up a batch.  It would have made two weeks' worth, though, if I'd stuck to raw!  So be forewarned!

The Gorilla glue expanded out of the groove and has held up under some minor log splitting action.

It looks like another round of glue is in order. There is a tiny wiggle that I think can be deleted if I apply a small bead around the entire handle.

I'll wait till tonight for that step so I can get some chopping done this afternoon.

It's incredible to think that so many educated and intelligent people, who run large nations' governments and industries, can seriously believe that, in a finite world, infinite growth is possible and base an economy on that notion. It is not an overstatement to say that growth economics has led us to the brink of environmental disaster, or, that if we do not develop a sustainable economy, based on human needs, we will soon be on the downhill side of that brink. Unlike the people who in the cartoon abandoned their world to a trash recycling robot, we haven't another world to which we can escape.

Growth economies made sense when almost everyone was poor and a few million people inhabited a frontier nation. In a world with six billion residents, they make absolutely no sense. Pollution, global warming, depleting resources, a third world clamoring for what the developed world now enjoys all make the economics which won the cold war impossible to sustain.  Read more....

I was doing a connector upgrade on our irrigation pump today and discovered a small tip that could ease some friction trouble that can sometimes occur with plastic.

Some pieces are more difficult to couple when it's cold out. Toast the stubborn part over a fire for about 30 seconds... being careful not to let it get too hot. This will make it easier and give you a chance to warm your hands.

The seemingless endless line of unrecyclable empty cocoa tins in the barn pushed me over the edge into buying in bulk.  The concept of bulk food makes ecological sense (cut down on packaging), emergency preparedness sense, and financial sense.  Still, it took me a month after considering bulk food before I actually made the leap --- here's why:

First I had to figure out what to buy, and how much.  I've summarized how long various foods can be expected to last in the table to the left.  I decided to start out with a "small" amount of a few items for our first experiment, skipping the sugar and pasta which seem to cost the same in the grocery store as in bulk, any items which last less than six months, and items we don't use enough of to merit a bulk purchase.

We live at least an hour and a half's drive from the nearest bulk food store, so I initially considered buying online.  Most folks recommend Walton Feed for online bulk food, and their prices did indeed seem to be perfect.  However, once you load up your shopping cart and proceed to checkout you'll find out that shipping costs are as high as food costs.  Not my cup of tea!  Read more....

I hate to leave folks dangling, so I feel obliged to give a heads up on a few projects which don't yet merit a full post.

The wriggling worms didn't make it into my grubby little hands Wednesday, but our buddy promised to mail us some soon.  So hopefully sometime in the next few weeks I'll get the worm bin up and running!

In between cutting wood and a thousand other projects, Mark and I have been working on our water problems all week.  Mark got the big pump in the creek running again, so our thousand gallon tank is full of wash water.  Meanwhile, I figured out that the reason our well pump wasn't running was because it was unplugged, though I didn't get it pumping since there's ice in the line.

The biggest part of the water project is burying the lines, which Daddy warns must be done at a two foot depth to prevent freezing.  I'm so bad at judging the time it will take to complete farm projects, so I put that on my agenda to complete for Wednesday --- the picture here shows the 5% of the trench I've dug since then.  Currently, we're musing over whether it'd be cost effective to rent a ditch witch.

Finally, I got my web design, grant writing, and biological inventorying website up and running.  Check it out, and give me a holler if you have any projects to send my way!  I'm at the stage where I could really use some word of mouth pointing folks toward my consulting business.  Thanks in advance!

The additional bead of Gorilla glue eliminated the wiggle and is still holding up well. Now it's a question of time. How much pressure can the bond take and for how long?

The Bush administration has won another victory in its war on the Environment. The EPA approved a last minute rule change on Tuesday which will rewrite a regulation enacted in 1983 that bars the dumping of huge waste piles within 100 feet of any stream or creek.

The new rule change is opposed by both Kentucky and Tennessee governors as well as other area legislators.

The regions most affected are some of the poorest in the nation and in our back yard. I can't help but to wonder what other midnight regulations the Bush team has in store for us?

Huckleberry is an indoors-outdoors cat, but yesterday he decided that he was most decidedly an indoors cat. 

When Mark and I came home from a day spent visiting, we were a bit surprised to find Huckleberry curled up on the futon.  Surely I'd put him out before leaving the house that morning --- but maybe he'd slipped back past us as we were leaving?  He seemed quite content to be inside away from the cold weather, so I didn't think any more about it. 

Until a few hours later, that is, when I put him out for the night and snuggled up in bed with a book.  Just as my book sucked me in, little feet came padding down the hallway and Huckleberry announced his presence with a pleased "Meow!"

What in the world?  I shot out of bed and did a little exploring, quickly discovering the new "cat door."  While we'd been gone all day, Huckleberry had deviously ripped the air hose to the outdoor wood furnace out of the wall, creating a massive hole through which he could easily prance into the house.  Thanks a lot, Huckleberry!

This morning, I discovered that scientists are right --- cold hands make cold hearts.  Between Huckleberry's cat door letting in frigid air, the golf cart having frozen into the mud overnight so that we couldn't get the tires to roll and collect the wood Mark had cut at the other end of the property, and the chainsaw's gas having somehow frozen solid so that we couldn't cut any closer wood, I was cold and irritable.  Luckily for me, Mark solved all of our problems, even managing to start a fire out of wet kindling on a cold day.  As the interior temperature tops 60 F, my heart has begun to thaw.

First, the real point of this post --- congratulations to Andrea from Ohio, winner of our giveaway!  Now I will proceed to talk at length about the weather....

Which is snow!  A beautiful, though thin, sheet of fluffy white.  This morning Lucy romped about while I noticed deer and squirrel tracks.

Huckleberry and the hens, on the other hand, have taken the snow as a personal offense.  As I moved the chicken tractors this morning, our girls huddled on the patch of unsnowy ground until the last minute, unlike their usual rush-for-the-front as new greenery comes into view.  Cold feet for them this morning!

Converting your existing car into a Prius like hybrid just got a lot easier and cheaper thanks to an interesting start up company out of Connecticut by the name of Poulson.

For about 4 thousand dollars they will install a new type of external electric motor to each of your wheels that don't get driven by the car's transmission. The motors are used to keep you going once the gas engine has done most of the hard work. This can increase a car that normally get 30 mpg to 55 or better.

They don't sell the motor to do it yourselfers yet due to some legal issues, so you'll have to take your car to Connecticut or a participating dealer if you want to be one of the first to take advantage of this new technology.

Mark and I tried out a new bread recipe yesterday.  As the picture here shows, it hit the spot.  I had no time to get the camera before every slice was gone.

We don't eat storebought bread because the choices there are either insipid or way too expensive.  Instead, I usually make bread in the bread machine, which is definitely better than storebought bread, but could use some work in the crust department.

Unfortunately, I never seem to set aside the time to make real bread, so I was thrilled to see an article in the most recent Mother Earth News touting real bread which you can make in five minutes a day.  The recipe is enough for four loaves --- you mix the dough up in about ten minutes (no kneading required) and then cut off a quarter to bake.  The rest goes into the fridge where it can sit for up to two weeks.

I may tweak the recipe when I try it next time --- I like my bread a little eggier, a little sweeter, and a little less white.  Still, it was hard to argue with the loaf's crunchy crust and moist interior.  And the fact that I still have three more loaves to bake over the next few days!

If you like stories told with a farm as the backdrop then you might want to check out the lush work of Jeff Lemire.

"Tales From The Farm" has won several awards, but I was drawn to his work by this cover art, which brings back fond memories of my own personal Batman cape my mom made for my brother and me back in the late 70's.

I feel like his drawing style captures that magical space in a boy's imagination where anything is possible with a bit of time and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Rain is a perfect season to plant seeds.
When the skies flooded the earth,
We stood strong, out of doors,
Where we could watch the birds swoop
For worms.

Our parents seemed to hibernate in a
Different world completely.
If they lived through us, warm, rain drenched
Soggy haired creatures,
It did not show.

We were immune to thunder,
We repelled lightening.
Mom and Daddy would stand
Out on the porch, barely braving
The roof, shouting,

"Come in if the lightening gets too close!"
The neighbors thought they were cop out parents.
We were glad for it.
We took five gallon buckets,
Filled them with gutter water,

And dumped them on our heads.
We smelled our small southern city
Clean as the water washed off
The cars, the industrial grime,
And our own boredom,

All of which accumulated on roofs,
Ran into the drain pipes,
And journeyed to the gutter,
Where we would race sticks
To the bottom of the hill.

After the sticks circled around over the drain,
And the gushing water pulled them down
into the underworld, after that, neither me,
nor my siblings, could guess where our
Rain day stream must go.

The traction chains started slipping after a few days of back and forth in the mud.

I took each wheel back off and doubled the amount of rope and weaves. I also secured the rope ends with some metal wire.

After doing a bit of research I discovered that for about 5 dollars per tire you can get 100 percent nitrogen pumped into your tires. Nitrogen is more stable and will not fluctuate when the temperature changes. It is also reported to decrease the amount of inner tire decay.

Helium might seem like it could make your vehicle lighter, but it won't.... and then you have to deal with your car talking in that high pitched tone.

I was supposed to have a meeting this morning --- the good lord willin' an' the creek don't rise.  But the creek did rise and the doppler radar called for much more rain to come, so I called to say I was afraid to leave home for fear of getting flooded out.

While chatting to the folks I was supposed to meet with, I learned that the creek which folks talk about rising was originally meant to refer to the Creek Indians.  Which would make the phrase grammatically correct after all --- I always thought the "don't" in the sentence was just Appalachianese.

Anyhow, Lucy and I wandered down to the uncapitalized creek to perform a stick test on its depth.  Someday I want to install a long stick with graduated markings in the creek so I'll know the actual depth of the creek water, but for now I stick to a more quick and dirty stick test.  I throw the stick across the creek and see how well Lucy does as she bounds after it.  Today, Lucy showed me up for a wimp --- she could walk almost all the way across.  Still, I'm always glad to be flooded in, letting nature win the battle for once.

I never seem to have enough time these days, how do I create more of it?

Zemke, Pittsburgh PA.

Good news Zemke, we will all be getting an extra full second added to the official clock starting just before midnight on New Years Eve of this year.

According to NASA, time is slowing down, and 900 million years ago a day would only last 18 hours.

I would say the best way to create more time would be to delete most of your distractions and try to live more in the moment.

Please note: This giveaway ended in December, 2008.  Please go to our store if you'd like to buy a chicken waterer, chicken nipples, or do it yourself chicken waterer kit.

The day has finally come for us to announce and give away Mark's invention!  Introducing --- the Avian Aqua Miser!

Like most chicken owners, I used to moan and complain about the vagaries of watering hens in tractors.  Their waterers would tip and spill on uneven terrain and one of our hens died of heat exhaustion on a hot summer day as a result.  When the waterers didn't spill, it seemed like they got covered with poop within minutes of being refreshed --- ugh.

So Mark put on his thinking cap, and four or five incarnations later he's developed a product that I adore.  In our six hen tractor, half a gallon of water in our Avian Aqua Miser lasts for several days in cool weather and the hens seem to get a kick out of pecking at the nipple.  Clean, clear water for our chickens!

And time to share the joy with a giveaway!  Check out our usual giveaway guidelines (but note that this giveaway will end on Saturday, December 20 since I'm starting it so late in the week.)  In addition to an Avian Aqua Miser, we're going to throw in the e-books and video we developed to go along with it which are explained in our store.  If you have chickens or think you want to get some, I highly recommend you enter this giveaway --- I can't live without our Avian Aqua Misers now!

I took this 15 second video yesterday to show our poop-free chicken waterer in action.

Our chickens will never drink dirty water again, and that's well worth the admission price because that warm and fuzzy feeling continues to grow each time you watch them drink with such enthusiasm.

With every inch of rain, our world gets smaller.  One inch Wednesday and I only managed to walk Lucy as far as the creek rather than our usual two thirds of a mile down the road.  Then another inch and a half yesterday and I only make it to the alligator swamp before turning back in search of dry feet.

But rain is good for making me settle down with the laptop and finally start plugging away on the natural history book I'm supposed to be co-writing.  I hope that beginning is the hardest part --- I spent seven hours yesterday writing version after version before finally settling on one page I like.  My usual rate is more like a page an hour for first drafts --- I'm putting the extra six hours down to figuring out the theme and tone of the book.  I hope....

I forgot to mention the fact that these last two videos are of one of the first versions of the Avian Aqua Miser. I started out with a small plastic honey bottle, but found on hot days it was just barely enough water to last all day.

The final product holds up to a half gallon of water, which makes it wider and heavier and eliminates the problem of swinging, which the hens seemed to not mind, but it made me dizzy after watching them longer than a few minutes.

This video demonstrates how several hens can share the same Avian Aqua Miser and be happy about it.

I have a confession to make.  On Black Friday --- in the polar opposite of voluntary simplicity --- I not only bought something, but I bought something big.

When I quit working for my nonprofit, I had to return the fancy equipment I'd been using --- a zippy laptop, a stunning camera, a swell GPS.  I thought I'd miss the camera the most and had told myself I could splurge and buy one of my own, but luckily before I splurged I went back to my old laptop and realized that it was like returning to using a screwdriver after you've been building houses with a power drill.  I had gotten used to being able to manipulate 2.4 MB photos with ease or format big fancy documents.  Back on my old computer, not only was the broken hinge not as repairable as I'd initially thought, but those large manipulations would take 15 minutes of painful effort, the mouse lagging behind where I pointed it as the computer worked all out and still barely managed.

And so I told myself "if you can find a zippy laptop for under $500 you can get it", thinking all the while that the budget was too low and there was no way I'd find something zippy enough to tempt me so cheap.  But then on Black Friday I went online and found a 15% off sale at Lenovo along with free shipping --- and got a zippy laptop for under $500.

When the computer arrived yesterday, the creek was way up and the footbridge icy and lopsided, but I crawled across (literally), pushing the laptop box in front of me --- my version of risking life and limb for shopping.  Next week, Joey will set it up with Linux (at which point I will begin to love it --- right now it's running windows and I can't seem to force myself to touch it.)  And that is my confession --- we all fall short of the glory.  But at least I didn't fall in the creek!

The TC1840H steel yard cart with collapsible sides has proven to be a real work horse for us. We've had it going on two years now and it's held up under some serious abuse. I did seem to break one of the supports...but it was easy enough to repair. Like I said...we have probably overused the poor thing and it's a testament to its makers that it's still doing the job and doing it well.

A friend of mine emailed me this photo of what looks like the same model cart being deployed in the secret tricycle surge in Iraq. This could be just the kind of secret weapon our troops really need to wrap up the current Middle East Crusade so that they can all finally come home and get some well deserved rest.

Part of my solution to the Christmas gift problem this year is going to be baked goods.  Everyone gives sweets for Christmas, and I did bake a lemon merangue pie with a cookie crumb crust for Mark's mom, but I've decided to go for the salty side of snacking for most of my presents.

The photo doesn't really do my Cheddar-Parmesan Cheese Crackers justice.  I've been working on this recipe for the past month, trying to come up with something to replace Mark's dependence on storebought snack crackers.  I finally succeeded a bit too well --- when I make a batch of these crackers, they're gone before the day's out.  Luckily, they're extremely easy to make.  Blend the ingredients in the food processor, roll out the dough into a cylinder, cut off slices, and bake.  You can probably make a batch in half an hour or less, including baking time.  Enjoy!

Here, before us, we have a pretty self-sufficient farm family, whose only wants outside what they produce are some metal utensils, glass, fine cloth, perhaps, refined sugar, flour and meal, coffee or tea. Up the hollow is a wired old coot digging some coal and iron out of the earth and, with his sons, building a furnace to smelt iron. Down the road is a little country store and water powered grist mill, where farmers can get their grains milled for a fourth of the product. You get the picture. It's a community in early nineteenth century Virginia or Ohio or New York. Many dozens of places. Little or no money used or needed. No great expectations.

How do we get from there to here in two hundred years?  Read more....

Somewhere or other, I read that division of labor was one of the roots of human civilization.  When people began to specialize in certain chores required to keep the whole community alive, everyone got a little free time to paint cliff paintings or write in their blog.

I was a bit slower to come to terms with division of labor, but lately I'm startled to find myself falling into the typical gender roles in our relationship.  The honest truth is that while I can haul 50 pound bags of feed to the barn without much ado, when it comes to hefting the spud bar to dig deep holes I'll hack for hours at what Mark could do in minutes.  On the other hand, I sincerely enjoy the puzzle involved in keeping us nutrionally fed on a budget, planning the progression of roast turkey breast to pesto chicken salad sandwiches to fajitas.

While Mark was playing baseball with all the neighborhood kids, I was inhaling books in self-imposed isolation.  I was the kid who hated group projects and did most of the work for the whole group because I didn't trust anyone else to work up to my standards.  So it's no surprise that the teamwork in our relationship is primarily Mark's doing.  Some days I'm stunned by how smoothly our team runs --- Mark drives, I navigate, Mark saws wood, I load the golf cart and drive it home, Mark keeps the fire going all night, I sleep.  Oh, wait...

Visiting civilization, I load Mark's mom's washing machine with load after load of dirty laundry.  Every few weeks, I wash my clothes in the wringer washer, but Mark tends to throw his in a pile  in the corner of his room and wait for six months until he visits his mother.  The time has come for me to take the bull by the horns and take over our household's laundry rather than just my own!

In the summer, I wonder why anyone would do their laundry with anything except a wringer washer.  Standing in the hot sun, cold water dripping off my elbows, I wash my clothes with creek water and dry them with sunlight.  As the fall advances, though, I try to remember why I use a wringer washer, my hands freezing solid in ice water until I can barely feel them and they turn bright red.

The obvious reason to use a wringer washer is that they can be used without running water --- essential on our homestead --- and can be left outside to freeze with no negative repurcussions.  When done properly, using a wringer washer also saves water.  For the 0.05% of my reading audience who would ever consider using a wringer washer, I've compiled a list of wringer washer tips.  Enjoy!

The picture is the field behind my mom's backyard in Ohio. This time last year it was showing signs of soil compaction as I walked up and down its trail. Thanks to some corn stalk mulching I've noticed a decrease in the mud and standing water.

I'm not sure how often one needs to mulch corn stalks, but I have always enjoyed gazing out at these fields.

The wind is the price you have to pay for such a nice view. On a day like this you might want to consider electric socks to keep the wind chill as far from your toes as possible.

One of my favorite things to do when I go to visit Mark's mom is to prune her grapevines.  She has four vines planted far too close together which grow up a netted wire trellis, so I can't prune them in a traditional fashion.  Instead, I play it by ear, trying to prune them so that they'll cover the whole trellis.

So I have to stick to general principles rather than following any hard and fast rules.  Except for the main trunk, a grape vine should be cut back to one year old canes since these are what will produce fruit.  A healthy plant should be cut back so that it has only 40 to 50 buds (from the 200 to 300 buds on the plant before pruning.)

The great thing about grapes is that even though I'm a rank amateur, they always seem to do fine.  The animation shows the grapevines before and after from this winter's pruning while the still photo is fruits which were on the vine this past summer after my last hack job.  I'm very curious to see how well the vines will bear this summer!