New Kentucky Homestead

My first Back to Eden garden

2011-10-11T21:02:00.001-05:00

Last spring I hauled home 6 dump truck loads of wood chips from the local stock yard. I piled them up after bringing them home and watched them steam on cool mornings. I mulched around fruit trees and berry bushes with them, but most of the pile remained unused. Until this week.

After watching the Back to Eden film which details Paul Gautschi’s gardening technique, I was persuaded to give it a try. I had already sowed some fall greens in our main garden, and I didn’t want to disturb them (we’ve been eating some tasty salads for about a week now). One of our smaller garden areas had sweet potatoes in it, but it was time to get them out.

So, after harvesting about 20 bushels of sweet potatoes, and bringing in the basil plants to dry, it was time to create a Back to Eden garden. This particular garden plot is 50 feet by 75 feet.

The first step was to remove what weeds were left and then smooth out the remains of the ridges in which the sweet potatoes were grown. I used the disk to do that, although that wasn’t the only or best option. I wasn’t trying to work the soil up, just level it out a little.

Then, I hauled several truck loads of compost and dumped them on the garden. I used the tractor with a box blade to spread the compost as evenly across the garden as I could. It ended up being about one inch to two inches thick.

The next step was to haul wood chips. I hauled 6 or 7 truck loads, leaving about one truck load where the original pile was. Then, it was time to spread the chips across the garden as evenly as I could. I used my Bobcat for some of this, but a lot of the spreading had to be done manually, with a rake, hoe, shovel, and wheel barrow.

It took a couple of hours, but I was able to spread the wood chips across the garden to a depth of about 4 to 6 inches. It looks good, I think. Soon, I hope to plant some garlic and a few potatoes in it.

Back to Eden–a must-see gardening film

2011-09-19T11:35:00.001-05:00

A friend sent me a link to the teaser for a recent documentary called Back to Eden. It’s about the gardening philosophy and techniques of Paul Gautschi. He said that if I watched the teaser that I would then watch the full video (which is available to be viewed online free). He was right. I’ve watched it twice so far, and it is excellent! It’s inspiring. I will be implementing the methods Paul talks about in the film as I am able, starting right now.

If you already grow your own food/garden or are interested in doing so, this is a must see film. Watch the teaser and see if it doesn’t pique your interest and prompt you to watch the full film.

Now, follow this link to watch the full-length film: www.backtoedenfilm.com/

Let me know what you think.

Our three gardens

2011-06-18T11:11:00.001-05:00

It’s been a few days since I last posted. There’s not been a lack of things to do, and I have still been accomplishing much. Once the rain stopped, we got busy in the garden. We set out 50# of seed potatoes, 32 pounds of onion sets, 150 tomato plants, nearly 300 sweet potato plants, a few cabbage and broccoli plants, and about three dozen eggplants. We’ve also planted peanuts, dried beans, green beans, sweet corn, pop corn, squash, melons, okra, and cucumbers. I’ll be planting some more sweet corn and green beans soon.

We’re using three different garden areas this year, more than we’ve utilized in the past. One has the onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and sweet corn in it at the present time. Another has the sweet potatoes and some watermelon. We’ll probably put the next planting of sweet corn in this garden since there is still room for it. The other, and largest, garden has several types of melons, green beans, dried beans, and peanuts in it.

The children have been helping with taking care of the garden. Each year as they grow they are more able to contribute to our food production. My boys have really been helpful this year with planting and weeding. I try to not overwhelm them with too much at a time, and they’ve really been doing a good job and with a good attitude.

I think it’s important for children to grow up with responsibilities and learning to work. There are so many things that they can do to contribute to their family, and there are so many valuable things to be learned through the process. Too many children, I’m afraid, are not expected to contribute to their families in meaningful ways. When I was growing up, my family had a very limited income, and our gardens provided a good deal of our food. Each of us was expected and required to participate in the growing, maintenance, harvesting, and preserving of food. I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, but I certainly do now.

One of the challenges we’ve faced with the gardens during the last couple of weeks is the deer. They decided that we’re growing food for them. They’ve eaten on our peas, beans, beets, chard, and lettuce. They basically destroyed the beets and chard – I guess they tasted good to them. After they’d eaten on the beans which were just starting to blossom, I put up some deer deterrent: baling twine. I’ve been told that deer don’t like the smell of baling twine, and three years ago we put up a fence of it around our garden because of the deer, and it kept them out of it.

After I fenced off the beans with baling twine, the deer decided to eat some of the younger beans. These deer appear to be very hungry based upon how they’ve been eating. So, the boys and I put up a perimeter fence around the bean garden using 10’ poles driven into the ground and four strands of baling twine. We also tied rectangles of aluminum flashing onto each pole to move with the wind and create noise. So far, the deer haven’t been back in the garden, but it’s only been a couple of days. I’m hopeful it will keep them out for most of the growing season.

Yesterday, Malchiah and I worked on getting some of our tomatoes staked up. Last year I used livestock panels in an A-frame configuration – two panels on either side of the row tied together at the top. This year my rows are 30 feet long which requires four panels per row. I have 12 panels and didn’t want to spend the money to buy more. So, to be able to cover more rows (we have 8 rows of tomatoes), I changed the method for this year.

We started with three rows yesterday. I set some cedar posts at the ends of the rows and one post in the middle of each row. Then, we hung two panels between the posts right above the tomato plants. The panels are about 9 inches off the ground. I tied the larger plants to the bottom of the panels and wove their branches them. As the plants grow, we’ll weave them through the panels to the top, or as tall as the plants grow. We’ll tie them to the panels as necessary. It takes more work to set posts in the ground, but this way we have enough panels for six rows. I’ll stake up the other two rows differently.

We’ve been enjoying fresh blueberries and black raspberries this week. Soon, it’ll be time to pick blackberries. We usually pick and preserve as many blackberries as we can. Last year we picked around 20 gallons. We’re planning on doing the same this year.

I’ve been teaching two sections of my class this summer. There’s one more week to go in the session. It’s been taking a lot of time, but it’s worth it. My objective is to encourage the students to question the institution of school by considering some of its harmful effects and how it is not designed to promote learning/education as they assume. As one of the authors they read says, “School makes children stupid.” I enjoy the class, but it’ll be nice to be able to focus and devote my time to projects (like finishing our house) here on the farm.

Compost & mulch in the orchard

2011-04-17T18:42:00.001-05:00

Things are really greening up around here. It’s so pretty with all the new leaves coming out on the trees. Spring is a neat time of year. Around here it’s also a wet time of year. We received nearly five inches of rain during the last week. The ground is saturated, but it’ll dry out before too long.

There are a lot of jobs that need done around the farm during Spring. I keep plugging away at the things that need done. Last week before some of the rain, we composted all of the blueberry bushes and mulched them with wood chips. I worked the compost into the soil around each bush before putting the mulch around them.

Today, I worked in the orchard. Last year I didn’t give the fruit trees the attention they needed. With plenty of compost available this year, I didn’t want to neglect them again. I was going to till around each tree, but the pull rope on the tiller broke. I’m going to have to fix that and a couple of other things on it tomorrow or the next day.

So, instead of using the tiller, I used a grub how and worked in a circle around each tree, working up the soil out to the drip line of each tree (as far out as the branches extend). There were 14 trees, I think (I forgot to count to make sure). Once I had the ground worked up around all of the trees, I mowed between the trees with the bush hog. Then, I hauled compost to them. I put half a loader scoop at the base of each tree.

I used my grape hoe to spread out the compost. It ended up being 4 or 5 inches deep around each tree. Then, it was time to mulch them. I put a full loader scoop of wood chips at each tree and spread it out beyond the composted area for each one. A few of the trees didn’t need a full scoop of mulch. So, I put the extra around the little hazelnut trees I set out a few weeks ago and a little bit around the cherry bushes.

The orchard looks nice and neat now, and I hope the compost gives the trees a nutritional boost. The wood chips will keep the weeds down and will provide nutrients as the break down over the next year or so.

Morels

2011-04-17T18:25:00.001-05:00

The children and I have hunted for morels several different days during the last couple of weeks. We’ve looked for them in previous years, too, but the most we’ve ever found is about 20. I’ve read about where to look for them and have tried to note where we find them growing, but there’s been little consistency. Basically, they grow where they want to.

Last week we did find about three dozen of the tasty little buggers. We’d had rain a couple days before with some cool weather. As it warmed up, some Morels popped up. We probably spent two and a half or three hours looking on our ridge to find these. The photo shows a few of the ones that we found that day.

After washing them and cutting them in half lengthways, I sautéed them in butter, and we enjoyed them as a special treat for dinner. They were very good!

Cows on grass and gardening

2011-04-08T21:29:00.001-05:00

We moved the cows out of the barn and back onto grass this week. They seem happy, and our milk production has gone up. I’ve provided them with some hay to make sure they have enough roughage as they transition back onto green stuff, and they are doing well.

After I moved the cows out, I started cleaning out the barn. They were in the barn for four months. I used straw and saw dust for bedding while they were there, giving them fresh bedding every day and letting it accumulate during the entire four months. Two full grown cows and two young steers can make a lot of manure mixed with bedding in four months time.

I used the Bobcat to start cleaning it out. The way the barn is set up, I can only get the Bobcat straight in from outside and clean a pathway across the cows’ area inside. There isn’t room to turn and clean out the rest mechanically. We’ll have to clean out the other 80% by hand, or at least loosen it and throw it into the middle so it can be moved out with the Bobcat. We’ll complete this work over the next couple of weeks, I hope.

On other blogs, I’ve read about people starting their garden plants inside over the last couple of months, but I didn’t get any of starts going until yesterday. I have no place inside our current home for starting seeds. In the past I’ve started seeds in the basement of a previous home under grow lights or in a greenhouse. I don’t want to use the power to keep a grow light on with our electrical system now even if I had the space/place inside for it.

Without a place for starting seeds and with the length of our growing season, I’ve not worried about having not started my seeds yet. So, yesterday, I mixed together some growing medium (one part compost, one part peat moss, and one part rich dirt) and planted some seeds: tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. I put them in some flats I had from last year and set them under a makeshift greenhouse.

The makeshift greenhouse is a metal framework with plastic stretched over it. When I checked it a couple of times today, it was nice and warm and moist inside. I think with the warm weather we’re having, the seeds should sprout fairly quickly. I don’t plan on setting plants out until mid-May. So, if all goes well, they should be ready by then.

Then, today, the boys and I planted some things in the garden. First, I worked up an area about 30 feet by 30 feet. Using my grape hoe (an wonderful tool), I pulled dirt into four ridges. I filled the trenches left from pulling the dirt together into ridges with wood chips about 6 inches or so deep. This makes nice walkways with material that will break down over time, feeding the worms and adding to the soil. Then, I smoothed the tops of the ridges with a rake, making rows about 18 to 20 inches wide for planting.

This afternoon, we planted several varieties of lettuce, spinach, beets, swiss chard, and carrots in these wide rows. We also planted several rows of sugar snap peas in another area right beside the first one. We’ll be planting a lot more things in the coming weeks.

I had an interesting experience while using the Bobcat to the wood chips from the big pile to the garden: a wheel fell off. Apparently, the lug bolts had come loose, they worked themselves out. I hadn’t noticed this was happening. As I made a turn to head into the garden, the wheel fell off, and the Bobcat sat down on its haunches. I found three of the bolts and borrowed one from each of the other wheels to reattach it before continuing with the work.

After finishing the planting, the children and I went for a swim in the pond. It was a bit cool, but we all enjoyed it.

The Bobcat M500 back together

2011-04-05T07:08:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about working on my Bobcat M500. I had to take it apart in order to pull the engine so I could get the starter off of it. The starter was in need of repair – the brushes were completely worn out. I also had Jack (the local guy who works on starters) check the generator, and it tested out fine, thankfully. That meant that something else was causing it not to keep the battery charged.

While I had the Bobcat taken apart, I cleaned it a bit. It had quite a bit of grease and grime on it. It probably could’ve used a good power washing, but since I didn’t have access to a power washer, I used soapy water, a brush, and a rag. I also purchased some cans of cheap spray paint and gave it a new coat of paint. It was nothing fancy, just something to cover up some of the scratches and places where the metal was bare.

While I had the engine out, I discovered it needed new head gaskets. Amazingly, new ones are still available – Kohler doesn’t support the engine (K662) anymore, but they apparently still have some engines that use the same head gaskets.

After getting the new gaskets installed and the repair starter on it, I completely rewired things. I welded a corner of the operator’s cage which had come apart (it’s home-made by a previous owner) and gave it a new coat of black paint. I also painted the wheels and rear weight red.

Putting it back together went well. I had to replace a few bolts that hold things together. Of course, when I had the engine back in and before I had all the other things put back, I checked to make sure it would start and run okay. It did.

After getting it all back together, I had to run it and check things out. It worked well, but I noticed the batter wasn’t charging. I suspected the voltage regulator, and, when I tested it, it was clear that it wasn’t working (it regulates the voltage from the generator for charging the battery – alternators have built-in voltage regulators). So, I ordered a new one, and when I arrived I put it on. it solved the problem.

The only other problem I had was that the air filter needs replaced. I still have to find one or figure out a way to put new filter material in/on the current one.

Since I got it back together a couple of weeks ago, I’ve used it around here some, and it is quite handy. I’ve moved compost and have loaded some manure and bedding into the truck to haul it to a compost pile. The only complaint I have about it besides that it’s almost underpowered (it is amazingly strong for its size and small engine) is that it drinks gas at an alarming rate. These old Kohler engines aren’t known for being fuel efficient.

Yesterday, I hauled the Bobcat to the stock yard in town. The company that owned the stock yard went bankrupt. So, it’s closed. Anyway, before it closed, the guy who ran the place had the power company tree trimmers dump several loads of wood chips for him to use in their back lots instead of rock (wood chips would keep the cows out of the mud). I liked this idea (it was my idea), because I intended to get the wood chips and manure later on.

However, since the place closed, the pile of wood chips has just sat there looking forlorn and lonely. When I asked, I was told that I might as well get the wood chips if I wanted them. So, I used the Bobcat to load them on my truck and bring them home. I used my smaller truck and trailer to haul the Bobcat, and then after bringing home a small truck load of manure/bedding (all that I hadn’t already gotten – I left it in case anyone else wanted it, but it was still there after four months), I drove my big truck back. I loaded and hauled six loads with the big truck, approximately 72 cubic yards of wood chips.

They’re all piled nice and neat here on the farm, now. It’s very satisfying to push things into a nine foot tall pile for some reason. We’ll use wood chips for garden walkways and to mulch around trees. When I get some more manure, it can be mixed with them. If they’re just left to break down, they’ll make some excellent compost on their own.

Spreading more compost

2011-03-23T16:50:00.001-05:00

It didn’t rain last night (there was a chance). So, this morning, I spread compost on the small field near the orchard, at the end of which I planted the 50 asparagus crowns earlier. My compost spreading process involves two tractors, a manure spreader, a loader, and a field cultivator.

This is the field before I started. I disked it a few days ago. Last year, we tried to grow corn here, but the crows and other varmints interfered with that. The soil doesn’t have a lot of humus, appearing to be mostly clay. Like much of the other ground on our farm, it was used to grow tobacco in the past. There were tobacco stalks in it when we moved here almost eight years ago.

I took compost from the piles at then end of the field. Yesterday, I used from one of the piles for spreading on the garden.

The manure spreader that I have is an old one that I bought last spring. Of course, it’s not as old as the one I used before I got this one. I’ve only been able to use this one the last couple of days even though I bought it a year ago. Thankfully, it worked fine today. I pulled and powered it with my 1966 International 424. This has been a very good tractor since I bought it 7.5 years ago. I use it for just about everything.

Part way through the process, I took a photo of my progress. I’d already spread 10 loads at this time, and the first pile was completely removed and I had started on the second pile. I loaded the spreader with the loader tractor. I would’ve liked to have used the Bobcat, but it needs the battery charged. The voltage regulator doesn’t work on it. I ordered another one. Hopefully, that will keep the battery charged.

In all, I spread 13 loads on the field. I estimate each load at around 3,000 pounds. Since the spreader is PTO powered, I ran the tractor in first gear to allow the compost to be spread as thickly as possible. I also went over the same ground at least twice. It’s amazing how little it looks like when it is no longer piled up.

Once I finished spreading, it was time to rip the compost into the soil. I didn’t want to leave it on the surface to dry out and lose some of its goodness. Thankfully, most of the time while I was working it was also overcast.

The field cultivator I used has seven shanks and does a really nice job. This ground was a little harder than the garden I worked yesterday. So, I couldn’t get it to go in quite as deep. Almost as deep though.

It started to rain a little just as I finished working the compost into the ground. I considered that a blessing. It wasn’t much rain, but it was nice to have a little to wet the compost into the ground a bit.

The final photo is of the field after I finished. The soil doesn’t look much darker than before in the photo, but it is a little. It will take several years of working in compost to get it where I would like it to be.

We’ll use this field as a second garden area. I don’t know that we’ll use all of it this year. What we don’t, I hope to sow buckwheat or some other beneficial cover crop on.

Warm and dry in March

2011-03-22T20:39:00.001-05:00

Last post I mentioned how we usually warm up and dry out in March. It happened again. We’ve been experiencing summer-like weather for the last few days, and it’s been keeping me busy.

On Sunday I had 50 asparagus crowns to put in the ground. I put lots of compost into the trenches I had already dug and set the asparagus crowns in it. I was able to get them all bedded, and hopefully they’ll be happy.

I also plowed an area for our field corn. It’s not a very big field, but hopefully we can grow enough for corn bread. Last year the crows ate the seed out of the ground and then the raccoons and deer tried to demolish what the crows missed. Hopefully, we’ll do better this year. I’m going to spread a good bit of compost on the soil before it’s time to plant since this particular plot has some poor soil. I actually plowed it a few years ago but didn’t plant anything in it. So, it’s had a bit of a break. I think it previously had tobacco planted in it, as just about every field here has.

Yesterday, I planted the nine cherry bushes that were anxiously waiting to be set in dirt. I put two in front of the house so that we can enjoy their blossoms in the spring. The other seven I set out in a row near the new asparagus rows – they’re on the edge of the orchard. I used the 12” auger on the tractor to dig the holes which was much easier than using a shovel. I dug them deep and put lots of compost in the holes before planting.

Yesterday afternoon I spent working on the manure spreader. I bought the spreader last spring, and the first time I went to use it, the apron chain broke (that’s what walks the material to the back of the spreader). I’ve been needing to fix it, and it’s been waiting patiently. In anticipation of spreading some compost on the gardens, I decided it was time to get it done. I took the chain out, replaced the floor with some new beech boards I had (it had a plywood floor with a few holes).

After buying the necessary hardware and links for the chain, I bolted the floor boards in, repaired the chain, and put it back in. I wasn’t able to try it out until this morning. It seemed to work fine, though. However, on the second load, another link in the chain broke. So, I had to shovel everything out. It occurred to me that at that point, I had shoveled more stuff out of the spreader than it had actually spread for me. I replaced the broken link and made a few adjustments, and then it worked fine.

I spread the pile of manure and bedding we cleaned out of the barn last fall – that was the accumulation from the winter before. Most of that I spread with the loader tractor and a grader blade after the manure spreader broke. I used a friend’s field cultivator to rip the material into the dirt and work up the ground. Then, I spread several more loads of compost from another pile on the garden and ripped it in.

I’ve got another garden area to spread compost on and to work up. If we don’t get much of the rain that’s possible tomorrow, I’ll see about doing that later this week.

Putting plants in the ground

2011-03-18T21:25:00.001-05:00

It felt a lot like summer today. Our high was about 80 degrees. We had rain a couple of days ago, but the warmer temperatures and breeze that has been blowing is beginning to dry things out. Usually, there are a couple of weeks in March/April that it dries up enough to work the garden and begin getting some things planted. It’s till too wet to work up our main garden area, but maybe we’re getting closer to that drying period.

I did work in the dirt a bit yesterday and today. A couple of months ago, I ordered some plants. They arrived this week. So, I thought it would be a good idea to get them in the ground.

Yesterday, I planted three Rosa Rugosa plants that Anne ordered free from Gurneys. I planted some in front of the house we lived in before we moved to Kentucky, and we enjoyed them. One of the reasons for getting them now (besides the fact that they were free with the Gurneys’ promotional coupon) is that Rosa Rugosa produce many nice-sized rose hips. We want to harvest them for tea.

Also yesterday, I put six hazelnut trees in the ground. We would like a good nut source. The wild nuts around here are hickory and black walnut. Primarily, we’ve used hickory nuts.

I’ve been digging into one of my compost piles, the smallest one actually, for these plantings. Today, I dug into it a bit more for the strawberry beds. I finished my work on the Bobcat earlier in the week and was able to use it for moving the compost. About three years ago I framed two beds about four feet by 50 feet using some cedar boards and slabs. I added some compost to them and planted strawberries.

We had a few strawberries the next summer, but the deer and weeds were hard on them. Few actually survived. So, yesterday, the boys pulled out all of the old weeds from the beds to get them ready for today. This morning, they dug out the few remaining plants, and I filled the beds with compost. I would say the layer of compost was 6 to 8 inches deep. We then used grub hoes and then the tiller to work it into the soil in the beds a little.

Once the beds were ready, we planted the 100 strawberry plants that arrived two days ago. We also replanted the ones that survived from the previous planting. Later, after they are established, we’ll mulch the plants well to help keep down the weeds. I think weeds are the greatest problem with growing strawberries.

We still have 50 asparagus crowns to put in the ground and some cherry bushes, too. This afternoon, I disked the area where we tried to grow corn last year. At one end of it, I used the turning plow to dig two ditches. On Sunday, we’ll put compost in the ditches and plant the asparagus in them. We’ll also put the cherry bushes in the same area – it’s actually on one side of our small orchard which seems like a good place.

Later, I’ll put compost on the ground I disked today. We’ll use it for garden along with the main area in front of the new house which will also receive as much compost as I can spread on it. I can see already that I won’t have enough compost and that I need to haul in a lot more stuff.

We’re enjoying the spring weather, for sure. Next week, we ought to be able to get the cows out of the barn and back on grass. They’ll appreciate that, I’m sure. It’s really nice to see things greening up and the early spring flowers. One of our plum trees just bloomed today. There will be a lot more blooms on other trees soon.

Mechanical project (Bobcat M500 tear down)

2011-03-03T11:04:00.001-06:00

Last spring I purchased an old Bobcat M-500. The guy I bought it from sold it cheaply because he wanted it out of his barn. I paid to have it hauled from his home in Michigan to here (about as much as I paid for the machine), but I deemed it a good buy since it ran and worked. I was able to play with it a few days and was pleased with it overall. It had some issues, but it seemed like it would work fine for my purposes.

Then, it wouldn’t start. There was a click when I turned the key, but the starter wouldn’t turn. Since I was busy working on my house, I parked the Bobcat in the barn until I could devote some time to remove the starter. Finally last fall, I found time to remove the starter, only I couldn’t remove it without pulling the engine out. I was able to get the solenoid off of the starter without any problem, and I thought that it was probably the culprit anyway.

I took the solenoid to the local guy who works on starters. He said solenoids like that one rarely if ever go bad, that it was probably the starter. If I’d bring it in, he could check it out. I didn’t really want to have to remove the engine, but the machine continued to sit there waiting for me to do the job that needed done.

So, last week, I started on it. It became clear that I would need to remove the lift and everything else off of the Bobcat in order to be able to get to the engine. Although I’ve been working on it at what seems like a slow pace, everything is going well. I’ve broken a few bolts which I’ll replace with new ones when I reassemble everything. I pulled the engine this week – I have a chain hoist secured to a metal truss right above the Bobcat. That made it easy to lift things up and off.

It was easy enough to remove the starter and also the generator (it’s questionable that the generator has been charging as it’s supposed to). I’ll be taking both of them to have them checked out and repaired.

With the engine out, I could see I’d need to pull the flywheel because a couple bolts on the side were loose. Thankfully, I was able to get the flywheel off without too much difficulty, and I’ll only need to replace the bolts with ones a little longer than the originals. As I was loosening the flywheel, I realized that the head gaskets (there are two – one for each cylinder) weren’t holding the compression – I could hear air escaping from the head when turning the flywheel (the pistons were pushing air out at the heads and pulling air in on the return stroke). I just ordered new head gaskets this morning – I was amazed I could find a set since Kohler no longer supports this old engine.

Before I reinstall the engine and put everything back together, I’m going to give the old machine a good cleaning and spray on a new coat of paint – nothing fancy, though. I’m hoping that the engine will run better when I’m all done without leaking head gaskets and that the Bobcat will prove to be a useful tool around here. The starter problem which prompted this project is a blessing because it revealed other repairs necessary and is resulting in cleaning up and getting the old machine back into the useful shape it ought to be in (I was just going to use it dirty).

On another note, our pond is once again full. We had enough rain at the end of February to top it off. It’s nice to see it full once again – it’s been several months. I’m hoping that the water won’t seep out of the bottom like it did last year, that it will hold water better this year.

Banjo playin’

2011-02-12T12:15:00.001-06:00

In an earlier post, I shared with everyone my new endeavor: learning to play the banjo. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and have learned quite a bit already. I’ve only begun, of course, but I thought I’d make good on my promise to share some of my progress with you.

The following is a video I recorded earlier today of me playing Wildwood Flower. While it was so cold on Thursday, I spent a few hours learning how to play the tune and have continued to work on refining my playing of it yesterday and this morning. It’s not perfect, I know, but I’m happy with it for now.

Root cellar and garden/storage crates

2011-02-09T19:48:00.001-06:00

If you didn’t know, we’re building a house. I don’t mean that we’re paying someone to build a house for us. We’re building it. Well, I’m doing most of the work, but I accept help from friends and family.

Anyway, one of the things we designed into our home (and, yes, we designed the house ourselves) is a root cellar. At one point in the process, I was going to build a root cellar separate from the house using the methods described by Mike Oehler in The $50 & Up Underground House Book. I still like his method (years ago after reading the book, we thought about building an underground house like he describes), and may use it for some structure sometime in the future. If you want to build a fairly inexpensive root cellar, you ought to check out this method.

We changed our plans for the house more than once (it’s been a developmental process, and it’s only gotten better with each change we’ve made to our plans). One of those changes was to make the root cellar under part of the house with access to it from the house. So, I dug a hole with the use of a friend’s backhoe and constructed a root cellar. You can read about how I built it here.

We haven’t gotten to use the root cellar yet, though. We haven’t gotten to live in our house yet either, but we’re getting closer all the time. In fact, just this week I built the stairs to the root cellar.

The root cellar has two rooms, a larger one and a smaller one. The larger one is about 8’x13’. The smaller one is about 8’x 8’. I still have to insulate in the ceiling and install the exhaust vents in each room. Then, there will be shelves and bins to build, but I’m looking forward to being able to store some food in it next fall and winter. Hopefully, if all goes well, we’ll also be living in our new house by then.

Earlier this week, I bought some storage crates to use in the garden and root cellar. I saw them advertised on Craigslist late last week. They are really very nice. They measure 24” x 16” by 8.25”, and if filled up to the handles, they hold one bushel (based upon my calculations of volume). They are very sturdy and stack nicely. I think they will be very handy. You can buy them new from a few places, but they’re expensive. I’m glad to say I paid well less than retail price for them.

I move them into the root cellar yesterday after I finished the steps. So, they are now waiting for the coming harvest season and the christening of our new root cellar. In the meantime, we have more snow (it won’t last long, though).

Skimming cream

2011-01-01T08:54:00.001-06:00

The cows are staying warm and dry in the barn during the winter, eating hay and dreaming of green pastures (I’m imaging that last part, of course). I didn’t get either one of them bred back this last summer as I intended. It’s been a year since Tilly freshened (12/31/2009) and about 7.5 months since Josie freshened. We’re still milking both of them twice a day, and intend to continue doing so for another year or as long as they continue lactating. I’ll get them bred in early summer, I hope. I prefer that their calves be born in Spring.

If I kept a bull on the farm, it would simplify getting the cows bred, but I don’t really want an extra mouth to feed. With two cows, two steers, and a horse, we go through enough hay. I considered selling Tilly so that we would need to feed less hay, but we ended up keeping her – I didn’t really want to get rid of her. We probably don’t need two milk cows, but we have them and are able to keep them fed. And, the milk is appreciated.

At this time of year while the cows are eating hay – and it’s just grass hay, nothing special – we’re getting 1.5 to 2 gallons of milk a day. The amount varies depending upon how well they like a particular bale of hay and how cold it is. Colder weather requires them to convert more energy into keeping warm, and it affects the amount of milk produced. Now, this quantity of milk is not really much for two cows, but I don’t expect or want extreme production. This is enough milk for our uses and to share with my parents and Danny. It’s also better for the cows’ health since it isn’t taxing them to much to produce this amount, I believe.

During the summer months when the cows are on fresh grass and closer to the time they freshen, we get between 3 and 5 gallons of milk per day. That’s more than we can keep up with, usually. We ought to be converting some of that into cheese, but we’ve not taken on the extra task of doing so on a regular basis. We do make as much butter as we can, and Anne cans it when we have enough accumulated. Canned butter will keep for years. We use the butter as shortening/oil in baking and cooking so that we don’t have to buy oil. It also gets used on hot biscuits, sweet potatoes, and other things.

During the summer months, I skim cream off of the jars of milk on a regular basis. I have to in order to have jars to put more milk into. We also drink whole milk a couple times a day (whole milk is good for you and easier to digest than skim milk). Since the cows have been in the barn, I’ve not had to skim as often. The cream from cows eating fresh grass is preferable to the cream from hay-fed cows. Also, we’ve been mostly keeping up with the amount of milk we’ve been getting.

I know there are different ways that cream can be separated from the milk. The cream naturally rises to the surface when the milk cools. If we’re going to drink the milk, we shake the jar to mix the cream back in with the milk. If we want to use a little of the cream, like for coffee or tea, we can pour some off the top of the jar. If we want it for butter or baking (we substitute cream for some of the liquid and oil called for in a recipe – makes good biscuits, for example), then I need to skim it.

We strain the fresh milk through a cloth into 2-quart wide-mouth jars before refrigerating it. The wide mouth is large enough so that I can get a gravy ladle into the jar. My skimming method is quite simple: I use the gravy ladle to take the cream off the top of the milk. I put the cream in a quart jar so it will be available for use later. When I get down to the milk in the jar, it’s visible (you can see the separation between the cream and the milk) as I’m ladling out the cream. That’s when I stop skimming. It doesn’t take long to skim the cream off of two or three gallons of milk. The amount of cream we get varies some during the seasons. We can usually get a quart of cream from 1.5 gallons of whole milk, sometimes from only 1 gallon. If you click on the photo to enlarge it and then look closely, you can see the line between the milk and the cream in the two full jars (just above the “B” in “Ball”).

Some hay, some snow, and a new banjo

2010-12-25T12:44:00.001-06:00

Some of you may wonder where I’ve been. The answer is, no where really. I just haven’t posted in quite a while. I do intend to rectify that, and this post will be the beginning.

Things on the homestead are going well. It’s winter now, so some things are slower. The fewer daylight hours and weather affect how much time I spend working on different projects outside. There are chores to be done every day. So, I get out rain or shine at least twice a day.

I moved the cows to the barn just before Thanksgiving. I put it off as long as I could. The limited amount of rain that we had during the summer months affected how the grass grew. I could probably have kept them out on grass for another two weeks, but we were planning on going to North Carolina to visit family for Thanksgiving. Since my dad was going to take care of my chores, I wanted to simplify the process as much as possible, and having the cows in the barn provided that simplification.

I bought a few more bales of hay in order to ensure I have enough to last through the winter months. Usually, we are able to bale enough to feed the animals until grass greens up in the spring, but I only had two cuttings of hay this summer. Also, I was pasturing the cows on part of the ground I usually hay. I hope to not feel a need to buy any next year.

This winter started early with colder temperatures and snow. We’ve had more snow already than we’ve had many winters. We’ve also had temperatures 10 to 20 degrees below normal. It snowed again last night. So, we woke up to a beautiful, white snowscape. For some, I’m sure, the snow was welcomed as a special blessing augmenting their Christmas celebrations. We don’t celebrate Christmas, so it didn’t add any specialness in that regard. It does add some visual beauty to the Sabbath, though!

I’ve not brought home any new composting material for several weeks. The large corporation that owns the local stock yard had some financial trouble and wrote nearly 100 million dollars worth of bad checks (not just here, but in the 11 states in which they have facilities). So, the local facility hasn’t been open for business since before Thanksgiving. I don’t know if it will reopen. Besides, the ground has been wet and muddy which would make hauling anything problematic.

I bought a banjo with the intention of learning to play. It’ll take a while, I’m sure, but I’ll learn. It would be great to just be a good banjo-player, but there’s a process for becoming one. I can’t skip the process. I’ve found some good resources online. I’m learning a lot from Patrick Costello who has written a few books (which are available through Amazon or for free download) and has a ton of instructional material available online, including a lot of YouTube videos. I bought a Gold Tone CC-OT and am learning frailing/clawhammer banjo. Whenever my skills are good enough, I’ll share some of my playing in a video or two. It may be a few months!

I already play the guitar some. I bought a guitar seven years ago and taught myself how to play. I’m not that good with it, but I’m learning more along with my banjo learning. I’d like to be able to play the guitar better, too. So, hopefully, I’ll become relatively proficient on both instruments.

Well, ya’ll stay warm. I’ll try to keep you updated more regularly on the goings on at our place.

Peanuts and peppers

2010-10-14T21:19:00.001-05:00

Last spring I planted peanuts in two different locations. In the first patch, I made ridges to plant them in, and they grew very well. The boys mulched the after the plants got going well. The other patch, however, was decimated by crows. They picked the seed out of the ground soon after it was planted. Granted, they did leave one or two peanuts that sprouted and grew only to be choked out by the weeds later on.

I dug on row of the peanuts that grew well last week, and the boys dug the other five rows earlier this week. The plants produced well. It was interesting to pull up the plants and find where they had rooted from the vines through the mulch and set on peanuts there as well as at the base of the plants.

We fed the vines to the cows who absolutely love them. The boys spread out the vines from their digging so that they could dry, and I feed some of these to the cows when milking. Both Josie and Tilly are eager to eat this treat at milking time.

After picking the peanuts off of the vines, we spread them out on a couple of window screens to dry outside for a few days. We moved them inside the summer kitchen when we got a little rain. It’s a pretty sight to have screens of peanuts spread out. The peanuts also taste really good. I don’t care for raw peanuts generally, but these are good raw. They’re also good sautéed in a little butter or roasted in the oven.

I also built a frame from which Anne can hang sweet peppers above the wood stove to dry them. I set out a lot of pepper plants in hopes of having a lot to dry. However, the plants didn’t bloom or set on many peppers until September. I’ve had that happen before – really nice plants that don’t produce until the end of the season.

Anne cuts the peppers into rings, runs a string through them, and hangs them up to dry. When they are completely dry, she stores them in jars. They are a nice addition to chili, meatloaf, and other dishes. The children also enjoy just eating them.

Sweet potato harvest 2010

2010-10-07T07:32:00.001-05:00

On Tuesday, the boys and I dug our sweet potatoes. We had frost down in the bottom two mornings this week which didn’t hurt anything. A few of the leaves on the sweet potato vines were touched, but I don’t believe the notion that frost will go down the vines into the potatoes as some claim. I an inclined to believe that sweet potatoes can’t stand cool temperatures, and that if they are allowed to chill below 45 degrees they won’t keep well.

Anyhow, it was time to get them out of the ground and into the house. We planted somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 slips last spring. Sweet potatoes are easy to grow, and we’ve had very good success with their production. We plant the slips in ridges, mulch them a few weeks later when they’ve gotten going well, and then leave them alone other than pulling a few weeds. The only other chore for the season is digging them out of the ground.

I estimate that we harvested 10 bushels of sweet potatoes this year, approximately 600 pounds of these nutrient-rich little buggers. We sorted out the best ones based upon size and blemishes, filling 7.5 crates which I stacked inside. I made these crates a few years ago, and each one holds about 1.25 bushels. There was about 2 bushels that we sorted out to use first, the ones with scrapes, vole bites, blemishes, etc. So, there may be more than 10 bushels, but that’s okay.

We’ll eat from this harvest all winter and through the spring, assuming they cure and keep well. Generally, sweet potatoes keep very well for us. They are currently stacked in the children’s room, where they will stay for the duration. After they’ve cured for a couple of weeks, we’ll cover them so that they won’t have light shining on them which could encourage a few of them to sprout prematurely. Next spring, we’ll start slips from some of them for next year’s crop.

Solar electric system update and statistics

2010-08-24T16:42:00.001-05:00

It’s been over six months since we threw the switch on our off-grid solar system. To refresh, we have 1,250 watts of solar panels, 12 6-volt batteries wired together for 24 volts, a Xantrex XW MPPT solar charge controller, and a 1,100 watt true sine wave inverter providing all of our power needs for our home.

We have had no real issues with our system. It has worked as it is supposed to. We are able to power lights, computer, fans, washing machine, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, sewing machine, and even occasionally an iron. As you may recall, our refrigerator is a chest freezer with an external thermostat. It has provided the only real challenges. First, there is no freezer for ice cream! Second, it accumulates condensation in the bottom which must be sponged out periodically. And, third, it sometimes surges beyond the capability of our inverter when starting.

This third challenge is not a big deal. When the appliance can’t get started within a couple of seconds, it stops trying. It tries again in about 30 seconds. If it can’t start on that try, it stops and waits another 30 seconds before it tries again. It may take it a few tries, but it always gets started. This is not an all the time occurrence, and the problem would be eliminated if our inverter could handle a surge over 2200 watts. I didn’t realize how much the freezer can surge when starting when I put our system together. When running, it only consumes about 200 watts or less.

Our charge controller keeps stats on the power that is harvested. During the last six months, we’ve harvested 469 Kilowatt hours of electricity. That equals out to an average of 2.43 Kilowatt hours per day. Some of this power goes into charging the batteries and some is used during the day.

Our battery monitor keeps track how many amp hours are charged into the batteries or discharged from them. According to it, we have used a total of 244.8 Kilowatt hours from the batteries during the last 193 days that our system has been online. That is an average of 1.27 Kilowatt hours taken from the batteries every day.

The difference between the 2.43 Kilowatt hours per day average harvested and the 1.27 Kilowatt hours per day average used from the batteries is the extra we have used during the day when the sun is shining. We are able to run ceiling fans and floor fans to keep cool enough to survive the many 90+ degree days we’ve had this summer.

We are able to charge our batteries with our generator if the battery level drops low enough (it’s not good to cycle lead acid batteries too low). We have only hooked up the battery charger three times, and all of them have been during the summer months. The first time it wasn’t really needed, but I wanted to see how well it worked. The other two times followed several days of cloudy but hot weather. Our usage exceeded what we could harvest.

When looking at our usage by month, we have harvested a lot more power during the summer months than we did during later winter early spring. This is no doubt impacted by the amount of sun available during the summer, but another factor is our usage. When we do not use as much, the batteries are charged more quickly and the charge controller only harvests enough power to maintain the batteries.

So far, we have not felt deprived. We are able to live our lives normally with our limited consumption (one of the keys to making an off-grid solar power system work). It’s been a great blessing to be able to run fans and to have the convenience of the washing machine and refrigerator. So, I would say that so far, our system has done quite well.

Keeping raccoons out of the corn

2010-07-14T20:57:00.001-05:00

The corn that survived the crows in our small field has grown quite well. It started to tassel a couple of weeks ago. I know that the raccoons would want to eat the corn (they always do), but I didn’t expect them so soon. They were in the field a few nights ago checking it out and tearing down plants. They don’t seem to realize that I’m not growing the corn for them to eat.

So, yesterday, the boys and I put up an electric fence to keep the raccoons out. My grandpa used to use an electric fence about 5 or 6 inches off the ground to keep raccoons out of his corn. I’ve used this method successfully in the past.

We set posts around the field and ran two strands of electric wire. The lower wire is just above ground level and the second one is about 6 inches above the first one. I’ll have to keep the grass and weeds out of the fence so it doesn’t short out and lose it’s ability to work.

The idea is that the varmints will put their noses on the fence trying to get to the corn. The shock they receive will be enough to deter them. I’m sure they’ll look all the way around the field for an entry point, but as long as the fence is charged, they won’t gain access. They do have an uncanny knack for determining when/if the fence is not one or working properly.

Hopefully, we’ll keep the rascals out of the corn!

Compost, garden, and blackberries

2010-06-25T17:39:00.001-05:00

I hauled two loads of composting material from the sale barn yesterday. It looks like some nice stuff. I dumped it behind the ridge at the end of the pile I built back there a few months ago. Using the loader tractor, I was able to push it all up together. Now, we’ll let our little bacterial friends do their work, turning the material into black gold, ready to enrich the soil and grow awesome gardens next year!

The original pile I built behind the ridge has shrunk in size quite a bit during the few months it’s been there. We planted some watermelon at its base a few weeks ago which are coming along fine. We planted some butternut squash at the base of another small pile. It’s looking happy.

I thought I’d share a photo of our poor stand of field corn. We were able to hoe a lot of the weeds and grass out of it last week. I still ought to run the tiller between the rows to get rid of a few more weeds and grass. I hope to be able to get at least enough corn out of it for next year’s seed. I hope the crows aren’t a problem again.

Before lunch yesterday, I went out to pick some blackberries. It’s that time of year. With all of the hot weather and lack of rain, it looks like the berries are going to ripen within a short period of time. My dad has been out a few times to pick berries, and he came along and picked with me and gave us the berries! He’s kind like that. Anne canned nine quarts of blackberries after we brought them in.

The work of summer

2010-06-18T20:39:00.001-05:00

There’s an amazing amount of work to be done every day. We keep plugging away. I’ve been devoting a lot of time to our house project. We’re making some good progress. You can check it out on my other blog, if you haven’t already.

The children and I have enjoyed swimming in the pond several times. They actually ask me if they can go in the pond nearly every day. Usually, there is no real reason not to. The pond isn’t holding water as I would like it to. Water seeps out in several places around the dam. I don’t know if this is something that will correct itself over time as the dam settles more, or not. It’s not a fast leak, but the water level has gone down a fair bit.

We’ve been enjoying some produce from the garden. I didn’t get in a hurry to get the garden planted this spring, so we’re not enjoying things like tomatoes and squash yet. But, those things won’t be too long. We’ve had some nice salads, and the sugar snap peas were awesome! We had new potatoes with our first picking of snap peas a couple of weeks ago. The asparagus did quite well this year, especially considering the small size of our asparagus bed. I think I need to set out about a 1,000 plants!

We’ve been eating fresh black raspberries for the last two weeks. We’re also getting blueberries off of our older plants. Soon, it will be time to begin picking blackberries. Some of the early ones are ripening.

Yesterday, we got the tomatoes staked up. I like to keep them mulched and hold them up off of the ground. I used to let our Roma tomatoes sprawl out, but now I stake them up, too. They are so much nicer to pick and do better this way.

I drove small posts in the ground and strung baling twine I took off of bales last winter between the posts to hold up the Romas. I’m trying a new method for the Mortgage Lifters: using livestock panels in an A-frame. I learned about this method from another individual who regularly uses it. It is certainly a quicker, easier way to stake up tomatoes.

We’re growing pole beans this year. Usually, I plant bush beans. I built a frame work using sycamore poles for the beans to climb on. I may add a few more poles. I have one more row to take care of. I’m thinking I’ll use the livestock panels that we had for the peas. I’m going to save the rest of the peas for next year’s seed. So, they are about done with the panels.

The boys have been working on mulching the plants in the garden. They mulched the potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and squash so far. There are still some more sweet potatoes and tomatoes to mulch. Maybe this next week.

The children, dad, and I spent some time in our small corn field this week. The crows about ruined our corn crop by eating the corn out of the ground before it germinated. I replanted between what came up the first time that the crows didn’t get, but the stupid birds ate most of that, too. I don’t know how well it will produce, but there is some corn growing in the field. The weeds were threatening to take over, though. I tilled between the rows, and then we all worked in the rows with hoes. It was hot and sweaty work, but we got most of it done. I have 4 or 5 rows to do this coming week.

I was able to haul one load of manure and bedding from the sale barn last week. This is a slow time of year for them. Also, since they had to do a thorough cleaning a month or so ago after the flood, there’s been less need for cleaning out. When I can see myself clear to do so, I’m going to start hauling some of the old sawdust from the sawmill.

Rotational grazing milk cows: my method

2010-06-16T21:36:00.001-05:00

If you observe how a cow eats, it makes sense to rotationally graze them. Ideally, you would give them a new paddock every day with just enough to graze on for that day. They will make the most use of the forage, eating it down more evenly. You can then control their impact on the pasture by not letting them on any area for more than one day every few weeks.

With my milk cows, the ideal is harder to replicate than it would be for a beef herd, because I milk them twice a day. It’s not easy to set up a milking station in a temporary paddock twice a day, at least not for me. I also don’t have water readily available in the pasture where I wish the cows to graze.

Last year, I moved the cows to different paddocks in which they stayed for a few days at a time. This happened in a somewhat disorganized fashion because I didn’t have their movements planned efficiently. I also provided them with access to the barn near which I kept their water trough. I would have to herd them to the barn at milking time every day. Sometimes this involved a walk of considerable distance because their pasture was a long ways from the barn.

This year I fixed up a small roofed structure I built a couple of summers ago. I intended to make it a milking shed near the pasture I wanted to graze the cows. So, finally, this spring I made it a functional milking shed. It has a small pen to hold the cows during milking time and a stanchion to use while milking. It works quite well for me.

After reading about some others’ experiences and methods for rotationally grazing their cattle, all of them beef cattle, I have developed my own method/routine. It involves corridors for grazing that are the length of the pasture and 45 feet wide. These corridors are fenced with a single strand of electrified high tensile fencing. I subdivide the corridor into paddocks for the cows. Ideally, they would only have access to the new paddock each day, but that would necessitate moving their water every day. So, I creep them down the corridor, giving them a new section in the morning and another new section in the evening after milking time. It takes a week to ten days to creep them the length of one corridor.

I keep the cows water near the milking shed. I haul water in a 325 gallon tote which I fill by siphoning water out of our pond and then move on a trailer. This isn’t a perfect situation since they do spend a fair bit of time near the water trough which concentrates their manure in that area. However, it does simplify things for me.

Here are a few photos illustrating my method:

This is the pasture in which I graze the cows. It’s about five acres in size (my guess).

Here are three corridors that have already been grazed. The cows finished on the greenest two and a half weeks ago. They were then on the section visible on the right. On Monday I moved them off of the corridor in the center of the photo. I will bush hog it tomorrow.

This is the last line of high tensile fence I put up. I’ve been adding fence to make corridors as needed. I dig fence post holes at either end and insert cedar posts into them. I’ve found that making the holes about the size of the post, tapering the end of the post, and then pushing it in with the loader on the tractor makes for a tight post that can handle the tension of the fence wire.

I use poly wire for creeping the cows down the corridor. I have used solid metal electric fence wire, but it’s more of a pain than the flexible poly wire. I tie it to the high tensile wire with a piece of poly baling twine.

The spools I use are ones that came with regular electric fence wire. I had three empty spools, so I use them. I put it on a fence post held near the end with an insulator. This allows me to roll it up and move it easily. With the 45 foot wide corridor, I have a fence post with insulator at either end and one in the middle. I have three poly wires up at one time so that when the cows are in a new section, there are two more ready to go. When I take one down, I move it 8 paces ahead of the last one (8 paces has been the right amount for the cows so far).

I put the fence post at the end in place so that I can hook the poly wire to it. I formed a hook with electric fence wire to hook onto the insulator. With this method, I can set up the temporary wires while the charger is still on – it’s only electrified when the spool end is wrapped around the high tensile wire.

Since there is no electrical power at my milking shed or near the pasture, I use a solar fence charger. I’ve been very happy with it.

After I finish milking in the morning and evening, I fill the cows’ water trough and then move the temporary fence line to open a new section. The cows quickly caught on to the routine and are ready to get to the new grass as soon as its available.

I will be adding more high tensile wire to define more corridors in the coming weeks. There will be 5 to 8 weeks between grazing time in the same corridor. The corridors are also wide enough that I can make hay in ones that the cows will not be able to get to.

So far, this system has been working well. It’s easy to move the cows to new grass, keep them where I want them to be, and to get them to the milking shed. They’re usually waiting for me at milking time. I don’t let them into the milking shed pen except at milking time.

Gardening and house work

2010-06-02T08:28:00.001-05:00

We’ve begun another week of work. It is a blessing to have the opportunity to labor on our own projects here on the homestead. It involves a lot of sweat, soreness, and tiredness at times, but there is a simple joy in such work. I think I often take for granted the situation we enjoy in which there is no one dictating my activities. Reporting for a “regular job” every day with a supervisor telling me what to do would not be nearly as enjoyable.

I’ve been working on our new house. You can read a little about my efforts on my Cedar Ridge Farm blog. It feels good to be making some visible progress on it.

While I’ve been devoting time to house-building (and more extreme composting soon), the children (all four of them) have been taking on more responsibility for the garden. They’ve been pulling a lot of weeds. The boys mulched some of the potatoes the last two days and will mulch more plants today. They also pick potato bugs off of the potato plants. I do pay them a little for removing the bugs as an incentive. We’ve found that if you pick them off and then keep up with them, the number of bugs is greatly lessened to where they aren’t much of a problem in a couple of weeks time.

Here is a photo of the field in which I planted the beans for dried beans. It also has squash, winter and summer, and several rows of popcorn that I just planted this week. I also planted a small plot of red indian corn near a compost pile in another place. The Wapsie Valley field corn that I replanted hasn’t come up yet, and the crows are actively picking the kernels out of the ground.

We have lots of roses blooming. There are some light pink and dark pink ones. The children love picking them and presenting their mother and mammaw with bouquets. These roses apparently were started in years past by the residents in the old cabin and have spread over time.

A welcome rest at the end of the week

2010-05-28T22:01:00.001-05:00

It’s been a good week. Lots of work. I’m glad that it’s the end of the week and we have a day of rest – a welcome respite every week. Normally, I don’t like to post without photos, but I decided to go ahead tonight, mainly because I didn’t take any pictures this week.

On Monday, my friend Jon came over (he’s coming over on Mondays and Wednesdays to work with me), and we dug footers for the porch and kitchen on the new house. We also planed some boards that will be used for the upstairs subfloor.

On Tuesday, the children and I worked in the garden. The potatoes were really needing weeded. The children worked on weeding Monday and Tuesday. Then, I tilled between the rows. The potatoes in this particular plot haven’t done as well as I would like. I think the wet weather after they were planted didn’t help. In the morning on Tuesday, I also bought 100 80-pound bags of concrete mix in order to be ready for pouring the footers on Wednesday.

Wednesday morning was the scheduled delivery for our coop order. Thankfully, Danny offered to get it for me. I had a few things to do to be ready for when Jon arrived. Once he got here, we began mixing and pouring concrete. Thankfully, I bought an electric powered concrete mixer from Lowes a few weeks ago when we started working on the cistern again. It worked great powered by my Yamaha generator (which is so quiet you couldn’t hear it over the noise of the mixer).

We started with the footer for the kitchen. I ran the mixer while Jon dumped the concrete and tamped it down. It took 54 bags to finish it, mixing two at a time. We used three bags of concrete for each of the porch footers (one for below each post). The mixer was just able to hold three bags worth, and we were able to position the mixer for each one so that we could dump straight into the hole. It all went very smoothly. We mixed 98 bags of concrete and got the job done. I was a little tired at the end of the day!

On Thursday, I cut some wood for the cookstove, and then the children and I worked in the garden. We planted some sweet corn, more green beans, zucchini squash, and cantaloupe and set out another 100 sweet potato slips (we now have 300 sweet potato plants growing). I also bush hogged where the cows have grazed during the last two weeks, mixed some manure with wet hay, adding to one of the compost piles, and tilled the field for growing beans and squash. The children and I ended the day with a swim in the pond, the same as we did on Monday and Tuesday.

Today, I replanted the corn field because it looks like only about 1/3 of the corn we planted two weeks ago came up. I don’t know why it didn’t germinate well. It may have been too wet. I do know that crows ate a good bit of it right out of the ground. I used the garden planter to replant today. It took a bit of work since I didn’t work the ground first (I didn’t want to disturb the corn plants already up). Hopefully, what I planted today will germinate and grow well with little interference by pesky crows.

I also planted our dried bean seeds. The rows in this field are 80 feet long (give or take 15 feet). I planted 4 rows of small kidney beans, 12 rows of pinto beans, 12 rows of red beans, and 12 rows of horticulture beans. I also planted several kinds of winter squash, some pumpkins, okra, and cantaloupe. Then, this afternoon, I went to town and bought some concrete blocks and mortar mix to be prepared for more work on the new house on Monday.

Oh, I also completed some class work (I’m teaching a six-week section during the summer session) in the mornings before everyone else got up. There are a few other things I did during the week, but the ones I’ve mentioned are the major ones. It was a good week with lots of things accomplished, and I’m glad that it’s Sabbath now!

The cistern, continued: ferrocement construction

2010-05-19T20:55:00.001-05:00

In March I posted about working on our cistern. Since then, I’ve been able to work on it a few more days. My good friend Jon has come over to help in the construction. He’s actually helped with some other projects to and will continue to do so through the summer.

Before the cistern project, I had never attempted the construction of a ferrocement water tank. I first became aware of this type of construction through my dad who found information about it online. It seemed like a neat concept, so I did a little research on it myself. I found a book online that provides instructions. The strength of a ferrocement water tank is provided by a steel armature which is the plastered with a cement sand mixture.

At the time of my last post about the cistern, we had completed the floor framework and poured the concrete for the floor. I was concerned that the floor wasn’t going to set up as it was supposed to. It acted differently than concrete I’ve worked with before. But, it did set up quite nicely. So, construction has continued.

After the floor we began building the walls. The process involved putting welded wire around the perimeter. Then, we added vertical rebar and horizontal rebar. Then, we began framing the roof of the tank.

The book details the building of a round tank. Because of where I’m building our cistern and the amount of water storage I desired, I decided to build an elongated tank. It is 9 feet wide and 14.5 feet long. I’ve calculated the cistern’s capacity to be 5,300 gallons of water. I changed the plans to suit my application, opting for extra steel in the armature to make sure the strength will be more than sufficient.

For the roof, we bent sections of 1/2 inch rebar that were wired into the frame all the way around. Each of these sections was bent as identically as possible. There will be an opening on top. Rather than make it round, I designed it to mirror the shape of the tank. It will be about 2 feet wide by 8 feet long.

Today we finished installing the rebar in the roof, including horizontal rebar. The next step will be to put another layer of welded wire on the inside of the walls and on the roof. Then, we’ll put on some poultry netting and expanded metal lathe before beginning the plastering process. It’s coming along nicely, but it will still take a few more days of work to complete it.

Summer kitchen

2010-05-14T20:30:00.001-05:00

We’ve been keeping busy around here. There is still quite a few things to plant in the garden, but there’s still plenty of time. We’ve set out tomatoes, sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, and broccoli plants and planted some peanuts, squash, cucumbers, and beans. That’s not counting the potatoes, peas, onions, and salad greens we planted earlier. We’ll be planting more squash, summer and winter varieties, more beans, okra, corn, etc. as we’re able. It rained today, so we’ll have to wait for the garden to dry out a bit. I also planted nearly half an acre of corn last evening. Today’s rain should help it germinate quickly.

I have a friend who is coming over here to work on house-building-related things with me a couple of days a week now. That helps to keep me on task so that we can get things done. There are so many different projects to do that it can be difficult to focus specifically on just one. Some things get put off when something else demands attention. With Jon coming over to work, I’m forced to focus my energy and efforts on some specific projects that need completed.

This week we worked on the summer kitchen. We’ve been using the wood cook stove on the porch quite regularly since I set it up a few weeks ago. Our plans were to enclose the porch, making it into a summer kitchen.

We built walls (only needed on two sides) on Monday. On Wednesday, we put on siding, screened window openings, put trim around the window openings on the outside, and reglazed some windows. I have seven windows that a friend gave me two or three years ago that have been stored in the barn that we’re using for the summer kitchen. We hung one window – the others will be installed in the coming week.

With the walls and screen, a lot of bugs will not have easy access. That’s a good thing. I have to do something about the leaks in the roof. The roof has leaked since I put it on when I built the porch a few years ago. I’m pretty sure that most of the leaks originate in the junction between the porch roof and the house roof. The shallow pitch of the roof also has an effect. I’ll attempt to rectify the leak situation soon. With the rain today, we didn’t have rain blow in the windows, just leaks from the roof in a few places, especially when the rain was pouring down hard.

We acquired the sink and cabinet from a friend who removed it from someone else’s house. It’s a single sink with double drain boards and a white metal cabinet. I haven’t hooked up water to it yet, but I’m going to. We’ll run the drain outside and use the water for irrigating Anne’s flower garden.

You can see my clothes hanging up to dry in the last photo. I got soaked doing chores this morning. I had to chase the neighbor’s cows (10 Holsteins and a calf) off of our property (I hope he fixes that fence sometime) while it was pouring down rain. Then, I set up some more paddocks for our cows since I was already wet.

We’re already pleased with our summer kitchen. It’s going to work out quite nice.

General update: rain, compost, & cows

2010-05-05T21:44:00.001-05:00

It’s a beautiful spring on the homestead. We’re keeping busy, of course. There are always more projects to do than it seems possible to get done.

There is still a lot of gardening to be done. We got in some early stuff a few weeks ago like potatoes, salad greens, onions, and peas. I’ve been waiting until May to put in the other things like tomatoes, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, etc. We had some much needed rain(three inches) a week and a half ago. This last weekend we received another 11 inches of rain, 8 of them during the day on Sunday. That was more than we needed in such a short period of time. We didn’t have any flooding here, but the small river in the local town flooded several places.

One of the blessings of the flooding in town has been a lot of extra composting material to be hauled from the sale barn. They were underwater, five or six feet deep in places, on Sunday. So, they’ve had to clean out everything. They called me yesterday morning to ask me to help haul away wet hay and manure. I hauled yesterday afternoon, all day today, and will be hauling more tomorrow. The guy who regularly hauls off their manure and bedding brought out several loads today, too. So far, I’ve put together a nice little compost pile.

On April 28 Josey, our Guernsey, had a calf. She was due to freshen by the end of April, but she just didn’t look pregnant. Even though she hadn’t been in heat, I began to wonder if she was actually going to have a calf. She had a little bull calf. We let it nurse for the first 2 or 3 days and then took it off to bottle feed it. It still gets milk from Josey, not milk replacer. I would have left him with Josey, but I don’t want weaning problems later on. She never weaned her last calf, and he was 20 months old when we butchered him. Ramiah named the new calf Smokey.

I also finally got the cows out of the barn and back on grass this week, Monday evening actually. I was regularly cutting them fresh grass to eat every day for a while while they were still in the barn. One of the things that made it so late for getting them out was preparing the milking shed. I don’t want them coming back to the barn to be milked. It’s too far from their pasture and creates other problems because I need to be able to drive where the fence would need to go.

I had already built a shed to use as a milking shed a couple of years ago, but I had never put it to that use except for a brief period of time last summer. I’ve fenced in a small area to hold them at milking time and constructed a milk stanchion. It’s worked pretty well so far this week.

One of the things I’m doing this summer is rotating the cows onto new grass each day. In fact, my goal is to rotate them twice a day. Since I have to milk them twice a day, I will bring them into the loafing area, milk them, and then put them in a new paddock. I’m going to make use of fenced corridors from which they’ll access paddocks I’ll fence off. While they were in the barn, I fed them hay twice a day, morning and evening. It seems to make sense to give them fresh grass to each on the same schedule, kind of like green hay still on the plant.

One of the challenges for me in terms of intensive rotational grazing has been water. This summer I’m going to haul water from the pond in a tank to fill a trough for the cows. Their water trough will be in the corridor so that I don’t have to move it and so that they will have access to it.

So far, Josey, Tilly, and Buster (our beef steer) have been on four different paddocks. You can see how they grazed today’s paddock (photo to the left). They were happy to have fresh grass this evening. Moving them twice a day won’t create much more work than moving them once a day since I have to bring them in for milking anyway. I’m hoping that it’ll work out well.

It rained!

2010-04-27T17:29:00.001-05:00

We’ve had about three inches of rain since Friday night. That’s nice. We haven’t actually had much rain since January. I’ve heard it reported that we had been about eight inches behind for the year already. This recent rain has really helped. Everything seems to have grown tremendously in the last few days with all the moisture. The trees are leafed out. It’s so nice to see all of the green.

Around here we enjoy several different flowering trees during the spring. The redbuds and dogwoods are basically done blooming now, although there are still a few dogwood blossoms hanging on. The royal empress trees (non-native) are blooming now as are the locust trees.

I’m late getting the cows out on grass this spring. They should’ve been out two or three weeks ago. I left them in the barn to help make chores simpler for my dad while we were gone last weekend. I’ve also had to get a little fence work done in order to put get them out. That is just about complete now. So, I ought to be able move them tomorrow. I’ll still feed them hay at night for a few days in order to transition them to their new diet. They will be thrilled to have fresh grass. Once they’re out, I’ll see about getting a couple of pigs to aerate the bedding pack in the barn.

Cleo is going to a new home. She’s almost four months old now and has grown very well. In anticipation of putting the cows out on grass, I thought it would be a good time to sell her. So, I put an ad on Craigslist last night, and she’ll be leaving an just a little while. She ought to make a nice milk cow in a few months for her new family.

I have a hankering to haul some composting material, but that’ll have to wait a day or two. It might be a bit too wet in the bottom right now. Maybe on Thursday it’ll be dry enough. . .

First load with the new truck!

2010-04-22T13:07:00.001-05:00

We spent a few days with Forerunner and his family, arriving home Tuesday evening after a GREAT visit. Yesterday, I had a few things to work on, but the urge to haul compost material was strong upon me. Have you noticed that composting has become ‘important’ to me? (We won’t call it an obsession – maybe a passion, though.) So, I acquired the necessary materials to build a tailgate for the new truck. Construction of said tailgate began immediately and was finished (except for paint) this morning. Ain't she a beauty?

As soon as I finished the tailgate and checked the rear end shifter on the truck, I set off to town in hopes of bringing home a nice load of material from the sale barn. I was not disappointed.

Unloading was easy.

Empty in a matter of minutes (except for the 2x6 Malchiah threw in the back after removing it from the material -- whatta boy!).

I was very pleased with the amount -- at least twice as much as I can haul with my other truck and trailer, and I haven't even built the side boards yet.

There's one more load to haul after lunch, but I'm wishing there was more. . .

Increasing my hauling capacity

2010-04-14T15:21:00.001-05:00

I brought home another piece of equipment this morning. I’ve acquired several things to make my composting endeavors more efficient. With my F250 and trailer, I’ve been able to haul about 5 tons of material per trip. Now, I expect I should be able to haul 10 to 12 tons per trip with my new truck:

It’s not brand new, of course. It’s a 1981 Chevrolet 2-ton truck with a 16 foot dump bed. I have to do a few things to it, like put on different tires (I have a source for some good used ones), build some extensions to raise the height of the sides, and construct a tail gate. I’m itching to put it to use.

The joy of composting

2010-04-13T05:55:00.001-05:00

Last Friday I made five trips and hauled in about 25 tons of cleanings from the sale barn in town. With the manure/bedding and sawdust I already had hauled in, I went ahead and put together two more compost piles (I already had one built).

On Sunday morning, the piles were vigorously steaming. So, yesterday I took my camera with me when I went to do my chores so I could photograph the beauty of steaming compost piles in the early morning.

Now it’s time to haul in a lot more material and keep building compost piles. We’re making a trip to Illinois later this week. So, it will be next week before I can haul more. It’ll be hard waiting that long. . .

Work on the cistern

2010-03-27T11:01:00.001-05:00

Currently, we are connected to city water, but that’s something that we want to change. It’s been our plan for quite some time, but the municipal water has been convenient. There is a shallow well down the hill on which I have a hand pump and have used for watering livestock. There’s also a spring that flows about 9 months of the year. We also have the pond now. So, there are alternative water sources available.

We also want to cistern rain water that we can catch off of our house roof. In September of 2008, I decided to start constructing a cistern inside the shed portion of our garage. The garage is a pole building that has an original area of about 24 feet by 40 feet. The previous owner built the garage and also added some space on one side that is about 12 feet by 40 feet. We used this shed portion as a goat/chicken barn for a few years. With gutters we should be able to harvest quite a bit of water off of the roof. Additionally, locating a cistern here would allow us to let gravity provide water pressure to our new house, because there is about a 50 to 60 foot elevation change between the two.

It is inside the shed that I began the construction of a ferro-cement cistern. The basic idea for ferro-cement construction is to build a metal framework that provides strength and structure. This framework is then plastered with a cement-sand mixture that makes it so it will hold water.

The first thing to do was to provide a level space for building the cistern. I used hand tools: a shovel and a grub hoe mainly. I hauled the material that I dug out outside and dumped it on the hill behind the garage.

The next order of business was to begin building the metal framework. This consists of welded wire (re-mesh) and reinforcement bars (re-bar) that are wired together. Essentially, you create a sandwich with the re-mesh on either side of the re-bar all rigidly tied together. Here are two photos of the work I completed in September 2008:

Sadly, after getting started on the framework, I did not get back to the construction of the cistern until Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. We decided about two weeks ago that we should go ahead and get the cistern constructed and start using it sooner rather than later. So, I enlisted the help of a good friend who came over this week to help me.

The first day we worked on finishing the metal framework for the floor. We had to add another layer of re-mesh and a layer of chicken wire on top. Wiring all the layers together takes time and quite a bit of wire. The end result is a framework that is strongly joined together and that will make for a strong cistern. The different layers are offset from one another so that the spaces between the wires and re-bar become smaller and smaller.

The following two photos show the floor ready for to be poured:

We finished the framework on Tuesday after a full day of work. On Wednesday we began with the concrete. I bought an electric concrete mixer for this project and later projects, including plastering the straw bales on our new house this summer. I already had sand and bags of cement that I had bought in 2008 for the cistern project. The sand was fine, but the cement had absorbed some humidity.

We carried the concrete mix into the shed in buckets and used trowels to force it into the framework. We had to build it up at the edges to the point that the walls would later extend from. I also put in a drain line and an outlet pipe. It took a full day, but we got the concrete finished for the floor (sorry about the dust spots on the camera lens).

At this point in time, I’m not sure that the concrete is going to set up hard enough. I think the cement didn’t work properly, probably from having absorbed moisture during the last year and a half. At first, it seemed like we had nothing more than wet sand, but it is hardening somewhat. I just don’t know if I will be able to trust it for completing the cistern. The dimensions I designed for the cistern would provide about 5,000 gallons of water storage. That’s a lot of weight and pressure.

Our current thinking while we wait on the floor to cure completely, is that we may put in two 2,000 gallon poly water tanks. They will sit on this floor with no problem. I can add some wire around them which will attach to the stub wall that is already framed. Then, inside this wire, I can insulate around the poly tanks with sawdust or some other material. We are not sure yet which way we will proceed. The poly tanks would cost a bit more, but they would save a lot of time and labor. We’ll decide for sure in the coming days.

Carbon material

2010-03-25T20:28:00.001-05:00

Earlier in the week, I stopped and spoke with an Amish man who has a small sawmill at his dairy, inquiring about getting saw dust from him. He was happy to continue letting the gentleman who cleans up for him take care of it. When I got home, Anne said she had good news: a friend had dropped by to chat for a while, and she said that we could get saw dust at a small saw mill in Marrowbone. Well, I was busy working on a project Tuesday and Wednesday, so I couldn't get to the mill to see about acquiring saw dust until today.

This mill is only 10 miles away mostly across country roads. The guy in the loader said that I could help myself to the saw dust and take all I wanted, when I asked him about it. He didn't offer to load it, and I didn't ask him. As I show up for loads regularly, he may be more willing to load, but I'm not afraid of manual labor (working a shovel). Thankfully, I had taken the scoop shovel. I was able to back the truck right up to the pile to load it which didn't take long.
After unloading here at home, we (my good friend Danny was with me) hooked up the trailer and headed for another load.

The pile of sawdust is gorgeous. Apparently, when the pile gets too high, the push the saw dust back away from the auger that unloads it.

There's another pile of chipped bark from their debarking machine. We loaded the trailer with this material and then filled the truck with saw dust.

I took another photo with the trailer loaded. We used pitch forks for loading this material, and that worked pretty well.

Here’s a photo of the truck loaded with saw dust. We covered the load with the tarp so that not too much of it would blow away. Notice the dark material in the background: that's where they have pushed the saw dust and chipped bark in the past and let it sit. I'll have to ask about acquiring some of that good looking stuff, too. . .

When we got home, it was time to employ the "burrito-method" of unloading to get the material off of the trailer. It unloaded great.

The trailer load dumped right on top of the first load of saw dust.

Here's the carbon material we hauled today in two trips.

In the morning, I'm heading in the opposite direction to haul home some more material from the sale barn. They cleaned out some of the back lots today, and I want to get some of that back here. If that hauling goes well, I'll haul three or four loads of carbon material in the afternoon. Then, this Sunday, after a nice rest on the 7th day, I'll build a beautiful compost pile.

I bought a new tractor (as I mentioned in my previous post). Here is a photo of it:

It’s a 1976 Case 990 with a loader. The loader has been well used, broken, and repaired, but it’ll work for my purposes. It’s like having 100 men with shovels and pitchforks ready and willing to work for me, something not to be taken for granted. It's a great tool.

I’m thrilled about having a source for carbon material. It’s one more step toward extreme composting!

More compost material

2010-03-19T19:59:00.001-05:00

There was no one at the sale barn to load material yesterday – the guy was doing his taxes. He was scheduled to be there this morning, though. So, I set off at 8:00am with my truck and trailer to haul in more good stuff.

When I arrived at the sale barn, Pat, the guy who has the contract to haul off the manure and bedding, was there. He had just finished loading his tandem axle dump truck (a 1967 Mack) and was about to leave. This was good timing. He’d already hauled one or two loads but was more than willing to haul loads for me. I told him that I would take all he could haul. I rode with him on the first load to show him where to dump it. When we got back to the sale barn, my truck and trailer were loaded.

I hauled three loads this morning, and Pat hauled five all together. I had an appointment this afternoon to look at a loader tractor that I’d seen advertised on Craigslist (I ended up buying the tractor – I’ll have more info and photos about that later after I have it hauled home). So, I only hauled manure in the morning.

Using the trailer I am able to haul between 4 and 5 tons at a time. On the first two loads, unloading the trailer went very well with no problems. I let the guy load the trailer too heavily on the third load, making it more difficult to unload it.

The trailer being loaded at the sale barn.

Getting ready to unload the trailer. The method I use involves the use of some chains and some 2x6 boards. I used lag screws to attach several 2x6s cut just less than the width of my trailer to two logging chains. There are approximately three inch gaps between the boards. These slats on chains are then laid on the trailer floor, and the material is loaded on top.

When I’m ready to unload, I connect two more chains to the chains with the 2x6s at the front of the trailer and pull with the tractor. This rolls the material off of the trailer. I connect the ends of the chains with the 2x6s to the back of the trailer in order to make sure they don’t just pull out from under the material when it gets near the back of the trailer.

On the third load, my tractor couldn’t roll the load off of the trailer; it was too heavy. So, I had to shovel some of it off first.

Another picture of me shoveling to lighten the load so that the tractor could pull it off. A larger tractor (which I just bought) wouldn’t have had much problem.

And, finally, the load of manure and bedding rolls off of the trailer.

After pulling the material off, there is a little that has fallen through the slats which needs to be scooped off. This only takes a couple of minutes. In all my fussing with this load to roll off the trailer, the chains on the back came unhooked and left a bit of material on the end of the trailer. This didn’t take too long to shovel off, though. Ideally, there is very little to be scooped off.

The last thing to do is to pull the false floor back onto the trailer so it’s ready for the next load.

Here is the pile after hauling three loads today. There was already about four tons there from when I was perfecting my trailer unloading method. So, this pile is made of about 16 to 18 tons of sale barn cleanings.

Here are the piles from five dump truck loads (with younguns playing on them).

I was able to make the trip to the sale barn, get loaded, drive back, and dump it all off in less than an hour. That means I was able to haul more than twice as much per trip adding less than 15 minutes to the round trip. Not bad, I think.

Truck repairs (the do it myself kind)

2010-03-17T20:41:00.001-05:00

There’s a beautiful pile of manure and bedding at the sale barn. I’ve eyed it with great longing and hope to bring much of it home. I stopped by this morning to talk to the guy in charge to see if he’ll be in tomorrow. Nope, he won’t. He’s the one driving the skid loader who loads my truck. Unless, I come up with another option, I’ll have to wait until Friday to haul. I would haul my “new” Bobcat down there and use it to load, but I’m not sure I trust it well enough yet. I’ve still got to make a few more adjustments.

Yesterday, I tried out a couple different methods of unloading my trailer, hoping to be able to haul more at a time without adding a lot of extra time or effort to the process. I think I’ve got a pretty good method for unloading the trailer which I’ll share in another post soon. With the truck and trailer, I ought to be able to haul four or five tons of material per trip.

This afternoon as I was adjusting the rear brakes on my truck, I noticed that the passenger side wheel had some movement it shouldn’t have. I figured bearings. Even if it was only the nut having loosened, I thought it best to put new bearings in that wheel. I had noticed a vibration when driving the truck at highway speed and had changed the rear U-joint last week. That helped but didn’t solve the problem. Probably was the bearings. Thankfully, the local auto parts place had the bearings in stock. So, after a quick trip to town, I was ready to change the wheel bearings.

Only there was a problem. I didn’t have a wrench or socket to fit the nut that holds the wheel on. I thought that the tool I had for doing the front wheels, which I did a few months ago, would fit. Nope, I was wrong. These nuts actually take a 2-9/16” (or thereabouts) socket. The auto parts place didn’t have one (I called – they don’t stock it). What to do? Get creative.

I quickly discerned that a screw driver and hammer wouldn’t work. Scrounging around in the garage, I found part of an old driveshaft, what remained after a previous project (I don’t remember exactly what right now). It happened to be about the right diameter, and after a couple minutes with the bench grinder and a few hammer blows, I had a socket to fit the wheel nuts. A large pipe wrench worked for turning loosening and tightening.

So, the project was completed. It’s probably best to have this done before hauling more material. The extra weight puts more wear and tear and strain on the the truck and specifically the wheel bearings. The bearings weren’t completely worn out, but some pitting on the bearing races was visible (the bearings fit sit inside the races).

I’m not a mechanic by trade. There’s a lot about vehicles that I don’t understand. Usually, if I can see how a thing goes together and works and if I can look up some directions online, I can do it. This was a straight forward project, much easier than changing the front wheel bearings and axle U-joints which I did a few months ago. That project took about three days. Earlier this week, I put in new spark plugs and wires and new vacuum hoses. That was simple.

Oh, on a different note, Regina received the maple syrup fine and enjoyed it on some fresh biscuits! She said, “It is yummy!”

Summer kitchen cook stove

2010-03-12T21:39:00.001-06:00

In the fall of 2008, we purchased a Smederevac wood cook stove to use in a summer kitchen.

The summer kitchen was only in the plans at that time, not a reality.

We didn’t know anything about this stove at the time except that it is made in Serbia, having been made since the 1920s (or so we read). It’s fairly light weight with a small fire box. It’s designed for cooking, not heating.

The stove has been sitting on our back porch patiently waiting to be set up – we’ve never used it. As the weather continues to warm up here, it’s gotten kind of warm inside the house when we’re cooking on the Baker’s Choice cook stove. So, that has provided some impetus to actually get the smaller stove hooked up. I’ve had stove pipe sections that I bought some time ago ready, and I purchased a couple more this week.

So, this afternoon, I moved some things on the back porch, including the stove. I installed the stove pipe adapter (it has a small outlet, not 6 inch). Because the solar panels are installed on the porch roof, I wanted to route the chimney behind and above them. Originally, we were going to install the stove with the stove pipe running in front of where the panels are now installed. I guess I would have had to move it if it had already been installed.

I cut a hole in the metal roof and ran the 6 inch stove pipe straight up from the stove. Ideally, I would’ve used double-walled insulated chimney pipe, but for this installation I didn’t want to spend the money for that. So, it’s just single wall pipe all the way. There is 14 feet of stove pipe so that the top is above the solar panels.

Of course, once I had the stove set up and the chimney installed, I had to try it out. So, I built a small fire to see how it would work. I set a tea pot on the top to test the temperature of the cook top. It didn’t take long for it to start blowing steam and whistling. It looks like the stove is going to work.

I want to enclose the porch a bit to keep out some of the wind and the rain that blows in. It will have several screened windows for ventilation. We also have a sink with a cabinet that I’ll install, and I’ll put in a couple shelves with counters. Then, we’ll have a fully functional summer kitchen. That will be a good thing since we don’t want to heat the house up during the summer and using the electric cook stove is no longer a viable option.

Bobcat M500

2010-03-10T14:04:00.001-06:00

One piece of machinery that is necessary for the expanded composting operation I have in mind is a loader of some sort. I recently found an old Bobcat skidsteer loader for sale in Michigan for a very good price. Everything worked out for buying it, including making arrangements to have it hauled here – I wasn’t interested in driving nearly 700 miles to get it myself, and the haul fee wasn’t too much more than it would have cost me in time, gas, food, and lodging.

My shipper called last evening to let me know that he had it on his trailer and was heading my way. I drove over to Somerset, Kentucky, this morning to meet him and transfer the machine to my trailer. We had no problems, thankfully. The Bobcat started fine and drove onto my trailer without any problems. I chained it down securely and headed home. There is an old manure bucket that came with the loader, but it is in need of some repairs.

When I bought it, the seller was unsure which model it was. Someone had painted it in the past, including painting “Bobcat 610” on the side, but he couldn’t find a serial number tag. I looked for information online about the model based upon the seller’s ad which said it had a 2-cylinder Wisconsin engine. I could find no Bobcat models that ever had such an engine. The 610 had a 4-cylinder Bobcat.

Well, after getting it home this morning, I discovered that it has a 2-cylinder Kohler engine. Based upon this discovery and a little more searching, I determined that it is a Bobcat M500.

The loader works. It does need tuned up a bit – it’s been sitting the last few years. I think it will work out alright for what I need. If not, I do believe that I could sell it and get all my money back out of it since it is a working skidsteer.

I hope to put it to work soon loading some compost that needs spread on the fields.

And the winner is. . .

2010-03-08T09:04:00.001-06:00

Regina!

I printed out all of the entrants’ names (70 in all), cut out each name, folded them, and placed them in a stainless steel bowl. After thoroughly mixing the pieces of paper, Anne drew out the winning entrant.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the giveaway contest! It’s been a lot of fun.

I’m currently boiling some more sap into syrup. I haven’t decided yet, but I may give another small jar away. It depends on several factors. So, if I do, I’ll let you know.

Okay, Regina, you’ll have to email me the address to which I should mail the syrup. My email address is: darrylapifer(at)gmail.com. I’ll let you know once it’s on its way.

You load 16 tons. . .

2010-03-05T15:31:00.001-06:00

Well, I didn’t actually load it myself – the guy with the skidsteer at the stock yards did. And, not all at once. My truck couldn’t handle that. It would be nice, though.

I spent several hours today hauling eight loads of manure and bedding that they’ve cleaned out of the pens at the livestock buying market in the local town. It’s just over 6 miles away from our home. I can haul two tons per load. Thankfully, I didn’t have to load it with a shovel. The round trip, including helping the guy switch from the forks to the bucket on the skidsteer and watching him load the truck, took 45 minutes. It would have taken a lot longer if my truck didn’t have a dump bed.

I’ve hauled manure from the stock yards before, a few times using the truck. Before that I’ve hauled on my 16 foot trailer. I can haul more with the trailer, but then I have to unload it by hand. If I can figure out how to unload the trailer more easily, then I could bring more each trip. Any ideas?

The stock yard actually pays someone to haul away the manure and bedding that they clean out of the pens. I’m not sure where all he takes it, but I have had him bring some here in the past. It’s probably cheaper to pay him $15 a dump truck load than to haul it myself, but that doesn’t always work out. He can’t get in the bottom here to dump it where I want/need it when the ground is wet (which seems like half the year – the same time during which they stock yards have the most material to get rid of). His schedule also doesn’t always coincide with mine. I’ll work on that. He’s a nice guy, the same one I had dig our pond. He knows I’d like him to haul more. I need to make a point to tell him that I’ll take all he can bring.

So, with today’s hauling, I’ve started my own small mountain of compost. It will take time to build it up. I hauled today because I could get it, and there was some pretty good stuff available. It has a lot of saw dust and some hay in it along with the cattle mess. It was steaming really well when he dug into the pile to load my truck.

On another note. . .

The Giveaway

I’m keeping a record of all the entrants and referrals. I’m also enjoying the comments. A lot of people are saying some very nice things. Some of you would like to buy some maple syrup. I wish I had some to sell. We generally make enough for our use throughout the year, not extra to sell. I can see that if I did have extra, there would be a market.

The bottle I’m giving away, which I wish I could give to everyone, is some that I made this week. What I’ve made so far has been very good. This particular batch had a little more than the giveaway jar which I put in another jar. It actually boiled a little too long while I was bottling the giveaway jar and most of it turned to sugar after bottling (we’ll enjoy it, though). I mention this because it should be an indication of the thickness of the giveaway bottle. It’s not sugar, but the next bit that was still in the pan while bottling it is mostly sugar (I have in the past made syrup that wasn’t as thick as it ought to be – still tasted good, though).

Maple syrup giveaway!

2010-03-03T19:33:00.001-06:00

Now is your chance to not only sample but to enjoy a jar of fresh, 100% natural, homemade maple syrup! This is not just any syrup, it is special grade syrup made from the sap of South-Central Kentucky maple trees. These trees were grown sustainably and organically, happily enjoying life while growing in the fertile soils and clean air of Kentucky with plenty of fresh water and sunshine. After being gently tapped, sap from the trees was collected and then boiled over a real wood fire in order to concentrate the sugars and highlight the maple goodness that typifies real maple syrup.

One lucky winner will receive a jar containing approximately 20 ounces of select grade, organically grown maple syrup. To enter the contest and have a chance to win this fabulous prize, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Those who have already commented stating their desire to be considered will automatically be entered. All comments for entrance must be received before I finish my chores and breakfast on Monday morning, March 9, 2010 (I might sleep late, or I might not, so no definite time will be stated). After I have finished my chores and breakfast, I will randomly select one entrant as the winner of the first New Kentucky Homestead maple syrup giveaway. The winner will be announced Monday morning immediately after the drawing.

If you want to increase your chance of winning, then refer someone to my blog. If someone leaves a comment stating that he/she was referred by you, then I’ll enter your name an additional time for each referral. That’s it. Good luck!

Once a pond a time (article in Countryside)

2010-03-03T12:10:00.001-06:00

In the latest issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal, there is an article featuring our pond (and homestead). Some of you have already commented on the article (you can read the article here), but I waited until the put it online before sharing it.

Jerri Cook, the author of the article, left a comment several weeks ago on my blog. She was given the task of writing an article about homestead ponds. She’d found a lot of information online but thought it was mostly technical, boring stuff for an article. Then, she came across my blog and wanted to set up a time to talk with me.

So, I emailed her my phone number, and she called me on the weekend to talk about our pond. I, of course, was glad to share when information I could about our pond project and building a pond, in general. She did a nice job writing the article and made us sound pretty good, too. So, if you have a chance, you ought to check out Once a pond a time.

I’m working on getting some pure, homemade maple syrup ready for a giveaway. I mentioned in my last post that I might give some away. There was a little interest. I’ll record the names of all those who comment on my blog to enter them in the contest. I’ll also announce the contest when I’ve gotten the syrup ready. So, if you want to be considered, just make a comment in order to be entered.

Gearing up for composting on a larger scale

2010-03-01T21:05:00.001-06:00

I’ve continued to be impressed with Forerunner over at the homesteading today forums. Some of his latest posts are in the Extreme Composting thread. He’s inspired me to develop and expand my composting efforts. I’m planning on putting the dump bed on my 1979 F250 to good use starting very soon. There are a lot of items in the county that need composted, and our fields could sure use some amendment since they are mostly old tobacco fields.

I own a couple pitchforks. Actually, I own three, but one has only half a handle because it got broken. I need to buy a new handle and figure out how to put it on that one. Pitchforks and the old scoop shovel that I own are good tools for making compost and cleaning out a barn. I’ve done that. There’s nothing wrong with hard work and a bit of sweat. However, I’m thinking of doing some composting on a scale larger than what I would like to do with a couple pitchforks and a scoop shovel. I’ll do it that way if I have to, of course.

So, I’ve been seeing about acquiring some equipment to help with this endeavor. One of the things that would be helpful is a manure spreader. I already have one, but it’s about 100 years old, or thereabout. I bought it a few years ago from a man who cleans up junk for people. He drug it off of an old farm where it had sat for who knows how long, but it was still operational. I didn’t pay much for it, something less than $150.

It continued to work until last year when both of the chains for the moving floor broke. I haven’t fixed them yet. I know I should have, but it’s just one of those things that I haven’t gotten to. I’m going to soon. I haven’t decided whether to keep it or to sell it. It’s an old Oliver horse drawn spreader that someone removed the front axle from and welded on a hitch for a tractor. It shivers and shakes when in operation, threatening to blow itself apart, but other than the chains that broke, it hasn’t given me much trouble.

Still, I’ve wanted a newer manure spreader, or at least one that doesn’t seem like it’s gonna blow apart. I found one on Craigslist last week and bought it on Friday. It’s a pto driven spreader and is in decent shape. I’m going to replace the floor sometime and replace a bearing in the top beaters which are currently disconnected. They only serve to knock the top off the load when spreading, so it works without them connected. I think it will be a good piece of equipment to have, especially when considering the amount of bedding in the barn that will need spread after it composts.

Contemplating loading several tons of composted bedding and manure by hand for spreading doesn’t excite me greatly, although if that’s what must be done, I’ll do it. My old International 424 would make a nice loader tractor except for one thing – it doesn’t have power steering. I know how hard of a beast it is to steer without extra weight on the front. So, I have never seriously considered adding a loader to it.

I thought about maybe buying a small loader tractor for my composting endeavors. Then, I thought maybe it would be better to find another tractor to replace the 424 that had a loader. I looked at one that might have worked, but it only convinced me that I really like my 424. Then, I found a good deal on an old Bobcat skidsteer online. There was only one problem: it was located way up in the thumb of Michigan. That’s a long ways away. However, the deal was a really good one and I found someone to haul it very reasonably. So, I’m buying it. I believe I could resell it here and actually make some money off of it. I’ll know better once I get it here.

Someone on a forum explained that they considered their tractor to be their most important investment on their farm/homestead after their house. I never thought of it that way, but I can see their point. I’ve mostly approached buying equipment with a very frugal viewpoint. That’s been justified, I think, by the fact that I don’t have much to actually spend. However, I’m going to consider saving some pennies in order to upgrade my tractor (not Grandpa’s JD MT, though) at some point.

The animals in the barn are doing well. Josey ought to have her calf in a couple of months. She isn’t really showing much, but she’s not been in heat for the last seven months that I’ve been aware of, and she usually makes it obvious by how noisy she gets. Cleo is growing strong, but she’s a wild thing. She never calmed down and responded positively to human interaction. I decided I really didn’t want to spend the time to tame her. So, we’ll sell her in another month. Hopefully, Josey will have a heifer – I’d rather keep hers anyway. It will be Ramiah’s calf.

Jessica’s horse, Spice, is fairing well, and Jessica is looking forward to it warming up and drying up a bit around here so she can work more with her and ride her more. I’m trying to figure out how to rotate grazing for the cows this spring and summer. I want to really implement management intensive grazing. Milk cows offer some extra challenges for doing so than beef cows. I’ve got some ideas which I’ll share later as they develop.

I’m going to boil down some more maple sap to make syrup. I’m thinking about having a giveaway with a bottle or two of the syrup. Is anyone interested? I’ll announce it soon. There aren’t a great number of readers of this blog, so the odds should be pretty good. So far, what we’ve made has been excellent.

Boiling sap for maple syrup

2010-02-24T19:04:00.001-06:00

I decided not to tap any of my maple trees this year. I just didn’t feel like doing it, and we still have plenty of syrup from last year. We don’t have very many syrup trees, maybe three dozen at the most. But, our friend Gill who lives across town has a couple hundred he usually taps. Last year he let us collect sap from his trees and boil it down on his evaporator. This year the weather hasn’t cooperated very well, but Gill has been collecting sap for about a week and expects to get more in the next few days. He offered us some sap, because he didn’t think he would get all that he had collected boiled down soon enough.

So, Dad and I went over yesterday to bring home some sap. We didn’t know quite how we were going to evaporate it to make maple syrup, but we figured we would come up with some way. In the past we have evaporated a few gallons inside on our wood stoves. But, we brought home about 85 gallons from Gill’s, and that is too much to do inside. Gill was kind enough to lend us his small evaporator pan. It holds about 15 gallons.

We put the sap in a 275 gallon tote that I had previously had water in for the cows (thankfully, it was empty). When we got back home, I made a quick fireplace with concrete blocks, some pieces of metal, and a short section of stove pipe. It’s large enough for the pan to cover the opening on the top. Keeping a good fire in it allows the sap to boil, evaporating off most of the water, leaving the sugars concentrated for syrup. We finish it inside one the wood stove. It boils away at about 1.5 inches per hour.

I lifted the bed of the truck to tilt the tote, making it easier to get the sap out. The fireplace is near the truck, making it easy to add sap to the pan as needed.

I finished two pints of syrup last night. This is grade “AA” stuff – quite thick and flavorful. I put another pan of sap on last night after taking off the first batch. Before going to bed I was able to add about 6 gallons more sap and then some more this morning for about 27 or 28 gallons all together. I made three pints of grade “AA” syrup form this today. We just took off the third batch we boiled down from about 21 gallons of sap this afternoon. Dad will finish it tonight. There’s another pan on to evaporate tonight and tomorrow morning, hopefully finishing up what we brought home.

When I bring the condensed sap in to finish it, I put it on the stove to boil. Inside I can watch it more carefully and keep from scorching it. Our candy thermometer doesn’t work, even though it is brand new (I don’t know if we’ve ever had one that actually works right). When the syrup started foaming vigorously, I figured it was ready to bottle. I heated pint jars in the oven and boiled some lids. Then, I strained the syrup (a slow process, usually) into the jars, put lids and rings on them, and set them on the counter. They usually seal within 30 minutes or so.

We enjoy the pure maple syrup we make during the rest of the year. It’s great on pancakes, of course.

Homesteading as a moral commitment

2010-02-22T09:53:00.001-06:00

“I’d love to do what you’re doing,” we sometimes hear, followed by the inevitable “but.” There are people who say they would love to live a more self-sufficient life, to be off-the-grid, to homestead out in the country, growing their own food and living a more intentional life. Many of these individuals are sincere and do wish to break free of their enslavement to a social and economic system that holds them tightly in its grasp, but how many of them will ever move on their desires?

It was very encouraging recently to come into contact with a man and his family who earnestly desire to become modern day homesteaders. I will do anything and everything I can to help them realize their dreams (and whomever else). This family’s desire is not just a passing fancy; they are serious and are doing things now to make it a reality. Unfortunately, most of the people I’ve heard express affinity for what my family and I are doing are most likely never going to do it. They have a romantic notion of “the simple life” (which ain’t so simple) but they value some things too highly to give them up to see their notions become reality.

Recently, in passing I mentioned that living a homesteading life requires a moral commitment, but I didn’t elaborate on that point. Basically, the morality of the situation resides in believing it is good/better to pursuing this particular way of living, an intentional life, as I like to call it. For us it is better to live without debt than to borrow money in order to have things which we may want but don’t need, realizing the difference between wants and needs. It is right to invest our energy and labor in providing as much as we can for ourselves rather than relying on industrial mechanisms to make things available for us via an exchange of my labor in the form of dollar bills. Being together and working together as a family is more highly valued than having enough money to provide a bigger home and more things at the expense of family. These are all moral choices that guide our way of life.

You can examine anyone’s life and begin to see what they value. You can do that with my life and find things that reveal moral commitments I should change (I need to be examining my life for this purpose, actually). For instance, if one values things over relationships, this is evident. Granted, some do not see any other way to live than the usual, standard way of living that is all around us; they’ve been conditioned and trained to accept life on terms that they did not create. Intentionally changing the terms upon which we live our lives requires discernment, seeing how we live in its bare, naked form, for what it is.

Western culture and economics dictate a certain way of life, one that I find morally problematic in many ways. Until I had opportunity and reason to question the context of modern life, I didn’t see this. As my eyes opened to the problems of our socio-economic system, I was challenged with the responsibility of making a choice about what to do. Should I go along with what I understand is wrong but which is difficult to disentangle myself from (the easier path)? Or, should I act upon my understanding and choose to change the circumstances of my life, living in opposition to much of the socio-economic order surrounding me? That’s a tough place to be, but one in which everyone makes a choice. Even choosing not to decide is still to make a choice.

We are surrounded by romantic notions of rural/farm life and the good old days. Most of these notions are not in sync with the reality of rural/farm life as it exists today. Examine the packaging in the grocery store to see the images that are sold to us, images that draw upon our romantic notions. These are a part of our social psyche, but they are not based upon current reality. These are powerful images that when we buy things from the grocery store may help us feel good about what we’re buying and eating and keep us from seriously considering the real conditions of production. They are evidence, though, of the power of our notions and their very real existence.

I think it is these same kinds of romantic notions which lead people to say they would love to live a self-sufficient life but to never make changes in their lives to realize at least part of that desire. Being a homesteader doesn’t always mean owning a chunk of rural property with enough room to raise a large garden and a menagerie of animals. However, it does mean making choices and decisions in our lives that separate us from the hegemony of the socio-economic system in which we are all enslaved. It means frugality. It means doing as much for yourself and your family as you can. It means taking increasing responsibility for your life in meaningful ways within the current sphere of your existence. It’s a process, not a destination.

I wish to encourage all who want to homestead to take steps right now to realize their desires. However small the steps may be, start taking some now. Limit your consumption of industrially produced products by making do with what you have or making for yourself. Focus on and prioritize those things which are more meaningful, like time together as a family playing and working. Grow a tomato plant in a pot. Preserve some of your own food. Make your choices more intentional with a goal of realizing your dreams/desires one step at a time.

There’s nothing wrong with romantic notions. They can guide and motivate us. We need to take responsibility for our our actions, for the moral choices we make every day, with an end in view, not because it is a romantic notion, but because it is a better way to live. Our moral commitments are revealed in what we do. What does what we’re each doing say about us and our values?

Lessons from solar: taking responsibility

2010-02-17T07:15:00.001-06:00

We’ve been off the grid for a few days now. Everything is going quite well. As we’re becoming more acquainted with the ability of our system to provide our electric needs, we’re being very conservative in our usage, and we’re enjoying it. All of us keep an eye on the battery monitor which we usually have displaying the current amp hour rate (net gain or loss), watching to see what each item we turn on uses. Sometimes, one of the children will look at it and say, “Hey, someone has a light on” based on the number displayed.

The challenges associated with being off the grid are exciting and we are embracing them. It requires us to take responsibility for our power consumption, and we find ourselves paying more attention to the weather, whether cloudy or sunshine. This is a good thing and teaches some valuable lessons.

When connected to the utility grid, I believe most people don’t think much about the power they use and don’t equate that with the amount of coal required to generate it (as Anne said last night, most people don’t think about how much of a mountain it takes to support their power needs each day). The power is always there in practically infinite supply, and it really doesn’t cost much. Besides, we don’t see and realize the amount of electricity we use when we flip on light switch, open the hot water tap, boil water on the stove, or vacuum the carpet.

If people were aware of the rate at which their appliances consume electricity, would it lead to more conservation? If you turn on the stove burner and see that it is consuming the equivalent power of 24 100-watt light bulbs, would it make a difference? If you saw that your vacuum cleaner is sucking in power at the rate of 1.4 kilowatt hours, would that matter? A regular refrigerator uses about 2 kilowatt hours a day, every day. How much does a TV left on all day consume? What about a computer? In general, we don’t know and don’t think about it.

When our electricity is derived from the sun via a limited amount of solar panels and components that are not 100% efficient, we pay a whole lot more attention to what we’re using and what we’re gaining. Our inverter consumes 12 watts an hour and is displayed as 0.5 amps on our battery monitor. This is on 24 hours a day. A 12 watt CFL light bulb also uses 0.5 amps. When the refrigerator runs, the usage jumps up to about 7 or 8 amps and settles back to about 5 amps. We watch these things and know what they mean because we are connected to our electricity source and know that we must conserve.

The local lineman for the electric company was interested in our solar setup. I told him the first three things to do when going off the grid were conserve, conserve, conserve. I explained that our goal was to use, on average, 1.5 kilowatt hours per day, an amount that many families use in an hour. He commented that he couldn’t get his kids to conserve, because they have to have their TVs and games and stuff. I guess, they would feel deprived and would resent taking responsibility for the usage (another way to think about conservation). We don’t feel deprived; we are motivated to generate and use what we need, not mindlessly consume. It’s a challenge that we welcome and are excited about.

So far, we’re doing really well. As I said, we’re enjoying the challenge and opportunity to be off the grid. It fits with what we want to do and with our outlook on life and moral commitments (homesteading is a moral commitment, but that’s a topic for another time). Wouldn’t the world be better if fewer people were disconnected from their consumption (whether electricity or in other areas)? That doesn’t necessarily mean being off the grid, just taking responsibility for their usage in more meaningful ways than just paying a monthly bill.

We just threw the switch!

2010-02-12T15:47:00.001-06:00

We did it! We are off the grid!! Wow, this is cool!

I wired the battery meter (Bogart Engineering Trimetric 2020 – pictured to the left displaying battery voltage) and connected the power line from the inverter to our house wiring. In the disconnect box outside on the pole, I pulled the house wires loose and wrapped their ends with electrical tape.

The wire from the inverter (Exeltec XP1100) comes through the kitchen floor behind the electric stove (which is unplugged). I connected the neutral wire to the neutral in the outlet and the ground to the ground. Then, based upon a suggestion from Ramiah, I connected both existing hot wires in the outlet and the inverter hot wire to the same terminal. Ramiah suggestion was that I could just flip the breaker for the stove in the box. I was going to reroute the wires to the mains at the top. His suggestion helped clarify how unnecessary and complicated that was going to be. With the 240 volt 50 amp breaker the power would already be connected to both poles inside the box. So, I took his suggestion, and then flipped the switch.

Things are working well. The refrigerator came on right away and ran for about 5 minutes (see my post about our energy efficient refrigerator). The lights work (they’re not on now – it’s not dark enough). The computer works. In fact, at this moment, the power coming from the panels is enough to power the laptop I’m working on (it’s 3:36pm Central Time). Very cool!

We’re all excited!

The batteries are charged & I didn’t even know it

2010-02-11T18:32:00.001-06:00

I’ve been keeping an eye on our solar electric system the last few days in order to watch how it’s performing. It’s been overcast every day it seems, and we even had some snow. However, the panels have been outputting power every day for about 9 hours a day. I was looking forward to seeing what kind of numbers we would get on a sunny day.

Today the sun actually shown through. However, I was disappointed and concerned to see an input value of only about 150 watts. Naturally, I wondered what was going on. I noticed that when I turned the photovoltaic array back on after momentarily disconnecting it via the circuit breaker that the power input would peak around 1,000 watts and then rapidly decrease.

For the previous days, I had noticed that the peak power input seemed to occur quite early and was much higher than the average input during the day. It seemed like something was bleeding off the power. So, I started checking my wiring on the panels. Interestingly, the input power was the same whether I had all panels connected or only some. I should mention that the source of my readings is the display on the Xantrex XW60 charge contollor.

Maybe I’m a bit slow, but I began to wonder if maybe the explanation had something to do with the solar charge controller. I couldn’t find anything in the manual, though. So, I called the technical assistance number and spoke with a representative, explaining what I was experiencing. She told me that the charge controller was adjusting the input because my batteries were fully charged or nearly fully charged.

I liked this answer, but it surprised me. I was sure that the batteries were a bit low based upon my voltage readings on them. I guess I was wrong. We’ve not connected the system to our house yet; I wanted it to fully charge the batteries first. Since it appeared that they were fully charged already and we had good sun today, I told the charge controller to equalize the batteries. This means that it purposefully charged them at a high voltage in order to mix the battery acid inside the cells. The reason for doing this was so that I could take specific gravity readings for each cell to use as a baseline for determining battery health in the future.

So, the batteries have been equalized. During the equalize cycle, the input was around 350 watts. When the cycle ended, I watched the input drop to zero watts. Confirmation that the charge controller was indeed adjusting/limiting the input. Very cool.

Only, I really have no way of knowing what kind of realistic input I can expect on cloudy days, now. What I’ve observed the last few days has been the charge controller adjusting the input to float charge the batteries. I guess it will be at least as much as we’ve seen so far, maybe more. Over 3.5 cloudy days, we registered 1.5 Kilowatt hours. Today only added half a kilowatt even with good sunshine and an equalize cycle. The possibilities are looking good, actually.

I’m going to take my specific gravity readings tonight. Then, tomorrow, I hope to complete the wiring so that we can flip the switch and be off the grid by tomorrow night.

Constructing a milking stanchion for our cows

2010-02-09T20:00:00.001-06:00

I’ve been milking both Tilly and Josey in the mornings since the middle of January. At the time we butchered Chucky Joe, he was still nursing on Josey. So, afterwards, I figured we might as well have that milk now. Josey is still producing two to three quarts of milk a day.

Cleo is still nursing on Tilly, of course, since she’s almost six weeks old. Since Cleo was born, I’ve brought Tilly in to milk her in the mornings to make sure she’s stripped out. In the last two or three weeks, Cleo hasn’t left much for us. I have segregated Tilly at night a few times and am starting to do that regularly now. Doing so we get seven or eight quarts of milk from the two cows.

When I first started milking Josey after Chucky was born, I hooked her halter to a post in the barn. She’s well-behaved when being milked, and her being halter broke makes it easy to tie her and to lead her. Tilly, on the other hand, was not broke to a halter when we bought her. She still isn’t. So, tying her or hooking her halter to a post didn’t work too well for milking her. She protests against such confinement.

After Tilly got here, I built a gate for milking, because that’s what she was used to. It was set up just outside the loafing area in the barn. When I open the gate, whichever cow I’m going to milk walks straight into the milking stall. She stands next to a wall, and I close the gate against her which keeps her from moving around. Overall, this has worked fairly well for both cows during the last year.

Instead of giving the cows grain while I’m milking, I give them a flake of hay to eat. I’ve been putting the hay on the floor at the front of the milking stall. The only problem has been that they will move a little bit backwards and forwards while nuzzling through the hay. I’ve wanted to do something to constrain them a little more. So, today, I constructed a stanchion.

I used 2x4s to construct the stanchion. I set a post from floor to ceiling and tied it to existing posts. I used a 2x4 for the locking mechanism to hold the cow’s head in the small feed bunk I built to hold hay. It pivots over and is secured with a pin. When closed, there is about 8 inches of room for the cow’s neck which allows her to move enough to reach all the hay, but it doesn’t give her enough room to pull her head back out. I’m pretty sure of this because when I put Tilly in it to try it out today, she tried to pull her head out but couldn’t.

I actually put both cows in the stanchion to see how they would do with it and how well it works. Josey had no problem with it and enjoyed a little hay while standing there. Tilly, on the other hand, didn’t want her head locked in. She tried to get out but couldn’t. After a bit she calmed down and ate some hay. I sat next to her and simulated milking for a few minutes. When I moved near her head, she would begin to fight the stanchion and move her hind end over.

Because of Tilly’s movements, I decided that I would continue to use the gate in addition to the stanchion. This way, she would be forced to keep her hind end over and her forward and backward motions would be restricted. So, I made the necessary modifications to the gate (I made it shorter) and installed it. We’ll see in the morning how well it works. I believe it will work fine.

We’re harvesting electricity from the sun

2010-02-07T13:50:00.001-06:00

Although it’s been cloudy here, I’ve been watching the solar charge controller for evidence that we’re getting power from the panels. I thought there should be some power even with a

few clouds, but there was nothing. Nada. Zip.

I’ve been concerned that something was wrong,

that maybe I wired things incorrectly when tying the panels together, although I was careful when connecting them.

This afternoon, the sun actually peaked through the clouds. Still, no power. Hmm. I have a separate panel I want to install on the barn.

So, I put the multitester on it to see if it really was too cloudy.

It was putting out over 20 volts when I pointed it toward the sun.

We definitely ought to be getting power from the array on the roof.

I climbed up on the roof to check the wiring on the panels. I disconnected on string and put the tester on it – over 90 volts. They were working. So, I came back down and opened the combiner box. I pulled the wires from the panels loose and tested them in pairs to be sure that each of the three strings was working properly. They were.

I decided to check the continuity between posts on the bus bars inside the combiner box. That’s when I discovered the problem. They aren’t really bus bar. Each terminal is only connected to the one on the opposite side; they aren’t all connected together. So, my strings of solar panels were not connected together and not connected to the charge controller.

Once I redid the connections inside the combiner box, the solar charge controller began to register power coming in and to charge the batteries. There isn’t a great deal of power at this point. I think I should be seeing more, but it’s hard to tell. It’s still partly cloudy, not direct sun. I’ll keep an eye on it. If it continues to register lower wattage than I believe it should, I’ll check a couple of things to see if it makes a difference.

Anyway, it’s exciting to have power from the sun flowing in to the batteries for the first time.

Solar power: we’re getting closer

2010-02-03T16:38:00.001-06:00

Most of the snow melted off the porch roof yesterday. So, today, once I got a few things done inside the house, I worked on installing the rest of the solar panels. This job went quite well and didn’t take too long. Before lunch I started wiring them together. I finished after lunch.

There are 15 panels in all. There are three sets of five panels which are each wired in series. That means they are connected positive to negative. This multiplies the voltage while the current stays the same. So, once five panels with a voltage of 17.4 volts each and an amp rating of 5.75 amps are wired in series, the voltage is 87 volts and the amperage is 5.75 amps.

Each of these three five-panel strings is then wired in parallel – connected positive to positive and negative to negative. Wiring in parallel multiplies the current while the voltage stays the same. So, three strings of 87 volts and 5.75 amps wired together in parallel yields 87 volts with 17.25 amps.

There are of course variations in the voltage and amps coming off of the panels depending on different factors like how direct the sun light is and the temperature of the panels. Increasing the voltage by wiring in series allows smaller gauge wire to be used to bring the power from the panels to the solar charge controller since the wire gauge required is based upon the amperage and the length of the wire.

The solar charge controller I purchased will take the 87 volts (with variations) and convert it to the appropriate voltage for charging my battery bank. The battery bank is nominally 24 volts, but it will be charged closer to 29 volts. The controller is rated to handle up to 150 volts, but I’m happy with 87.

The three strings of series-wired panels are combined in a combiner box. The negative leads are attached to one bus bar, and the positive leads are attached to another bus bar. This combines the positives and the negatives from the panels allowing only one wire for postive and one for negative to be sent into the house to the charge controller.

After installing and wiring the panels, I hooked up the negative and positive battery cables which lead to the disconnect box and from there to the other components of the system. I had them disconnected so that nothing would accidentally become powered inside before I wanted it to. After connecting them, I flipped the circuit breaker for the charge controller, and it woke up ready to be commissioned. Commissioning just meant I needed to verify the battery bank information for the controller.

It was late enough in the afternoon that the sun wasn’t shining directly enough on the panels for them to be producing power. So, I wasn’t able to determine for sure that everything is operational as it should be. I believe I wired them correctly, but I’ve made mistakes on other things before. Hopefully, we’ll have some sunlight tomorrow so that I can verify that things are working correctly and let the sun charge the batteries completely.

There are six tasks left to do before we flip the switch and go off the grid:

1. Run the 12-2 wire from the inverter through the floor into the kitchen.
2. Connect the wire from the inverter to the existing wiring in the outlet for the electric stove.
3. Disconnect the mains from the AC circuit breaker box in our home.
4. Connect the wire leading to the electric stove outlet to as the mains.
5. Run the wires and connect the Bogart Engineering Trimetric 2020 battery monitor.
6. Flip the switch to turn on the inverter.

At that point, we’ll be off the grid and on solar power. Don’t worry, I’ll disconnect the power from the utility company outside at the disconnect box before doing the wiring in the house. I have no desire to let electricity course through my body.

Thoughts on sustainability

2010-02-02T11:31:00.001-06:00

One of our goals and objectives is the pursuit of sustainability. What does this mean, though? Is it possible? The term sustainable is frequently used in reference to our personal agricultural and homesteading practices. It's something I've been thinking about and which I think ought to be considered.

What does it mean for our practices to be sustainable? Webster's defines it as “of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.” For us, that means replacing the minerals and nutrients taken from the soil in growing food and forage. Additionally, to truly be sustainable, external resources would not be brought in to supplement or augment growing and harvesting our food, hay, and firewood.

Do we do this? No. We use machinery which requires fuel derived from petroleum. We cut and haul in firewood from other farms. We have had manure brought in from outside our farm. I've also taken several tons of hay off of the fields without putting amendments back on the fields as sustainability would require (this is an area to be addressed).

Do I want to be sustainable? Yes and no. I want to work toward being more sustainable than conventional agricultural practices and to have the ability and capacity to be completely sustainable at some point (if required). As long as I use machinery that is powered by internal combustion engines, I'm not practicing sustainability (unless, maybe, I can set up a wood gasification system on my tractor). I am not ready to do without these things though. The amount of physical labor required to grub hoe my garden instead of disk or till it and the labor required to scythe hay and haul it to the barn in loose form is mind-boggling (especially without the help of some sort of draft animal, be it horse or ox).

One of the problems with complete sustainability is that it is unrealistic, just like the term self-sufficient. We are created to need a community, the support of a structure larger than ourselves. I believe this is natural, normal, and necessary. We are social creatures and can accomplish so much more in conjunction with other individuals than we can alone.

What does this mean for homesteaders? It means we need each other. Homesteading is bigger than we are. My farm cannot be completely sustainable without a great amount of work. Using resources that come from outside our gates makes the work we have to do more doable. We also have resources that can be shared with others in order to make their work more doable. If we view sustainability from a personal, farm-specific perspective, we will find that it is an elusive, if not impossible, goal to attain. But, if we view it in terms of community, it is more realistic.

It's difficult for individuals who wish to homestead to capitalize on the notion of community with like-minded families. We seem to live so far apart mostly. Intentional communities that have been attempted have their own sets of problems. It's not easy. There used to be more community when people were mutually engaged in the process of growing their own food and helping one another with the work at hand. Mechanization and industrialization killed much of that as the rogue American independence triumphed over the strength and richness of real community.

I like to read about how things were done a hundred or more years ago in rural America. There were multiple diverse farms with people working to supply their own needs and for their neighbors' needs. Villages and towns were supported by a belt of these farms that grew (or could grow) most if not all of their food needs. In return, the people in the villages/towns provided for needs on the farms that otherwise would have been difficult to produce on site, from shoes to salt to farm equipment. There is a richness in such a situation and a sustainability that we can only dream of today.

Our current agricultural system involves the consumption of great amounts of petroleum. Even industrial organic agriculture consumes great quantities of petroleum, nearly as much as conventional, just not in the form of petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Industrial organics has adopted the conventional model merely with substitutions for the synthetic additives. Is the industrial organic model more sustainable? Although it has certain elements that make it 'better' than conventional, it is hardly more sustainable in the form it has taken.

True sustainability involves a retrogression to some age-old, pre-mechanized, pre-industrial practices, including the development of community inter-dependence. Without that, our efforts at sustainability involve a movement in the direction of more ecological responsibility, better stewardship of the land God has blessed us with, and the adoption of the philosophical and moral principles of the original organic agricultural movement (not its current iteration in the form of industrial agriculture).

Will this happen? Not without great disruption to the current order, I'm afraid. Do I want that? No, because it would bring great suffering. We live in an age that is based upon unsustainable practices such as a debt-based economy and petroleum-based agriculture and lifestyle. At some point, the resources we're exploiting will run out and the debt will have to be paid. Both of these outcomes will be difficult and painful because by-and-large, we are unprepared for it.

So, I come back to where I started. What does it mean to practice sustainability? For me it means working toward and reaching a point at which I can provide for my family and others in need without depleting the resources available to me and without being dependent upon external resources. It means working with and for those that live with and around me in order to help one another. It's less of a realistic goal to be achieved than a direction around which we seek to organize our life. It's a moral choice that reveals itself in what we do as a form of stewardship of the land and responsibility to ourselves and to others.

Five and a half inches of snow

2010-01-30T10:05:00.001-06:00

The children have been anxiously anticipating the arrival of the winter storm forecast for our area. Uncle Danny, our local weather aficionado/junkie, contributed to their excitement by giving them regular updates on the expected amount of snow and when it would start. Yesterday morning, because the storm had slowed down and delayed its deliverance of white matter, Malchiah rushed outside when he saw Uncle Danny emerge from his house and very seriously asked him, “Uncle Danny, why isn’t it snowing?”

The snow finally began yesterday about mid-afternoon. Most of what we’ve gotten so far fell overnight. So, the children were excited and noisy when soon after they woke up this morning. They couldn’t wait to get out in the snow with visions of great sledding and fun bouncing around in their heads.

Once we got things done in the house, the three older ones and I headed out to do our chores. There were many exclamations of delight about the snow and awe for it’s depth – 5.5 inches. We haven’t had this much snow at one time here the whole time we’ve lived here.

We tramped down the hill, and I took a few photos. Malchiah soon discovered the joy that snow packed in one’s boots can impart. He wasn’t too happy about it. Once we got to the barn, he tried to get the snow out, but he was quite distraught with the cold that was being imparted to his leg and foot.

After milking Tilly, Ramiah decided that his feet were cold, too, but not because of snow in his boots. The temperature was almost 20 degrees. So, the two boys marched back up the hill to the house to warm up. Jessica and I finished our chores before we went back to the house.

The forecast is calling for more snow this morning. Sometime today, I’ll go out with the younguns to enjoy some sledding. We’ll have fun.

A good day

2010-01-28T21:06:00.001-06:00

The cheese arrived today! It’s already been eaten. I remembered to take a picture of the second half of it. Let me tell you,

it was some good cheese! Wow! We all enjoyed it a lot. The children made sure they told me more than once that I should be sure to enter every cheese giveaway that mmpaints has. With cheese this good, they don’t have to tell me. I think we’re going to have to give cheese-making another go. We haven’t made any for a while, and it was never this good. Time to learn a bit more and develop a new skill.

Today’s weather was nice: in the lower 40s with sunshine. We’re under a winter storm warning beginning at 6:00 tomorrow morning and continuing until Saturday afternoon. The forecast says 5 to 9 inches of snow is expected here. We haven’t had that much at once in the whole time we’ve lived here. The children are looking forward to it.

Since the weather was nice, I worked on the water heater installation again. I took the heater out and redid the plumbing. My hunch appears to be correct: Teflon tape doesn’t work well on metal plumbing components. The threads cut the tape and push it mostly out of the way. I put some joint compound on the threads, and there were no more leaks. I cut the CPVC pipe and put in a new coupling. I let it sit for a few hours to make sure the glue was thoroughly dried before turning the water back on. No leaks there either.

So, I put the water heater back in the closet, hooked up the water lines, and routed the vent pipe through the wall. I’ll check it again tomorrow, but I think it will be fine now. This particular water heater connects to a 20 pound propane cylinder, the kind commonly used with LP grills. It can heat the water hot enough to scald you. I’ve got the adjustment for the flame turned down so that the heat in the shower is just about right. If it’s too hot, you just need to open the hot water side a little more. I think it will work out fine for us since our only hot water from it will be for taking showers.

While I was testing the water heater, our cat came home. Now, this may not sound like a big deal, but it was. He was missing for two full days. This is very unlike him; he likes to eat too well to miss a meal. We figured he either got himself stuck someplace (he somehow got under the floor in Dad’s barn earlier in the week) or something got him. We were quite concerned (I hadn’t realized how fond I am of that cat). Thankfully, this afternoon he came walking up the hill to the house. We don’t know where he’d been, but he was quite thirsty and hungry and glad to see us.

Later this afternoon it was too early to do chores and I didn’t want to waste the time and nice weather. So, I decided to install some more solar panels. I figured there was enough time to get two of them put on. Well, the installation went well enough that I was able to bolt four of them on. So, one frame is complete. Six more panels to go on the other frame. I’ll tackle that next week after the snow is melted.

My dad voiced a concern about the panels acting like sails and catching the wind up there. The roof on our mobile home is basically flat, and the pitch on the back porch roof is very shallow. So, the panels stick up in the air a ways. I do believe that if they blow off, they’re taking the porch roof with them. However, I think I’ll go ahead and put some guy wires on the top corners down to the other side of the house in order to provide a little extra insurance against strong winds.

The first solar panels are installed

2010-01-27T18:51:00.001-06:00

Why is it that doing any plumbing seems to result in a leak somewhere? On Monday I got everything ready to change out our water heater. This involved taking out the 30-gallon electric water heater and putting in our new on-demand heater. The new one is one that is supposed to be hooked up outside, but where I’m installing it there’s no problem venting it to the outside. That was part of having everything ready – have the vent pipe to go in.

Well, I successfully took out the old one and put in the new one. Only thing was that there were some leaks. Nothing major, just some drips. Still, it worked fine. I could take care of the leaks on Tuesday. And, I endeavored to do so, changing the supply lines from those semi-rigid 3/4 inch regular hot water heater things to some flexible hoses with 1/2” connectors on each end. I also put in a shut off on the incoming line, something that should have been added years ago. Again, the installation went well, but there are a couple of drips.

The hot water works fine, but I have to redo some of the connections. On the metal pipe pieces, I used Teflon tape on the threads. I think I should have used joint compound. In fact, I will. The threads seem to cut the tape and render it practically useless which allows water to seep out around the threads. I replaced a section of 1/2” CPVC and it leaks around the coupling I put in to tie it to the existing line. So, I have to cut it and redo. Hopefully, I can get it all taken care of tomorrow since there were other things to do today.

A good friend came over with his family today to help me with solar panel installation. It was a nice day for it. I even had to take off my jacket for a while. We worked and accomplished a lot while our children played here and there (they get along great) and the mommas talked and enjoyed themselves inside.

We secured the frames to the porch roof first. We had to make the 2x4 rails the feet of the frames attach to and pivot upon. This wasn’t difficult. These rails are securely attached to the 2x4 purlins of the porch roof with lag screws. Once we got the frames installed, I did some calculations for drilling holes for the adjustable legs. The frames are adjustable for the different seasons to maximize the amount of energy harvested. In this area, we are at 37 degrees latitude, meaning that 37 degrees is the fixed mounting angle. They can be adjusted 15 degrees either way to face the sun at the winter and summer solstices. The calculations I did (using an online resource) was to determine where to drill the holes for the adjustment settings.

Once the frames were installed, we started installing the solar panels. We got the five 50 watt panels on but not the 100 watt panels (ten of them). We had to drill holes that matched the frames on the panels. I already had holes drilled, but they didn’t match. Their placement was based upon the measurements from the website where I ordered the panels and an assumption that since they are supposed to be half the size of the 100 watt panels the mounting holes would correspond to the larger panels. Not so.

That didn’t take long, though, but by the time we had the fifth panel attached, it was time to put tools away and wrap things up. You’ll notice from the photos that one of these five panels is different than the others. I’m not happy about this, but I think it will work fine. They were all five supposed to be the same, but for some reason a different 50 watt panel was substituted for one of them. The specs on it are close enough to the other panels that there shouldn’t be any problem.

Anyway, it was a pretty good day. We’re getting closer to actually being off the grid.

I won cheese!

2010-01-25T21:31:00.001-06:00

I follow several blogs that I find interesting and helpful. Using Firefox as my browser, I am able to bookmark blogs using Live Bookmarks. I subscribe to the RSS feeds, and Live Bookmarks puts them all only one click away. It makes it quite easy and convenient to keep up with. You can find blogs I follow in the side bar to the right. Every now and then, I find a new one or two that interest me.

One of the blogs that I’ve been keeping up with for a while is Self Sustained Living. There’s a lot of good, useful information shared there, and the owner, mmpaints, is a wonderful individual. Last Friday she started a contest to give away some cheese she made. To enter the contest, all anyone had to do was post a comment. I posted one with no expectations of winning. Well, I found out today that my name was drawn out of the hat! I won!

She explained that the cheese is “Cheddar, it is very mild with a nice, light taste to it. Slightly drier than your typical American cheese with a smooth texture.” It’s a 1/4 wheel weighing 14 ounces. I’ll let everyone know how it is when it gets here. I’m sure it’ll be good!

Be sure to check out her blog and leave a comment (she loves comments). There’s a lot to learn from her.

Roasting coffee beans in the wood stove

2010-01-24T09:09:00.001-06:00

Last year I explained that life’s too short to drink bad coffee. That’s still true, of course. My preferred method of roasting, in fact the only one, was using a hot air corn popper. Well, after about 10 years of use, it finally quit. I hoped it would come back to life, but it didn’t. Not wanting to live without coffee, I had to figure some way to roast my beans. It wouldn’t be difficult to roast them on top of the stove, but I didn’t really want to fill the house with smoke from the roasting.

The solution was to roast them in the firebox of the wood stove. I put a couple handfuls of green coffee beans in a small cast iron skillet we have and set it on the coals or burning wood inside the firebox. I wear welding gloves while doing this since the skillet gets quite hot. I stir the beans often, trying to ensure that they are evenly roasted. It takes five or ten minutes to roast them, depending upon how hot the coals are.

One of the nice things about roasting them in the firebox is that the smoke from roasting is drawn into the stove and out the chimney, not into the house. I don’t mind the smell of the smoke from roasting coffee (actually, I like it), but it’s nicer for everyone to not fill the house with it. I’m thinking of roasting some in the oven to see how that goes. Maybe the smoke won’t be too much.

Last night, I ordered some more green coffee beans from the Coffee Bean Corral. They have some nice selections. I’ve almost finished the ones from my last order. I don’t really drink very much coffee (that’s my story, anyway). I like how it tastes and the feel of a warm coffee mug in my hands. It’s a simple pleasure.

When summer gets here, I’m going to have to find another method for roasting. Maybe I ought to come up with some kind of a drum roaster for on a grill or over a fire outside. . .

Dogs

2010-01-23T09:31:00.001-06:00

About a week and a half ago, some friends of ours brought over two dogs for us to take care of while they go to Missouri for a couple of weeks. They’ve had the older dog, an almost three-year-old border collie, for a couple of years. The other dog is a young puppy that someone dumped out on their road a few weeks ago. He’s a bit of a mutt, but he’s cute and sweet.

Originally, they asked if we wanted Bodie, the border collie, since they were looking for a good home for him. I told them I didn’t know. After we spent a day with them (they live about 40 miles from us), we offered to babysit the two dogs while they were in Missouri. That would give us an opportunity to see if we like having a couple of dogs on the farm.

So far, having them here has been fine. Bodie enjoys trying to herd the animals on the farm. The cows don’t herd well for him. Initially, they wanted to be right in Bodie’s face and chased him. Now, except for Tilly, they’re getting used to his coming near the fence and barking at them. Tilly still thinks she has to protect Cleo. So, she growls and roars at Bodie, although she is getting a little more used to him.

The puppy’s name is Freddy. He’s soft, cuddly, and adorably cute. He’s a whole lot more laid back than Bodie is. Bodie can’t stand still; he’s always running somewhere to do something. Freddy hangs out on the back porch and loves the children.

The thing that has probably taken the most getting used to is having a dog barking near the house at night. Bodies is still getting used to things around here. So, whenever anything moves, he starts barking and chasing it, whether it’s a cat, a coyote, or the donkey in the nearby pasture.

Both dogs seem to have settled in quite well and are happy here. We still haven’t made up our minds for certain about keeping them. Freddy will stay. He’s young, easy-going, and should train well. Bodie is fun and smart, but he needs some training. He’d be good for keeping varmints out of the garden and corn patches. There are advantages and disadvantages. We have another week or so to decide.

Canned ground beef

2010-01-22T17:55:00.001-06:00

It was a lot of work, but Anne finished canning the meat yesterday. She ran eight canner loads in four days. It takes longer when canning on the wood stove than it does on a conventional stove. So, two loads in a day is pretty good.

We ended up with 25 quarts of shredded meat from the roasts and 61 pints of ground beef.

We’ve got at least three very full 20-quart stock pots of bones to cook down for broth. We’ll start that this weekend. They’ll cook for at least a full day, extracting lots of good stuff out of the bones and making a rich broth. There ought to be several more quarts of meat and some of broth to can from that. Then, there is some fat to be rendered. That will be used for making soap sometime, or it will be used in cooking.

It’s nice to have the meat. We’ll be doing it again next year, God willing. We have another steer which will be 18 or 19 months old in a year from now. He’s a beef breed (Belted Galloway-Angus cross), so he ought to have a little more meat on his bones than Chucky Joe did (he was a Guernsey).

The pond is full!

2010-01-22T09:04:00.001-06:00

We had nearly three inches of rain yesterday and the last two nights. Last evening when I did chores, the water level in the pond was only about 6 inches below the overflow pipe. After it rained fairly heavily again last night, I told the children that the pond was full. They weren’t sure whether or not to believe me.

This morning I took the camera with me when I went down the hill to do chores and took a few pictures. The pond was indeed full with water running out the overflow. It only took four and a half months to fill up. That’s not too bad considering that we’ve not actually gotten a whole lot of rain. Based upon my calculations, there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 gallons of water in the pond.

The children are looking forward to swimming in it this summer.

My latest reference book

2010-01-21T07:25:00.001-06:00

Reading about composting recently, I decided to order a copy of Rodale’s The Complete Book of Composting. The recommendation in what I read was to get a copy of the old edition of the book, not the new ‘light’ version currently available. I did a little searching online and found a good copy for a very reasonable price. It arrived Tuesday.

It was originally published in 1960, and there are 1,007 pages between the covers. I’ve only just started reading it, but it certainly looks like a lot of good information is contained within its pages. I’m excited about reading it. I thought I would share a few photos I took of the book so others can see the Table of contents and have just a snippet of some of the information it contains.

Solar power: more installation

2010-01-20T07:00:00.001-06:00

Well, I changed what I installed previously. I was going to have components on two walls, but as I looked at it and figured things, I decided it would work better to put it all on one wall. So, I moved the two components I put up last week and added some more.

Last week I bought some wire and other supplies from Richardson Electrical and Plumbing Supply in Glasgow, Kentucky. There were a couple more items I needed that I bought at LS Supply, and there are a couple more I need to get. Even when I figure ahead of time, it always seems that I forget or overlook a few things.

I set the disconnect box and charge controller first. Then, I mounted the inverter. The directions for it said that the preferred method was to mount it fan down. That also works best for running conduit straight from the disconnect box to the inverter. I had some heavy gauge cables I was going to use for the previous 3,000 watt inverter (which I just sold on Ebay for about $40 more than I paid, including shipping). These were too big for the new inverter. I was able to use 6 gauge wire, according to the Exeltech specifications.

I am still waiting to receive the Iota DLS 27-40 charger that I ordered. It will mount to the left of the disconnect box. I’ll run 6 gauge wires from it into the box and connect them to where the positive and negative battery cables are connected.

I’m endeavoring to keep the wires neat inside the box. I’ve routed them carefully and zip-tied them together. Since the 2-inch conduit for the battery cables isn’t connected to the battery box, I was able to route the wires for the battery meter out through it. I also ran the wire for the battery temperature sensor through the disconnect box and out the 2-inch conduit on the bottom. This is preferable to running it outside the box.

One of the options I’m building into the system is a panel for 12 volt applications. I don’t know what I’ll use it for yet, but I want the option. Since the battery bank is 24 volt, I have a step-down converter that will output 12 volts to a Square-D QO breaker box (the QO line is rated for AC and DC). I’ll be able to wire off of the breakers in this box to outlets I can install in the house to run 12-volt fans, appliances, or lights as desired.

I rewired the battery bank. Previously, I wired it into two banks of six batteries each at 12 volts in order to put a 12-volt charger on the batteries. It’s now wired to be 24 volts. I temporarily connected it to the box to check the inverter. It worked!

I’m going to run wires out to the combiner box I made, which I’ll mount just outside the wall where these components are mounted. Then, once I mount the panels on the roof, I’ll just have to wire them into the combiner box for the batteries to be charged by the sun.

From the inverter, I still have to run a wire to hook into the AC panel in the house. This will be a short section that will go under the storage room where the components are and up through the floor into the kitchen behind where the electric stove is sitting. In a junction box, I’ll tie the lines from the inverter to the wires for powering the electric stove. In the AC breaker box, I’ll disconnect the main lines coming in from the power company (the power will be disconnected outside at the disconnect breaker during all of this) and attach the wires that were previously for the electric stove. We won’t have 200 amp service, but it will be sufficient to run our refrigerator, lights, computer, sewing machine, washer, and other loads.

Before I get the solar up and going, I think I ought to install the propane on-demand water heater I have still in the box. I don’t like cold showers, and our system certainly won’t power an electric water heater.

Canning beef

2010-01-19T20:20:00.001-06:00

Dad, Danny, and I worked on cutting the meat off the bones on Sunday and Monday. We decided to just get it done while we had the time. I don’t know that anything would have been gained by waiting. The meat would have kept fine in the chest refrigerator, I’m sure, but by getting it cut up, Anne has been able to process four canner loads so far. She cooked roasts, and I helped her cut the meat into pieces. Then, she filled jars and ran two canner loads yesterday and two today.

It takes 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure to can meat. She filled the jars full, adding hot broth after packing the meat. The canner holds 7 quarts at a time. We were disappointed yesterday that three jars broke. There was no apparent reason for the breakage. Sadly, one of the broken jars was a favorite old jar of Anne’s (she ‘collects’ old canning jars and uses them). As near as I can figure, the grate on the bottom inside the canner which holds the jars off the bottom of the canner is transmitting too much heat to the jars. So, today, she put some canning rings under the grate to get the jars up a bit higher. No broken jars today – we’re grateful. We have a couple dogs staying with us (maybe permanently) who will enjoy the meat from the broken jars (usually, jars that break in the canner have clean breaks, but we have seen glass slivers in the past, so we don’t use the contents ourselves). So, it’s not completely wasted.

While the second canner load was processing this evening, I fried some steaks off the backstrap. Let me tell you, they were awesomely good! Wow! We had some small steaks yesterday that I cut off of the front leg. They were good, too, but they weren’t as tender as these off the back. We have some tenderloin to cook and eat, and we’ll also have some hamburgers this week. Once it’s all canned, we won’t have the fresh meat. Canned meat is very good, though, and very convenient. We are so grateful for it.

We gave my parents and Danny a little over half of the beef. There was almost 250 pounds of beef after it was cut off the bones. We could have taken a larger portion, but we wanted to share with them. And, they appreciate it. We’re happy with the blessing of healthy, properly-raised meat!

The meat’s in the fridge

2010-01-16T09:24:00.001-06:00

Previously, I explained how we converted a chest freezer into an efficient refrigerator. After we made the conversion, my wonderful wife encouraged me to order another external thermostat so that we could convert our other chest freezer also for times that we might need it. One of those possible times would be at butchering time when we have more meat to preserve than we can do at one time. Keeping it refrigerated would allow more time.

We were going to leave the meat from our steer hanging in the garage to chill until we could work it up and can it. Originally, the forecasted temperatures were fine for doing so. But, the forecast has been changed. In fact, it changed a couple of times just yesterday. Today, they’re calling for 54 degrees with a low of 40 tonight. That’s not cool enough. Coupled with forecasted highs near 50 for the coming week, we couldn’t leave the meat hanging in the garage. It’s too warm.

So, I hooked up the external thermostat to our second chest freezer and made a refrigerator into which we could pack the whole steer. We moved it from the garage this morning. It got down to freezing last night, which allowed the meat to chill pretty well. Now, there shouldn’t be any problems with keeping it chilled properly.

The butchering of Chucky Joe

2010-01-15T17:13:00.001-06:00

Today was the day. Chucky Joe is no longer. I expected it to be difficult to pull the trigger, and I was right, it was. It’s never easy to take an animal’s life, nor do I believe it should be.

We raised Chucky for meat.

I took care of him during the last 20 months and grew somewhat attached to him.

Even knowing the purpose for his life, this morning wasn’t easy. Out of respect for him as a living creature, it was important to make it painless and quick. It was. He never knew.

Once he was dead and had bled (that gave me enough time to shed my tears and calm down), we began the butchering process.

We first removed his feet, cutting at mid-foreleg (cows’ feet can get kind of dirty and messy). Then, we hooked a rope to his rear legs to pull him inside the door of the barn to place him under the chain hoist and gambrel. We used the tractor and a pulley to do this; he was too heavy for us to do it without mechanical help.

Then, the skinning began. Skinning a steer takes longer than skinning a deer – something to do with the respective size of such creatures, I suppose. Once we started skinning the rear legs, we hooked the gambrel through the legs near the knee joint (there’s a strong tendon there that works well for this) and lifted the carcass a little off the ground to make the skinning easier. The chain hoist makes it easy to adjust the height. After we had skinned about halfway down and had raised it higher, we removed the head. This made it easier to get the hide all the way off (the head would otherwise be in the way and impede the process).

Once the carcass was skinned, we removed the front legs. Then, it was time to remove the stomach, intestines, and other organs. The children were really interested in seeing this part of the process. I carefully cut down the stomach lining from the groin to the sternum, and then we let the innards come out into a cut-off barrel. There’s a lot inside a cow! I cut out the liver and also saved the heart.

With the carcass eviscerated, we began to cut it into pieces. We didn’t follow the traditional way of cutting up a cow carcass which involves splitting the carcass in half down the center of the backbone. We removed the neck, cutting it off where it joins the back at the shoulders. Then, we cut the ribs off along the side of the backbone, over far enough to leave the backstrap and tenderloin uncut. At that point, we removed the back and then the two hind quarters. We find it easier to cut it up this way; it involves a lot less bone cutting than splitting the backbone. This is important when you’re not using power tools.

With the carcass cut into pieces and laid out in the back of my truck on a clean tarp, I drove it up to the garage. There, we rinsed the pieces off and hung them from a beam in the rafters of the garage. In there it should be safe from varmints and can cool off before we cut it up. Many people like to let a carcass hang for up to two weeks. Since our refrigeration is dependent upon the outside temperature and we don’t necessarily see a need to let it hang for such a length of time, we’ll start processing it next week.

Earlier in the week, the forecast looked pretty good temperature wise. However, it was warmer today than I would like and it’ll be warmer than I’d like tomorrow. It will get down to about freezing at night. The meat should be fine in the garage, but I would like it a little cooler. I don’t have control over that, though. So, we’ll work with what we have and get it cut off the bone next week. We’ll mainly be making burger and roasts. Maybe we’ll cut a few steaks off the back.

Chucky becomes meat tomorrow

2010-01-14T14:38:00.002-06:00

The plan is to butcher our steer, Chucky Joe, tomorrow. We’ll let him hang for a few days and then cut the meat off for burger and roasts. I’ve been getting things ready. I sharpened my knives, hung the chain hoist in the barn, and made a gambrel big enough for a bovine (I’m pretty sure the one made for deer wouldn’t hold the weight of a 20 month old steer).

I expect that it will be a little difficult for me to kill Chucky tomorrow morning. I was there when he was born on May 14, 2008. In fact, I helped pull him out. He’s been a friendly guy. He usually wants to play more than I want to, though, mainly because he’s too big. We’ve raised him for meat. That’s been his stated purpose all along. Once he’s dead, the butchering process is no longer personal; it’s just a job.

I’ll post about how it goes tomorrow.

Solar power: the first components installed

2010-01-13T22:27:00.001-06:00

Last week I received a few more of the components for our solar power system. There are only two more components I have yet to receive. They’ve been ordered and should arrive soon. I’ve made one change in the plans: we’re not going to use two inverters. I already purchased a 3,000 watt inverter off of Ebay and was going to buy a 600 watt inverter also. Well, somehow my order for the 600 watt Samlex inverter got ‘misplaced’ during the holidays. That was actually a good thing because I had pretty much decided not to get it. So, I cancelled the order.

I realized that I do not have a need for a 3,000 watt inverter. There won’t be enough times that I need enough power from the system to justify having an inverter of that size. So, I’ve listed it on Ebay to sell it, hopefully getting my money back out of it. I also had decided that I wanted a different Samlex inverter/charger. This unit would provide AC power and allow charging of the battery bank from a generator during extended periods of cloudy weather. It was in favor of this unit that I cancelled the order for the 600 watt inverter. Then, I found out that the inverter/charger I wanted was no longer available. Samlex discontinued that model because they were coming out with a new one sometime this spring or summer.

This situation prompted me to consider other choices. I was interested in the Xantrex Trace series of inverter/chargers. I really like their power saving feature where the inverter can be put into sleep mode, during which it consumes very little power while sending out a pulse every few seconds to check for any loads. If there’s a load, it powers up. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was that it is a modified sine wave inverter.

There are many inverters out there which are modified sine wave, and people run all kinds of things with them. There are a few things that can have problems with modified sine wave. For instance, certain electronic devices don’t like it and some motors can run hotter and less efficiently with them. As I considered the pros and cons (the pros mainly being price), I finally decided that we would be best served with a relatively small true sine wave inverter.

At this point, I was ready to order a 1,000 or 1,500 watt Samlex inverter which would provide all the AC power we would need 99% of the time. But, I didn’t like their no-load power consumption, and I wasn’t completely sure about the quality and longevity of an ‘inexpensive’ inverter.

Anyway, I ended up ordering an Exeltech XP1100 true sine wave inverter with a power saving option. These are American made and of good quality. I’m pretty confident that it will do all we want and need very reliably. It did cost a bit more than a cheaper model, but if it lasts longer it will be worth it. I also ordered a battery charger since the Exeltech is only an inverter. Iota has a nice model (DLS 27-40) which I’d been considering. So, since it may well be necessary at times, I ordered it. These are the two components I’m waiting on.

This afternoon I went to a local electrical supply store to buy some wire and other supplies I need for installing everything. I started the installation by getting the knockouts ready on the disconnect box. Then, I attached it and the solar charge controller to the wall. When other projects allow, I’ll start wiring the inside components and will then mount the solar panels and connect them. At that time, we’ll be just about ready to throw the switch on our alternative energy system.

In the first photo, you can see the first two components on the wall. I’m installing it in the corner of the small storage room I built on to our mobile home a few years ago. The battery box is on the floor below the solar charge controller and disconnect box.

The photo at the left is a closer view with the cover off the box. The battery cables will enter from the bottom. The conduit to the left will route the wires to the inverter. The Xantrex XW-MPPT60-150 solar charge controller is on top. This controller has some very nice features and should help harvest as much energy as possible from our solar array.

Inside the disconnect box are breakers. These are for the PV array input, the solar charge controller output, and one for a separate DC only distribution box for any DC loads that we may wish to run in the future. There will be a larger breaker installed for the inverter in the empty slot above the other breakers. You can also see the shunt I installed inside the box. This will allow for accurate battery monitoring with the Trimetric 2020 battery monitor that I bought and will install.

I bought a weather tight junction box and two bus bars today. I installed the bus bars inside the junction box (photo at right) for attaching the positive and negative leads from the solar panels to. I didn’t want to use wire nuts. The negative leads will be on the bar to the left and the positive leads will attach to the bar on the right. The positive and negative wires going to the house will also attach to the bars. This will allow me to combine the three sets of panels I’ll have wired in series in one neat, clean box. I think it will work well.

I think we’ll end up with a very nice system. It’s cost more than I intended – it’s easy to spend a lot of money on solar power. We wouldn’t be putting this system together if it wasn’t for taking an early disbursement of my retirement money (I don’t believe it would be there by the time I reach retirement age if I left it along) to fund our house building. Lest you think we had a great sum of money to withdrawal, let me assure you that we didn’t. It ought to be enough to finish the house, including a solar power system, without extravagant spending. My conviction is that it is better to have that money in something tangible, like a house, than to leave it subject to unstable market forces.

Imagine a mountain of compost. . .

2010-01-11T21:12:00.001-06:00

I’ve been exploring the blogosphere recently. I’ve searched for blogs of interest, ones that are related to and address some of the topics in which I’m interested: homesteading and agrarian objectives primarily. Using Live Bookmarks in Firefox, I read several blogs regularly, several recent additions. There are people doing some amazing and interesting things out there. It’s inspiring to read what others are doing.

In “My Blog List” in the right hand column of this blog, you can find most of the blogs that I regularly read. I still have to add a few that I just found yesterday. There are only so many blogs that I think I can realistically keep up with. I don’t know how many that is for sure, but I’m confident that I’ll find out eventually.

One of the blogs I just found, Farm Livin’ is the life for me, had a link to the writer’s husband’s posts about composting at Homesteading Today. I’m still reading what he wrote; his posts are really good. They are worth taking the time read. I like his radical approach to life. His composting endeavors are incredible (check out the photos of his compost piles here). A lot of good information.

My composting has been limited and somewhat sporadic. We had a compost pile when we lived in Bloomington, Illinois, but it was almost always deficient in carbon materials. We got leaves from the city and horse manure from a neighbor when we lived there. I could have done much more. We had a compost pile the first couple of years we lived here, and then we started giving all the household scraps to the chickens, ours or my parents’. I’ve had a compost pile or two near the barn created from cleaning out soiled bedding. We’ve used all we’ve produced.

I’ve also hauled manure from the local stock yards at different times, and I had three dump truck loads of it delivered last fall. I really need to do more with that because it’s a free resource, except for paying the guy who hauls it in his dump truck. If there’s someone at the stockyard running the Bobcat, he’ll load my truck for free. I need to bring home a lot more of that stuff to compost. I’m also thinking I need to acquire a whole lot more carbon materials. You’ve got to have the right balance between carbon and nitrogen for good composting.

Shortly after we moved here, we used a composting toilet for a few months, employing the principles found in Joseph Jenkins’ Humanure Handbook. I got fresh sawdust from a local sawmill and constructed a cabinet with a toiled seat fitted over a five-gallon bucket. It worked quite well, but we switched back to a regular toilet because of the convenience (it was a long way to the compost pile which was down the hill, and I was the only one carrying the buckets to empty them).

My current composting system involves processing dried organic matter with a machine that compresses it into elongated cubes. I then run the dried organic matter through digestive processors a little each day during the winter. The processors make a concentrated and enriched product which is placed on and mixed into carbon material in the barn. I add more carbon material at about the same rate that the dried organic matter is processed. This is allowed to build over the winter until the spring when I move the processors out onto green fields at which time they will harvest and process organic matter, depositing the nutrient enriched product directly on the field. Once those processors are working on fresh, green matter, I’ll employ some aerators who’ll work for a few hundred pounds of grain to stir up the accumulated mass in the barn and ready it for distribution on the garden and fields.

Sounds impressive, right? I guess I could’ve just said I have cows eating hay and pooping out good stuff in the barn right now, and that I’ll have pigs work it up in order to eat the grain I’ve put in it. As I showed in my previous post, I’m also using a horse to process organic matter and contribute to the fertility of the soil. I’m glad to keep the material from the farm on the farm, but the land here could use a lot more brought in. Most of what I take off of the hay fields isn’t going back on to them; it’s being put somewhere else after processing. It would be nice to have a larger system so that more could be added on all the fields.

One of the things that limits my ability to haul in or have hauled in material from off the farm is winter. Not because it’s cold. Rather, the places I have to stockpile material and build mountains of compost are all in the bottom, and during the winter, except when it’s frozen (which is only sometimes), it’s muddy. It gets wet and stays that way. I can usually get in and out with my truck, but it makes ruts and slides around a bit. Forget about having a larger truck get in there – most drivers don’t want to get stuck there, and I don’t blame them.

Anyway, reading about Forerunner’s composting endeavors has got me thinking. I have a lot to learn. I’m glad there are others sharing what they’ve learned and what they’re doing.

More horse manure on the garden

2010-01-10T18:46:00.001-06:00

The end of the frigid arctic temperatures is in sight. We may actually get above freezing tomorrow. We’re supposed to be in the mid-forties by the middle of the week. That’s going to feel practically balmy.

This morning I went to a gun and knife show in Cave City, KY. I didn’t buy anything – I didn’t go prepared to buy anything, just to look. I did take a gun to try to sell. Anyone need a nice muzzleloader with a scope?

After I prepared a nice lunch of pancakes, venison, and eggs (we had this for lunch because I didn’t have time to make it for breakfast) and after we had eaten it (with maple syrup we made last year and some organic pineapple juice), I went down to the barn to spread Jessica’s work on the garden. She mucks out her horse’s stall every day, putting it into a small trailer I have parked near Spice’s stall for that purpose. I haven’t unloaded it for a couple of weeks. So, it was needing to be emptied. Jessica put tobacco sticks around the edges of the trailer so that it could hold more than it would otherwise.

Amazingly, the tractor started up right away without needing the choke. Sometimes it’s rather particular about starting, but the last few times it’s started without any problems, today being no exception. I pulled the trailer of horse manure and bedding to the garden and tossed it out with a pitch fork. It only took a fifteen or twenty minutes to spread it around. It got spread about as far as I could throw it. I’ve put four trailer loads on so far, although this was the most in one load. I’m hoping for good things from the garden this spring/summer with the added fertility.

We need to teach and to learn

2010-01-09T08:59:00.001-06:00

We take a lot of things for granted. Our way of life is encompassed with so many blessings. We are together as a family every day. I don’t have to run off to work somewhere off the farm, and we sit down to eat together as a family three times a day. We eat food that is good for us, not the standard American fair.

Anne and I watched Food, Inc. recently (via Amazon Video on Demand). It’s a sobering portrayal of commercial/industrial food and the multi-national companies behind its production. We were already aware of a lot of things in the film. In fact, we stopped eating commercial meat, dairy, and poultry products in 1996 because of concerns about that whole industry. We studied and learned more about the appalling treatment of animals in these industrial production facilities and desired even less to consume their products. Who would want to eat beef that was fed rendered animal refuse and chicken litter?

We took steps when we lived on the outskirts of Bloomington, Illinois, to raise our own food. When we bought our house there, it came with a 3/4 acre lot across the street in front of the house (it was previously the right of way for an interurban railroad). I worked up two large garden plots, and we grew a lot of vegetables. We planted fruit trees and bushes, but we moved before we were able to enjoy any harvest from them.

We moved here to Kentucky in order to further pursue out desire to grow our own food, including animal products. We have structured our lives around what is important: faith, family, and food. It is a blessing from God that we enjoy what we have here, and we are thankful every day. But, there are so many who don’t have the knowledge to make significant differences in their lives, to grow their own food, to refuse to be in debt, to champion the importance of family time together.

What about those individuals who are ‘caught’ in a trap of debt and low wages? What about for the families for whom it is more economically feasible to buy a hamburger than an apple? We want to see changes in our food industry, and consumers have a lot to say about how things go in this industry. But, when people are enslaved by debt which has been pushed on us through national and local economic policies (our economy is based upon debt – for example, consumer spending does not take into account whether any of the things bought are actually “paid for,” only that they were purchased somehow, usually via debt encouraged through low interest rates), the options readily available to them are severely limited.

It’s easy for me to garden, hunt, raise animals, etc. I not only have the knowledge about how to do so, I also have room and opportunity for all of these things. I’m not trapped in a city somewhere. Sure, even urban dwellers can grow some things, theoretically, but what is the reality of their lives as they seek to make ends meet? Do they even know that they need to? What is the path to take in order to get out of this ‘trap’ that we as a society have created in which we are dependent upon cheap “food”?

As I look at it, the need for education is apparent. Our schools aren’t teaching about ethical and responsible food consumption and production. Our churches aren’t. Our governments aren’t. The multi-national food corporations aren’t. It’s not even happening within most families. I don’t expect to change the world in a grand way with what I’m doing, but I am shaping the next generation through my children. We are setting an example for others by what we do and what we value. But, even so, I can’t take credit for the ways in which my eyes and heart have been opened. I have made choices based upon opportunities that were presented to me, opportunities that I recognized because of things I learned that made those opportunities possible, but my learning was shaped and influenced by my coming into contact with others and their knowledge.

All of us should seek to share our knowledge with others and to continue to learn from others. We’re involved in a great educational experience, and we’re all in it together. As we endeavor to change the world and bring education to others, may we each have the humility to learn from one another.

Fresh milk: a straining experience

2010-01-08T09:15:00.001-06:00

Cleo, the new calf, isn’t taking all of Tilly’s milk. I am able to get two quarts or more in the morning. During the day, she’s pretty much getting all of it, so I don’t bother to milk in the evenings, unless it appears necessary. I expect that Cleo will nurse more as she grows and soon there won’t be much left for us as long as she has free access to it. At that time, probably when she’s three weeks old or so, I’ll separate her from her mama during the day or over night so that we can have some of the milk. By that age, she’ll be eating a little hay (she’s already nibbling on it), and she doesn’t need all of the milk anyway.

This morning I milked out nearly a gallon of milk. I put down fresh bedding in Tilly’s stall, because she makes a mess of it over night. I give her a nice flake of fresh hay, just lay it down on the floor. While she eats it, she stands still and lets me milk her. I usually take some warm water down to the barn in the bucket to moisten a rag to clean off her udder. Some mornings it’s messier than others (she’s not real careful about where she lies down sometimes). If I forget the warm water, I have to use cold, and she doesn’t particularly care for that (she kind of jumps a little bit). While I’m milking, Cleo often tries to get her share, but I discourage her – she leaves the teats slimy because she slobbers on them.

After I bring the milk back to the house, it needs to be strained to remove dust and any small pieces of hay or chaff that’s gotten in it. I have an old tin milk strainer that didn’t have the bottom screen. I cut a piece of PVC pipe that fits in it nicely and use that to hold the filter. I used to use squares of Bounty paper towels, but, in order to use less consumable goods, I started using a thin cloth diaper (it’s not been used as a diaper). I can use it several times, cleaning it well between uses, before it needs to be washed. It’s easy to adjust it to strain through different parts of the cloth for each day since it’s larger than necessary.

Then, using a funnel under the strainer, I sit it on a 2-quart wide-mouth canning jar and strain the milk through it. The wide-mouth jar allows me to skim the cream later if I want to. We like to drink the whole milk, so it doesn’t all get skimmed. I have been skimming a little bit to put in my coffee, though. Otherwise, we’ve been drinking the milk so far.

After the milk is strained, I set it in the refrigerator and clean the bucket, funnel, and strainer so that it’s ready for the next time.

Garden plans and seed orders

2010-01-07T07:20:00.001-06:00

The seed catalogs have been flowing in, it seems. We’ve gotten several so far. One of the first ones was from Pinetree Garden Seeds. I’ve ordered from Pinetree for the last eight years or so. It’s not the only seed company I’ve ordered from, but I like their offerings and prices. Because Danny wanted to order his seeds early (before December 20 was his goal), we’ve already received seeds from Pinetree (we ordered with Danny to split shipping costs which saved us each a couple of dollars).

Another place to order seeds that I found when searching online two years ago is Sandhill Preservation Center. I love what they are doing! Their primary purpose is the preservation of open-pollinated and heirloom seed varieties. Selling seeds is only a sideline business associated with their preservation goals. There are so many wonderful varieties in their catalog. It makes me want to order a bunch of different things.

We are trying to save more of our own seeds for subsequent years. We plant only open-pollinated or heirloom varieties in our garden. Every now and then a hybrid sneaks in, though, but generally not because we ordered hybrid seeds. It’s happened when we’ve been given some seeds or plants to transplant into the garden by someone else.

This year I want to focus our garden efforts a bit more than the last couple of years. It’s so easy to get carried away in the spring and plant a little bit of everything or to set out all the plants that we started, even if there are five times as many as needed. Or, to plant more than is needed of a particular seed. Then, it’s really hard to let something go to waste in the garden. So, there’s extra work in harvesting and preservation.

There are certain staple crops that we grow each year. Among these are potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and beans. We also grow lettuce, spinach, squash (summer and winter), beets, corn, okra, and melons. We may buy some seed potatoes this spring, either that or we’ll plant some from what’s left of what we grew last summer. We’ll start our own sweet potato slips from some of last year’s sweet potatoes as this is very easy to do. These two crops provide so much for our diet.

I’m going to focus our tomato growing on about three different varieties. Last year I think we had over 30 different varieties with more than 200 plants all together. Too many, really. We also didn’t get them staked up and taken care of properly. I’ll make sure they are up this year as they’re supposed to be.

Last year we also had too many green beans. We love fresh out of the garden green beans, but we don’t really care for them canned. They aren’t bad frozen, but since we’ll be on solar power and not running a freezer, that won’t be an option. I would like to try drying some. Other than that, I want to only grow enough for eating fresh.

Our onions last year did not do well. I’ll keep trying. I think the soil where we planted them was not good for them. In one place, it was too wet. In the other place it was lacking fertility.

I’ve been adding to the fertility of the garden soil. We had three dump truck loads of manure from the local stock yards put on it last fall which I spread with the tractor and grader blade. As Jessica mucks out her horse’s stall, she puts the soiled bedding in a small trailer. Every week or two I empty that onto the garden, spreading it out. All of this should add.

It’ll be nice to get back in the garden. We ought to be able to put some of the early things in in a little more than three months from now.

A homestead update: what’s going on

2010-01-06T19:00:00.001-06:00

Since I don’t have a post prepared on a specific topic, I thought I’d do a general update about what’s going on on the homestead.

It’s been cold here for the last week like it has been for much of the country. We haven’t been above freezing during this time, which is unusual for this area. It’s been getting down into the teens and single digits every night. This pattern will continue until maybe Monday when the forecast says we might make it up to the freezing mark. The children are excited about the possibility of snow tomorrow.

We’ve been keeping the wood stove going and staying warm. No pipes have frozen, thankfully. I generally don’t like really cold weather, but this hasn’t been too bad, actually. I got out yesterday and today with Dad and Danny and cut some firewood. We brought two truck loads back from a neighbor’s farm. He had 40 acres logged about three years ago. We can drive right up to the tops to cut them. We cut, split, loaded, and dumped the four loads all together in about 1.5 hours each. The total amount was about 3 cords of firewood.

The animals are doing fine with the cold weather. I have no running water at the barn. Usually, I pump water into five gallon buckets from a shallow well near the barn which I then have to carry to their water troughs. When the temperature drops into the twenties, the water in the pump freezes, rendering it useless. I have to drain the water out of the pump or it will break when it freezes. It’s done that two or three times in the past. We’re on our second pump because I can only repair it once or twice with the welder if it breaks. So, since the pump is inoperable during this freezing weather,

I’ve been dipping water out of what we call the

spring pond,

a small pool about the same distance away from the barn as the well

There is a spring that flows during wet weather at the base of the hill near the barn. There was a small area dug out near it to hold water when we moved here. I dug it out more two years ago. It’s still small, but it holds several hundred gallons of water. Because the spring is still flowing right now, this little pond hasn’t frozen. I’m very thankful that it’s there. If it wasn’t, I would have to make other arrangements for getting water to the cows (about 40 gallons a day).

Our new calf is doing fine. She loves to run around and jump in the stall. I’ve decided to name her Cleopatra, Cleo for short. She and mama will have to stay in for a few more days. I’m glad to have a relatively warm, enclosed space for them during her first week of life.

Our new pond is frozen over. It has 3+ inches of ice on it now. I’ve played with the children a little bit on the ice at the shallow end. They’ve enjoyed that. We would do more, and may later, but I want to be sure that it is thick enough so that no one might break through – the water under the ice is cold!

On this coming Sunday, a friend was going to bring his Woodmizer saw mill over to Gill’s house to saw beech logs for me. We’re rescheduling the day for sawing since the logs are frozen and it’s supposed to be 2 degrees (or thereabouts) Sunday morning, and that would be hard on his blades. When we do get to it (maybe later next week), his LT-40 Super Hydraulic mill should be able to cut all the logs within the day. We’ll load them on my trailer to bring back over here. We’ll cut the slabs into firewood for Gill which he’ll use for making maple syrup. The sap ought to start flowing soon. It often starts in the middle of January and continues into March. We’ll see how the cold weather affects that. I may tap a few trees here, and we’ll gladly accept sap from Gill’s trees (he usually lets us collect after he’s made as much syrup as he wants).

I should receive more of the items for our solar power system this week or early next week. It would be nice to have it all set up by the end of the month. That’s doable if I have everything here, and if it isn’t too cold outside. There have been a couple delays in getting some things shipped, but I hope that’s resolved now.

Classes for the Spring 2010 semester begin next Monday. I have a few things to do to be ready for it. That won’t take too much time. I’m glad to have at least one class to teach. Even though the income amount is small, it’s enough (at least theoretically) for us to meet our monthly expenses.

We’ll keep plugging along.

Where’s the beef?

2010-01-05T09:54:00.001-06:00

On May 14, 2007, our Guernsey, Josey, gave birth to Chucky Joe, a little bull calf. It’s been something watching him grow during the last 19.5 months. I banded him when he was a couple of months old (he was just about too big at the time) in order to make a steer out of him. We’ve raised him for beef. Sometime in the next two weeks, we’ll butcher him. I know that to some that may sound like a harsh thing, but that’s what he was created for – to become beef (and to provide the materials to make two powder horns).

Chucky has lived a good life. He’s had plenty of grass and hay to eat and good clean water to drink. He’s gotten to be with or near his mother his whole life. In fact, he still nurses. She never kicked him off. It’s something to see a 900+ pound steer nursing. Josey is just too patient and kind to wean him. I tried to wean him, but it just didn’t work because Josey wouldn’t help. Even those weaner things you put on a calf’s nose didn’t work. He found a way to work around it. I even kept the two of them separate for two and a half months, but when they were together again, it was like they’d never been apart. Finally, I gave up.

If we put off killing Chucky for beef until next winter, I’m sure we’d get more out of it. He’s got the frame to grow quite a bit more, but, I don’t want to keep feeding him for another year. So, his time is coming soon. Dad, Danny, and I will do the job. Mom and Anne will help with the processing, too. We got fewer deer this year than usual, but with the addition of the beef from Chucky, we’ll have enough meat for the coming year.

We don’t buy and eat conventionally raised and processed meat from the store. The way animals are treated and raised and what they are fed and injected with in order to provide that unnaturally-colored meat in the supermarket is horrible. I don’t want to consume it, let alone support the industry and its practices.

I want to know how my meat is raised. I want the animal from which it comes to live a good live, eating good food, and to not be filled with antibiotics and hormones. A cow is not meant to eat a diet of corn and corn products; it is a grass eater. Chucky has eaten grass and hay his whole life; he has lived naturally. The meat we get from him will be healthful and will have been gotten in an ethical, humane fashion. And, apart from some labor and a little fuel and string for making bales of hay to feed him, it’s free meat. In my book, that’s good.

Homemade solar panel mounting frames

2010-01-04T12:32:00.001-06:00

We hadn’t planned on going off the grid while we live in our current home. As I said before, going off the grid was a future endeavor. Moving the time for doing so up, I still hesitated to install it for our mobile home because that would require it to be disassembled and moved to the new house later. However, we decided to go ahead now. So, I’ll be moving it whenever the house is finished.

As I considered how to set up and install a system, I had wanted to build a metal framework to mount the panels on. However, I decided later to build the framework out of wood for now and construct a metal framework later for the new house. I do want the panels to be adjustable on one axis to face the sun more directly in the seasons rather than to be a fixed mount. They need to be laid back during summer and raised closer to vertical in the winter – a thirty degree swing of movement.

For the current framework, I’m using 2x4s and 1x4s. I designed and have built two frames. The first one (photo at the left) will hold six 100 watt panels, and the second one (photo on the right) will hold four 100 watt panels and five 50 watt panels. The 50 watt panels are half the size of the 100 watt panels and will be installed on the left of the framework (one sticks out to the left of the others).

Both panel mounting frames will be attached securely to the roof of our back porch which faces south. To adjust the tilt of the panels, I will have to physically go up on the roof. I plan on having five set positions for them to adjust the tilt every month and a half. It would be nice to have a mechanical means of adjusting them so that I didn’t have to climb up on the roof and do it manually, but I’m still working on a design for that. Hopefully, I’ll incorporate it into the more permanent mounting frame on the new house. As it is, the porch on this home is not very high.

In the photo to the right, you can see the part of the framework that allows the tilt to be adjusted. There will be rails on the roof on which the feet will run with set points for the different angles desired. When in position, these feet will be bolted to the rails. The feet on the front, bottom of the frameworks will pivot on a bolt through another rail bolted securely to the porch roof. To change the angle of the panels, I will have to take out the securing bolts on the rear feet, lift the frame a little, slide the adjusting feet to the desired position, and reinsert the bolts through the feet.

Hay in the loft

2010-01-02T09:01:00.001-06:00

During the summer, Dad and I bale as much hay as we can off of the fields here on the farm. It’s not the best hay, yet, but it is improving, I think. This last year we baled over 500 bales. For some people, that isn’t very much, but it’s a good amount for us. It’s enough to feed our cows during the winter and Dad’s goats year-round. My old hay equipment makes the job take longer than newer, more expensive equipment would, but I could afford it.

It’s a wonderful feeling to have the loft full of hay. If you don’t cure and store hay properly, you can create a fire danger, though. I don’t put hay in the loft of my barn unless I’m confident about it’s state of dryness. If hay is baled before it is properly cured, it will grow mold and/or mildew. That’s not what I want for my animals.

My barn is an old tobacco barn. In years past, the people who farmed the fields on our place grew Burley tobacco. When they took it out of the fields, they hung it from tier poles in the barn to dry/cure for a couple of months. Of course, the growing of tobacco year after year depleted a lot of nutrients from the soil – something we continue to work on, especially in the garden areas on the farm.

I don’t grow tobacco, and have no desire to. So, I’ve worked to convert the barn to be serviceable for animals. A few years ago, I put about 800 square feet of hay loft space in it. We used tier poles we took down in the barn for floor joists and nailed onto them a couple bundles worth of rough sawn oak barn lumber for the floor. We added some cedar posts in places on the first floor to help support the loft. I figure that I could store about 800 bales of hay in it. This year after summer ended, we had close to 700 bales in it, counting what we baled and what was left from last year.

I designed the hay feeder so that hay can be dropped from the loft down to the animals. It makes no sense to make extra work feeding livestock. It’s a fair bit of work putting the hay in the loft during the summer (we put it in as soon as it’s baled so it doesn’t get dew on it or rained on), but in the winter it’s nice to be able to feed it easily. As I’ve also said before, having the animals in the barn during the winter months allows their nutrient-rich manure to be collected for later use on the fields and garden. If they were out on pasture during the winter months, they’d really make a mess of the wet ground, and their manure would not be able to benefit the soil and plants as it does in the summer. Besides, they wouldn’t be as warm and secure as they are while in the barn.

Another benefit of having hay in the barn is that the children love to play there. They climb on the stacks of hay and play hide-and-go-seek. Last summer, they even slept in the loft overnight when they had cousins visiting. I routinely find “ropes” of baling twine that they’ve made and have tied to the rafters for swinging on.

There are stairs for getting into and out of the loft (there are other ways, of course, as my children would readily show you). They are steep but are quite serviceable. A friend gave them to me after we took them out of his house and built a new set of stairs for him. All in all, having a hay loft with hay in it is a great blessing for which I am quite thankful.

She’s doing fine

2010-01-01T14:18:00.001-06:00

I still haven’t decided on a name for her yet, but our newest addition is doing well. Tilly is a gentle, caring mama and is taking good care of her.

The little one has white on the end of its tail, on her belly, and on a couple of her knees. The rest of her is a chocolate brown. I didn’t meet the father, but, when I bought Tilly, I was told that it was a Jersey bull. They only had Jerseys on their farm.

Everyone is excited that Tilly had a heifer. Of course, the children get excited because babies are so cute just in general. This one is no exception.

We’re just beginning a week of below freezing weather. Tilly would wait until the coldest week of the year to have her calf!? I’m going to leave them in their own area until after it warms up and after Chucky Joe is gone (he’s a bit ornery, and I don’t want him to cause any problems). Right now, he seems to think he’s missing out on something and keeps trying to see what’s going on in Tilly’s stall.

It’s a heifer!

2009-12-31T16:57:00.001-06:00

I didn’t expect to make a third post today, but after my last one, I have to post this one.

Tilly had her calf! It’s a beautiful little heifer! She was standing next to her mama trying to nurse when Jessica, Ramiah, Malchiah, and I went down to do chores this evening. I thought Tilly might be in labor earlier, but I wasn’t sure. I guess she was.

The children have asked what I’m going to name her, but I don’t know yet. In the photos she looks darker than she really is because she was still wet. I’ll get some more photos when she’s dried off. She’ll be a darker brown than her mother, for sure.

Both mama and baby are doing fine.

Waiting for the calf. . .

2009-12-31T12:45:00.001-06:00

Last April we bought a Jersey milk cow named Tilly. According to the people we bought her from, she was bred six weeks before we brought her home. Based upon that, I calculated her due date to be the end of December or the beginning of January. She looks to be right on track for her due date. Now, I wouldn’t purposefully have a cow freshen in the middle of winter. That just seems like the wrong time of year, but I had no say in when Tilly was bred. By looking at her, I believe she will give birth within the next couple of days. It’ll be nice to have fresh milk and cream again, though!

I moved her to a stall separate from the other cows a few days ago because she was starting to bag up. She’s continued to bag up and looks like she couldn’t get any fuller. I took a couple photos of her late this morning. I didn’t clean her udder before taking the photos, so you’ll have to excuse the mess on it (I still haven’t taught her to not poop in her bed). I put fresh bedding down in her stall twice a day, trying to keep her clean. Most of her manure ends up away from where she likes to lie down, but, like this morning, when she gets up she’ll drop a load right where she is. So, I keep adding bedding and trying to make sure she has a clean, dry place to lie down.

She may be in early labor today. She was acting a little different, just kind of standing there facing the wall. She may also just be uncomfortable. Either way, the birth of her calf is imminent.

Whether she has a heifer or a bull calf, we’ll keep it to raise. I plan on retiring my other milk cow, Josey, this next year – she’s 12 or 13 years old now. She’s due to have a calf in April. It will be a Guernsey-Jersey cross (a Juernsey?) as she was bred to a friend’s Jersey bull. I’d thought about keeping Josey’s calf if it’s a heifer, but I won’t if Tilly has a heifer. There’s no telling at this point. It’s entirely possible that they’ll both have bull calves. If so, we’ll keep at least one for beef.

I’ll let you know when Tilly has her calf. Soon, I expect.

Off-grid solar power system specifics (technical details)

2009-12-31T08:08:00.001-06:00

The basic components of our solar electric system are:

1250 watts of solar panels (10 100-watt panels and 5 50-watt panels)
12 6-volt 225 amp hour batteries
60 amp MPPT solar charge controller (Xantrex XW-60)
3,000 watt true sine wave inverter (Aims Power)
600 watt true sine wave inverter (Samlex)

I bought the panels and batteries from Sun Electronics in Florida. The panels are Sun-100 and Sun-50, panels that the company has assembled for them from other panel manufacturer’s parts. These are not top of the line panels, but I didn’t pay the $3 to $5 per watt price of top of the line panels. I bought these because they were on sale ($1.74 per watt – they now have other sizes on sale for the same price), fit within my budget, and their specifications were appropriate for my application. They look fine and test fine on my digital multi-meter. Maybe they won’t last as long as other name brand panels, but they seem like a good place to start.

The batteries are 6-volt golf cart batteries, a common deep-cycle lead acid battery for solar applications, especially new systems. They are relatively cheap and should provide several years of service if treated properly. One of the things I didn’t realize when I first ordered the panels and batteries is how the solar array needs to be sized to the battery bank. You can have too large of a battery bank for the number of panels which isn’t good for the batteries. I actually was on the bottom edge with my amount of PV (photovoltaic) watts with our original number of panels (10 100-watt).

I ended up ordering more panels, 5 50-watt panels, after having received the first 10 100-watt panels for three reasons: they didn’t have any more of the 100 watt panels matching what I already received, I wanted to size the PV array more appropriately to our battery bank size, and it allows a little more available power generation for the system. As I mentioned in a previous post, conservation is the first three things you should do in setting up an off-grid system. In sizing your system, you need to be able to compute your reasonable and realistic electricity usage. This is where a Kill-A-Watt meter comes in very handy (as of 12/30/09, Newegg has it on sale for $19.99 with free shipping if you use promo code EMCMNPM27).

For our usage we’ve figured on the following daily consumption (rounding up each in order to over-figure rather than under-figure):

300 watts for refrigerator
300 watts for lights
300 watts for computer/tv/dvd player
200 watts for washing machine
100 - 300 watts for miscellaneous usage

That gives a total of 1.2 to 1.4 kilowatt hours per day. We can and probably will use less because these numbers are figured high on purpose based upon our current usage. There will be times when there is limited sun during a given week because of cloud cover, meaning there will be less electricity available for use. Extended periods of cloudy weather would probably require a generator or other power source to charge the batteries. If we weren’t trying to run a refrigerator, we could just live without electricity during such times until the sun returned to recharge the batteries. So, we’ll be getting a small generator as a backup to keep the batteries healthy – discharging batteries too low is greatly limits their lifetime.

We can figure the necessary battery size for our system based upon our general usage (let’s round it up to 1.5 Kwh). When figuring usage, watts for different voltages are equivalent, but amps are not. There’s a simple formula: volts time amps equals watts. That means at 120 volts (standard AC) 12.5 amps equals 1,500 watts (120 x 12.5 = 1,500). However, at 24 volts (the voltage of our battery bank), 1.5 kilowatts requires more amps: 24 volts times 62.5 amps equals 1,500 watts (24 x 62.5 = 1,500). If I made my calculations based upon amps, I’ be way off. When figuring battery usage, we need to be sure and use the right numbers.

So, our daily usage at 1.5 kilowatt hours requires 62.5 amp hours from the batteries. A standard three day reserve would require 187.5 amp hours. For battery health and life, it is best to not cycle it too deeply. I don’t want to use more than 20% of the battery’s capacity on a regular basis. Fifty percent is the maximum level of discharge, and I prefer not to discharge it that low. At 62.5 amp hours per day, the daily cycle of the battery will be about 10%. We could go 2.5 days without sun without going below 80% state of charge on the batteries. At 50%, we have about a 5 day reserve.

The thing that needs to be figured into all of this is the inefficiencies within the system. All of the components are not 100% efficient. For instance, it’s generally figured that batteries are only 80% efficient. At that rate, our usage figures out to just over 4 days reserve. These numbers give us a good estimate of the capabilities of our storage as it relates to usage. We’ll also have a battery monitor that will give us information regarding the battery’s state of charge and other pertinent information.

There are other inefficiencies in the system to be figured, too. One of those is the inverter. My numbers above haven’t considered the amount of power the inverter will consume just by being on. In fact, the reason we’ll have two inverters is because the smaller one will consume less power than the larger one while supplying the power we need in our home 90% of the time. I originally bought the larger one off of Ebay for about half price of new. Later, I realized that it would draw up to 576 watts per day (probably less, but, again, it’s better to figure on the upper end). The smaller 600 watt inverter will consume 250 or less watts per day.

Okay, you don’t have to do all of these computations in order to set up a system. For me they’re important in sizing our system. A lot of people start out small and build on to their system over time. This allows them to figure out what works as they build. This is a good way to learn. There are also a lot of online resources to help you learn about solar power systems. I’ve found some great information on the Northern Arizona Wind and Sun discussion forum. A little searching will reveal a lot more information if you have the time and desire.

A nice resource for figuring how much power you can expect to realize from a solar electric system is the site PVwatts. You can input location information and PV array specifics to figure how much electricity you can realistically generate for usage. Their numbers are based upon statistics collected over 20 years. If you want to compute for an off-grid setup, put 0.52 in the “DC to AC Derate Factor” to account for the inefficiencies in the system. I know this sounds like a large amount to derate it, but it is recommended by those with experience in order to give you realistic figures to work with. This number accounts for panel, battery, and inverter efficiencies which are less than 100% each.

So, our system will have a 1,250 watt PV array feeding a 24-volt 675 amp hour battery bank connected to an inverter that will output clean AC power for our household use. We could have designed and put together a smaller system, but we had the opportunity to make it this size at this time. As I put this together (it’s still being put together), I worked with a self-imposed budget of $5,000 (money taken out of a 403b account budgeted for building our house – the solar power system is part of the house project). In some ways that was an ambitious number, but not completely unrealistic. Our total will actually come out to about $7,000, but the federal government offers a 30% tax credit for installing a system. After that credit (yes, I’ll take it), we will fit within our $5,000 budget (I had hoped to fit within it prior to the tax credit).

We figured as long as we were able to, we ought to make the system larger than smaller. Generally, usage ends up being greater rather than smaller. At our system’s size, during the shortest month (December) we can still realistically expect to generate enough power to consume 1.5 kilowatt hours a day (based upon PVwatts calculations). During the peak months (May, June, & July) while we have plenty of sunshine, we’ll be able to go hog wild and use up to 4 kilowatt hours a day! Ya’ll come over for the party!