Some hay, some snow, and a new banjo

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.

Five and a half inches of snow

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.

Deep bedding revisited

On December 23 I posted about using deep bedding for my cows this winter. I first became aware of the term and the specific ideas of this method through Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in his book $alad Bar Beef. Joel houses his cattle in a shed over winter, feeding them there rather than in the pasture as is common in his area of Virginia and this area of Kentucky (many areas, in fact). In order to utilize the 2,500 or more pounds per day of nutritionally-rich excretions from his cows back ends, Joel spreads carbon-rich bedding every day or so. This provides a dry, comfortable place for the cows to spend the winter. There are benefits for the cows health associated with using his deep bedding method.

By the time the cows are ready to move back out on pasture in the spring, the bedding, loaded with nutrient rich cow dung and urine, may be up to four feet deep. Rather than use mechanical means to loosen and aerate this bedding, Joel employs pigs to root it up which loosens and aerates it. The pigs work for grain which has been incorporated into the bedding during the winter. The grain sprouts in the bedding and provides the pigs with motivation to root up the bedding because it tastes good to them. The end result is loose, aerated compost that only needs to be handled once as it is loaded into the spreader and spread on the fields. You can read an article from the 1990s written about Joel Salatin’s pigerators here.

 

Many others also use a deep bedding system with their cows. One of the blogs I regularly read is Throwback at Trapper Creek. The author, Matronofhusbandry, writes about her and her family’s homesteading adventure in the Northwest. They use management intensive rotational grazing – moving their cows to a new paddock everyday – and deep bedding in the barn during the winter. She has a love for composted animal manure because of the great benefits it provides for the soil and plants. You can read a couple of posts written by Matronofhusbandry on the following links: Sacrificing the sacrifice area and Dung love.

After my previous post on deep bedding, a friend expressed concern that such a system would constitute a fire danger much like wet hay in a barn does. I’ve searched for any correlation between deep bedding and a risk of barn fire to no avail. If anyone has some information on such a risk, I’m interested in hearing/reading it. I don’t see it as a risk, though, based upon my research and experience, but I’m curious to hear from others about it.

I’ve actually done deep bedding with animals before. That was with goats, and it wasn’t as intentional as it is this year. I just kept adding enough bedding on the floor so that the goats weren’t in mess, and then I dug out the accumulated and packed (can you say very dense) bedding in the spring or early summer. It’s amazing how stuck together it would get. At the bottom of the layer, the material was mostly broken down/composted. The density of the pack prevented any oxygen from being available within the bedding which would be necessary for combustion to occur.

I’ve seen barns in which no bedding appeared to have been put down for the animals. Those were horrible situations and resulted in a lot more problems for the animals. I’ve seen goats who had chronic foot rot problems that when moved to a barn with ample bedding had no more problems. Keeping animals warm, dry, and clean is important. It’s very difficult to provide ideal conditions for the animals without good bedding. If you don’t incorporate enough carbonaceous material into the bedding, much of the valuable nutrients are lost. If you barn/bedding area smells bad, you’re wasting the good stuff. Liquid manure systems don’t stabilize the nitrogen and other valuable nutrients in the manure let alone the problems for the animals associated with a concrete floor (and the mechanical requirements for such a system).

Last year with my cows, I kept bedding on the floor for them, but I didn’t let it accumulate with their mess. I forked the cow pies and wet bedding out into a pile every day. The lack of depth in the bedding actually created more mess for the cows than what I’ve been doing so far this winter. I add fresh bedding every day, usually in the morning. This gives the cows a nice dry bed that is well insulated from the ground. They’re cows, so they still end up laying down in some of their mess (they don’t care that they’re standing in their bed when they drop a load) that was added after the fresh bedding, but it seems like overall they have a much better bed to be in. I’m also excited about the nutrient rich material that is being collected.

So far, the bedding for my cows is maybe about a foot thick. The carbon material I spread for bedding is what I already have. So, I’m not spending money on bedding. I’ll see what I can accumulate for next year. The concept behind the deep bedding method makes a lot of sense, and others’ experiences with it validate its utility.

Here are a couple of photos of cows on deep bedding I found online (not my cows) – the second photo looks more like the bedding in my barn:

More fresh winter-time salad

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The greens in the greenhouse have been fairing well. They keep growing and are providing us with some wonderful and tasty salads. The wood stove inside the greenhouse has made it possible to keep from losing much of the tender greens to the cold. We’ve had several nights in the low teens or in the single digits. With the stove loaded with wood and the dampers closed down, I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to put more wood in. I’ll load it a little before 10:00 p.m. and then put more wood in around 6:30 in the morning. On the coldest mornings, the thermometer in the greenhouse registered a temperature of about 25 degrees. I think it was a little warmer at ground level near the plants. However, it’s been warm enough inside that we’ve not lost any of our greens due to freezing. I don’t keep a fire going if the overnight temperature is not going to be less than the middle or upper twenties. During the day when the sun is shining, it is usually 80 degrees even if it’s only 20 degrees outside.

So far, I rate the wood stove in the greenhouse a success, and I’m very pleased with how it’s worked out.

Ice in Kentucky

In my last post I mentioned that Anne and I were heading to Michigan to deliver a vehicle. Well, we sold the Suburban to a really nice individual who lives near Flint, Michigan. It was a 550 mile trip there (and about the same coming back). We put our car on a U-Haul trailer so that we could drive it home. We left on Thursday, January 29, 2009, the day after the major winter storm moved on east. We were going to leave on Wednesday, but we were concerned about the snow and ice and how they were affecting road conditions.

You may have heard about how many people in Kentucky were affected by this storm. In our neck of the woods, it didn’t cause any problems. However, we didn’t drive very far after we left before we saw evidence of much greater ice accumulation. Driving north on I-65, there was lots of ice all the way from Cave City, KY, where we got on the interstate, to about Columbus, Indiana. From that point on, there was plenty of snow. The roads were fine, though.

We took a few photos as we were driving north on that Thursday, and then we took some more on our return trip on Friday. The ice was still hanging tenaciously to the trees Friday afternoon (January 30, 2009). I thought I’d share a few of our photos so you can see some of what it looked like along the interstate as we traveled. The first two were taken in Kentucky as we were headed north on Thursday morning. We took several others on the following afternoon, mostly in Kentucky with a few in Indiana a little north of Louisville. I don’t remember exactly where the ones I’ve shared below were taken, except that they were along I-65 (I think these were all in KY).

A little winter weather

A good-sized winter storm rolled through the night before last. We got some freezing rain – about 1/4” accumulation. The ice stayed on the trees until last night, even though it rained all day yesterday. It warmed up a couple of degrees last night, or the rain we got then would’ve frozen also. As it was, the ice melted overnight.

 
All together, we received just over five inches of rain here. At the end of the storm this morning, the temperature dropped into the upper 20s, and we got some sleet and snow. Just enough to cover the ground.

In other areas of the state, there was more ice accumulation and/or snow. Anne and I were going to drive to Michigan today to deliver a vehicle to the buyer, but we postponed until tomorrow. We would’ve had to have driven through areas in Indiana that got some significant snow. We still may have some icy roads tomorrow, but there’s no rush. We’ll be back home on Friday. The younguns are staying with my parents, and Dad will take care of chores while we’re going. That’s one of the advantages of having a bit of community on the homestead.

  
Even though we didn’t receive a major storm here, we were prepared for one. Being prepared is a way of life, actually. We have food, water, and heat. We don’t live our lives with the need to run to the store for every little thing. Running to the store happens as infrequently as possible. That means it will usually be weeks or even months between trips to buy some “necessary” item from the store. With that sort of situation, there is little adverse effects from a severe storm, only some inconveniences (like no internet if the power goes out).

A home heating contemplation

I’ve been thinking more about the work that I have to do on the house this year. There are a lot of details to be ironed out and a lot of work to be done. I enjoy trying to creatively approach some of the challenges of the building process, and it’s great fun trying to come up with ideas for providing some basic services in efficient and low energy input forms.

We heat with wood. We have a nice wood cook stove that is also designed to heat a home. It works well. Perhaps the biggest drawback of a wood stove has to do with distribution of heat. It’s warmest near the stove. That’s not all bad, of course, especially when you come in from outside and want to warm up. The challenge is to circulate that heat through the rest of the house in an efficient and low energy usage manner. Fans help, but they also move a lot of dust and contribute excess noise to the home environment.

So, I’ve been toying with ideas to distribute the heat from the stove into the various rooms and corners of the house, specifically the house we’re building (I don’t want to spend the time retrofitting and building a system for this old mobile home we currently live in). I toyed with the idea of an outdoor wood furnace. There are some nice things about those, primarily that the mess of burning wood stays outside. However, there are some drawbacks. They are expensive to purchase, and building one may require skills I don’t yet have. They can also consume a lot more wood than we currently burn. Additionally, most of them are connected to some kind of furnace-blower system inside, something that requires an amount of energy I don’t want to support. I want some system that will not consume very much energy so that it can be powered in the event of electrical service disruption.

I’m already planning on installing a domestic hot water system that will utilize heat from the wood stove in the winter when we’re using it and that will also have solar collectors for the summer months. We can buy a hot water coil that fits onto our stove which uses the heat in the firebox to heat our domestic hot water. The heated water naturally flows into a tank via thermo-convection, drawing cooler water from the tank back through the coil. It’s a nice system that can produce some very hot water with no extra expense.

So, tonight I got to thinking about how to draw upon this hot water source to spread the heat of the wood stove throughout the house. My idea involves radiant heating tubes installed in the floors (probably only the first floor). However, water directly from the hot water tank would oftentimes be too hot for such an application. So, I envision another tank to supply the radiant heating system. Here’s a diagram of my idea (hopefully, it’s clear enough to understand – you can see a larger version by clicking on it):

Does this look like it would work? Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, improvements? I envision the low-wattage pumps being small enough to be run off of solar power. I would have to determine what thermostatic controls are available and that would work with this system.

I solicit all input. I’m curious about the feasibility and workability of this idea. Someone else may have had a similar one and may have developed it, I don’t know. This is just the product of my thinking this evening.

Heating the greenhouse

The weather forecast says we’ll be a might bit chilly for the next few days. We’ll be in the teens tonight and tomorrow night and down to somewhere around 7 degrees by Friday morning. When it gets cold like that for a few days, it’s hard for the tender greens in our unheated greenhouse to survive. A couple of winters ago, I lost some beautiful romaine when the cold settled in for a few days. I hope to avoid that this year.

I set up a small wood stove in the greenhouse this afternoon. I’ll keep a fire in it while it’s cold the next few days and nights. We bought this little box stove through Harbor Freight several years ago and installed it in our fireplace in our home in Illinois. That winter fuel prices went up drastically, and we cut back on heating expenditures by burning wood.

Some of the other uses this little stove has seen include providing some heat in the garage one winter and generating smoke for a homemade smoker last November. Other than that, it’s not been used for anything.

For the greenhouse installation, I used a ten foot length of “stovepipe” I created from a piece of aluminum siding. This creation was previously used with the smoker, providing an opportunity for it to cool before entering the smoke chamber (I was cold-smoking some cured venison roasts). To this makeshift piece, I attached a few odds and ends chimney pieces that I ran through a piece of roofing metal affixed over the window opening in one end of the greenhouse. In the photo, the thermometer hangs from the ceiling, and there is some smoke in the air, mainly from the paint burning off the two foot section of new chimney pipe I used.

Malchiah and I lit a fire in it this afternoon, and I’ve added wood a couple of times this evening. How well it does tonight will determine whether or not I’ll decide to cover the plants Thursday night. Earlier, it was keeping it 20 to 25 degrees above the outside temperature. That’s not too bad considering there’s only a thin layer of plastic between the inside and the outside. I also set up a box fan in the greenhouse to help circulate the air. 

If the addition of a little heat keeps the plants happy, I’ll be happy, too. It won’t cost me much of anything, and it was easy to install.

First green salad of the year

We’ve been blessed with some nice, warm weather recently. Today was in the low 60s, although we had a few thunderstorms rumble through or nearby. The plants in the green house have been growing nicely. Their growth this time of year seems somewhat slow, but I expect that’s a result of the temperatures dropping down to or below freezing at night. It heats up nicely inside during the day when the sun shines.

This morning I watered all of the plants. We collect rainwater off of the garage roof which we use for watering. The rain fills 55-gallon barrels that sit under the eaves on one side. I don’t have any gutters on the garage at this time.

This afternoon I began thinning some of the plantings. The lettuce and spinach came up a bit thick. So, in order to promote better growth and harvests later, it’s necessary to thin them out a bit. The nice thing is that this process provides some nice tender, young greens for eating. I also picked a few leaves from those greens which didn’t need thinned in order to compile a nice salad mixture.

 
The salad included three different kinds of lettuce, spinach, turnip greens, radish greens, chard, pak choi, mustard greens, holland tyfon greens, mustard spinach komatsuma, arugula, and some garlic leaves. There were also a few small radishes I pulled.


Fresh greens in the middle of winter are certainly appreciated. They taste so good. They don’t need any salad dressing; just eat them as they are.

It was an excellent salad!

Miscellaneous: painting, reading, photography

Homesteading is a way of life, one in which we are able to pursue what's referred to as a "simple life." I suppose it's simple in some ways, but it also brings considerable physical labor. Growing, harvesting, and preserving food takes a lot of time and work. However, there is still time to pursue other activities and interests, especially during the winter months when the days are shorter and the nights longer. Also, when it's raining outside, there are quite a few things that I'll gladly put off rather than get soaked.

I recently purchased a new digital camera (a Fujifilm Finepix S700), and I'm enjoying taking photos and exploring its capabilities. I have an interest in photography, at least to a small degree, whether I have much skill or ability in this area. I took these photos of the sunset this evening.

There's more time during the winter for reading. One of my evening activities is reading to the children. Currently, we are finishing Little House on the Prairie. We generally read the entire set of "Little house" books over the winter. The children really seem to enjoy them. This year, Malchiah is old enough to truly appreciate them. Naomi is enjoying them, too, although she doesn't follow all of the stories completely.

I also read other books for my own edification or entertainment. I'm currently reading The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need -- And What We Can Do About It by Tony Wagner. I ordered this as an evaluation copy in order to consider using it in my class. I just finished Created for Work: Practical Insights for Young Men by Bob Schultz. I enjoyed the practical lessons he presents.

Probably because they've all been read to since they were infants and have seen Anne and I reading, our children all love books. Jessica reads every chance she gets. Ramiah is growing as a reader. All four of them love to be read to, the younger three asking quite often to be read to. That's a good thing, and I'm glad they are readers.

Years ago while still in grad school, I participated in an informal painting class put on by a friend. It was based upon Bob Ross' method. You may have seen The Joy of Painting series on PBS in the past. Bob Ross would paint a landscape within the 30 minute program. I studied his painting techniques by watching his program and reading some of his instructional books. Although I haven't painted any pictures in a few years, I enjoy painting. I hope to make time to do so again soon. The photos show a couple of the paintings I've done.

The rains of winter

Winter officially began just a few days ago. Growing up in Central Illinois, I have memories of some winters with sub-zero temperatures, lots of snow, and incredible ice storms. This is our sixth winter in Kentucky, and they have all been mild in comparison to the winters I remember on the plains of Illinois. Usually, the ground doesn't freeze except temporarily and only a few inches deep. The major form of precipitation we receive is rain. Lots of rain, usually. At least, it seems that way. Slogging around in mud is a usual thing, because until later in Spring, the ground stays wet.

Last week brought cloudy skies and rain. It also brought wind. All week. I was going to spend several days in the woods hunting deer as it was our late muzzleloader season. The weather was less than ideal for it all week except for two days. So, no deer. I'll try not to complain about the wind we've been having. Generally, we don't have too much, at least not like in the flatlands where there are few trees and no hills to stop or slow down the wind.

After our coldest temps yet this year (5 degrees Monday morning), we had more rain yesterday, last night, and today. Dad said his gauge measured over two inches of rain today. At times it came down quite heavily. The temperatures have been up, though. We were in the 60s today. A chance for more rain is forecast for Friday and Saturday with more 60 degree temperatures.

When the rain comes down hard, the creeks rise and really flow. All that water has to go somewhere. Rain on hilly land is a different experience than it is on flat land. It's amazing how much power water possesses when it flows downhill. I've had to fix my driveway after storms several times. The water will move the gravel quite a ways if given a chance.