At long last

647 days since we first listed our house.
104 days since the offer came in.
$61,000 below our initial list price.

And it is finally done.

But hey, at least we're not in a recession.

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A nice little tool for our new wood stove

I found a great tool for getting a wood fire going. It goes by the the rather cumbersome name of "Fire Dragon Bellows / Poker". Apparently the generic name for this tool is a "blow poke," which sounds like something that should not be mentioned in polite company.

Anyway, this is basically a hollow fire poker, with a brass mouthpiece on the the end, so you can blow air into the fire with pretty good precision. Here's a picture:

This one is less expensive than the others I found online - about US$40. (I didn't find anything like this at either of our local fireplace stores. And it's been really helpful for me since our first load of firewood has proven to be a little damp. It's not green wood, but I suspect it got rained on at some point.

At any rate, I really like this thing. We've mostly only been burning wood at night. If I remember and have time, I toss a log into the coals in the morning before I leave for work. Then by the time I get home, it's lightly charred and well dried. And surprisingly, even if I don't toss a log in, I still find hot coals at 5pm. With the remaining embers and the blower, I can get a fire going without matches or a lighter.

More on some other topics when I get a chance. Right now I'm exhausted.

Photo follow-up from last post

New roof
(and new wood stove chimney)

New wood stove

New downspout and new (old) rainbarrel

Now the only problem is that the water line from the well to the house has frozen. So we have no running water. Not an emergency at this point. But I've got to figure out how to either insulate it, or maybe wrap it in heat tape or something. I'd rather insulate though.

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Some nice milestones, and a loss

Well, let's see.... Lots going on here.

We lost one chicken. There was snow on the ground, but I couldn't find any non-chicken tracks. I couldn't find any breaches in the chicken pen. No blood, no carcass. Just a handful of feathers inside the coop. My best guess is a raccoon, or maybe a possum, came down a tree. But who knows. We don't have a CSI: Chicken Coop team. Emily, we hardly knew ye.

But today was a big day at the new homestead.

The metal roof is done. And I have to say, it looks fantastic. And it should be good for half a century or more. The roofers even replaced our skylights with more efficient ones for free. (I was going to tell him we didn't want to do the roof after all, so he threw in the skylights to get me to close the deal.)

The gutters and downspouts are done too. The installer was nice enough to notice one of my rain barrels, and set it up for me. Bonus!

And last but not least, the wood burning stove is in too. A week ahead of schedule. We're supposed to burn only small fires the first few times, so we did a little test fire tonight. The boys were fascinated, of course. I'm looking forward to getting the hang of it's nuances. I'm really looking forward to getting a real fire going.

No pictures because I leave when it's dark and I get home when it's nearly dark. Maybe I'll snap a couple tomorrow.

Good times...

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Making progress

It's been a bit of a slog since moving. So many boxes to empty, so many things to learn, so many places to find... so much chaos. It seems like the progress has been slow.

But when I stop and think back at the projects we've gotten done so far, it's a pretty good list:
- Got rid of all incandescent bulbs
- Fixed constantly running toilet
- Set up two rain barrels
- Fenced back yard
- Fixed door locks
- Got plumbing leaks repaired
- Got stove repaired
- Replaced dead fridge & dishwasher with high efficiency models
- Built compost bin out of old pallets
- Established a system for trash & recycling (took a little figuring since we'll be transporting it all to the county facility ourselves)
- Put in a new over-engineered clothesline.
- Put a gate on the front porch (to keep Amelia from wandering off)
- Fixed and reinforced the front porch swing.
- Set up a workshop in the garage
- Joined a bio-diesel co-op
- Came up with a plan for where to put the garden and how to (hopefully) keep the deer out of it

Not a bad run for under two months. There's still a lot of work to do, including some pretty big stuff. But that's another post.

In the meantime, I have to share the one that's most exciting to me: The Return of Chickens.

We have been DYING to get chickens again. We've really been missing them. But with so much other work to do, building a chicken coop was looking like a daunting task. Building a coop inside our old pole barn was fairly easy. Building one from scratch, while certainly doable, was something that was going to take some time.

I made the mistake of browsing the Farm & Garden section of Craigslist. (Always a dangerous idea...) Lo and behold, a stunningly well designed (and handsome) chicken coop for sale, for less than what we imagined spending on materials. And October was a three paycheck month. It was like Fate screaming at us to go for the instant gratification option.

And so, here it is... It's being delivered on Sunday.









Next we just have to get ourselves some chooks!

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Our new flexible, frugal meal plan

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are about to be poor. Poor by choice at least, but with effectively half our non-housing income gone, we've got some major adjustments to make.

One area that seemed like a good target for cost-cutting was food. Our grocery bills have been growing along with our kids. We don't eat a lot of convenience foods, but we do eat out more often than we mean to. Hopefully a healthy dose of self-discipline will solve the latter problem, but what would we do about the former?

We decided to come up with a frugal meal plan. To start with, we wanted to plan out seven days of meals, to be repeated each week. As we settle in, we'll add variations, but for now, simple and flexible are the buzzwords.

Actually, our goals were a little more involved:
- Simple
- Flexible
- Inexpensive
- Healthy & nutritious
- Made from "real" food rather than packaged / convenience items
- Made from ingredients we could potentially produce ourselves, even if we're not right now
- Easily adaptable to seasonal produce
- Made from items that are not hard to find locally and/or organically
- Appealing to all family members (including Amelia)

That seemed like a tall order when we started talking about it, but a plan came together much more quickly than we expected.

So below is the menu plan that we're beta testing now. It focuses on dinners. Breakfasts are usually easy for our crew - some combination of oatmeal, fruit, nuts, yogurt, toast, etc. Lunches are generally soup, sandwiches, or dinner leftovers.

Saturday
Roast two whole chickens. (It's just as easy to roast two at a time, and you only have to heat up the oven once. Plus whole chickens are the cheapest kind.) Serve one chicken for dinner, along with whatever is in season. The beautiful thing about roast chicken is that it goes with so many things - potatoes in almost any form, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, rolls, cornbread, salad, and just about any vegetables you can name....

Cut the meat off the second chicken. Put half the meat in the refrigerator and half in the freezer. Stash both dismantled carcasses in the fridge as well.

Sunday
Cook a double batch of rice. Use half of the rice, plus some of the leftover chicken to make one of several chicken & rice dishes in our repertoire. (Chicken vindaloo, Golden rice & chicken pilaf, etc.) Put the remaining rice in the fridge.

Monday
Make chicken stock and/or chicken soup with the chicken carcasses. (See: Free Soup.) We have several soup recipes that can work here. Serve soup with salad, sandwiches, bread, or other items as appropriate.

Tuesday
Use the leftover rice and remaining chicken, along with seasonal veg, eggs, or whatever's on hand to make a simple fried rice dish. Or add beans, cheese, veg and tortillas to make burritos. Or beans & rice.

Wednesday
Some form of pasta & tomato sauce. Spaghetti, chili mac, lasagna, baked ziti.

Thursday Free-for-all. Leftovers, sandwiches, fritattas, omelets, scrambled eggs, pancakes, dinner with friends... whatever makes the most sense.

Friday
Homemade pizza. Bake a loaf of bread at the same time, as long as the oven's hot.

Then, we start again. Only the second week, we only roast one chicken instead of two. Since we froze half the meat from last week's second chicken, we'll use that in the coming week's recipes.

We can easily swap some days, and we can easily substitute other meats from time to time as budget and circumstance allow. And although the menu appears to repeat the same dishes every week, pretty much every night has a myriad of variations available. Very little consultation of cookbooks is required. Prep is generally simple as well.

If we raise three batches of 25 meat chickens per year, we are suddenly self-sufficient in chicken. If we can 50 jars of tomatoes, we are suddenly self-sufficient in tomato products. We can produce pretty much everything in this menu ourselves, short of flour, rice and pasta (all of which can be purchased in bulk, and all of which store well - a single 50 lb bag of rice would last over a year with this plan). A good sized garden's worth of potatoes, sweet corn, and other standard vegetables should cover a large percentage of our needs.

It's a little light on whole grains on the surface. We hope to incorporate a lot of brown rice (which the kids love), and whole wheat (or whole/white mixed) items, but for the sake of simplicity (and storage) we didn't factor those into the plan explicitly. And of course there's always popcorn.

After we've worked our way through this a few times, we'll probably make some adjustments and refinements. It's already simplified meal planning and grocery shopping greatly. We saw an immediate effect on the grocery bill. It should cut down on waste, including the number of "oozing blobs formerly known as produce" in the bottom of the fridge.

We are oddly excited about this plan. It removes many variables. And it makes the garden planning math SOOOO much easier.

We'll see how it goes over the long haul. So far, so good...

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Instant Homestead Sale!

Dory: He says, "It's time to let go!". Everything's going to be all right.

Marlin: How do you know? How do you know something bad isn't gonna happen?!

Dory: I don't!

- Finding Nemo

As many of you guessed from my last post, we've more or less made up our minds. Oh in theory there could still be some dramatic last minute change of heart (or circumstance), but mostly we're just waiting for the Gears of Bureaucracy to turn. We're pretty close to the point of no return on this decision though.

But as a result of these impending events, our Instant Homestead has been significantly discounted from our original price. We're down about $20,000 from our starting point.

We did have four showings last week, including three in two days. That's more showings than we had from November through June. So we feel a bit better. We may end up dropping our price some more though if something doesn't happen soon.

Unfortunately, we'll most likely take a loss on this place. We put our money into things that just don't add to resale value - like really good fences.

But what can you do? We could stay put, and have my job disappear in six months. Or stay put and have my job move to Texas, which is almost as bad. (No offense to my Texas friends.) In my line of work, there are only so many employers to choose from in any given metro area, and none of the ones around here are hiring.

There is no obvious best choice here, and either direction could turn out to be a bad move. So you go with what feels right. A friend of mine advised that in situations like these, you should make up your mind decisively, and then do a Happy Dance. If it doesn't feel right, switch your decision and try again.

So here we go. We've come up with Plans A through at least G or H by now. We've got contingencies upon contingencies. We'll navigate it as best we can.

And as soon as everything is official I'll have some stories to tell. This blog will pick up again, perhaps somewhat sporadically at first as we do all the million things we need to do. But I can feel the writing piling up inside. It's just not quite time yet...

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Sell it baby

So our new real estate agent came by to do the necessary paperwork and to get some pictures. The first thing that tipped me off that she was my kind of agent was that she was trying really hard to come over on a sunny day, so the pictures would be better. (Nothing worse than a gloomy, overcast photo of the six-figure asset you're trying to sell.)

Anyway, we had a string of rainy days in a row, so I told her to just come on over, take the pictures, and then I'd email her some better ones as soon as the sun came out.

Being the photographer wanna-be that I am, I knew that the best light for photography is either the hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset -- the golden hour. Since the front of our house faces East(-ish), I needed to be up early to take advantage of it. I wasn't up quite as early as I wanted, but early enough to get some great pictures anyway.

I should mention that I am not a lawn nut. I am the opposite of a lawn nut in fact. I like weeds and ground-nesting birds and butterflies and so on. Plus the more you mow, the less you can make into hay. I lived here for over four years without a riding mower. But for selling purposes, image is everything, so I mowed it as pretty as I could.

When we had this house built, the builder had this lovely "artist's conception" of the finished product. Here's what it looked like:

I wasn't consciously trying to mimic that image, but I think I actually managed to go one better than the artist's conception... 'cause mine's real:

Go on, click on it. Make it bigger. I'm almost sure that's the prettiest it's ever looked.

And here are a couple more shots I got wandering around on that lovely spring morning...




Oh, and just for comparison, here is the picture from our old agent. It's not terrible, but still... big difference.

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Sale update

When we chose a real estate agent, we went with a local firm. I always like to support local businesses when I can, and we figured they'd be experts on selling in our area.

Unfortunately, after half a year and only three showings, it looks like that approach is flawed. Oh I know, the market is not good. But ads in our small town paper are not cutting it. I've always imagined our buyer coming from somewhere else anyway.

We've gotten nothing but positive feedback from the people who have come through. We even thought we might get an offer from two of them. We've done everything we can think of as the owners, we should be priced fairly, and we really believe that all it should take to sell this place is getting more people through that front door.

So I spent a lot of time digging, and found an agent who advertises over a much broader area, and through many more channels. Her testimonials include a number of people who had no luck with other agents. She regularly sells in our area, and even lives in the next town over. She's good at staging, and has better-than-average photos on her listings. When I talked to her, I heard the right words and got the right feeling. Good agents are worth their weight in gold, and are surprisingly hard to find.

We'll see how it goes. We love so many things about this place, but once you've decide to move on, it's hard to un-imagine your plans. When we moved here, we had 2 1/2-year-old twins and no idea how to do any of the things we wanted to do.

Now, the twins are seven we added Owen (who is two already!). We've learned what we're good at and what we're not. We have a much better idea of which of our dreams are most feasible. We have seen what it takes to raise our particular family.

So... nothing big to report. But we're not giving up yet.

Meanwhile, back to the garden. I hope if somebody does buy this place, they're the kind of people who will appreciate what we've put into it.

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Next question

Has anybody tried this? It looks intriguing. We're not in a position to try it right now, but we may give it a shot if we don't have success with traditional methods.

I wuoldn't quite say there's nothing to lose, but there's not a lot to lose. We'll see how things go in the meantime.

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Multi-use homestead outbuilding

So I've been tinkering with a design for a multi-use outbuilding. Thinking way too much I suspect.

In the past we built several goat shelters, a chicken pen, a chicken tractor, along with milking stanchions for goats and another for a cow. We also planned the design for our pole barn. I never did get around to building a greenhouse, but I did finally finish my grape arbor.

So I'm trying to combine things I've learned from experience with things I've learned from others, and create something new. Or at least interesting. I'm not sure if I've succeeded at either, but I've at least kept myself entertained and occupied through this long winter.

Below is what I came up with. This is a first pass. Suggestions and constructive criticism are always welcome. Also, if I ever build it, it could use a catchy name.

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Design:

The structure will be a long, narrow outbuilding composed of five square compartments or pens aligned in a row, running along an east/west axis. Each pen will have an interior space a little over 5 feet on a side, giving about 25 square feet of floor space. Each pen will have a 32-inch "doorway" in the center of the south wall. One pen should be able to provide shelter for up to six standard sized goats, or up to a dozen chickens, assuming they are given adequate run or pasture space.

click image to enlarge

Each of the five pens will serve a particular role in a given year, and functions will shift each year, giving a five-year rotation. The five functions are: Goat shelter, chicken coop, compost finishing, greenhouse, and woodshed.

The lower portion of the pens will be three courses of standard 8'x16' concrete blocks, but double the usual thickness (i.e. 2 blocks side by side or 16 inches thick). Standard dimensional lumber will be used to create a simple framework for the upper part of the structure.

The upper walls and roofing material will vary by function, as follows:

click images to enlarge

Goat shelter: The walls will be made of stacked straw bales. The roofing will consist of corrugated metal attached to lightweight (2x2) wooden frames. The roof will be designed with a slight slope for water runoff. It will overhang the straw bales slightly in all directions.

Chicken pen: The chicken pen, like the goat shelter will have straw bale walls and corrugated metal roofing on lightweight frames. However, movable nesting boxes will be inserted into the north wall in place of one of the straw bales. The nest boxes will be constructed to match the typical dimensions of the bales. A wood-framed door covered with chicken wire will be used to close the pen at night. Branches or rods can have both ends stuck into the straw bales to act as perches for the chickens at night.

Finishing compost: The compost area will consist of the remains of the goat bedding from 2 years prior, the chicken litter from the prior year, and rotting straw bales used for walls in previous years. Any excess rotted straw bales will be laid around the outside of the structure to act as insulation (and additional compost/mulch). This area would have minimal roof and wall coverings beyond those shared with neighboring pens.

Greenhouse: The roof, walls, and door of the greenhouse will be glazed with lightweight, durable material (polycarbonate maybe?) attached to lightweight frames. However, the rear (north) wall of the greenhouse will be painted plywood. Just inside the plywood, on top of the double-thick block walls will be 55-gallon rain barrels. They will be used to store rainwater. The barrels will supply water for the goats, chickens, and plants in the greenhouse. The warmer environment of the greenhouse will reduce the chance of the water freezing, and the thermal mass of the water will reduce temperature extremes within the greenhouse. The concrete block side walls should be entirely enclosed within the greenhouse, allowing for more shelf space. The concrete block could also be used as bench supports for shelving that extends the length or width of the greenhouse.

Woodshed: The woodshed area will have lightweight covering of whatever material is available, to keep rain off the stored wood. If extra glazing material is available to be used for this area, it would minimize the possibility of casting shade onto the greenhouse. However, caution should be used to make sure the stored wood is not subjected to excessive humidity.

Functional Rotation:

Each spring, the functions of each pen will shift one pen to the west, as follows:

Year 1: |  goats   | chickens | compost  |greenhouse| woodshed |
Year 2: | chickens | compost  |greenhouse| woodshed |  goats   |
Year 3: | compost  |greenhouse| woodshed |   goats  | chickens |
Year 4: |greenhouse| woodshed |  goats   | chickens | compost  |
Year 5: | woodshed |  goats   | chickens | compost  |greenhouse|

The upper portions of the pens would need to be taken down and moved as needed, which explains the emphasis on lightweight materials. However, the actual amount of work should not be great, since two of the pens have straw bale walls, which, if rotting, can simply be knocked down in place. The compost area has essentially no walls. The remaining roof panels and wall panels should be built in such a way that they can be moved easily. The rain barrels can be emptied for moving. The rotation should happen in spring, when rainwater should be plentiful.

The rotation is designed to cut down on incidence termites in the wood storage area, manure-borne parasites, while keeping a constant supply of fresh, rich soil for the greenhouse, and hopefully cutting down on all types of pests and pathogens.

The logic of the rotation is as follows:

The goat pen will build up a certain amount of bedding and manure over the course of a season, especially in winter. By moving the chickens into the goat area, the will scratch the bedding somewhat, encouraging the composting process, while at the same time adding fresh material in the form of droppings and litter. In the third year, this material, along with old straw bales, will finish composting, while still providing plenty of mulching material for the gardens. In the fourth year, the finished compost can be spread to the gardens and used with greenhouse plantings. The fifth year will be something of a "fallow" year, acting only as a dry place to store firewood through the winter.

In the warmer months, when no firewood storage is required, the pen could be set up as a milking area for the goats. In the winter, the milking station could be moved to the warmer greenhouse area.

By keeping the chickens and goats side-by-side four years out of five, the fencing needs are simplified. The chickens and goats would not be restricted from entering each other's pens during the day. Flexible stock panels could be used to channel the goats and chickens to pasture areas.

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Instant Homestead

If you know ANYBODY looking to buy a piece of land to come back to, send them to this page. We've got something for everyone. No really... Look, here I'll even give you the direct URL: http://greenbluebrown.blogspot.com/2010/03/instant-homestead.html

The house is about 2200 square feet, with 3 bedrooms and a loft that could easily be converted to a fourth bedroom (it's already got a closet even), plus a full unfinished basement. The land is just under 9 acres. About 6 acres are fenced pasture, with a 1 acre pond and another 1/2 acre "sunken marsh". (It was meant to be a pond, but it doesn't hold much water, so it's mostly cat tails, frogs, and red-winged blackbirds.) We're about 10 minutes from Circleville, Ohio (the Pumpkin Show!) and 30 minutes from Columbus. Based on local comps, we feel our asking price is fair at $264,900... but we can talk.

(Some of you are going, "Wow that's a lot!" and other's are going "Wow, that's all?" What can we say, real estate prices are what they are.)

What's so great about it? What does it have for me?

(No stock photos here, this is all legit...)

For the Nature Lover: We've got at least three species of frogs and one species of toad living here, along with a surprising number of salamanders. Our avian visitors include red-tailed hawks, great blue herons, bluebirds, barn swallows, barn owls, merganser ducks, mallard ducks, ring-necked pheasants, and even an occasional snowy egret. (Not to mention hordes [or possibly hoards?] of red-winged blackbirds, robins, cardinals, cowbirds, etc.) We get skunks and possums from time to time. Still hoping for an otter. Or a hippo. At least a dozen types of butterflies, and plenty of dragonflies and a fascinating array of beetles. The pond is well-stocked.

For the Bright Green environmentalist: Our pole barn has a big roof facing true south (I marked it off with my compass and even accounted for magnetic declination), for all those solar panels you always dreamed of. And plenty of room (and a good bit of wind) for the tallest wind turbine you can afford. There's a recycling center five miles away.

For the energy miser: CFLs throughout the house, R-60 insulation in the attic (mostly blown cellulose), a heat stove that can burn corn, pellets, cherry pits, sunflower seeds (or hulls), soybeans, or almost any other "granular" fuel. (Propane furnace serves as a backup.) A vaulted ceiling/loft that lets all that heat flow right up to the second floor, so the bedrooms can share the warmth. Low-E windows throughout. Removable shade screens to cut the summer heat. A super-efficient whole-house fan to draw in the cool summer night air. And of course the over-engineered clothesline.

For the Passive Solar enthusiast: We put in extra windows on the south face of the house for some winter warmth. We've got a porch overhanging some of the east facing windows, and a grape arbor overhanging some of the west facing windows to get some summer shade. We had plans to put up solar hot water panels as an additional shade structure over some of the south windows. No windows on the north face. In fact, most of the north face is a 2-car garage (and the beginnings of a green windbreak) to buffer those winds out of the north.

For the Local Food enthusiast: We've got a number of other small farmers close by and one good sized organic dairy. And a fabulous farmers' market in the next town over.


For the gardener: That south-facing barn was built with an attached greenhouse in mind. The soil in the garden area has been amended with: Several pickup loads of finished compost from the nearby organic dairy, many bags of leaves from yards in town, dried molasses, hay, straw, shredded paper, newspaper, cardboard, worm castings, composted wood chips, and manure from chickens, goats, cows, and a donkey. Oh and lots of biochar from our biomass stove and wood ash from when we burn pellets. And no chemicals. And scattered wildflowers.

For the edible landscaping enthusiast: We've got apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, grape vines, gooseberries, currants, sunchokes, asparagus, and a big patch of lemon balm. And possibly some salvageable nut trees if you can baby them a bit.

For the livestock enthusiast: We've got a chicken pen inside the pole barn, and a milking stall suitable for cows or goats. And room for plenty of hay. We've got acres of pasture well suited for rotational grazing, and fences built to last. The property has had no [pesti/fungi/herbi/insecti]cides of any kind on it, and it's got a nice variety of grass and red clover with occasional volunteer alfalfa, wheat, corn, wildflowers, etc. We've also got an Amish-raised Jersey cow who gives gallon after gallon of amazing cream-colored high-butterfat milk. It makes awesome butter, ice cream and yogurt (and presumably some incredible cheeses too, though we haven't gotten that far). She's bred to a proven Angus bull for your grass-fed beef needs. She doesn't come with the house, but if you're interested, she certainly can.

For the small farmer: We've got lots of room to grow small row crops, with pasture gates wide enough to fit most any equipment that would make sense on this scale. We've also got a Ferguson TO-30 tractor, a bush hog, and a 2-bottom trip plow we could throw in. The soil is already fabulous, and we've been working hard to improve it.

For the aesthetically inclined: The sun rises out your bedroom windows and sets out your living room windows. There's nothing ostentatious about this place, but it does have oak trim throughout, and most of the doors are solid oak. It's got beautiful stonework around the fireplace. It's got light-stained maple cabinets in the kitchen, and French doors leading to the dining room. It's got a vaulted ceiling up to the loft. It's got a big wrap-around front porch.

For the busy parent: It's got a 50x50 fenced back yard, and it's in a great school district (with a fabulous special needs program). And lots of room to roam and explore. And a surprising number of kids in the area.

For the homeschooler (or the amateur inventor, or the artist): it's got a 6-foot tall chalkboard in the kitchen. And great spaces for books and projects. The main library up in Columbus is regularly rated as the best library in the nation.

For the cook: We've got a wide-open oversized kitchen with tons of cabinets and counter space and a lovely south-facing window for a little herb shelf.

For the telecommuter: We've got DSL or WildBlue (satellite) for your broadband needs.

For the lazy mover: Everything in the house or on the property is negotiable except the kids, the dog, and the cat.

For the pumpkin enthusiast: The Circleville Pumpkin Show!


For the Red-Blooded American Consumer: Walmart, plus one of each of the major fast food chains.

For the TEOTWAWKI Zombie Hunter: We've got a clear view all around, with visibility approaching ten miles in some directions. We've got a full basement that's perfect for your underground bunker, root cellar, cool storage, and weapons cache. 20 miles from the nearest big city, but just 5 miles from (non-passenger) rail lines and a mile from a small river.

PLUS IF YOU ACT NOW, we'll throw in contacts for any/all of the following (a list I wish I had when we moved in):

• A local organic dairy farmer who will load up your pickup truck with finished compost for next-to-nothing
• Several neighbors who will cut and bale hay from your pastures (or who can sell you hay if you need it)
• A neighbor who will rent your pastures for his beef cattle if you'd rather that than the hay
• A neighbor who raises pastured poultry and garden vegetables
• Next-door neighbors who are both nurses, and have kids of all ages in case yours need instant friends
• A garbage collector who will come up the long driveway to get your trash, so you don't have to drag your garbage cans across all that gravel.
• A neighbor who can fix tractors if you need it
• A neighbor who can repair/replace tires (tractor or otherwise)
• A nearby source for dried corn in case you want to use it in the corn/pellet heat stove.
• A reputable auto repair shop
• A neighbor with a snowplow that can handle a gravel driveway if needed
• Various neighbors who raise cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, llamas, horses, turkeys, and chickens in case you need advice on any of them.
• A great local source for honey
• A great local-only farmer's market

So click on my profile and email me. I'll send you the full listing with photos of the house and everything. Don't delay - the zombies could be on their way at any time. Operators are standing by.

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One lesson learned

One of the things I've learned since we departed Suburbia back in Aught-5 is that for us, anything approaching self-sufficiency is a bit unrealistic. Maybe if our home and land were paid for and I didn't have to work full time, we might be able to get a fair bit closer than we are now.

Then again, I think true, independent self-sufficiency is pretty unrealistic for anybody. It's very hard to go it alone, in the cut-hay, chop-wood, haul-water, Pa Ingalls sort of way. Especially absent both skills and community support.

I'm confident that we could learn to do any given aspect of this. But not everything. Not filling all of our needs all the time. I've come to accept "no man is an island" in a different and more complete way than before. I mean, how better to establish ties within a community than by buying and trading for some of these things?

What's important about this lesson for us, is that it changes what we're looking for in a home and a property. By accepting that we don't need enough space to do it all, we can reduce the amount of land we need to acquire, pay for, and maintain. We can focus on those things that a) we're good at, b) we feel strongly about, and c) will mesh with our circumstances.

Plus, downsizing would free up both time and money, allowing me to focus more on all my goofy permaculture-infused dreams and flights of fancy.

I've got a basic wish list of things I want out of a homestead. They don't all have to be present initially, but they have to at least be feasible:

PLANTS & ANIMALS
A large vegetable garden
A moderate herb garden
Some room to experiment with calorie & feed crops, like grains, roots, & tubers
Fruit trees (apple, peach, & cherry at least)
Nut trees (Hazel & chestnut at least)
Fruiting shrubs (various)
Chickens
A few goats (probably Nigerian Dwarf, as indicated by the previous post)

INFRASTRUCTURE
Shelter for goats & chooks (and their feed)
Extra insulation in the home
Energy efficient windows
Rainwater collection

WISH LIST
Metal roof
Wood burning heat stove
A partially cleared, partially wooded property
Solar hot water
Solar PV
A small greenhouse
A small but self-sustaining pond

...and of course, a community that has the ability or potential to supply us with other essentials - locally grown food, perhaps wood, perhaps hay, not to mention friendship and support.

(I'm always open for suggestions, additions, critiques, commentary.)

It's probably a pretty typical list for homesteader-types and wanna-bes. We have many of these things already, so it may seem strange that we're moving. It's pretty hard to let this place go in a lot of ways. It really has a lot going for it. But it comes at a price that's higher than we'd like right now. And our immediate area is critically short on some key things.

I'm being slightly vague here lately. Given the State of Things, there are no guarantees that we're going anywhere. But here's hoping the powers that be can keep this whole thing propped up just a tiny bit longer.

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Makin' Lemonade

One of the challenges of trying to do this small farm thing AND have a day job is that there's not always time to finish projects. I'd venture to say that most people who try this don't end up with their properties looking like the cover of a magazine. The partially finished projects combine with the scraps leftover from completed projects to create a lot of debris.

The problem with trying to sell your house in this case is that most home buyers don't appreciate the, uh, "working farm aesthetic."

I've been giving Freecycle, Craigslist, and our local recycling center a workout, but they have their limits. And even the trash man won't take a broken down old goat shelter. Also, it turns out that when it comes to rotting lumber, even free is not a low enough price.

So, I decided that to commemorate, um... our move? The Pumpkin Show? Our upcoming 10th Anniversary? ... I decided to commemorate all those things at once. It was time for a bonfire.

A surplus of cinder blocks for a firepit. Some water-damaged cardboard boxes as a firestarter. A teepee of unusable lumber, a failed attempt at a bookshelf, a flimsy wooden chair, and we had ourselves quite a little fire.

The boys danced around it, helped gather the scraps, and tossed in woody stems (Thanks for helping with the weeding! Keep it up!) Amelia, confined to the other side of the back yard fence, decided to get in touch with her primitive side and get naked. And Lori took advantage of the situation to grab a few rare moments of solitude inside.

Fun for the whole family, and a nice little soil ammendment for next year's garden.

Throw in an overnight shower to put out the last of the coals, and it was almost serendipitous.




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Favorites, Part 6: Muck Boots.

I recently had the opportunity to try out a pair of Muck Boots, courtesy of Muck Boots Online.

Now, I've become very picky about footwear. I'm willing to spend extra for a good fit that will last. I don't like buying shoes, breaking them in, and having them fall to pieces on me. Also, my feet are, um, unconventional. Okay, they're mutant. (I know many people have a second toe longer than their big toe, but how many have a middle toe longer than their big toe too? And with that troubling visual, let's just move on.) I'm also hard on footwear. Anything that lasts longer than a year on my feet is doing pretty well.

Even so, I feel like a bit of a ringer on this review, because I already have a pair of Muck Boots. And I'll tell you right now, I love them. After almost four years around the homestead though, they are showing their age a little. Oh, they're still perfectly functional, but after a lot of climbing over fences, walking through brush, catching livestock, and climbing into a rusty gravity wagon full of moldy corn to clean it out, they are getting slightly ragged. The exterior layers are torn in places, and they tend to flop over rather than stand up (which just makes it a little harder to slip your feet in if your hands are full).

The new boots are different from the old boots in two ways: First, they are a slightly lower cut. My old chore boots come well up on my calf, where the new ones are cut more like snow boots. Second, the old boots have the tougher rubber covering only up to the ankle, with the lighter wetsuit-like material higher up. The new boots have a rubber outer shell most of the way up.


My hope was that the lower cut with more tough outer rubber would be more durable, and easier to get on and off. Now this is kind of asking a lot, because the old boots are easier to get on and off than just about any other footwear I have. That's one of the things I love about Muck Boots. They're like putting on very tall slippers. There are no laces or anything, and the inside material is fairly slippery, so they pull on with little effort. But if you're wearing jeans with taller boots, there's more to tuck in. I also figured the rubber would not snag on cattle panels or thorny shrubs as much.

And both of these things seem to be true. The only disadvantage of the new boots is that the tougher exterior makes them a little less flexible and a little less breathable. The breathability is not a huge deal, since they are shorter. And the reduced flexibility only matters when I put them on with shorts. (I know. I'm a fashion trendsetter.) Instead of bending with my legs, the more rigid boots slide back and forth across my calf, causing a little friction discomfort after a short while.

So now I wear the softer, taller boots with shorts (watch for this look in Milan next spring), and the shorter, tougher boots with jeans. This actually works out pretty well, because if I'm doing anything that might involved getting scrached, scraped, or nicked, I'm probably wearing jeans anyway. If I just want to mess around in the garden, or not have to worry about stepping in a menagerie of manure, mud, and muck while checking on the animals, the taller boots work better anyway.

I'm only going into this level of nitpicking so you get the whole picture and can fit the boots to your needs if you consider buying some. For my needs, if I had to pick only one pair, I'd probably go with the new pair of mid-height Muckmasters, mostly because I think they'll hold up longer.

There are several things I love about Muck Boots in general. One I already mentioned - they slip on "like buttah." I can almost always put them on hands-free, just by stepping into them, which is great if I've got my hands full or gloves on already, or whatever. I can take them off hands-free too. But through some deign magic, they don't ever think about coming off when I'm walking around.

Second is that they are waterproof. With no laces or seams, there's no place for the water to sneak in. (They're also bouyant. Ask me how I know...). I'd be happy to wear them walking through water, mud, snow, manure, or any other questionable small farm ooze.

Third is they are surprisingly breathable. I expected them to be more like old rubber Duck Boots, but they seem to do a good job of wicking away sweat, or moisture sneaking in around the top.

And finally, they're just comfortable. Much better than work boots for me.

As for Muck Boots Online, their customer service was great. I ordered a pair of size 11's, but after I got them I thought 10's might have been better. (Muck Boots don't come in half-sizes.) So they sent me another pair to try, along with a return shipping label. I ended up keeping the first pair, as I decided that slightly loose is much better than slightly tight. Quick and appropriate response is all I could ask for from a customer service standpoint.

I'll just end by saying that I hope I always have a pair of Muck Boots sitting by the door.

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Favorites, Part 2: The Bearded Lady

When we first got chickens, our plan was to hang on to a couple of the Buckeye roosters. Unfortunately, they were way too aggressive. They could draw blood with their spurs. They'd attack each other, me, Lori, the kids, the mail carrier, the neigbors, inanimate objects... So we decided to try to find a full-grown rooster whose temperament was a known quantity. We found somebody with two roosters available, both well-tempered and both from desireable breeds. And both with ironic names. The Buff Orpington, Rocky, was afraid of his own shadow. And the Araucana (Ameraucana? Americana?) was named Sherry, because his original owners thought he was a hen when they named him.

Unfortunately, Rocky didn't last long. He died of unknown causes. Sherry never liked him, so he may be a leading suspect, but without the CSI: Special Poultry Unit, we'll never know for sure.

At any rate, Sherry is everything we want in a rooster. He's protective of his flock, but he's never shown any signs of aggression toward people. (Despite that, I still flinch from time to time when I cross paths with him, and then remember he's the new guy. I don't miss punting roosters across the yard.) He's much more handsome than any of the other roosters we've had. And anytime he finds food, he alerts the hens with a very distinctive clucking. And he waits for all within hearing range to get there before he takes his first bite.

Here he is, calling the girls for a snack:



...and digging in.


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Favorites, Part 1: The awesome hoe thingy

I thought I'd write about a few current favorites around the homestead. (I adjusted the wording in that first sentence a little so you wouldn't start thinking about raindrops on roses...) So I started writing these in a single post, but as I am long-winded and have no editor, I decided it was best to split them up into separate posts.

Up first, a mystery hoe.

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I bought a few sturdy-looking garden tools at a yard sale last spring. I was also able to take a some old garden tools from my grandmother's toolshed after she passed away. Unfortunately, last year's garden was a total wash. We had flooding. We had a baby. We bought a dairy cow. I made a valiant attempt to plant some stuff, but if you don't keep up with the weeds, you're not gonna harvest much (...which is why we signed up for a CSA last year too.)

Anyway, so I didn't really get to try out any of the new (old) tools last year.

This year, I'm taking the garden more seriously, and giving it a very high priority. I'm honing my techniques. I'm staying on top of it. So far, at least.

And I've fallen in love with one tool in particular. It probably has an official name, but I don't know what it is. The closest thing I can find is called a ridging hoe, or sometimes a pointed hoe. But I don't know who makes or sells ones like this. If you do, let me know in the comments.

It's like a standard long-handled hoe, but instead of a rectangular head with a flat edge, the head is arrow-shaped:


Why do I like it so much? Well, keep in mind as you read these points that we have some pretty gnarly clay soil. Working clay soil is almost always a workout, so anything that makes a job a tiny bit easier is welcome, and any tool that can deal with it well is a blessing.

If you're going after a big weed with this thing, that pointed tip will penetrate the soil a lot more effectively than a flat edge. When my aim is good, I can even pop a pretty good sized clump of grass out with this. Chop hard right behind it and the head digs in an cuts the roots underneath. Pull on the handle and out pops the unwanted green stuff. When my aim is bad and I miss, the hoe goes to one side or the other, and the edge slices that side of whatever I was aiming for. Not a bad consolation prize.

If you turn the hoe to one side just a bit, the edge can cut through the top layer of dirt like an ordinary hoe (though the angle is better than my other hoes). If your arms get a little tired from repetitive motion, you switch hands, flip the hoe around and use the other edge (which gives you about twice as much sharp edge to a normal hoe). If you need to make a furrow to drop some seeds in, just drag that point through the soil. (In fact, I suspect this was the initial purpose of this design.) If you need to push or pull a little soil to cover a seed or shore up a seedling, that pointed tip gives you a lot of precision in tight places. And so far the tool seems tough as nails.

A good garden tool is a wonderful thing. Thanks Grandma!

--

[ UPDATE: Apparently it's called a "Warren hoe" (or sometimes a "planting hoe"). Mine appears to be made by Union Tools, but I'm not positive. What remains of the writing on the handle is pretty hard to decipher. ]

Green grass, blue skies, brown eggs, and purple flowers...

I'm excited that I can finally, I think, get some planting done this weekend. We've got sunny skies and nice temperatures forecast for the weekend, and a couple days without rain leading in, to dry things up a little. It's always hard to go to work on a beautiful spring day, but somehow working from home makes it even harder. I can see the garden, the sunshine, the things that need to get done. They're right under my nose! Not that I'm complaining. I wouldn't trade it. But at this point it has surpassed the kids running around making noise as the #1 distraction.

I'm also excited that we're getting about 4 dozen eggs a week already. Probably more, in fact, but the chickens do love their secret nesting spots. I think (though I may be wrong) that this is higher egg production for this time of year than we usually get.

I'm excited that the redbuds are starting to bloom. My favorite tree blooming always coincides with my favorite time of the year.

I'm excited to hear news this morning about possible high speed rail service in Ohio. But rail service of any kind in Central Ohio would be a nice option. Columbus is the second largest US city (after Phoenix AZ) with no passenger rail service of any kind. The nearest non-industrial rail lines are about 70 miles away. Personally, I'd be willing to lose the "high speed" prefix. It sounds like we'd need to lay all new rails and build & pay for expensive trains. I'm probably naive, but I'd love to see them try to use existing rails and technologies. I'll hold most of my excitement until I see anything actually happen, but talking about it is a good start.

And finally (and I never thought I'd say this), I'm excited about mowing. It won't last, but for now, it sure is nice to be able to cut down the waist high dried up weed stalks filling our pastures. I'm scattering weed seeds everywhere in the process, but what can you do? At least the grass has a head start. It's amazing how much greener the fields look after cutting (or at least knocking down) the dead stuff. I've got some plans to make some minor fencing adjustments to make rotational grazing easier, so hopefully I can find a couple hours to do that this weekend as well. (Have I mentioned how much I love cattle panels? It makes fencing changes so much easier.)

Yet another positive post. Must be spring...

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Approaching a crossroads?

I've documented my tractor struggles here on numerous occasions. I just don't get along that well with internal combustion engines, or many other mechanical devices: Bolts in awkward places that are rusty and hard to get off; Parts that are expensive and/or have to be mail-ordered; Parts that are clearly inferior to the original because the original is no longer made; Tasks that require specialized tools; lubricants that need refreshing... I could go on.

Some people like working on tractors, old cars, lawnmowers, and other such things, and come away with a great deal of satisfaction from getting and keeping them running. Me, I generally come away filthy, scuffed, scratched, sore, frustrated, and feeling like I did more harm than good. And that's when I succeed!

But a tractor can be a tremendously useful tool in the right hands. It can move and lift heavy things. It can help plow and disk soil. It can help with making hay or clearing brush. There must be hundreds of things a tractor can do around a farm. But most of those things require tractor implements. The tractor itself is just the power source.

I have two problems in this regard: 1) an unreliable power source (the tractor), and 2) a shortage of useful implements. The implements aren't cheap, and switching from one to another is not a five minute task. It always seems like it should be, but it never is. They are invariably heavy, and often almost as cantankerous as the tractor itself.

So I have a tool that should be useful but isn't. In someone else's hands, it almost certainly would be. In mine, it's a chew toy for livestock. After yet another bout of troubleshooting, getting help, spending money, and not being at all confident of results, I'm starting to reconsider. Maybe there's another solution.

Short of getting into draft animals (which I admit would be appealing, but for a variety of reasons, just isn't plausible at this point), I'm kicking around a different approach.

In a perfect world, what would I use the tractor for?

1. Mowing. We have a good bit of land, and other than the pond, it's pretty much all grass and/or brush. As much as I'm not a fan of the Oversized Lawn, I don't forsee a day in the near future when there won't be a good bit of grass. A certain portion of it is not suitable for making hay, which leads to...

2. Making hay. We need hay. Unfortunately, there's not really much equipment out there for making hay on our scale. It'd cost many thousands to get equipment for cutting, raking, and baling. And maybe I'm a wuss, but I do believe it's too much to tackle with a scythe and a rake.

3. "Sod-busting." As in, plowing, disking, and general seedbed prep. You see, I'd love to grow grains on a small to medium scale. Maybe sunflowers or root crops too. I'm not talking about acres and acres, but bigger than "garden scale."

...and surprisingly, that's about it. There are plenty of other things a tractor might be useful for, but none important enough to include in this equation. Our truck can generally serve the "pulling and moving heavy things" category.

The hay-making I could hire out. We need alfalfa hay for our picky cow, and the old-timers around here are telling me alfalfa would be a real pain for me to try to grow anyway. My soil would need ammending, the bugs would eat half of it, and it wouldn't be that great anyway. Better to plant a mixed pasture, have a neighbor cut it, bale it, and pay me for it, and then use that money to buy good alfalfa hay from somebody who's already growing it successfully.

The downsides of this approach are that we'd need to widen our pasture gates so that either of my local hay cutting neighbors could get their equipment in, and it would mean we'd be depending on somebody else. But as we wouldn't be using the hay, it would keep me from worrying about the quality, whether it was cut at the best time, etc. And we already depend on outside sources of hay anyway, but without the income from our own pastures.

That leaves the mowing of non-hay areas, and prep work for growing crops on a slightly larger scale.

If I sold the tractor, I could get a halfway decent mowing machine of some sort, and have plenty of money left over.

And with the extra, I could buy a nice walk-behind tractor, like a Grillo, or more likely, and old Gravely. It could be used for many of the same things as it's four-wheeled uncle, just on a much smaller scale. It could till more ground than a tiller. It could clear more brush than a mower. And it would be smaller and so hopefully, easier and cheaper to maintain.

Or maybe I just spend it all on really good two-wheel tractor, and make sure it's a capable mower and tiller.

Is this a good idea, or would I just be trading one set of problems for another. The devil you know or the devil you don't?

I don't know the answer. I'm just thinking...

--

The (Cherry) Pits

I've talked here before about my difficulty in choosing the "best" winter heating fuel. We have a "biomass" stove, designed to burn wood pellets, corn, or other small, "pellety" fuels. Not that there have been many other options available up until now, but our appliance can hypothetically burn oats, sunflower seeds, grass pellets, and various other things.

I struggled with the ethical dilemma of burning corn for the same reasons I think ethanol is a flawed option. Namely, that you're pitting food and fuel against each other, which can only drive up prices. Not good in a world of seven billion people who all need to eat.

But it does burn hot and clean, and I can get it unbagged, in bulk, from very local sources - so I could "heat local." I could even theoretically grow enough myself to get me through a winter, which I keep hoping to try. Storage is a pain, because it attracts rodents and other critters, but once we got the chickens, at least we had a crack clean-up crew.

The other option, wood pellets, has its own pluses and minuses. Currently most of the wood pellets made come from sawdust - a byproduct of other industries. The downside is the sawdust has to be dried, formed into pellets, bagged, and shipped. It's usually been shipped a long way, but I can pick up the pellets within about 5 miles of my house.

From a practical standpoint, they both have their good and bad points as well. The ash from the corn is much easier to clean up. It's kind of sandy, and cools quickly, as opposed to the fine, fluffy ash from the pellets that stays hot for an hour after the fire is out. But the corn tends to form "clinkers" when burned - hard, black chunks of pure carbon that adhere to the stirring mechanism and have to be busted out from time to time.

Last year we settled on a mix of corn and pellets. It was kind of the best of both worlds. The ash was easier to deal with, there were no clinkers, and we could get some of the benefit of the lower cost and higher temperature of the corn, balanced with the easier and less ethically muddy pellets.

This fall, I was surprised to find my local supplier offering a third option: cherry pits. Like pellets, they are essentially a waste product. Like pellets, they have to be bagged and shipped. But unlike pellets, they are not manufactured. They also come from a much closer source: Michigan.

So I decided to give them a shot this year. I'm hedging my bets, with a fuel supply of two-thirds pellets to one-third cherry pits.

The cherry pits are less dense than the pellets, so a 40 lb bag is bulkier. This resulted in comically (and precariously) tall stack of bags in the back of the pickup truck. Their lower density means you can't pack as many into the stove's hopper, at least by weight.


I'm told they burn hotter and faster than pellets. They were priced the same. They have a lovely sound rustling together that reminds me of... something. A rain stick. And the exhaust (I can't really call it smoke) smells like cherry wood burning instead of roasted grain.

I'll have to report back after we've had some really cold weather to give a full report, but I have to say I like the concept. It's got a bit of a permaculture feel to it. I have high hopes.

I know I should end with some twist on a bowl of cherries and the pits. But I won't.

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