We have had a great weekend so far folks! We got some of our building money, and we have a load of rebar coming tomorrow. We have decided to go down to a 34ft diameter dome. When we staked it (40 ft dome) out we noticed that we mis-staked it and the 34ft is not that much smaller than what we had staked out..
I got my apple trees ordered, I ordered ultra mac's for Silver and double delicious for me. I love the golden and red delicious. The company I ordered from a local nursery for this state Stark Bros nursery, they offered free shipping on orders over $85. So as I ordered 2 of each the order with the free shipping was just over $100. So I saved at least $20.
We had gotten a “pay later” flower catalog, that had Dahlias (edible root) and a few herb and bee friendly plants, We have been approved on their credit plan and I have a order of quite a few flowers coming that will be planted in a few various places one being our outdoor kitchen that will make it nice there and I will have lots of butterflies, bees, and humming birds stopping by.
We have also prepaid on the track hoe for next weekend as we had rain yesterday evening and this morning it would have been a waste of time and money getting it for this weekend. My son is crossing his fingers and behaving overly well in the hopes of getting to learn how to use it. Well, a 16yr old boy should have that opportunity to learn it. He's not doing all the work however. Especially since we need to dig a ditch from the power pole out to the clearing. I'm NOT having a child no matter how old digging near the power pole.
The next pay day we are going to get the chicks ordered, I wanted to do it Friday; but we didn't get a chance to. I did get the chick food and the new light for them. We will still need some pine bedding and a cover for the brooder before they get here though.
Now for the next week we have to clear area for the track hoe to run in. Yesterday my son and Silver started on it before the rain showed up. They'll go back out today after the rain lets up and it drys up a bit. Tomorrow it'll be just me and Silver working out there.
On another note, I was thinking about the weather and I believe we are already in our “Spring pattern” for here as we are getting tons of rain. Which is normal Spring weather here. Oh, my plant starts have started sprouting. Cabbages, grains, and tomatoes; also a couple of herbs! I am very happy about that.
I hope everyone is having a good weekend!
Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...
So here I am with what now seems to be a once a week update of sorts.
I started my plants yesterday I filled 2 trays so far, and I'm thinking of in a month or so starting cukes and squashes to see if they grow better from starts. I discovered that I did not use up all the sugar cane seeds I got from Listia so I put six into the tray to see if I can get them from starting in the house. I'm using a “all weather” birding journal to keep tabs on this year's plants and with what I planted yesterday I have nearly filled all the lined pages.
Silver has pointed out that I probably should wet the starting mix before I put it into the “cells” so I don't have to water under them to avoid losing my seeds. ...hindsight... I defiantly think I'll be doing that next time.
I am hoping for 100% on my plants, but who really knows right? I have it set for 12 of each of the two types of tomatoes that I want to grow. I did 6 sweet peppers 2 of each of the ones I have and 6 hot peppers 3 of two of the multitude I have of those. I have some onions planted as well as cabbage, mini Bak Choi, edible chrysanthemums, nastrums, Kale, and a variety of herbs. I am hoping this time I get the lemon grass to grow good.
We have gone and found out how much a track hoe (wow it really is a “track hoe” ) would cost from a Saturday to Monday. It would be $350, and that's considering that Sunday is given as a freebie. Just need a nice weekend and the money and we can get the digging we need done. Oh, that price includes the trailer to bring it home.
We didn't get the package of insulation that I wanted to try to make the papercrete to try out, so we'll have to make an extra trip before we can buy supplies just to try it out. As I'd rather buy in large quantities only once and have it all delivered. We did discover that we are paying about ½ price when we buy the rebar in 20ft lengths, it's just a matter of getting it home after the fact. Which again would be best to include in a delivery option.
We did find out during the last rain storm that the area the house is going does get water during storms, but we are planning to build a bit off the ground; so we should be ok there.
Well I'm up again baking bread at this early hour and I need to return to it. Have a good day everyone!
Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...
I know it's been a while since I have been on here.. over a year really. I thought it was about time I updated here as I have regular internet now. We tried out growing luffa gourds this last year and they did grow pretty good we got about 2 full sized sponges. One of the two had better seeds in it than the other. Funny thing about it was that the one with the better seeds is one I never noticed until we took the vines down once winter started. I did learn from it that it's a plant that while you need to thin some flowers the plant itself is pretty much self caring for. It is a voracious vine though, it tried to eat our electric pole.
We had tons of tomatoes this year and we have decided that the Cherokee orange purple smudge is the best for us. I have finally discovered why you need to trim the plants and cut back flowers. I have learned that if I don't understand why “they” say to do something I won't know until I figure it out myself.
I got my Tiger's eye beans to grow better than I thought, even though I didn't try to grow them. Odd how that the one I plant for “the heck of it” grew the best? Considering I can't find the seeds though I cannot eat them this year though, I have saved them all for next years planting. The “green bean” that I grew up growing.. well, it just didn't want to grow for me at all. I think we got maybe 20 beans and I planted ½ a pound of seeds. When I was a kid I could plant 10 seeds and get 10x's that.
My eggplants didn't do much of anything, as well as my bell peppers. The Rhubarb I ordered and planted grew a bit then quit on me. I hope they come back this year, we will see.
We have gotten the space for our house and our new chicken coop cleared fully. In 2 weeks we will be starting to buy the rebar to work on the house. We built a newer type of a barrel wood stove, we made it upright; and it takes up less than half the space. There is also no wasted space inside the stove, we also have the ability to cook on the top of it.
We also made an attempt at helping a friend out. A young man,who wants to be a woman who was living homeless. We invited her to live with us in exchange for being a “farm hand” to help me out with the day-to-day chores. It did -NOT- work out. I think it partly had to do with the person's age, and the desire of them to only play video games all the time. We just recently sent her to a place where she can spend tons of time playing video games with someone else 90% of the day.
So now I am hoping to keep this site up to date as my other blogs. Lets hope I do!
Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be....
Now I mentioned in my previous post about this cook stove that Silver made for us last year. Now it was very easy to make. It has metal from what Silver said was a commercial stove that was left on our property and we discovered it when we moved here. He took the metal squares from the base and took the legs off which were later used to hold pots over the fire. The metals squares though were filled with large rock then gravel. The other piece of metal is that back piece, which was also in the original base.
The next thing Silver did was put two standard cinder blocks on the rock/gravel filled base and then filled them with again rocks first then gravel till full. Now I want to say you SHOULD let them sit a day or 2 to let the stones and gravel settle. Otherwise they will get hollow spots in them. Then Silver put the flat cinder blocks on top of the standard ones, just offset enough for the leg "grate" to go across. Now that back piece of metal is held in place with a cinder block that is filled with concrete that we found on site with a rock on top. There was also a broken flat cinder in back to cover and uncover holes on that metal based on how hot you want the fire.
Now here is the only main problem, once you heat the cinder blocks and they get wet. You CANNOT remove them or they will crack and/or break. While this can be built in lass than an hour with all the materials like I said take the time to let it settle the gravel before finishing it off.
Now like I said we are going to do a cob oven and stove, and we aren't quite going to be doing the "standard" way of doing it. Now I wanted to embed this but I have yet to find the way too so here is a link to the "type" of cob oven we want to make.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lGTGUo6tyQ&feature=channel_video_titleNow in case you were wondering why I am showing you a spot of "dirt" (it's actually clay). Well this is where we are going to build the stove and oven. This is the clay from our root cellar dig out (which we are still doing). After we filled in some "wet spots" on our property where we walk we just had the kids pile it here. Silver went out and hoed it down then raked and hoed it flat on one side. Then "tamped" it down a little to make it very flat. This will be our starting stop for both the stove and oven. The plan is to have a space between to hold wood for both. Now the stove will be redone in a more "rocket stove" manner with the outside covered in cob to help keep the heat in while we cook.
This of course is the metal base from our first wood cook stove. Boy, did we have fun when we took the old one apart. Seems the local wasps had built a nest in one of the cinder blocks. It was pretty big too.
Now I'd like to point out that it's 2 pieces of metal in squares measuring a piece 2ftX24inX2in. So they aren't really all that big, but together they work well. Silver of course had to level it to make sure it was perfect.
Isn't that a pretty level it's a 6ft level that we only spent $14 on it at Harbor Freight Tools. Silver took me to their stores a few times and I was pleasantly surprised by them. I had never even heard of them until Silver told me about them. Anyway, I personally think a 6ft level is a very good tool for any homesteader whether you are "urban" or not.
Now a few things have been done here. First Silver took the broken flat cinders (yep all the old ones broke like I mentioned above) and placed 4 pieces in the 4 corners of the metal to hold it in place. Then he put in rock and then filled with gravel. It has been sitting for 3 days now, partly due to the fact that it was raining yesterday.
We also had (at first) the kids put those rocks along the front, for decoration mostly. Silver went back through and straightened it a bit, and added more. He's good at eyeballing pieces that fit together.
Then he went and put gravel all along the flat surface that we are going to build on. Now the plan is to spread some concrete dust over it and let it dry in place hardening it to prevent "wash out". the hope is also that the gravel pieces will make little channels for water to go through. Silver thinks it will be pretty as well.
That is what we have so far, we need to do the concrete on it before we do anything else and for the cook stove we need to get some more cinder blocks. Silver wants to use earthbags for the base of the oven, we'll see what we can manage. Well at least the "platform" isn't the only thing we need to concrete. We also need to do the stairs into our home as it's just wood holding gravel. We've had to re-make those steps twice now so we REALLY need to get the concrete in it.
I'll update this as we go along.
Be Well, Be Safe and Blessed Be...
RSS Feed