Life is hard enough; don't make it harder

Anyone that has attempted to homestead in any degree or capacity knows it is hard work.  For reasons based in principle and necessity, we're often left to accomplish certain tasks with great difficulty that might otherwise be very easy with the right help or equipment.

We live in an age of convenience.  Just look at cars.  You have voice activated controls for radio because somehow it is too difficult to take our hands out of our lap to change the dial.  Likewise, modern houses are designed around convenience.  From dishwashers to clothes dryers, modern life revolves around freeing us from tasks we'd otherwise only be able to accomplish with greater time or effort, or both.

At our homestead, we've escewed some of these conveniences.  We wash dishes by hand, we line dry all of our clothes.  We haul our water in and waste water out.  Some of this is by choice, some by necessity, and others for a combination of these reasons.  

That being said, I don't purposely set out to do things the hard way (although my wife often likes to claim that I do).  One must still use brains before braun, if for no other reason than it permits you to simply get more work done in the day.

Here are a few examples of things (often times little) that can make a big difference.

Location: much of my examples will have to do with location.  Our clothesline was purposely located close to the back door of our cabin, which is also where the laundry room is located.

We located our cattle shed close enough to the house to be accessible, but far enough to not be a source of smell.  It's also within range of the rear spotlight on the house, so you can just turn on the back light when going out to do chores at night.

I also placed the hay stack and straw pike right next to the shed so I can simply fork things over the fence.

Our firewood piles are UPHILL from the house.  This is key.  There is no comparison between rolling a wheelbarrow full of wood down a snowy hill than up a hill.

We designed both entrances to our house with ramps rather than steps.  Wow does that make life easier whine bringing firewood to the house.  Just roll te wheelbarrow up the ramp and next to the door.  I could even roll the wheelbarrow inside the house if I really wanted.

Our compost pile is right in the center if the garden, and it's simply a pile on one of the garden beds.  No need to haul te material to some far corner of the garden, and then haul it all back when done.  Once we're done with a compost pile, the soil under the pile is rich and ready for growing.

Winter is here

What a difference a few weeks makes.  In my last post I discussed our efforts to store potatoes and carrots in our riot cellar.

Well, it wasn't a week later and we got a heavy rain and suddenly I found the cellar flooded.  Most of our buckets were full of water and half of them had floated and tipped over, dumping potatoes in the water.  The barrel with carrots is completely swamped.  So, in the dark one Saturday night, I lifted the whole works back out if the cistern and spread them out in a shed to dry.  A couple days later we took them to an old house my parents own that is kept just above freezing.   Fortunately I think I caught them in time that they'll store properly over the winter.

It was shortly after that that we got our first snowfall and severe cold snap, which prevented me from getting the balance of the carrots covered with mulch in the garden.  I also was unable to get my onions out of the garden and the garlic has not sprouted.

Because of the early onset of very cold weather, I decided I needed to cut more firewood.  I've heard reports that the almanacs are calling for a long, cold winter.  Judging from the past few weeks, this might not be far off.

We have about 8-9 acres if woods.  Most of it is mixed hardwoods of oak, cherry, maple, and elm.  Because we're dealing with Dutch elm disease, most of our elm trees ultimately die at some point, so they are an obvious candidate for firewood.  

We also scour the woods for blow downs  and other limbs that have broken or fallen.  It's also a great way to clean up the forest floor.

On the edges of the woods, where the land was once farmed or grazed, we have box elder trees, which are a nuisance in many ways.  When you cut one down, the stumps sprout hundreds of suckers and it is almost impossible to kill them.

Because I'm attempting to reclaim our tillable ground, I've been cutting back a lot of the box elders.  Surprisingly, it makes pretty decent firewood.  It splits easily and while not particularly dense or having a lot of BTUs, it is perfect for the spring and fall when you need just a little heat and don't want to burn your hardwood.

In addition to cutting our own wood, we've been bringing in slabs from the Amish sawmills.  When they cut logs--generally red oak--they square up the sides.  They then cut the waste (slabs) into chunks from 12-24 inches.  They once simply burned these on a pile.  I can buy these for $25 per wagon load.  I don't think cutting wood on my own timber is any more cost effective when you factor in time, has and oil, and wear and tear on your equipment.

Here are some recent pics.

Trying out the cellar

Our homestead was once part of a larger farm with standard house, barn, and outbuildings.  Though most of the buildings have long since been torn down, one remnant of days gone by is the old cement cistern.  It was placed up hill of the rest of the farm, and water was pumped in to it from the windmill, and then it was a gravity flow from there.

We've decided to use it for a root cellar for our vegetables.  It's about 10 feet in diameter and about 9 feet deep.  The bottom should keep an even temperature in the 50s.  We'll be adding sawdust to the cement roof for added insulation.  We'll also he adding a wooden door with hinges, and a vent pipe to curb condensation.

Inside the cellar, we will store our potatoes and carrots.  For the potatoes, we dug the potatoes and then spread them out in a shed for a couple days to dry and harden.  It's important to keep potatoes out if direct sunlight for extended periods of time.  We then lowered them in plastic 5 gallon pails, where they'll remain until use.  In the past, we've usually stored potatoes in large wooden bins.  We'll see if buckets makes it easier to keep track of bad potatoes, and it should make it easier to get then in and out for actual use.

For carrots, we're trying two methods.  I dug about half the carrots and trimmed the green tops to about an inch and a half.  We then spread them out in a half plastic barrel in between layers of moist sand.  The other half if the carrots will be left in the garden and covered with a heavy mulch of hay--hay that we had on the potatoes this summer.

We also planted a small patch of garlic.  They will sprout and get some growth this winter, and then go dormant until the spring.  They should be ready for harvest next summer.

Finally, in addition to the slab wood we've been getting from the Amish saw mills, we cut and drug up a good amount of dead trees  for firewood.  We like to drag the logs out of the woods with the tractor and then cut them up in the pasture.

Planting garlic (6 inches deep, about 1 foot apart)

husking the garlic in to individual cloves for planting

placing carrots in barrel with moist sand

potatoes stored in plastic buckets

finished carrot barrel

firewood bone yard

new hay/pasture seeding

Fall rush

It's that time if year that tends to be very hectic on a homestead.  You're busy trying to get summer projects finished, like garden produce preserved and stored away.  There's plenty of things to do to get ready for winter, such as cutting and stacking firewood.  Couple that with shorter days and it's a rush to squeeze everything in.

I'm happy to report that the pasture/hay I seeded down a month ago looks beautiful.  Hopefully it gets another month to grow and establish roots before snow and winter set in.  The main advantage as I see it to fall planting of hay is that all the annual weed seeds will germinate and sprout in the fall, and then die over winter.  I expect this will greatly reduce the number of weeds we end up with in the spring.  Plus, there is now a patch of lush green grass to draw deer to my treestand?

I continue to make whatever hay I can.  It's particularly hard to make hay this time of year because hay just doesn't dry out.  I was fortunate to have 5 days of dry, relatively warm weather to make a final patch of hay.  This was piled on the top of the hay stack and left uncovered, to further cure in the sun and wind, until just before it rained, when I put the tarp on the pile.  I believe this is one advantage to outdoor haystacks as opposed to making bales: because the hay is not packed tightly in bales and stacked in a barn, it continues to have an opportunity to breathe and cure out.  

In addition to hay, I will need some bedding for our steer through the winter.  I'll likely buy some straw or cornstalk bales, but I do want to try and begin making use of what I have.  I've considered a few options.  First, I have some old farm found that is overgrown with tall grass and small trees.  I cut some with my sickle mower and if it ever dries out, I'll stack it and use it for bedding.  An added bonus is that by getting the old hay off now, the fired will have a chance to grow back with lush green grass next spring that I can graze and/or make hay.  Second, I still have the patch of dried out sweet corn stalks.  I'm going to cut them down and lay them in the cow pen.  At a minimum I'll use them to create the base, which will encourage drainage.  Third, as we dug potatoes today, we raked back all the hay we had piled on as compost this summer.  I might use some of it as bedding as well.  Finally, I'm going to try using fall leaves for bedding.  They come nice and dry and are free for the taking.  Regardless, in the spring the whole works will go on the compost pile.

I still have a few fall garden crops, such as broccoli and cauliflower, and will be planting a patch of garlic this fall.  We even had some fresh watermelon today while we were digging potatoes.  Delicious.

We've recently started using the wood cook stove in the mornings to warm the cabin up.  It's a great opportunity to heat our water and cook some eggs for breakfast.

Here are some pictures from the last month or so.



Slab wood from Amish sawmill



The one carrot had wrapped its "arms" around its neighbor

"Frank", our Holstein steer

New hay seeding



New open front shed for storing tractor and steer this winter

Planting hay

We have 3 acres of crop ground that, until last year, had been rented by a local farmer and farmed conventionally (i.e. not organic).  I knew I wanted to get it back to organic status, so last year I rented to a different neighbor who attempted organic corn without a lot of success.  It was a dry year and the weeds took control and seeded out.  This year I had arrangements to rent to a different organic farmer to have to the acreage seeded back to hay, but due to the wet spring, he as unable to get it done and I decide to try and farm it myself.

Because the ground was corn the last few years, it grew up in to weeds this summer, so I had to use a brush hog to mow off the fields a couple of times.  It's important to keep the weeds from going to seed, or your problems will multiply exponentially.  My plan had been to plow and plant the field with a grass based pasture/hay mix in August, but my tractor, a 1940s vintage 9N Ford, broke down. It took a number of weeks to identify the problem and get the tractor running.  After replacing the spark plugs, condenser, and points, we had it running.  By then it was nearly the end of August, and I wondered if I had missed my window of opportunity, but the tractor breaking down probably turned out to be a blessing, since the recent drought would have ensure that nothing germinated anyway.  While spring is when hay is normally planted, fall is actually a good time to seed hay, particularly grass-based hay mixes, as opposed to alfalfa.  The idea is that the hay will germinate and get some growth, establishing its roots, and then go dormant over winter. 

By early September, I had the tractor running again and was ready to farm 2 if the 3 acres.  I began by using the brush mower to again now off the weeds.  I then used a 2 bottom moldboard plow to plow the field.  A moldboard plow flips the soil, in hopes if burying most of the weed seeds and keeping them from sprouting and competing with the new seeding.  For much of the last 100 years, moldboard planting was the standard method of American tillage.  It has only been in the last 20-30 years that it has given way in large part to minimal tillage methods, such as chisel plows, or no-til methods, which can only be done through use of chemicals.  I'm not an advocate of moldboard plowing as a regular practice, as I believe it disrupts the important layers in the soil and microorganisms that grow within those layers, but for purposes of preparing the seedbed for hay or pasture, where the crop will remain for a number of years, I believe it's good to get the ground prepared right the first time, and do what you can to thwart the weeds so the hay can get established.

After the field had been plowed, I used a small 3-point disk to help knock down the clumps, and begin smoothing the field.  Because the ground is so dry, I found that there was still a lot of dirt clumps that were passing through the disc, so I borrowed a neighbor's cultipacker to break up some of the clumps, and went over the field with a harrow that I had created out of an old heavy chain link gate, pulled behind the tractor with a chain.  Finally, we borrowed a neighbor's grain drill, which I pulled with the 9N to seed the hay, mixed with oats.  Now we just need some rain to make it germinate.  Hopefully, it will then have some time to grow this fall, the. Go dormant over the window, and then resume growing in the spring.

 



Moldboard plow flipping the soil

 

 

Finished plowing--now starting to disc

Ford 9N pulling 3 point disc

Soil after two passes with disc

Using cultipacker and makeshift harrow to further break up dirt clumps

Field after seeding

Field after seeding

Making hay

Looking back on my childhood on and around the farm, undoubtedly my favorite activity was making hay in the summer.  It was hard work at a fast pace to stay a step ahead of the weather.  As a dreaming homesteader, I have to say that making hay for winter feeding is one step I've long looked forward to making.  Finally this summer we took that step.

The acreage we bought had about 2-3 acres of old standing alfalfa, meaning its been a number of years since it was last planted.  Typically, alfalfa only lasts for a few years before it is plowed up and replaced with corn.  Since I don't care about getting maximum yields, and don't need corn, I'm content to farm the hay as it is, even if it is getting thinner and with more grass establishing itself in the field.  Our hay field has about 30% alfalfa, with the rest being orchard grass and a type of brome grass.  It makes nice feed for homestead animals, and is more forgiving when it comes to making hay, unlike alfalfa, which needs to be cut at the right time, raked at the right time, and baled at the right time.

I'm still limited in the equipment I have, with a baler being the most obvious missing piece to this ensemble, so I've been left with trying to make do with what I have.  I don't have a barn either, so my only real option was to make an outdoor haystack and cover it as best I can.

Hay making began with my BCS tractor and 30" sickle mower.  It does a pretty decent job, but certainly not of the quality of a modern haybine.  Unlike haybines, which have crimping rollers, the sickle mower cuts the hay off at the ground and lays it over.  Crimping rollers bend the stalks of hay at various places to encourage even and quicker drying.  This is less important when making hay of grasses, versus alfalfa.  Once I had mowed the hay, I borrowed the neighbor's side delivery rake to flip the hay over for further drying.  Because I made the hay during a stretch of 90 degree weather, this probably wasn't necessary, but having a side delivery rake flips the hay over, so the part that had been on the ground gets an opportunity to dry in the sun and air.  This also puts the hay in thicker windrows, making it easier to pick up.  The dump rake I use for gathering hay mulch in the spring doesn't flip the hay--it only gathers it, so if you're trying to make hay for feed, particularly if the hay is thick or you have less than ideal drying conditions, it's important to flip the hay over, either with a rake, or by hand with a fork.

Once the hay had been raked and dried, we made the haystack.  We began by pitting down a layer of wood pallets to get the hay off the ground.  This is important to create a moisture break with the ground.  You don't have to do this, but it will minimize the amount of spoilage on the bottom of the pile.

Once the pallets were arranged, we connected four sections of corn crib rings together to form the outside if the stack, with one section containing a doorway.  Once this was done, we used the 9N tractor and trailer to collect the loose hay, which we gathered with pitch forks, and then piled inside the ring.  The hay was packed and spread until we reached the top.  We ran out of hay before we were able to form a nice crown, which we will finish when I cut the next half of the hayfield.  Finally, we covered the stack with a tarp to protect it from the elements.  Again, you don't have to cover the stack, if you put a good crown on the top of the pile, but you do minimize the spoilage.  Now we have hay to feed our steer through the winter.

BCS tractor with 30" sickle mower

Even my 6 year old son can run the sickle mower. 

 

 

hay cut with sickle mower

raking hay with side delivery rake

 

hay all raked in to windrows

packing hay in to ring made with corn crib sections

nearly completed hay stack.

Making hay and stuff

As you can see from the increasingly irregular timing of my posts, I'm finding it more and more difficult to fund even a few minutes to sit down and describe what's going on at the homestead.  Let me try and recap.

Once again, the weather is playing tricks on us.  After a historically wet spring, we're now in the midst of the driest fall since records were being kept well over 100 years ago.  It's absolutely mind boggling.  We have not had a decent rainfall in over 2 months.  My well has gone dry, so I've been using the remaining water in the kids' swimming pool, plus all of our gray water, for watering the garden and trees.

Despite the weather, we continue to plod forward with our work.  Because of the wet spring, much of the garden was planted very late.  As a result, instead of canning in July, as we usually do, we started canning in August.  We canned pickles, and froze many quarts of green beans and this past weekend we canned sweet corn.

We're about sick of eating watermelon and cantaloupe, which have thrived despite the weather.  The raspberries and blackberries have been bearing for the past few weeks, but it remains to be seen if we can get enough to freeze, as they get gobbled up pretty quickly around here.

We still need to make salsa and store away tomatoes, and then get the garden ready for a fall crop of peas, broccoli, and cauliflower, not to mention planting a large patch of garlic this fall.  There's no rest for the weary.

 

 



Blackberries on 2nd year thornless vines



Fall gardening

One thing that I always plan to do, and almost never do, or when I do get to it, is done poorly, is fall gardening.  Spring is considered the proper time to plant cool loving plants, like broccoli, cauliflower, peas, etc..  The problem is that if you don't get these crops in early enough, they don't mature until the middle of the summer when heat is hard on these crops.

Hence, the reason for fall gardening.  By planting cool crops in mid to late summer, these crops mature and bear during the ideal cool temps of early to late fall.

My hope had been to get these crops in at some point in July, but here it is a week in to August and I'm just getting to it.  This morning I planted more kohlrabi, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and peas.  I thickly sowed them to ensure adequate germination, and will come back later to thin.

With the peas, I ran in to some troubles because I'm running out of available garden space, and because deer will eat them, I need to keep them inside the area protected by electric fence.

Another problem with peas is they have to have a trellis or fence to hold them up and, once again, I always seem to be behind the game on that.  So, I decided to use what I have.  We have a large patch of sweet corn, some of which is nearly ripe.  I planted peas along the sweet corn in two ways.  In a few rows I inter planted within the corn row itself, using every other row in case I decide to chop down the alternating rows to let in more sunlight.  In other parts, I planted along side the rows of corn that border an opening.  On one end of the patch we have a gap in the corn where we planted onions.  I planted peas along the corn on each end of the onion patch. 

The hope is that, assuming I'm not planting too late, that the corn will provide two benefits to the peas.  First, it will provide some shade to the peas through the remaining hot weeks of August, and second, the trellis support for the peas.  Stay tuned.

Peas are planted along each row that borders the onion patch.  Peas are also interplanted in some of the corn rows.

 

Life without water update

Earlier this year I posted a description of how we've learned to live without running water inside the house.  http://emmausgarden.blogspot.com/2013/05/life-without-plumbing.html  At the time I was still tinkering with how to run a washing machine without running water.  I attempted to operate it with pure gravity fed water, but that failed.  The washing machine has to have pressurized water to operate. 

Plan B.  While at Menards one day I found a shallow well jet pump with pressure tank on clearance.  I bought it and took it home, but it sat in my shed for awhile before a friend of mine came to visit and he decided we should try to make it work.  He's a priest now, but grew up on a farm in South Dakota and has lots of experience with pumps and plumbing from his days with the irrigation system on his family's farm.

To put it simply, we devised a system whereby we have a water tank in the utility room (I believe it's about 75 gallons), which we fill manually.  My understanding from talking to the local authorities is that "no plumbing" basically means no water lines running in to the house and no drain lines running out of the house.  We haul the water in and haul the water back out, so I'm going to take my chances with this system.  If I'm wrong, I'll be required to install a septic system, which I'm trying to avoid for now.

Connected to the water tank is the pressure tank and jet pump.  It plugs in to a local 110 outlet and pressurizes the water, which then runs to the washing machine.  Waste water from the washer runs in to a bucket, which has to be monitored and dumped throughout the wash cycle. 

We've found it takes about 12-15 gallons of water to run a normal load of clothes through our front loading washer.  I believe a top loader would take more, as they use more water. 

Needless to say, my wife is thrilled to now be able to do laundry on site, without having to haul laundry to town, even if it is still somewhat primitive in that we have to dump water in to the barrel and then dump the waste water out. 

The next project is to hook up some water barrels to our old well to see if we can utilize the water for household use, at least for laundry and bathing.  The well uses a pump jack, rather than a submersible well, so you have to have a separate tank or cistern to hold the water before using it.  Our water currently has a lot of sentiment in it, so I'm planning to create a system of two barrels.  Water will pump in to the one barrel (about 50 gallons) and will then be allowed to settle for a day or so.  A pipe about a foot off the bottom of that barrel will then connect to another barrel, separated by a valve, at which point I'll divert the now-settled water to the new barrel.  The water from the second barrel will probably then go through a sentiment filter I have to further remove sentiment, but my hope is that the water will then be clean enough to use for laundry, which is by far the biggest consumer of water.  I'll post the results of my experience later.

Gravity experiment failed

Washing machine with storage tank on right

Coleman jet pump and pressure tank
 

I hate weeding

Many a child has had his/her perspective on gardening forever warped by hours of forced labor pulling weeds in mom's or grandma's gardens.  I was no different, and as a kid, I hated the garden.

It wasn't until I became an adult, and realized the virtue and savings of a garden, that I came to love gardening, but I was determined to find a way that is better than how my parents and grandparents did it.

You'll see plenty of posts in my blog talking about the importance of mulch, but I can't reiterate it enough.  Use mulch!

We use two main mulching methods: black plastic and hay/straw.  It's important to understand the strengths and wit weaknesses if each.

Hay/straw helps protect the soil from the harsh sun and pounding effects of the rain.  It also keeps the soil cooler, so it does not work well for crops that like lots of heat, like melons, tomatoes, and strawberries.  You can use it for those crops, but it tends to slow the production more than having the ground left bare.  It inhibits the weeds, but doesn't always stop them entirely, so you have to go back and pull the weeds that make it through.

Black Plastic is almost a complete barrier to weeds, but they will make it up through any holes in the plastic.  We poke our plastic full of holes with a hay fork to allow rain to soak through.  Plastic heats the soil, so can help certain crops warm up quicker in the spring, such as strawberries, and is great for plants that like lots of heat, like melons and tomatoes.  We generally use plastic in such a sway that we leave it on the same bed for multiple years at a time, and simply rotate the crops within the plastic.

One thing I started this year was covering new beds for next year with hay.  We had attempted to work some new sod up this year for potatoes, but the weather absolutely did not cooperate and it did not try out enough to work.  So, I used the extra hay we had from the first cutting and put a think layer of hay over the areas that I'll work up next year.  The hope is that it will help kill the sod, begin to break things down, and provide an environment for the worms to stay near the surface and do their magic.

Here are some updated pictures of the gardens.

Butternut Squash

Cucumbers and cantaloupe

Pumpkins

Watermelons

Potatoes filling out and flowering
 



Next year's beds mulched

Second year raspberries--slowly filling out

Bed with lettuce, zucchini, green beans, carrots, and fall broccoli

Sweet Corn patch broken up with onions.  Fall peas are planted along side the corn rows on each end of onions

New strawberry bed transplanted this spring.  Note the lack of weeds and runners are periodically removed

Sweet corn and yellow squash

3rd year growth of grapes

Third year growth of semi-dwarf apple trees

Steer gets picketed on various parts of yard during day.  I tie him to utility trailer that can easily be moved.