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