KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013

Month: March 2014 (page 2 of 2)

walking dodger’s way: a perimeter path around our land!

yesterday jason and i did something that i have been fantasizing about for months… we finally chose, marked, and pruned a path around the perimeter of our land! even though it was raining a cold drizzle during most of the adventure, it was excellent fun. some of the reasons i have been chomping at the bit to get my new trail marked:

  • spring is about to hit and i really wanted to have the trail marked and somewhat cleared before all of the foliage came back in and obscured the best path options. jason carried the bush ax and i carried the long-handled nippers and green marking tape. we pruned small tree limbs out of the way and pushed some dead wood out of the the path as we went, and i marked trees that were directly to the left side of the trail. this was so that i can remember the path until i get more used to it and so that visitors know where they are going if they decide to strike out on their own!
  • i recently started running again and unlike my other attempts over the last decade to get motivated and stick with it, i really feel excited about it this time. i thought that getting my trail marked and thoroughly “beaten down” before the undergrowth threatens to block the way would really keep me excited about running. i can also imagine how much cooler exercising will be in the summer under the shade of my very own canopy!
  • as i discovered this weekend, the ticks have arrived (tick spring break ’14! what, what!). they have not shown up in mass yet, and i only found 2 crawling on me because i was sitting down in the leaves at the edge of our yard. but before they show up in numbers, i wanted to do all of the limb bumping and leaf shaking that i could (ticks like to wait in bushes and smaller trees for an animal to bump it… then they jump off onto the animal).
  • for the wedding, of course. we really wanted to have some developed walking trails available for the wedding guests to be able to explore the different portions of our land. we tried to make it a scenic and not-too-strenuous route so that everyone (even running emma) could enjoy it!

first we started by the house and marked the path through what we call open woods, a portion of our land that has large hardwoods and very few pines. There is very little undergrowth here and it has nice open spaces for walking and looking down towards the pond.

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walking in open woods with jason’s family in early 2014

then the path goes down to the pond, curves up the hill slightly, and takes you right by the longest side of the pond where the mimosas will be blooming and where the frogs can already be heard singing lovely songs!

pond

the pond–the site where jason officially asked me to be his life partner

the path then leads into an already existing path that is framed by pine trees and littered with pine needles (this is the small portion of our land that always reminds me of a traveling scene in the lord of the rings films). this path is actually the top of the dam.

it goes out into a small clearing and then cuts back into our largest portion of woods that borders an even larger pond. it goes in the gulley for a while, through stove cove (named for the old rusting stove sitting in the middle of it) and starts to climb up the side of our largest hill towards areas that overlook the larger pond below. during this portion of the path, you can see other landmarks that we’ve named: the hanging tree, a pine that has snapped off from it’s base but is weirdly held in its place by adjacent pines and looks like it is floating vertically in air 12 feet off the ground; finger tree–also called hand tree–that has 5 trunks coming out of one stump with one trunk emerging from the stump closer to the ground (and thus looking like a thumb and 4 fingers), and bo bo tree, a large, fallen tree that we originally thought was struck by lightning and so we named it after bolt.

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hanging tree–what a crazy site!

bo bo tree is at the highest point in our land, and after going past this tree, the path curves back a bit in the direction of the house and tours the plateau, an interesting flat and wooded area that would be great for building a little cabin one day.

from there, the path goes downhill into a gully (that in another direction eventually connects to stove cove) and starts to climb uphill through running cedar, a lovely portion of forest that is blanketed with running cedar vines year-round. the path follows a natural deer trail through this area and eventually spits out into a very shady pine forest.

as you travel through this pine forest, the trees begin to get larger and less are standing. i’ve given this section of our land the name drunken pines, named after a pablo neruda poem and since so many of the pine trees have fallen or are leaning (i would say maybe half of the trees!). this part of the trail emerges at the edge of  a large area on our land that was a tobacco field about 7 years ago, and has since hosted small pines and blackberry vines.

the trail leads around this old field and right beside the old tobacco dryer and drying racks that still sit and wait for a better purpose…

tobacco dryer

our old tobacco dryer… maybe a future tiny winery?

by this time those on the trial have sight of the house and yard and the path cuts down bridey’s run for a little while and right past the spot where we are about to plant a lot of fruit trees and where we are thinking of getting married. from there, the path leads right up to the house!

and… a little history about bridey’s run: it is an old road (wide path) that goes from our paved road down our property until the beginning of our pond’s dam, where it dead ends. this straight run down has been titled bridey’s run because bridey, our 15-year-old dog likes to run down this path. the only (comical) problem with this is that once she gets going, her old legs can’t stop and she “bunny hops” all the way down to the pond! so hilarious.

so this is what we did this weekend, and it was great fun! we’ve named this perimeter trail around our land dodger’s way because the first time we ever walked the entire property our cat dodger came with us, meowing all the way. he even came with us again this weekend, despite the fact it was raining! that’s a sign for sure; that dodger’s way is going to be a “good luck” path for many years to come.

.:.

What is Permaculture?

I’ve written a lot about permaculture on this blog. I’ve talked about different permaculture plants and techniques in the garden, but I haven’t really talked about permaculture as a concept, or even defined the word it is for those who may not be familiar with it. So here goes.

Permaculture is an ethical and ecological design science, with the goal of creating sustainable systems that provide for humanity.

Permaculture, as a concept, was created by Bill Mollison. The word itself is a combination of “Permanent” and “Culture,” and that is its main goal. To create permanent systems and cultures.

There are no rules, per se, in permaculture, but there are 3 ethics and a prime directive.

The prime directive is that: “The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. Make it now” ~ Bill Mollison.

The three ethics of permaculture are:

1. Care of the earth.

Pretty simple really. Don’t do anything that damages or destroys the earth. This might include spraying herbicides, clear cutting old growth forests, or planting millions of acres of monoculture row crops that require clear cutting forests and spraying hundreds of thousands of gallons of pesticides a year.

2. Care of people.

Also fairly simple. Don’t do anything that will hurt, or make another person ill. Using the pesticides example, it might not be a the best idea to spray extremely toxic chemicals in the lawn where your kids play, or your neighbor’s kids play, or anyone plays. How about damming up a river upstream and completely stopping the flow downstream? First, that would completely shatter the ecology of the river and the surrounding areas, thus violating the first ethic. Second, by damming the river, any people downstream who depended on it as a source of water for irrigation or drinking would be out of luck, a violation of the second ethic.

3. Return of Surplus to the first 2 ethics.

This one is a bit harder. The third ethic has been a source of controversy in the permaculture movement. I won’t get into that here, suffice to say that the third ethic calls for any surpluses that may arise from a system, be they yields of fruit, waste, by-products like organic matter such as leaves from deciduous trees, or knowledge from experimentation and experience, be somehow put back into the system in a way that strengthens it.

An example: fruit from an apple tree can be harvested and sold at a farmers market, the profit from the sale ensures the mortgage for the farm is payed, which ensures that the farmer can continue to produce healthy apples. There may be some apples that rot, or are damaged by bugs. These can be returned to the system by either feeding them to pigs or chickens, breaking the pest cycle, and fertilizing the tree with manure. As winter comes, the tree drops its leaves, and instead of raking them up and taking them to the landfill, the farmer lets them decompose at the base of the tree, providing mulch, and completing the nutrient cycle in preparation for another year of apple growing.

None of these actions violate any of the ethics. In fact, by utilizing the surplus of the system in an efficient and intelligent way, the permaculturalist avoids creating an expensive problem and instead makes his system stronger and more resilient.

Permaculture is more than the prime directive and ethics, though. There are many principles that help lay out the path towards sustainable design, and many techniques as well. These principles can be applied to anything, not just growing food, but also building houses, creating communities, and even planning weddings.

A great metaphor I’ve heard about permaculture compares permaculture design to a wardrobe. In your wardrobe you have different types of shirts, pants, socks, belts etc. and everyday when you get up, you have to decide which things you’ll wear based on your actions for the day, and especially based on the weather and nature. In permaculture, things like digging swales, establishing food forests, chop and drop mulching, and passive solar heating are all part of the wardrobe.

It falls to the individual to determine what will work and what won’t, based on observation and drawing from the wide base of global knowledge, traditions, and forgotten techniques. What tie matches the shirt. Not wearing a wool coat when it’s 90 degrees outside. Growing a deciduous vine like grapes along a southern wall to provide shade in the summer and reduce cooling bills, a delicious yield of fruit in the fall, and allowing the winter sun through to heat the home during the coldest part of the year. That’s permaculture.

 

Resources:

Permaculture Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison

Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway

Geofflawton.com ~ Some awesome, and inspiring videos by one of permaculture’s best teachers.

 

pineapple plant: a delicious gift!

my birthday was last week and one of my co-workers, who i admire very much, gave me a pineapple plant! amazing!

this might make me sound ridiculous, but i really had no idea that another pineapple (Ananas comosus) could grow from the top of your old pineapple! my parents and i did do interesting growing experiments when i was a kid; with avocado, celery, or potatoes, but never with tropical fruits. we live in zone 7 (while the pineapple plant likes zone 9) and so i suppose my parents never thought that they would be able to keep a living pineapple plant alive. so, i was excited to learn more about this super cool (and sharp) bromeliad!

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my new pineapple plant!

first of all, the pineapple plant needs warm weather and should never be allowed to be exposed to temperatures less than 20 degrees. this means that to grow it in our area, we will need to keep it inside or in a greenhouse. my plan is to keep it inside near a very sunny window until true spring and summer hit and then give it some time outside in the bright sun. it also likes soil that is somewhat moist so i expect i’ll need to water it at least once a week while inside and every few days while it’s outside basking in the sun.

it is great to have this plant as an addition to our homestead; pineapple is rich in manganese and vitamin c, and the juice can help breakdown and digest protein. my mother always says that some pineapple for dessert is a great thing for aiding in digestion! also, the fruit and the root can be eaten or applied to the skin to act as an anti-inflammatory.

a last fun fact about pineapple: a pineapple will never become any riper that when it is picked! unlike other fruits, a pineapple does not ripen once removed from its plant. instead of “ripening,” the pineapple gets soft once an enzyme inside of it gets activated. this enzyme works to break down the structural material inside the plant. cool, huh?

cool… just like the smoothie that my yummy pineapple will end up in sometime in the future!

.:.

Giving Dogs Bones: The How and Why

With the recent scares, recalls, and revelations of questionable ingredients in commercial dog food, it’s no wonder that many pet owners are looking for a better way to feed their canine companions. Homemade dog food is one, noble option that many, including us, have turned to.

Because dogs have co-evolved with humans for so long they can eat, digest, and derive nutrition from many of the foods that humans eat (check out NOVA’s Dogs Decoded Documentary, here on youtube, for more on the bond between dogs and us). That is, many of the foods humans used to eat. Hunter/gathers didn’t frequent McDonald’s, and your dog shouldn’t either.

One thing that is a great supplement to your dog’s diet are bones. Dogs love to chew on and eat bones. They have been doing it for thousands of years, both in the form of leftovers from humans, and from wild game they took down themselves.

Bones supply calcium, an essential mineral and nutrient for healthy canine growth, development, and well being. Without a healthy dose of bones, you must supply this calcium in other ways, either in the form of supplements or in egg shells. But the most natural way for dogs to obtain calcium is by eating bones.

Chewing on bones also helps to keep a dog’s teeth and gums healthy. If a dog doesn’t have bones to gnaw on, they may turn to other sources, such as your furniture, shoes, or tool handles. A nice bone session also lets a dog focus his energy, and is good mental stimulation. These kind of activities, like a long walk, can do wonders to improve poor behavior and help calm stressed or nervous dogs.

Our number one resource for all things pet health has been Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, and in it Dr. Pitcairn lays out a few guidelines to consider when giving your dog bones. First, avoid chicken bones as they easily splinter and can hurt your pet. Try to focus on bones larger than your dogs head, so that they won’t be able to swallow it whole.

Don’t feed cooked bones, only raw ones. Cooked bones also tend to splinter and could be dangerous. Also, avoid feeding frozen bones because your dog may chip or break a tooth. Let them thaw out a bit first.

Dr. Pitcairn also recommends giving your dog a “bone fast” where he eats nothing but bones and has access to plenty of clean water all day. This simulates the natural conditions of predators, and can help clean out your dog’s system and keep him healthy and strong.

Here are some of the things we have learned while feeding bones to our young dog Bolt:

Always watch them carefully; Bolt can chew through a bone in almost no time, especially the epiphyses, or ends of the bone. These smaller pieces can become choking hazards.

Watch out for food aggression issues when feeding bones, especially with dogs that have shown this behavior before. When Bolt was little, he had some food aggression issues–we solved them–but a nice meaty bone can be sooo delicious that your dog may forget himself a bit, and get defensive over it. I try to make sure that he sits, and drops the bone before I take it, and I like to “trade” a piece of meat or other snack for the bone.

I wouldn’t give a dog a bone when other dogs are around. Again, such a treat could lead to a fight and some hurt feelings. If you have two dogs, separate them and give them each a bone to chew on.

As long as you follow a few simple guidelines, feeding your dogs bones is a great way to improve their nutrition, health, and behavior. Introduce bones slowly to their diet, and always watch keep an eye on them.

If you can’t or don’t want to feed raw bones to your dog, try making bone broth. Basically a super charged stock, where bones are cooked down in water (with a touch of vinegar or lemon juice) for hours until they turn to mush. When you can smush the bones between your fingers, it’s done. Add a scoop to the top of your homemade dog food for an extra jolt of calcium and other micronutrients that are present in the bones. Your dog will love it.

low budget, homemade save-the-dates for our (ochre) wedding

last week we designed and completed our save the dates for our wedding. we really wanted the design to be simple and we decided that making/printing them ourselves would be cheaper and more fun!

i bought a multi-colored pack of card stock, which included 50 sheets of each color: yellow, cream, green, blue, and gray, and i also bought small, cream-colored envelopes designed to fit 1/4 of a regular sheet of paper.

i designed the save-the-dates so that 4 of them would fit on each page, landscape style. this allowed them to fit perfectly in the envelopes and also meant that we only had to print 15 pages (since we only needed about 60 or so save-the-dates). we chose the blue card stock for our save-the-dates and will likely use the other 4 colors in some form when we design the official invitations in the next few months.

the overall design for the save-the-dates is not very complicated. the card is one-sided and on the left we chose a simple clip art image of a black and white farm (house, field, and silo). on the right half of the page we included the special event, our names, and the general location (our city).

even though the design and printing did not take very long, there were other details that did take some time: when i bought the card stock and envelopes i also bought a do-it-yourself stamp kit and decided that the old-fashioned look of the stamp would be a nice addition to the cards!

it took forever to properly place the letters in the stamp for each of the 3 designs i wanted to use, but in the end i loved how the cards and envelopes looked!

cards

the back of our save-the-date cards, stamped and ready to be mailed!

i used the stamp for:

  • our return address on the front of the envelope
  • the words kuska wiñasun homestead on the back of the save-the-dates cards
  • a design i put over the flap of the envelop once it was sealed, that included our initials (with a little house symbol in between) and our wedding date (see the picture above)!

i also added a little bit of color to the black-and-white image of the farm, using a silver sharpie for some shine!

and that was it, really!

i’ve also made a spreadsheet which includes all households and has columns for the number of people invited for each household, if their save-the-date has been mailed, if their official invitation has been mailed, how many people are confirmed as coming, etc. although i won’t be looking at most of the columns in this spreadsheet until months from now, making it was very helpful in making sure that i didn’t skip anyone or address two envelopes to the same household! it makes me feel very on top of the whole thing–which is key for weddings, as i understand it!

almost 6 months until the wedding, now! wow!

.:.

 

farm food friday: savory venison stew recipe

we have another snow day on our hands and what better way to spend the day than slurping up a delicious and nutritious venison stew?! this recipe is jason’s newest specialty, who fearlessly makes soups without written recipes, and due to his copious adding of spices, they always turn out to be excellent!

jason has made this stew twice so far, and included different vegetables in the pot based on what we had in the house at the time. i’ve asked him what exactly he added to these soups, and his response has been: “you know what i do, you know, earthy spices.”

in order to make this stew more manageable for those of you at home, i’ve put his description of just how he does it into my own words:

in an ideal situation, which means having all of the ingredients around that we want to use, this is what goes in our savory venison stew…

the ingredients:

  • venison butt/rump roast (or any roast of beef that you would like to use, preferably with the bone or with any stew meat)
  • one large onion
  • 4 large carrots
  • 3 large shafts of celery
  • 5 or 6 medium-sized potatoes
  • salt & pepper
  • 5-10 garlic cloves and/or garlic powder, oregano, basil, paprika, 1-2 bay leaves
  • red wine
  • olive oil
  • beef broth, chicken broth, venison bone broth (if you’ve made some in advance), or just plain water if you don’t have any broths in the house.

keep in mind that if you are missing any of these ingredients, you need not abandon ship yet! any other earthy spices that you have (such as rosemary, etc.) can be added/substituted and other vegetables can be included. for example, the second time jason made the stew, we did not have potatoes or onions. he instead added more celery and included our own sweet potatoes, which turned out to make a different and interesting soup!

some things to have prepared first:

  • have your crock pot out and ready to go! if you do not have a crock pot, i recommend getting one, as it can be left on all day while you are at work without any risks associated. but, if you do not have one currently, you can certainly use a large pot and cook the recipe on your electric/gas stove on low/medium.
  • set your meat out of the fridge for about an hour so it has time to warm up.
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savory venison stew, 4 hours into cooking. yum!

and the directions:

  1. cut onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes into medium-sized pieces.
  2. rub a seasoning of salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, oregano, basil, and olive oil over the meat. pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.
  3. place cut vegetables (as well as whole garlic cloves, if you are using some) into a deep, large, casserole dish.
  4. douse the vegetables with olive oil and generous amounts of all of the above-mentioned spices. add 1/4 cup of red wine over the spread.
  5. place the meat on top of the vegetables and put in the oven for 10 minutes or until the meat is braised and brown and the vegetables have a roasted look.
  6. once dish is removed from oven, transfer the meat and veggies to the crock pot and add 1/4 cup of red wine to the casserole dish and stir while scraping the bottom. this ensures that you get all of the little, roasted pieces of food and spices! add this mixture to the crock pot.
  7. add 1 or 2 bay leaves. decide now if you want more spices added, based on your personal tastes and add them!
  8. fill up your pot/crock pot with your choice of broth!
  9. cook the stew in your crock pot on low for about 8 hours (longer wouldn’t hurt) or on your stove on medium or low until the meat can be easily shredded but before your vegetables are reduced to a pulp!
  10. serve and enjoy!

.:.

Random Farm Stuff: Spreading Seeds, Mulch, and a Garlic Update

Kuska Wiñasun Homestead is ready for spring. It’s been nice enjoying the winter weather and the change of the seasons, but I personally can’t wait to see those first dandelions and clover blossoms. The maples are budding out, but it’s still cold. We got more snow, ice, and sleet today, and it should continue into the morning.

This constant cycle of freezing and thawing should help the seed mix I broadcast this weekend by improving soil contact and moisture. I sowed a nice mix of perennial herbs, annual grains, and a few random vegetables thrown in for fun. The base of the mix was dutch white clover, a low lying leguminous perennial that fixes nitrogen and feeds the bees and chickens. To that I added a good bit of chicory, some plantain, alfalfa, vetch, and lambsquarter. I also mixed in some oats and wheat, as well as a packet of daikon radish, lettuce, spinach, chamomile, broccoli, cilantro, and old packet of yellow squash.

We’ll see what takes and what doesn’t, but there should be more than enough vegetation in the old chicken pens where I over-seeded the mix. If there are any blank spaces, we can follow up with some amaranth, chia, buckwheat, and some  more lambsquarter after the soil warms up a bit.

seeds homestead

Broccoli and cabbage seedlings starting to germinate.

There’s also been some vegetable seed starting. We have a flat of De Cicco broccoli and White Acre cabbage that has begun to germinate. After they gain some true leaves, and some strength, we’ll transplant them out in the garden for a nice early spring crop, and hopefully get the chance to make some lacto-fermented sauerkraut.

There haven’t been anymore hawk attacks on the chickens but they seem a bit more skittish than usual. We bought a bale of straw today from the feed mill, and they scratched it around all afternoon while they picked out seeds, weeds, and bugs. They’re great mulch spreaders, and a nice layer of manured straw should protect the soil from spring rains, lock up some of the extra nitrogen from the chicken poop, and slowly decompose into wonderful topsoil.

I pruned our dwarf apple trees a few weeks ago and am trying to get some of the cuttings to take root. Apples are normally propagated by grafting, but they can also be grown from cuttings under good conditions. I’m doing a mini experiment, and I have different sizes of cuttings from different trees, some cut below buds, some above buds, and some just tips of growth.

apple cuttings willow

Apple cuttings in water with pieces of willow.

The majority of the cuttings are simply jammed into either our raised garden beds, or into the sides of our garden swales. The rest are on our kitchen table inside the house in a Mason jar filled with water and pieces of willow. The willow contains natural rooting hormones that encourage the growth of root.

The garlic has really perked up the last few weeks. We were worried for a while there that it had gotten too cold too soon for our garlic crop, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ll try to get a picture up soon.

almost completed chicken tractor in the snow

Almost completed chicken tractor in the snow. Those 2 sticks to the right are the dwarf apple trees after a serious pruning.

I’m also almost finished with a new chicken tractor for the bantys. Just a few finishing touches; roost bars, nest boxes, some more chicken wire, and Roosty and his girls will be ready to move in! The timing couldn’t be better, because one of the little hens has gone broody, and wants to sit on eggs and hatch out some chicks! We’ll see, and we’ll keep you updated!

creating new space for great things: cutting down a big oak tree

as jason mentioned in his post yesterday, this weekend we enlisted my father’s help to clear a dying oak tree in our yard. i’m hoping that we’ll decide to use most of the new-found space for garden beds and a small orchard! we both really love the idea of cutting the stumps (there were 4 large “fingers” that made up this tree) to make them into seats, a table, and perhaps even a foot rest! we’re also thinking about somehow incorporating the space into our wedding… perhaps where the ceremony itself takes place… but we’re not sure yet.

starting to work in this area around the tree, we weren’t totally sure what the final product would be. we had originally thought to start cleaning up around the barn by clearing and pruning, thereby opening up that spot for wedding antics–but jason and i couldn’t agree on how to approach it.

sometimes we have similar visions of what we’d like to do with our land/yard and other times we can’t agree at all–this was one of those times. that’s just the nature of love and partnership! we did both agree, however, that we wanted to clear the barn area but we couldn’t come to a consensus about what to do with the cut trees and the empty space we would end up with afterwards…

and so we dropped that idea and dove head first into working on the area around the oak!

tree

before: the many trunks of the oak tree (back and center, covered in snow)

there were a lot of pines and scrubby trees to cut and tons of green briar to rip out. as jason mentioned, poison oak abounds in that area, and although we killed a lot of it, we’ll certainly have to weed eat (or pig eat) in the near future.

we also found broken glass, tires, decaying lumber, metal (grates, tool boxes, cans, screws), plastic, and even a truck’s large tool rack. most items were trash but some were treasure!

after clearing all of the junk and the smaller growths under the large oak “fingers,” the chainsawing began. jason and i do not own our own chainsaw yet, and it is a big help to have a trusted family member willing to help! my dad has also helped out by cutting oak logs for this year’s mushroom crop. even though chainsaws are super useful, they still make me somewhat nervous (even though i’ve been around them my whole life) so i’m glad to have my dad help. he cut all four trunks of the tree about 4 feet off the ground, notching each of the trunks first so they would fall the way we wanted… except one of them. as soon as this one trunk (that he didn’t notch) started to go down, we could tell that the not-notching approach was not the best idea. the tree did fall the way we had hoped, but it bent upon itself and stayed partly attached to the stump. just looking at the result made me nervous!

tree

the aftermath of felling the oak trunk without the pre-cut notch. note the size of the tree and how much pressure is sure to be on the bent pieces.

jason and i stayed far away while my dad slowly tried out a couple options for bringing the tree the rest of the way down. first he cut off some larger limbs that appeared to be holding up the trunk. that made the tree shift but did not bring it down. then he tried to cut at the taught pieces of wood that were still attached at the location of the cut (keep in mind that all of the weight of the tree was bowing down these pieces, and it was a surprise that they had not already snapped when the tree fell). needless to say, during this time i yelled at my dad not to make the cuts into the taught, flexed, “wooden slingshots,” but he only grinned at me and went for it anyway. uggghhh… fathers! they can be such punks!

despite my anxiety, his cuts to this part of the tree did not result in injury, and he stopped cutting in that area once the tree shifted a little bit more. then he cut the rest of the limbs off that might have been holding the trunk in the air and we discovered that the tree was actually balancing on a single pine pole coming out of the ground. annoyingly, my dad decided that kicking the pine pole would knock the heavy trunk off and make the tree finally hit the ground. he did this, and in my mind, barely got his leg out of the way before the heavy trunk hit the dirt.

i was horrified by what i perceived to be an exercise in idiotic risk-taking, but he simply laughed at me and said “i knew what the tree was going to do… and my leg was out from under it well before it hit the ground. it didn’t even come near me!” yeah, right!

anyway, we all escaped without injury (which is not surprising for jason and i since we were well away from the action the entire time).

this video shows my father notching one of the trunks and then sawing through it… a much safer tree-cutting practice than the other!

once the portions of the tree were laying on the ground, my dad cut them into manageable rounds and jason and i stacked them “tipi style” so that they would dry better… and now we have two great mounds of firewood that we will need to process, split, and store in the near future.

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after: jason and bolt posing with the oak stumps n the background. what a changed view of our land!

so, not only did we clear the area of a dying tree and make way for future gardening and livestock practices, we also gained a lot of wood for next winter’s woodstove heating adventure! and although i hate to admit it, sometimes it is ridiculously fun to watch my dad act like a stupid teenager!

.:.

Pig Tractors?

We cleared some land this weekend, opening up a large area under an old, probably coppiced oak that was dying. We cleared out the underbrush of pines, black cherry, small oaks and briars, and cleaned up some old trash that had accumulated over the years. Were not sure what we’d like to do with this spot, maybe some combination of extending the garden, terracing the bottom slope, and adding some nice fruit trees and shrubs to stabilize the upper slope while provided a nice treat to enjoy while savoring the view from the oak stump seats.

Whatever we decide to do, the area needs some work first. There is a patch of poison oak nearby, and I don’t know if opening up the area will discourage or encourage its growth. Also, by removing the big oak and letting in all that sun, I’m sure we will see some interesting things popping up this spring/summer. Most likely, if left to it’s devices, this area would success to blackberry, pine, and Bradford Pear seedlings like the big field across Bridey’s Run. By planting productive species early, we should be able to stay 1 step ahead of this pioneer stage, and not have to deal with a tangled up thorny mess.

This brings us back to pigs. Pot bellied pigs to be exact. These little rooters could be a huge asset to the farm by rooting out undesirable species, clearing brush, and adding copious amounts of fertile manure to the land. I can envision sitting a Joel Salatinstyle pig tractor, similar to a chicken tractor, right over our patches of poison oak and ivy and letting them go to town. Then, after a week or so, we can plant fast growing shrubs and trees, or lay down mulch and transplant tomatoes into the freshly prepared soil.

So that’s what I’m thinking right now. About getting a few pot bellied pigs to raise as breeding stock, and eventually bacon, in a movable pasture/woods based forage system. A pig tractor. Details to come on its design, size, and construction.

 

hawks and moles and mice, oh my!

we’ve had some amazing animal adventures over the past few days. this is to be expected at the beginning of spring (or at least what appeared to be spring until it dropped from 50 degrees to 20 degrees over the course of 5 hours today and then started to snow and sleet!). this means the school system where i work is closed tomorrow… and i get to spend my birthday at home! fantastic!

the other day bolt unearthed a mole while digging in the yard (now we know what he’s been digging for!) and played with it a little bit but wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it since it wasn’t fighting back or running–just laying there and squeaking. bolt’s problem was solved when he encountered an escaped chicken (6 of them sneaked out of the small crack in the gate during feeding time a few minutes before bolt found the mole). the chicken ran from jason and i and flew towards bolt, who forgot all about the mole and tried to pluck the bird out of thin air. luckily, the chicken never got close enough, seeing the big black monster that bolt has become, and turned back toward us. when bolt returned to the mole it was gone, having waited for the opportune time to make his escape!

after this adventure we also noticed that dodger had caught a few prizes: field mice. we saw him catch 2 from afar, and later jason confirmed that dodger had eaten the head off of at least one of them. a little bit of a waste, dodger… we wish you would eat the whole thing!

also… about a week ago, jason saw a small, white-speckled, brown hawk fly in twice to smack up against the bird net above our chicken yard. after seeing this he sent me a text message that said: bird net: 2, hawk: 0.

unfortunately, this same hawk got smart and found a small hole in our bird netting a few days ago. the holes were torn in the netting a few weeks ago when we got 8 inches of snow. the wet, thick snow on the netting weighed it down too much and ripped out some of the zip ties that we had used to attach strips of netting together. we had noticed the holes but didn’t think too much of it, considering that up to that point we hadn’t detected any animal attacks at all.

anyway, this crafty hawk (which we are pretty sure is a cooper’s hawk) spent a few days looking at the netting and plotting his entry (or so we can assume). the first signs we found of his success came on friday.

i usually open up the chicken house and let them out into their yard every morning around 6am. jason found a dead bantam in the corner of the chicken yard around 7:30am. she was ripped open with many of her feathers missing and half of her breast was eaten. it was clearly a hawk attack.

hawk

a cooper’s hawk, photo courtesy Tobeyotter

the circumstances are still a bit of a mystery considering that the hawk was sitting outside the bird netting when jason came outside and flew away. did he kill and eat the bantam the night before and come back for more the next day? did he hear jason coming outside and somehow escape the netting in time (but stay around to actually see jason appear?). also, why was he able to catch bantams but not our standard hens who are much slower? after thinking on it, we’ve realized that the hawk probably didn’t even try to get the larger hens, since a cooper’s hawk is about the size of a crow. but, we just aren’t sure!

so, long story short: we lost a bantam from the hawk attack. then… late in the day on saturday once jason and i went inside after being outside all day, the hawk came back and went for another bantam! he got inside the netting again and pulled the feathers from another bird but did not wound her. jason and i chased him away and we have since patched all the holes in the net. once we move our chicken yard later this week, we’ll re-patch it again just to be sure.

overall… very frustrating. but also, admittedly, very exciting. and we suppose that this is the way it is: we’re learning firsthand that raising animals and plants comes with some failures and some successes. some living and some dying. you witness birth; you witness death, and the cycle goes on…

.:.

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