Jun 2009 Personal Preps
Jun 2009 Personal Preps
Things you have accomplished this month in direct relation to personal preparations.
“Conspiracy Theories Are Wisps of Smoke From Fires That Cannot Be Seen” - The Watchman (2024)
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acet7
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
I sorted through the some old mre’s from 1990 and took out what was bad and salvaged the rest. The food was all bad but the utensil pack still had useful items i.e. matches, spoon, salt, pepper, wet wipes and toilet paper. The coffee was bad it looked like it had white mold on it but the coco and fruit drink mixes were all still good. Also the freeze dried fruit was still edible I just added water and let it soak for a bit.
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dejure
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
Eighty acres of peas, just south of the house, came ripe. With permission of the farmer, we've been wandering out and filling five gallon buckets for dehydrating and freezing. Meanwhile, an ample supply has been landing on our dinner table. For those not familiar with such, fresh peas cannot be compared to frozen, canned or anything else found in most grocery stores. They might better be called candy (I like mine straight or with a smidgen of Ranch dressing).
Though surrounded by thousands of acres of potatoes, corn, onions, mint, apples, cherries, buckwheat, wheat and so forth, we have our humble gardens in.
As we speak, propane cannons are working overtime to keep the birds away from the cherries that surround us. We'll grovel to a few farmer friends and associates for picking rights (I have to redesign and build a staircase for one, as well as tend his cedar roof and decaying deck).
The chicken palace is done and we have fourteen critters floating around there. Most are young, but we're in the big time now- we've gotten six eggs.
It's my first year back on the farm after being away for over a decade. I'd forgotten the benefits of dealing with hard work and hot days. Even less than ripe strawberries from our meager patch taste far better than what passes for strawberries down town (fell into the patch the other day and had to eat my way out).
Giving serious consideration to raising a couple goats and a steer. We've the space and ample food, until butchering time.
Though surrounded by thousands of acres of potatoes, corn, onions, mint, apples, cherries, buckwheat, wheat and so forth, we have our humble gardens in.
As we speak, propane cannons are working overtime to keep the birds away from the cherries that surround us. We'll grovel to a few farmer friends and associates for picking rights (I have to redesign and build a staircase for one, as well as tend his cedar roof and decaying deck).
The chicken palace is done and we have fourteen critters floating around there. Most are young, but we're in the big time now- we've gotten six eggs.
It's my first year back on the farm after being away for over a decade. I'd forgotten the benefits of dealing with hard work and hot days. Even less than ripe strawberries from our meager patch taste far better than what passes for strawberries down town (fell into the patch the other day and had to eat my way out).
Giving serious consideration to raising a couple goats and a steer. We've the space and ample food, until butchering time.
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
This, admittedly, is something we have ignored in past years......but wife decided that it was a shame to let all those nice, green Egyptian (Walking)(perennial) onions go to waste. Yesterday she and granddaughter-in-law cut down all the nice green stems and are drying them for future flavorings. It will probably yield about a gallon of dried green onions.
Another subject, I purchased and am getting ready to install a solar-powered motion sensor security light system. I am not pleased that it is Chinese-made but it is constructed very well. It has a 6-volt lead acid rechargeable battery with about a square-foot solar panel. If it works well I'm going to replace all our electricity-powered security lights. If you are interested in energy-related savings, I read yesterday where they have developed and are marketing 4-foot LED tubes to replace the standard flourescent lights. They're expensive now but price will come down. The standard rule-of-thumb is that a flourescent light uses about a third of the electricity that an incandescent bulb uses and that an LED light uses about a tenth of what a flourescent uses.
Another subject, I purchased and am getting ready to install a solar-powered motion sensor security light system. I am not pleased that it is Chinese-made but it is constructed very well. It has a 6-volt lead acid rechargeable battery with about a square-foot solar panel. If it works well I'm going to replace all our electricity-powered security lights. If you are interested in energy-related savings, I read yesterday where they have developed and are marketing 4-foot LED tubes to replace the standard flourescent lights. They're expensive now but price will come down. The standard rule-of-thumb is that a flourescent light uses about a third of the electricity that an incandescent bulb uses and that an LED light uses about a tenth of what a flourescent uses.
“Conspiracy Theories Are Wisps of Smoke From Fires That Cannot Be Seen” - The Watchman (2024)
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
Update On Solar-Powered Motion Sensor Security Light: My grandson finished the ladder work for me today and the light is charging. It takes 3 days to accumulate a full charge. Forgot to mention, the light has an array with 80 LEDs. Tuesday evening I will flip the switch and it will become operational. Its supposed to be able to come on and off up to 125 times a night, staying on for 10 to 30 seconds each intrusion. Will take a photo of it and post here.
“Conspiracy Theories Are Wisps of Smoke From Fires That Cannot Be Seen” - The Watchman (2024)
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bee_pipes
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
5/31
Well summer is certainly on the way. We have come out of the rains and were enjoying some clear, mild days. The leaves have filled in, providing ample shade, and now the Tennessee weather is getting down to business. After a few days in the 80’s – sort of a “get acquainted” period – we have jumped into 90 degree weather. Today we reached 92 and the weather was oppressive. By the time it is all done – October or so, we will be acclimated and a 90 degree day will be tolerable for work. Rough weather in the summer is when we hit triple digits and the nighttime low doesn’t get below 80 degrees.
The ticks are out, but they have been very mild so far. A typical tick season is when we see ten a day or more in the house. We will find these critters moving – or nestled in for a meal – on dogs, people or furnishings. It is a matter of a few weeks – generally less than a month - then they are an occasional sight. Chiggers have not made themselves an obvious problem yet – a major blessing. They, like ticks, seem to have a season of a few weeks where they are a real problem, then dissipate to a minor inconvenience. The hot weather and bugs all serve a purpose – if Tennessee was too nice and welcoming we would be overrun with people, like Southern California.
We ran a sizeable pile of brush through the chipper today. While we are not producing tremendous volumes of mulch, we are gaining the upper hand on brush at the edge of the woods. Generally the edge of the woods is an impenetrable curtain of green; this year we can see well into the woods in a number of places around the house. This is denying predators with the cover they need to move in close to the poultry and make their ambush. This does change the conditions at the edge of the woods and within. There could be penalties for introducing these changes – dense underbrush within the woods, prevented in the past from the brush at the edge of the woods screening out the light – just a guess. When I lived in Southern Maryland opening up a wooded area by removing brush or cutting down trees would allow additional light in and spur the growth of poison ivy. That would be an undesirable consequence.
6/1
Moved guineas from the brooder to the portable pen outside. This is a small chicken tractor and is roughly triple the space of the brooder. Enough room for two feeders and two waterers. The small roofed structures are just wooden holders for the feeder troughs to keep the feed out of the weather.
6/5
This morning we lost two keets. I knew guineas were sensitive to cold and damp when they are small, but was surprised the find any in distress. I figured more likely to have losses from trampling and piling up. Last night’s temperatures plunged down to 53, a wonderful break from the warm muggy weather we have been having. Each keet was found separately. After the revival of the newborn I figured some time under a heat lamp in the brooder would bring it back around. Apparently they get a little dainty between growing feathers and adulthood. The adults have weathered some pretty nasty storms and made it through the winter roosting in trees. These little fellows were down and still alive – moving and eyes open. They just expired under the heat lamp.
We got on a roll today. I started working on the floor joists for the loft in the shed and had the first ten boards in place by noon. After lunch we went back at it and got the entire loft done (34 boards). Now we need spacers in between the joists to hold them up, but they are stable enough to throw two sheets of plywood on them for a working platform and haul lumber and a saw up to this working area. Should be able to put the spacers in and slide the plywood deck across as we make progress. We can also start working on the rafters.
6/6
I should know better than to trust TV weather. The lows for today and yesterday were predicted for the 50’s – unusually cool, but I’ll take it. Yesterday I never got around to checking the thermometer, but this morning I noticed the front porch was 46º. No wonder those poor keets had such a rough time of it yesterday. Last night, at my bride’s insistence, we put down straw and dropped a tarp over the entire pen to protect them from the chill. Good thing. The rabbits do better with cool weather than hot weather. As temperatures during the day reached the 80’s and 90’s, I noticed the new litters crawled out from under the litter and fur the mothers had made the nest with and were lying out on top. Normally you would not see the litters this soon. The kits still have their eyes closed and not enough fur to mention, but are quite capable of movement and have enough sense to deal with heat using the meager resources available to them. These chilly nights are freebees. Windows open all night catch the chill; closing the windows as the day warms up keeps the cool air inside and may just be enough to make it through the heat of the day. With a little luck we won’t need to turn on the air conditioner – a small victory against the power company.
This morning we found a scorpion on the kitchen floor. I had seen one on the wood pile last night when I was covering it back up for the night. There was a time where I considered these exotic and never saw one before moving to California. They get mighty big in the Mojave Dessert. When we started seeing them around here – a year or two ago, I was surprised to find that there are species native to the Eastern US that range from Canada to Florida. Seventeen years growing up in Virginia and I never saw one.
Today is my natal birthday. My dear sainted bride took me out to dinner at a restaurant in Jackson, the large city an hour and a half west of us. It is a large enough town to have all the chain stores and chain restaurants. We went to Outback, using some gift cards we were given for Christmas and had a fine meal. After dinner we stopped by Lowe’s for a few small items and headed home. One of the items was a set of knee pads for working on the shed. They were fairly inexpensive - $10 – and not the best pair the store carried, but the difference they make in work is worth much more than the price. I have seen people using them – most notably carpet installers. I have had occasion to use them on odd jobs for Tony and another neighbor and was much impressed by the relief they provide. It’s just one of those things you never think of until you are in the middle of a job that requires working on your knees on a hard surface. Without my smart wife I would have doubtless gone through life thinking what a fine idea it would be to own a pair of knee pads while working jobs like the one described.
6/9
Sold a dozen guinea keets to a fellow working at the CoOp for $20. Quite the trauma for the birds. We needed to move the pen anyway so we took out all the birds, moved the coop and returned the birds we wanted to keep. Catching little keets is difficult under the best of conditions. We used a minnow net somebody gave us and that did make the process a little easier, but we still had a few escapees. Fortunately for us the birds are drawn back to the coop and the cries of their siblings. Nothing is more difficult to catch than a small bird that can weave its way though plants and shrubs. If it was a bug and you were trying to step on it, that would be easy enough, but trying to catch the frightened critter without causing it any harm is quite another matter.
Seem to have a problem with something grazing on the apple trees. Deer are my guess. I had heard somewhere that they don’t care for the smell of deodorant soap, so I tried shaving a bar of Irish Spring soap and put the shavings in cheese cloth and hanging it around the trees. We’ll see if we can grow and keep leaves on the trees now.
6/10
Chicks arrived today. We received 10 dark Cornish and 5 silver laced Wyandotte. The hatchery threw in one extra of each variety to account for attrition in shipping but they all arrived healthy and active.
6/12
A good amount of rain in the last two days. Yesterday was early morning showers of almost an inch. Late in the evening we received more rain and early in the AM today we received another good shower adding up to an additional ¾ inch. Of course, the grass is growing like crazy and weeds in the garden are thriving. We put a dent in the weeds this morning, Karen working on tomatoes, peppers and beans while I worked on the peanuts. The recent mulching is paying dividends. We laid down sheets of old newspaper over weeds and then buried it in mulch. I think those weeds have gotten the message and are well on the way to becoming topsoil.
The last few days we have been cutting brush and running it through the chipper. It does take a lot of brush to make a pile of mulch, but the woods have never looked better in a summer.
6/15
We broke up the turkey hen today. She has been broody for more than 4 weeks, with enough safety margin to ensure fertile eggs should have hatched by now. She smelled really bad. Sitting on eggs for more than a month would no doubt cause personal hygiene to suffer. We blocked access to her nest and forced her outside to stretch, eat and drink. It never ceases to amaze me that these creatures can go into a trance and require little in the way of food and water for such a long period of time. I have noticed that a bird freshly off of a nest and coming out of a brood trance will evacuate their bowels. The size of this evacuation would indicate that the volume has been accumulating for some time. It would seem that most of the activities normally associated with a healthy, active bird shut down and the focus of all activity becomes maintaining life through respiration and maintaining body heat for egg incubation. We still have two chickens occupying the same nest box, brooding duck eggs I placed in the box. The duck seems to have settled down to incubating her eggs in another nest also. She continued to lay before she went solid broody (she was sitting in fits and starts before) and has accumulated a surprising number of eggs. The nest is shaped like a cone – an egg filled volcano. I don’t know that she can hatch all these eggs, but I am reluctant to interfere and will watch as the situation takes its own course.
The turkey hen, no doubt in a foul mood from being pulled off of her nest, seems to have decided the rooster is a likely candidate for her wrath. The rooster, no great shakes as roosters go, does not seem to have the sense to realize he is completely outclassed by the turkey hen. Where as any creature with a lick of sense would put distance between itself and such an aggressor, the rooster seems to want the fight even though he comes out on the bottom every time. The fighting showed no signs of winding down, so I picked up the turkey hen and returned her to her cage where she could have access to food and water. That is when I realized the foul odor was coming from the turkey hen and not from the nesting location. I washed my hands and arms, but could still smell the stench the remainder of the day. The rooster, considering himself the victor in the altercation, paced up and down the length of the turkey pen to aggravate the turkey hen. Rooster does not realize his days are growing short and his replacement is in the brooder.
Today we strung wire on the posts over the grape vines and along the top of the garden fence. The wire over the grapes will become the trellis and we used a heavier gauge of wire. The fence for the garden used a smaller gauge. The chore was fairly simple and required no exertion, but in the matter of a single hour we were so drenched in sweat that neither Karen nor I could see through our glasses. The temperature was only 80 degrees or so, but the humidity was through the roof. In that kind of weather just breathing will break a sweat. After stringing wire and pounding staples we called it quits.
6/16
Turkey hen and rooster got into it again today. I don’t know what the problem is, but something about that rooster just pisses her off.
This morning I put J-clips on the fence and wire we strung yesterday. We noticed last year that climbing plants pull down the fencing and a wire strung between posts and clipped to the fence would support the plants. Last year it was gourds, which placed a considerable amount of weight on the fence.
During lunch we made a run to the feed store and stocked up on feed. We had seven 50 lb bags – not a major ordeal to unload and store. The weather was again humid and I was drenched with sweat when the chore was finished.
6/19
Today I set about weeding the carrots. It is an ongoing project of the last week or so. If you have never had the pleasure of planting carrots, they come from very tiny seeds. Accuracy and discretion are not an option when planting carrots. Since they are primarily a root crop, you can’s start them in a bedding tray and transplant them. Life with carrots would be much simpler if they could be planted as slips. Well, the miniscule seed turns into a miniscule sprout. They took some time to germinate too. We wanted a deep bed for the plants so the roots would have ample room, but the soil here is not the best. Our method was to till the entire bed, move the dirt to expose trenches, then till the trenches and replace the fill dirt mounded up on either side. The mounds are the deepest loose soil, so the carrot seed was planted on the top of the mounds. When sprouts finally did appear, some time and many other activities later, I remember thinking to myself “It is impossible to tell a carrot from a weed at this point, I will have to let them get a little bigger so I do not remove carrots by accident when weeding.” That was a number of weeks ago. Since then I have gotten distracted with mulching, beans, peanuts and other chores. When I next looked at the carrot bed, it was noteworthy in that it was the tallest patch of weeds in the garden. The weeds must have been 12-18 inches tall. With a keen eye and much concentration, you could see a few carrots poking out of the weeds. You’d think that a fellow that does not enjoy weeding would go to more trouble to avoid weeds. Apparently not. I set about weeding these plants over a week ago and found it to be quite the job. Carrots grow tops that must be described more as a frond, rather than a stem with leaves. All credit must be given to the plant – when surrounded by other plants, growing briskly and competing for sunlight, the lowly carrot is up to the challenge. The fronds were growing along with the surrounding vegetation and hat reached the canopy. This made weeding a tricky proposition. Reaching down and pulling a hand full of vegetation would result in carrots being pulled also.
My weed patch was a jungle on a microcosmic scale. With the 12-18 inches of height, there was quite a bit of diversity in that small forest. On the top there were flying insects, patrolling for the meager blossoms available or hunting the unwary pollinator. Below the upper canopy was all manner of nits and gnats. On the forest floor were salamanders or newts, bull earthworms, and the ever present risk of encountering a snake. I have reached an uneasy agreement with snakes – I make all the noise I can and they do their best to get out of my way. This arrangement has worked well for me and the snakes have likewise prospered. I did not encounter any snakes, so I have to assume that our agreement is still in force. I did, however, come across some reptile eggs. I immediately thought of snakes, but there were a number of salamanders or newts running around. I debated collecting the eggs and feeding them to the chickens, and then thought better of it. Best not to teach them tasty food can be found inside of round white objects. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t make the connection with their eggs, but they did not need any encouragement. The reptile eggs were white, but the shells were soft and leathery. This is a fact I have gotten from nature shows on TV, but encountering them in the world is so much more gratifying than seeing it on a TV screen. We tilled rabbit manure into the patch when we made preparations for planting. The growth of weeds attest to the fact that the soil is quite welcoming. But on the animal side of things, the worms seem to be thriving. We have some of the largest worms in that patch that I have ever seen. Fast too! The first glimpse I got of a worm, as I was removing weeds, surprised me and made me think I had found a snake. It darted out of sight, under other growth. I have seen worms all my life and as a child was known to play with them, but the word “dart” is not one I have ever associated with earthworms.
The weeds themselves had some tricks of their own. I don’t know why, but it seems that plants being cultivated are much easier to kill than the plants being removed. While pulling weeds, you have to wonder about that. Why aren’t the more tenacious and invasive plants prized for their greens, roots or seeds? It would seem that if we ate weeds, gardening would be a much simpler project. But no, it seems we want to encourage only the most fragile and easily destroyed plants. The carrots would to well to take a few lessons from the surrounding weeds. It has already mastered the use of a large root underground. This is a trick that the dandelion, thistle and other plants have learned. They all have a large root that permits them to store enough energy to grow the upper plant a number of times. Your basic turf grass is likewise well endowed with roots that can grow the blade again and again, making them near immune to the effects of hungry cattle. One particular plant – I have no idea of the name or heritage, produces a woody stem populated with leaves. The stem is supple, like a vine, and the plant manages to intertwine itself through the entire mass of weeds. I noticed that the stem breaks off easily at arbitrary points, ensuring the plant will survive with the loss of an extremity. I don’t know it for a fact, but I’d wager that the part broken off would not take much encouragement to root in another location. Following the vine down to the soil, it emerges from its roots with no less than four stems/vines – each heading in a direction different from that of its brothers. In order to remove the majority of the plant one must follow the stem down to the ground and grasp it at this junction where the vines emerge from the soil. They seemed to be successful and hardy plants, making up the bulk of the population in the weed patch. Since the dirt had been tilled in the last month or so, the soil was fairly loose and the weeds were easily worried loose from the soil, pulling the bulk of the root out. No doubt some are missed and will need to be removed later. Also some new weed seed in the soil has now been granted favorable conditions in which to grow, or seeds will be carried in by the wind or birds. We will be back to the carrot patch again someday soon. You can’t get angry at the weeds, they are fighting for their very survival with every trick they can muster. I’m sure the knowledge that they will be getting composted in the potato bed would not satisfy them any more than me receiving the news that my body would keep a village of cannibals from being hungry.
Today our first duckling hatched. A chicken hatched it. It seems to have crawled out of the nest box and was huddled against the wall in some straw, near another broody hen. I picked it up and placed it back under the hen that hatched it. Don’t know how the adult chickens would view this newcomer, but it could get hurt badly if they decide it is some sort of food.
The tobacco slips are getting big enough to put outside. My book says they are ready to go when leaves reach two inches across. Karen suggested I plant it across the creek. We are not using the land for anything at the moment and it would be close to the creek for watering. For the most part, the soil over there is rocky, but it lies at the bottom of a wooded hill and gets frequent washes from the rains. The soil filling the gaps between the rocks is quite rich and grows trees and grass readily. That side of the creek is late to get sun in the morning but is the last part of the hollow to lose sun in the evening. Tobacco can handle hot sunny weather, so long as it receives ample water when first getting established. The test plants we grew last year did extremely well with little water after the first week or two. The rabbit cages were cleaned and emptied yesterday and the manure was sitting in a lidded plastic tub, so the plan was to set the manure aside and till it into the bed for the tobacco. Today’s temperatures are in the high 90’s and humidity is really up there – about 89% according to the weather man. Preparing the bed was a matter of working for 15-30 minutes, returning to the house to cool off and drink tea, then returning for another period of work. I went on like that through the afternoon until I had the bed tilled – about three widths of the tiller and enough passes to get 8 inches into the ground. Man, there was enough stone in the soil to build a wall. The bed is actually kind of low compared to the surrounding soil after removing all the rocks. At the end of the tilling I was pretty much done in for the day and left the manure and tools there for the night.
6/20
Today we are going to Tony’s place to help with laying tile so I ate breakfast and got right on feeding and watering animals and finished tobacco bed. The plastic tub had about 50 lbs of manure in it and had been sitting out in the sun with a lid on it. When I opened the tub the smell just about knocked me on my heels. For a minute I thought I was going to add the contents of my stomach to the fertilizer. Rabbit manure doesn’t have a strong aroma, like cow or horse manure. Usually the smell coming from the rabbit hootch is caused by the urine. Cooking out under the sun had caused the mild smell of the manure to become really strong. The bed was empty of soil, I had removed it after the last pass on the tiller the night before. The rabbit manure was shoveled into the trench and covered with the fill dirt removed last night. Funny thing about rocks – no matter how many you remove from rock soil, every time you touch the dirt it seems like a dozen more are there. After burying the manure I ran the tiller through a few more passes to mix the dirt and manure. That was all we had time for and my book recommends planting tobacco in the evening or on a cloudy day.
We spent the rest of the morning at Tony’s putting down tile. Karen and Kay hit a yard sale and picked up lunch for us. It was another 90+ degree day, but the location Tony has for the house is in the woods over a creek and always quite cool and comfortable. We had one fan blowing into the bathroom and that was enough to be comfortable. We got the bathroom done by noon or so and took a break for lunch. The house had a wonderful deck and again, the shade and creek kept the place cool enough to be quite comfortable. All the while it was unbelievably hot out in the sun. I have never laid tile before so the project was an education. This is all old routine to Tony but his knees are not what they used to be. While I am no spring chicken, I can get up off the floor a lot easier than he can. So, he supplied all the materials and know-how and I got to learn how to lay tile. I could do the physical part for him and he can watch what I’m doing and catch any problems before I manage to get the tiles running in diagonals across the floor. Tony and Kay have been great friends. Tony is a real jack of all trades and has provided me with a lot of help in the past – we have done well trading experiences and work back and forth.
When we got home we started making arrangements to get the duckling in from the chicken house. The hen is sitting on six duck eggs, so the siblings aught to be following soon. Here we hit a problem. The second pen is full of meat birds and they won’t be ready to slaughter until next Tuesday, at the earliest. The portable pen has ten guineas and a chicken that are also about 6 weeks old. The brooder has 17 chicks in it that are not quite two weeks old, and we have nowhere to put the ducklings. I don’t trust the older guineas with the new chicks or the meat birds, so we have set up a tub on the table to hold the ducklings. Turkeys will also be in at the end of next week. Raising ducklings in a brooder with chickens or turkeys is not a good idea. We have been giving the chicks, guineas and turkeys medicated starter, which is not good for ducklings. The ducklings are also quite messy and could trash a brooder in short order. Fortunately the ducklings can be moved outside earlier than chickens or turkeys. We’re going to have to keep the ducklings in the tub for another week until we can clear out the meat birds and move the guineas and new chickens into the second pen. Then the ducklings can be moved to the small portable pen. The turkeys will have to be brooded for at least two or three weeks. They grow pretty fast and we may be able to move them into the second pen. That should hold us until the broody duck begins to hatch her pile of eggs. We’ll be eating guinea and duck this year!
This evening (after a dandy nap) I went back to planting the tobacco. A day in the sun mixed with dirt had done nothing to cut the smell of the manure. The dogs were with me while I was working and I had to keep chasing them out of the bed – they were mighty interested in the smell and kept trying to eat the manure in the dirt. My book recommends planting tobacco two feet apart in rows three feet apart. I got eleven slips planted and cages over the top to keep the guineas from digging the plants up. So far they seem to have no interest in the bed, just the activity. We couldn’t start working until 6 PM, the time the sun finally went behind the trees and the bank was in the shade. The plants went in well and it wasn’t too much trouble to build berms around them to hold water. The storms of the spring had washed a lot of gravel into the creek, so some time spent with a garden rake hollowed out a deep pool large enough for a bucket. It took about four trips or so to get enough water to set the plants well in their new bed.
After the work was done it was time to guzzle sweet tea and cool off. I only found four ticks on me today, so that’s not too bad. It doesn’t take long to get soaked with sweat in this sort of weather. If I were to put on fresh clothes every day it wouldn’t take long to run through every stitch I own. The best compromise I have come up with is to wear the sweaty duds until work is done for the day. The work duds get hung over the tub to dry overnight and after a shower I get into clean clothes. In the morning the work duds are dry and can be used again. I try to get at least three or four days out of a set of work clothes. The clean clothes I change into only get worn for a few hours a day right after a shower. When the work duds are too grungy to wear any more (usually after cleaning the rabbit shed) they get thrown in the wash and the clean clothes become work duds. That’s pretty much life during a Tennessee summer.
Regards,
Pat
Well summer is certainly on the way. We have come out of the rains and were enjoying some clear, mild days. The leaves have filled in, providing ample shade, and now the Tennessee weather is getting down to business. After a few days in the 80’s – sort of a “get acquainted” period – we have jumped into 90 degree weather. Today we reached 92 and the weather was oppressive. By the time it is all done – October or so, we will be acclimated and a 90 degree day will be tolerable for work. Rough weather in the summer is when we hit triple digits and the nighttime low doesn’t get below 80 degrees.
The ticks are out, but they have been very mild so far. A typical tick season is when we see ten a day or more in the house. We will find these critters moving – or nestled in for a meal – on dogs, people or furnishings. It is a matter of a few weeks – generally less than a month - then they are an occasional sight. Chiggers have not made themselves an obvious problem yet – a major blessing. They, like ticks, seem to have a season of a few weeks where they are a real problem, then dissipate to a minor inconvenience. The hot weather and bugs all serve a purpose – if Tennessee was too nice and welcoming we would be overrun with people, like Southern California.
We ran a sizeable pile of brush through the chipper today. While we are not producing tremendous volumes of mulch, we are gaining the upper hand on brush at the edge of the woods. Generally the edge of the woods is an impenetrable curtain of green; this year we can see well into the woods in a number of places around the house. This is denying predators with the cover they need to move in close to the poultry and make their ambush. This does change the conditions at the edge of the woods and within. There could be penalties for introducing these changes – dense underbrush within the woods, prevented in the past from the brush at the edge of the woods screening out the light – just a guess. When I lived in Southern Maryland opening up a wooded area by removing brush or cutting down trees would allow additional light in and spur the growth of poison ivy. That would be an undesirable consequence.
6/1
Moved guineas from the brooder to the portable pen outside. This is a small chicken tractor and is roughly triple the space of the brooder. Enough room for two feeders and two waterers. The small roofed structures are just wooden holders for the feeder troughs to keep the feed out of the weather.
6/5
This morning we lost two keets. I knew guineas were sensitive to cold and damp when they are small, but was surprised the find any in distress. I figured more likely to have losses from trampling and piling up. Last night’s temperatures plunged down to 53, a wonderful break from the warm muggy weather we have been having. Each keet was found separately. After the revival of the newborn I figured some time under a heat lamp in the brooder would bring it back around. Apparently they get a little dainty between growing feathers and adulthood. The adults have weathered some pretty nasty storms and made it through the winter roosting in trees. These little fellows were down and still alive – moving and eyes open. They just expired under the heat lamp.
We got on a roll today. I started working on the floor joists for the loft in the shed and had the first ten boards in place by noon. After lunch we went back at it and got the entire loft done (34 boards). Now we need spacers in between the joists to hold them up, but they are stable enough to throw two sheets of plywood on them for a working platform and haul lumber and a saw up to this working area. Should be able to put the spacers in and slide the plywood deck across as we make progress. We can also start working on the rafters.
6/6
I should know better than to trust TV weather. The lows for today and yesterday were predicted for the 50’s – unusually cool, but I’ll take it. Yesterday I never got around to checking the thermometer, but this morning I noticed the front porch was 46º. No wonder those poor keets had such a rough time of it yesterday. Last night, at my bride’s insistence, we put down straw and dropped a tarp over the entire pen to protect them from the chill. Good thing. The rabbits do better with cool weather than hot weather. As temperatures during the day reached the 80’s and 90’s, I noticed the new litters crawled out from under the litter and fur the mothers had made the nest with and were lying out on top. Normally you would not see the litters this soon. The kits still have their eyes closed and not enough fur to mention, but are quite capable of movement and have enough sense to deal with heat using the meager resources available to them. These chilly nights are freebees. Windows open all night catch the chill; closing the windows as the day warms up keeps the cool air inside and may just be enough to make it through the heat of the day. With a little luck we won’t need to turn on the air conditioner – a small victory against the power company.
This morning we found a scorpion on the kitchen floor. I had seen one on the wood pile last night when I was covering it back up for the night. There was a time where I considered these exotic and never saw one before moving to California. They get mighty big in the Mojave Dessert. When we started seeing them around here – a year or two ago, I was surprised to find that there are species native to the Eastern US that range from Canada to Florida. Seventeen years growing up in Virginia and I never saw one.
Today is my natal birthday. My dear sainted bride took me out to dinner at a restaurant in Jackson, the large city an hour and a half west of us. It is a large enough town to have all the chain stores and chain restaurants. We went to Outback, using some gift cards we were given for Christmas and had a fine meal. After dinner we stopped by Lowe’s for a few small items and headed home. One of the items was a set of knee pads for working on the shed. They were fairly inexpensive - $10 – and not the best pair the store carried, but the difference they make in work is worth much more than the price. I have seen people using them – most notably carpet installers. I have had occasion to use them on odd jobs for Tony and another neighbor and was much impressed by the relief they provide. It’s just one of those things you never think of until you are in the middle of a job that requires working on your knees on a hard surface. Without my smart wife I would have doubtless gone through life thinking what a fine idea it would be to own a pair of knee pads while working jobs like the one described.
6/9
Sold a dozen guinea keets to a fellow working at the CoOp for $20. Quite the trauma for the birds. We needed to move the pen anyway so we took out all the birds, moved the coop and returned the birds we wanted to keep. Catching little keets is difficult under the best of conditions. We used a minnow net somebody gave us and that did make the process a little easier, but we still had a few escapees. Fortunately for us the birds are drawn back to the coop and the cries of their siblings. Nothing is more difficult to catch than a small bird that can weave its way though plants and shrubs. If it was a bug and you were trying to step on it, that would be easy enough, but trying to catch the frightened critter without causing it any harm is quite another matter.
Seem to have a problem with something grazing on the apple trees. Deer are my guess. I had heard somewhere that they don’t care for the smell of deodorant soap, so I tried shaving a bar of Irish Spring soap and put the shavings in cheese cloth and hanging it around the trees. We’ll see if we can grow and keep leaves on the trees now.
6/10
Chicks arrived today. We received 10 dark Cornish and 5 silver laced Wyandotte. The hatchery threw in one extra of each variety to account for attrition in shipping but they all arrived healthy and active.
6/12
A good amount of rain in the last two days. Yesterday was early morning showers of almost an inch. Late in the evening we received more rain and early in the AM today we received another good shower adding up to an additional ¾ inch. Of course, the grass is growing like crazy and weeds in the garden are thriving. We put a dent in the weeds this morning, Karen working on tomatoes, peppers and beans while I worked on the peanuts. The recent mulching is paying dividends. We laid down sheets of old newspaper over weeds and then buried it in mulch. I think those weeds have gotten the message and are well on the way to becoming topsoil.
The last few days we have been cutting brush and running it through the chipper. It does take a lot of brush to make a pile of mulch, but the woods have never looked better in a summer.
6/15
We broke up the turkey hen today. She has been broody for more than 4 weeks, with enough safety margin to ensure fertile eggs should have hatched by now. She smelled really bad. Sitting on eggs for more than a month would no doubt cause personal hygiene to suffer. We blocked access to her nest and forced her outside to stretch, eat and drink. It never ceases to amaze me that these creatures can go into a trance and require little in the way of food and water for such a long period of time. I have noticed that a bird freshly off of a nest and coming out of a brood trance will evacuate their bowels. The size of this evacuation would indicate that the volume has been accumulating for some time. It would seem that most of the activities normally associated with a healthy, active bird shut down and the focus of all activity becomes maintaining life through respiration and maintaining body heat for egg incubation. We still have two chickens occupying the same nest box, brooding duck eggs I placed in the box. The duck seems to have settled down to incubating her eggs in another nest also. She continued to lay before she went solid broody (she was sitting in fits and starts before) and has accumulated a surprising number of eggs. The nest is shaped like a cone – an egg filled volcano. I don’t know that she can hatch all these eggs, but I am reluctant to interfere and will watch as the situation takes its own course.
The turkey hen, no doubt in a foul mood from being pulled off of her nest, seems to have decided the rooster is a likely candidate for her wrath. The rooster, no great shakes as roosters go, does not seem to have the sense to realize he is completely outclassed by the turkey hen. Where as any creature with a lick of sense would put distance between itself and such an aggressor, the rooster seems to want the fight even though he comes out on the bottom every time. The fighting showed no signs of winding down, so I picked up the turkey hen and returned her to her cage where she could have access to food and water. That is when I realized the foul odor was coming from the turkey hen and not from the nesting location. I washed my hands and arms, but could still smell the stench the remainder of the day. The rooster, considering himself the victor in the altercation, paced up and down the length of the turkey pen to aggravate the turkey hen. Rooster does not realize his days are growing short and his replacement is in the brooder.
Today we strung wire on the posts over the grape vines and along the top of the garden fence. The wire over the grapes will become the trellis and we used a heavier gauge of wire. The fence for the garden used a smaller gauge. The chore was fairly simple and required no exertion, but in the matter of a single hour we were so drenched in sweat that neither Karen nor I could see through our glasses. The temperature was only 80 degrees or so, but the humidity was through the roof. In that kind of weather just breathing will break a sweat. After stringing wire and pounding staples we called it quits.
6/16
Turkey hen and rooster got into it again today. I don’t know what the problem is, but something about that rooster just pisses her off.
This morning I put J-clips on the fence and wire we strung yesterday. We noticed last year that climbing plants pull down the fencing and a wire strung between posts and clipped to the fence would support the plants. Last year it was gourds, which placed a considerable amount of weight on the fence.
During lunch we made a run to the feed store and stocked up on feed. We had seven 50 lb bags – not a major ordeal to unload and store. The weather was again humid and I was drenched with sweat when the chore was finished.
6/19
Today I set about weeding the carrots. It is an ongoing project of the last week or so. If you have never had the pleasure of planting carrots, they come from very tiny seeds. Accuracy and discretion are not an option when planting carrots. Since they are primarily a root crop, you can’s start them in a bedding tray and transplant them. Life with carrots would be much simpler if they could be planted as slips. Well, the miniscule seed turns into a miniscule sprout. They took some time to germinate too. We wanted a deep bed for the plants so the roots would have ample room, but the soil here is not the best. Our method was to till the entire bed, move the dirt to expose trenches, then till the trenches and replace the fill dirt mounded up on either side. The mounds are the deepest loose soil, so the carrot seed was planted on the top of the mounds. When sprouts finally did appear, some time and many other activities later, I remember thinking to myself “It is impossible to tell a carrot from a weed at this point, I will have to let them get a little bigger so I do not remove carrots by accident when weeding.” That was a number of weeks ago. Since then I have gotten distracted with mulching, beans, peanuts and other chores. When I next looked at the carrot bed, it was noteworthy in that it was the tallest patch of weeds in the garden. The weeds must have been 12-18 inches tall. With a keen eye and much concentration, you could see a few carrots poking out of the weeds. You’d think that a fellow that does not enjoy weeding would go to more trouble to avoid weeds. Apparently not. I set about weeding these plants over a week ago and found it to be quite the job. Carrots grow tops that must be described more as a frond, rather than a stem with leaves. All credit must be given to the plant – when surrounded by other plants, growing briskly and competing for sunlight, the lowly carrot is up to the challenge. The fronds were growing along with the surrounding vegetation and hat reached the canopy. This made weeding a tricky proposition. Reaching down and pulling a hand full of vegetation would result in carrots being pulled also.
My weed patch was a jungle on a microcosmic scale. With the 12-18 inches of height, there was quite a bit of diversity in that small forest. On the top there were flying insects, patrolling for the meager blossoms available or hunting the unwary pollinator. Below the upper canopy was all manner of nits and gnats. On the forest floor were salamanders or newts, bull earthworms, and the ever present risk of encountering a snake. I have reached an uneasy agreement with snakes – I make all the noise I can and they do their best to get out of my way. This arrangement has worked well for me and the snakes have likewise prospered. I did not encounter any snakes, so I have to assume that our agreement is still in force. I did, however, come across some reptile eggs. I immediately thought of snakes, but there were a number of salamanders or newts running around. I debated collecting the eggs and feeding them to the chickens, and then thought better of it. Best not to teach them tasty food can be found inside of round white objects. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t make the connection with their eggs, but they did not need any encouragement. The reptile eggs were white, but the shells were soft and leathery. This is a fact I have gotten from nature shows on TV, but encountering them in the world is so much more gratifying than seeing it on a TV screen. We tilled rabbit manure into the patch when we made preparations for planting. The growth of weeds attest to the fact that the soil is quite welcoming. But on the animal side of things, the worms seem to be thriving. We have some of the largest worms in that patch that I have ever seen. Fast too! The first glimpse I got of a worm, as I was removing weeds, surprised me and made me think I had found a snake. It darted out of sight, under other growth. I have seen worms all my life and as a child was known to play with them, but the word “dart” is not one I have ever associated with earthworms.
The weeds themselves had some tricks of their own. I don’t know why, but it seems that plants being cultivated are much easier to kill than the plants being removed. While pulling weeds, you have to wonder about that. Why aren’t the more tenacious and invasive plants prized for their greens, roots or seeds? It would seem that if we ate weeds, gardening would be a much simpler project. But no, it seems we want to encourage only the most fragile and easily destroyed plants. The carrots would to well to take a few lessons from the surrounding weeds. It has already mastered the use of a large root underground. This is a trick that the dandelion, thistle and other plants have learned. They all have a large root that permits them to store enough energy to grow the upper plant a number of times. Your basic turf grass is likewise well endowed with roots that can grow the blade again and again, making them near immune to the effects of hungry cattle. One particular plant – I have no idea of the name or heritage, produces a woody stem populated with leaves. The stem is supple, like a vine, and the plant manages to intertwine itself through the entire mass of weeds. I noticed that the stem breaks off easily at arbitrary points, ensuring the plant will survive with the loss of an extremity. I don’t know it for a fact, but I’d wager that the part broken off would not take much encouragement to root in another location. Following the vine down to the soil, it emerges from its roots with no less than four stems/vines – each heading in a direction different from that of its brothers. In order to remove the majority of the plant one must follow the stem down to the ground and grasp it at this junction where the vines emerge from the soil. They seemed to be successful and hardy plants, making up the bulk of the population in the weed patch. Since the dirt had been tilled in the last month or so, the soil was fairly loose and the weeds were easily worried loose from the soil, pulling the bulk of the root out. No doubt some are missed and will need to be removed later. Also some new weed seed in the soil has now been granted favorable conditions in which to grow, or seeds will be carried in by the wind or birds. We will be back to the carrot patch again someday soon. You can’t get angry at the weeds, they are fighting for their very survival with every trick they can muster. I’m sure the knowledge that they will be getting composted in the potato bed would not satisfy them any more than me receiving the news that my body would keep a village of cannibals from being hungry.
Today our first duckling hatched. A chicken hatched it. It seems to have crawled out of the nest box and was huddled against the wall in some straw, near another broody hen. I picked it up and placed it back under the hen that hatched it. Don’t know how the adult chickens would view this newcomer, but it could get hurt badly if they decide it is some sort of food.
The tobacco slips are getting big enough to put outside. My book says they are ready to go when leaves reach two inches across. Karen suggested I plant it across the creek. We are not using the land for anything at the moment and it would be close to the creek for watering. For the most part, the soil over there is rocky, but it lies at the bottom of a wooded hill and gets frequent washes from the rains. The soil filling the gaps between the rocks is quite rich and grows trees and grass readily. That side of the creek is late to get sun in the morning but is the last part of the hollow to lose sun in the evening. Tobacco can handle hot sunny weather, so long as it receives ample water when first getting established. The test plants we grew last year did extremely well with little water after the first week or two. The rabbit cages were cleaned and emptied yesterday and the manure was sitting in a lidded plastic tub, so the plan was to set the manure aside and till it into the bed for the tobacco. Today’s temperatures are in the high 90’s and humidity is really up there – about 89% according to the weather man. Preparing the bed was a matter of working for 15-30 minutes, returning to the house to cool off and drink tea, then returning for another period of work. I went on like that through the afternoon until I had the bed tilled – about three widths of the tiller and enough passes to get 8 inches into the ground. Man, there was enough stone in the soil to build a wall. The bed is actually kind of low compared to the surrounding soil after removing all the rocks. At the end of the tilling I was pretty much done in for the day and left the manure and tools there for the night.
6/20
Today we are going to Tony’s place to help with laying tile so I ate breakfast and got right on feeding and watering animals and finished tobacco bed. The plastic tub had about 50 lbs of manure in it and had been sitting out in the sun with a lid on it. When I opened the tub the smell just about knocked me on my heels. For a minute I thought I was going to add the contents of my stomach to the fertilizer. Rabbit manure doesn’t have a strong aroma, like cow or horse manure. Usually the smell coming from the rabbit hootch is caused by the urine. Cooking out under the sun had caused the mild smell of the manure to become really strong. The bed was empty of soil, I had removed it after the last pass on the tiller the night before. The rabbit manure was shoveled into the trench and covered with the fill dirt removed last night. Funny thing about rocks – no matter how many you remove from rock soil, every time you touch the dirt it seems like a dozen more are there. After burying the manure I ran the tiller through a few more passes to mix the dirt and manure. That was all we had time for and my book recommends planting tobacco in the evening or on a cloudy day.
We spent the rest of the morning at Tony’s putting down tile. Karen and Kay hit a yard sale and picked up lunch for us. It was another 90+ degree day, but the location Tony has for the house is in the woods over a creek and always quite cool and comfortable. We had one fan blowing into the bathroom and that was enough to be comfortable. We got the bathroom done by noon or so and took a break for lunch. The house had a wonderful deck and again, the shade and creek kept the place cool enough to be quite comfortable. All the while it was unbelievably hot out in the sun. I have never laid tile before so the project was an education. This is all old routine to Tony but his knees are not what they used to be. While I am no spring chicken, I can get up off the floor a lot easier than he can. So, he supplied all the materials and know-how and I got to learn how to lay tile. I could do the physical part for him and he can watch what I’m doing and catch any problems before I manage to get the tiles running in diagonals across the floor. Tony and Kay have been great friends. Tony is a real jack of all trades and has provided me with a lot of help in the past – we have done well trading experiences and work back and forth.
When we got home we started making arrangements to get the duckling in from the chicken house. The hen is sitting on six duck eggs, so the siblings aught to be following soon. Here we hit a problem. The second pen is full of meat birds and they won’t be ready to slaughter until next Tuesday, at the earliest. The portable pen has ten guineas and a chicken that are also about 6 weeks old. The brooder has 17 chicks in it that are not quite two weeks old, and we have nowhere to put the ducklings. I don’t trust the older guineas with the new chicks or the meat birds, so we have set up a tub on the table to hold the ducklings. Turkeys will also be in at the end of next week. Raising ducklings in a brooder with chickens or turkeys is not a good idea. We have been giving the chicks, guineas and turkeys medicated starter, which is not good for ducklings. The ducklings are also quite messy and could trash a brooder in short order. Fortunately the ducklings can be moved outside earlier than chickens or turkeys. We’re going to have to keep the ducklings in the tub for another week until we can clear out the meat birds and move the guineas and new chickens into the second pen. Then the ducklings can be moved to the small portable pen. The turkeys will have to be brooded for at least two or three weeks. They grow pretty fast and we may be able to move them into the second pen. That should hold us until the broody duck begins to hatch her pile of eggs. We’ll be eating guinea and duck this year!
This evening (after a dandy nap) I went back to planting the tobacco. A day in the sun mixed with dirt had done nothing to cut the smell of the manure. The dogs were with me while I was working and I had to keep chasing them out of the bed – they were mighty interested in the smell and kept trying to eat the manure in the dirt. My book recommends planting tobacco two feet apart in rows three feet apart. I got eleven slips planted and cages over the top to keep the guineas from digging the plants up. So far they seem to have no interest in the bed, just the activity. We couldn’t start working until 6 PM, the time the sun finally went behind the trees and the bank was in the shade. The plants went in well and it wasn’t too much trouble to build berms around them to hold water. The storms of the spring had washed a lot of gravel into the creek, so some time spent with a garden rake hollowed out a deep pool large enough for a bucket. It took about four trips or so to get enough water to set the plants well in their new bed.
After the work was done it was time to guzzle sweet tea and cool off. I only found four ticks on me today, so that’s not too bad. It doesn’t take long to get soaked with sweat in this sort of weather. If I were to put on fresh clothes every day it wouldn’t take long to run through every stitch I own. The best compromise I have come up with is to wear the sweaty duds until work is done for the day. The work duds get hung over the tub to dry overnight and after a shower I get into clean clothes. In the morning the work duds are dry and can be used again. I try to get at least three or four days out of a set of work clothes. The clean clothes I change into only get worn for a few hours a day right after a shower. When the work duds are too grungy to wear any more (usually after cleaning the rabbit shed) they get thrown in the wash and the clean clothes become work duds. That’s pretty much life during a Tennessee summer.
Regards,
Pat
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dejure
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
The cherries are in. I went and worked on a stair case for a local farmer and he let us free in his orchard. We only picked fifteen gallons, since we have to dehydrate and otherwise store them. Much of our canning equipment yet remains on the other side of the mountains, waiting us to move it over.
The house needs a lot of work and it's getting done in small spurts. Being a trailer, little expense was given for the cabinets and they had large gaps (5/8") between the shelves and the door. I cut and installed wood to fill the area, making it somewhat mouse proof (okay, I tend toward the pessimistic). I also cut paneling to add sides to the drawer areas. All these cabinets are built on site using the minimum amount of materials possible. While this save money, it also allows total uninhibited access to drawer areas and adjacent cabinets. Something to remember when building or buying cabinets, to be certain.
A closet just off the kitchen (about arms reach from the stove) was missing a door. Since the kitchen is wanting for storage, I built shelves for it, converting it to a miniature pantry. The upper one has an indentation so one can place large pans and such (e.g., woks, canners, etc.) on it. Without the indentation, one would have been limited to the size of the opening. Making the shelf "U" shaped on the front doubles the opening size.
Since the closet I installed shelves in was missing a door, I built one out plywood. It's about four and a half inches deep and has several shelves to house foil, wax paper, herbs and so forth. I'll install it with four heavy duty hinges, so it should accommodate a reasonable amount of weight. It need be, I'll find a wheel with a long mounting shaft that could have a spring placed over it (which would press up against the bottom of the cabinet) to take some of the weight. The spring would help the door deal better with uneven floor issuesss.
In cleaning the shop, I found twelve monster batteries the land owner bought and was going to incorporate into his solar system. They had never been used, but have been sitting for ten years. They read five and a half volts, so I didn't have a lot of hope for them. I wired them in series-parallel for twelve volts and started pumping a couple amps into them. They are up to 12.95 vdc today, so may fly. We order a desulfinator and are going to try to bring them back. In light of the approximate 4k replacement cost, that seems a worthwhile effort. Once that's done, well dig a bit further and figure out where he left the new controller (we already found the six solar panels he bought along with the batteries). However things go, it appears I have a job ahead of me (learning what it is I'm doing with this collection of toys).
We are hoping to take advantage of Amazon sale opportunities, at least while money is yet worth something. As such, we just put up a wall to give ourselves an office space just off the front room. In addition to giving us another room, we get more wall space. I'll be building a lot of overhead storage shelving/cabinets. That aside, I've yet have to pick up the drywall. That will be a while, since it won't fit in the little van and taking my (Hostess) Twinkie mobile for a three hour round trip drive just to chase a hundred dollars worth of drywall isn't practical.
The house needs a lot of work and it's getting done in small spurts. Being a trailer, little expense was given for the cabinets and they had large gaps (5/8") between the shelves and the door. I cut and installed wood to fill the area, making it somewhat mouse proof (okay, I tend toward the pessimistic). I also cut paneling to add sides to the drawer areas. All these cabinets are built on site using the minimum amount of materials possible. While this save money, it also allows total uninhibited access to drawer areas and adjacent cabinets. Something to remember when building or buying cabinets, to be certain.
A closet just off the kitchen (about arms reach from the stove) was missing a door. Since the kitchen is wanting for storage, I built shelves for it, converting it to a miniature pantry. The upper one has an indentation so one can place large pans and such (e.g., woks, canners, etc.) on it. Without the indentation, one would have been limited to the size of the opening. Making the shelf "U" shaped on the front doubles the opening size.
Since the closet I installed shelves in was missing a door, I built one out plywood. It's about four and a half inches deep and has several shelves to house foil, wax paper, herbs and so forth. I'll install it with four heavy duty hinges, so it should accommodate a reasonable amount of weight. It need be, I'll find a wheel with a long mounting shaft that could have a spring placed over it (which would press up against the bottom of the cabinet) to take some of the weight. The spring would help the door deal better with uneven floor issuesss.
In cleaning the shop, I found twelve monster batteries the land owner bought and was going to incorporate into his solar system. They had never been used, but have been sitting for ten years. They read five and a half volts, so I didn't have a lot of hope for them. I wired them in series-parallel for twelve volts and started pumping a couple amps into them. They are up to 12.95 vdc today, so may fly. We order a desulfinator and are going to try to bring them back. In light of the approximate 4k replacement cost, that seems a worthwhile effort. Once that's done, well dig a bit further and figure out where he left the new controller (we already found the six solar panels he bought along with the batteries). However things go, it appears I have a job ahead of me (learning what it is I'm doing with this collection of toys).
We are hoping to take advantage of Amazon sale opportunities, at least while money is yet worth something. As such, we just put up a wall to give ourselves an office space just off the front room. In addition to giving us another room, we get more wall space. I'll be building a lot of overhead storage shelving/cabinets. That aside, I've yet have to pick up the drywall. That will be a while, since it won't fit in the little van and taking my (Hostess) Twinkie mobile for a three hour round trip drive just to chase a hundred dollars worth of drywall isn't practical.
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
This sounds like a potentially good find!In cleaning the shop, I found twelve monster batteries the land owner bought and was going to incorporate into his solar system. They had never been used, but have been sitting for ten years. They read five and a half volts, so I didn't have a lot of hope for them. I wired them in series-parallel for twelve volts and started pumping a couple amps into them. They are up to 12.95 vdc today, so may fly. We order a desulfinator and are going to try to bring them back. In light of the approximate 4k replacement cost, that seems a worthwhile effort. Once that's done, well dig a bit further and figure out where he left the new controller (we already found the six solar panels he bought along with the batteries). However things go, it appears I have a job ahead of me (learning what it is I'm doing with this collection of toys).
“Conspiracy Theories Are Wisps of Smoke From Fires That Cannot Be Seen” - The Watchman (2024)
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bee_pipes
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
6/21
Yesterday I checked on the new hatchling a number of times before going inside for the night. At last check it was still wet and somewhat doubled over. Experiences with guineas have shown us that hatchlings are better off spending their first day under a broody hen. There they will have the opportunity to dry out, straighten out and get their legs under them. This strategy seems to be working for the ducklings also. They do have a grace period where they can subsist on their yolk, so food and water are not a crucial concern the first day or two. Warmth is more of a concern, and with two broody hens in the chicken house there are ample opportunities to stay warm. This morning I found the latest hatchling dry, active and ready to bring in. This is a good thing as I would prefer the other duckling to have the company of another of its species, rather than being by itself.
I stepped outside on the porch with a cup of coffee later and saw a deer back by the fruit trees. I did startle the animal by coming out the door, but held still and it returned to its business. I saw it examine the apple trees but not graze on them, so hopefully the bags of soap shavings are doing their job. Later in the morning I went back and examined the trees. The do not show signs of nibbling/browsing by deer, but Japanese beetles seem to have a fondness for ample leaves.
This morning Karen put up some more green beans. She has been going out and picking every morning since Monday. So far she has put up about 20 quarts.
Today was another hot one. I was lazy and Karen did all the work with the beans and whipped up a batch of peanut butter cookies. Later in the evening, after the heat of the day had passed I cut six wooden floor boards for nesting boxes for the rabbits. This is a chore that needed doing and with three does possibly getting ready to kindle I don’t think it could have been put off another day. Nest boxes were placed in the cages with the three does that may be pregnant. We should know in a day or two. Afterwards I cut wire cages for the tobacco and blueberry plants. They are not so much to contain the plants or hold them up as much to keep the chickens from scratching the loose dirt around the roots. Deer, walking through the place at night or startled during the day and running to the woods are quite capable of running through the plants and trampling them. The wires strung between the posts for the grape trellis would suffer badly from a deer running through the wire and getting caught on it. The dogs, blasting around the place and chasing each other, pay little attention to where they are going and would likewise trample the plants. Tapes made from cutting up plastic grocery bags were tied to the cages and wires to attract attention to them. My neighbor told me that the tapes, rustling in the slightest of breezes, would do well to make deer steer clear of the area. I do not know this for a fact but it takes such little effort to make and tie the tapes that it is worth the extra effort. These tapes serve well on all wire barriers. People can accidentally stumble into them if distracted while walking. The guineas seem to wind up on the wrong side of the garden fence and the incidence of this is reduced when tapes are tied to the fence. The heat and plentiful rainfall of May and early June have all the weeds growing like they have been fertilized. The beds for the fruit trees and grape vines are getting taken over by weeds and will need a good cleaning out soon. As we continue to cut brush and make mulch, we will eventually dress all the beds and reduce the weeds.
I saw two more deer throughout the day. Zeb, the young male dog, was with me while I was caging the tobacco plants. He caught a scent of the deer and followed the trail. He seemed really excited and happy, like he had discovered his purpose in life – chasing deer. He ran the trail with his nose to the ground, hoping to catch sight of the deer. He has seen them from the dog pen, but I don’t think he has ever had a chance to chase one. The older dogs love to chase deer and seem to enjoy that more than harassing snakes.
6/22
Spent most of the day gathering brush. Two large piles of brush made a respectable pile of mulch. The young dogs take turns coming out with me while I’m working. One dog by itself usually sticks close and listens when I call. Tow of them at the same time get preoccupied with running and chasing each other and won’t pay attention to calls or commands. They need to burn up the energy, but we save that sort of activity for evening. The two young dogs will run themselves ragged in 15-30 minutes and spend the remainder of the evening calm and sleeping. It is getting to be customary to give them the last half hour for horse play. While they chased and ran around I hauled buckets of water from the creek. The blueberries and grape vines looked a little thirsty. With ample rain fall this spring, we have gone some time without any precipitation. The only benefit of the humid weather the last week or two has been the heavy morning dew.
6/23
A good heavy dew this morning. I got my dead butt out of bed early enough to help Karen with picking beans. She has set two rows aside for seed. While picking I found a shed snake skin, which really did a lot to make Karen feel better. I should have kept this find to myself. After picking we collected old newspaper from the house and set about weeding the peppers. After pulling the weeds we laid down newspaper between the pepper plants to smother the weeds and buried it in mulch from running the chipper the night before. It is only a temporary delay in the weeds, they will be back, but future weeds will be easier to pull with their roots anchored in mulch. Next will be the beans. They have already been mulched, but the weeds are getting out of hand again. Nine o’clock is about as late in the morning as you can do this type of work. Even with a hat on, the sun starts cooking your brains and it is difficult to remember what you are doing or why. The air is thick with humidity, but it is tolerable before the sun starts warming things up. Even so, you are drenched with sweat by the time you have had enough.
A quick trip to town to get the gauge checked on the pressure cooker – a service provided for free by the county extension agent (already paid for by taxes, that is), picking up a few cases of canning jars and a hand riveter and pop rivets. We had problems last year with the meat birds breaking their wings while bleeding out. These were nasty compound fractures in which the bone protruded from the skin. This year we are going to try making a killing cone from sheet metal for keeping the birds from flapping and bruising the meat.
When we got home we found problems in the dog pen. All four dogs had been left in the pen, something we normally do. The youngest female, Zuzu, seems to be particularly aggressive. She is a small dog, and it is difficult to tell when she is getting aggressive. Her and her brother, Zeb, play roughly – they sound like two dogs in a pit fighting to the death. Zeb, who has a tan coat and dark skin, is all marked up with scars from the rough housing. The older dogs generally keep the younger dogs in check, but lately Zuzu has been getting aggressive with the older female, Zoey. When we got back from town today we found Zoey missing her collar – something that normally gets torn off during horseplay. Well, Zoey also had a bunch of bites too. One of her ears was bleeding and she had puncture marks high up on one of the front legs. This is getting out of hand. The two younger dogs were found abandoned on our road almost two years ago. The vet guessed that they were mountain curs, a hunting dog. So long as the roughhousing was confined to each other and didn’t get too far out of hand, we could live with it. Zuzu has given Zeb a number of nasty bites and his face is covered with scars. Individually, they are great little dogs. Quite affectionate and pretty well behaved. But now the order of things is upset – the dominant female is no longer the dominant female. This is a case for the dog whisperer. We can no longer leave all four of the dogs unattended in the pen because we can’t trust the youngest female. The youngest male is not too much of a problem – he’s pretty mellow and just wants to get along. If it was just a matter of the youngest female reaching the dominant position, that wouldn’t be a big deal either. But we have no assurances that she will not “play rough” with the other dogs, inflicting additional injuries.
Joey left his tractor with me again. There are a number of project in which a backhoe and front end loader would make quick work of things, but this afternoon I went to the neighbor’s house and pulled some stumps. This not only sews a little good will, I have a project I need a hand with and we are swapping labor. He’s coming over on Saturday to help me drop two trees. He’s a cagey fellow that has been around and has a good handle on getting trees to fall where he wants them. These are not posing an immediate danger to the house, but they are a little close to the well for my comfort. These two trees need to come down and are the last thing that needs to be done before the goat area can be started. I would also like to dig out a low area around one of the trees where it adjoins the creek and create a small pool for the ducks (and us).
6/24
This is certainly the summer of our discontent. Problems with the dogs, mentioned above, and the turkeys seem to have it in for our rooster. It would be nice to let the turkeys out to graze, but they don’t seem to be able to stick to their side of the playground. They eventually mosey on over to the rooster, who is scurrying about trying to keep his hens herded together, and after much posturing they begin to start fighting. The tom is there mostly for moral support, though he is not above taking a cheap shot if the rooster’s back is to him. The hen seems to be the one that really carries the fight. When I put her up the tom will patrol the ground outside the pen and the rooster will occasionally pace back an forth taunting the confined hen. He’s a brave rooster, picking fights only with females and strutting in front of a caged bird. Thank goodness the bees and weeds are a little more peaceful in their approach to the world.
This morning I found one of the new does had finally kindled. She seems to have dropped 8 kits from my quick count. No sign of the other does kindling, but I’ll leave the nesting boxes in with them for the rest of the week. I wouldn’t say we’re quite into full production, but we have 5 litters in queue for the freezer. Next week is slaughter time for the oldest litter with three litters following in another 8 weeks.
I finally broke down and got a new pair of boots. I found a shoe store across the river, in Parsons, that sells Red Wing boots. They were highly recommended by folks and are some of the last boots still made in the US. The owner of the store mentioned a few other manufacturers that she will soon be carrying which are still made in the US. I have had it with cheap boots made in China and India. They are extremely competitive in price, but do not hold up. Both old pair of boots have holes in the same place. The store owner’s opinion was that the steel toe was causing part of the problem. I do a lot of work crouching and squatting, flexing the toes to an extremity. Since the backs of the steel toes don’t flex, they wear out that leather quicker.
A friend of mine on an internet forum showed me a low cost alternative to making a sheet metal killing cone. She used an old plastic milk jug to hold the chickens while they bleed out. Here’s a picture:
This evening we moved the Cornish and wyandotte chicks outside. We are getting tight on space and I wanted a day to clean the brooder before getting the turkeys. We put them out around 7 PM, after the sun was low enough for the temperature to start dropping. The nights are plenty warm enough for them to get through a night. The real acclimation won’t start until the heat of the day tomorrow.
Tony and Kay came over in the afternoon. I had asked Tony about an underground cable that got snagged when we were working on the storm shelter. I had assumed it was a fat cable, but it turned out to be PVC pipe with three strands (two insulated, one not) of wire in it. This was the electrical supply to the old trailer. We had found it a number of months ago and rerouted it to the shed. Tony checked the wires and we pulled them back to there the snag happened. We’ll put in a new trench while we have the backhoe and bury the wires deeper this time. He looked at the electrical service box in the old trailer and we’ll pull that to make the connections for the shed.
6/25
No dead chicks this morning, they seemed to have made it through the night okay. The small pen is pretty crowded, but better than the brooder. They have not quite yet gotten the routine down, but the older birds know that after the morning disturbances there is food.
I managed to get my dead butt out of bead early this morning. I can’t keep up with Karen, she is the original early riser. Thoughts were on the upcoming slaughter and mulling over what time I will have to get up and when we can start. First light comes around 5:30. That would mean someone like me needs to get up at 4 AM so I can stumble around, drink coffee and scowl at the world for an hour. Another half hour to get prepared (scalding pot, camp stove, knives sharpened, garbage bags over working table) and we’d be ready for the first bird. Past experience has shown that the first bird takes the longest and somewhere in the second bird I find my rhythm. After that it is 15-20 minutes per bird, from bleeding to clean carcass thrown in ice water. Aside from mulling these thoughts over, we went to the garden and picked beans. After the picking Karen returned to the house to snap beans while I stayed in the garden to do some weeding. She is keeping one row of beans unpicked for seed next spring. Some of these seed plants have bull bean pods. The weeding was not too bad, this particular bed was the lesser of the two evils because it had been papered and mulched. The other bed of beans seems to have gotten worse, so far as weeds are concerned, having only been mulched (because we used up our old newspaper). When I start on that patch, I’ll be happy to get two rows done each day. It is not as bad as the carrots, but still pretty bushy.
After coming in from the garden, I helped Karen finish snapping the beans. She fried some potatoes and eggs for our breakfast, and then set about getting ready to can this batch of beans.
I went outside to prepare for the tree felling on Saturday. Some smaller trees were in the way and bound to get broken by the larger trees, to I cut them down. By small, I mean 20-30 foot tall and 6-8 inches in diameter. The first order of business was to put a new chain on the saw. I had been nursing the old chain along, sharpening it and filing it. Most recent use has been cutting cedar poles and notching joints. The chain, in spite of the work, would get hot and start smoking when cutting through cedar hearts. With most of the cedar work done, it was time to put a new chain on. Man, nothing cuts as nicely as a new chain. When the first tree fell, all three of the dogs crowded into their dog house and watched me through the door. The terrain was kind of awkward because they were on the bank of the creek, but other than pinching the chainsaw blade once and opening the cut up with wedges and maul, all went pretty well. When a tree has a severe lean in one direction, it doesn’t matter much how the directional cut is put in. Three of the trees fell where I wanted them to, one had to be felled sideways because the lean away from the desired spot was so bad. The dogs were much relieved when the fourth tree hit the ground and I turned the saw off.
The afternoon was pretty hot and we dozed off after lunch. About 6 PM I got back out side and topped the trees felled this morning. Managed to get two trailer loads of branches run through the chipper. Mowed the slaughtering area in preparation for tomorrow. Tried to get the dog pen mowed before knocking off for the night but the battery on the brush mower is not working. I can jump it from the car but the clutch is electric. As soon as the battery loses enough of a charge to not keep the clutch engaged the blade stops. After jumping it twice to get the blade going again I gave up. There’s enough short grass for the dogs to use. They just lay in the shade of the dog house otherwise.
6/26
We got the slaughtering started this morning. We didn’t start the first bird until 6:20, there was enough light to start an hour earlier but we just didn’t get moving fast enough. That’s sort of to be expected on the first day. However, we were able to process 6 birds. The first bird went well and we just kept knocking them down. Karen did the scalding and plucking; I dispatched the birds and did the actual dressing. I was ambitious in pulling 6 birds, but figured we could always put them back if it took longer than planned. We finished off in about 2 hours, an average of 20 minutes per bird. It should go even faster tomorrow. Today’s effort resulted in 22 lbs of meat added to the freezer, an average of a little over 3 ½ lbs per bird – dressed. The birds have reached the end of their growth, there was some fat on the carcasses, but not as much as one might see on an older bird. The killing cone works great – not one broken wing!
We made a quick run to the feed store in Lobelville and picked up four turkeys. This should do us for birds in spring/early summer. There are still ducks on the way and the occasional, unexpected guinea clutch. Man, those guineas are laying eggs everywhere. You have to watch where you step. Walk into a shed that you walk into everyday and one day you will step on a guinea egg if you are not watching where you are going. We have an old wood burning stand, sort of a portable campfire. It sits behind the house and hasn’t been moved in years. The guineas are getting under it and laying eggs – must be 30-50 eggs there. If they can catch a broody hen getting up for a drink or to stretch her legs, guinea hens will run in and drop an egg in her nest.
Yesterday a bird fell from a nest. We have been watching a cardinal nest in the mock orange Karen planted in the front yard. We assumed that the bird fell from that nest. Karen took the dogs out in the morning and they found the bird. She was hard pressed to keep them away from it, but managed. When I went out to feed the birds in the tractor I heard something peeping. I had assumed it was one of the chicks and started looking for it – maybe it had gotten a leg caught or something. Last year one of the meat birds got its head caught in a feeder – it had somehow managed to get its head through a hole on the feeder and couldn’t get it back out. Well, after checking the tractor I couldn’t see anything making the noise and thought it was just coming from a tree and the hollow was doing strange things to the noise. As I walked away I could still hear it and it did seem to be coming from the tractor. I looked under a tarp on the tractor and found the baby bird Karen had told me about. It had climbed the wire up under the tarp. When it saw me it opened its mouth, like they do when waiting to be fed. I picked it up and went over to the cardinal nest. All the birds had hatched, but seemed sleeping. I put the little devil back in the nest and it commenced peeping and climbed out of the nest and back onto a branch. I must have put that rascal in three times yesterday and listened to it complain all day long. It would get out of the nest, down out of the tree and make it back over to the chicken tractor. I’m not crazy about the idea of a wild bird hanging out around the chickens – they can have mites and carry all manner of viruses and diseases, so when I’d see it hanging on the wire sides I would pick it up and put it back in the nest, all the time it would be peeping and carrying on. It occurred to me last night that it might have fallen from another nest in the yard and the poor rascal was trying to tell me it didn’t come from that nest – I was putting it back in the wrong nest.
Ended the day by getting the last of the branches topped from the trees cut down yesterday. The trunks were cut to provide 20 foot timbers and skidded to a location out of the way. Tomorrow after we finish another six chickens we will be dropping two large trees. Hopefully all will go well.
Regards,
Pat
Yesterday I checked on the new hatchling a number of times before going inside for the night. At last check it was still wet and somewhat doubled over. Experiences with guineas have shown us that hatchlings are better off spending their first day under a broody hen. There they will have the opportunity to dry out, straighten out and get their legs under them. This strategy seems to be working for the ducklings also. They do have a grace period where they can subsist on their yolk, so food and water are not a crucial concern the first day or two. Warmth is more of a concern, and with two broody hens in the chicken house there are ample opportunities to stay warm. This morning I found the latest hatchling dry, active and ready to bring in. This is a good thing as I would prefer the other duckling to have the company of another of its species, rather than being by itself.
I stepped outside on the porch with a cup of coffee later and saw a deer back by the fruit trees. I did startle the animal by coming out the door, but held still and it returned to its business. I saw it examine the apple trees but not graze on them, so hopefully the bags of soap shavings are doing their job. Later in the morning I went back and examined the trees. The do not show signs of nibbling/browsing by deer, but Japanese beetles seem to have a fondness for ample leaves.
This morning Karen put up some more green beans. She has been going out and picking every morning since Monday. So far she has put up about 20 quarts.
Today was another hot one. I was lazy and Karen did all the work with the beans and whipped up a batch of peanut butter cookies. Later in the evening, after the heat of the day had passed I cut six wooden floor boards for nesting boxes for the rabbits. This is a chore that needed doing and with three does possibly getting ready to kindle I don’t think it could have been put off another day. Nest boxes were placed in the cages with the three does that may be pregnant. We should know in a day or two. Afterwards I cut wire cages for the tobacco and blueberry plants. They are not so much to contain the plants or hold them up as much to keep the chickens from scratching the loose dirt around the roots. Deer, walking through the place at night or startled during the day and running to the woods are quite capable of running through the plants and trampling them. The wires strung between the posts for the grape trellis would suffer badly from a deer running through the wire and getting caught on it. The dogs, blasting around the place and chasing each other, pay little attention to where they are going and would likewise trample the plants. Tapes made from cutting up plastic grocery bags were tied to the cages and wires to attract attention to them. My neighbor told me that the tapes, rustling in the slightest of breezes, would do well to make deer steer clear of the area. I do not know this for a fact but it takes such little effort to make and tie the tapes that it is worth the extra effort. These tapes serve well on all wire barriers. People can accidentally stumble into them if distracted while walking. The guineas seem to wind up on the wrong side of the garden fence and the incidence of this is reduced when tapes are tied to the fence. The heat and plentiful rainfall of May and early June have all the weeds growing like they have been fertilized. The beds for the fruit trees and grape vines are getting taken over by weeds and will need a good cleaning out soon. As we continue to cut brush and make mulch, we will eventually dress all the beds and reduce the weeds.
I saw two more deer throughout the day. Zeb, the young male dog, was with me while I was caging the tobacco plants. He caught a scent of the deer and followed the trail. He seemed really excited and happy, like he had discovered his purpose in life – chasing deer. He ran the trail with his nose to the ground, hoping to catch sight of the deer. He has seen them from the dog pen, but I don’t think he has ever had a chance to chase one. The older dogs love to chase deer and seem to enjoy that more than harassing snakes.
6/22
Spent most of the day gathering brush. Two large piles of brush made a respectable pile of mulch. The young dogs take turns coming out with me while I’m working. One dog by itself usually sticks close and listens when I call. Tow of them at the same time get preoccupied with running and chasing each other and won’t pay attention to calls or commands. They need to burn up the energy, but we save that sort of activity for evening. The two young dogs will run themselves ragged in 15-30 minutes and spend the remainder of the evening calm and sleeping. It is getting to be customary to give them the last half hour for horse play. While they chased and ran around I hauled buckets of water from the creek. The blueberries and grape vines looked a little thirsty. With ample rain fall this spring, we have gone some time without any precipitation. The only benefit of the humid weather the last week or two has been the heavy morning dew.
6/23
A good heavy dew this morning. I got my dead butt out of bed early enough to help Karen with picking beans. She has set two rows aside for seed. While picking I found a shed snake skin, which really did a lot to make Karen feel better. I should have kept this find to myself. After picking we collected old newspaper from the house and set about weeding the peppers. After pulling the weeds we laid down newspaper between the pepper plants to smother the weeds and buried it in mulch from running the chipper the night before. It is only a temporary delay in the weeds, they will be back, but future weeds will be easier to pull with their roots anchored in mulch. Next will be the beans. They have already been mulched, but the weeds are getting out of hand again. Nine o’clock is about as late in the morning as you can do this type of work. Even with a hat on, the sun starts cooking your brains and it is difficult to remember what you are doing or why. The air is thick with humidity, but it is tolerable before the sun starts warming things up. Even so, you are drenched with sweat by the time you have had enough.
A quick trip to town to get the gauge checked on the pressure cooker – a service provided for free by the county extension agent (already paid for by taxes, that is), picking up a few cases of canning jars and a hand riveter and pop rivets. We had problems last year with the meat birds breaking their wings while bleeding out. These were nasty compound fractures in which the bone protruded from the skin. This year we are going to try making a killing cone from sheet metal for keeping the birds from flapping and bruising the meat.
When we got home we found problems in the dog pen. All four dogs had been left in the pen, something we normally do. The youngest female, Zuzu, seems to be particularly aggressive. She is a small dog, and it is difficult to tell when she is getting aggressive. Her and her brother, Zeb, play roughly – they sound like two dogs in a pit fighting to the death. Zeb, who has a tan coat and dark skin, is all marked up with scars from the rough housing. The older dogs generally keep the younger dogs in check, but lately Zuzu has been getting aggressive with the older female, Zoey. When we got back from town today we found Zoey missing her collar – something that normally gets torn off during horseplay. Well, Zoey also had a bunch of bites too. One of her ears was bleeding and she had puncture marks high up on one of the front legs. This is getting out of hand. The two younger dogs were found abandoned on our road almost two years ago. The vet guessed that they were mountain curs, a hunting dog. So long as the roughhousing was confined to each other and didn’t get too far out of hand, we could live with it. Zuzu has given Zeb a number of nasty bites and his face is covered with scars. Individually, they are great little dogs. Quite affectionate and pretty well behaved. But now the order of things is upset – the dominant female is no longer the dominant female. This is a case for the dog whisperer. We can no longer leave all four of the dogs unattended in the pen because we can’t trust the youngest female. The youngest male is not too much of a problem – he’s pretty mellow and just wants to get along. If it was just a matter of the youngest female reaching the dominant position, that wouldn’t be a big deal either. But we have no assurances that she will not “play rough” with the other dogs, inflicting additional injuries.
Joey left his tractor with me again. There are a number of project in which a backhoe and front end loader would make quick work of things, but this afternoon I went to the neighbor’s house and pulled some stumps. This not only sews a little good will, I have a project I need a hand with and we are swapping labor. He’s coming over on Saturday to help me drop two trees. He’s a cagey fellow that has been around and has a good handle on getting trees to fall where he wants them. These are not posing an immediate danger to the house, but they are a little close to the well for my comfort. These two trees need to come down and are the last thing that needs to be done before the goat area can be started. I would also like to dig out a low area around one of the trees where it adjoins the creek and create a small pool for the ducks (and us).
6/24
This is certainly the summer of our discontent. Problems with the dogs, mentioned above, and the turkeys seem to have it in for our rooster. It would be nice to let the turkeys out to graze, but they don’t seem to be able to stick to their side of the playground. They eventually mosey on over to the rooster, who is scurrying about trying to keep his hens herded together, and after much posturing they begin to start fighting. The tom is there mostly for moral support, though he is not above taking a cheap shot if the rooster’s back is to him. The hen seems to be the one that really carries the fight. When I put her up the tom will patrol the ground outside the pen and the rooster will occasionally pace back an forth taunting the confined hen. He’s a brave rooster, picking fights only with females and strutting in front of a caged bird. Thank goodness the bees and weeds are a little more peaceful in their approach to the world.
This morning I found one of the new does had finally kindled. She seems to have dropped 8 kits from my quick count. No sign of the other does kindling, but I’ll leave the nesting boxes in with them for the rest of the week. I wouldn’t say we’re quite into full production, but we have 5 litters in queue for the freezer. Next week is slaughter time for the oldest litter with three litters following in another 8 weeks.
I finally broke down and got a new pair of boots. I found a shoe store across the river, in Parsons, that sells Red Wing boots. They were highly recommended by folks and are some of the last boots still made in the US. The owner of the store mentioned a few other manufacturers that she will soon be carrying which are still made in the US. I have had it with cheap boots made in China and India. They are extremely competitive in price, but do not hold up. Both old pair of boots have holes in the same place. The store owner’s opinion was that the steel toe was causing part of the problem. I do a lot of work crouching and squatting, flexing the toes to an extremity. Since the backs of the steel toes don’t flex, they wear out that leather quicker.
A friend of mine on an internet forum showed me a low cost alternative to making a sheet metal killing cone. She used an old plastic milk jug to hold the chickens while they bleed out. Here’s a picture:
This evening we moved the Cornish and wyandotte chicks outside. We are getting tight on space and I wanted a day to clean the brooder before getting the turkeys. We put them out around 7 PM, after the sun was low enough for the temperature to start dropping. The nights are plenty warm enough for them to get through a night. The real acclimation won’t start until the heat of the day tomorrow.
Tony and Kay came over in the afternoon. I had asked Tony about an underground cable that got snagged when we were working on the storm shelter. I had assumed it was a fat cable, but it turned out to be PVC pipe with three strands (two insulated, one not) of wire in it. This was the electrical supply to the old trailer. We had found it a number of months ago and rerouted it to the shed. Tony checked the wires and we pulled them back to there the snag happened. We’ll put in a new trench while we have the backhoe and bury the wires deeper this time. He looked at the electrical service box in the old trailer and we’ll pull that to make the connections for the shed.
6/25
No dead chicks this morning, they seemed to have made it through the night okay. The small pen is pretty crowded, but better than the brooder. They have not quite yet gotten the routine down, but the older birds know that after the morning disturbances there is food.
I managed to get my dead butt out of bead early this morning. I can’t keep up with Karen, she is the original early riser. Thoughts were on the upcoming slaughter and mulling over what time I will have to get up and when we can start. First light comes around 5:30. That would mean someone like me needs to get up at 4 AM so I can stumble around, drink coffee and scowl at the world for an hour. Another half hour to get prepared (scalding pot, camp stove, knives sharpened, garbage bags over working table) and we’d be ready for the first bird. Past experience has shown that the first bird takes the longest and somewhere in the second bird I find my rhythm. After that it is 15-20 minutes per bird, from bleeding to clean carcass thrown in ice water. Aside from mulling these thoughts over, we went to the garden and picked beans. After the picking Karen returned to the house to snap beans while I stayed in the garden to do some weeding. She is keeping one row of beans unpicked for seed next spring. Some of these seed plants have bull bean pods. The weeding was not too bad, this particular bed was the lesser of the two evils because it had been papered and mulched. The other bed of beans seems to have gotten worse, so far as weeds are concerned, having only been mulched (because we used up our old newspaper). When I start on that patch, I’ll be happy to get two rows done each day. It is not as bad as the carrots, but still pretty bushy.
After coming in from the garden, I helped Karen finish snapping the beans. She fried some potatoes and eggs for our breakfast, and then set about getting ready to can this batch of beans.
I went outside to prepare for the tree felling on Saturday. Some smaller trees were in the way and bound to get broken by the larger trees, to I cut them down. By small, I mean 20-30 foot tall and 6-8 inches in diameter. The first order of business was to put a new chain on the saw. I had been nursing the old chain along, sharpening it and filing it. Most recent use has been cutting cedar poles and notching joints. The chain, in spite of the work, would get hot and start smoking when cutting through cedar hearts. With most of the cedar work done, it was time to put a new chain on. Man, nothing cuts as nicely as a new chain. When the first tree fell, all three of the dogs crowded into their dog house and watched me through the door. The terrain was kind of awkward because they were on the bank of the creek, but other than pinching the chainsaw blade once and opening the cut up with wedges and maul, all went pretty well. When a tree has a severe lean in one direction, it doesn’t matter much how the directional cut is put in. Three of the trees fell where I wanted them to, one had to be felled sideways because the lean away from the desired spot was so bad. The dogs were much relieved when the fourth tree hit the ground and I turned the saw off.
The afternoon was pretty hot and we dozed off after lunch. About 6 PM I got back out side and topped the trees felled this morning. Managed to get two trailer loads of branches run through the chipper. Mowed the slaughtering area in preparation for tomorrow. Tried to get the dog pen mowed before knocking off for the night but the battery on the brush mower is not working. I can jump it from the car but the clutch is electric. As soon as the battery loses enough of a charge to not keep the clutch engaged the blade stops. After jumping it twice to get the blade going again I gave up. There’s enough short grass for the dogs to use. They just lay in the shade of the dog house otherwise.
6/26
We got the slaughtering started this morning. We didn’t start the first bird until 6:20, there was enough light to start an hour earlier but we just didn’t get moving fast enough. That’s sort of to be expected on the first day. However, we were able to process 6 birds. The first bird went well and we just kept knocking them down. Karen did the scalding and plucking; I dispatched the birds and did the actual dressing. I was ambitious in pulling 6 birds, but figured we could always put them back if it took longer than planned. We finished off in about 2 hours, an average of 20 minutes per bird. It should go even faster tomorrow. Today’s effort resulted in 22 lbs of meat added to the freezer, an average of a little over 3 ½ lbs per bird – dressed. The birds have reached the end of their growth, there was some fat on the carcasses, but not as much as one might see on an older bird. The killing cone works great – not one broken wing!
We made a quick run to the feed store in Lobelville and picked up four turkeys. This should do us for birds in spring/early summer. There are still ducks on the way and the occasional, unexpected guinea clutch. Man, those guineas are laying eggs everywhere. You have to watch where you step. Walk into a shed that you walk into everyday and one day you will step on a guinea egg if you are not watching where you are going. We have an old wood burning stand, sort of a portable campfire. It sits behind the house and hasn’t been moved in years. The guineas are getting under it and laying eggs – must be 30-50 eggs there. If they can catch a broody hen getting up for a drink or to stretch her legs, guinea hens will run in and drop an egg in her nest.
Yesterday a bird fell from a nest. We have been watching a cardinal nest in the mock orange Karen planted in the front yard. We assumed that the bird fell from that nest. Karen took the dogs out in the morning and they found the bird. She was hard pressed to keep them away from it, but managed. When I went out to feed the birds in the tractor I heard something peeping. I had assumed it was one of the chicks and started looking for it – maybe it had gotten a leg caught or something. Last year one of the meat birds got its head caught in a feeder – it had somehow managed to get its head through a hole on the feeder and couldn’t get it back out. Well, after checking the tractor I couldn’t see anything making the noise and thought it was just coming from a tree and the hollow was doing strange things to the noise. As I walked away I could still hear it and it did seem to be coming from the tractor. I looked under a tarp on the tractor and found the baby bird Karen had told me about. It had climbed the wire up under the tarp. When it saw me it opened its mouth, like they do when waiting to be fed. I picked it up and went over to the cardinal nest. All the birds had hatched, but seemed sleeping. I put the little devil back in the nest and it commenced peeping and climbed out of the nest and back onto a branch. I must have put that rascal in three times yesterday and listened to it complain all day long. It would get out of the nest, down out of the tree and make it back over to the chicken tractor. I’m not crazy about the idea of a wild bird hanging out around the chickens – they can have mites and carry all manner of viruses and diseases, so when I’d see it hanging on the wire sides I would pick it up and put it back in the nest, all the time it would be peeping and carrying on. It occurred to me last night that it might have fallen from another nest in the yard and the poor rascal was trying to tell me it didn’t come from that nest – I was putting it back in the wrong nest.
Ended the day by getting the last of the branches topped from the trees cut down yesterday. The trunks were cut to provide 20 foot timbers and skidded to a location out of the way. Tomorrow after we finish another six chickens we will be dropping two large trees. Hopefully all will go well.
Regards,
Pat
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side_job
Re: Jun 2009 Personal Preps
Just a quick line. I have added a new pistol to my collection, this one is very small and could easily be concealed if need be. I have also been adding to my ammo count. Finally wally world got some 9mm in, winchester white box value pack for 20 bucks per 100. That didnt last long, now they are out again. Preparing to head out on our family camping trip. Bought some military style cots, going to try to get up off the ground this year.. also ordered "summer' sleeping bags. Trying to add to the ease of transport and set up.