Spring is in the Air!

Busy days at the little farm. After a fall and winter without the beef cows across the way we are excited to see the return of a new herd of about 30 black and red Angus cows. I suspect some of the previous herd is in freezers across NC.  As  usual the days have been busy around here as we continue to work at revitalizing the old buildings and getting the garden started.

We have gotten the new metal roof on the garage and replaced the two front support posts that were rotten and termite ridden. That job was hired out, as we just can't do it all. Though I think we could have if we had the time. This fall I am hoping to get it resided. The framing is actually pretty sound. I dream of adding rain a water collection system at the back which would probably catch enough water to water the garden. There are two "lean too"  sections behind the main "garage buildings.

Friend Andrew tilling new plot

Karen working the Broad fork

The garden plots are all prepped for what we will plant this spring and summer. That was one of the most laborious and time consuming tasks so far. The ground was hard as a rock(almost) and after the tiller broke up the top inch or two of sod, the rest of the deep soil loosening was done by hand, and foot. The broad fork is my new favorite hand tool. With some effort it will loosen the most compacted soil to about 12 inches deep. It took about 6-7 hours of work to prep each 5 x20 foot bed. We have 10 beds...

Tomato and peppers heading to garden

Our tomatoes,  not a vineyard...

 We have the tomatoes and peppers  in and a raised bed of various salad greens that will soon be harvest-able.  We had to cover them up a couple nights this past week after a cold front brought some frost this week. It looks like we dodged that bullet. I lost a little sleep over that. After raising the plants from seed, and planting over 40 of them it would have been a tremendous loss. Hopefully no more temps in the 30's at night.  When it warms up a little more we will plant the beans, summer squashes, cukes, and melons. Strawberries are ripe and and Karen and the kids picked several small pails and we have been eating them all weekend. Karen and Ethan also made some jam to enjoy over the rest of the year.



After the garden is in, the next big project is going to be laying the five tons of flagstone for our walkway from the garage to the house, about 115 feet. Surely that will be a piece of cake! :)  I think we are looking at several weekends of hard labor there.On a brighter note, our new chicks(45) to replenish and build our laying flock arrived in the mail this morning just as scheduled. We will keep about 20 and sell the rest to friends and neighbors. I forgot to get a picture of them. Next time.





 And last but not least an introduction to the newest member of our family... just arrived last Friday, semi spontaneously, and we have yet to come up with a name that suits him. He is part American bulldog, part shepherd, and only God knows what else, but we like the final package. If I do say so myself I have never seen a cuter puppy! 

                                                             As the kids say...OMG!




                                              Until next time....the view from the back four.....

Spring Projects....

So the spring weather has really opened up the opportunity to get more things done around the farmstead. Our biggest priority right now is getting the garden ready for planting. Before we can even contemplate doing that we needed to put up a deer fence. This took about two weekends to erect the posts and then get up the actual fencing. Although the post hole auger was a help we still had to drive the metal posts(13 of them) almost two feet into the ground by hand and sledge hammer. Hard labor pretty much sums up that job! Thanks to Ross "the deer hunter" we got them all in in the ground in a few hours. Ethan was the inspector.

The only reason we are smiling is because we are done!

The following weekend we were on our own to erect the actual 7.5 foot high fencing. The garden space is 78 x 78 feet. It will take me two to three years to use all the space as planned.

This past weekend I had a couple friends from work come over to help do some barn restoration. Primarily replacing some dry rot and post termite ridden framing. I had the place carbon dated and it dates back to the early 1900's...just kidding, but probably close.

Hard to appreciate from the photo but this pole was dry rotted pretty much from bottom to top.




Look at this picture slowly as we were very proud of our work... and it took the good part of the day for three of us to complete. You can't appreciate some of the inside work we had to do at the top of that corner post. I was a bit worried thebarn would cave in when I cut out the bottom section, but it did not budge. The rest of the framing is decent, a few more 2x 4 to replace inside the front and it will be ready for the siding to go up.

This a view of the garden from by the front of the barn. You can see a few of my garden beds...almost a weeks worth of work there..but that is another story.

Warmer weather, more projects...

We had a beautiful weekend of weather here in NC. This is just a look at the chickens and guinnias waiting to get outside in the morning to start hunting for bugs.

This was my new "toy" for the weekend. A trencher. I spent most of Saturday digging (not diggin') 300 feet of 24 inch deep trenches from the house to the garage to the barn. The electrician laid the conduit to run the wire next weekend. We figure it will be a nice family project to put all of the dirt back !

This is one of five bluebird boxes Ethan and I made from salvaged barnwood. Our yard seems to be some kind of bird haven with a lot of bluebirds, bluejays, robins, finches, cardinals(state bird), woodpeckers,... and occasionally a dead bird from the cats.


Sunday Aki and I spent some time in the sun together on the front porch starting some of our garden plants. These are our peppers, herbs, and some flowers. Next weekend we will start the tomatos.

And this would be Jacob, the bird hunter...after an exhausting day of doing next to nothing.

Snow!, a couple weeks ago...

Hi Folks it has been a dry spell here again. Pretty much we have been holed up waiting for spring. I wanted to share a couple pictures of the only snowfall we really had this year to amount to anything. But this is actually from a couple weeks ago already. The house has performed amazingly over the winter from an energy efficiency standpoint. Our only utility bill is electricity and our monthly bills over the winter have averaged about $85,... a far cry from our $500+ natural gas bills last winter in the rental house!

We actually are having much more mild weather now with temps often reaching the 60-70's. Trees are starting to bud out and bloom. With that comes a spring list of things to do, so I'll keep you updated on current happenings this spring

Merry Christmas, etc.

Sorry for the lack of activity here. Things have been a little slow with the cooler weather and darker days. But I finally took some new pictures to catch up on things, so this is rather long!

Our friend and deer hunter Ross has had a successful fall hunting season. He bagged two good sized bucks from his perch up in the barn loft, the door of which overlooks our field. We have a group of about 15 deer that stll arrive nightly. He and our family are now well stocked with venison for a while. There are still plenty left, including another good size buck which he is "saving" for next year. This might be him below?(from our bedroom window)

I have been busy the last couple weekends building some good sized compost bins. I was able to build the bulk of them from re-used lumber from the section of the barn we tore down this summer. It took about half a day to scrounge enough to use. A lot of it was split and rotten. I hope I get a few years out of them.

Unfortunately the current compost pile had to be hand moved so I could place the new double bin where it will stay until it falls apart. There is never a lack of physical activity around here. The bin in the foreground is a beehive style, you can break it down layer by layer. I think we have a good supply of compost material to get the garden started. That is our old guinna hen cage in the far ground, they moved in with the layers so I re-purposed it to hold our shredded leaves for mulch in the garden this summer. Beyond that is a pile of leaves yet to be shredded.

This is our rock garden that Karen and the kids cleared out of weeds. The rocks accumulated around these trees during our land clearing and the building process over the past year. We planted a lot of wild flower seeds in between the rocks. We will see how it does this coming summer. I hope the chickens did not eat all the seeds we planted. I likely will need to fence it off if things grow until established, or the chickens will have a good time eating all the seedlings.

And now some more random pictures....

This was our first turkey we roasted for Thanksgiving...it was AWESOME!, as was the one we just had for Christmas... still not sure we will take them on this summer or not though.

Speaking of birds, the laying hens have stepped things up lately in the egg production. The last few days 9-10 eggs a day for 14 birds. Pretty good for the winter! I think Ethan had a talk with them when I kept threatening they would be chicken soup if they did not start producing more than 4-5 a day!

Speaking of Ethan, ...we feel quite lucky he still has his head attached! This is the aftermath of him trying to duck under a fence at the last minute while riding his bike at full speed!! That mark goes around to the other side as well. Fortunately the fence was just a taunt cord with some give in it, and his guardian angel was looking after him!

Speaking of angels, ...

O.K., angels might be a little strong, but they sure are cute! Speaking of cute....

Ha ! Just kidding, ... speaking of just kidding....

Our version of American Gothic! ... Karen preferred the more traditional family picture...

Still trying to get used to that green house! Speaking of green...

This might just look like an ugly green bowl to you. Actually, it was a Christmas gift from the kids that makes me smile every time I see or use it for my breakfast cereal. When I unwrapped it, Shalo promptly and proudly told me "We got it from the dump! " ... that's my girl !... As many of you know we can be on the frugal side. We are well known at the dump for checking out the recycle building. You never know what you are going to find! This was actually a Veitri brand bowl from Italy. And these are the crazy shoppers ...

I will accept an ugly bowl from them anytime!

So that should catch you all up with us down here. It has been a busy, yet rewarding year for our family. We have a busy, year ahead with many more projects to go. We feel blessed in many ways and are thankful for them them all. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night...and upcoming year!

Fall Harvest and Shed update

Just a quick update. The shed is nearly completed, ... other than getting the front window in. It blew over one day and broke during the construction process. I just got it back from the glass shop yesterday. But otherwise I am quite pleased with how it turned out. That stack of lumber in front of the barn is the siding for the front of the barn and north side of barn. Yet another big project, but after building the shed, I think that will be pretty easy. The hardest part will be replacing any "rotten" framing underneath, which overall is rather minimal. It may wait until spring. I will dry stack the lumber in the barn for the time being.

This Saturday is out fall harvest of the meaties. This is Ethan starting to say good bye, he really will be glad when they are gone I think, as he did not particularly enjoy cleaning out their three waterers every night. We have 45 left out of an initial 56. Neighbors dog got about six, hawk one, one gimpy one that had to go (despite our initial efforts to nurse her along) and one of unknown causes.

From Barn to Beach...

Things have been pretty busy down here the past few weeks. Karen and I have been continuing to plug away at the barn addition/coop, the kids have just finished up their fall break. The coop is turning out nicely. Below is a shot of the walls framed up. I divided the area up into a garden tool storage area, a chick brooder area, and the far section is a 12 foot chicken coop area. It should allow us to easily have up to 30 -40 layers should we choose to be that crazy. Currently we have 14 hens. I don't think they are all laying yet, as on a good day we are getting only 8 eggs. Some days only 3-4! I suspect they are hiding some where we are not finding them.


Karen patiently spent an afternoon helping me heft the rafters into place and listening to me curse how different the birds beak notches were for each one, mistakenly I cut them all at once after the first one fit perfectly... if I ever do anything like this again I will know better. But all in all the roof framed up quite nicely.
Aki is a good helper if you keep a close eye on him!
Putting up the metal roofing went pretty well, again I had to have Karen help heft and hold each panel until I could secure it in place. There was a brief learing curve with the screws, but overall it turned out nicely. The hardest thing was keeping from sliding off! The roof is actually finished, and I have the front of the addition sided and windows up. Hope to finish siding the ends this coming weekend. It is a slow process with the batten board siding. Lots of cutting and nailing. But it is looking good. More pictures soon.

Towards the end of the day the turkeys dropped by to check things out!

Actually, I think they were trying to stake their claim on the new digs for a new roosting site!

We took a day off to take a day trip to the beach in Wilmington, NC... it was about a three hour drive. Nice weather, relaxing,.. but a long drive for a day trip. I think worth it as the kids had a great time...