Donkey Manners, Sidewalk, Goat Routines, and Spring Weeding

Yesterday Brandon and I took both donkeys on a walk around the little farm.  Ernest patiently let me put a halter on his face, and walked behind Brandon like he's had some practice using his walking manners.  Rufus was his same old silly self - balking at new objects, bumping into me, pulling ahead, kicking up his heels when asked to walk through a puddle.  Everyone had a good time.  Once the donkeys were back in their little pasture, we handed out some treats and Rufus put his ears back with jealousy and bit Ernest on the side.  This caused Ernest to run and kick up his back legs, which flipped manure onto Brandon's face, and nearly sent him tumbling backward over the water trough.  Ack!  Rufus!   

Check out our new sidewalk project!  One of the things we miss from our old house is the very civilized sidewalk from the driveway to the front door.  Now that we live in the land of clay soil, we understand mud in a whole new way.  

We've been tip-toeing from paving stone to paving stone for several years now, trying to keep our work shoes clean during the mud seasons.  In the summer months the clay soil is so firm setting stones is extra hard work, so Brandon is taking advantage of the soft spring soil and the extend days at home to create a continuous pathway.  Our own little piece of suburban comfort!  

The red bud tree I planted when we first moved to the farm is putting on quite a show this year. 

With the dirt that Brandon excavates for the sidewalk pavers, I'm filling in the herb spiral and re-arranging stones.  There's a few sage and oregano plants still living from last year, but most of the spiral is ready to be planted.  I have dreams of basil pesto.  

I'm making a habit of letting the goats out to graze each evening.  They are funny with their strict routine of where to eat.  They come out of the gate and head for the lush grass behind the tractor barn, then spend some time in the honeysuckle vines on the property boundary before wandering through the front yard to eat the rose bushes and pear tree, then to the bush honeysuckle near the hammock woods, then back to grass where they started.  After an hour of this, they are ready to follow me back to their pasture in exchange for a few treats.  Their chins are green right now from the new grass.  

I'm off to a good start with pulling weeds in the greenhouse.  I have only the center bed planted, and I meticulously pulled every tiny weed from the whole bed, and then transplanted some of the extra lettuce seedlings.  If only I would keep up with the weeding all spring.  Come on Rain, you can do it!  

Greens!  

Peas and onions, too!  

Fixing Foundation Cracks and Fence Holes

If I'm remembering correctly, the upcoming winter will be our fourth here at the little farm house.  Our first winter, the year of the failed rocket mass heater, was cold.  The second winter was warm on the inside, thanks to our factory made wood stove, but the water pipes under the house froze more than once.  Last winter, we put straw bales all around the foundation of the house to block the breeze from entering the cracks in the stone foundation, and the pipes never froze.  But then in the spring, we had a huge messy job moving water logged straw.  

Brandon was determined that this was the year he would fix the gaps in the house foundation.  Using a concrete mix plus some white gooey stuff, to make it more flexible, he patiently crawled around the entire house and troweled it into all the gaps. 

It took several workdays, and multiple sore back muscles, but he finished the job!  It's bound to help, right?  Plus, he's plugged up many of the snake and mouse access points. 

The house foundation isn't the only project he's been working.  He tackled one of the jobs the goats and I have been hoping for, which is to add enough fences to allow the goats into the overgrown fence line adjacent to the small back pasture.  The old fence line has a woven wire fence that is tangled with vines, shrubs, and small trees.  By connecting the side of the small pasture to this old fence, it allows the goats to browse all those leaves.  In just a few days they devoured so much of the tangle of vegetation that they identified some week spots in the old fence.  

Nibs also figure out that the old fence has perfectly sized holes for him to get his horned head stuck!  If you've ever tried to push on a goats head, then you know that they instinctively push back.  Trying to push a young goat back through a fence is nearly impossible, but now I know the trick.  If I put my hand under his chin and lift up, he's helpless to resist.  He's strong neck muscles only work one way, and it's easy to make him lift his chin and then maneuver his horns back through the fence.  It's a good thing this old fence is in the shade, because he's been stuck multiple times and had to wait for help.  He's been stuck enough times that he doesn't even cry now, he just stands or lies there calmly and chews his cud. 

Brandon has poison ivy all over from patching holes in the fence as the goats find them and escape.  When I came home from work to find all the boy goats (except Nibs, who was stuck!) roaming the yard with their bellies so stuffed that there sides were distended, and I told Brandon that they found another hole, he said with exasperation, "I don't even like goats!"  What!?! Ha!  

The Lawn with Chickens and Iris

All of the lawn was mowed at the same time!  And it was trimmed.  It took Brandon nearly all day on Sunday, working on and off at it.  He keeps expanding the area he mows, and even has a few places we refer to as auxiliary yards - near the road, under the zip-line, behind the hammock.  Plus the nature trail that wiggles it's way around the property boundaries and animal fences.  

Because the chickens will dig up any mulch that we use, most of my little fruit trees and other trees I'm encouraging to grow do not have a ring of mulch around the base to suppress the weeds.  This means the tall grass at the trunk of the tree gets trimmed with the weed-eater, and the base of the tree gets nicked and scarred.  I worry that this will kill the trees, but I don't worry about it enough to take on trimming them by hand.  Hopefully the repeated abuse will create a super tough bark scar that can withstand the whipping string trimmer.  

The iris are blooming!  

We've also begun moving the soggy bales of straw from around the house foundation to the garden to use as mulch.  Those bales are so heavy!  Before we placed the straw bales to block the breeze from entering under the house through the gaps in the foundation rocks, I read someone's advice on the interweb, and they said cleaning up the bales of straw was such a big job they would never do it again.  Now I know what they are talking about!  Brandon estimates that each bale weighs over three hundred pounds.  It's a soggy bundle that's hard to maneuver onto the dolly, and the weight causes the dolly wheels to sink into the soft earth.  Also, the siding behind the bales turned green with algae.  I think this will be encouragement for us to chink the foundation before the next winter.  Our pipes never froze this winter, so at least the straw worked. 

In the background of this photo you can see some of the rose bushes that we transplanted from a friends landscaping.  They are red "knock-out" roses, which I think I've seen around hotels and restaurants.  They didn't have much dirt on their roots when we picked them up, and had been out of the ground for more than a day by the time we got them planted.  

The roses were wilted, so I trimmed them back by more than half, and after nearly a week in the ground, I'm starting to see some life in most of them.  We planted roses in the front of the house, the workshop, and the studio building, so if we ever do get red flowers, they should be very visible from the approach to the house.  I hope it's worth putting thorns in our yard! 

It seems that it rains nearly every weekend lately, but Sunday was a perfect spring day.  Cool but dry and sunny.  We mowed, trimmed, gardened, and even hung all the towels out on the line to dry.  We are getting excited for the annual firefly festival farm party, and made a list of things we would like to accomplish before the big day.  I think any spare time we have next weekend will be dedicated to the pool.  It's almost pool time!  

Taking Shelter

This little building, just outside our backdoor, hides an underground space where we say we will take shelter if there's a tornado.  The spring winds have been so strong that Brandon made sure to clear a path through the items we have stored in there, just in case we need to make a quick dash for safety.  

You first, Wendigo.  She sniffs the air right at the entrance, but doesn't go all the way inside.  The walls of the shed have gaps, and wasps build their nests in the ceiling, and giant black rat snakes shed their skin against our stored lawn chairs.  

Boo!  Once you enter the tiny wooden shed, there is a steep and dank stairwell that leads down into the underground space.  And there's a creepy woman sculpture down there!  Brandon rescued her from a sculpture friends collection, and several years ago Jamie put her down in the cellar so she can scare us when we open the door.  She's been down there in the dark ever since.

Her arm is raised like she is shying from the sunlight from the open door.  You can see the underground room is round, and the domed ceiling is higher than I can touch.  Someone told me that if we were to be accused of a crime, and the jury saw our creepy lady trapped in the underground bunker, they would assume we were guilty, because only people up to no good would have such a thing.  Ha!  

The floor is solid, and has a thin layer of damp mud.  It's so humid in there that the dead spiders that hang from webs grow fuzzy with white mold.  The fuzzy spiders also cast giant shadows on the walls when you enter with a flashlight.  I really hope we don't have to take shelter down there, but it's nice to know we have at least one place to go that can't be blown away by a twister.   I'm sure the rickety old shed would collapse over the stairs, and we would be trapped!  If I disappear after a big storm, please come get me out of that creepy place.  

From the round cement wall come this strange assemblage of pipes.  We aren't sure what this round underground room was built for, but my guess is that it used to house a pump to push water from the nearby well, or from the nearby cistern, which could collect water from the roof of the house.  If the pump was stored underground, it wouldn't freeze in the winter.  Other guesses for this room have been an ice house, a cheese house, and a root cellar.  I think the humidity would be great for storing roots and fruits, but not so great for storing things in jars or bottles.  I daydream of white washing the walls, installing some lights, covering the muddy floor with gravel, and storing crates of homegrown pears and potatoes all through the winter.  

From the bottom of the stairs you can look up into the shed.  Even during the day, it's a little spooky in there.  The door usually swings closed when I don't want it to, and then I'm inside, in the dark, with the fuzzy spiders, snake skins, and creepy lady.  It's hard not to overreact.  Let me out of here!  

The shed door is two steps from the backdoor of the house that enters into the bathroom.  The shed is a handy place to store things, including the extra buckets and bags of sawdust and wood chips that we need for our composting toilet system.  

Hibernation Technology

Of course, the most crucial technology for an enjoyable hibernation season is a combination of our two oldest human inventions - fire and the domestic cat lap-warmer.  I feel we have perfected our winter hibernation experience with the addition of a few relatively modern technologies.  

The electric blanket on the sofa is nice, but even more exiting is our movie projector and a record player. 

The silver box on the left is the movie projector, and the brown case on the right is my new record player, from Santa Clause.  It also has a blue tooth function, radio, CD player, and even a tape deck!  I've been hinting that I would like a record player, but it took me a while to get Brandon on board.  He may have even referred to the idea of a record player as hipster nonsense!  I like to shop at antique and junk stores, and there are always lots of old records for sale.  We are exploring some music we rarely hear, and now we are hooked!  

The movie projector lives on a stand with wheels so it can be rolled into position.  The giant screen for projecting the movie lives mounted near the ceiling, behind the beam of our room divider. 

Our space is a bit small for such a large screen, so we have to recline the red chair so the screen can unroll.  The projector has it's own speakers, but it only plays DVD's.  It's best to use the movie projector after the sun has gone down, so the image isn't diluted by sunlight through the windows.  This makes the early sunsets of winter ideal for movie watching.  

We've been enjoying the entire series of All Creatures Great and Small, the BBC show based on the books by veterinarian James Harriot.  Sometimes at the end of a long day we settle in near the fire for our show, with a hot beverage and laps full of sleeping cats, and sigh with contentment.  Ah, the wonders of technology!   

Wood Stove Season

It snowed!  It was just a dusting, and didn't stick around long, but I think it finally settled in my mind  that the summer is over. 

Brandon spent hours last weekend chopping firewood from a fallen tree.  The tree fell from our wood line into the neighbors hay field.  It lay there for several weeks before someone used their tractor to push it from the field into the trees.  Brandon fought through the brush to claim it for firewood.  He thinks we already have enough wood stored from his efforts last fall to squeak through the winter, but he gets antsy without a surplus.  This new wood isn't seasoned, so it will be best if we don't burn it this winter unless we need to.  

That old saying about firewood warming you twice is true, he was overly warm from his efforts to saw and chop the tree, and and we haven't even burned it yet.  He was sore from all that chopping too, but the strength that comes from all the effort is just a bonus.  

Just look at the moat around the mobile chicken coop.  If I miss my dry path to the door, I slosh through the mud that softened up by the moles who excavate here.  Brandon curses and threatens the moles when he stumbles in their excavations, but I find moles so interesting I don't mind sharing our soil with them.  I like to envision a whole different world inhabited by strange predatory creatures under our feet.  

After the snow melted and the puddles dried up, I blocked the big chickens from using the mobile coop, and set it up as a shelter for my baby birds that have been living in the greenhouse brooder.  I stapled tarps over the open sides, filled the bottom with a thick layer of dry hay, stretched extension cords all they way from from the outlet in the barn, and hung a heat lamp, feeder, and water bucket.  I was so proud of my work I was convinced Brandon would mention the tidy job I did with the tarps.  As we took our evening walk he looked at it and said "You managed to make that ugly coop even uglier." What!?! 

Well, the chicks appreciate my efforts anyway.  The big Red Ranger chicks weren't too hard to catch to transfer to the mobile coop, but those little white leghorns are like canaries.  They fly!  And they run really fast.  They scrambled so hard to escape me that they kicked up dust in the brooder and I had tie a bandanna around my face to keep from choking on the chicken dust.  At night the little white birds are centered under the heat lamp with a ring of big red birds on the outside of the cluster.  I think they like their new digs, and are learning to jump onto the perches.  

At night the coop glows red from the heat lamp.  When I approach to look in the window all the chicks scatter and squawk like I'm the big bad wolf.  It makes me miss Helen and Mrs. Hall, my first chicks who were raised in a box in the house, and were so tame I could pick them up and feed them by hand.  

I hope the chicks enjoy the heat from their lamp as much as the house cats and I enjoy the heat from our wood stove.  I love wood stove season so much I can welcome the winter.  Do you love your wood stove too?    

Composting Potty - 3 Year Update

I checked the blog, and was surprised to find that it's been nearly three years since we started using our home made composting potty system.  Three years!  We've made some small tweaks to our system, but we are still using the potty that Brandon made and we haven't any concrete plans for an upgrade any time soon.  It must be working!  

When we were still weekend house renovation warriors, and I would spend time on the interweb reading about other peoples composting toilet systems, I always appreciated it when folks would give an update after using their alternative toilet system for a while.  In the photo above you can see our little plywood potty tucked to one side of the bathroom.  On the floor to the left of the potty is a plastic tub with fine pine shavings that we buy from Tractor Supply.  On the wall above, near the ceiling, is a regular vent fan made for bathrooms, which has a speed controller mounted near the light switch.  The vent fan helps keep the air in the room refreshed when needed.  A friend who visited for the first time told me after she used our potty, "it doesn't smell bad like I thought it would."  

In this photo you can see that inside the painted plywood box, is a five gallon plastic bucket.  This one is orange.  Different stores sell different colors, and every once in while, usually before a holiday or party, I buy a new bucket.  We now use a two bucket system.  Every time the bucket is emptied and rinsed, we set it outside in the sun, and put the other bucket, which has been outside, back in the potty.  This way we always have a fresh air dried, sun sanitized, bucket ready for use.  

We have found that after putting the clean bucket in place, it's best to put a big scoop of wood chips in the bottom of the bucket before it gets used.  This makes it easier to clean as it prevents toilet paper from sticking to the bottom of the bucket.  The pine shavings smell nice, and if each... ah... deposit, is adequately covered with wood chips, I haven't found smell to be a problem.  I keep a little brush handy for sweeping away stray wood chips from the lid and seat.  

Wood chips do get spilled to the floor and tracked around, but overall, cleaning this potty is easier than cleaning a flush toilet.  It's much easier to wipe down a straight sided box that always stays dry.  When we had a flush toilet at our last house, the outside of the bowl was often damp from condensation, which helped cat hair and lint stick to it and it was awkward to wipe off.  I had to twist my body into an uncomfortable position to clean behind the toilet and around the pipes and things that came up from the floor.  With this potty, I can move the plywood box out of the way and give the floor a good cleaning.  It's light enough that I can pick it up and move it wherever I want.  

"What's the status of the bucket?" That's a question we ask each other.  Every day, or every other day, or more than once a day, if we have house guests, the bucket needs to be emptied. We are lucky that our bathroom has a door to the outside, so we never have to carry the bucket through the house.   

To empty the bucket, we just raise the lid of the potty, grab the bucket by the handle, and carry it out the door.  Once it's empty, we rinse it off with either the garden hose or the shower head that has a hose.  If we use the shower hose, we dump the dirty water that collects in the bucket outside, so the shower stall never gets dirty.  Rarely does the bucket need to be wiped, as the water pressure takes care of most dirt, especially the hot water from the shower hose when on the setting where the water is concentrated into a single stream.  

In this photo you can see the distance we have to carry the bucket to the compost bins, which are under the biggest tree, past the greenhouse and garden. 

It's a wide grassy path to walk, and we sometimes do it after dark using headlamps. 

See that tall ragweed growing on the left of the photo above?  That's where the compost bins live.  They are far from the house, and screened by the tall weeds and a small fence. 

This is what you see when you walk behind the weed screen - seven large compost bins, with lids, that are open to the soil on the bottom.  During the spring and early part of the summer, when I had the garden hose handy, I would flip off all the lids (and frighten the black rat snake that likes to coil in one of the bins!), and water the contents.  I do this to make sure they have the moisture they need to decompose.  This fall, we will select the bins that have been inactive (no fresh buckets added) for over a year, and spread the contents on the hay field.  We did this last fall and the material was so decomposed there were no bits of identifiable material.  The oldest bins had decomposed so that nearly half of the bin was empty, and it was full when we stopped using it.   

I was going to end this post with a poop joke, but I couldn't think of one that wasn't crappy.  Ha!