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Posts Tagged ‘Chickens’

Getting Warmed Up

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Yes, I know, I’m overdue for a blog entry. As soon as the weather warmed up it seemed that everyone decided it was time to get their web page revamped. Every time I’d sit down at the computer I’d feel like I needed to be working on web work, and the blog could wait. It can wait no longer!

There’s so much to do and just not enough time to do it all. I’ve significantly cleared out the garden area along the edge and put up a 5′ tall fence. I’ve taken to throwing all of the brush on the outside of the fence to further deter deer from jumping it and hopefully it’ll be good wildlife habitat for less garden-aggressive creatures.

I decided to cut things back when I started planning out the exact fruit tree locations and realized that they’d be getting quite a bit of shade, and if I didn’t cut those trees back now it’d be a lot harder when the fruit trees are planted because the trees and branches could very easily fall on the fruit trees. It’s been sweaty work, but it’s finally done. I don’t enjoy cutting trees down, both on principal and my general dislike for running the chainsaw. It just makes me nervous handling something so dangerous.

Incidentally, a couple weeks ago I accidentally cut a tree down and had it fall on the straw bale place. It did some damage, but not nearly as bad as it could have. I’d actually taken extra precautions because it was near the house. I had a wench set up and had it under a lot of tension pulling it away from the house and cut an extra large wedge, but somehow the laws of physics decided to throw me a curve ball. I’ve since chopped the tree up, along with some others and will be inoculating them with shiitake and chicken of woods mushroom spore plugs in the next week.

I’ve successfully been driving the truck around without being hassled. So far I’ve picked up all the supplies I’ll need to raise the wind generator, supplies for the plaster that’ll cover the gravel bag foundation wall, a load of horse manure, and a heaping load of compost. The compost came at a price though. I didn’t realize that the new trailer that I’d been given couldn’t handle the weight I put in it. The person who gave it to me told me that he’d used it to haul compost and so I just filled it up. I didn’t realize anything was amiss until I pulled into the driveway and was clearly dragging something… it turned out to be the whole trailer. The neck part basically just bent, and I’m not sure what I can do to fix it. The guy who gave it to me does welding, but I’d feel bad asking him to fix this. I’ve considered just flipping it over and using a sledgehammer to bash it straight, but even if it’s effective it’ll still be weak.

Despite the tree falling on the roof and trailer breaking things have been generally good. I put up the gutters on the front part of the house and have been harvesting rainwater. All of my seedlings seem to be doing well. I was worried for awhile that some of the older seeds weren’t good any more, but they just took a little longer. I’ve got one of the garden beds planted with cool weather crops. I’ve added nesting boxes and a run to the old guinea coop in preparation for the chickens.

I’ve met some interesting people in the last few weeks as well, and everyone always seems to bring me things. A couple people from Columbia came out and brought me 3 loaves of freshly baked homemade bread which was absolutely delicious. I’ve even been invited to come out to the next bake so I can see how it’s done.

Yesterday, a guy that lives a little over an hour from here came up for a visit. He’s building a geodesic dome, and it turned out we had quite a lot in common. He brought me some great stuff that he’d got dumpster diving behind a Trader Joe’s. I’m quickly getting on board with the dumpster diving idea. It’s not exactly sustainable, but it’s certainly making good use of things that would otherwise just go to waste. You wouldn’t believe the perfectly good stuff that people throw out. He’d even found working power tools in hardware store dumpsters!

As with every post, I’ve got to talk about the weather. It’s been unseasonably warm here, it got up to 82 today and right now there isn’t anything close to freezing temperatures in the forecast. I’ve been sleeping with the door and windows open, and I installed a cat door on the screen door so Pink wouldn’t just tear a hole through it. He didn’t like it at first, but he’s getting used to it. The nice weather has made it all the harder to spend time inside working on the computer.

My next projects are getting the fruit trees in the ground, getting more manure, and raising the wind generator. I’ve had a lot of offers for help getting the wind generator up, but there’s quite a bit of prep work I need to do, and even then I need to think about exactly how it’s going to work and what people will need to be doing. I’m trying something a little… unconventional, but I’ll save that for my next video post.

Tags: chainsaw, chicken of the woods, Chickens, Compost, Deer, fence, garden, Guineas, Mushrooms, roof, shiittake, trailer, trees, wind generator
Posted in Chickens, Compost, Deer, Guineas, Mushrooms, Reusable Goods, Straw Bale, Wind | 3 Comments »

The Big Thaw

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

It’s finally happened. The weather has warmed to the point it’s no longer miserable to be outside. In fact, it’s down right pleasant and judging by the chorus of crickets and peepers, the wildlife would agree.

The change in temperature has been swift, but I remember being struck by how quickly the chirps and hum of nature disappeared last fall. One day it was there, and the next it wasn’t. Two days ago the woods were completely silent at night except for the occasional owl hoot, and yesterday it was as if everyone got the memo.

As the days have gotten nicer they’ve also begun to pass much more swiftly. That tends to happen when you’re constantly busy, web work in the morning and projects in the afternoon. I have to slow myself down at times because it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the sheer scope of everything. I’ve taken to making to-do lists every other night just to keep that next step in perspective.

I’m aiming to start setting up Tarpopolis again at the beginning of April. Once I empty the house out then I can start working on the interior roofing again, and after the last frost is past the plastering can start.

Until then I’m focusing my energy on the garden. I built a trellis in the garden and cheated a little by buying some bagged garden soil to plant the sugar snap peas in. I’ve also got a lot more seeds in the mini-greenhouse and coldframe although I’m a little worried I may have to restart some of them since I think I might have cooked them by not paying attention and opening them on a sunny day.

Due to some ridiculous beaurocratic wrangling with the DMV I wont’ be able to get a plate for the truck until early April. Which severely hampers my rotted manure collecting operations among a host of other things I need the truck for. I do have a plan on how I can still use it, however, it’s not exactly legal so I won’t post the specifics here. Big brother may be watching.

I’ve got several new sources for manure which I plan on taking advantage of. I’ll be adding a 4th vegetable garden bed as well as a 2nd perennial bed and then I’d like to add at least a small layer of manure around the perimeter of the main beds where I intend to plant berries and fruit trees in a couple weeks. All in all I’m probably looking at 8 full loads of manure and another 2 or 3 of free mulch from Columbia for the paths. It’ll be a good workout and warm up for the coming construction season.

A couple weekends ago Justin and Melainia came out and we burned a bunch of the brush piles that had been built up over the last year or so. I wanted to make bio-char out of them by putting them out before they’d turned to ash. The charcoal holds a lot of the nutrients in the ground so that they don’t wash away. Unfortunately I didn’t have any water so we just let it burn where I’ll be adding the new vegetable bed. The ash will still be good source of potassium for the plants.

One point of excitement was when we all 3 came back with bunches of brush to find flames leaping from the humanure pile which was maybe 20 feet away from the fire. It was amazing how quickly the pallets caught on fire as well, and putting the whole thing out wasn’t easy with the aforementioned lack of water. It was tempting to stomp on it, but it would be the equivalent of stomping out a giant flaming bag of poop on your doorstep. Justin made this excellent graphic which is certainly t-shirt worthy should the opportunity arise.

I was considering planting standard size fruit trees, but there really isn’t enough space in the garden for that. Instead I’m going to plant a lot of semi-dwarf and dwarf trees and have a big variety of different kinds of fruit. I’m hoping that these trees will serve as sort of the genetic stock for the eventual food forest in the ecovillage center.

Typically you don’t want to start a fruit tree from seed because you don’t know what kind of fruit it will have, for instance an apple pollinated by a crab apple probably won’t have very tasty fruit. However, if you start some of the trees from seed and then graft a branch from one of the tried and true varieties that I’ll have growing in the garden here then you’ve got something you know will be tasty. Of course, any trees grown like that will be full-size since size is determined by the roots and they won’t have the dwarf root stock, but that’s what would be more appropriate for the ecovillage anyway. Standards produce a lot more fruit and do so for many more years than dwarfs and semi-dwarfs.

I’m also waiting on the truck plate to pick up the pipe I need to raise the wind generator. I’m hoping I can get that next week and get it up and running soon. I did manage to fix my gas generator which hadn’t wanted to start since I got back so I at least have some power until then without having to go recharge my batteries at my friend’s place every several days.

I also picked up some trash along the road with some help from a friend last weekend. I noticed that people had still been parking at the driveway to the old cabin and littering it with more beer cans and bottles since I cleaned it up last year and posted the “No Trespassing” signs. Clearly they didn’t get the message so I lugged some of the 30 or so old tires that someone graciously dumped in the old root cellar and placed them as a barricade across the driveway entrance.

There are still another 30 or more tires in a ditch just down the road. I plan on using some of those in the garden to grow potatoes in, and saving the ones that are in decent shape for other uses down the line. A lot of them are really too far gone to do anything with and I may end up hauling them to a special tire recycling place not too far from here. I also posted a homemade “No Dumping” sign in the hope that it might make some sort of difference as far as future tires are concerned.

My current struggle of the moment is getting water in the camper. It appears that simply opening the main drain valve didn’t empty all the water out of the pipes and at some point the water froze and burst the water supply line in two different places. Neither spot is very easy to get at, but I’ve only had to cut minor holes so far. I’m on my 3rd attempt at patching them and each time I’ve gotten closer. In fact the last time they held for a couple hours, enough for me to take my first hot shower in the camper, but then one burst and the second started leaking. I think I’m finally on the right track now though and I should have it taken care of in the next day or two.

I’m also looking to get 3 or 4 laying hens and keeping them around this time. I considered guineas again as well, but I wouldn’t be able to actually have them out and tick hunting until late July again. They also don’t have the benefit of easily collected eggs and aren’t going to handle the winters as well. The chickens have stinkier poop, but I think if I only let them free range around the campground and construction site every other day or so then it won’t be too big of an issue I’m hoping. In the future I’d like to get guineas again since they have a wider tick-hunting range and they’re just kind of cool, but I’ll save that for another time.

So that’s where I’m at. I’ll probably start having visitors out on the weekend of March 27 weather permitting if anyone’s interested.

Tags: ash, bio-char, burst water pipes, Chickens, coldframe, Columbia, crickets, DMV, dumping, dwarf, fruit trees, gas generator, grafting, Guineas, humanure fire, interior roofing, license plate, manure, mulch, peepers, perennial bed, potassium, root stock, seeds, semi-dwarf, signs, standards, sugar snap peas, Tarpopolis, truck, used tires, vegetable bed, wind generator
Posted in Chickens, Cold Frames, garden, Greenhouses, Guineas, Humanure, Organic Gardening, Recycled Materials, Ticks, Visitor Lodge, Wind | 3 Comments »

Making Connections

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

It’s amazing how many connections I’ve found by just doing what I’m doing. Jesse’s mom, Anne, raises alpaca only about 15 minutes away from here. She’s offered to let me take her “alpaca beans” off her hands, some of which are already well rotted. I’ve only gotten one small load so far since it was muddy and now everything is frozen solid.

While I was talking to her she mentioned she had a local guy who DELIVERED straw bales for $2/piece. They’re not anything I’d use for construction, but for stacking around the camper and eventually becoming mulch, they’re perfect.

A nice guy named Charles delivered the bales and while we were unloading the bales I was just talking with him and the fact that I didn’t have a larger propane tank came up. I tried to get one in town but they were sold out, and in any case they were pretty expensive. Well Charles said they had a couple 100lb tanks(holds what 5 grill-size tanks do, which I was using). So, I ended up getting one from them for about half of what they were going to charge me at the store in town.

Connections can be powerful, but you have to be open to them. If I hadn’t talked to Anne about straw bales, I wouldn’t have met Charles, and if I hadn’t talked to him about stuff I wouldn’t have gotten the tank. Even a few years ago I may not have been extroverted enough to just start talking to people.

I’ve actually talked to Charles a couple times now and shown him around the straw bale place. He had a lot of questions and seemed kind of excited at the idea of being able to build like that. He even asked me for the website address to find out more about it, so hey, what’s up Charles? if you’re reading this.

I had just enough bales to cover the trailer as much as I wanted to and also make a compost bin out of bales. I’m going to put fresher manure in it to break it down. The bales should keep it warm and I’m also thinking about putting some clear plastic over it to heat it up and speed it along, that’s why I left a few bales off of the south side for better solar gain. Oh, and the bales will give off heat as they decompose, adding to the heat generated by the compost which will be even hotter thanks to the bales insulative value.

I’ve also taken the chicken tractor and removed the door on one side. I found a really cheap roll of clear plastic drop cloth and stapled a couple sheets over the run and the now opened nesting box. I oriented it to run east-west, ie, face south. I also put a couple inch layer of straw underneath it. I plan on putting some bricks and bottles of water in there to regulate the temperature and hold the heat into the night.

Today was sunny with an actual high of 40F according to weather.com. I got two outdoor thermometers and set one outside the “solar coop” and one inside on the straw. I checked it this afternoon and the thermometer sitting outside the coop in the sun read 60F, and the one in the house read 100F!

I’m actually hoping the bricks and water will moderate that high somewhat. I’m going to use the solar coop to start my garden plants. A lot of seeds are supposed to get started 8 weeks before the average last frost, which is April 15 here. So, I’ll be starting several flats of seeds in the next 2 weeks. I’m sure I’ll be checking on them far more than need be, it’s my nature.

I bought a couple of T-105 deep-cycle batteries a couple weeks ago. I’ve got them all hooked up and now have juice in the camper without having to go out and turn the truck on and off. I have a wall-charger and can take them to friends’ houses to charge them every week or so when they get a little low.

I’m excited about getting a wind generator set up and be truly off-grid. I’d really like to build one, but I’m trying to prioritize as best I can. The situation as it is right now isn’t too bad, and I think having a real roof over my head should be my top priority.

I can’t imagine that I won’t have the house ready to live in for next winter, but just the same I want to be sure. I went and picked up some more of my favorite free used billboard tarps. I’m going to use them to line the inside of the roof rafters and stuff the space between with wool and cellulose. I’m taking it piece by piece since it’s hard to work with by myself and it’ll be easier to take down to fix leaks or run pipes and wiring up there later if I need to if it’s in smaller pieces. I’m going to put pieces of wood on the outside of the rafters to hold the tarp in place better since it’ll be fairly heavy with all of the insulation.

Anne, who I’m getting the alapaca beans from has a bunch of rough wool she can’t use for anything else. She said she’s been using it for mulch in her garden, but wool is an awesome insulator and even holds it’s insulative value when it’s wet, though I don’t intend it to get wet. I’m thinking about asking other people with sheep and alpacas(I’ve heard of others) to see if they have wool they can’t use. Connections.

I also continue to be contacted by all kinds of interesting people who find that what I’m doing resonates with them. Keep on writing, I enjoy talking with all of you. I’ve also gone out of my way and contacted several of the local universities. William Woods University in Fulton has offered me as much horse manure as I want and a few professors at the University of Missouri have given me some good references about Native Americans that lived in this area, specifically ethnobotany(what they ate and used for medicine), but also traditions, rituals, etc.

I’m going to try to plant a lot of native plants in the garden here. Hey, if they grow here already without anyone having to do anything, think how easy they’ll be to grow in the garden. My kind of gardening.

Tags: alpaca beans, Anne, billboard vinyl, camper, cellulose, Charles, chicken tractor, Chickens, Compost, compost bin, connections, coop, deep-cycle batteries, insulation, Jesse, manure, off-grid, plastic drop cloth, roof, solar coop, Straw Bale, thermometer, University of Missouri, William Woods University, wind generator, wool
Posted in Compost, garden, Greenhouses, Recycled Materials, Reusable Goods, Solar, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 3 Comments »

Maya Creek Christmas 2009

Friday, December 25th, 2009

After some soul-searching and continued annoyance with referrals to the morning after pill I’ve decided to change the name of the Ecovillage. I’ve gone through a few different ideas and some conferring with Justin and Melainia I’ve settled on Maya Creek Ecovillage. Almost the entire watershed is on the property and it’s easily one of the most beautiful features of the land. The road that will eventually go out to the ecovillage center will pass along several especially beautiful parts. What a way to be greeted home!

It’s snowing out here on the land today. Big fat flakes dancing around in the gusty wind. There was a little snow on the ground when I arrived but it melted quickly the first day. I’ve only been out here for about 5 days.

It’s gotten colder since then, but I’m keeping warm. The propane heater is keeping the camper warm and I’ve also started using one of the kerosene lamps in the evenings, which also puts off a good amount of heat. It makes it smell a little, but nothing like the kerosene heater did.

It’s not a large area to heat, but the camper has exactly no insulation. That’s why I’m using a bunch of the rejected straw bales I have left over from the house to just wall in the camper for the winter. I’m going to hang one of the billboard tarps from the trees over the camper to keep the bales dry It’s ok if they degrade a little because I’m going to use some of the wet ruined bales to mulch the garden this year.

I started on it, but didn’t want to hang the tarp first because it was supposed to snow and I wouldn’t have been here to knock it off and make sure it didn’t just collapse and tear the tarp. Even with just third of it I’ve done it’s made a difference. I put that part up to block the prevailing winds, but I’m sure once I get the bottom done all the way around it’ll make the floor a lot warmer too.

I wouldn’t have been here because I was supposed to be in Minnesota at the family Christmas, but the same storm that’s snowing on me made a barricade of ice between here and there. Snow is one thing. Ice is another beast altogether. I’m still going up there, but just going to miss today and post-Christmas eve. I’d been looking forward to seeing everybody and I’m glad I still will.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for the winter out here. The first thing is to get the trailer baled and get the water running, especially the hot water. I’ve been worried that the water might freeze in the tank or in the lines, but I think once it’s all baled in that won’t be a problem.

The next thing I’m going to do is make a hot bed, which is basically a cold frame that you put compost under to keep warm. I’m going to try growing some greens and who knows what else in it. It’s a stepping stone to a larger greenhouse I’d like to build out in the garden area. I’ve already got some good ideas on the design.

My next bigger and much more expensive project is to start generating some power. I didn’t really want to spend the money just yet, but I found an awesome deal on some amorphous silicon thin-film panels. They were only 98 cents/watt, which is outrageous considering the next cheapest I’d ever found before was $1.74/watt and that was at this same web site. I ordered 10 Kaneka 60W panels from Sun Electronics in case anyone else is looking for cheap panels. The next cheapest place I found was Affordable Solar, but even it’s best deal is $2.69/watt and most of them are much much more.

The camper has a battery-powered lighting system and I have an small inverter I can use for now, but 600W will be way more than enough for just me. Even just taking the minimum average hours of full strength sunlight per year and minimum panel efficiency I should get at least 1.5 kWh/day or roughly enough juice to use my 90W power hungry giant laptop for almost 17 hours/day. Obviously I wouldn’t use my computer that much, but it gives you an idea.

There are a still a lot more expensive components to buy and then I’ll have to assemble them, the toughest of which will be mounting the panels on adjustable mounts that I’m going to make myself. The batteries and the charge controller will be the most expensive pieces, and the inverter isn’t cheap either.

I’ve learned to scale down my expectations somewhat on how quickly I can get things done, but not as much as I had worried I’d have to. So, building the green house and the solar power system are my main things to get done, but somewhere in there I’m also going to set up a small biodiesel production system to process waste vegetable oil for use in the truck and future vehicles and engines. That’ll cost a bit to set up as well, but nowhere near the expense of the off-grid power system.

And, as if I could get all of that done I’m also thinking about building a nicer larger guinea/chicken coop with insulation that I can fit inside the greenhouse. It’ll keep the birds warmer and they also produce some CO2 and body heat for the plants. At some point I’d like to be able to move the coop to another greenhouse though so I’m going to keep that in mind.

Other than that, the straw bale house is standing up nicely to the elements, even without plaster or gutters. The tarps certainly aren’t very charming though. Everything else said and done, I’m enjoying living in the camper. It’s cozy, everything is within arm’s reach, and it takes 5 minutes to clean from top to bottom. I hope everyone else out there is staying warm and dry.

Tags: amorphous silicon, biodiesel, body heat, camper, Chickens, Christmas, CO2, cold frame, coop, greenhouse, Guineas, heat, hot bed, insulation, Kaneka, kerosene, Maya Creek, off-grid, power, propane, snow, solar panels, Straw Bale, sun electronics, waste vegetable oil, winter
Posted in Chickens, Greenhouses, Guineas, Solar, Straw Bale, Visitor Lodge | 3 Comments »

The Rise of Tarpopolis

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Once people began arriving out on the land things began to pick up and time for blog writing quickly vanished. Liz got here about 2 weeks ago, my dad and Charlotte just left after spending a week here and bringing lots of tools and goodies as well as helping out a lot, building a solar oven, mulching, etc. We’ve also met a great couple that lives right in Fulton, Melainia and Justin. They’ve got a composting toilet in their house, keep chickens, and have a garden. They both work at MU and Justin is in plant science and has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of plants.

There have been a number of large developments. First, the driveway has now been graveled. We still need another load which we’ll spot place on the trouble spots and use for some other projects as well as using it for the rubble trench foundation of the straw bale building. No more stuck cars! I just wish the gravel came from a dry creek bed instead of a quarry, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The composting toilet is now basically complete. I would still like to add a hand-washing station on the side and I’m going to paint the front white so it matches the vinyl wrapped around it. It seems to be working great, no smell or flies. I’ve emptied the buckets into a simple pallet compost bin near the garden and it doesn’t even resemble… poop. Just some brown sawdust textured material.

Thanks to dad and Daniel the paths are quickly becoming mulched and are now mostly mud free. Although we are going to have to dig some french drains, or ditches filled with gravel to keep them open, around the bigger communal tarps to divert some of the water that runs down and soaks the ground and makes things muddy. We also need to patch some holes in the tarps. There’s still a lot of brush to be mulched, especially for the garden, but we’ll get there.

There are now 3 tent platforms, Daniel moved into the 6-man tent my dad and Charlotte left for us and put his mattress in it. Then there’s another platform that hasn’t been nailed together yet, and needs a tarp, but it’ll be used for visitors who camp out. I also hung up a giant 15’x40’ billboard vinyl that now houses our nice kitchen setup and new screened-in picnic table. I’ve taken to calling our little settlement Tarpopolis as the tarps spread through the forest.

Liz built a chicken tractor and as of today we now have 4 Rhode Island Reds, 3 hens and 1 rooster to help expand the clan. That brings our current population to 7 full-time residents. We also picked up 6 fertilized guinea hen eggs, which we’re going to attempt to have the chickens hatch.

We really want the guineas because they eat a lot of ticks and range far and wide. The problem is that adult guineas tend to leave and return home, normally you want them from babies and train them to come home to a coop at night for a feeding. Another cool thing about them is that they can fly and so you can build an open-top fenced in area where they can fly into and be safe at night.

So we’re going to get the hens to hatch the guinea eggs we’re going to wait for the hens to lay a few of their own eggs and then switch them out with the guinea eggs because they take a week longer to hatch and then a week later we’ll put those eggs back. At least I believe that’s the plan. So, if all goes well, the tick population is in for a massive decline and it couldn’t happen any sooner.

The solar shower is the next big thing on the list, and I’ll be heading out to get some pieces I need and working on that tomorrow. Clothes washing was another big thing that we didn’t have answer for until Melainia and Justin offered to let us use their little hand crank “Wonder Wash” machine that does a small load by turning a crank. We haven’t tried it yet, but I think it’s a good temporary solution.

After the shower gets done we’ll be getting the garden going. It seems like a million little jobs creep up on you and makes getting the main projects completed take a lot longer. It’s all good as long as we can get started on the actual straw bale structure soon, hopefully in the next week we’ll be breaking ground.

So that’s it from here. If anyone wants to come out we’re giving tours every Saturday at 2pm and we had our first meetup group meeting today which had a total of 6 people at it. I think she’s planning on having the next meeting on May 23, but I’m not sure on that.

Tags: chicken tractor, Chickens, composting toilet, Humanure
Posted in Animals, Chickens, Humanure | 1 Comment »