homestead – Page 4 – Raising Wood

June 30, 2021April 23, 2026

Leaving the Edges, and Frogs

In the bible there’s a principle shown in God’s law. Don’t over harvest your fields. When you harvest the field just make one pass over it. Leave what’s left on the ground for others to come and glean from. Leave something on the edges that can help others, and the whole community can prosper. A short and beautiful story that centers around this concept is the book of Ruth.

Leaving margin for others to flourish pays off. I don’t often see it this clearly though.

This hose repair has been so bad that my co-farmer-lady removed it from the yard and stuck it out in the pasture. But it really was useful! The frogs certainly enjoy the showers.

Even when the water is off they can be found nestled in the brick crevices. They’re multiplying and moving into the garden, devouring some of our pests. We’ve even discovered that a pile of grass clippings in the garden becomes a home for these cold blooded allies. It’s moist and cool and a perfect lair to lurk upon Larry the Lima bean muncher insects.

Turns out, leaving something on the edges of the field can help the fields bring in a greater harvest for the whole community.

June 15, 2021April 23, 2026

Surprises

You never know what will pop up when you walk the pasture. Jenny found this:

In a pasture that looked like this:

I expect it’s a duck egg. But it’s more interesting to imagine: A renegade hen who escaped from confinement housing. Beth is now laying about open pastures with free range egg strategies. You know, like the plans of the noble fowl in the seminal documentary Chicken Run.

June 11, 2021April 23, 2026

Got the Blues

Part of the beauty of our farm property is a building that was a milking parlor for a dairy operation. We’ve converted it into a feed storage, workshop and child development facility.

Last year our livestock really wanted the feed inside. They broke the door from this building into the pole barn pasture. The quick and dirty farm fix was : board it up with Craigslist pallets. Then I walked away until more time was available.

This past week time was available. We’re always looking to improve it process, and waste time is often walking the long way around because this door doesn’t work.

A friend of mine was unhappily required to run an estate sale for a family member. I was happy to find a new home for this door. The color choice is driven by the best outdoor grade paint on the ‘Oops’ rack at Lowe’s. I spray the first coat with the sprayer and walk away.

Rock the goat would not let this process go without protest. He left his marks all over the door. So the second coat needed some prep work.

The curiosity may kill the cat, but here, it gloms to the goat.

June 1, 2021April 23, 2026

“Snake Season is Here!”

“Snake season is here! No really, look at all these posts on Facebook about snakes this week!” So Jenny shares a comment stream about monster snakes coming out in our county. It is spring after all.

She does have cause for concern. Last year I eliminated 3 cottonmouths from the property. We put cats into the workshop to deter them. If the cats eat the rodents, the snakes don’t have food. They also don’t like snakes and will kill small ones.

I scoff. “Snakes won’t be around. The cats will keep them away, haven’t seen anything since August anyways.” Within 24 hours I was required to recant.

Mr(s) Rat Snake was perched in my shop window. “Where are these crafty kittens? How can the cats let an invasion happen? Why hasn’t this snake moved in the time I took these pictures?”

Wasp on the case, but totally really not looking at Mr(s). Rat Snake

I go into the shop and find perfect stillness. Not a tongue flicks out, not a glance at the snake. Oh sure, the cat Wasp was moving all about licking herself and looking all around this serpent, but never at the serpent. The stalemate is real. Snake can’t go forward, and backing up exposes the neck. The cat Wasp can’t make a move because the distance is to far. So no one moves to the fight.

I’ve introduced the boys to Kipling’s The Jungle Books. There’s a recurring theme in the loosely fitting narratives. The eyes of the snake contain paralysis and death. Don’t look at the snake! It’s in Mowgli stories and Ricki Ticki Tavi, the mongoose who kills malevolent cobras. I thought it was a mythological apparatus Kipling incorporated, but maybe it’s more then that. He was a keen observer of the wild.

After 5 minutes of watching and having Jenny come see, I pulled the snake out on a rake and threw it over the fence.

What? Keep the snake?? Yes. It is shy and non venomous. It fills a predatory niche in this ecosystem. If the rat snake supplants the aggressive and poisonous cottonmouths, it is a real win. Maybe awareness of the new cat sheriffs in town will percolate throughout the meadows and forests warning all pests to leave the shop alone! Kipling would be proud.

Don’t look at me, I don’t sharpen my claws on these haunches.

May 23, 2021April 23, 2026

Captive Rainwater

Collecting rainwater from the rooftop has been a goal and this past week marked a significant step forward.

The front quarter of the rooftop is now guttered. It collects water to flow to the tank.

Used tank on craigslist required some cleaning out, fortunately there are helping hands around here.

One it was cleaned, time to run pipes. The vertical pipe is a first flow diverter, the dust off the roof runs off first and is diverted into a drain so the sediment doesn’t get into the tank.

First flow diverter is also a support for the pipe

I’m not accustomed to pipe projects being a race against the weather. This day was a race against the thunderstorms, and p it the last pieces together as the rain started. What’s the end result?

Captured rainwater with good pressure from the tank

May 21, 2021April 23, 2026

Training Chickens

Chicks don’t stay chicks. They get bigger. As they get bigger they become more cold tolerant and more aggressive in their hunting and eating capabilities. Here are some adjustments we’ve made.

It’s time to start moving them outside in increments. Every morning with good weather we put them in the top deck of the mobile chicken home. They are sheltered in here until they are comfortable heading downstairs, and they are also learning that the stairs are actually there.

2020 was the year of the RV, and the chickens are no exception

Once they come down the ramp they have access to water, feed, and most exciting: fresh turf.

You can see the rope on the front and this allows us to easily move the chicken RV to a new patch of grass every day.

What does moving the chicken RV do? First it keeps the birds from hammering down and destroying the grass. Second, while they are on a patch of turf it is being heavily fertilized and aerated. Third, chickens like to scratch and peck and hunt, and every hunter loves new territory to hunt. Fourth, chickens eat plants. The chlorophyll is great for their bodies and new grass is tasty grass.

For now they come back inside at night, that will change next week. Ready to live outside fully when the weather is fully warm.

This week I found a 8in snake dead in the yard. I brought it inside and tossed it to the chickens. After watching the birds lightly peck the serpent for a while I got bored and went away. Then they found their taste for the snake because when I came back it was completely gone, which is where this picture came from. Good work chickens!

Chicken training so far: going down a ramp, drinking water, and eating snake.

April 14, 2021April 23, 2026

Got that One Wrong

Sometimes you take a leap and it works out. Other times you miss the ledge and go tumbling down…like this time.

Craigslist ad has a 5ft rotary cutter for a good price. Looks good , runs great, has ac, ect.

Go pick it up and it’s too wide for my 5.5ft trailer. The good ol boy with the monster tractor tells me it’s called a 5ft cutter because it cuts 5ft, not because the deck is foot.

Nodding agreeably I give him the cash and strap it on the trailer, a bit janky but chipper about the deal and confident it’ll work.

Turns out, she’s too big and too heavy by far. It took the wife and I 30 minutes to even unload it from the trailer.

The tractor hydraulics won’t lift her. I asked a friend helped me troubleshoot. “these two spark plugs wires are severed!” So we fix those and it doesn’t help. Check the dipstick “you need more fluid!” So we add more fluid…and no go. Check for hydraulic leaks and there are none.

Ladies and gentlemen, I messed up and bought a heavy piece of equipment. Now I can’t load on anyone else’s trailer. It’s on Craigslist now waiting for someone looking for a deal who can bring their own tractor to pick it up.

April 7, 2021April 23, 2026

Stone Age Tractor

Over the past year we have celebrated using goats and cattle to manage brush and grass. It’s a running joke that we could either spend 10k on a depreciating asset (tractor) and do extra work or half that on an appreciating asset (livestock) and let them celebrate doing the work.

Over the winter, we noticed the pastures cut for hay did better at growing new grass to stockpile for winter. Our property is small and doesn’t come out very economically to pay a profitable rate to hay balers. How could we cut down old growth to make room for fall growth when the livestock can’t keep up with summer growth? For sure, the push mower was off the table.

Then I get a note from my Dad:

Now the cost benefit starts to look better: it won’t loose any value, maintenance costs are low because parts are widely available, and the hard work of restoration has already been done by a trusted party.

Life lesson: it is worth listening to other people’s experience. If you asked me to consider something older then many museum exhibits last year, I would have laughed. I like history but I don’t work history. But a friend talked about restoring an Old Ford 8n (similar tractor) and getting a lot of utility from it on his land in Georgia in a passing conversation. I didn’t do anything with that data except mentally file it away. That planted a seed that these really could be a viable option. (Thanks Dave!)

So I put a new battery in and learned how to drive it.

Next up, every good tractor needs some implements, and this needs some maintenance checking when the manual comes in the mail. Updates to come!

March 12, 2021April 23, 2026

The Power of No

Last year was our first venture into livestock. It’s been a learning experience and I encourage everyone to at least try it at some point. We were blessed by our first goat purchase being out of someone’s backyard, they were very helpful and informative about what is healthy and what is not, and yes, theirs were healthy.

We’ve bought other goats from commercial operations, turns out we bought some problems but nothing debilitating. We’ve bought from other midrange production farms that took hours to get to but provided quality doelings (not yet bred girls) at a reasonable price.

This recent experience was different. Text the guy from Craigslist, he confirms most of our questions. Good price and good deal. So we load up the kids, drive the hour out there. Find we find out the seller doesn’t live here, he just bases his sales here because it’s close to Fort Worth and brings his stock down from Oklahoma.

Friendly guy, very happy to talk about his animals and his extensive experience and credentials with livestock. Hail-fellow-well-met approach to selling.

But as we listen, we hear about his problems with his herd. How the worms are always there and no one can get rid of them. How this pathogen is always there too, but these ones are healed up…nope, nope, nope.

When you run your own operation, you are responsible for what comes on the property. The easiest way to prevent pestilence in the pasture is to never bring it onsite. After watching the final doeling emit a bloody stool, we said no, thank you and left.

It’s a good word, the word No. I hope my son’s and daughters learn it early. Better to make a round trip and pickup pizza (when did a large pizza get so small??) on the way home then bring hours of problems and death back to the home.

March 8, 2021April 23, 2026

Stymied by the Velocity of Water

In the fall last year we put a lot of work into pulling the shingle roof off the house. Insurance wouldn’t cover it and it was just waiting for a storm to destroy it.

I installed a metal roof with a radiant barrier underlayment. I am looking forward to seeing how the energy savings stack up this summer. If nothing else it’s nice to not worry about a roof for the next 50 years.

The project was to install gutters on the roof top capture the water running off the roof, rather then water carving deep channels under the foundation. The plan is to harvest the water into a rainwater collection system and use the sweet, sweet rainwater for the garden and livestock applications.

First line of gutters installed and…nope. Not going to work. The water coming off the rooftop is moving so fast is just zips right over the top of the gutters.

The next phase of this project will be building out the eves with wood to increase our installation surface area, and then moving the gutters up closer to the actual rooftop.