And to end February

February went out with a bang today, ending our weeks of 60s/70s temperature by getting down to 34 last night.  One last horrah.  Thank you February :-)

I have been reading through an incredibly detailed, incredibly useful link on Poultry.  There is a lot more info than just poultry, but I'm not ready for that stage.  Here's the link, start reading!

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Poultry.html

I got in all my seeds over the weekend.  All I lack now is the strawberry plants (set to come in & be planted this week), and I'll be all set.  Also, 2 of the pullets will be going to live on a farm - literally, not metaphorically - today, and another 2 will be going to live with Tara at another time shortly. 

The last thing for the week, probably, will be the renting of a rear-tine tiller from Ace Hardware.  My front-tine tiller broke again, and I'm just tired of dealing with it.  You can't beat $8 to rent a $400 tiller!

See you in March!

Random Thoughts

I've now completed day 3 of the P90X workout video series.  WOW.  It is brutal, but I feel amazing already.  And sore, very very sore.

I got my bloodwork results in today; all looks good!  That's great to hear...now to eat healthier than I have been.

Another windstorm hit us today, but we lost no fence posts.  Thank goodness...

The house next door to us sold.  Maybe they'll be the bees knees and won't care if we have chickens?  Heh...

That's really all for now...not too much happening.  We did get a nice soaking of rain, so the potatoes have a nice kick-start to their growth.  Can't wait till next week - the entire garden is getting tilled, and the Strawberries will be planted.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Exercise

I had a doctor's appointment last Friday.  It was the first appointment I think I've ever had where nothing was really wrong - I just went for a general checkup.  That's not to say I'm not at the doctor often - if you know me, you know that I have many, many, injuries every year, and I practically have my own room at the local doctor's office and Emergency Room.

But this time, it was a little different.  I turned 25 the other day, and decided that I would rather know now if I need to change something in my lifestyle, rather than finding out 5 years from now, sitting in a hospital bed.  I'm not stupid; I know I don't eat the healthiest, so I figure my cholesterol is probably a little too high.  Luckily my blood pressure is perfect, I'm not overweight, and I try to be very active.  The thing that made me consider doing this was when some VERY bad storms hit while I was hunting one day.  The lightning was frequent and getting closer.  I decided sitting in a metal deer stand was probably not in my best interest, and took off running with my gear pack (it probably weighed about 20 pounds).  The distance from the stand to the truck was a tad over 1,000 feet, or about 1/5th of a mile.  I had to stop and rest on the way back to the truck - in doing so I was literally ashamed (not to mention scared out of my flipping mind from the lightning which had just hit 15 feet away from me).  It was such a helpless feeling...I was so fearful for my life in this crazy storm, but I had absolutely no energy, no drive, to push and keep running.

I brought this up to my doctor.  Sadly, I have been plagued by incredibly painful arches over the last year.  He suggested trying one more thing, then going to orthotics;  regardless, running a few miles like I used to is now out of the question.  I'll need to work out inside the house, but I am not the kind of person who enjoys getting on a treadmill for an hour and mindlessly walking 5 miles.  No thanks.  But there is one thing I am now intrigued by - perhaps you've heard of it.  It's called P90X, and from what I hear, it is a brutal kick in the groin.  It's going to really suck the first 2 weeks or so, that is guaranteed, but after that I'm hoping it will help my energy level rise, as well as help me to be more active.  I often think back to that day in November and feel how helpless I was, and I never want to feel that again.  There's a lot of things we as humans have no control over, but I feel I should at least be able to run for my life.

I'll admit, this is a weird post.  But you get what you pay for :-D

Peaceful

When doing the nighttime chores (locking the chickens in, refilling feed & water, etc), I have found that, while it takes a few extra minutes, it's such a peaceful feeling to do the chores in the dark.

After a while, my eyes adjust to the starlight and moonlight, and the calmness sets in.  All the animals have just about gone to sleep for the night, and the crickets play a song as the moon casts shadows in the dark.

Goodnight everyone.

Planting Dates

As I was working all day in the garden yesterday, when I planted onions and carrots, I remembered that I had not posted the planting dates.

I like to plant onions, carrots, and lettuce earlier than this (February 19th), but oh well, that's just the way it goes.
Potatoes I like to plant between the Full Moon in February and President's Day.  This year, that date range is the 18th - 22nd.

Strawberries will be planted March 1-8.
Corn, Beans, and Cucumbers will be planted sometime between March 20 and May 1.  According to my 2010 gardening journal, I planted these on April 4th.  It just sort of depends on the weather at the time.
Shortly after the Corn, Beans and Cucs, the Tomatoes will be planted between March 25th and April 15th.
Next, the Peppers will be planted sometime in the month of April, followed by the Southern Peas being planted between April 1 and May 20th.
Cantaleoupe, a big letdown from last year, will be planted sometime between April 5th and May 1st.
I don't have a schedule made up for the Fall planting dates, but I plan on getting one together soon.  There are many vegetables that grow much better in the fall, here in Texas, thanks to the incredibly hot summer ending.

Some other gardening notes:

On the lasagna method, which I spoke about a couple posts ago, I have run across one negative...well maybe.  Most tillers (at least the one I use, for sure) cannot till through all the hay, so you'll have to rake the hay out of the way, till, then rake it back on top.  It kind of stinks, because I wanted to till the hay into the ground.  But I guess having a thick layer of hay mulch will be pretty awesome.

Completely unintentionally, I "planted" a cover crop over a portion of my garden last fall.  What actually happened was, I put down wheat straw, and the wheat seeds germinated, then grew :-)  So after it started to grow, I thought "why not, cover crops are good."  Well now that it's time to till it all in, I sorta wish I had a horse and plow, because this stuff is FIRMLY rooted into the ground.  That's the point of wheat as a cover crop, but probably is not realistic for such a small scale garden.  It took a long time to get it uprooted, and that was only about 20 square feet of wheat grass.  Notice this clump of wheat grass - the root structure is incredibly thick and intertwined, and (you'll just have to trust me on this) is very hard to separate.

Planting Onion plants

I thought I'd write up a little how-to on how I planted the onion plants I bought ($0.89/60, not bad!).

First, I tilled the few square feet where the onions were to be planted.  I flattened the ground so digging furrows would be easier.  I then used my hoe, or my hands, to dig a furrow.

I took a handful of onion plants and started setting them in the furrow about 4-6" apart.

I then simply pushed the soil back onto the onions, which are now at about 1-2" deep in the furrow.  I then compacted the ground around the stalks, to provide good root-to-soil contact.  I did not do that last year, and I believe that with this tip, I should have a better production rate.

 Well, that about sums up everything from this weekend.  What a beautiful weekend it was, and it was great to soak up the sun outside.  I can't wait to see what this year's garden holds in store!

Thankfulness

I wrote out a long post about how difficult things have been lately, with such an incredibly large amount of work at my job.  But then, I deleted it all.

I'm so extremely thankful for the opportunity to even have a job, much less make a great salary and so much more.  Complaining just seems so wrong when there are millions of Americans without a job, a home, or money.  So help me out - let's all be grateful for what God has blessed us with, even if at times it can be extremely stressful.

Shh!

"We're not supposed to be here!"

Tilling around chickens

Due to all the mayhem lately, very little has been done in the garden.  The lasagna method of soil preparation seems to have REALLY worked well.  However, for those interested in trying it, I do have a few suggestions.

• Horse manure is great - there are far less weed seeds than cow manure.  The areas with cow manure have considerably more weeds than the areas covered with horse manure.
• The manure that you choose, try to find it "fresh."  The manure I used had been composting for a couple of years.  Although it is a great soil additive, it didn't really heat up, which is part of what you're aiming for.  
• The hay on top - use the best you can find.  Usually it will be called "Coastal Bermuda."  Buy a lot in the summer before the prices go up and quantities diminish near Halloween.
• Be sure to spray it down with water if you haven't gotten precipitation for a while.
• Use thick cardboard if you live in a very wet area.  If you live in a dry area, use thinner cardboard.  The wet soil will decompose the cardboard faster, so obviously the wetter places can get away with thicker stuff.

Now that it is nearly Spring, it's time to rototill all of this back into the ground.  Problem is, there are chickens in the garden.  They're not terribly easy to move, either.  So I'll just have to rototill around them (I'm sure they'll love that).  Actually I will probably lock them inside their coop so they aren't frightened.  With the lasagna method, I shouldn't have to till too deep - probably just around 6-8".  I had put around 6" of horse manure on the soil, then covered it with hay.  It has now settled down to about 3" high, so that will give me a good combination of original soil and manure.

Obviously the most critical areas of the garden are the areas where things need to be planted immediately.  Unfortunately, that's a TON of area.  The entire potato area needs to be tilled by next Tuesday (2/22/11) and the Strawberries will be planted two weeks after that.  The peppers, corn, and tomatoes have a while, so they aren't of immediate concern, but I think it would probably be in the best interest to go ahead and till them since I'm out there.  Since I planted the onions last night, I will have to be very careful tilling around those as well.  

Well, on to the hard work!  

And now, for a recap.

(Note that I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, so when I say "it is" it should be "it was" etc.)

Since Blogger was causing me so many problems, and it now appears to be working, I thought I'd give a recap of all the things I wanted to post!

Yes!  We now have chicks! We went out to Terrell (about 30-45 min. east of Dallas) and picked up 4 six-week-old pullets, and 2 two-day-old Silver Laced Wyandottes.  The chicks are currently living in a small brooder, and will "graduate" up to the bigger brooder in a couple weeks.  The bigger brooder is being used (although a tad cramped) by the pullets, because....

IT'S FREAKING COLD!  The temps in North Texas dropped...like a brick of lead in the ocean.  I'd say the average temperature for the last day or so, and for the next couple, has been in the mid-teens.  At night it's getting down to around 13* F, with a wind chill far into the negatives.  The entire Metroplex is covered in a thick layer of ice (locally about 1" - 1.5" thick).  There have been rolling blackouts, frozen pipes, and wrecks galore.  Animals are living in the house, and going outside requires 10 minutes of preparation.  The dogs are afraid to pee out of fear!  Not only did all that hit, but, a portion of the fence fell in the storm (that makes 10 posts snapped and 15 fallen panels since moving in).  Because of that, we couldn't house the chickens outside.  They are illegal chickens, and if the neighbors behind us saw them, we'd for sure get written up and they would be removed.  It sucks, I know.  But those are the crappy rules.

And yet, I had jury duty.  Not city, but county, which meant 9 hours of sitting and waiting in downtown Ft. Worth (only to be told I was dismissed, yahoo!).  This just happened to coincide with Superbowl XLV being held RIGHT down the street, and mass chaos ensued all week.  Remember the ice from above?  I'm sure you heard about how big of a disaster the Superbowl was thanks to it.  

So eventually I am working from home, during the "Snowpocalpyse."  Going well until...bam! hit by a ton of bricks, aka the flu.  I've never had the flu, and wow - the flu had my number.  That number was 102, as in degrees Fahrenheit, for three days.  Needless to say, nothing got done around the house.  When we were finally able to drag ourselves to the kitchen, we found that the pipes had frozen (see Snowpocalypse, above).  "Life is so cruel," we thought....

But now, life is back to normal (*is life ever really normal around here?).  The pipes are unfrozen, there are illegal chickens eating bugs in the back yard, there are 2 chickens sitting on our dining room table, I no longer have the full-blown flu, and best of all, the dogs are no longer fearful of frozen pee.

Life is great around here.

Potatoes!

My most favorite thing to grow, potatoes, will be bought today.  To me, it's the "kicking-off" of the gardening year! 


More to come later.  Obviously there has been a big lacking in the posts lately (even after I promised to post more).  Well there's...adequate...reasoning.  But more on that later.

Blogger

I am having a TON of problems with this website (hence the absence of posting for the last week).  Nothing is posting when I tell it to post, and half the time the website isn't accessible.  Argh!

Anyone else experiencing things like that?

Defining Liberty - A Short Essay

Warming: This article may be hazardous to your health and readers are encouraged to not participate in such a dangerous reading activity ;-)

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I see a lot of regulations these days, and my mind constantly retreats to a specific dream I once had.  The dream was of a man and his wife, living in the foothills of a discrete mountain.  He and his family had lived here for years, decades even, after his ancestors arrived in the push across this great country.  He and his wife were happy people; they lived in a cottage they built themselves, heated their house through the cold winters with wood they cut and split, and ate the food they grew and killed on their property.  It is obvious that this was merely a dream, because these people paid no property taxes!  Their lives were a constant - never bothering anyone and never bothered.  They just...were.


In today's world, however, this sort of ideology would never last.  You see, one has to question, when skimming the news headlines for all of 15 minutes, how we as humans made it to the year 2011 without the invention of such institutions as the post-1920s American Government, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and similar agencies.  Surely life before these came about, life was filled with terrible, disease-ridden people who lived only until they drank some raw milk, or perhaps burned an outdoor fire without a permit.  Afterwards, they were sure to fall over dead.  

Give me a break! People have lived for thousands upon thousands of years without these invasive agencies and will continue to once these agencies are gone.  I don't deny that the agencies were formed in good reason, but the monster they have morphed into is an all-consuming, all-regulating giant.


Recently I began thinking, "what is true liberty?"  Liberty is defined as: freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.  I much prefer an alternate definition, though: freedom from control, interference,obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.

When we think back to the American pioneers and frontiersmen, we think of men, women, and children who lived nearly as if they were the only ones on the Earth.  I'm sure they had interaction with others, occasionally, but for the most part they lived alone, working to provide a better means for themselves.  They used America's natural resources to provide sustenance and life - and they did so without applying for permits, taking OSHA approved safety courses on how to operate their tools/machinery, and they did so completely free of being told how to do it.  Why is this so important to me, and others like me?  Because at that point in time, and only a few years beyond it, did Americans exhibit pure liberty.  I believe that if we, as Americans, want to regain control of one of our founding virtues, then we need to return to an Agrarian type of life.  The caveat to this is that it would undoubtedly require work.  Work is seen by the lazy as unnecessary - something that can be done by others.  And because this laziness infiltrates just about every nook and cranny of America (more specifically the cities), America has very few options to correct it.  I would like to venture out more into that topic, but I am limiting this essay to, mostly, defining liberty.  I have a strong feeling that America will either be forced to enter an agrarian lifestyle, out of an incredible economic depression, or that America will become a country no longer based on independence and liberty, but rather on a Socialist/Communistic style of economy & government.  I am not intending to make some sort of political statement; I just feel that in order to satisfy the overwhelming (and growing) lazy portion of the population, things will change.

Liberty was once at the core of the American soul.  It was something that was respected and loved, but most of all, Americans were liberty.  When the country at risk of being run over by tyrants, it was the liberty that kept them going, kept them fighting.  Liberty was not granted to them by an agency.  It wasn't something one could apply for and exercise at another's discretion.  Liberty was, simply because interference was not.