New beginnings

It's...been a long time.

It has been about 2-1/2 years since I last blogged on here, and for good reason. Well, reasons. So many changes, I don't really know where to begin.

Well I guess I'll start with our daughter (!), who was born a few weeks after the last blog post. She is now running around like any other toddler, though we call her a "Threenager" since she's (nearly) 3 and acts like a teenager. Haha. We'll call her M for blog purposes ;-)

I got a LOT of my Mustang rebuilt (see my other blog). Painted the front end, new suspension, lots of new parts and lots less money. 

We're also expecting another girl to be born in a few weeks! We'll call her C... very excited, but maybe not so much with being overrun by girls (3:1 now, come on).

But the biggest news (for this blog's purpose, anyway) is..........

.........(drumroll)..........

We sold our house and bought a homestead!

It's not the 10, or 5, or even 3 acres we dreamed about, but that just was not going to happen unless we waited for months or years. I kid you not, I've been looking for something with our criteria for years now and there have been, maybe, 3 properties which suited everything.  All that being said, there's nothing wrong with the house & land we're on. It's heavily wooded with a few open spots for gardens and such. The most beautiful 30-40' tall Oak trees ever. 

Our neighborhood is (as we've been told by jealous friends in the area) one of the best neighborhoods to be in, and it has been. Sweet people everywhere, most of whom are older & retired. I'll upload some pictures later, along with some of the plans we're working on. Right now it's just work, work, work, to get the house ready for kiddo #2.

Thanks for checking in!

Stephen

We're back!

With a lot of excitement to come!

More to follow later...

A year in review...

I certainly didn't blog as much as I would have liked in 2011 (and to be honest, there's still time!), but it was a good year.

In case you hadn't heard, Texas is a smidgen dry.

Dry, and hot.  We had something like 75 days over 100 degrees. 

Now, it normally gets hot in Texas during the summer, but when the large high pressure system moved into Texas and refused to budge, we were stuck with agonizingly long, sunny, hot days with no cool spells to help.  So we waited for rain, and waited, and then turned on the sprinklers for a little bit, and then waited...

And nothing ever came.

But, all was not lost.  The potatoes grew very well.  So well, in fact, that we're looking at selling 2012's bounty at a Farmer's Market, to make a few extra dollars.  The peppers grew pretty well, and the onions did well.  Everything else kind of died off.* While there is not much hope for 2012 as far as reversing this drought, I will plant again and hopefully God will bless us with some much needed rain.  The rain barrels are full :-)

*The tomatoes I grew died off miserably in the heat, and to my surprise, came back to life in September!  We didn't get a lot, but it was neat to see.

One of the major problems with 2011 was "what do we do with all this food!?"  The answer is to preserve it for later, but we did very little preserving.  That should change next year.

So, that's about it for 2011.  I'm sure I'll post a few more times before the end of the year, because 2012 is nearly upon us and I have a lot of work to do.

There was one other little crop that did pretty well in 2011.  It should be "ripe" in a couple weeks or so, and should weigh about 7-8 lbs., and be over 20" long.  :-)

Hoss Wheel Hoe

I want one of these so bad.

Transition

 

The lack of money = the lack of opportunity

It's a sad realization, but it is what it is.  It seems that in every aspect of life, you can have A, or you can have B, but you can never have both A & B.  As I continue to look for land (or land with a house) I'm finding that I just have too many criteria.  Call me a dreamer, but maybe one of these days it will magically fall into my hands.  If not, well, I'll have to compromise somehow.

The three major criteria I have are that: 1) I still need to work at my regular job, which means I need to be able to drive a reasonable distance to work.  2) I would like at least 5 acres (preferably 10), so that I may raise at least 1-2 small cows, along with sheep, chickens, turkey, and whatever else.  3) I need the land to be cheap enough that, when I add on the price of building a house, I'm paying about the same as what I'm paying now.

Obviously the last one is the one that jumps out to most people...many claim it to be impossible (maybe it is), but hear me out; Right now, I'm paying an annual property tax of nearly $4,000.  There is a good chance I would not be paying that much out "in the country," and so when you divide, say, $1500/12 months, that knocks $125 off your payments.

Then, you look at the price of water, electricity, and trash, and you're down even more - perhaps $200 a month (in the summer at least).  With wood heat, preferably free from my woodlot :-)  you've knocked even more money off per month.  So what I am getting at is that, yes, living in the country is cheaper per month, but buying all that land to being with is a very high expense. 

So, getting land.  I could compromise on one of the other two, such as less acreage, or moving father away.  Less acreage is exactly how I got into this predicament to begin with, so I doubt I'll go that route.  Moving farther away has already been ruled out from my dear wife, who doesn't like driving that far to begin with.  So, time to either start saving money, or find a good deal on land / house building price.

Recently I found 4.3 acres in Venus, Texas, which was exactly in the area I wanted, and was very cheap.  It also wasn't that far of a drive.  .  I could have pulled the trigger, but I didn't, because it would have meant compromising on land size, and the land was north-sloping.  It was really hard not to buy that land, but, I'm glad I at least stuck to my "goals."  I let out a big sigh, but I'm not sure if it was relief or regret.  Dang that land was cheap.

Until another day...
Stephen

Pretty awesome little story

http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/the-man-who-created-paradise-by-gene-logsdon/

Gene Logsdon is awesome.  It's long, but a great read.

Corn & Furrows

I bought "Delectable" hybrid corn, and when I planted about 50 seeds in 3 rows, I was expecting nice results.  I got nothing (okay, I got 1).  What a letdown! 

Now, I'd like to say this is some type of experiment I had come up with, but what it actually was, was just bad gardening.  I am learning gardening, for the most part, from books and the internet.  So when I heard to plant X" apart in rows spaced Y" apart, I did just that.  I planted something like this:

Now, 3 weeks later with 1 single seeds sprout, I dug it all up and re-planted, but this time, I planted at the bottom of the "trenches" I had dug - so,like this:

Now, obviously my rows were nowhere near that high, but I had to use those exaggerated pictures to show you what I meant.  I have found that the bottom picture (planting in the furrows) worked better.  It seemed to retain water better, and did so without flooding the roots, because eventually the rows flattened out, and water didn't set on the bed.

Anyway, maybe that info can help anyone else.  Perhaps the seeds being raised up on the row-tops, they just needed a lot more precipitation than what they were getting (which should have been plenty, but whatever). 

The first garden-grown strawberry

That.
Was.
Sublime.

:(

I want to post.  Boy, do I want to post.  I just can't.

"Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorry that Heaven cannot heal."

So long, pullets

The last of the illegal chickens are leaving today.  It'll be sad to see them go, but it was fun to raise these little ladies from a day old.  I can't believe when we got them, they were the size of a tennis ball.  Here's a few pics before they leave.

(The chickens secret pen which hides them pretty dang well)

Bye ladies!

Egad! Giant Potatoes!

I don't know why, but these potatoes are growing to be monsters!  Now, it could be that my first year growing them, last year, were just small.  But I think these are just huge.  One of them, for example, is over 2 feet tall, though I have "dirted" it twice, to keep the potatoes growing under the ground.

Here are how the potatoes are looking.

Here are the big ones.

Also in my pictures, you're able to see the garden hose irrigation lines I set up.  Here are a few more pics, where you can see the total layout, and the fittings I used.  Like I posted earlier - pretty simplistic.

The past 2 weeks, I've spent many hours in the garden.  It's so relaxing to be out there, walking barefoot through the soil, picking weeds, the breeze keeping me cool even with the temps in the high-80s.  It's one of the few things that is real work, but puts my mind at ease.  I think the Vitamin D I'm picking up is also having quite the effect on  my mentality - it sure is better than sitting in a flourescent-lit office.

Well that just about wraps up all for today.  I'll have more later!

Borrowed from The Deliberate Agrarian

I, in no way, want to take credit for this - I'll make that clear right off the bat.  I just found this so enlightening and wanted to share with my readers as well.  Herrick Kimball puts out a wonderful blog every month, and this was just a small portion of it.

Find his blog here.

Here is (a part of) what he wrote:

"Every so often I feel the need to reiterate and expound upon the differences between Christian agrarianism, which I espouse, and the industrial order, which I oppose. This is one of those times...

I see industrialism as a usurper, taking, reshaping and reordering all aspects of life as God designed it. The antithesis between God’s order and the industrial order is enormous.

Where God designed simplicity, the industrial order imposes complication. Where God established the beauty of diversity, the industrial order demands uniformity. Where God, for his own sovereign purposes, established inequity, the industrial order declares that there must be equality. Where God mandates decentralization, the industrial order mandates centralization. Where God has declared that man must work and live by the sweat of his brow, the industrial order endeavors to remove this requirement. Where God has said to look to Him as the source and provider of all good things, the industrial order supposes that it will supply all good things, and that all people must be dependent on the industrial providers. Where God thinks and acts multigenerationally, the industrial mindset cares little about the generations to come. Where God says for mankind to trust in Him, the industrial order says to trust in it. Where God has designed sustainability and economy within his creation, the industrial order disrupts, destroys, poisons and wastes creation. Where God created and defined what a family is and how it should function, to best serve Him, the industrial order has redefined and reordered the family, to best serve the industrial interests. Where God declares that a full and rich life does not consist in the accumulation of things and riches, the industrial order loudly declares just the opposite. And, finally, where God has declared what is good and evil and has decreed that there will be consequences for sin, industrialism neither recognizes sin nor believes it has any responsibilities under God."

Ugh, stupid blogger!!!

I try to write often, but I've found recently that the "post at a scheduled" time button doesn't even work.  I have several posts now that I thought were posting, but are still in my drafts.  So dumb.

I'll spread them out over a few days.  No idea why that feature stopped working...it was awesome :-\

Drip system installed!

I'll be sure to get pictures later.  Like most things, I did this in the dark, haha.

So, you can order 250 feet of soaker hose online, but you're going pay a hefty price for it (unless you get the cheap brand that fails after one year...no thanks).  I have debated over what to do with watering, and I've thought of drip systems, sprinklers, soaker hoses, and just watering with a garden hose.  Here's the pros/cons of each:

Drip System
Pros: Long, slow, continuous amount of water provided to plants.  Can be placed right at root level.  Saves money since no water is wasted.
Cons: Expensive to set up, lots of fittings

Sprinklers
Pros: Lots of water provided very inexpensively (since sprinklers are installed in my yard already). 
Cons: Very wasteful of water, due to evaporation and/or wind.  Water is provided from overhead, and must have time to soak through mulch into ground.

Soaker Hoses
Pros:  Water applied at the roots.  Long slow continuous amount of water provided to plants. Cheaper than drip system.
Cons: Some water is wasted, since hoses need to run between rows/plants that is just watering the ground.  Slightly expensive.  Requires lots of fittings.

Garden Hose:
Pros:  Lots of water, versatile to move around.  Very cheap.
Cons: Wasteful due to evaporation/wind.  Annoying to drag a hose to each plant, and very time consuming.

So, what do you do?  Clearly the drip system and soaker hose are the best approaches for the benefit of the plant, but are expensive.  Well, luckily I am an engineer and can never settle for doing things the simple way.  I built my own.

Home Depot was having a great sale on garden hoses, so I bought 300 feet (wow!) of garden hose, for $40.  I created a unit of measurement, which I called a "link," that is a 15-foot strand of garden hose.  Thus, from 300 feet, I have 20 links.  Perfect, since I needed 17 links for the garden.

I also ordered (from Amazon) some 5/8" tees and elbow fittings for these hoses.  I could have done without the elbows, but oh well.  They were a couple bucks. 

Now with my links all cut, and hoses laid out, the fun began.  I tediously walked along and drilled a very tiny hole every foot (or 6", or 10" - whatever the spacing of the plants was).  As of right now, I'm about 3/4 done.  My back said "I'm through!" so that was it for last night.  Then came the test. I plugged a cork in the end of each hose, and turned on the spigot.  It took a little bit to get the pressure up to par, but it finally did, and then I turned it down a bit.  I let it run for 30 minutes, under the mulch, at root level.  Perfect.

In the end, I guess I could add up all of my expenses and it probably would be a little more expensive than the soaker hose plan, but it was a "custom" install, so I'm happy with it.  And it's still a lot cheaper than those expensive drip-irrigation systems.

I'm pleased :-)

Now I have to ask, what will I do when I have a garden that is an acre or so, one day!?  Yikes!

Some questions & tips

Feel free to answer any of these questions, if you know the answer.  I have a feeling on what to do, for some of them, but who knows - I've definitely been wrong before!

1)  It would be nice if everything sprouted on the same day, grew & bloomed at the same rate, and was ready to harvest on the same day.  Unfortunately that is not the case, at all.  I have some potato plants that are barely peeking through the mulch (~0.5") and some which are over 6" tall and HUGE.  According to my Gardening Guide (the best vegetable book ever written for Texans), I need to "dirt" the plants once they reach 5-6", with 3-4" of dirt thrown on the base of the plant.  Like I said above, though, I may have one plant at 6" tall next to a tiny sprout.  I've just started dirting the ones that are growing strong, and go back later over the ones which are lagging behind.  It will be interesting, because there's only so much dirt to be thrown on top, lol.

2) The question that I seem to never get a straight answer on: If I'm planting in a ridge-and-furrow style, which I am for cucumbers, corn, beans, strawberries, and potatoes, where would you put the soaker-hose for watering?  I've heard to lay it in the furrow, because it encourages the roots to grow down, and become stronger.  I've questioned these people, as to how the seedling would get water to sprout, and how the roots would reach down (about 4-6") to even reach the water?  I never can get a straight answer.

3) Here's a tip - potatoes can be grown in rows 2 feet apart, but that is probably about the limit if you plan on dirting the plants. 

4) Hey, let's throw a random one in here...does anyone know how to keep chicken from drying out when cooking stir-fry, or in a crock-pot? 

5) Though I don't have any pictures yet, I'll be sure to get some.  I'm using 4 (or 6 if I can find another) T-posts and some binding wire, to make a growing trellis for my beans.  Simply put a post at each end of the row (and more in-between if you have very long rows), and tie the binding wire between them.  Add a turnbuckle on one end if the wires start to sag...I don't really know if the binding wire will sag or not, but I imagine (like most things) it will a little.  That will just have to be a trial & error deal.

Other than that, the garden is growing VERY well so far!  Almost all the beans sprouted yesterday, the potatoes are still huge, and the strawberries are taking off.  The peppers have been planted, with some more to plant later.  Corn still hasn't sprouted, but it's been so dry, I don't really expect them to until the middle of this week.

Thanks for stopping by.

What's been planted

Corn was planted on Saturday.  I planted three 15-foot rows, and I'll do three more rows in a couple weeks.  I planted several varieties of cucumbers (bush and trellising), hoping to have better luck than last year.  I also planted my beans & southern peas last Thursday.  The garden is just waiting to explode with green!

The potatoes are doing pretty well - odd though.  Some are HUGE and some are very tiny.  They'll come up, eventually.  Patience is a heck of a virtue when gardening.  So is weeding, lol.

The strawberries are doing well, also, but I was hoping they'd be a little further along than they are.  Part of that is likely due to lack of rain.  It hasn't rained here in over a month and a half.  I'm hoping to pick up some soaker hose on Friday, and rig up a watering system.

Last Saturday I was at Home Depot, strolling through the pepper/tomato plants, and I got to thinking "isn't it too early to plant?"  After looking at the weather, I now realize that we had a very early last-freeze-date this year, which is great.  Hopefully that doesn't mean we're going to smash heat records this summer, though.

As I mentioned in my previous post, things have been a blur of insanity lately.  I wish I could get back to reading some books, that I've started and haven't finished.  Seems like every time I get going, something comes up at work, or home, or elsewhere.  :-\

Either way, I'm glad to be able to have the time I do to spend in the garden.  So peaceful and eases a lot of stress.

Clearly a conspiracy

It's funny how when I claim I will post more, I post less.  I think the government is behind it...lol.

So, why the long absence?  A variety of reasons, but most notably, the hospital.  I've been at the hospital for about a week straight, because my sister had severe abdominal pain.  I won't go into all the details, but let's just say that there are some EXTREMELY incompetent people working here in town, and at the third hospital, they ended up removing a cyst the size of a baseball, and her appendix.

So honestly, the garden hasn't been at the top of my list, in the season which it should be.  Luckily I was able to take a few "sanity" days off from work and get it back on track.  The potatoes were plated, as well as strawberries, and now the beans & peas have been planted.  I slightly altered the layout when I figured I could add another row by merely knocking 6" off the pepper row-spacing.  Big deal - the minute crowdedness that will come about shouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

The blackberry plants are flowering well, and the onions at the north side of the garden are growing strong.  The south side doesn't get as much sun (yet) so they're not fully-growing.  So far, 27 out of ~80 potatoes have bloomed, and that's likely due to the other half being the Yukon Gold (or was it Red?) that bloom later.  The carrots have finally begun to sprout, but are still very very tiny.

It is a very warm Spring here, so far, so I'll probably plant the corn early next week, followed by Tomatoes and Peppers.  I am beginning to think our last freeze already occured (pretty early).

So, back to work.  Thanks for checking in!

Marching into the garden

If you've read this far, I appreciate you not leaving after that terrible pun of a title.

So, I ended up going to Ace Hardware and renting a front tine (urgh, the rear tine was still broken so they are selling it) tiller.  I brought it home, cleverly unloaded it by myself with a big board, and then started tilling away.  What a great tiller!  Very simple, no crazy knobs, buttons, etc.  And it made quick work of the garden.  I finished tilling all of the garden in less than an hour, so that was nice, because I only had to pay $8 :-)

Here's how the garden stands now.  I'll try to get pics of the actual garden tomorrow when it's light out again.  Needless to say, it's finally coming along.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Well that is all for now, because I'm running late for church.  Thanks for stopping by.

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!