The Homesteader's Rifle

As most of the readers of this blog know, I like to hunt.  Hunting is a very important aspect of our environment, but it gets a bad rap.  As with most things, the few bad things make the news, and people react in an uproar.  However, most hunters are conservationists and strongly disagree with poaching, over harvesting, and illegal marketing of pelts/meat.  Hunting is important because it helps keep the animal population in control.  In Texas, the number of whitetail deer are closely monitored by game wardens, civilians, and Texas State Biologists, so their numbers do not get out of hand.  Ever hear about someone hitting a deer in their car?  That happens a lot here in Texas, and the State tries to balance the fine line between over harvesting, and keeping the public safe.  It's not an easy job.

With Fall fast approaching, it's time for deer (and several other animals, for that matter) to begin their annual mating.  This coincides with the beginning of most hunting seasons.  While watching a video about hogs yesterday (I am determined to get a hog this year), I ran across a video that brought up something called "The Dog Bowl Theory."  The author had a very interesting point.  He stated that if a domesticated dog were brought to the wilderness and released, it would likely die.  The domesticated dog does not know how to get food - he knows that food magically comes from the food bowl.  Now picture humans and grocery stores: an eerie resemblence.  There are millions of people in the US that have never seen a cow, hog, or chicken butchered.  What if, tomorrow, there were no grocery stores.  Poof: gone.  What would people do?  If I had to guess, I would say most would simply starve to death.  Another small percentage would probably die of poisoning (thanks to poisonous or contaminated food).  I don't mean this to be a doom & gloom post, but the sad fact is, a lot of people have no idea how their food gets to their dinner plate.  Heck, they don't know how it gets to the Styrofoam tray covered in cling-wrap.

So why do I bring all this up, related to hunting?  Well, I made a purchase recently :-D.  I purchased what I consider to be the all-American all-around perfect gun.  The Marlin 30-30.  This small lever-action rifle is powerful enough to take literally any animal in the United States (seriously, they have killed everything from bobcats to Moose with this tiny thing).  It's a valuable tool if one has access to hunting land, as it can cheaply provide meat.  I paid an amount so small for this mint-condition rifle, I feel bad about posting the price.  Hopefully it will pay for itself soon - it already has provided a bit of protection when today, 7 cops showed up in our neighborhood looking for someone on the loose who was feared could break into a house to get away. 

So let's say I kill a average sized deer and hog.  That's going to be over 120 lbs. of meat, easily.  We like to use most of the deer (along with a bit of the hog for the fat content) for hamburger meat.  That's a lot of hamburger meat we do not need to buy at the store.  And it tastes exactly the same as ground beef, in my opinion.   Maybe a very slight (nearly unnoticeable) spicy flavor to it.  Then we use the rest of the pork for sausage.  Mmm, you cannot beat Spicy Sausage that you harvested and made yourself.  If only there were wild cows, we'd have it made!   Mmm wild rib-eye! 

To make this purchase, I sold my shotgun to come up with the cash.  I like shotguns for a lot of reasons, but I am not an avid bird hunter.  If I ever want to go bird hunting, I'm easily able to borrow a shotgun from a friend or family member.  So I figure the good outweighs the bad.

Here is an image of the rifle, though not my exact one.

Until another day, happy shooting!

Lots to get to

As if anything ever slowed down around here...might take a few sittings to get through this entire post.

Around the Farm:
It has, unfortunately, been over a month since I posted the "Days in the Ground" table.  Feel kind of bad about that.  But anyways, what's done is done, and below are the current stats:

Days in the ground
Plant	# Days
Lettuce	107
Potatoes	80
Carrots	80
Onions	80
Peas	66
Nasturtiums	66
Tomatoes	49
Bell Peppers	49
Rosemary	49
Green Beans	49
Cucumbers	49
Corn	45
Beans	45
Strawberries	45
Squash	45

Charantais Melon                10

As you can see, the lettuce has been in the ground over 100 days.  The Lettuce has been an interesting adventure.  It began by getting 12" of snow dumped on it, and had some trouble getting going.  But once it did start, it grew very well.  I have learned this year that it grows A LOT better when you give it A LOT of water.  Who'da thunk it?  Even so, it did not perform as well as hoped, with only 3 plants really producing any lettuce of eating size.  The worst news of all is, it didn't really taste good.  I mean, sure Lettuce isn't supposed to taste like a T-Bone steak, but it had a bitter-type taste to it.  Could have also been that the leaf I had was not the freshest, and I normally would eat it with carrots, salad dressing, etc.  I chalk this up to a half-success.  Next year I will grow it in a slightly different location getting better sunlight, and it will be in a cold frame (can't wait to finish building that).

Next, potatoes.  Wow, what a crazy vegetable.  In the Square Foot Gardens (SFGs) I planted 6 total plants - 3 Red Noreland and 3 Yukon Gold.  The Red Norland immediately shot out of the ground, followed a couple weeks later by the Yukon Gold.  I noticed the Red Noreland plants appeared to be turning yellow above ground, and slightly brown/black.  As far as I can tell, this meant they were "done" growing.  The stalks and leaves eventually all shriveled up and died, and when I pulled 2 Red Noreland plants, I had 14 potatoes.  More on that later.  Overall, I think these went pretty well.  Still eager to see how the rest of the potatoes will do.  In addition, I planted 6 "test cases" (3 of each) in a clay filled bed, with really poor soil, and I really did not pay much attention to it, other than watering it when I remembered.  After pulling up 3 of those plants, I found potatoes that were just as good or better than the SFG's.  Needless to say, that was surprising.  Encouraging, though.  Hopefully next year will yield more potatoes per plant, as opposed to 1 or 2 per plant this year. 


The carrots are confusing me.  2 squares, same soil, same water, same location in sunlight.  And yet, one is producing very well, while one is not.  After checking one today, it is about 1/2 the size of my wife's pinky finger - not very big. 

The onions - not too much to say about these.  They appear to be growing well, though I need to dust off the top level of soil so they will expand.

I had a beautiful red bloom on one of the Nasturtiums this morning.  Dang, I really wish I had taken a picture of that.  It's gone now, unfortunately, but it sure looked good!

Tomatoes & Peppers - you suck.  Supposedly easy to grow and very tolerant, they have been a complete failure.  I'm not terribly upset about it though.  This isn't to say they're done for the year, but they are nowhere near where they need to be.
*edit* As I wrote this a few days ago, something amazing happened - two tomatoes showed up!  They really look like peppers, so I'm kind of confused, but I'll let them keep growing and we'll see how they turn out.  Pretty cool :)  Bell Peppers though, are still producing nothing.

Rosemary - Well to be honest, I wasn't even sure if this was planted.  I spilled the seed pack, haha, so I was *hoping* one just happened to land where it needed.  Haven't seen anything.


Beans & Peas - The Green Beans are growing very well, albeit a tad short.  They have just produced runners and starting to climb.  The Peas have been hit by bugs very badly.  They still seem to be growing but it must be hard when you're being targeted above everything else by the insects.  After putting down a fertilizer (more about that later) they SHOT up, from approximately 3" tall to approximately 7" tall in just a few days.  Amazing.

Cucs and Corn - Growing well, but still early.  Eager to see how these turn out.

Strawberries - I don't really know, to be honest.  I still think that I may have just planted a bunch of dead strawberries, but on the other hand, I have a lot of "green stuff" growing there.  It might be weeds.  I have no idea.

Squash - Eh.  I just don't know yet; the verdict is still out.  Some really bad winds broke them over but they appeared to recover.  They have flowered, but they are FAR from the size of other people's plants.  They were planted a tad too late, but they really should be doing better.

Cantaloupes - Just planted these a few days ago.  I put some stones behind the plant so they will absorb some heat, which melons love.  They had a few sprouts, but pests attack one of them.  I can't wait for these.  Really hopeful these turn out well.


Livestock

First off, the rabbit.  I just do not know about this guy.  To be honest it seems like he has turned more into a pet.  Reason being, the manure he produces, when dried and put into the garden, merely attracts TONS of pests and they end up killing plants.  That's definitely not what I wanted.  So, that leaves 1) figuring out what to do with a ton of manure, or 2) breeding him for meat/selling rabbits.

While breeding him with a doe may not be extremely difficult, it's the sweltering weather in Texas I am worried about.  Not to mention needing a market for the rabbit and/or meat, governmental restrictions on selling meat, etc.   Not sure how that would go, but it would be an undertaking to say the least.

Secondly, the meat chickens.  Words can't express how I feel about this.  Literally - I have tried to come up with some.  It just feels so...right.  First off, it was dang cheap, which will surely grab my attention any day.  Secondly, (from what Tara says!) they were fairly easy to raise.  They were humanely raised and humanely killed.  We had our first dinner with the chicken last night, along with some potatoes from the garden.  The chicken tasted amazing.  The potatoes tasted...weird.  It was like tasting a potato for the first time.  When people told me "you will be so surprised how your food tastes straight from the garden" I frankly brushed it off, but wow was I wrong.  The potatoes had an earthy taste, not in a bad way though.  Delicious.  We made some spicier than normal chicken, and it was delicious as well.  Very happy with this :)

I would really like to put up some pictures, but since the last two weeks have been an absolute disaster, in nearly ever aspect, they'll just have to be put up later.  I promise.  As soon as everything cools down.

And last but not least, the great Fence Debacle.  Another 5 fence posts have blown down.  I have now realized I am in the wrong business - you can make a killing off removing fence posts and installing new ones.  Wow.  Unbelievable.  No thanks, I'll just cut my arms into pieces installing my own :-\

Alright, if you haven't been able to tell, this post was written over several days, so it's kind of a conglomeration of crazy stories.  Another one occurred last night, just when I thought it was all winding down.  I went to the garage to turn off the sprinklers for tomorrow (didn't want them to spray on the fence-pulling stuff in the back yard - go figure).  When I went into the garage, I noticed water on the ground.  What could that be?  Then I looked up and saw that my clock was off.  The power had gone out (it's a GFCI outlet, so just the outlet goes out).  Well, I wanted to say a lot of words that shouldn't be said.  I thought them, that's for sure.  I also wanted to punch some things.  Over $200 worth of meat, down the drain.

After cooling off a little (no pun intended), I checked the meat in the freezer, and did some investigation.  It had been approximately 27 hours since the freezer went out.  The meat was still frozen, but it had slightly thawed around the edges.  I think it will be safe, obviously if cooked to the proper temperatures and handed carefully.  Just really, really irks me.
     Then Katie came to my aid.  She pointed out that, on a "real" farm, you might not lose your freezer power to a freak outlet, but you might lose 20 chickens to a coyote.  You might have a herd of animals inflicted with some disease, and you have to kill them all to save themselves.  While mine happened a little farther down the food chain, nonetheless it happened.  Just time to move on and don't give up due to an accident.

Thanks a ton for checking in and reading my blog.

Processing a chicken, part 1

Wow.

Firstoff, a H U G E  thanks to Tara for taking care of the chickens over the last 12 weeks or so, and for everything she and Jerry taught us yesterday on their farm.  (Love it out there, by the way.  It's awesome)

So the evening beforehand starts off with bad news - the chicken processing would be canceled due to terrible storms and hail.  However, the weather forecasters must have spun their "wheel o' weather" a tad too hard, because it ended up being a dang nice day.  We all went ahead and went out there to begin the process.

After getting everything set up, we corralled the chickens to make them easier to pick up.  We picked 3 big ones and tied their legs to begin the process.  At this point, I must say I wasn't necessarily looking forward to the ensuing mess.  It was obviously going to be bloody and messy, and though I have killed animals before for food, it was using a rifle, not a knife.  Tara showed us how it was done, and believe it or not, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Sure it was bloody, but it was very humane and clean (relatively anyways).

Next we pulled feathers, and once we figured out how to use the "Clucker Plucker" correctly, it worked phenomenally, if I say so myself :-D .  After that, it was onto the table to clean out the insides, and then into the ice-water bath.  At the end of the day (3 hours) we had done 15 chickens and decided to meet back next Saturday to do the remaining 13 + 3 roosters.  I might have a helper as my sister is awfully interested in learning about it.  Who knows...

Though I do know one thing - I can't wait to cook some of these up!  

Growing Updates

To help gauge how long it's been, I'll try to start adding this at the top of the post.

Days in the Ground

Lettuce	43
Potatoes	16
Carrots	16
Onions	16
Peas	2
Nasturtiums	2

The Red Noreland potatoes are growing like crazy!  The Yukon Gold, on the other hand, still haven't sprouted above the surface.  Oh well, eventually they'll make their way up here.

I saw a handful of carrot sprouts today, after the rain.  They are teeny tiny.  Shouldn't be too long before they are sticking up out of the ground like the onions.  They're growing so fast you could probably sit there 5 minutes and notice a visible change, lol.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours moving the compost bins to a secluded part of the yard.  They were attracting lots of bugs, especially woodlouse (aka rollie pollies).  Well, rollie pollies were neat as a kid, but now I realize that they eat tender seedlings, so they're enemy #1 at the moment.  I boiled some water and yeast, and filled 2 cups I sunk in the ground.  Woodlouse smell it, walk on over, fall in, and die.  Victory! (in a twisted sort of way)  When I went back out today, I found even more of the woodlice in the compost bin...unfortunately these were not dead.  Is having woodlice, along with lots of other bugs and critters, in the compost bin okay?  Hope so...

Last but not least, with our oh-so-wonderful hail-filled Springs, here in North Texas, I needed to buy some type of protection.  I went down to the hardware store and let my mind run wild.  Then I told it "I'm not made of money" and let it run less wild.  I picked up eight 3/8" x 1ft bars of Rebar, and four 1/2" x 10 ft. PVC pipes.  I also went to the paint department and grabbed a 10 ft. x 20 ft. sheet of plastic dropcloth.  A fairly simple design: 

1. 4 bars of Rebar at each corner of the raised bed, stuck in the ground.  
2. Stick the PVC pipe on the Rebar, bend over to another corner, and stick that end on the other Rebar.  

I found it to be surprisingly stable.  Who knew!?  So, the next time there is a freeze (Sunday, perhaps) or hail in the forecast, we'll just run out there, snap them into position, and run back inside.  What could possibly go wrong? :-D

Back to basics

I've been slacking on the blog lately...time to get talking about the "farm" again.

I have noticed that the rabbit (yes, he still has no name) produces a smaller size of "manure" during the winter. Just a weird interesting fact for those of you who want to use a rabbit for manure.

Potato leaves have sprouted as of this morning (13 days after planting), and are looking good. I am finding that the Red Noreland variety appear to be much quicker producing than the Yukon Gold variety. The onions are shooting up like gangbusters...I'm really astonished at how large they are, this quick after planting (It has been 13 days). I'm also fairly sure something is wrong with the lettuce seeds. They're not really growing, and Seed Savers Exchange (where I bought them) says they should be ready in 60 days from planting. It's been 40 already, and they're about 1/2" tall.

I bought a $4.50 Plant Light Bulb. I was speaking with a guy at work who grows ~250 peppers a year (he sells them), and his pepper plants, which were planted at the same time as mine, are HUGE. He stated he only uses these light bulbs from Home Depot, and they have worked well for years for him. So, I'll give it a shot. He also grows them in SOLO brand plastic cups. Pretty clever because he can write what type of plant it is on the cup, when selling.

Which brings me to one of my Goals for 2010 - I have drawn up a quick design to do a much better job at seed-starting, and I plan on having many more seeds next year. Perhaps I'll scan in some images/drawings of my plan. I have gotten really lazy about uploading photos, because it's such a tedious process.

Tilling

I wish I had uploaded photos, but I'm really too tired to do so.

Tilling is a BLAST and a half. I borrowed a 26" wide tiller, cranked it up, and when I hit that throttle...dirt everywhere! However, I've always been told, "never buy a tiller, and never buy a chainsaw" (tongue in cheeck, of course) because they break often. After 5 minutes of turning clay into, well, smaller chunks of clay, I was ready to buy one. I took the tiller over to another bed, cranked it up again, and the pull-rope snapped. How ironic.

So, I spent the next 2 hours fixing it. Then it was dark, so I took it back to its owner. Oh well, the experience was fun, and maybe, just maybe, one of these days I will have enough land to buy a tiller.

Finally, a post!

First things first

I have been crazy sick - finally I'm well enough to move around again and get to doing some work.

North Texas. Snow. Craziness.



We received about 1 foot of snow at our house. I really have no words for the insanity that ensued. Snowmen galore, all schools closed, a crazy adventure losing my phone for 4 days. We are just not used to this. We ended up breaking the all time 24-hour period snowfall record (in N. Texas) and the most snowfall in one day record. 12.4" and 11.5" respectively.

Bell Pepper Transplant.

As you may remember, I have 6 seed pots on top of the fridge. Pots 1, 2, and 3 are Cherry Roma sprouts, and Pots 4, 5, and 6 are Bell Pepper sprouts. Unfortunately, Pot 4 never sprouted anything, while all the others sprouted multiple plants. So, I did a little "Gardening Surgery" and carefully removed one Bell Pepper plant from Pot 5, and moved it to Pot 4. I used a large spoon and dug extra deep, making sure I pulled ALL of the plant and did not split the root. Hopefully it will survive in Pot 4, and we'll be back on track. (Pot 4 is front and center)



Birthday

Well, last Thursday was my birthday, and my wonderful wife got me an awesome gift. I got a water-bath canning (jarring) set. I cannot wait to use it, but that will be several months away. Still, very cool.



The last bit of bed-work

Today I spent about 30 minutes tilling the soil (read, breaking my back). I needed to get a bed set up for corn, so I settled on an 8' x 5' rectangle that was in the sun. Below are pictures of the 4 separate beds:

Beds 1 & 2 - main vegetable beds



Bed 3 - Primarily for Corn (the one I tilled today)



Bed 4 - Primarily for Strawberries (though I'm tempted to grow lettuce there as well)



I think I'll end the post there - information overload, you know. More to come tomorrow...

And so it begins...

The raised bed boxes are officially underway, with 12 lettuce seeds planted. Here is the layout to my garden (you can click on the image and it will come up much larger).



Katie came up with a great idea for dividing the beds into 16 blocks - I nailed 3 small nails on each side, and ran nylon strings across the bed. If the strings get destroyed after a year - big deal, tie a new one on.

Some sadder news - the bell peppers have not sprouted, and it has been 15 days. The typical germination time is 10-14 days, though. I think that it is just a bit too cold, so I moved the seed pots to the top of the fridge. Previously I didn't think this would work, because I measured the top of the fridge, and it was just as cold as the room temp. Today I found out, though, that the back of the fridge is a tad warmer.

(There sure is a lot to update...)

We're still not out of the winter yet, by any means, but at least it's above freezing for a few days. I need to get the new Red Oak trees moved to the back yard (temporarily of course) and there's likely more to do in the garden.

If you have any recommendations for the garden layout, let me know. Since this is my first year growing anything, I'm not sure how big things are going to get, and I'm not sure how much shade is going to be created by nearby plants.

Sleep in the Beds

The beds are finally complete (well, for the most part)!

I spent about 3 1/2 hours today, with approximately 2,000 pounds of peat moss, compost, and vermiculite, "making" soil today. I ache all over :)

Here's a picture of me preparing some soil. You can see all the bags of soil-materials (that isn't even all of it).

From Blog Photos

Instead of weedblocker, which is outrageously expensive, I just laid down a lot of newspaper under the beds. This will, over time, decompose into the ground. At that point, well, who knows...

Here's the completed beds. Yes, I know the tomato cages are upside down.

From Blog Photos

Last, I leave you with a pic of my complex rainwater collectors. See, the way it works is:

1. The bottom bucket fills up with water.
2. I put the lid on the bottom bucket.
3. I put the other bucket on top.
4. That bucket fills up with water.
5. I put the lid on that bucket.
6. No more rain collects in the buckets.

It's complex, I tell you.

From Blog Photos

In the next week or so we'll begin planting a few vegetables. Hopefully I'll still be able to move.

Chicks!

Some of these guys will be on their way to Tara's house.



Then, around April, we'll head down to butcher them when they're full grown. It may not be raising my own backyard chickens, but it's pretty close.

Today is the day!

We're finally getting our furnace fixed!!

Also, I still haven't gotten 3 gifts. It wasn't that big of a deal because I had Wednesday to get them. But now, due to a funeral, I'll be gone Wednesday, and I'm not really sure when I'm going to get time to go get the gifts.


Now on to some actual homesteading stuff.

I've been looking at building a stone house, though that seems more and more unlikely with additional research, due to some environmental constraints. Did you know, however, that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) allows you to "mine" all the rock you want, from public lands under their control? That's awesome for those of you who live out where there is plenty of rock. Want to know how much it is, here in N. Texas, for 1 ton of rock? $120. That's insane. If you wanted to do your entire house made of stone, you're looking at about $1800 in rocks, not to mention MANY trips to pick it up, because your truck can probably only hold about 1 ton. (Obviously that number changes due to the size of your house)

So, perhaps I will still use stone in our house to be built one day. It's just too awesome not to.

Hamburgers in the Dark

Barefoot, outside, in the cold. I love it.

Of course, it's only 67 degrees out. A wonderful temperature here in Texas. On Sunday, I decided we would have hamburgers tonight. I did not take into account it would be dark outside, thanks to Daylight Savings Time. Thank goodness there is a full moon looking down on my BBQ.

So, let me formally introduce myself and my situation. My name is Stephen, and my wife's name is Katie. We have two "children" - our dogs Sparky & Jenny, both of whom are Boston Terriers.
We live in the Metroplex (or Metromess, if you prefer) in a suburb between Dallas and Ft. Worth, and south of Arlington. The reason we moved to this particular house was because of many factors, but the main one was the lot size.

Now, before I tell you what the lot size is, you have to promise not to laugh afterwards :)

Our lot is 1/3 of an acre, situated on the edge of a subdivision. On three sides of us are 55 acres, 18 acres, and about 15 acres. As my grandpa said during our search for a house with a lot of land (and near our jobs, and in a good school district, and being a "new" house, and 100 other requirements we held our search to)... "the reason land is so expensive now is, they're just not making it like they used to." We had so many requirements that it eliminated a LOT of properties. That is nothing against the house we're in - it is absolutely perfect, minus being in an HOA. That's another story I'll get to later...

So, what to do with all this land? Well that's why you're here. Whether it be gardening, composting, or heck, breaking the HOA rules and doing some other "homesteading" duties, we'll see as the years go on.

Well, the burgers are done, so that's a wrap for me. Thanks for checking in.