Sorry about the links in my last post. The one I was trying to post was basically a box frame made out of 1"x6"s or 1"x8"s, mounted on a south wall. The wall and inside of the frame is painted black, upper and lower vents are cut into the wall, then a glazing of some sort is attached to the outside edge of the frame.
Anyway, builditsolar.com has lots of great free or cheap ideas for anything solar.
October On The Homestead
Another day, another to-do list... CHARGE!!!
LOL
Got my 2011 seed order in last night. Ordering early this year so that I can try some winter sowing. Should be a fun experiment. And hopefully, a productive one!
Got the potatoes dried yesterday, and a run to the grocery store. Our box store stinks... no pectin, no jars, no almond milk, got the last 10# bag of name brand sugar (got the store brand once; little black specks. I don't wanna know!) Had to make 2 more stops to get what I needed. }=0(
Gonna try tackling the jalapeno jelly today; wish me luck. I've never made jelly before, the SO usually handles it, but she's swamped this year. So I'm plunging into the fray... LOL
Oh, I LOVE pepper jelly! Our box stores don't have the canning supplies now either, but Dollar General and our little IGA's do. Go figure.
I was planning on spending the day over in the garden, but the guys brought my heat pump back and are re-installing it, moving the inlet air duct to the center of the house and doing some ductwork repairs. They keep clearing things with me, and I don't have the energy to keep coming back and forth from the garden. Guess I'll do some housecleaning, while stuck in the house.
Did I tell you all I have the 3rd tunnel up? I still need to put in a T-post on both ends for added stability. I couldn't pull up the ones I was going to use from a garden row support, so I'm just going to pick up a couple of new ones.
Cajun, I don't remember the results of your potatoe bag project, but I think you said it was successful enough that you'd do it again with a little tweaking. I want to share some observations on my bagged potatoes. I had the stack of large Alpo dog food bags, turned them inside out, rolled down the tops halfway, and punched some drainage holes in the bottom. I put 3-4" of garden soil in each and planted a couple of potatoes in each. I set these bags along the outside of the north greenhouse wall and have only watered them twice. These have been growing since early June. Sometime in late July, I unrolled them a bit and stuffed straw around the stems. They are still green and growing. In the next day or two, I will dump one out and see if there's any potatoes.
I did something similar with potatoes, in my old tires a couple years' ago. Landfill wanted $ to dump them, so I planted in them instead. Crop was okay, but would have been better if I had added more fill as the plants grew... and not stacked the tires so high. 2 tires would have been sufficiently high and they would have gotten more sun.
Y'all might find this interesting... a 'poultry schooner'
http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2010/10/poultry-schooner-in-action.html
That's a great idea, Darius. I wonder...if I don't get around to setting something up like this till say February or March, assuming I can find some chickens at that time, and only used this for warm season crop rows, would the next 2 months without the chicken activity be sufficent time to take the "heat" off the droppings?
Good question. I don't know how long chicken droppings really need to compost before they won't burn... Most folks just side-dress with it if it's aged a bit. I know if you can still smell ammonia in a pile of it, it will burn plants.
Folks who let chickens free-range in their gardens part of the day apparently don't get enough 'volume' for it to be a problem...
May I interject here ?
My thought on big box stores, Stay away from them!
They only carry items as seasonal. Probably had canning supplies in June & when they were gone that's it. Probably replaced canning supplies with Halloween stuff day after July 4th!
Go online & look for the things you want. Very likely cheaper than a store. I bought a pop up tent at Shopko this summer. Wanted more but couldn't find any. Another seasonal thing.
Went to their web site. They were same price as the store with free shipping. Cost me less because at the store I paid a city sales tax. Only charged state sales tax online.
IGA carried canning supplies because they are still a locally owned store.
You homesteaders should be promoting supporting locally owned businesses. If you ever decide to sell some produce or crafts, they would likely accommodate you. A big box will laugh at you!
Have a Great Day!
Bernie
Bernie, the box store is the cheapest 'round here. I don't have the extra cash in general to pay $2 more per case of jars, $1 more per box of pectin, $2 more per half gallon of milk. Ordering via the mail is a nice idea when one can get that organized. But polemics, high ideals, noble principles and large purses don't do me a heck of a lot of good when I need something and they have it.
But it is the pits when they don't have it, 'cause that means I have to make several more stops at several different stores and pay significantly more to obtain what I need.
We do try to stockpile when things are in at the box store, but sometimes life happens faster than I can plan for it.
And our box store is a major source of employment, not just for 'regular' folks, but for our large handicapped population here. They are large enough to be able to offer some employment benefits, which mom & pop stores don't. They also make significant contributions to our animal shelter & our Salvation Army, so they don't really represent the ultimate evil in my book.
They sure run different there than here. Minimum wage, part time so no benefits. All kinds of horror stories.
Under cut all the other stores. They have run numerous places out of business.
I avoid the big box stores too. The local hardware store may not be able to undersell them but they sure can outperform them when it comes to knowledge of what they sell!
The main advantage of the local hardware, over "big box" the owner of the local receives his goods adds his mark up prices to it and that is the price charged - however long it sits on the shelf. The box stores base their price on what it would cost them to restock, day to day.
You can find some amazing bargains at both, the box because of quantity buying and the local because of limited resources to keep track of price changes.
Look before you leap?
Find something you like at a big box. If not enough of the item sells, it will be off the shelf.
Owner operated stores will go out of their way to order something that is not on the shelf.
Darius/MsRobin ~ I run several "hot" compost piles of chickie poo and pine bedding - takes about 2 1/2 months to be marginally plant friendly, after 3 months it is sweet smelling and crumbly, but still has lots of pine chips and larger plant material that wasn't shredded (like sunflower stalks) in it. I think by 6 months it would be completely soil-like - but I can never wait that long. Somewhere between 3 and 6 months, it gets kinda sifted and then it goes into the garden. Of course, this is pretty high density chickie poo compost as droppings from the roosts and dropping raked from the pen are also added to the "just ordinary soild bedding." If your concentration of chickie poo isn't too high and you till it up a few times to get it mixed into the soil and to add additional air, it could be OK by then. Your nose will know ;-)
I have a 50ft x 75ft garden area where 15 hens and a rooster spend about an hour a day during the week, and a few hours a day on the weekend days. Except for their favorite aresa (under the apple tree, near the compost areas), there is hardly ever any noticible chickie poo. So, apparently, that much time in the garden is not enough to cause too much chickie poo overload.
I am dreaming of a tunnel...
Placed my seed order today. Now that I've been at my sandy high desert home for 5 years, I finally have built some dirt looking stuff (thank you, chickie poo and pine shavings!). Hoping to majorly expand gardening efforts this season.
I didn't think I'd be able to find any layers at this time of the year, but found an ad at the feed store today that someone has 10 for sale, that had just recently started laying. Have to clean out the coop side yard a bit tomorrow, then I'll call to see if they have any left. I've got 6-8' high weeds that grew through the chicken wire covering the top. Probably not a major problem, but I want to make sure there are no snakes in there and get the Poke weed pulled out.
Thanks for the info, Kmom. That was kind of my thinking...that there wouldn't be that much, if the chickens weren't left on any row more than a day or so, and they do such a great job of scratching it in. We had a terrible problem with the bugs this summer. I'd sure like to have the chickens to get rid of the majority of them. Do chickens eat stink bugs?
Speaking of which....found out in class last night that there is a stink bug that is starting to move across the country and so far nothing has been found to kill them. The new ones have a little white bands on their legs and antenne and will find their way into your home, like the Asian Ladybugs do. If you find them in your gardens, it is asked that you report it to your extension office.http://www.usapple.org/industry/treetac/stinkbug_factsheet121903.pdf
I don't think chickens will eat stinkbugs; they don't eat squash bugs. But they'll probably eat the eggs & larvae, so a gain there.
I got the jalapeno jelly done yesterday; set up soft, but good enough. I'm off to the big city of Santa Fe this afternoon for things we can't get 'round here and class. The drive wears me out. =0(
My chickens don't eat stink bugs, but they will "play with them" until they bug is dead, so that works for me. Then the carcase goes into the compost bin. I have noticed a decided decline in grasshoppers in the garden, even when they are everywhere else. My chickies will kill and eat mice and lizzards when they find them. I have one Marans that is a particularly good huntress.
They used to run flocks of turkeys in the alfalfa fields to control the grasshoppers around here. The little kids would "ride herd" on 'em. =0)
Yeah, when I catch a mouse in a trap, I used to throw it in the coop... feeding frenzy!
Rain much of the night, woke to the sound of rain... sigh. So nice. This happens maybe 6 days out of the year. It's like a holiday or something. =-) So far we've gotten something around an inch; the SO got hyper & has already brought in the rain gauge for the winter, so can't know for sure, but there's a straight sided bucket on the porch w/over an inch of rain in it. And SNOW on the mountains... a good place for it right now. Still cloudy & overcast so it may not be over yet... =0)
Congratulations on the rain!
Picked up my hens (Leghorn/ Rhode Island Red mix) this morning, and got a Leghorn rooster thrown in, too. Four eggs so far. Whippee!
HotDamn!
woo-hoo! We're makin' omelets now, by golly!
=0)
Just told DH and he mentioned omelets too, but he was more excited about maybe getting deviled eggs more often. Funny how such a simple thing can bring us so much pleasure. LOL
Oh, I'm getting hungry.
Our new chickens were hatched yesterday. Arrived my mail this morning. Grandkids taking them out of the boxes.
We bought 300 this year. Hope not to run out of eggs next summer.
These are called Gold Star layers. Very nice hen that lays brown eggs, nearly one a day. The guy that sells meat at our market is coming to get our old hens on Sunday. He has an e-mail list that he meets once a month to deliver meat & eggs.
This message was edited Oct 21, 2010 5:21 PM
Wow! =0)
Howdy, CG! Do you butcher any old hens for your own freezer?
No. Rather eat nice young chicken. Guy with the meat has it. Also Golden Plump from the grocery are great. They are raised on small farms in central MN.
We got more rain, & HAIL last night, along w/thunder & lightening... strange storm for October. Another coating of snow on the mountains, wisps of clouds still out there around the peaks. Sun bold & bright now, hopefully it'll warm up quickly & I can get out there & work in the GH some... clean up more of the old dead plants, see if I caught the dang gopher. Need to get a bucket of chicken manure from a neighbor to add to the compost tumbler. Send off a package, make some sauerkraut. No end of things to do!
Oh, and the jalapeno jelly is wonderful! Just the right amount of heat & so flavorful.... mmmm-mmm.
Wow! Had a lot of catching up to do on this thread. You guys have really been busy. I was keeping a list of things I wanted to reply to so this post will jump from subject to subject. Please bear with me.
I tried draining my cheese in a pillow case but it must have been a high end pillow case ( given to me ) with a really tight weave. It wouldn't drain. Ended up draining the cheese in a collander lined with coffee filters. I put a saucer on top and weighted it down with a gallon of water. In the morning it was perfect soft cheese. I flavored it with green onion and it was delish. The second batch I had cheesecloth for that a friend gave me. It had been her mother's who had passed away. It worked fine. I lined the collander with the cheese cloth and used the saucer and gallon of water again. I flavored the cheese with lemon basil and garlic. It was OK but I had let the milk sour so the cheese tastes more like sour cream. It would be fine if you are a big sour cream fan which I am not. I would like to try it again with the lemon basil and garlic but with fresh milk.
That big water tank sounds great. I'd love to have such an opportunity. We have a nice little creek in the front yard that I dip water out of for the chickens and dogs. I can use it for the horses in a pinch. But it has nearly run dry on several occassions this summer. We have a hand dug well we get our drinking water from. It is plumbed to a pump in the cellar and is run to 2 outside spigots and a spigot in the cellar. The house is plumbed for city water. If the electricity goes out we can drop a bucket down the well.
I hope you guys can beat the wind turbine thing. That just stinks. I hate polotics.
We don't have any of that to deal with here that I am aware of. Our terrain does not suit it. But we have our share of troubles with the coal industry. I know it is a vital industry and I would not like to see it end but I know there has to be a happy medium somewhere in the mix. It is devastating the inviroment. Money is the bottom line and has been since it's inception. Most of the owners have never lived here and don't care what havoc it reeks as long as they get their money. They have desecratred the mountains and robbed the people and the shame of it is that the people, for the most part, don't see it. They still think the company is their friend. The mining has changed the land so much that flooding is a horrendous problem. When homes do flood, people want retribution from the government when it's the coal company's fault. Some people do sue the companies but they don't want the companies to stop mining. You can't have it both ways. The industry needs to be revamped.
Jay, so good of you to help the needy. It will come back to you in blessings. We had some apples given to us and I dried most of them. I have some sliced to fry with sweet onions and bacon. Mmm These apples were an old variety called Black Wallace, I believe. I think we will be able to get some more of them.
My garlic did OK but stayed small. I have to get mine planted for winter. I have some elephant garlic to plant this time around. looking forward to it.
That pantry is impressive on several levels. 1) It is so organized! 2) It is so full. It looks like my Mom's pantry. Being a Sr, they get commodities from several organizations and she stock piles it. She doesn't hoard it up. She is very free with it. Every time she comes here she brings a car load. She does the same when she goes to her twin brother's house and her friends and family are always fed from it. She has her faults but she is a very generous person.
We are working on our winter supplies. We have several cases of propane canisters and we bought another camp stove. We also bought 2 more kerosene lanterns. That makes 4. They burn a long time on a small amount of fuel. We have 2 kerosene heaters. We were given a large generator that DH has to do a little work on. Saved us a ton of money and we are sure thankful for it. Wouldn't want to lose 500lbs of pork. That's a great idea about charging the batteries in the solar yard lights. We have lots of those in the yard.
A great way to insulate the windows from the cold is with bubble wrap. Especially if it is encased in foil. But if you leave off the foil you can still get some light which is also important mentally in the winter. You can buy big sheets of it at UPS or Walmart and with clear strapping tape you can custom fit it to your windows. I'd love to get some plastic around my front porch but I don't see that happening. It would sure make it nice for dipping animal feed in winter. I keep it on one end of the porch in barrels but the wind is cold zipping through there.
Hot bricks is a great idea. I wonder if hot rocks would do the same. We sure have a vast supply of those in nearly every shape and size. I get cold when I sleep and it's really tough on my joints and muscles so I have experimented with different ways to keep the bed warm. I have a regular innerspring mattress. I put several cheap dollar store blankets on the mattress under the bottom sheet. then I put on another blanket under the top sheet and put the comfortor and other blankets on top. It helps a lot. We were given a case of disaster relief blankets. They can't be washed so you can't use them like regular blankets so I think they will be good for putting under the sheet.
I tried a bit of winter sowing last year and didn't have a great success but I think I will try it again. What kind of planting medium do I need to use?
That chicken schooner looks like a great deal. But we have predators so it might not work here. I also could not find the door on it. You'd also run the risk of having it roll down the hill here. The only flat spots we have are the driveways. LOL
We don't have mice here. We have Rats!!! They give the dogs a good fight.
Congrats on the hens! If I don't miss my guess that is a Gold Sex Link. I have 8 of them coming on. They are great layers. What does your roo look like? I'd love to see pics of your flock. And already getting eggs! You are very lucky the move didn't shut down production. They must like their new home. Mine are starting to pick back up after molting. Got 8 eggs 2 days ago. It's still sporadic. I am killing roos one by one as I want to cook them. They are free range so I don't have to feed them. I killed Old Dumplin by mistake. I prefer to think he commited suicide. He had been rather glum lately. I believe it was the chill in the air that had him depressed about the coming winter. He lost a spike from his comb to frostbite last winter. I was running him back up the hill with a BB to his hind end. I always gave him a big head start. But he decided to turn around just as I pulled the trigger and his head was where his hind end should have been. He got hit right in the head and it killed him dead as a hammer. He was 3 years old, a pleasant fella and I hadn't planned to eat him but I surely wasn't going to waste all that meat. He weighed at least 10lbs. I knew he'd be tough as an old shoe and I figured I'd have to cook him for 3 days but 1 hour in the pressure pot had him as tender and a young fryer. He was delish! So the other old geezers better step light!
Sounds like your CSA has been a success even though you has setbacks. Did it do well enough financially that you will continue it? What kind of snake was in the barrel?
I'd better get off here and onto my day's To Do list. It's a long one as usual. I try to let it warm up before I go out. Won't have that luxury before long.
Gonna eat this roo next if he tries to jump on me again.
Wind turbines & coal fired power plants. Which is worse ? The coal for the power plants here comes by train from Wyoming. Many, many trains a day. Wind turbines don't take inputs once they are up. One east of us going online in January has 122 towers. It will supply electricity for 50,000 homes. Another one to the west that should be going online soon, as all towers are up. I think that is bigger.
If the people wouldn't have been scared to death of nuclear, we would have them & wouldn't need all the coal & wind things. Other parts of the world have lots of nuclear plants. We have a couple here in MN & nobody is dying from them.
Cajun, with milk at 2.50 per gallon, I bought an extra gallon just to make cheese -- turned out super! I put chopped garlic leaves (like chives) and fresh basil in it. Got a pound of cheese, a little crumbly but delicious. .
Well, the P&Z meeting was last night and we lost. 3 commissioners were absent (they had all favored us) and the county used substitutes, who had never heard any previous testimony. The same old tired claims by the wind farm developers were trotted out until I regretted not having brought a big bag of rotten tomatoes. (Would have ended up in jail.) Still has to be adopted by the Board of Stupes but that is usually a slam dunk. So now we will have ninety 450 foot monstrosities 1/2 mile from our homes (that is, 1/2 mile from the actual wind turbines to our very houses), and 750 feet from any 40 acre parcel with no house on it at the time of the adoption of the ordinance. The room was packed, mostly with local ranchers who stand to make money, developers who stand to make money, and a couple of tradesmen saying how wonderful it will be to provide temporary jobs for a handful of people while they are building. After that, nothing but flocks of 40-story tall machines that whirl, flash red lights, hum loudly, and roar when the wind is strong. This will be 24/7, of course. And one permanent job! In the first wind farm, that job went to the son of the rancher who leased the property. One developer placed one blade from one of their turbines on the front lawn at the county complex --OMG that thing is HUGE. One rancher said, well the noise is like a freight train, but you'll get used to it, so it's okay. Navajo County, once known for its beauty, will now be one giant wind farm from the Mogollon Rim to the Navajo reservation, and beyond. North of Flagstaff they will be all along the road to the Grand Canyon. The three parcels I bought, cleaned up and put mobiles on two of them, and hoped to sell for my old age fund are now WORTHLESS.
Actually, Country, wind farms do use electricity from the grid to bring them online and then back off, which happens repeatedly. Each turbine also contains several hundred gallons of oil. The developers get 80% of their costs from our tax money, including Obama's stimulous funds. Most of the developers are foreign corporations, and the turbines are built in China or India. Each turbine costs 6 million dollars In short, the whole thing is just a boondoggle to make billions of dollars of profit that go overseas.
And wind, being sporadic, must be backed up by usually coal-fired generators, which will now be LESS efficient being cycled on & off, producing more CO2 gas, not less.
AZ, as you have a house on those plots, doesn't that move the turbine off 1/2 mile? I know it's not great, but maybe there is still something to be earned from those parcels. {{Hope, hope}}
Re: nuclear... it's really the only viable option at this point, for the amount of energy this country needs to produce. But the zero tolerance folks with their heads in the alternative energy sand dune are blocking it... which is to say driving the price through the roof.
Ah, heck, lets just convert ALL the corn & sugar into fuel, kill the farting cows, pave the desert & everybody put a giant turbine in their backyard. What's the hold up? {{boy, is that riddled w/sarcasm...LOL}}
Turbines here are built in Denmark, not as high of cost as you state. Ours are all out in farm country, not near any houses.
Some towns have their own wind turbine. Small town here has one, which is more than enough for them.
I suppose like everything else out west, it is feeding power to California. Just like their water comes from other states. Don't stop them though, we don't want California people moving here!
Country, the developer of the wind farm that is planned to be in our laps says $6 million per turbine. The power is supposed to go to the Phoenix area and Los Angeles.
Jay, on the 40 acre parcel I own that is north of the 80 acres I live on, there isn't a house, so that means 750 feet. The other parcels I own down near the currently proposed wind farm, there are other parcels in between so it doesn't affect them.
No matter how some people may scream about lovely green energy, please remember that we are talking about 40-story high machines that run day and night, 1/2 mile from our houses, NOT from our property lines. Nobody at the County seems ever to have heard of the Golden Rule. What really kicks is that our lilttle community, Antelope Valley, is 30 miles of bad road from town, with nothing else around but cows. Yet this millionaire rancher (doesn't work, leases his land to other ranchers), chose to put these monstrosities right next to us, rather than someplace else on his 228,000 acres which are not near any habitation. Greed Greed. Greed.
On Tuesday, reporters from a Phoenix TV station and from our local paper came out and did stories. They were simply amazed at how far from civiilization we are, and how quiet and peaceful it is. Now. They said they kept driving and driving and kept saying, where is this place, anyway?
Well one good thing happened yesterday, I finished the electric fence around my 80 acres and it is HOT. The cattle will be turned into Antelope Valley in a matter of days. I still have to go down the arroyo and finish rebuilding the fence across it, which was knocked down by the recent torrential rains. But it's too cold today!
Out in farm country, where nobody lives?! Excuse me, but I've lived in farm country, and there's plenty of people, maybe not as densely settled as town, but they're there. And I've been seeing plenty of letters written by those nobodies that are complaining of the health impacts of the noise & disruptions of the wildlife.
AZ... they're not going to run constantly, even where you are. That's one of the problems... the noise will be intermittent. Did they mention how high the wind has to be to turn one of those monsters? It's a pretty stiff little breeze. At least the ones I'm familiar with; seemed like under 25 mph, they don't run. Maybe the new ones have less inertia & turn more easily?
Still sucks. =0(