Hello again everyone, it's boxing day! Or it was 2 hours ago. I'm trying to push my internal clock forward for the graveyard shift tomorrow, so I'm up late.
We've had a mix of good and bad times, mostly good of course. The bad stuff isn't much, mainly automobile problems. I had to spend a gob of money on tie rods, and the car is still making some strange noises from the suspension and steering area. I couldn't do the work myself without a very expensive tool, and I needed my car on the road right away.
On Christmas Eve, as I was on my way home from work at about midnight, I was coming around a corner that I KNEW was icy, so I slowed down...but not enough. The road was a thin sheet of ice, and the car started whirling around like a retarded ballerina! I ended up off the road at a rather steep point, facing straight down into the ditch. Someone passing by stopped to offer help, and ended up giving me a ride home (Thanks again, Steve and Samantha!)
Lucky for me, my mother has AMA, so she had a two truck out there today, and I'm out! He pulled my car out by one of the back tires, so I'm not sure if that can cause damage...hopefully not.
With Christmas past, and the days actually getting longer, I've started dreaming of gardens and livestock again. I did a mountain of research into cattle, and I figure I've got 3 choices. One, wait till fall, buy 6-7 weaned calves for about $500 each, feed them through winter on whatever forage they can reach, and perhaps a little hay, and butcher in fall of 2011, selling the beef in sides. Option 2, buy as many cow/calf pairs as I can in March/April, and sell the calves off in 2011 as per option 1. Then, rebreed the mothers and repeat ad infinitum.
Option 3, and a very risky type of option, but with the highest potential for profit. Get a few bottle calves, and try keep them alive long enough to eat forage. It's a lot of work, but the calves can be had for under $100 in most cases! We'll see....I think a mix of Options 1 and 2 are probably best, if I can come up with a decent bit of cash.
I've also got some designs on a market garden, scaled up from last year. The things that really did well, carrots, peas, sunflowers, a different variety of bean, onions, and strawberries, will be the only things I grow. The peas will be grown behind something that will block a lot of light, as that seemed to be the way they grew best. The peas that were in 70% shade last year produced a TON of pods, which decreased for the plants which were getting longer light.
I would also like to get the pit greenhouse covered, and at least a small portion of it planted to something.
I will be planting in rows, after I burn off the vegetation on about 50x20 feet of space. I literally mean "burn" as in flames! I will have buckets of water ready...don't panic now. I have no plans to rototill the ground, except to hack a narrow bit out and place the seeds directly into it. There are a lot of thistle roots in the ground, but they get worse when you cut the roots, or bring them to the surface.
I will certainly need some way to control the weeds, and wheel hoe looks like the best and fastest way. If you've never seen one in action, look it up on YouTube, it's an amazing little tool, if not a bit pricey. A really good one is $350 or more, and then you can get different attachments for them that would cost more. Still not as much as just one weaned calf tho.
Right now, the wind is blowing like mad, which of course means free electricity for us! I have a pretty large list of things to do tomorrow, including water hauling, and wood cutting....unfortunately, the fun and games never end out here, but at least the house is warm for free!
Take care, and happy new year!
Monday, December 27, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
I must protest, Mr Weatherman
November 27, 2010. Not even December. Alberta has already seen more than a foot of snow, and temperatures dropping to -39 C a couple of nights. I have twice dragged my car down the driveway with my truck because the snow was too deep to navigate with my car. Booooooo....
The really cold weather is behind us (for now), but we still have tons of snow! That's not very common for this time of year, and it brings challenges. Any tools left out will be either gone till spring, or until the next Chinook, the snow forms large, solid drifts that block foot traffic, and of course, driving becomes nightmarish. Then, water pipes freeze. Thanks to some missing insulation under the house (-39 didn't help either) several of our water pipes froze. They have thawed since, but it's very apparent to me that living in a mobile home is going to be a constant battle to keep those lines unfrozen. The only successful thing I have been able to do is to blast a kerosene heater under the house, especially in the direction of the sewer pipe, which again froze solid on me. The heater did it's job tho, and our pipes are clear, and my wife loves me again (haha....ha).
Seriously though, once we are clear of the winter months, we are going to take a drastic step. We are selling our house, and moving away. Temporarily.
Sitting on my "List of things I wanna do someday" is building a strawbale house. The problem with doing that is, how do you build a house, when you already have one? The only real way to do it is to sell the first one, THEN build another! Therefore, we are listing the house in the new year, and we are going to try selling it with all of the renewable energy stuff inside. I will even offer to move it (the first 100 km) to sweeten the deal, if we don't get a lot of interest at first. I'm going to ask for a bit more money to cover the replacement of the RE stuff, probably 15k more.
It shouldn't take more than 1 year to build a house, at least far enough along to live in it. We only need to obtain financing from the bank, which is no easy task to be sure. I will give it my best shot. We probably need about $60 k, which isn't much, but I never take it for granted that getting any kind of loan will be "easy". It almost never is, except for the first time.
In other interesting news, my darling wife, who up till now has never really taken much interest in business, has had a lightening bolt of a business idea, which I think has a real shot at producing something. I won't go into extreme detail, but it involves crafting personal health products, like lotion, soaps, perfume, and selling them. This idea has kind of revitalized her, given her something to reach for. Of course, I support the idea, and I'll put whatever money is needed on the table, even if my own business plans suffer a bit.
Because of the house-building quest, most gardening will take a back-seat this year. I may attempt some peas, carrots, and other easy veggies, but my main focus this year will be purchasing some cattle, and getting them growing out on the grass. In time, I plan to market the beef for bulk purchase. It looks to me like there will be quite a bit of interest, many of my friends and coworkers have said that they would purchase bulk meat. Raising cattle is more of a "hands off" type of activity, they don't need much except wind shelter, fresh grass, and water. That will free up my time for construction.
My phone's camera is still shot, or I would have pics of the snow. It's quite deep, but thankfully it hasn't drifted too much yet.
The really cold weather is behind us (for now), but we still have tons of snow! That's not very common for this time of year, and it brings challenges. Any tools left out will be either gone till spring, or until the next Chinook, the snow forms large, solid drifts that block foot traffic, and of course, driving becomes nightmarish. Then, water pipes freeze. Thanks to some missing insulation under the house (-39 didn't help either) several of our water pipes froze. They have thawed since, but it's very apparent to me that living in a mobile home is going to be a constant battle to keep those lines unfrozen. The only successful thing I have been able to do is to blast a kerosene heater under the house, especially in the direction of the sewer pipe, which again froze solid on me. The heater did it's job tho, and our pipes are clear, and my wife loves me again (haha....ha).
Seriously though, once we are clear of the winter months, we are going to take a drastic step. We are selling our house, and moving away. Temporarily.
Sitting on my "List of things I wanna do someday" is building a strawbale house. The problem with doing that is, how do you build a house, when you already have one? The only real way to do it is to sell the first one, THEN build another! Therefore, we are listing the house in the new year, and we are going to try selling it with all of the renewable energy stuff inside. I will even offer to move it (the first 100 km) to sweeten the deal, if we don't get a lot of interest at first. I'm going to ask for a bit more money to cover the replacement of the RE stuff, probably 15k more.
It shouldn't take more than 1 year to build a house, at least far enough along to live in it. We only need to obtain financing from the bank, which is no easy task to be sure. I will give it my best shot. We probably need about $60 k, which isn't much, but I never take it for granted that getting any kind of loan will be "easy". It almost never is, except for the first time.
In other interesting news, my darling wife, who up till now has never really taken much interest in business, has had a lightening bolt of a business idea, which I think has a real shot at producing something. I won't go into extreme detail, but it involves crafting personal health products, like lotion, soaps, perfume, and selling them. This idea has kind of revitalized her, given her something to reach for. Of course, I support the idea, and I'll put whatever money is needed on the table, even if my own business plans suffer a bit.
Because of the house-building quest, most gardening will take a back-seat this year. I may attempt some peas, carrots, and other easy veggies, but my main focus this year will be purchasing some cattle, and getting them growing out on the grass. In time, I plan to market the beef for bulk purchase. It looks to me like there will be quite a bit of interest, many of my friends and coworkers have said that they would purchase bulk meat. Raising cattle is more of a "hands off" type of activity, they don't need much except wind shelter, fresh grass, and water. That will free up my time for construction.
My phone's camera is still shot, or I would have pics of the snow. It's quite deep, but thankfully it hasn't drifted too much yet.
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Neverending Summer
It's October 15th, and my son is 6 months old! He is now sitting up on his own, but no crawling or rolling yet. Not that I'm upset, the sooner he crawls, the sooner I have to clear out EVERYTHING in reach before it becomes food!
I've been busy, doing exactly those things that I said I would do all year, and thankfully, the weather has been absolutely perfect! I rented the mini-excavator and dug the water tank holes (more on that later) and dug a large rectangular greenhouse pit, which I will be covering with plastic.
GARDEN UPDATE:
It's mid October, which is looooong past normal gardening time, but there are still some plants that are alive in the garden. All of the flowers are still alive, the sunflowers are slowly maturing, and if I had actually planted a second crop of peas, they would have produced a good crop at the end of September. Next year, I will do that. I'm not used to double cropping here in the frozen North!
Carrots are a good double cropping thing too, and I've already got my future huge garden plot mapped out, it just needs the weeds tilled under!
WATER
As I mentioned before, the real purpose for renting the excavator was to bury my water tanks, so I dug a huge hole for that purpose. Turns out it wasn't huge enough, and only one tank will fit, and that's after I got into the hole and hacked it out with a pick and shovel.
At first I pushed the empty tank into the hole, realized it didn't fit, and panicked when I saw that it needed to come back out. This is a 1250 gallon tank, 7 feet in diameter. Prolly 250 lbs. I pulled it out with the truck, by looping a rope through the top and bottom.
The bottom of the hole has accumulated about 1 foot of groundwater, which was surprising to me. I didn't realize our water table was so high! It made working in the hold a lot more difficult, until I tossed a couple of sturdy pallets down there. The tank itself will probably be resting on top of these after all is said and done.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
I finally got my new turbine blades! Today is installation day for the newly upgraded wind turbine, and not a moment too soon. The automn wind is picking up, which means $3-6 in free electric on days where the wind exeeds 20 kph, which is about every third day so far. Less windy days might produce about $1.50 in power, not a lot, but that's every single day!
I have been window shopping solar panels in the US, and on the site
www.sunelec.com, full panels can be had for $1.35/watt USD. That's a substantial discount off our local prices here, and with the US dollar at parity with our dollar, I will be able to get many panels for just a few thousand dollars.
I need about 1000 watts worth, which in the winter will admittedly only produce about half our needs, but in summer will be more than enough. Eventually, I want about 2500 watts, and an additional 8 batteries to even out the power consumption. My goal is to reduce my generator runtime to less than 50 hrs per month in the winter months, and nothing in the summer.
OTHER BRIC-A-BRAC
I still need to work on the insulation under the house, fix the storm doors, seal some of our windows, put an outside air intake on the woodstove, and a few dozen other smaller projects. Not like last year at this time, where every waking hour was spent working on the ill-fated workshop, which I have been cannibalizing for lumber, btw.
Oh, and finish off the perimeter fence. That's kind of important too.
As you can see, a homesteader's work is never done! Sometimes, it stays half done for a while.
I'll post pics of the water, when I've got it completed.
I've been busy, doing exactly those things that I said I would do all year, and thankfully, the weather has been absolutely perfect! I rented the mini-excavator and dug the water tank holes (more on that later) and dug a large rectangular greenhouse pit, which I will be covering with plastic.
GARDEN UPDATE:
It's mid October, which is looooong past normal gardening time, but there are still some plants that are alive in the garden. All of the flowers are still alive, the sunflowers are slowly maturing, and if I had actually planted a second crop of peas, they would have produced a good crop at the end of September. Next year, I will do that. I'm not used to double cropping here in the frozen North!
Carrots are a good double cropping thing too, and I've already got my future huge garden plot mapped out, it just needs the weeds tilled under!
WATER
As I mentioned before, the real purpose for renting the excavator was to bury my water tanks, so I dug a huge hole for that purpose. Turns out it wasn't huge enough, and only one tank will fit, and that's after I got into the hole and hacked it out with a pick and shovel.
At first I pushed the empty tank into the hole, realized it didn't fit, and panicked when I saw that it needed to come back out. This is a 1250 gallon tank, 7 feet in diameter. Prolly 250 lbs. I pulled it out with the truck, by looping a rope through the top and bottom.
The bottom of the hole has accumulated about 1 foot of groundwater, which was surprising to me. I didn't realize our water table was so high! It made working in the hold a lot more difficult, until I tossed a couple of sturdy pallets down there. The tank itself will probably be resting on top of these after all is said and done.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
I finally got my new turbine blades! Today is installation day for the newly upgraded wind turbine, and not a moment too soon. The automn wind is picking up, which means $3-6 in free electric on days where the wind exeeds 20 kph, which is about every third day so far. Less windy days might produce about $1.50 in power, not a lot, but that's every single day!
I have been window shopping solar panels in the US, and on the site
www.sunelec.com, full panels can be had for $1.35/watt USD. That's a substantial discount off our local prices here, and with the US dollar at parity with our dollar, I will be able to get many panels for just a few thousand dollars.
I need about 1000 watts worth, which in the winter will admittedly only produce about half our needs, but in summer will be more than enough. Eventually, I want about 2500 watts, and an additional 8 batteries to even out the power consumption. My goal is to reduce my generator runtime to less than 50 hrs per month in the winter months, and nothing in the summer.
OTHER BRIC-A-BRAC
I still need to work on the insulation under the house, fix the storm doors, seal some of our windows, put an outside air intake on the woodstove, and a few dozen other smaller projects. Not like last year at this time, where every waking hour was spent working on the ill-fated workshop, which I have been cannibalizing for lumber, btw.
Oh, and finish off the perimeter fence. That's kind of important too.
As you can see, a homesteader's work is never done! Sometimes, it stays half done for a while.
I'll post pics of the water, when I've got it completed.
Monday, August 16, 2010
My Blue Eyed Girl!
Well, it's official!
I've been married for 9 years
We've owned our land for two years
I've been in my job for two years
All in the same week!
Oh, and I'm 29. That was last week. Yeahhhh....
FAMILY
My brother is getting married in 5 days, which means his anniversary is pretty much going to coincide with mine. Again, my darling wife is doing the pictures, so perhaps with his permission, you might see a few here!
My son is becoming a massive no-longer-newborn, he's tipping out around 16 lbs at 4 months old, and is one of the content-est babies I've ever met. His sister has put aside most of her jealousy, and has got some milestones of her own, including the finishing of Grade 1, and the starting of Grade 2 in a few weeks, or whenever I get around to finding the books. She now reads silently to herself, and can read words like "difficult" and "pronounce". We need to work on spelling and writing, but I have no doubts that she will follow in my footsteps, and become a voracious reader of anything printed!
GARDEN
This is my most successful year of gardening EVER, and we've been eating fresh garden veggies every day now for a month! The harvests are small, but steady, and the weather has been excellent (no hail). The peas are pretty much spent, the brocolli has started making heads, and is huge, I've picked about two handfuls of beans, several dozen monster onions are protruding from the soil, there is a couple of small but growing watermelons, and the cukes are spreading rapidly, and will cover the mounds they are on within a week's time. I don't know if the corn will actually produce, but the plants are tall and vigorous, so here's hoping for a nice September. Oh, and the sunflowers are taller than I am (not difficult, but still...) I have some potato tires with leafy growth, but when I push down I can't feel any spuds growing yet. Could be that they are deeper than the straw.
Today, I pulled a microscopic handful of saskatoons off one bush, and they were tasty!!! I think there were twelve berries in total, but they were large and plump, bending the branch over with their weight. Next year I'm going to plant 100 of those 3 year bushes, and some apple trees.
HOME PROJECTS
I've come up with an interesting idea, hopefully I haven't mentioned it already. I need to excavate a large pit to put my water tanks in. It would not be difficult to dig that pit out to twice as wide as the water tanks, and put a pit greenhouse in that spot. The tanks will be painted black, and the top will be insulated up to ground level, where I will build a platform over top of them, and make a sun-room at that level. Inside the sunroom will be some solar heating boxes, funelling heat under my house, which will hopefully keep the floors a bit warmer, and stop any drain pipe freezing. Then, I need to seal any gaps around the rest of the skirting, and tack some insulation along the inside of the plywood. That should hopefully help the floors from getting too cold, without actually pumping much heat down there. If the solar space heater works, I might put one on some of the sun-facing windows, or even along the south facing wall, with vents coming through the wall!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Midsummer
Am I crazy to be thinking of winter coming already?
I don't care, there's lots to get done before the snow flies!
There's about 2 months before the first frost, which is quite a while for the garden to fully grow up. I've got fence to build, water tanks to bury, and many other miscellaneous things to get done, but what else is new???
GARDEN
We got the very first harvest a few days ago, about a cupful of snow peas were ready for picking, and there are more growing on the three plants that I've got. I believe that I may allow the rest of the pods to fully mature and dry out, which will give me seeds for next year. The rest of my garden is well into it's summer growth, the 100 or so pea plants are shooting up, probably will have some peas to eat in a few days. My sunflowers are massive, leaves the size of my head, brocolli is healthy and big, beans are beginning to go, and we might get some cukes in a month or so.
One thing that I will say about my garden, I did not plant enough! I've got a planting bed that could probably support ten times more plants, and it's basically idle, just about 25 sunflowers in it, and a few really shoddy looking strawberries. Next year I'll have to use that bed to it's fully capacity.
I've been really thinking that I need to amp up my production for next year, and put a lot more space into the garden. I think I've learned the easiest way to do some rowcrops, which is to make a raised bed from soil and manure on top of a layer of newspaper, and mulch it with about 4 inches of cut grass. The plants will grow on the very top of the "mound", tucked into the mulch. Between the rows will be grass, about 5 feet of it, which I will cut and throw on top every couple weeks. I just don't know what exactly I should grow, but squash, pumpkins and watermelon sound pretty good. A decent sized pumpkin will sell in October for about $20, but they take a looooong time to mature, so I will need a greenhouse, and some soil blocks.
I'm thinking that I'm gonna need at least a full acre to do this, in addition to my current garden area. It will be watered with drip tape, and my hope is that the mulch will suppress most of the weeds, and whatever weeds manage to get through I'm just going to chop them with a whacker instead of pulling.
In any case, I will need to start making these mounds right now, rather than wait till next spring. The plan is to rent a Bobcat to move the dirt. I'm tired of shoveling.
ORCHARD
My mini-orchard, which consists of two cherry trees and about 12 saskatoons is actually doing well. The saskatoons are producing a most crop of berries! Maybe a half a bucket or so, but considering that I planted them this year, any kind of harvest is super! Next year, I'm gonna try and put about 200-300 of the same mature plants out there, along with a bunch of apple, plum, nut and other cool trees. In front of the saskatoons, I'm going to put either a thin row of strawberries, or asparagus, or even both. Somewhere around the edges, or even behind the big trees will be some raspberries, and down on the ground beside the trees will be tires or pots to plant squash or vine crops into. That's a few years down the road, the trees will have to be a lot bigger before that's gonna happen.
LAST WEEK
The bummer of this last week was the breakdown of my Corolla, which experienced a bizarre breakdown on my way to work. The engine is fine, but the steering and suspension are shot. I think we might be looking at $600 or better, and then I've still got to fix the brakes as well. I love that car, but I fear it might not be worth fixing : ( I've still got to tow the stupid thing from off the side of the highway, where it's been for a week now. Can you believe that there are no towtrucks out here??? Maybe that would be a good p/t business for me... The only way for me to get it is to rent a car dolly and tow it myself with the truck. It's actually a bit cheaper than a tow-truck, but I can't do it for a few days. Surprisingly, I'm not nearly as pissed about the breakdown as I could be. I was half expecting it, to be honest.
We've got a bead on a car, which we're actually picking up tomorrow from a nearby town. We've got a bunch of family there, so we'll make a visit out of it as well.
The car is a 1981 VW Golf, a hatchback diesel. It should improve my gas mileage for work by about 40% over the car, hopefully saving a bit of dough. It's a beater, so if it lasts me for six months, I will be content, but I'm hoping for a year or so, even if I need to spend a little money to fix the injectors. Those vehicles should be good for 500,000 km, and this one has half of that!
Anyway, the wife wants the computer, so I'll sign off here. Pictures to follow on the next post!
I don't care, there's lots to get done before the snow flies!
There's about 2 months before the first frost, which is quite a while for the garden to fully grow up. I've got fence to build, water tanks to bury, and many other miscellaneous things to get done, but what else is new???
GARDEN
We got the very first harvest a few days ago, about a cupful of snow peas were ready for picking, and there are more growing on the three plants that I've got. I believe that I may allow the rest of the pods to fully mature and dry out, which will give me seeds for next year. The rest of my garden is well into it's summer growth, the 100 or so pea plants are shooting up, probably will have some peas to eat in a few days. My sunflowers are massive, leaves the size of my head, brocolli is healthy and big, beans are beginning to go, and we might get some cukes in a month or so.
One thing that I will say about my garden, I did not plant enough! I've got a planting bed that could probably support ten times more plants, and it's basically idle, just about 25 sunflowers in it, and a few really shoddy looking strawberries. Next year I'll have to use that bed to it's fully capacity.
I've been really thinking that I need to amp up my production for next year, and put a lot more space into the garden. I think I've learned the easiest way to do some rowcrops, which is to make a raised bed from soil and manure on top of a layer of newspaper, and mulch it with about 4 inches of cut grass. The plants will grow on the very top of the "mound", tucked into the mulch. Between the rows will be grass, about 5 feet of it, which I will cut and throw on top every couple weeks. I just don't know what exactly I should grow, but squash, pumpkins and watermelon sound pretty good. A decent sized pumpkin will sell in October for about $20, but they take a looooong time to mature, so I will need a greenhouse, and some soil blocks.
I'm thinking that I'm gonna need at least a full acre to do this, in addition to my current garden area. It will be watered with drip tape, and my hope is that the mulch will suppress most of the weeds, and whatever weeds manage to get through I'm just going to chop them with a whacker instead of pulling.
In any case, I will need to start making these mounds right now, rather than wait till next spring. The plan is to rent a Bobcat to move the dirt. I'm tired of shoveling.
ORCHARD
My mini-orchard, which consists of two cherry trees and about 12 saskatoons is actually doing well. The saskatoons are producing a most crop of berries! Maybe a half a bucket or so, but considering that I planted them this year, any kind of harvest is super! Next year, I'm gonna try and put about 200-300 of the same mature plants out there, along with a bunch of apple, plum, nut and other cool trees. In front of the saskatoons, I'm going to put either a thin row of strawberries, or asparagus, or even both. Somewhere around the edges, or even behind the big trees will be some raspberries, and down on the ground beside the trees will be tires or pots to plant squash or vine crops into. That's a few years down the road, the trees will have to be a lot bigger before that's gonna happen.
LAST WEEK
The bummer of this last week was the breakdown of my Corolla, which experienced a bizarre breakdown on my way to work. The engine is fine, but the steering and suspension are shot. I think we might be looking at $600 or better, and then I've still got to fix the brakes as well. I love that car, but I fear it might not be worth fixing : ( I've still got to tow the stupid thing from off the side of the highway, where it's been for a week now. Can you believe that there are no towtrucks out here??? Maybe that would be a good p/t business for me... The only way for me to get it is to rent a car dolly and tow it myself with the truck. It's actually a bit cheaper than a tow-truck, but I can't do it for a few days. Surprisingly, I'm not nearly as pissed about the breakdown as I could be. I was half expecting it, to be honest.
We've got a bead on a car, which we're actually picking up tomorrow from a nearby town. We've got a bunch of family there, so we'll make a visit out of it as well.
The car is a 1981 VW Golf, a hatchback diesel. It should improve my gas mileage for work by about 40% over the car, hopefully saving a bit of dough. It's a beater, so if it lasts me for six months, I will be content, but I'm hoping for a year or so, even if I need to spend a little money to fix the injectors. Those vehicles should be good for 500,000 km, and this one has half of that!
Anyway, the wife wants the computer, so I'll sign off here. Pictures to follow on the next post!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Summer? I think so!
Two cherry trees, and seven saskatoons in a semi-circle. The saskatoons are three years old already, so hopefully I'll get a few berries off this year. The cherries will take a while longer, maybe two years from now.
Hello again, it's springtime, and things are going well!
As you see in the pictures, everything is green as ever, and I've been planting everything in sight, and trying to keep it alive in the process.
There are a lot of non-garden projects that need doing yet, not least of which will be the solar panels that I will (hopefully) be ordering next month, getting the wind turbine up again, and putting up a wind fence. That should hold us off till Fall, and then I would like to do some water collection projects, starting with the burial of a water tank by the house.
All of this is made possible by our mortgage company, who is allowing us to defer our payments for one year (thank you!) and by this time next year, we will be $20,000 less in-debted, and hopefully be well on our way to independent living.
PERMACULTURE
For those who haven't heard it before, permaculture is short for permanent agriculture, or permanent culture. What it really means for us is relying less on outside sources of energy and "stuff", and providing more for ourselves, at least as much as practical. It also means making "systems" that feed into each other, making it possible to produce much more with less time, less money, and less infrastructure.
My first permaculture project were the two cherry trees and saskatoon bushes in the first picture. I planted the saskatoons in a semi-circle around the two cherries, with the shorter sasks facing the south, and solar gain. I plan on repeating this setup multiple times, as well as placing some shorter plants (strawberries) in a semi-circle around the saskatoons. I may plant other shrubs or trees around or near these ones, like nasturniums, herbs, and whatever else I can find that doesn't need a lot of water. Behind the trees, I will dig a small pond, and when the pond overflows, it will feed a mulch pit near the trees, which hopefully will attract tree roots. I will dump compost in there, rather than spreading it around the trees, hopefully saving time. The whole circle will have at the centre a small wooden platform that will shade the ground, and provide a place to pick cherries from, since I've got the idea to have this as a U-pick operation.
I know it sounds weird, but it's not really that unusual, and it ought to look pretty cool as well! I'm hoping that the mixing of trees and such will deter the normal bugs that can destroy berry crops, and that orchardists normally spray poisons on their trees to fight.
At various times in the summer, I plan to run chickens between the trees, who should do a fine job of fertilizing the ground, eating bugs off the plants, and eating rotten fruit off the ground. And that's how permaculture works!
GENERATOR
Up until two days ago, we were running our household electricity off a propane generator, which was a REAL pain in the...you know what I mean.
Several weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me a used generator, and said he didn't know if it worked, but it didn't produce electricity. I thought maybe the coils needed to be energized, and I figured I could probably get it going again.
Well, the other day, the propane generator died. Somehow the spark plug socket was completely stripped, and the spark plug kept popping out. After trying a million times to keep it together, I finally decided to try this free generator...I flipped the circuit breakers on, fired it up, and it worked!
Not only that, it has a 30 amp circuit, which means I can use up to 3600 watts at a time in my house. The last generators would only do 2400 watts, before the breaker popped, which meant no using the water when it was running.
As I'm typing this, the new generator just ran out of gas, which means it ran 12 hours on one tank! The propane one would only run for 7-8 hours before it was done. And a tank of propane costs around $15. All in all, I've traded up, and this genny is a Honda engine, which should last a looooong time, with proper maintenance.
Time for bed, church tomorrow!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Everything's pretty much normal...
In the last two weeks, we've had almost as much snowfall as we got for the entire winter before now...so, in other words, it's a standard Alberta springtime. Except for the one last snowfall on the May long weekend. That should be the last. Maybe.
It's already May 7, and the kind of weather that I should have been expecting has been prevalent. It was warmer for most of February than it was today, but I'm just grateful there was no wind!
The wind seems to make bad weather seem 1000% worse...
So, nothing has come up in the garden yet, except for the broccoli seedlings, which are still in the tray. No peas, although I planted a ton. I expect that I may have soaked them for too long, and they used all of their energy. I will try again, I have no shortage of pea seeds...but I was sort of hoping for some plants by now : (
I finally decided to buy some more blades for the wind turbine, and it turns out they cost around $250! I don't have that much money to spare, needless to say...but that doesn't mean I can't put blades on my turbine. I have decided to make an interim set of blades out of PVC pipe, which I will hopefully be able to find for free, or cheap. I found some instructions on Youtube, which were very detailed, and it doesn't seem too terribly hard. The blades won't be as efficient, but if they can at least pick up some decent power on the really windy days, I'll save some money on propane!
Tomorrow, I'm going to pick up a couple truckloads of composted horse doody, which should nicely fill up the remainder of my planting tires. I figure I'll mix about 30% topsoil, 15% peat moss, and the rest with horsie poo, and try planting in that. Apparently some of this guys "stuff" is 12 years old, so it's probably REALLY nice and broken down by now! He's very close too, which is very important to me, I'd rather not drive all over the province to get this stuff, and I really do need it.
After some conversations with the mortgage people, they might let me refinance everything, including the parts that I'm behind on. I need to demonstrate that I can make $5,000 this year, so I'm going to have to pull out all the stops. I know I won't make that much, but if I can show the POTENTIAL, that is good enough for them! My tax return is nowhere to be seen, and probably won't be done till June...I just can't wait any longer!!!! We need to sort this out now. On the plus side, when my return does come through, I would be able to use the entire thing for improvements, solar panels, and buying my cherry and apples trees. That's a good thing! The sooner those trees are in the ground, the sooner they will be producing food, and income for us.
Last, my little boy turned three weeks old yesterday! He's really porking up quick, he's put on two pounds already. Unfortunately, he's become more fussy and needy...my poor, poor wife.
Anyway, warm weather is coming, hopefully to stay. Adios!
It's already May 7, and the kind of weather that I should have been expecting has been prevalent. It was warmer for most of February than it was today, but I'm just grateful there was no wind!
The wind seems to make bad weather seem 1000% worse...
So, nothing has come up in the garden yet, except for the broccoli seedlings, which are still in the tray. No peas, although I planted a ton. I expect that I may have soaked them for too long, and they used all of their energy. I will try again, I have no shortage of pea seeds...but I was sort of hoping for some plants by now : (
I finally decided to buy some more blades for the wind turbine, and it turns out they cost around $250! I don't have that much money to spare, needless to say...but that doesn't mean I can't put blades on my turbine. I have decided to make an interim set of blades out of PVC pipe, which I will hopefully be able to find for free, or cheap. I found some instructions on Youtube, which were very detailed, and it doesn't seem too terribly hard. The blades won't be as efficient, but if they can at least pick up some decent power on the really windy days, I'll save some money on propane!
Tomorrow, I'm going to pick up a couple truckloads of composted horse doody, which should nicely fill up the remainder of my planting tires. I figure I'll mix about 30% topsoil, 15% peat moss, and the rest with horsie poo, and try planting in that. Apparently some of this guys "stuff" is 12 years old, so it's probably REALLY nice and broken down by now! He's very close too, which is very important to me, I'd rather not drive all over the province to get this stuff, and I really do need it.
After some conversations with the mortgage people, they might let me refinance everything, including the parts that I'm behind on. I need to demonstrate that I can make $5,000 this year, so I'm going to have to pull out all the stops. I know I won't make that much, but if I can show the POTENTIAL, that is good enough for them! My tax return is nowhere to be seen, and probably won't be done till June...I just can't wait any longer!!!! We need to sort this out now. On the plus side, when my return does come through, I would be able to use the entire thing for improvements, solar panels, and buying my cherry and apples trees. That's a good thing! The sooner those trees are in the ground, the sooner they will be producing food, and income for us.
Last, my little boy turned three weeks old yesterday! He's really porking up quick, he's put on two pounds already. Unfortunately, he's become more fussy and needy...my poor, poor wife.
Anyway, warm weather is coming, hopefully to stay. Adios!
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