Harnessing untapped sources of energy

Tabitha has been employing Tristan to do the glasses for a few weeks. He does a great job and gets to earn a privilege.

He cleans them better than the dishwasher does and makes stacked dish art.


Tristan earned two privileges today. The first one was because he picked up a wheel barrow load of cow patties from the upper paddock. We compost all of our cows manure and it is a huge help for him to clean up the paddock like that. Furthermore, the cow won't eat the grass in about a one foot radius form one of her old cow patties for many months. If we left all of them in the field there wouldn't a blade of grass left to eat within a few months.

Sure the fields don't get all that fertilizer from the cow but that is why we raise chickens in tractors. There are no diseases that transmit easily between species (from the chickens to the cow). It is a perfect symbiosis. The cow doesn't mind eating after the chickens move through a field.

We received our latest order of broiler chicks. The post office had a little debacle and left them in a hot warehouse. We have already lost a few. I hope they thrive.

I made a brooder out of stacked bales of straw. It seems to be working really well. Now I just need to build three more chicken tractors. It was too hot today for me to work outside on them so I worked on my portable solar fan system. We use them to circulate air in the chicken tractors when they must be in the direct sun.

My system will utilize one large solar panel and two recycled attic fans. I attached wheels to the solar panel to make it easy to move.

Then I attached the D.C. leads to a regular house outlet.

This way I can use standard extension cords to run power from the panel to the separate tractor fans. Sure there is the potential for confusion with regular A.C. stuff but this will be nowhere near A.C. stuff.

Plus I know better. One tip if you plan something similar. Cover the panel with complete shade(I flip mine over) when plugging and unplugging. A direct current spark will ruin standard outlets and plugs.

This just wheels around like a wheel barrow--easy.


On other news the kitten factory is in peak production. In true Ozarks fashion the matriarch grandmother is raising her grand children and her own children at the same time.

Two of her grandchildren haven't survived but this is the best we can hope for.

Twelve hours later (a day of preserving peaches)

Have I mentioned that I have an amazing wife? She spent the entire day canning peach jam. We stumbled across an astonishing deal on peaches and bought the lot of them.

I had to be gone for the morning. When I came home Tabitha was well into preserving jam. I sat down and helped as best I could.

She had already done the lions share of the work. This is what she had in half pints. I thought it looked pretty.

I helped feed the kids, chop fruit and clean some of the dishes. Tabitha worked over the giant canner. She had a system where she was heating jars for the next batch, canning the prior batch and heating the lids in a steamer rack all in the canner. It was very efficient and streamlined. I having had cut all the fruit left her to really get into production. It is funny that my little contribution could make such a big difference.

The purple stain on the table cloth is from one of our wonderful egg customers dropping off two plus gallons of blackberries. I dumped them into a strainer (the only clean large vessel left in the kitchen) oops...

Tabitha has been nursing a bad back since butchering chickens and toughed it out to get ninety five half pints of jam done.

Such a beautiful comforting sight. What ever happens we won't starve this winter.

Today we need to preserve some blackberry jam. I have to get ready for the one hundred and fifty baby chicks coming tomorrow morning. I have already built the brooder. Now I just need to sterilize all the equipment and hook it all up. Over the next two weeks I need to build three more chicken tractors. Whew and I haven't even started the slip form cement work on the barn.

I need a clone that doesn't want to steal my wife and kids from me;0

And who will help me eat the harvest?

We have started to add to our pantry. Onions are the first harvest and I have ran through two dehydrator loads of them. This is what I have left to peel slice and load in the dehydrator.


This year has been a successful year for beets. We grew a F1 hybrid from Johnny's called Merlin. We love them. Big healthy and very tasty. Where appropriate we grow heirloom plants but beets are not something we'll attempt to save seeds from in the near future. Although we have been enjoying the thinnings for several weeks, we just got around to harvesting them in earnest. This batch is from the front yard row.

It is very weedy. Our trip to Michigan left this row in shambles. I'll cover this row with a black tarp, kill the weeds and sterilize the soil for a few weeks. After that I'll plant a cover crop. These are the littlest beets after sorting and removing the larger ones for this first batch.

Here are some of the larger ones in the queue for the cooker.

These beets are partially cooked and will cool so we can slip the skins off, slice them and stick them in jars.

As I type the last quart of fifteen is being added to this canner.

These will be pickled beets and here are the spices to be added to each jar.

Other recent additions to our pantry and freezer are two quarts of black raspberries, three quarts of black berries, fourteen quarts of green beans.

The sheep are working out nicely. We have kept them in a fifteen foot piece of snowfence and move it regularly along our fence rows. They are excellent at keeping me from having to weed eat the fence rows.

A simple piece of tarp for shelter and a bucket of water are all they need. We plan to shear them before butcher. I also hope to tan their hides. So far sheep seem to fit well into our farm. Lamb being my favorite meat affords them a little more latitude than usual.

The dogs are doing well. They are shedding their puppy coats and look a little scruffy.

Astrid is an excellent livestock guardian. She also has enveloped our house into her sphere of protection. Visitors are notified that a large dog lives here with a deep menacing bark.

The other night Tabitha went to the barn with a flashlight and Astrid did not recognize her. Astrid ran around at lightspeed to the upper paddock to surround her. Astrid and the boys closed in on her to attack from front and rear. This scared Tabitha and she yelled their "disarm" word. They immediately stood down and marched around with ruffled back fur snorting heavily. Scary but kinda makes a person feel good about personal protection.
Astrid is nine months old and will only get better at her job. She is probably 75% grown in size. The boys, Captain Jack and Ianto will be quite a bit larger than Astrid. They come from larger stock and they are boys. We feel lucky to have these dogs. They are on a raw meat diet plus table scraps. Very healthy and anxious to please.

How does your garden grow?

Of course Tabitha is an excellent gardener. She is diligent, observant and proactive. The problem has been, no mater what we tried our plants still suffered. This year, I believe that our current level of success with our garden is because of two technology improvements.

Copper spray is a powerful fungicide. It is organically certified but dangerous to use. Full hazmat gear is recommended on the label while spraying. We have been spraying weekly and are just managing to stay ahead of the tomato blight.



Pruning off infected foliage and spraying, exposed some fruit to possible sun damage. In the above photo Tabitha used some old tulle as a partial shade cloth.



Neem is another powerful organically certified weapon in our arsenal. It kills indiscriminately so we are cautious to use it only when necessary and in a very focused manner. We like our beneficial insects to live to fight for us another day. The latest thing we have tried is to neem drench our cucumber plants roots. This really seems to have worked on the cucumber beetle onslaught. Cucumber beetles are a sinister foe. They are impossible to catch by hand in mass. By eating the foliage they infect the plant with bacterial wilt that can quickly kill the plant. If the plants survive this first assault the beetles larvae dig into the ground and eat the cucumber plant roots. This usually happens just before the first fruit has a chance to grow to size.



As you can see there is plenty of cucumbers on the thriving vines. We have been mixing a root drench of neem and fish emulsion and pouring it directly on the plant roots. The neem kills any beetle larvae. The fish emulsion feeds the plant. Something else seems to be happening. Tabitha read that the neem can get sucked up into the plant and systemically deter the cucumber beetles from eating the foliage.

We have eaten several fresh cucumbers and a few tomatoes. We are hopeful of a bountiful harvest this season.


The butternut squash seem to be thriving also.


Our little farm is starting to look a little more kempt since our vacation. Here the echinacea are looking pretty.


I have also started digging the footings for the barn. I plan to slip-form these walls and this is my first step. Why didn't I just have this dug mechanically? We didn't plan to have a cement floor in this milking barn at first. After thoughts are hard on my back.



This is Toly's new playground. I am going to pour it in sections. I am about one quarter the way done digging. Each shovel load requires at least three strikes with a pick axe to loosen the soil. Digging in the Ozarks is no fun.



The dirt is back fill for an intended garden terrace. When done the garden should be fifteen feet wider. Every little bit helps.


We also got a couple of lambs from our friends. Here they are hiding their eyes thinking I can't see them.


Immediately after we ordered a new camera battery charger we found the old one. Isn't that how it always goes?

I lost my chi for a little while.

Much has happened since I have made time to write.

We took a trip to my parents house in Michigan for a week. The kids love their grandparents and had a blast. Their yard is like a botanical garden (I'm not exaggerating). One favorite was the coy pond with several huge coy, a water fall and blooming water lilies. Kassi's favorite was the fairy garden with a close second being all the exotic day lilies. The boys were intrigued by all the winding paths and sitting nooks.  Kassi is going to start a day lily business. It will take several years but my Mother is sending her starts of all her pricey exotic day lilies. We plan to encourage this most passionately. Although top soil is at a premium in the Ozarks this is something that could pay for college and afford a little spending money along the way. Kassi is perfectly suited for this. She is passionate about flowers, knowing their names and is not scared to work in her garden.

We butchered fifty chickens in three and a half hours and survived. Our friends came to help and what a huge help they were. We learned so much from them. They have been selling chickens for a few years and had some revolutionary insightful methods. Usually after butchering Tabitha and I are at each others throats, not true for this occasion. Killing animals always makes me feel raw and irritable. Matt, Rachel and family were a Godsend. Thank you.

We have already ate several chickens and find them to be the best we have ever raised. Customers arrived and picked up chickens. Most everything went off without a hitch. We are expecting one hundred and fifty birds within ten days. Tabitha has declared that we need one hundred chickens in our freezer for winter. This seems accurate since we devoured an entire chicken the other night with no leftovers. We will soon be a two chicken per meal family. We like leftovers.

It surprised me how many unnoticed little maintenance tasks we accomplish everyday. This was revealed to me after coming home and seeing our place in a shambles. The jungle garden was unbelievable, impassible and generally frightening. The yard became so overgrown that Bob had to bring his weed-eater to cut paths just take care of the animals. Tabitha's sage and one of Kassi's rose bushes became victim to the nylon whip. The dogs grew while we were gone and so did the pigs. I hardly recognized our replacement pullets.

We brought tons of plants back from my parents. Our rocky path got an entire makeover. We dug the cracks out and replaced the lime base chat with soil and planted some wonderful ground cover. I had to use the shop vacuum to get the chat out from between the rocks. It took several hours but I think most of the plants will survive and hopefully thrive.

You might be wondering why I have no photos of these exploits. Coincidentally this also explains why I have had trouble finding my writing chi. Alas, the charger to the camera battery is missing and has kept me from taking photos of any of these activities. Does anyone know the name of the saint for finding lost things? We need an intervention here.

Recent failure

My Japanese beetle trap was a bust. It does not work and I should have actually used a real trap before I tried to make my own. Milky spore and beneficial nematodes are in my future.

On a up note I did build something that works quite well.

It is a mini chicken tractor for between the rows in the garden.

These are some pullets that are too little to run free and too big to stay in the brooder. We have been feeding them the Japanese beetles that our traps aren't catching. We are catching them by hand again this year--a loosing battle. You can't see it here but they are decimating our pole beans.


Another success is our new garden fence.

It is chicken proof and mostly children proof.

I also drifted closer to my rain water catchment goal.

Here the cow stable steel roof sheds to her stock tank.

This pvc guttering is cheap. That is if you don't use their fittings or mounting hardware. A piece of gutter is around five dollars. While if you were to install it per recommendations you'd spend thirty or forty.

Another experiment is our sweet potato patch. We are using hillbilly mulch (aka old carpet) and cut holes in it for the slips.

I hope it works.

We also took delivery of some of our winters hay. Ten beautiful bales of wheat hay that Mike just put up with his new bailer.

Round bales are not our favorite but these were too beautiful to pass up.

The biggest success of the year is the black raspberry patch. Even having to share roughly half of our bounty with the Japanese beetles we are in berry heaven.

Kassi invented a desert. fresh raspberries still warm from the sun and vanilla ice cream.

Heaven on earth...


Every toy that Toly has been playing with of late has to have a trailer of one sort or another.


Kassi found a clam shell at the creek.

meet ropey

Early June photos

The black raspberries. Yes they are still red--mostly. I admit to have eaten a few.


Our Peach tree needed crutches.



Our strawberry season is over.


We ran a third hot-wire to maintain the dog boundary in the field where the broiler chickens are lurching around.


They are incredibly healthy seven weeks old.

I'd move them more than twice per day if it weren't so bloody hot.

They mostly lounge around except just after a lurch forward move. That is when they scurry about looking for that illusive insect.

This is a view from where the chickens are toward the house.


Each of the kids have their own raised bed. They love it and are very proud to show them off to any visitors.


They each chose what they want planted there.


The greenhouse is mostly empty of seedlings now.

I like the soil block maker, I admit it.

The tomatillos have battled and seem to be winning.

There be salsa verde in my mouth very soon.

The new soaker hoses get my full endorsement.

They are better than the old ones in every way. We have the 75 foot version.

Here we are trying winter wheat in between our tomatoes.


This is the season where our garden looks the best--right before everything starts dying.



Toly has become fixated on the hose connectors. We use the quick connect style.


Jack is a great dog. We have such high hope for both him

and Ianto


These pigs are our favorites of any we have raised.


Ginger is so cute.


Ianto


Astrid is a show dog.

She'll never compare to Henry but in some ways she is better. She definitely is more protective of Tabitha and the kids already. She is about half grown now.

Yes, she will be a big dog.

This will be garden soil next year.


Jocelyn is looking great these days. She gets a few mower bags full of grass clippings each weather permitting day.

She loves it more than anything. It is like pre-chewed-food.

This is my barn ladder-stairs. They pull up out of the way on a hinge mechanism.