pumpkins + squishing goo = jack 'o' lantern

Rome, Kassi, Tristan, Toly


toly's was voted the scariest


Today was a long awaited day of our first green egg.

I hope all the auracanas start laying soon. It will be a nice mix for our customers to have colorful auracauna eggs in their dozen.

Autumn Lingers

We still haven't had a killing frost yet. Last week I covered part of the wood pile.

There should be plenty of extra wood in-the-dry under there for the entire winter. Four rows ten feet long by five feet high. Sorry to bore you but this is how I document this sort of thing. There should be a few ricks of wood left over for next winter.

I might use the surplus to make some terra preta. I have discovered an easier way to make charcoal than previous searches have revealed.

It is described in detail at http://www.saveourskills.com/lump-charcoal

Last week I also turned the compost from these two bins..

..into this larger bin.

I wet it down as I forked it over. Yesterday it had settled about a foot and was giving off considerable heat.

Last evening I took a break from work and raked some of the upper field with Tristan and Toly. We raked hickory nuts and leaves onto a huge piece of tarp. They helped me drag it to the pigpen and dump it. several more evenings like that and we'll have the entire paddock cleared of leaves and hickory nuts and acorns. The pigs should really enjoy the fodder.

The chickens are finally laying a reasonable amount of eggs again.

One of our neighbors had a stroke and gave us his chickens. I reluctantly took them, because I felt bad for him. They promptly gave our hens mites and probably worms. One day I went to collect eggs and there were merely a fraction of the expected amount. Since we treat everything naturally and only when necessary it takes a while to get over this kind of stuff. That was several weeks ago and with intensive treatment and they are finally getting better. No good deed goes unpunished--I didn't even like that guy either.

I also got a bit more slipform masonry completed on the milking barn.

The weather has been perfect for this kind of work and I have been stuck in-doors doing web design. Aarrgh..

Here is that bad cow on pasture furlough. She has been promptly going directly for the acorns. She can poison herself if she eats too many. We have been keeping her up and feeding hay until I can do something about it.


The boys are getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Their raw diet agrees with them. They still have that sheepish puppy look to them. astrid has been keeping the dominance pressure on them even though they are beginning tower over her. Ianto, the tallest, is starting to not take it anymore. I imagine there will be a power change very soon.

captain jack and ianto say good bye to ginger and pepper

The boys as I call them are growing like weeds. They have been on a raw diet for quite a while. It suits them. Chicken has been their staple. They ate all of our "flatties"* during broiler raising season. We lost quite a few of this time around. They began their journey heat stressed and were overly susceptible to it from then on.

This gate is one of their boundaries they are not supposed to cross. They are pretty good about following that rule.
This is Ianto about half grown. He reminds me of Henry. I still miss Henry.

Ianto is my favorite, I admit it. I can't help it. Here they are waiting for dinner.

Once Ianto is full grown he'll stand like that but only on the top bar.

Ginger and Pepper are going to the slaughter house tomorrow.

I know I professed last time that I would never do that again. Luckily I'm allowed to change my mind. The job that they did on smoking the meat and making sausage was so great that they have won me over for at least another time.

We will save every little scrap of bone and usual waste from both pigs to freeze for the dogs. They eat less on this diet and are much healthier. Tabitha really appreciates the fact that their waste is small and turns ashen white and benign within a day or so. Our large dung beetle population makes short work of three large dogs feces this way too.

So, goodbye to Ginger and Pepper but hello to them all winter long.


They are such friendly creatures we love them on so many levels.


I don't think that I will ever put pigs in the garden again.

Their smell is a little too close to the house. But, the main reason is they only tore up certain areas of the garden a little too deeply while left other areas completely untouched. Huge craters in the garden are not what I was hoping for.

I still have a little more tear down of the butcher area. The big-top worked perfectly this time.


I am trying to complete some compost for when my parents arrive with Kassi's Daylily starts. Two of these bins were full of nitrogen rich waste bedding and cow manure.

This is how far it has composted.

It is about a third of it's original volume. I have turned it twice in the past few weeks in attempt to get high compost temperatures. The feed stock was full of weed seeds and I wanted to be sure to kill of them. My moisture content was a little high and I lost some nutrients.

Composting is easy and difficult at the same time. Predictable results are the elusive factor. Last season my compost, although complete, contained far too many weed seeds. I hope for much better this time around.



*flatties are what we call chickens that have died and are laying there extremely flat when we come to check on them.

It is finally raining...

Tabitha and I cleared the garden for the pigs to go in there and clean it up. This morning we decided to attempt the move. We opened the appropriate fences and gates. Tabitha got a bucket of grain while I opened the pigpen. They wanted nothing to do with her and her measly pulverized pig feed. Tabitha had just cleaned out the freezer and gave the pigs the waste. Note to self, make sure pigs are hungry before trying to coax them anywhere.

The rodeo ensued in earnest. I must admit it was really fun. I love pigs. Our farm is mostly dog proof so we were not in any danger of loosing anyone. First we tried chasing them. Pigs don't react like other animals in this respect. They immediately think it is a game wherein they are the puck and you are the goalie. They rush past just out of reach woofing just to taunt. Did I mention I love our pigs?

After trying several methods we simply relied on their natural curiosity and closing gates behind them. Surely the garden is the place with the most interesting things to eat and root. Finally they realized that it was. We closed them in and they were happy.

Then the heavens opened and praised our good work by offering us with a much needed rain. It has been over a month since it rained here. The grass crunched with each step like walking on fall leaves. Tabitha also put some clothes out on the line just to taunt the mischievous clouds into cutting loose.

We are hopefully going to get more this evening. All that beautiful chicken fertilizer from moving the tractors across our paddocks needs to be rained in. Oh if we get a couple of inches over the next few days the pastures will perk up into a lush cow heaven.

My rain water storage for the chicken coop was down to twenty five percent. I had a broken water fountain and it dripped for over twelve hours. Here is a picture of it filling up. I installed a chain for the water to adhere to on it's descent. I watched it for a while it was hypnotic like a campfire.



I took a video but when I watched it I decided it wasn't worth sharing because the moment was lost. A little video of it seemed stupid while in person it was almost spiritual. It is funny how some things can be captured and others can't.

Rome almost got bit by a copperhead snake yesterday. He actually stepped on it. It was between the house and garden. It struck at him twice but didn't pierce the skin. We were so lucky. I grabbed him up by one arm with a jerk. Luckily he is used to me picking him up by one arm since a baby. Otherwise, he surely would have a dislocated shoulder.

I guess they mostly travel in pairs so we are on *high-alert* until further notice. I raked all the leaves and debris from that area of the yard to be sure the other snake wasn't lying in wait. I showed Rome the dead snake, yes I killed it. I warned him that this snake could kill him and to stay away.

Dayglo'melay

Last year we only planted one German-stripe plant. I saved seeds from several tomatoes from it because I loved how they taste. We planted a whole row of them this year. Most plants were true to type but we had one lucky variation. A whole plant of the most fabulous tomatoes I have ever tasted.

They taste like peaches and vibrate with day-glow iridescent pink and yellow. We have dubbed the tomato Dayglo'melay. We will plant an entire row of them next year. I will save seeds from the best of those and possibly offer seeds for sale. Yeah they'll be cheap, mostly to cover the shipping.

I have eaten so many of them this year. I would normally have a mouth full of canker sores. I usually eat cherokee purple to excess and they have a much higher acid content. Not these babies.


Tabitha has also discovered the perfect canning tomato. We occasionally watch *Lidia's Italy* on the cooking channel on PBS. She is always raving about San Marzano tomatoes. We grew some of them and are extremely impressed. They are not a good salsa tomato nor taste good sliced but add a little heat and they are amazing. They cook down very quickly and make thick rich tomato paste. We also grew an organic version but they failed almost immediately. *shakes fist into the air* They suffered from the blight the earliest and worst. Even the copper spray didn't stop the death. So we are on the hybrid band wagon for the time being. I might try and save some seeds from them anyway. What is the worst that can happen? Poor/no germination or never set fruit might happen. But, I might get lucky and have my own seed. The book gardening when it counts states that most of the newer *heirloom* varieties came from hybrids from the fifties.


My parents sent Kassi a bunch of Iris rhizomes. They are labeled and organized for Kassi to grow them for sale. Four varieties will be ready next year and dozens will be ready in a couple of years.

We planted half of them in the raised beds by the peach tree. The other box of longer term plants are still in my closet. We need to get beds ready for them and it is too hot out to do that kind of work.

Bob is loaning us four fencing panels for a dog pen for Astrid. I know, that doesn't sound like me. It appears that she will go into heat before the boys are ready. Plus we'd like her to not get bred her first heat. So we'll put her up during her heat until the boys are ready and she has had a few heats.


Tucked under the fence panels are four twelve foot long telephone pole sections. They are going to be a play tower for the kids. It will overlook the garden and paddocks. It will be like a guard tower. I'm thinking a zip-line careening into the forest.


The broiler chicks are growing like crazy.

This is my new door design. It requires a pipe bender to make but it is really elegant and simple.

I also put an improved handle on this tractor.

It is inspired from mikes tractors that I am borrowing. We are very pleased with his tractors. They turn on a dime and squeak next to fences more easily than mine.

I also had an epiphany regarding the water fountain for this new tractor. The pipe connects to the bottom of the bucket with a homemade bulkhead fitting and a sock as pre-filter.

It goes straight down to the water fountain using a bit of old hose so it will hang correctly in an incline situation. The whole thing clicks apart and removes from the tractor quickly and easily for dumping, cleaning or repair.

Having the water fountain connected to a flexible hose has the added benefit of easy dumping of the bowl when it gets fouled.

I also added the new style doors to the old tractors.

We zip tied billboard-vinyl-tarp to the doors. So far we are very pleased.

These birds are looking so healthy.


We also turned the sheep loose in the paddocks. They promptly used the dog pass through and went to the upper field. They like being where the dogs are. The dogs love them, respect them and genuinely seem to enjoy protecting them.

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.