I thought things were getting pretty bad a while ago when our collection of animals grew from ONE dog and three children to a gaggle of chickens, the dog, and a series of feral cats (never more than two at a time). One thing I’m learning though is that if you are willing to accept responsibility for an animal, someone will be willing to give one to you. Thanks to the wiles of the coyotes we were down to one cat and had cut our chicken flock substantially, so of course we needed to fill the void with something… Enter … Read the rest
Category Archives: The Homestead
Our attempts to get closer to our food, give our kids an idea of where food comes from, and teach them how to work.
Liz the Coyote Killer
It never fails… the best fun always happens when I’m not around. I happened to be out of town this last week for work. Were Liz and I to trade places, I’m pretty sure I’d go crazy with her on the road from time to time and me left at home to manage all the affairs. This week though, she gave me even more evidence of her outstanding ability and my unworthiness in comparison.
As I was boarding my plane early Friday AM to come home I noticed a voice-mail that must have come in while my phone was going … Read the rest
Gloves are Good and Wow, That’s Red
One of the blessings of this life is that every day presents some form of opportunity to learn. This week, among other things, I got a somewhat painful lesson about the wisdom of wearing gloves when trying to wrangle sheep, and a reminder that you shouldn’t wear your good sunglasses when painting a barn.
We have a good friend a few miles from here who is single and somewhat elderly. When her husband died of cancer a little over a year ago, she was left to run the 10-acre homestead on her own. She’s quite capable, but when it comes … Read the rest
Food Faces
I’m not sure why, but Liz and the Kids keep seeing faces in our food. Just for fun, I’ve decided to share a few that they’ve taken pictures of…
Happy hens make happy eggs apparently. I don’t honestly know if these eggs were from our flock of backyard chickens or if they were from one of the last dozen or so we purchased at the local meat market before our buzzards started laying. I think this is just before we started getting our own eggs. The ones we’ve been getting have yolks so orange it would look unnatural if you … Read the rest
Free Cats are Hard to Keep
Ever since we moved in here I’ve been saying we needed to get a barn cat to help keep the mice in check. Even before the house was built, I was certain we would have problems because as I was clearing the land and cutting the brush and undergrowth the path in front of my tractor would almost look like the ground was boiling with all the mice and other vermin scattering in fear of death by power shredder. Since I cleared off most of their cover and food supplies I wasn’t all that surprised when they moved into the … Read the rest
A Rattlesnake in the Garage
I went out to the garage the other day to look for a tool I had thrown on the pile that has been building since we moved in. As I lifted an old blanket I saw a small snake coiled up just below my hand. As afraid of snakes as I am, I surprised myself by not jumping, starting, or even elevating my heart-rate. Looking at it, it wasn’t totally clear what kind of snake it was, but I decided to pick up a shovel and take care of it either way.
The funny thing about snakes is that when … Read the rest
The Chicken Coop
I had thought I had taken pictures of the chicken coop while I was building it. True to form, I got busy and forgot. So… I guess you get to settle with a picture of Michael doin’ what he spends a lot of time doing: Playing with chickens.
Liz decided she wanted a lot of fresh eggs, which translated into an order of 40 chicks (straight run, so about half would end up in the stew pot as young roosters). The only problem is that you can’t use a standard back-yard chicken coop for those kinds of numbers. To … Read the rest
My Experience with Lumber Liquidators Tongling Strand-Woven Bamboo
This is a stub for me to write about my (bad) experience with the Tongling Strand Woven Bamboo flooring we installed in our house. The quick and dirty version is simple. It scratches very easily, and scratches are highly visible against the dark color. It shrunk enough to separate the joints in the middle of the room and leave a 1/2 inch gap in spite of following their recommended maximum span, acclimation time and procedure, and floor preparation, and is terribly difficult to keep clean. If you are a little old lady who never goes outside, wears felt-soled slippers all … Read the rest
Home Building Progress
The outside of the house is basically finished.
Here is a small shot of the living/kitchen area. The pantry door is the first to the left. The french doors open into the office.
This week cabinets are being stained and installed, tile floor is being put down in the bathrooms and laundry room, and light fixtures and fans are going in. The front door is now on and the garage door will be coming soon. Peter has decided to install the wood flooring in the main area to save us nearly $3000 in labor costs.
I have been looking up … Read the rest