What Have We Been Up To?

And the farm animals take over the blog! Clearly, the humans have been too busy to blog lately, with their homeschooling and church and cleaning pens and stuff, so we thought we animals would share a few words on what we have been up to around here!

We finally got some rain around here, and the "goosies on the loosies" as that house mama calls us like rain better than any of the other animals! Why? To play in, of course! But also, because weeds mean that we eat fresh greens that the other animals don't reach. Mama says that means we are brats telling everyone else about it, but we are the guard geese after all, so we should get some perks!

House mama, also known as the feed lady, she tried to pull some weeds down by her garden recently. We told her this was unacceptable, as they were the salad bar we hadn't gotten to yet. Finally, we got her to leave the piles for a couple days so that we could munch a bit before she did more work.

She still has more to prep for our eating. We are done with the other piles, so she had best get busy!

Just because the geese roam all the time doesn't mean they are the only ones with good treats! Despite getting our own salad bar in our pen that Wyatt keeps stocked and growing for us, we still get baskets of sprouts!

It is like a party when the red baskets come out in the middle of the day!

We even share with the guineas! (Well, most of the time, anyway!)

Breakfast time is the best time in our pen! Okay, well, we think we get the best dinner, too! We have the house mama and our Bailey trained to bring us bottles twice a day, and then Daddy Powerstroke lets us have the feeder . This is our look that says, "We are cute!" We know you agree, and the Brahmas that share a fence with us in the grow out pen sing along with us.

The house mama is always excited to see melons doing well. What we like about melons, is that the chickens get lots of melon and then they are in better moods!  They complain less about us singing at night when they are in good moods, and I think I heard this kind of melon called a honeydew...

Just in case you were missing out on some of my cuteness, I am Freedom's Prayer!  I am pretty sure the world is here to cuddle me!

Did we mention we are masters as coexistence? The goats might say we complain about them singing, but we keep our rooster in line, and also have a pet snake in our pen. If you look closely, you will see his tail over by the old feeder we like to stand on.

This guy doesn't bother us hens, and our nesting boxes and new feeder are up off the ground. The desert comes with mice, so we let this guy wander around so the mice don't bother our nests, and in turn we nest up high and only try to sit on eggs up in the loft where Wyatt keeps our straw. The added bonus- the bigger our Wyatt gets, the funnier it is when he tries to get eggs from us up there! Then we all stand around in the door to our hen house and watch him... Did I mention bonus points for anyone who can get him stuck up there so he has to call for help?

Why yes, the chickens tried to take over! But guess what! We are just too cute to ignore!

My brother was being silly and trying to wrestle with our Dad, so I decided to play peekaboo from my favorite house. Dad also likes to pose. Don'e tell the house mama, but he leaves a pile of poop near where he poses on purpose. She says he wasn't well socialized before our Bailey brought him home, but Bailey says that means he will do just fine in our family of homeschool goofballs. Not sure what that means, but she always scratches our ears and brings us food. And, if we cry really loud, she will come out over and over to check on us!

Well, that is the world according to the bucks, the geese and the Big Pen. We dare the does and the others to outdo us!

Up-cycled Projects for Sustainable Farming

This dresser was yellow was it came to Arizona before our daughter was born. It had lived through my family, having been well constructed, though over the years it began to have troubles. We reassembled the drawers, reattached the bottoms, reattached the faces and back corners, over and over and over again. That is,  until this Spring, when I just couldn't get it to go back together again.

I thought hard about how to re-purpose it, rather than give up on something that seemed to still have life in it. I considered adding board for shelves, but realistically, I could see that causing a TON of dusting, without really adding much convenience. I considered the shelves and using the drawer faces like flip up doors, but when I got into the actual design on that idea, it really didn't work. Nothing would fit right.

I poured over Pinterest. That's what I tell the 4H-ers to do.

So it sat on the back porch, waiting for my crazy over attached to tradition self until I finally just realized- the greatest need around here was the organic and sustainability projects. So a plan was hatched- this dresser would be phase one- of the livestock salad bars.

Salad bard for livestock. you ask? Why yes. By creating planters where the sprouts continue to grow, proving more greenery to the chickens and goats, we hope to supplement their organic nutrition with things more naturally eaten in the wild. Besides, what we grow ourselves, when know where it comes from, and it is more economical for feeding organic.

So we took this old dresser, and the kids and I got to work.

The main frame of the dresser went to the doe pen. Sorry, it was getting a bit dark.

Wyatt took the first of the drawers with no base out to the Big Pen.

He picked a spot where the chickens keep digging hols for him to fill (two birds, so to speak.) Not far from the waters, though. We won't water it with chicken water, but we do want to make watering pretty easy!

They filled them mostly full with garden soil from my re-potting pile. They left a bit of room at the top, so the animals would not have enough leverage or grasp to pull the plants out from the root. Then came chicken wire.

I had originally thought to use hardware cloth to keep the from pulling too much, and had been following the progress of a few similar projects. It turns out, at least one person was having trouble with hens getting stuck walking on the hardware cloth and losing toes. Who! I hadn't even though of that! Glad for someone else's honesty and experience. Hope those hens are getting around okay!

This one is outside the doe barn. Once we catch the water harvesting system up, we plan to have one there, too, and stationed this so that there was just enough room by the roof, but against the wall, for a water harvesting barrel, and this could easily be watered from it. She added plenty of seeds that had been soaking for a couple days.

Then she got to watering them two to three times each day.

This is what is coming up. I have some more for her to reseed later tonight.

This is the chicken one in the Big Pen. Too bad I didn't get a photo of this one earlier, since they are REALLY digging on their sprouts! Wyatt will be adding more seeds, but just because they weren't as established as we had thought they would be when the ladies began eating them. They like to work together to get the best grasp on the sprouted grains while one stands on the wire, the other puts her head through to munch!

It is doing quite well, but we will continue to work with it!

Next up, after reseeding? The Bucks and the A Pen! The more natural the food is, the better!!!

Late Summer Garden Refresh, Part Two

This is Brown Seeded Simpson lettuce. I have AMAZING luck with it. It grows more like a stalk, which can be a bit odd, but if you let the last of it go to seed, the seeds gather easily and any you miss will automatically reseed and sprout when the temperatures are favorable. This variety has kept us in lettuce far more than any other, and that makes it a winner in my book!

Part of the end of Summer refresh meant weeding the tree sprouts volunteers out, as well as adding in a couple other varieties and a little broccoli.

This was a volunteer melon plant in the other planter, but I am a little worried it might be too late int he seaosn to get anything out of it. Still, I am going to let it go and see what comes of it since we stay warm so long here.

Shadow like to supervise me. I cannot miss her when she sits on the dirt pile.  She knows it, and she wants to make sure to be in the middle of the action.

Unfortunately, what you see here is me finishing off the last of the rainwater. The storm didn't come, again, and we are careful to use the water wisely, but this was draining hte last of this barrel into a watering can. Bummer.

These are purple heirloom tomatoes. Just about ready to pick... YUM! Ever tried them?

A pepper plant and some peas, winding up the trellis.

Another bell pepper plant. We love those...

And the strawberries are coming back into production since the heat dropped a bit, too...

Bailey was chatting with me while I worked, and jumped in to take on cleaning out the water barrels.The screens just aren't enough, they are good, but dirt still accumulates!

After another round of chores, sprouts, and more, a beautiful evening settles in and we head in to the next task.

We are making little forward steps with out projects around here, but always have more to do, of course. What are you doing in your gardens and livestock pens this time of year?

A Little Teamwork and Homegrown Redneck Engineering...

One of the many fun things I never expected about adulthood is that there is always a project awaiting my attention. I wish that was an exaggeration, but it isn't. Back in the spring, we got a crack in the wall of the shower in the master bath. I consulted friends, and came up with a plan to help it wait until hunting season. Why, you might ask? First off, in the last year, there have been several family crises in our extended family, and family is more important to us than tearing out an entire shower when we can avoid it.

Why hunting season? Really, out of practicality. Four of us live in this house, and when one or two are off hunting, fewer people are trying to share a shower and bathroom! So when Charlie was away on his archery elk hunt, I needed to make use of my time. 

First, Wyatt had been finishing repairing a hole in his bathroom from where the towel bar, not having lined up on the studs, had left a hole in the wall. It wasn't the first time, but the new repair was actually much better than the first, and he had done all of the work. We agreed that repainting the bathroom was a good idea, since the walls and ceiling are scrubbed regularly, and having to paint the repair meant a good time to do it all. Then we decided to go a shade darker.

The original color was an icy blue on one main wall, with the other walls white. We went just a smidgen more vibrant with a still icy blue, and took the blue back over the shower as well.

I think the color is a little more accurate in the top photo. Now we need to decide on new rug and curtain for the shower. Any thoughts for us?

I wanted to think that after that, and two coats of paint of course, that I was ready to get going on the master shower. But then I realized that something really did look funny. The vanity, to be specific. The drawers had kept rolling out and hitting me in the knee while I had been painting, but it didn't dawn on me right away (I do projects like this late at night, so I am even slower than usual during these times.)

Anyway, something look a little off to you? The front of the vanity had separated from the frame along this side. Ugh. I had no desire to replace it, but needed to get things on track so I could move on to the next project!

Wyatt helped me bring in a floor jack, and I was hoping to use some liquid nails to put it back together. After dragging it all the way up to the porch, and us using a dog towel to preserve the wood floor while lining it up in the bathroom, it didn't fit under the kick plate, so it had to go back out. My friend, Janna, gave us the idea of a soup can and board. Wyatt didn't want any proof of being involved in this redneck engineering...

He was able to help me with a piece of wood flooring and a can of canned pumpkin, but then the board broke- darn...

So then we were back at it with wood and a glass jar we usually use for tea.

The jar was too big, but we went back to the can of pumpkin. Less scary in terms of possible broken glass anyway, right? I thought I had everything on track at about this time, and used lots of glue to secure it in place. Wyatt continued to hold it down until I brought in some little weight plates. I thought for sure we were on track then, but it was not to be.

In the morning, after waking the kids the first time, I released the board, and found that the glue did not hold at all. BIG UGH! But I put the weight plates back in place, and having realized that there was some space between the drawer tracks and the original frame board that I could not screw to because of all the trim on the front, I brought in an extra piece of wood to fit there, and ran screws. It wouldn't be pretty, but when the drawers were closed, the screws would at least be hidden behind the drawer faces,

I went with long screws, since the board would have to support the weight of the drawers as well, and sone of them didn't go in all the way, so I will cut those off. But in the end, it is functional now, and will hold for quite a while so that I can get on to the  next project.  

perfect? No. But functional? Yes.

 

Anyhow, outside of the issue there, the vanity is perfectly functional, and I have really become frustrated with the "throwaway" nature of society these days, so I am going to repair and reuse wherever I can! We might not be fancy, but we are working to practice and live what we preach- organically, environmentally, and in an many aspects of our life as possible.

Well, lots more projects going on to share with you in the coming weeks. We hope you will also share your projects with us to continue to inspire and help others use a little redneck engineering in their homesteading and home projects!  And if you have a better solution tot he projects we have done, please share that, too! 

Have a truly blessed and thankful day!

After the Flooding of Hurricane Norbert, Getting Ready for Hurricane Odile

As usual, the hustle of life here has me busy enough to where I take photos to share, but never quite get to the blogging! So I figure I ought to take a few minutes today and tomorrow and catch things up!

To begin with, this is the garden shed. Or, shall I say random shed? Presently there are assorted garden tools, irrigation items, paint, a table I needed to put somewhere for a project, and the geese like to hang out in there. Yes, that's right, the geese. Despite having free roam of the property, a play house, their own pool and open enclosure, the geese like to nest by the planter boxes and sleep by the garden, but hang out by day in a metal garden shed. Goofy!!!! But then again, they live at our house! Does anyone else have goofy geese like this?

With the monsoon season drawing to a close, we had very little total rainfall, most of it garnered in the two inch storm yield midway through the season, and very little actually stored.  We had been able to complete the prototype water harvesting barrel a few weeks back, but when the rainfall from the hurricanes working their way up from baja California began to fill the prototype barrel and the extra overflow barrel that was out, we knew we needed to prioritize the project!

One of the barrels we had already had this rubber section of hose attached. This needed to go, but fortunately came off pretty easily. There was actually a threaded bulkhead underneath, which had me pretty happy since it would give us two barrels with threaded bulkheads and two with a new kind I picked up at the aquaponics store. 

In another spot on the same barrel was one bulkhead that was capped off. That would have been fine, but it was really filthy Poor Wyatt was sweet enough to volunteer to crawl inside and clean it out all the way!

While that one was soaking in ACV, I cut off the lid of another barrel, just like the prototype version. Then I set it to soak with the ACV as well, while working on setting up the bricks to keep it off the ground and high enough to put watering cans under the spigots.  Additionally, I wanted them high enough that overflow could pour out across the top to the successive cans, making it easier to separate them to clean them out periodically without needing to move them as a unit or re-plumb them!

Last weekend, I had needed to go in to work at the college to deal with new requirements and reporting, and the aquaponics store had been just a few miles down the road from there.  I picked up some new things to try in place of the bulkheads, called Uniseals. While the snap into place through the holes you drill, and tighen up around the pipe when you put it through, they do move some, and can be pulled back out. I used the same hole saw with these, though a bit larger than with the traditional bulkhead. The man at the aquaponics store felt strongly that these have lasted better than the others in his own yard, as plastic breaks down severely in the Tucson heat and sun.

This is the Uniseal. Have you ever tried them?

This is my fancy dancy little hole, made with the hole saw. And some muscle, too.

The seal really did pop right in as advertised.

I took a break to do a walk around at this point, having washed out the tubs and gotten another round of ACV in to soak and make sure any last residues would be gone. Bailey had a minute, so she came up to help me dump this tub. Notice that it looks like a black lagoon in there? This is what happens when you don't have a lid on your barrel- algae! Ugh, that is like an algae bloom in the ocean messing with the life balance where they appear- NOT something I plan to use on our gardens! We carried the tub together and dumped it in a tree well under some ornamental cacti and the like, where it would be okay and still useful.

After rinsing out the gunk, I went back to my project in process. This is the barrel with the Uniseal in it The guy at the aquaponics store loves these, and I admit that on top of the flexible material aspect, the ease of installation could also make for smaller openings and the possibility that we could have less gunk potentially getting inside. Still, that meant no actual threading, which has me rather nervous in terms of  the spigot being knocked around or out or that leading to a leak. They use them more in the way of one tank connecting to another, so they don't seem as likely to get the abuse that comes with being so accessible.