Farmyard Boogie

Monday, February 9, 2015

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Things are always in flux, and I really like to think out loud. It especially helps me while planning, because I can easily see the flaws in my ideas once I tell someone else about them. With that being said, some of the things that Naomi and I were planning for 2015 as of a couple of months ago have changed somewhat. We're also trying to focus on what we can do based on time, money and resources in the coming year. The following are some of the things Naomi and I have been discussing as of late. Naomi may have a few more, but this is what's on my mind:

Geese, not sheep
rabbits
mobile chicken coop
worm bin
refine duckponics
gutters on the house
attempt to replace one rotten windowsill

Geese- I had been talking about getting lambs in the spring because we have SO much lawn. Mowing it takes time, gas, and mower maintenance. Sheep would turn that grass into something productive- meat. Well, the summer was very dry, and when October rains came, I realized just how wet some of that backyard lawn really is, which makes it totally not suitable for sheep.

I had also been interested in getting some geese, but thought I'd save it for a later year. Once I decided sheep were out, geese seemed like an easy decision. They're much much cheaper to obtain, I can stock them in a higher density, they also eat grass, and they would love it when the backyard gets a little wet. Pretty sure that's a done deal. I'm going to try to figure out how to still use the polydome I got from our neighbor to house the geese in. They might need a little ramp and some ramp training like Penelope got when she was a baby.

Rabbits- Rabbit might be one of my absolute favorite foods in the world. They existed in such abundance at our apartment that it seemed silly to try to raise domesticated rabbits. While we saw a few here in the end of summer/ early fall, they certainly weren't in abundance. Aside from shelling out for some infrastructure and stock costs, rabbits don't seem too tough to pull off this year. I had originally planned to knock this out during the end of winter, but I've sort of hit a design flaw and I'm focusing on some other stuff at the moment, mainly music. Rabbits are reasonably easy to take care of, not cost-prohibitive in regards to feed and care, and can add a significant amount of extra lean protein to our diets. Plus, they're cute and fluffy.

Mobile Chicken Coop- I've been talking about this quite a bit lately. I want to build another coop similar to our existing one, but on a trailer platform and be able to move it around the property. I want to fence the chickens into small paddocks with electronet, or even just non-electrified fence in the beginning so that I can focus their efforts where it will do the most good, and spread them across the landscape rather than keeping them in a fixed location- which usually turns into a mudhole. Again, this is a moderate expense, but if done right, should last a long time and its benefits will outweight the cost long term.

Worm Bin- A few years back I had wanted to start a worm bin, but couldn't find an appropriate place to site the bin while living in our apartment. Our basement now seems to have a very consistent temperature, and would be a great location for a worm bin. What little amount of food scraps we've been generating have been going straight into the chicken run, but it's never enough volume all at once to get some good aerobic compost going. A big part of our tiny volume of food scraps is that with the ordeal of moving, we didn't produce nearly the amount of veggies from our garden as in previous years. We just can't afford to buy the kind of produce we're used to producing ourselves. Just this morning we were debating over the best use of our shredded paper, and it hit me again- WORM BIN. So, this is a relatively new idea, but seems easy enough to get going, especially considering we have most or all of the parts needed. We just need for the ground to thaw a bit and find some appropriate worms.

Duckponics- This is Naomi's area of expertise, but she mentioned some adjustments and upgrades she's planning on for this year. I'll let her tackle that when she sees fit.

Gutters- We dearly need gutters on our house. They would fix so many issues that we're having like basement infiltration, exterior rot on the house (see windowsills), foundation stuff, and water supply issues. I'm really hoping I can slam this one out before next fall. I haven't even begun to research the cost of this, but we've got so many water issues I can't NOT get them.

Windowsills- Most, if not all of the windowsills on our house are rotten. Like sponge-soft. It's easy to see where water sheets off the roof, hits the house, and then hits the windowsills. I need to do a lot of work on the windows other than the sills, too, (reglazing, new storm windows) but it doesn't make sense until the water issue is resolved. I am, however, planning to try replacing one windowsill and see how it goes. If it isn't too much of a nightmare, I will then plan on doing the others. I'm hoping to replace the sills, eventually get new storm windows, and otherwise rehabilitate the existing wooden-sash, double-hung windows because they're beautiful and fit the style of our home very well.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Information 2014 & 2015

Perhaps this is all in my head, but I feel as though one of my jobs in our household is systems manager (since that is something that I naturally do well). As the systems manager (that I just crowned myself as), I would be better suited to my job if I glean more information about the systems I am attempting to manage. In my year-end books read review I do for my own benefit, I noticed that not only did I not read a great number of books this year, very few of them were aligned with my goals of furthering our agricultural life. Here were the books that I DID read in 2014 that help me have a wider breadth of knowledge.

In 2015, I would like to read more, and read more books that further our life goals. I am fully aware that information comes from sources other than books, but I worry that this is emblematic of the information that I have been researching this past year.

Here's to a new year and new books to read!

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Energy Audit

On Friday, we had an energy audit of our home. I had been really excited about it, too. The program sounds great- tons of rebates, air sealing, duct sealing, thermal imaging, and a ton of (arguably crummy but "free") lightbulbs.

For $99, I figured that even just the weatherstripping on the doors would be worth it. We also desperately need to replace our windows because the sills are so rotten they feel like a sponge. The program was offering a rebate of $50 per window. At least we got the weather stripping done on the doors, but that's about the only thing we got.

In the first 5 minutes, the guys spotted some asbestos tape sealing some ductwork below the bathroom. I don't remember if the building inspector had spotted that or not, but I don't remember it. One of the guys immediately said they wouldn't do the blower door test because it's too dangerous. The blower is powerful enough to agitate the asbestos and make it airborne. So that was that on the blower door test. They proceeded to do the weather stripping on the doors anyway at least. There was no doubt that the doors were drafty, considering you could see sunlight through the door frames when the doors were closed.

Then the other guy said they'd still do some ductwork tests to seal up where the ducts leak, and boy do they leak, but we encountered the same problem- that bit of asbestos tape. Not surprised, but disappointed.

When Guy #1 was doing the weather stripping, he left the plastic wrappers to blow across the yard. OK maybe he forgot? Then came the lightbulbs. Guy #2 went around and switched out our lightbulbs. We got 4 LEDs and the rest got changed to CFLs. Luckily, we got to keep all our incandescents, which we need for brooder lights. By the time the guys had left, we realized they didn't even leave us the extra CFLs we were supposed to get. The program supplies 25 CFLs, but they left with the extras. They DID leave behind 2 more LEDs and an extra showerhead, which was in addition to the one they installed. WHOOPS.

And as for the rebates, Guy #2 would only sign off on a few of them, and we only have 120 days to redeem them. No window rebate, and no insulation rebate. SHIT!!! Overall, I am really disappointed. At least we got our doors sealed up well. They didn't do any thermal imaging, but said we "probably" have insulation.

the white band in the center of the photo is the alleged asbestos

I don't mean to fault the workers for not performing those tests, but I'm definitely disappointed. I'm also planning on taking steps for remediation of the asbestos as well, and seeing what else I can do to make our house more efficient. On the advice of my friend Paul, I also plan on filing a complaint to Energize CT against the crew who came out and their lack of professionalism. I didn't go into a lot of detail in this post about all of the the things that went wrong that day, but they were numerous.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

2014 Wrap-up

2014 had a lot of turbulence, but we did manage to get some data!

Having more birds definitely meant more eggs, but we unfortunately stopped keeping track of eggs when we moved into the new house.

Some dates that we noted on the calendar:
2/22: Started Eggplant, Lettuce, Pepper seeds
3/8: Started Tomato seeds
3/18: 1st Penelope Egg of Spring
4/5: Started Squash, Watermelon, Cucumber seeds
6/14: Moved into House! :)
8/3: Fabio began mounting hens
9/5: 1st Tweeter egg
10/14: Planted Garlic in bed #1
11/3: Duck pond frozen
11/8: The Chop
11/14: 1st Snow
11/15: Ground Frozen

Friday, January 2, 2015

Winter Fun

Naomi and I have been hiking quite a bit, especially considering it's usually pretty difficult to get Naomi outside during the winter. I had been feeling like I had a pretty funless summer and just wanted to get out and do stuff. We've been out a handful of times and seen some cool places. I'm really enjoying getting to know my new area here.

We've also had a few fires in the backyard, especially so I can get wood ash to nixtamalize the corn we grew this past summer. One recent afternoon while burning some wood, Naomi came up with the idea to make foil dinners! Well, I just love foil dinners!! I also suggested that we roast an egg in on the coals, and proceeded to attempt to find the "best" way to roast an egg on coals. The internet provided me with just TOO many options. I also remembered watching Steve Rinella try to roast some pigeon eggs on TV once. His eggs boiled out and he lost most of the insides.

So the best thing I came up with was to hollow out an orange and stick the whole egg in it. I had cooked cupcakes in orange peels at camp once, so the method seemed the most familiar. While it was roasting, the sun was setting. I went to close the coop and grab the day's eggs, and I discovered that one of the eggs was cracked. Having nothing to lose with that egg, I popped a tiny piece of loose shell from it and set it right on the coals. An insignificant amount of egg white came out of that little hole and ran down the side, but also provided us a view to the progress inside the shell. Meanwhile, the other egg was doing who-knows-what inside that tangerine peel.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, we determined the eggs (and the foil dinners) to be done. The naked egg looked completely cooked through, and we figured the other one should be about the same, so we pulled them from the coals. Naomi got the naked egg, and I took the tangerine egg. Naomi's yolk was just barely not cooked on the top side that never touched the coals directly, which wasn't all that surprising. The tangerine egg was cooked perfectly. Both were absolutely delicious; like a friend and a hard-boiled egg combined, but somehow better than either one. We determined that the tangerine peel was both unrealistic in a woodcraft situation, and totally unnecessary.

After we finished our eggs, we pulled the foil dinners. They were PERFECTLY done, minus the apple chips that were right on top. Those burned, so we took them off. I'm hoping to make some more foil dinners in the not-so distant future.