And then summer was over and it was summer again (summer 2011 till now)

So after the last time I posted things took off for the summer and then winter came and we had a bunch of reno's in the house planned and the last 8 months just flew by like blinking.  Blinking with a side car of exhaustion.  I am going to post photo's and just comment on them for the things that happened over the last eight months.

So over the summer we took the kids to the Toronto Zoo and had a blast, but there is a lot of walking, you don't see to many fat people

Plus we had the chance to go visit friends at their boat.

 I had a few friends that I grew up with up to this summer (2011) for a camp fire-bbq.  good times Lee still working on being  FATMAN! with his double patty burger w sausage and bacon.

Centre Island were we where shrunk

Here are our first Buff Orpington pure breed birds

Some Where in here our Hand Crank Cream separator broke.  Now that would be ok if we didn't need it for our milk and if we had bought it at some store down the street where we could just exchange it, not the Ukraine.  So at first I sent it back and up-graded to an electric model.  Now I know that all of Europe including the Ukraine not only have different plugs, but they also run off 220v not 120v like use here, but I didn't know that until I had the separator in my hands. I had to purchase a step-up, which changes 120 to 220, but again didn't know that till it was in my kitchen full of milk.  And if that didn't complicate things the first motor that was sent had something wrong with it,  So 3-4 months after sending it back we now have a working Cream Separator, but now the goats are dry (no milk).

THE CHICKEN PLUCKER:  Well this didn't go so well.  It started off being made from an old washing machine, but after tearing everything apart and rebuilding it the motor was not strong enough to spin the drum to plucker feathers.  So after a lot of work it was scraped and I built one from a 45 gal drum and a motor for a furnace.  it is still yet to be tested but there will be pictures or a video of that.

At some point here we butchered all the meat birds and because the chicken plucker did not work we skinning a lot of birds and plucked a few by hand,  THANKS RYAN!!!

BABY TYLER: Born Nov 11, 2011 6.1 lbs Name figured out 10 mins. before birth

THE BUS:  I took on driving a school bus, because of the appeal of giving up retirement to work, LOL. No really, we were expecting our third child and in order to be prepared I started driving to make some extra money and to cover off the loss of Cheryl's income when she was off on mat leave.  Now It sounds like good job for a farmer, a little bit of time in the morning and then a little bit of time in the after noon.  Guess what by the time everything was factored in I was driving close to 5hrs a day and could never give a project the time it needed because I would only have a few hours in a row to do something.  I signed that I would drive for a year so this Friday is my last day.

RENOVATIONS:  As the months started to get colder Reno's started on the house.  This was not just a lip stick and mascara job, I am still working on them everyday and it has been five and a half months.
the list
-New floors in the kitchen, main floor bath, and front hall
-Paint the living rm, kitchen, mf bath, upper hall and front hall
-Build a mud rm, complete with built-in shelving
-Replace all interior doors and closets w matching doors
-Replace all light fixtures
-Hang an above the stove microwave
Wait for it...
-Install a new kitchen

And then there were Cows!!!  So after our first summer with goats and Cheryl not drinking milk we decided that we needed to get a Cow also.  It would provide milk and beef.  After a lot of research I decided on Red Poll Cattle.  It is an old breed from england that used to be dual purpose.  It often wins awards (currently) for the the meat and flavour.   It's milk is high in butter fat content but has small fat globulars, so people that think they are lactose intolerant can actually drink this milk with no side effects just like goats milk.  They calf easy and are not prone to genetic disease like lots of other cattle, so they cost less to raise and you don't need to give antibiotics to keep them alive, not that I would anyways.

I was able to buy two cows both pregnant and have them delivered over March break.  The problem is that we have had plus 20's weather for the week prior and all the snow melted and the ground was soft.  The cows arrived and the truck could not get back to the paddock so they were just let off the truck and then I spent the next two hours chasing cows up our road and back down and on our neighbours property and then finally into the paddock.  They seem to be adjusting well but they still don't like me to much.

still getting caught Up

I left off with we had just got the last 16 chick.  So stop me if you have heard this one...LOL

We had the chicks in side by the fire place for about a day and then Cheryl put and end to that.  Out side I fenced them in around the fire place (that doesn't work) in the garage.  The Turkeys and Chicks were living together in not so much harmony.  We lost five chicks before I figured out it was the turkeys killing them.  The Turkeys would walk up to the chicks and just stump on the their heads, so that was the end of their communal living.  Which also meant more work, two feeders, two waterers,  two floors to clean, but that stopped it no more chicks died.

For the second chicken tractor I found a place that sells used lumber not to far from me.  Because I did have to use old skids I could design the tractor to be lighter and I might have gotten a like cocky and made it bigger.  The only thing I would change about this one is that I would have painted the inside before letting the chickens in, too late now.  I am still trying to find a waterer, like on the first tractor, that is gravity feed and shuts off when the bowl is full.  Now you are up to date on the chicks. O one last thing,  the chicks as they grow don't seem to be Buff Orpingtons,  Three do, you can see two of them just to the left of the kids in the picture the rest are white, not Buff.  I'm going to see what they look like at 20 weeks and if they are still not buff I will be going back to have a talk with the guy that sold them to us.


It was about three weeks ago now that the kids and I decided to go for a walk one day instead of sit in the paddock (so Tamara will come out of the barn and eat).  So by the time we got back from the walk and put Hailey to bed for her nap Nate and I were about two hours late for our daily visit to the goats.  When I first entered the paddock I found it odd that Tamara didn't greet us, as I entered the barn I found out why.  Troy was dead!  He some how tipped the feeder I built onto himself (the feeder doesn't weight much it is just four 2x4's).  Tamara must of seen what happened and in a effort to help tried to come to Troy's aid and jumped on the feeder, because he was crushed under it.  Rigger had already set in and so as I pulled the feeder off Nate Entered and there was only one thing to say "Remember how mommy and daddy tell you not to do certain things, this is why, we don't want you to get hurt."

A week past and we found Kiddy (we also did not name her).  She is a one year old Alpine with horns and this was her first kid.  She has the smallest little teats, but daily she is producing more milk.  She is up to about a 1L now and I hope that this is it, because she keeps getting blood in her milk.  She has encouraged Tamara to go outside more and now I don't go sit in the paddock anymore as they can pretty much do that on their own now.

Christmas and ThanksGiving:  The turkeys are now hanging out in the barn with the goats, roaming free and loving it.  But now there is only three.  To add to the story we have had some pretty fierce storms lately here, the first of which we had several trees come down on the property two blocking off the driveway and other then that nothing on the property was hit, Praise GOD for that.  So one night it is raining and I am milking and I was having trouble with the goats because I can only have the one that I am milking in the barn, the other has to go outside so she doesn't eat the feed, drink the milk, nock stuff over, get punched.... you know.  But it was raining and goats are not big fans of the rain so they are freaking out while I finally finish with Tamara and go to do the switch and the barn door falls off and the turkeys are all standing right there and one just didn't see it coming.  so now I had one dead turkey one goat wanting in one not wanting to go out and I still had to milk.  Yeah I might have yelled a little that night, ok replace yelled with screamed and replace a little with a lot.

Cheese making:  We found that the recipes that we were getting online were inconsistent and often times missing stuff, like the measurements.  So we ordered a cheese making book.  It was fine, but then we realized that we had non of the supplies that the book called for. That was fine so we ordered them online, BUT Canada post is now locked out (that is an issue that I have lots of opinion on, but not enough time to write about it).  So we have been dumping milk, because we just can find enough uses for it without making cheese.

I did however make a yogurt which seems to have worked.  It had a woody taste to it and it wasn't sweet and didn't taste like vanilla or berries (ok you caught me I have never eaten plain yogurt and had nothing to base my "did it turn out" on.  It looked like yogurt.  Anyways we ended up dumping have that because I made a 2L batch and we just couldn't eat it in time. I also made vanilla ice cream.  I watched several videos online and after thought it best to make my own recipe because some, sorry, most people would be explaining why they were doing what they were doing and would contradict themselves several times. So after my first attempt failed I tweeked it a bit and the second one worked great,  I might still play with this one.

Trial #2

4 Egg yokes

1 1/2 cups of icing Sugar 

A dash of vanilla

Add part of the milk to sugar mix and wisk till thin.

Add to below

2 cups of Heavy Cream 

2 Cups of skimmed Milk

Put in freezer and mix every 30-45 mins. till hard

Eat as soon as possible

Yesterday:  another down side to the older chicken tractor.  Because it is closed in under the coop it tends  to get dark under there and for the past week the Hens have found it nice enough to roust under there.  except that when I drag it forward in the mornings they are down below and well it makes things tricky. yesterday I had no idea that a hen had spent the night down below so as always, before letting down the stairs I dragged it forward.  I did not notice till half way through the day when I went to move it again that one of the black sex-links had her foot caught under the side of the tractor and was now dead.  As I tried to pull her out all but one of the hens escaped.  Now this in the past was fine as they normally just hangout near the tractor and want back in.  This time it was just me and they wanted away from me more then they wanted to stay near the tractor.  So if I went near the tractor they left and then they got lost in the woods and I ended up spending several hours trying to herd them back to the front lawn.  after that they hid in the garden.  They would dig themselves in and even if I was standing over them they wouldn't move.  Smart for them as the garden (flower) is so thick that I couldn't see them.  I finally got all but two.  One plymouth rock had out run me after I smoked her out of the garden and one sex-link took the "you don't have to run fast then the bear" approach and ran parallel to another hen and gunned it just I went in to get the both of them.  

The kids and I were heading back from visiting the goats when as we passed the small opening in the trees that leads to the back deck I seen something move out of the corner of my eye from under it.  I hurriedly got Nate to go around to the other side and I grabbed my rake and tried to catch it.  It got away, but oddly enough we ended up catching it because in her attempt to get away from us she ran back to the tractor and ran head first into it holding her head in through the wire with her body stuck outside the tractor.

Tomorrow we are off to St. Jacobs, so I will keep you posted. I'm sure there will be lots.

Some many things to do so little time

So it is now May 29th, more then a month since my last post and since we got the goat.

THE GOAT: when the breeder called on Apr 15th I was literally trying to get caught up on my posts and make sure that I had written about everything that I had done, and well, a ton more has happened.

The goats name is Tamara, she is a registered Nubian goat.  She kidded twins (good for me and hopefully she continues to have twins in the future) so the breeder through in the male kid for the same price.  He was a really nice guy and I hope to have him up one day to show him the homestead that he had a hand in building.  Now I don't know very many goats, but Tamara is not a very smart one.  She has this cry that she makes when she can find Troy (the male kid, Cheryl named him) and it is very distinct.  I can see that, the whole protective mother thing, but sometimes she will start freaking out and making that cry and Troy will be to the left of her and a little back (what I mean is just out of her line of sight) and she doesn't look around to find him first.  She chooses to freak out first and then look around for him.  This is hard for me to explain in written word, but she is stupid. We converted an old double car garage that was on the property into the barn.  I had spent a lot of time putting some scrap roofing metal around the base of the exterior walls and then piled rocks around the base of the wall to stop predators. Because it wasn't finished the first night that the goats were here I slept in the back of the van parked right outside of the barn with a loaded 22 rifle and a flashlight.  Sleep was limited.  A train passes by our house every half hour over night, I would say. I didn't know this sleeping inside, but now I do.

As we got the call, Cheryl said to me well why don't we pick up some laying hens while we are out and I agreed.  So we found 3 Plymouth rock and 4 Black sex-link right around the corner. A young guy was selling them and he had a huge array of other foul.   Now the chicken tractor wasn't done, so the first thing I had to do when we got back, after finishing the rest of the barn, was finish the chicken tractor. I kinda just through the rest of it together.  Because of that it ended up weighting a ton and now I have to move it using the ATV and not by hand as I had planned.  The chickens love it, but for the first few days they would lay their eggs on the ground and wouldn't go up inside at night.  One of the sex-link was the first to lay her egg in the nesting boxes and then from there everyone followed and it only took them three days till they all learned that inside on the perches was where they should spend there nights.  We do currently have one hen (but we can't find out who) that is laying deflated eggs.  The eggs is just a shell and has nothing in it and the shell itself is softer  and wrinkled.  O well hopefully it stops as the nest of them are laying fine.  We are getting at four eggs every day and some days they give up to six.

The Paddock:  Yesterday I got the paddock to a point where the goats can go out and they are contained, for the last month and a half we have been just letting them roam free and I have spent a lot of time trying to keep them out of areas that they shouldn't be in.  SO this is a relief.  the door from the barn to the paddock still has no lock but that is coming.  Yesterday there was no door and even though the goats had the ability to roam the grasses of the paddock they choose to stay inside the barn, like I said they are not very bright.  To add to that when there was no fence they would wonder around and eat the grasses and everything else that was growing all around the paddock, but now that they are fenced in (80'x 60', it's huge for one goat and a kid) they stay near the doors or inside the barn.  I still need to put t-bar between each set of posts, but Troy is too young to challenge the fence right now and he will be dinner if we don't get another doe soon, so I am in no rush to get that done.  I did build them this great feeder for in the barn but now that the grasses are in it will stay empty all summer.

Now well we where at the goat breeders we noticed that he had two jersey bull calfs. so we asked and he told us that he picked them up at a livestock auction for $20/head.  I almost passed out. To go over the numbers for those that don't know.

SO Jersey is a dairy breed, so the bull (male) calfs are useless, they take milk supply and feed to raise plus handling and so dairy operation want to get rid of them as soon as possible. A spring calf will weight about 500 lbs or more by the end of summer and still be or just past the veal point. thats roughly 300 lbs of vealish meat for $20 and some time and management, that's 6 Cents a lbs up front cost.  If you have 2 acres of grasses that you can bale 1 acre twice for winter feed well the calf eats the other (about 2 tons) and once you are through spring grasses the next year that calf that cost $20 now could weigh up to  1200-1400 lbs,  thats about 1000lbs of meat after you remove useless bone (because there are stewing bones) and innards, plus there are some innards that are useful like the intestine, heart and liver.  The brain can even be used for tanning the hind and hooves are a delicacy and hard to find with our current industrial food system so you could almost eat the whole thing, and don't forget to compost the rest for your garden the following year.  NOW THATS A DEAL!!!!!!

So Ryan and I went to a livestock auction.  I didn't understand a thing the auctioneer said, but I did find Buff Orpington's for $2/bird (day old chicks) so we bought the last 10 he had and two turkey's for $5 a bird, Ryan bought two turkey's also and we are going to take care of them till they have space or Easter/ Christmas/ Thanksgiving, haha.

I went the next week with Cheryl and the kids hoping to get a pig and bull calf plus some more Orpington's, but the pigs were all off the block and there were no calf's that week, but there were 16 more chicks.  I have had to separate the turkey's from the chicks. They killed five chicks from just being jerks and stumping on them.  They would literally just walk up to a chick and just stump on their head.  So we are now down to 21 chicks and four turkey's.

I will tell more later, bye for now.

Worst Blogger Ever

Ok, Ok, I know.  I am the worlds worst blogger. It has been forever since I was last here and wrote something.  I am equivalent to that date that shows up 2hrs after you gave up and went home, more like the one that shows up on the wrong day.

It seemed like I had nothing to write for well over two months with winter slowly closing shop and literally nothing going on but cutting wood, and lets all admit that there is only so many times you can hear someone talk about cutting word.  It's like listening to politicians talk about what they plan to do, all the hard work takes place at that point because once its out of their mouth you know nothing is going to be done.

Then winter ended and we had crazy warm weather and its like a hundred and one things needed to be done and the daily abeyance list changed, but never ended.  So in the past threes weeks (or so) this is what has take place......

I started, but have yet to finish the chicken tractor.  The bones and nesting boxes are done.  I just need to finish the coupe, add some tin for and the chicken wire.  then it is one down and one maybe two more to go.  This would seem to be an afternoon activity, but I am making it out of old skids that I got for free and I am recycling them into something new that will give life to hundreds of chicks if not hundreds of fine breakfasts.

28 Posts holes are dug. and then subsequently filled with water because the ground on our property is so wet.  I have cut around 20 cedar trees down and I have harrowed (the bottom four feet) all but four posts.  They are leaning against the back deck now drying and soon I will blow torch them and then water seal them.  In the same action I pulled up the boards on the deck to add footings, but the ground under the deck was still frozen,  So today I put back some new boards but didn't screw them into place in hopes that the ground will thaw soon and then I will have to do the holes by hand.

The post holes where ok to dig, we rented a gas powered post hole auger with an 8 inch bit.  It worked fine except for the fact that as soon as you hit something it just logged itself into the ground.  At that point we needed to take the bit off and turn the bit out by hand.  This is where the most time was spend.  The physical work itself; well if you want large shoulders then you should rent one of these and just dig some holes, you'll be as wide as a barn in no time.  As for me the physical and excruciating part was walking around carrying the machine and having to bend, there were breaks, lots of them.  By the end of the day the two man auger turned into a three man auger.

The kids play set is up and some what in good order.  It is not in its final place, but for now the kids can play on it and be occupied for at least a few hours each day.

We have the start of our orchard,  Four trees all about five years old, so they should bare fruit next season for consumption.  I changed the location from where I originally wanted it, and over time it might expand in the form of a phase 2 back to where I had wanted it.  We have 1- Apple that has five different apples grafted onto it. 1-Apple that has just one baking apple on it. 1- Dark Sweet Cherry (self pollinator) and 1- Pear (self Pollinator).  I just added root stimulator to them today, to help them take to their new home.

It is Apr 15th and the phone just rang, it's the Nubian Goat breeder, the Goat is ready for pick up today!..... 

Winter is Almost done!! I hope...

We just got back from a weeks vaca in Mexico, with no children.  Great Great Time.  Seen some ruins spent some time in the sun and ocean.  loved the fact that the weather was mid 20's (mid to high 70's) all week, not to hot, but never cold, some nights were chilly.

Coming home was hard, the house was 8 (48) when we came home and I was only able to 60 (thats the mid teen's) before bed.

BABY CHIC'S:

So I have written a few times about getting the buff orpington chic's.  This has been one of the must frustrating things that occupies my mind must days.

Months ago I did my research and found no hatcheries in Canada that had the BO breed.  I did find two USA hatcheries that would ship them and there was only a larger shipping fee.  Since then I guess things have changed.  Both companies when I called could not ship over the boarder and only one would ship to a post office at the boarder (US side) where I could pick them up and carry them over with health papers that they would print for an extra charge, almost doubling the order price when you fact gas plus the papers charge.

Then I found two hatcheries, one on the east coast and one on the west coast (of Canada).  they both could only ship by air due to the distance they were from us and that again would double the price of the birds.

So then we found a group that was ordering from the USA and was already going to have someone go pick the chic's up from the boarder.  Great I signed up, paid my fee and then tried to get in touch the person that was placing the order.  Finally they emailed me back and guess what... they were not members of the group and they had only just mentioned to the head of the group that they were thinking about placing the order.  The head of the group I guess misunderstood and printed in their publication that the group as a whole was putting an order together and well... it was not what I had signed up for.

We did end up finding a person that was going to hatch some chic's from her flock, a very small scale business venture for her.  The only catch is that she is out by Ottawa, about 5 hours away.  So now we have our order placed and should have chic's by Apr., which is much later then I wanted them, but what can you do? I did change the order to 20 Buff Orpington's and 5 Rhode Island White, just because RLW mature early and start laying eggs at around 16 weeks old. I'm also not holding my breath though.

Before vaca we had to show the inside of the freezer to the last of our chickens since we wouldn't be able to get someone to feed them while were gone.  The process is getting better.  We used a laundry bottle with the bottom cut out and hung upside down for the kill station this time.  It worked great, but I think we need to use 6L bottle instead of the 8L bottles that we get from Costco.  There was a little to much room in it and some of the chickens got their feet down under them while we were trying to cut their jugular.

The Goat seem to be a sure thing since we stopped being picky about the breed (we are now getting a saanen)  and we are just waiting for the doe to kid and then we can go get it, again from out Ottawa way so hopefully the goat and the chic's will be ready at the same time and we can just make one trip.

I have yet to start the chicken tractors, to many things are going to, but with the steady supply of skids that we found we should have enough wood to build as many as we need plus do the two "top bar bee hives."
I did pick up a hot water tank the other day from some repair place and hopefully this weekend I will be able to go over my plans with the plumber I know and make sure nothing contradicts the principles of plumbing.

Wood is still the on going issue, because of the snow I can only pull out enough wood at one time for a few days.  Add to that the the wood is still wet (even though I am only cutting green ash) so it doesn't produce as much heat so you burn more to get the same BTU's.  Right now after I am done this I will go out and drag more wood in, there is literally two pieces of wood in the basement right now.

Cheryl picked up a bunch of canning supplies last night from someone just trying to get rid of them.  which is great for us.

That's all for now.  I am still looking for a play-pen either free or really cheap.

Thanks for reading.

Why did the chicken Cross the Road?

The Colwill's, Vaughan's and Brandy and Monroe all came over for the slaughter Party.  So things always take longer then you think.  What I thought would take 1hr and have it all done, took 2 and a half hours and still wasn't finished.  We did six birds.  By the end we made Paul take his turn at killing and he did alright, besides the constant hesitation.  Ryan was the supreme gutter, Paul did what he does best watched and entertained while trying to keep his hands clean, hence the making him kill a bird.

The kids surprisingly where ok with everything,  we talked them through what was going to happen and why we have to kill the animals.  We took the time to explain that we were not doing this to be cruel, but to make food.

While we were processing them two of them had eggs in them.  It was so cool seeing how the eggs come to be.  In one of the chickens there where eggs in all different stages, all the way to just these little sacks that looked like caviare. Now all the planning didn't work out that great.  It ended up that we got blood everywhere, so once we have our flock it will be summers only killing and and outdoors.  Since we have five left, I'm giving them to a week to lay an egg OR ELSE! They know what is coming, it was explained as they watched their friends.

So sat the family headed out and picked up some feed for the chickens, not bad $18 for 40kg.  The rest of the day I had to come up with a place for the remaining chickens to stay.  We spent next to nothing on their coop.
Materials
-4 skids
-Brad Nailer and nails
-handful of screws and gun
-circular saw
-wire cage material
and Ta-dah!

They have two nesting bowes, a perch and two feed troughs (one for feed and one for oyster shells). The water dish, as of today, is an ice cream bowl filled several times a day.  I have a light hooked up to a timer to come on at 5am to give them few extra hours of light a day to try an coax them into laying eggs. None yet!  5 more days and then more freezer space will be occupied.  I finally got that email about the Orpington order so hopefully I get a phone call soon and then I can have that behind me and done.

The goat I heard back and things look good the seller is going to contact me as soon as the doe kids and then we can come pick her up!! milk milk milk!!!

Till next time.

I want to try and clear up some old post with things that I said I would get to and I did but I didn't blog about so that will be my next task.

All the best,

Taste like Chicken

On the goat front.  We found another person selling goats, but they are about a 3hr drive away and some things are a little unclear I'm going to have to have a few more emails to clear things up.  Hopefully our search is over and we can have a wet doe for the spring,  Cheese Cheese Cheese.

So the Chickens!  two days after I placed my order for the chickens we received a call from the hatchery in Canada saying that they can still fill our order, BUT they need to ship them by air $$$$$$$$$ and that adds an extra $100 to the chicken order.  Now considering that the order only came to $136, well you do the math.  Those are some expensive chickens.  Back to google.

Good thing I married such a smart women because after bouncing a few ideas around and i prepared myself for driving to the boarder and bringing the birds back over myself from the USA.  Cheryl did some looking online and found someone that was selling their birds so they could buy the breed that I want.  So i gave them a call and found out they were part of an Association that was ordering together and after a few more calls I am now joining that association in order to get in on their order of the Buff Orpington's that they are having shipped up from the USA (did I mention that they are ordering from the same hatchery that I was going to buy from).  I am just waiting to hear back from the person at the Assoc. about placing my order and then I won't have to drive to the boarder.

At the same time The other day I found someone online that was just getting rid of their flock because they had stopped laying (winter).  So the children and I headed up there today to pick up the birds.  Nate was all excited and you almost couldn't contain him,

 that was until the farmers dog came into the barn and then he freaked.  Hailey was freaking the whole time so there I was with two children freaking out a dog running around while sheep watched the whole thing and me chasing chickens.  the funniest part was that I was doing a better job of catching the chickens then the farmer.  At one point he was chasing one and I had one in each hand while trying to calm down two children screaming at the top of their lungs.  Now i guess that someone responded to the add after us because the farmer explanation was that someone else was coming and He (farmer) told him that him (the other guy) that someone was already coming so he could have half.  So i thought we were going to have 20 chickens, but instead we got 11.  Still a good deal at that price, FREE!!!! We finally finished, got the kids in the van, pooh covered and all, and left.

So tomorrow Ryan, Paul and Families are coming over to turn all but three into dinners.  Cheryl won't be here so she will miss out, but for the rest of us it will be good practise for when we have larger flocks.

I found a place that has a ton of skids, so for the next several Wed before bible study I am going to be picking up skids until I have all five chicken tractors made.  Yeah!

just in an aside---I had a run in with the Post worker today.  We haven't had mail a week and a half, so I called the post office toll free number and was surprised that they said that there was no way to call the local post office, "they don't have a direct line"  I laughed said thank you and hung up without waiting for a reply.  It took me all of 30 sec. to find the local number online and when I called them they said I hadn't received mail because there was to much snow near my mail bow.  I will give them this, if they felt there was a problem they should do what is necessary to solve that problem.  However what did they do, THAT RIGHT NOTHING.  I had to call them to find out that there was a problem and that bugs me because as with the rest of you I pay to get my mail and if I can't get my mail I feel that I should be informed why.  I shouldn't have to be the one that initiates that process.  Just as a side within this side. on Fri I had to wait to pull into my drive because the post veh. was at the end of my drive pulled right up to my box and didn't put anything in it. because there was to much snow, but they were pulled right up to it, any closer and they would be taking paint off their veh.

Going to see a man about a Goat!

Over the Christmas holidays we had some time go visit a local farm (about 30 mins away).  I found this farm through it organizations web site, Goat farmers.   After a few emails back and forth we went and visited this farm about buying a wet doe for spring time.  At first glance from the outside the farm didn't look like much, but as soon as we got inside I couldn't help but smile.  in the first barn we went to there were bucks, chickens, rabbits and a calf.  In the second barn it was just out of a one of those picturesque farm books, where everything was the ideal and nothing was make-shift.  The first thing you see walking in is the milking station, and just past that several pens with multiple goats and kids in the back ground bales of hay and a wagon.  Chickens where here and there and the kids wondered in and out of the pens as they pleased as they were to small to be contained by the large steel fencing.  The farmer was kind enough to share lots of info and spent more then an hour with us, this we were very thankful for.  Now the farmer seemed a little hesitant, but hopefully he will be able to sell us one or be able to talk to other farmers he knows and be able to help us get started on our way to producing our our dairy needs.  To top the trip off the farmer gave us a round of cheese.  All and all it was a great outing and I can't wait to get a goat!!!

As for the rest of everything.  Wood seems to be an ongoing issue for us.  At the beginning of winter I thought I had about 3 bush cords it turns out that it was just over 2.  Now I have been dropping Ash trees but it is slow work in the snow and I can only leave the kids for short periods of time so it seems that every week I am out getting more wood and it seems to only be enough to last about a week.  This summer I am going to have at least 3 bush cords cut and split in the basement and a spare bush cord in rounds just outside the basement window, so that I don't have to go outside cutting in winter again.

So I finally seen FOOD INC.  a must see for everyone.  You might never eat commercially farm beef or chicken again.  I want to get this DVD and start lending it to friends, not just because it promotes the type of life style that I am working towards, but it also opens your eyes to the how blind we are the were are food comes from.  Now don't think I don't know that doc's are one sided, but given the content and the fact that they would be sued if they had even a mis-leading sentence in the doc (you have to just watch it, to get that).  I would take most of it as truth and if I were more interested in the numerical side I would do some research into the stats that they used, but the doc was less about the stats and more about the how and the how is what I am concerned about.  Watch it!!!

Just over to weeks ago we had a friend ask if we could watch his boys while he took his wife on vacation before starting his new job and he would pay us, we opted for the favour returned.  Now the very night that we agreed and then set the day that they would drop off the boys, my wife received an email from work telling her that she had to leave for a business trip for four days.  So here I am with four children under four years of age, three of which are boys.  Well... it is finally over.  Now boys tend to edge each other on and by the end of the week I was doing surprise jump-in's to rooms because what was happening and what was being communicated to me where very different.  All and all it was what I expected having that many children all so young.  We only ended up in the ER once and it was near the end of the week for something minor, but I thought in might be a broken arm.  Glad it wasn't that would have been hard to explain, "here is your kids back and don't mind the cast".

The snow melted and other week and it was so warm (into plus double digits) that the rink completely disappeared and I am giving up for this year.  This is a straight on shot and the snow is really up to her cheek.

I plan on working on the chicken tractors over the next couple of weeks I will post some pic.  I am in need of wood pallet/skids.  Hopefully my friend will be able to get them for me but if not I need to find some more.  So if you have any please leave a comment.  I have placed my order for chickens and they will arrive in the first week of Mar.  Buff Orpingtons!!!  They cost a lot here in Canada ($150), but Lord willing we will be able to grow a sustainable flock from this lot and not have to buy anymore.

I am looking for a few things for free and if anyone has them please message me.
-pack & play pen
-wood pallet/skids
-hot water heater (doesn't need to work)
-metal barrels
-drywall or wood board (left over no smaller then 4x4)
-canning supplies (anything you have in your basement)
- plastic 20kg (or larger) bags from  walk way salt or water softener salt.

Well thats all for now,

Till next time
Justin

The Snow is Here For Good

So, I have been meaning to write this for about a week now but I have been extremely busy.

   The furnace has now been in and running for about two weeks.  Good thing to because the fireplace was just eating wood like crazy, we have already gone through a bushcord, when we had the WETT inspector in he noticed the wood stove and mentioned that if we lined the chimney and did insulated pipe inside the house that we would use about a third less wood in it and get more heat out of it.  Well thats great but now that the furnace is in who cares the stove is just for show now and will hardly be used.  I did have a chance to see how hot it gets using the wood stove using the digital thermostat (it is stuck in F it won't read in C) before we could use the furnace and I am not lying it was 89 F in the living room in the evening before we went to bed.

   WOOD:  while because we went through so much wood with the stove, my efforts have turned back to get ting wood into the house.  At the end of summer I had finished cutting the trees and had piled rounds in the back barn leaving chopping for a nice sunny winters day.  While that was today.  Did I mention that there is a little bit of snow here.  There is about a foot and a half on most of my property, driving the ATV is beyond frustrating.  I have to do this odd stance on the ATV were I lean over the front handle bars, feet still on the pegs in order to give traction to the front wheels other wise I can't steer the thing.

   ICE: I am determined to build an ice rink for Christmas and not spend anything for it.  I want to be able to wake up Christmas morning with the kids get dressed and then take them for a skate.  And it has to be a huge surface!!!  So I have put in about 10hrs already making slush and then spreading it out over the front lawn and then adding water to build it up and then all over again.  I have changed my method three times as I learn more about how things are reacting to what I'm doing and I only have about half of the base done.  That being said I am going to try to use a garden watering tomorrow and I think it will speed things up greatly.  I won't have it all done for Christmas morning, But I will have enough to take the kids skating.

   The goat farm guy did get back to me and we had a few exchanges, I'm just waiting to hear back from him as to when we can go see his farm over the Christmas Holidays.  We will be able to see the goat we are going to get, because it will be one that is preggers right now.  FUN FUN!

   The goat pen building stop the minute it started to snow.  But I have been using the barn well for the ice rink so it works I just need to get it wired properly, right now I have an extension cord running 30ft from the first barn to it.

   I am waiting on some skids to start building chicken tractors and top bar bee hives.  I have the plans all laid out and ready to go, I just need the free materials.

   I have been looking to no avail for a free old water heater.  I have designed a water heater that will run through the wood furnace in the winter and through a panel on the roof in the summer leaving only spring and fall for the electric water heater we have to do the trick.
   This will save a fortune,  try this on. when we had our first electric bill they did it based on an estimate based on what would be normal usage for the average family.  They had estimated some where just over 50Kwh per day. ( to give you an idea that would be like 20-100W bulbs running 24hrs a day)  when I called and gave them the meter reading our actual usage was 21Kwh per day and a large part of that is the water heater given that we have to heat our water with electricity.
   So the new set-up that I want to do will have a solar panel that will power a little 12V pump to circulate the water through the phethum on the furnace into a tank prior to our current water tank during the day.
   When Our tank calls for water, instead of it bringing in new cold water from the well it will bring in water from this tank that will have an average temp. of about 160 C. Meaning it will increase the temp in our current water tank (currently set at 110 C).  We will set our dish washer for the middle of the night so that the new tank doesn't get to hot over night, given that there will be no other calls for hot water.  I might get a small 12V plug converter from an electronics store that I will plug into a timer to have the water circulate a few times throughout the night just so the solder doesn't melt over night.

I will start posting picture with each post I just don't have the camera handy right now. I have a cute one of Hailey standing in from of the back door with the snow outside the almost as tall as her, the foreground is a little dark because I couldn't get the flash to go on give the snow in the back ground, but it is still cute.

All the best,
Till next time
Justin

Slow Times

 Not a lot has happened since the last post.  I am still working on the duct work.  It just takes way longer then I thought it would.  Each piece has to be measured then I have to draw it out on sheet metal then cut and file the edges.  Then I have to assemble it in place.  So hopefully by the end of this week I will have been able to dedicate enough time to be able to have it finished and then have someone come in to wire the furnace up.

For the outside I was able to dig one fence post hole, I attempted three.  The ground back in the paddocks  is full of small rocks and the hand post hole digger just doesn't work in those conditions.  For now I will have to use t-bar toe put up the fence for the goat pen.

I did email a farm that is not to far from us here about buying a goat off them, However I have heard nothing back from them.  Once I have some free time I will give in more effort.  While helping a friend with their basement last weekend I did have someone offer a male goat for $100 but they weren't sure if it was a nubian or not, I'm not sure if I really want a male goat this early.  I definitely don't want to pay for food and I did find a web site that you can buy registered goat sperm from award winning goats, you just have to buy five shots at once for about $25/each.

Heating by the fireplace in the living room is alright, but regulating the temp is crazy.  most day it swings between 23 degrees and any were as high as 40 degrees, it's 30 right now.  I am not joking, I can't wait to get the digital thermostat in so I can actually see how high it gets in the living room, right now the needle markings end at 30 and the needle pushes past that pretty far.

Can I get a big HURRAY!  My mother-in-law found a house and has an excepted offer, The end of Dec is her closing day.

I tried to boil water for coffee on the wood stove this morning...  So it took an hour before filled the stove and moved the damper wide open, then it boiled within 10 mins.  But then the house was back up to around 40 degrees, which is why it is now 30 almost 2 hours later.  I would have to say I expected the water to boil with in 10mins even with just ambers in the stove, given that the unit itself is likely in the range of 300-400 degrees at that point so I am a little stumped at that.  Now I am sure that if I put a cast iron pan on there and let it heat up I could definitely get some good cooking result, given that most food cook at under 100 degrees.

Did I mention that my mother-in-law is moving out!

This is one of the few times that I will mention brands, I am actually making an effort to leave names of people, products and companies off this blog.  When we bought this house we did not include the appliances in our offer to purchase.  We wanted to get all new High Efficiency appliances.  After doing some research, price comparisons and finding out what Cheryl wanted, we went with Sears and their Kenmore Elite line for the kitchen and one of there Kenmore Standard lines for the front load washer.

At first there were a few things wrong with the appliances, but they were quick to come out and fix them and they were minor things that would have happened in transit or things missed at the factory before shipping.  Not a big deal and we were really impressed with how fast they handled rectifying the problem.  Little stuff aside, things just keep going wrong.  The ice maker in the fridge makes more ice then what we need so the fridge manual says if that happens take the tray out and empty it.  So I shut it off and did as it said, but when I put it back and turned it back on it wouldn't make ice.  I tried everything in the trouble shooting guide, I also tried unplugged the fridge, and raising the temp of the freezer to 8 degrees just incase something was frozen.  When I called the person on the other end basically tried to read me the trouble shooting guide and then came up with they had to send someone out, why not have someone qualified answering the phone that could walk me through diagnosing it.  There are other issues , but I don't want to lose what little readership I have.  The short, we'll have to wait and see!

I picked up this book, "trees in Canada" and it has been great.  I have picked out what trees I want to plant in the forest and what I am going to put between us and our one neighbour.  It seems that the house that we can see is now being rented out, but I never see people.

Well thats all for today,

The Frost

Ok, so much has happened since the last post that I don't even know were to begin, so this might jump around a lot.

So after getting the bush cord of wood into the house I realized that I definitely don't have enough wood for all of winter and into next spring.  I thought I would do something that would make Nate more interested in being out side so I set up a tree drop that would take three trees in a row.  It worked well but the last tree started to go and then stood back up.  For anyone that knows that is not good.  So the debate is,  do you wait for the wind to take it down and maybe wait days or do you go re-cut it and risk having the tree fall on you?  So i went and re-cut, the tree was standing on only an inch thick strip ( like a hinge) straight through the trunk.

After dropping the trees I loaded the trailer and starting pulling it back to the house and thats when I got the trailer stuck.  My bright idea was well the car is heavier then the ATV so I just go get the car.  Then the car was stuck.  I had Paul coming over that night to help with the furnace, and when he got here I had him bring his Suburban back to pull out my car, and then he got stuck!

I called caa and explain that my car was stuck but there was the suburban in front of it that we needed to pulled and then we would get the car out ourselves.  I also told them that it was behind my house and that we needed a narrow truck that would fit through the back gate.

The truck shows up and it was a wide flat bed and so he tries to fit through the gate even after I tell him that it is 8ft wide and his truck is 9ft wide.  What does he do he gets stuck.  there was some back and forth about if it could be done and my exact words were "if you can't do this then l let me know, because if you can't then you can't"  His response was something to the effect of well I don't want to be a jerk I can but it would help if you made it easier.  it took a few tries but he was saying if you pay me more I can do it.  After he looked over the scoop of what needed to be done he said that $50 and he would call another truck and pull it out and bill caa.  done! not yet.  When the other truck show up it they said "O, just hook the two veh. together it will pull them both out."  now with both veh out we start to drive up to the house when the tow truck leading tries to drive through mud slow, and gets his truck stuck.

The result was we had the tow truck hooked to the suburban, the suburban hooked to my car and all of them being winched by the first truck that showed up.  Now you would think that this took all night but it really only took 30 mins from the time the second truck arrived and we only waited about 20 mins with the first truck for the second, so in total it was about 50mins.  Now the path past the house is only one lane so when the trucks stopped to take payment we had to stop and park our vehs also.  And this is when you find out what someone is made of.

When going to pay he used the same line "well I don't want to be a jerk, so"  and he asked me for a $100 dollars and when I brought up what that we had agreed @ $50 (which I did not haggle because I thought it was reasonable given the work to be done, even though I could not afford it) he then changed it to $75.  Then there was  this explanation that the tow job should have cost $250.  Ok so if you would have lead with this is going to cost $250, I would have just passed and asked you to leave.  So the baby starts to pout and threatens to call caa, and what do I say, go ahead we had a deal.  caa called an hour later and lets just say I am no longer a promoter of caa.  They were completely ok with the fact that the driver changed the amount he was charging after the job was done and they were going to charge me for two tows (to recoup the cost that I would not pay the driver)  By the way Canadian Tire provides the same service and I just happen to have my ear to the ground and there is soon going to be two more players on the block that provide the same service that caa does and more, so say good bye to your market share jerks.

The furnace is 80% installed and now just some duct connections and the electrical needs to be done, hopefully I will have some quotes by weeks end, then we can start having the whole house heated.

I finally went out and bought a winch for the ATV (because we need it for the plow) and it cost $90 for  a 3000 lbs winch.  I finished hooking it up tues and then drove back and hooked it up to the trailer and it didn't even flinch pulling the trailer out, I is great.  I also found a guy selling ATV plows and He should be calling back today with were we can meet to get the snow-plow off him and for $370 for a 48' swivel, thats a good deal, thank you kijiji.

So more wood today and hopefully I will get to all the the house today and then it is just the matter of splitting it and we are set.

Holy Goat!

Cheryl and I were talking the other day and she really wants to have goats for next summer (bring year one).  The plan has them scheduled for year two.  So this morning I spent more time then I should have and cleared around the first paddock, getting all the weeds and over-growth away from the old cattle fence (which is really just six strands of barbed-wire poultry nailed into anything in the way). I worked off and on all day on the fence.  Also I found a cattle fence not far from the one that I was working on, it looks to be in good shape and is one of the 4x8 rectangle rolls of fence, it might just be enough to fence in the first paddock and then I'll just string the barbed-wire through it to tighten the openings a bit.  There is still about three days of work left on the fence but I think it might be possible as long as I can grow what they need to eat for next year.

In getting ready to take down the barbed-wire fence I first had to remove the electrical fencing line that ran one side of the paddock.  Nate wanted to help with this.  It was a blast watching him try to walk through the long grass, in his little yellow rain boots (it has been rainy lately so the fields are a little soft).  I was holding his hand and it seem more like dragging him then walking, but he was laughing the whole time and kept rambling about how it was like being on a skate board.  When I had to stop and work on something all I had to do was give him my nettle noise to play with.

During one of the breaks I took from the fence work I tried to till were next years garden will be.  The tiller had a flat and had not been run in about a year and a bit.  Getting it started was easy, almost to easy.  The flat, while I don't have a pump, so it is still flat and that means that I still have to till the garden and after being in the front paddock all morning, I might till it also and throw down some alfalfa to grow over winter maybe mix in some timothy also.

I now have just over a bush cord of wood in the basement, cut and split.  When we bought the house the furnace couldn't be W.E.T. certified, so we had to buy a new one.  This has been a hugh head ache, the place where we bought it doesn't install them themselves, but they do recommend a company to do it.  Well, that company came out and took a look at the current set-up while we were waiting for the new furnace to be delivered.  They left and didn't leave a business card phone number or name (Co.).  So we waited and waited and then I was cutting one day and thought that I should call to find out what size logs would fit in the furnace and at the same time found out that the furnace was in.  Longer story short the installers hadn't called and then when I continued to call they had some excuse that there are so many set-up types for the furnace that we bought that they didn't know how to price it because they didn't know what needed to be done.  Well I'm not going to go into detail about that, but they were here they seen the set-up and they knew what needed to be done.  That just doesn't make me feel to confident in there ability, not to mention the customer service aspect (having to basically call everyday to get them to return my call).  So I have read the manual and I might just try to do it myself and then call someone once I hit something that trips me up. Tomorrow I'm going to take the existing furnace duct work apart and have a closer look.  And for now the fireplace in the living room is doing just fine,  I write this as I am sweating just sitting here.

Hopefully I will get the skids soon and I can start making plans for chicken tractors.  But for now I will just keep working on cutting wood and fixing the paddock while the weather still holds.

God Bless

Getting there

         As the yard fills with leaves I finally finished cutting the felled trees in the back, about half is chopped the rest is stacked in rounds waiting for a sunny winters day to be chopped.  After looking at the amount of wood that is there I can't help but remember the saying about wood "if you think you have enough, triple it and you might be ok". So I might drop a few more ash and cut them before the snow comes.  Defiantly having the ATV and Paul's trailer has made cutting a lot easier, I can't imagine doing that work with a wheelbarrow.

         My mother-in-law is still living here.  It has come in handy a couple of times when I need to leave the kinds and just go do something on my own.

         A couple weeks back Ryan help fell some trees in the front yard, well I have been trying to just burn through that wood.  So once the fire is going I will throw a few of those logs on top of the stove and turn them every once and a while, then finally put them in the fire to burn.  This has worked great with only few incidence until the other night.  It started with the night before one of the logs on top had started to smoke only a short time after going on top.  So, I just took it off and put it outside (around 5 or 6pm).  At 3am the next morning I was up with the kids and then couldn't sleep due to a headache.  I was downstairs watching "I still know what you did last summer" online (why do people still pay for cable?) when I thought that there was a tow truck next door or in our drive.  Wrong! it was that piece of wood, it had caught the front porch on fire,  four glasses of water extinguished it, but scary enough.  It took about half an hour to pull and replace the floor boards that were damaged.  And now there is the "No drying wood on the stove" rule.

         Next on the list I need to till the second paddock on one side for the garden in the spring.  I have asked my electrician friend to save the metal things that wire comes on so I can take down some barbed wire and relocate it to around the second paddock.  Deer and Rabbit (food) might try to eat the garden in the spring.  Which reminds me  I really want to catch some of the rabbits that are hopping around here and try to breed it with a meat rabbit to see if we can get all the good characteristics of the wild (foraging) with the size of the meat rabbit.  That will have to wait till spring and green pastures, because we don't won't to have to buy food for our food.

        On the topic of wild animals, I was up the other morning because I couldn't sleep (again), and around 4am I could hear the coyotes going crazy.  I opened the back door to get a better listen and they were no more then 400m from my back door, straight back (on my prop).  They sounded like they had caught something, more then likely a deer by the sounds of their numbers, and they were having it out over who got what.  I want to rig a few metal barrels up as traps to place around the prop to cut down on the amount that could potentially attack our animals (I have my license to do this).  So, if you happen to have metal barrels that you want to give away, Please post a comment.

        The pond is almost completely out, it is heavy work so I can only do a little at a time and pay for it dearly each time.  Now I just have to move the remaining stones and back fill the rest of it with dirt.

        I did just read in this months M.E.N. about Osage Orange.  It is a living fence, I would love to use this I just need to find out about how much it is going to cost and if that is in the budget then I will start next spring.

       Today I have to wire a trailer harness and then go pick up debris and do fall landscaping at the rentals.

Out for now,

Rainy Day

I know it has only been five days since the first post, but it raining today.  Ryan (what a follower, HAHA) came over last night and helped drop two trees that I am most certain would have come down on the house some time in the the next year in a storm.  The trees in the back yard are about a 10% done.  I still have lots of chopping to do in the back.

I met the neighbour to our left yesterday. He doesn't live there, but uses it for his shop.  He seemed to have an agenda with the way he was making statements, but then didn't follow through with asking/ telling anything.  I don't know! maybe thats just the way he is, other then that he seems like a nice guy and what better neighbour to have then one that doesn't live there.  Perfect!

The Internet: The first priority when we moved was getting the internet up.  In order to do this I had to build a 60 ft tower (50ft with a 10ft mast).  So I worked to get this done and finally them came and installed  some sort of transmitter on the top of the tower.  AND IT SUCKS!  So randomly the server just shuts off and when I say random I mean every two-three mins.  I have brought this to the providers attention and they said they would work on it, but if it stays like this we are going to have to change to something else.  Mind you I don't have the internet to research what that something else will be.

This weekend we are having a thank you dinner for everyone that helped us get to this point.  I hope that there is good weather.  I would really like to have a bon-fire and rain would kinda put a damper on that, haha.

The Land: I took the ATV back into the woods to clock how far back we had ventured thus far and then pushed a little further.  Our property is 4664 ft long,  roughly 1 mile or 1.6 kms. (I just dashboard-ed that).  I was at 1.3kms and that was really far. tons of land, although it wouldn't hurt to have 10 more acres, 13 is just fine and plenty.  Just as a side note there are two or three houses for sale to the east of our property.  Cheryl and I have said that it would be great if friends all bought them and that way we could do this together.  Vacations would be easy then (with trading off chores), not that we have money to go on a vacation any time soon.  Note: I did have time yesterday to figure out what needs to be planted for next year for both us and the chickens that we are going to get (Buff Orpingtons, a dual purpose bird, just incase you where wondering).  Not all I need to do is till where the garden will be.

The rest of the day will be spent doing errands and indoor stuff as it continues to rain.

It begins!

I guess the first thing would be to tell about the who, the what and the how.  I never really got into the whole face book thing where you write about what your doing every second of every day, so this might be a little choppy at first till I get the hang of writing about what I'm doing, O and my spelling sucks so beware.

The who.  My lovely and supportive wife Cheryl and I met at a friend of her's BBQ.  We found out that we attended the same Church and lived in the same town.  We started dating about a month after that meeting and then five month after that we were engaged, then five months after that married.
Next Came our son Nate (3) and then our daughter Hailey (14 months).

The what.  A little over a year ago I felt a draw, a pull to something that had never interested me before.  It started with bio-diesel.  Then it expanded to farming.  We need to remember that this was coming from someone who had never lived on a farm and had always wanted to live in a loft apartment in a city.  This and the events that followed I can only assume is a push from God, not that I am putting words in his mouth, I just have no other way of explaining it. I'll write more on the events that followed later.

The how.  I have always wanted to invest in real estate. Now with the global recession it might sound mad to invest, but actually if you think about it it was the perfect time.  The short of it is, we sold our house privately and then bought three rentals with the equity that was in our house.  This investment is not funding (it actually make no money right now but it is a long term plan) what we are doing it just takes care of retirement if things go to plan.  We didn't have enough left over to buy our house so we borrowed from family and now we have our dream home, it does need a lot of work but by year ten here it should be everything we want.  To summarize. Cheryl will continue to work her job and commute an hour each way.  I will stay home with the children, manage the rentals and build the farm.

That brings you up to speed with what we are doing.  The events leading to this I find interesting and amazing.  I will try to fully explain but I am human and will miss details or events, but hopefully you will be able to get a good idea of the big picture.

It started with a show with this Aussie guy driving across the USA using only alternative fuels (alternative to fossil fuel).  Thats what inspired me to build a bio-diesel lab.  I started to rent documentaries  and google about all the harm we were doing to our plant and thought long about why and how we could do things differently.  THE TURNING POINT: One day after morning service friends of Cheryl's family had approached us and asked if it would be alright to introduce us to their grandson and his wife, seeing that they were new and didn't really know anyone at our church. You will find that over the last year or so I have been turing into a person better suited for living in the middle of no-where.

Sure, and that's how the first big step was taken.  Meeting this couple start a friendship that out of it I got a job that allowed endless google time for research and the grandson was in the same frame of mind move to no-where and start a farm.  Over the next several month I had researched everything down to what breed for every animal I would raise and several techniques on how to do it.

That brings us to almost today.  We now have the land,  the plan and the friends to make it happen.  It is all hard work and blood from here on in.  And trust me there is a lot of work to get done.  I think it will take 10 years before this is up and running to the point that we can feed ourselves from the land.

The Land:  we have 13 Acres that exists as one long strip.  We are becoming more inclined that this shape (a long narrow strip) is better suited more then the square that we first were looking for.  The forest here has been badly managed.  There is a lot of standing dead trees and spots that look like they were clear cut at some point and the trees were never really able to make a come back.  Although I have formal training or certificate.  I did grow up logging my families 62 Acre forest, although I am rusty, I hope to make a thriving sugar bush that will serve our desire for sweets and our need for fire wood (we have a wood burning furnace).
We hope to have a flock of chickens for next year and once I get some fencing up then we will get a goat or two. Plus we will constantly be working on and expanding a garden and orchard.

I just took some pics and video of the current state the property is in and hope to once a year take the video from the same spot to capture the changes/improvements that we are going to make.

That all for now and I hope to add weekly but no-one is reading yet so I am just typing to myself for now.  Plus I need to figure out how to to add pics and video to this site.