At the beginning of year three on the farm, we started this blog to document
our journey into self-sufficient homesteading and voluntary simplicity.
We're glad to have you along for the ride!
The best thing about working a part time job
from home is that when Friday rolls around, you might have only one
hour left on the clock. You can read in bed until 10 am, feed the
animals, and still be done working by noon. Oh, glorious day!
After lunch, I dug about a third of the potatoes in preparation for the
frost which keeps warning but never quite happening. Despite all
of the good advice on uses for those potatoes, I'm going with an
entirely different option --- I'm trading them to my co-worker for
winesap apples out of his orchard.
Before long,
though, my brother Joey showed up with his big pickup truck to help us
haul some gravel for the driveway. In the two years since we'd
put gravel down last, some muddy spots had arisen, and gravel prices
had also risen sharply. Still, a pickup truck load of gravel cost
less than $20 and filled in three trouble areas. Mark went back
to get a second load while I made us shitake-topped pizzas with
homemade crust and homemade sauce (from tomatoes the neighbor traded us
for two massive cushaws). Joey got to work stringing an ethernet
cable and extension cord to his yurt four hundred odd feet away from
the trailer in the woods.
Types of Gravel
Crush and run (or crusher run) is commonly used on
driveways. This is a mixture of different sizes, all pretty small.
We opted for 2.5" rock, which is a better value
for muddy, new driveway-type areas. You get less sinkage into the
mud, meaning that you don't have to put down gravel as often.
This might look odd on a city driveway.
Finally, for those
really wet spots and near the creek where gravel would just wash away
at the first flood, we recommend rip-rap
which is bigger gravel up to a foot or two in diameter (as seen in the
picture.) You'll see rip-rap along the highway used for erosion
control.
It's going to be an
exciting week --- we're learning to kill chickens tomorrow at a
friends' house, and then when we get a chance we'll plant the fancy
garlic that came in the mail today. The picture above
is another preview of coming attractions --- Mark and I have been
poking at
digging a spot into the hillside for a little root cellar whenever we
had a spare minute for the last few weeks. We're nearly ready to
start
laying blocks!
Want to post a comment? Click on "Discussion" at the end of the
entry,
then click on "Edit" at the bottom of the new page it sends you to. Be
sure to sign your comment --- I'm poaching on my brother's new ikiwiki
software and things like automatic signatures aren't there
yet!
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The best thing about working a part time job
from home is that when Friday rolls around, you might have only one
hour left on the clock. You can read in bed until 10 am, feed the
animals, and still be done working by noon. Oh, glorious day!