Have you ever wondered how far out your pet roams during the day and at night?

Thanks to a cat named Mr Lee it is now possible to track your animal on a plug and play level.

The low end gizmo records up to 30 hours of prowling and needs to be downloaded via USB cable. 44 dollars.



The high end version transmits live data through GMS cel phone technology.
125 dollars.

Both interface with Google maps and claim to be easy to use.

I could see this being handy for goats and sheep or just about any level of livestock bigger than a chicken.

It would be interesting to see where Lucy spends her time, but I predict Huckleberry's map would only consist of him going from the couch to the chair to his basket with multiple trips to his food dish.

"Lucy, where did you find a brand new tennis ball?" I asked our frugivorous dog, catching sight of a yellowish sphere in her mouth.  She dropped...the first peach from our kitchen window peach tree.  Then promptly gulped it down, pit and all.

I had smelled the scent of ripe fruit wafting from the tree as I walked past earlier that morning, but I was so sure the peaches weren't ripe.  You see, I had planted a Loring peach in that spot three years ago --- a yellow-fruited variety with a nice red blush on the skin.  And the fruits on my tree were steadfastly pale yellow with white flesh.

But Lucy likes her fruit ripe, so I went back to check again.  Sure enough, the peaches were just barely starting to ripen, even though the flesh was pale as can be.  What's the statute of limitations on complaining about being given the wrong tree variety?

The trouble is, I adore yellow peaches, while white peaches are considerably lower on the totem pole --- like the difference between strawberries and blackberries.  Luckily, I have another peach tree out back that's one year younger but already gave me four little peaches with great flavor and bright orange flesh.  By next year, I should be glutted with yellow peaches.  But what to do in the meantime?  Perhaps I need to check out some recipes for peach leather?  Now's your chance to shower us with your favorite peach recipes.

Big thanks go out to Travis and Kacy for the nice post they wrote about us.

They're still on the cross country journey and have visited about 90 farming types.

I'm looking forward to reading their book about these travels which now has a working title of "Stewards: Stories and Perspectives From American Farmers".

Although I'm a vegetable conneisseur, I don't have enough experience to tell the difference between mediocre meat and awesome meat.  This is where Huckleberry comes in handy.

When I take a piece of meat out of the supermarket wrapper, Huckleberry naps on the couch.  I can even open a can of tuna, and our spoiled cat will barely twitch his nose.  But when I bring in freshly slaughtered chickens, he comes running to the kitchen where he meows (in vain) for a treat.

After its two day grace period, I roasted up one of Tuesday's chickens yesterday and Huckleberry was suddenly ready to help out with anything, no, really, anything.  Meow!  (Yes, this time I did give him a tidbit of meat to nibble on.)

To my untrained taste buds, the 16 week old Dark Cornish roosters are less flavorful than the 12 week old roosters, falling on the taste gradient somewhere between a storebought, organic, uncooked chicken and a storebought rotisserie chicken.  But to Huckleberry's nose (and mouth), our homegrown chickens are ten times better than either.  I suspect Huckleberry is sniffing out the superior nutrition, which makes me even more inclined to keep experimenting with a good way to raise our own meat.

The K9 electric pet barrier continues to keep Lucy from even coming close to the chicken pasture area.

It seems to have taken only one zap to get the point across.

I'm thinking of unplugging it to see if the threat alone is enough to keep her away.

I take back my previous 5 gallon bucket stacking suggestion after todays discovery.

The handle is obviously made to tuck into another bucket to prevent stickage.

I need to take more time and listen to my tools more often...I wonder what other obvious secrets will be imparted my way if I can just listen a little harder?

The first do it yourself pet door lasted a few months before the screen broke free. Not a good choice of material.

I found some see through material that is working out much better once I installed a layer on each side.

It got Huckleberry's meow of approval, but Strider is still reserving judgment due to his fear of change.

I estimate the total cost of the chicken pasture electric fence installation to be around 75 dollars which ended up including the following items.

• Zereba K9 lawn and garden charge controller
• small bag of yellow plastic insulators
• about 300 feet of electric fence wire
• a half dozen small metal fence posts

Each bag of insulators comes with enough nails, but I prefer using drywall screws because it makes adjustments easier after you've got it all together.

I think we've finally found a product that will help Lucy figure out that she's not allowed to steal food scraps from the chicken pasture.

Just minutes after the new chick made it back to mamma Lucy went sniffing around the fresh chick trail. It didn't take her long to follow it to the chicken pasture. I just happen to be watching when she got too close to the Zereba K9 lawn and garden electric fence controller. The backward leap she made seemed to break a few laws of doggie physics.
 

It's easy to set up. Just wrap each end of the perimeter wire onto the wing nut at the bottom. It uses something called direct discharge technology which eliminates the need for a grounding rod. With a maximum range of 1500 feet the K9 electric charger makes an excellent solution to keeping unwanted pets out of sensitive areas. Expect to pay about 25 bucks for the unit and maybe another 20 to 200 depending on how long of a perimeter you're protecting and the quality and quantity of the fence posts used.

The drink dispenser I salvaged the spigot from for the garden cart worm bin is now doing duty as a waterproof enclosure for the new K9 electric fence charger.

These units somehow get their grounding from the electric line, which is a change from other chargers.

I decided to use an old piece of tin to shore up the chicken pasture gate.

Putting a strand of electric wire across the gate bottom would make getting in and out of the pasture a small hassle.

After several days of basking in the sun the solar fence box seems to have a weak battery, which means our next step will be to spring for the 40 dollar electric fence charger.

This nose high strand of electric fence wire will help to keep Lucy out and any other stray critters that might be a potential threat when she takes her random naps.

This is the 4th breach of security for the chicken pasture perimeter thanks to Lucy and her naughty behavior.

Since the spring mowing and future fence building is starting to crunch our time I think I'm leaning more towards that nose high stretch of electric fence wire as a new method of keeping her out.

With any luck Lucy will get the message right away and reclaim her title as best dog in the galaxy.

I just noticed this back door to the chicken pasture Lucy installed recently and growled at her while I stitched it back together.

We could double down on securing the bottom edge with some additional fastening, or hook up the electric fence charger and run a strand at nose height all along the perimeter.

Another option would be to stop giving the pastured chickens any scraps and divert that nutrition to the chicken tractors or worm bin.

None of these choices work for me because they avoid the root problem of Lucy's failure to recognize that all food scraps belong to us and she needs special permission to access even a banana peel.

It may seem like a tall order to train a dog to fight the urge to eat something yummy, but I've seen it happen before and feel that Lucy is serious about doing her part in being a team player.

We just need to discover where the communication is breaking down and put some extra effort in explaining this critical lesson.

Some days, my life lacks coherence and is simply an unending string of awed discoveries.  Here's Monday in a nutshell....

I woke to the sound of rushing water --- the floodplain is submerged.

A scuffle in the hallway --- Huckleberry caught a mouse.

Blueberry bushes are coated in hundreds of flowers, some starting to open.

Seven male toads beckon lovers from our mushroom soaking kiddie pool.

Tiny fuzzball peaches are swelling fast, now bigger than my thumbnail.

Stir-fry for dinner --- dozens of Egyptian onions, some overwintered carrots and parsnips, and shiitakes sodden from three plus inches of rain.

The first lightning bugs danced in the dark.

I hope your spring days are as sweet!

The first mowing of the year is always the hardest on our farm.  The stump locations are long forgotten, and this year our chipping experiment left branches strewn around in unlikely spots.  Adding to the mess, Lucy's firewood fetish results in hunks of wood hidden here and there in the high grass where she dragged them, chewed for a while, then wandered off to do doggie things.  Basically, there's a lot of picking up to be done before we can safely run the mower over our "lawn."

Luckily, the grass comes into production at different times on different parts of the farm.  The north side of the garden always starts growing first since it gets the best winter sun, and I've mowed that area twice already.  In contrast, the south side of the yard is shaded by the hill and only started growing a week or two again.  I'd been ignoring that area, but by Monday morning the weeds were clearly getting out of control, so Mark and I tag-teamed it --- I picked up debris while he pushed the mower.  Our farm suddenly looks almost manicured!

It seems like old chimney bricks have hundreds of uses.

I wedged these together between the 2 gate posts of the chicken pasture in an effort to discourage Lucy from trying to dig her way under in order to help herself to any future scraps that might get tossed that way.

Luckily she fully understands that chickens themselves are off limits. It's just the delicious food scraps that bring out the bad girl in her.

These new goat gloves claim to be 67 percent better than cow leather, which will be worth the additional 50 percent to the price if they actually last that much longer.

The design and construction indicate an improvement, but time will tell if a goat really is tougher than a cow.

Each of these piles represents a truckload of compost from different sources.

The one on the bottom comes from a warehouse where they keep it out of the rain as opposed to the top one which was heavy with moisture.

Even though Lucy's pile cost just over twice as much as the other I think it's going to be our preferred location for tomorrow's load.

Last year, a couple of friends teamed up and bought us a dozen beautiful blueberry plants in honor of our wedding.  We were sorely unprepared, so we only managed to whack down box-elders and open up the canopy, then roll the logs out of the way and plant the bushes in new ground.  This oversight caused a lot of problems since I couldn't really get the lawnmower around the logs, and by the middle of the summer, our blueberry patch had turned into a weed patch.  Luckily, the blueberries survived the neglect, and I promised them a more weeded existence this year.

We spent the morning Wednesday clearing up the tree carcasses in the blueberry patch to make this year's mowing much easier.  Mark's hard work with the chainsaw netted us half a cord of firewood, now drying in the woodshed, and my branch piles are growing too.  Our chipper rental date is tentatively set for this weekend, but Lucy didn't want to wait --- she did her part to increase the farm's wood chip supply while we cleared the brush.

      Video credit goes to Anna for capturing this 38 second driveway moment.

My sister has been doing a lot of thinking and writing about the impact of routine in her life, and that got me thinking about my own routines.  The first half hour of my "work day" is always the same --- walking Lucy and then taking care of the chickens.

Although I rarely write about it here, the morning chores are a very important part of the Walden Effect.  They clear my head and give me time to think through any thorny issues that need my attention.

Saturday, I brought the new camcorder along to document my journey.  I hope you enjoy seeing a glimpse of my daily life rather than finding it boring --- if the latter, take heart that the video is less than two minutes long.

Anna and Lucy are the miter saw experts on this job. I'm just backing them up with some heavy lifting and the occasional two cents.

Lucy's worst trait is her tendency to dig up garden beds, diving in and sending dirt and vegetables flying in every direction.  Usually, I berate her and grumble under my breath about darn dogs, but lately I've had a change of heart.  I've been reading about how damaging mice and voles can be in the winter, girdling young fruit trees.  Granted, this guy that I found in the snow near one of Lucy's manaical digging sprees is a shrew (meaning that it eats insects and earthworms instead of plants), but I often find dead rodents left in her wake as well.  I wonder if she does more good than harm with her digging episodes?

By Saturday afternoon, the snow was a bit mushy on the bottom layers.  Trees began to shake themselves like wet dogs, tossing off their mantle of wet snow and turning back up to face the sky.  The cracks of falling limbs and trees slowed and finally stopped, and Sunday morning I decided it was time to explore our world.

I borrowed Mark's knee-high over-boots, put on damp jeans over dry fleece pants, and headed out to see what the outside world looked like.  I had to cross the downed power line, which I had skittishly steered clear of for the last day even though it was coated in snow and Lucy, Huckleberry, and a deer had all trotted across with no problems.  This time I was determined, though.  So I tucked Lucy's leash over her back and took a running leap across the white snake of wire hidden under the snow.

Nothing happened.

Lucy, of course, trotted over the wire behind me and waited for me to pick back up her leash.  We trudged down the driveway, past dozens of fallen tree limbs.  Some trees had ripped their whole root masses up out of the wet soil and toppled over, making me laugh that I'd thought a little leaf raking would do any damage to the forest compared to this catastrophe.

The cars were, luckily, branch-free, but the driveway between our parking area and the public road hadn't fared so well.  I counted seven full grown trees toppled across the driveway and when I reached the main road, I knew we would be stuck on the farm for a while.  Two trees had collapsed across the asphalt within sight and the road was unplowed.  I began to suspect that the electric company's estimate of giving us back our power by Sunday was a pipe dream.

Stay tuned for part IV.  Meanwhile, check out our microbusiness ebook.

Our first full day without power brought us back to basics: animals, water, food, and shelter.  The animals, luckily, weren't too hard.  Huckleberry and Strider came bounding up to the trailer through snow over their heads (nearly a foot deep now, but finally slacking off) and Lucy pranced and played in the drifts.

The chicken tractors were completely covered, and one had half-collapsed under the weight of the snow.  I brushed the tops clear and saw hungry hens eager for their breakfast...once I'd shoveled out the tractor so they wouldn't get their feet wet.

Without electricity, the fan on our exterior wood furnace doesn't run, which means that most of that heat dissipates into the great outdoors.  Mark first rigged an ingenious setup using a DC fan and the golf cart's battery banks, but the plastic fan quickly melted out of whack and stopped running.  At this point, I gave up and curled myself under a sleeping bag on the sofa with Huckleberry and a book.  But Mark wasn't deterred.  He dusted off the generator, and soon we were back in business!  Lights, power, action!  Heat!  Even electricity to top off the cold level in our fridge and freezer and keep our food safe.

Luckily, we had drinking water stored up, but food was going to be difficult since we cook on an electric stove.  It took most of the next day for me to figure out how to cook in and on the wood stove, ending up with food that wasn't charred at one end and cold at the other.  But at least we had the basics we need to keep the farm rolling along.

Stay tuned for part III soon.  Meanwhile, feel free to check out our ebook about starting your own business and quitting your job.

The foot bridge suffered a fatal error recently when the weaker walnut support cracked and sagged, making it unsafe for anyone to use.

We've decided to not rebuild it and instead upgrade the stepping stone crossing and install a zip line for when the water would be over the new steps.

 

In doing some research for an upgrade to the home made cat door I stumbled upon this fascinating project by Quantumpicture.com.

This home made cat door uses a low budget and clever way of taking a picture just before the cat reaches the door to enter. If the picture shows anything in your cats mouth like a mouse the computer tells the door not to let him in. Same thing is true if a skunk or other animal tries to get in. If he's all by himself the computer grants permission and unlocks the door. You can also use this system to keep track of how many times your cat goes in and out, complete with a fancy program that will send a picture to your cell phone every time an event happens.

Our cats have always kept their hunting prizes outside, and Lucy does a great job of keeping other small animals out of the yard, so we won't be going to this extreme. Quantumpictures is working on a self contained unit that will be available from their website in the near future.

The refrigerator root cellar fell back to 2nd place on the list to get things done here due to the puddles finally drying up near the new building project. I managed to finish the final row for the foundation today, which makes it look like the beginnings of a real building now.

 

This will be our 4th Halloween here on the farm and still no trick or treaters.......it's hard to complain when that equals extra chocolate for us.

Our new leaf containment area is starting to fill up fast making me ask the question....will there ever be too much mulch?

It's always a nice bonus when Lucy gives a project a few sniffs and then announces her seal of approval.

We're home, safe and sound!  Two purring cats, an ecstatic dog, three tractors of happy chickens.  Deer damage in the garden --- I will consider it a tithe to the earth for our stunning cruise adventure.  Plenty of orders for our homemade chicken waterer --- yay!  The earth smells of damp leaves and the creek is middlin' high.

We'll be more talkative later.  For now, I'm just glad to be home!

I've always said a cat would be worth its weight in gold if it could pull weeds out of the garden.

I guess the next best thing is to have your cat keep you company while you get the job done yourself.

We started to have some trouble back in the summer with one of the Plymouth Rock hens laying her egg on the ground, which made it easy to miss and pull the tractor over it, creating a scrambled egg in the yard.

It seems like a golf ball is close enough to an egg to fool even our smart Plymouth Rocks. No broken eggs since we installed the fake at a price well under a buck depending on where you get your sporting supplies from.

 

If you listen closely you can hear the very distinct sound of Lucy's tail hitting the seat of her golf cart, which is one of my personal top 10 favorite sounds of all time.

It's really nice of her to let us use it whenever we need to haul anything or anybody back to the trailer.

We've learned a lot about animals this year too.  Strider joined our menagerie and has since become an indispensible purrer.  Now that our pet count has reached three, we've gotten a bit more serious about bad behavior.  Last year, it seemed like Lucy picked a couple of garden beds and lay on them every day or so, crushing all of the vegetables there.  Huckleberry would also pick favorite beds and tear up young seedlings in the loose soil.

This year, we've pretty much nipped that behavior in the bud.  When I see the first signs of pet damage in the garden, I loosely stack branches on the bed to keep all animals out.  The branch technique seems to be 100% effective, and branches can be safely removed once the veggies get tall enough to make a scratchy bed.

We've also added two new types of livestock to our farm this year --- earthworms and honeybees.  We're still learning how to make the best use of them, but I'm thrilled to learn that both are relatively easy and that honeybees aren't scary.  Probably by this time next year, I'll have something more to say about bees and worms.

Of course, Lucy isn't a saint.  She's been known to carry off tools and spread the contents of trash bags all across the yard.  She used to tear up the garden pretty badly too, running across raised beds and choosing a few as favorite napping spots.

Dogs aren't large picture thinkers the way we are --- I'm pretty sure that I could train her not to chew on a tool, but I'd have to train her on every tool we own to really get the point across.  Similarly, Mark trained her not to go in the front door of the barn...but then caught her trotting through the back door because all she got out of the training was "don't go through the front door" not "don't go in the barn."

In cases like this, we've figured out that it's better to train ourselves rather than train the dog.  How hard is it to keep trash in the barn and gloves in the house?  We also developed main paths in the garden based on Lucy's regular routes, and when necessary put branches on the beds she was obsessed with to physically keep her off.  In our early days on the farm, I yelled at Lucy a lot.  Now, we've trained her and she's trained us and we're like a happy married couple.

Walking your dog is really most of what it takes to create a good farm dog, but we did put in the time to teach Lucy four basic commands --- sit, stay, come, and no.  There are lots of books and websites that will tell you how to get those few commands into your dog's head, but once you've got her used to looking at you as the pack leader, it's pretty simple to train her.

It's nearly as simple to train your dog to do things against her nature --- like leaving cats and chickens alone rather than eating them for dinner.  When we brought home our first chickens, Lucy was extremely excited and I think she might have killed a chicken immediately if we'd let her.  Instead, we took her for a long walk to calm her down and remind her who was in charge, then we made her sit and stay beside the chicken tractor.  Every time the first bit of predator instinct kicked in and Lucy started getting excited about the chickens, we said "no" very firmly.  After about 15 minutes of this, she understood.  Now, when chickens accidentally get out of their tractors, Lucy has been known to try to help us herd them back in.

When introducing your dog to "prey" animals, you should always have a way to enforce your commands.  Your dog should be on a leash so that she can't lunge forward and grab the chicken.  If you play your cards right, your dog will catch on very quickly and you'll be able to take the leash off and trust her alone with your livestock in short order.

Now, I have to admit that you won't see instant results the first time you walk your dog correctly.  When we got Lucy, she'd been tied up for months on end and she was wild.  I could barely hold her leash as she galloped up the driveway --- no way I was going to be able to get her to walk beside or behind me.

So, we bought a couple of tools to get Lucy to pay attention to us (and to wear down a bit of her boundless energy!)  The one dog-lovers are least likely to approve of is the Gentle Leader.  No, this isn't a muzzle --- your dog can open her mouth just fine.  The Gentle Leader is a lot like the harness on a horse --- it allows you to steer a large, powerful animal by turning its head rather than by trying to make the whole animal go where you want it to.  The Gentle Leader also puts pressure on top of your dog's nose if she tries to pull.  This simulates the way a pack leader will put its mouth around a follower dog's nose if the follower misbehaves, and both the pack leader's mouth and the Gentle Leader's pressure cue your dog to calm down and listen.

We also bought Lucy a doggie backpack and weighed it down with water bottles and gravel.  Carrying the backpack gave her quite a workout, even when walking at human speed.  I think that without the backpack, we would have had to walk Lucy for a couple of hours a day in the beginning when she was blowing off her leftover steam from being tied up.

Both the Gentle Leader and the doggie backpack did their job admirably, but after a few months Lucy had learned that we were in charge.  We slowly stopped using them --- after all, both were just tools to get our dog's attention.

We based our extremely simple dog training regimen on Cesar Millan's book Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems.  The entire book can be broken down into a couple of paragraphs --- Cesar argues that dogs are naturally pack animals with one leader and a lot of followers.  Rather than training your dog lots of fancy tricks to get her to do what you want, you only need to make her understand that you are the pack leader.  Then be sure that your pet also gets plenty of exercise and you'll have a well-behaved dog.

Cesar solves both the pack leader and exercise problem with one simple answer --- walk your dog.  Sounds simple, but most people (including us before we read the book) do it all wrong.  When you walk your dog correctly, she should be walking at your side or behind you --- you're in charge of determining where you're going and how fast you're going.  The dog shouldn't be stopping to sniff and pee unless you decide to stop and let the dog sniff and pee.  The goal is to get the dog used to following your lead and looking to you for directions.

Cesar recommends that your dog should have an hour of exercise a day.  We are a bit more lax than that --- I generally walk Lucy in the morning for about 20 minutes and Mark generally walks her in the evening for about 20 minutes.  If she were cooped up indoors all day, though, rather than able to run around on the farm, we'd probably have to walk her longer.

Food is also an integral element in the walk.  Rather than giving your dog meals as if it were his or her due, you should start feeding your dog after the walk.  When I come back from walking Lucy in the morning, I take off her leash and tell her to sit and stay at the door.  She waits for a couple of minutes as I go in the house and get her breakfast, and she stays seated until I've put the food in front of her.  This is yet one more way to make sure that Lucy knows that I'm in charge of the food and that she has to be calm and obedient in order to get any.

The walk is an important ongoing piece of training for your dog.  When one of us isn't feeling well and we just toss her a bowl of food without a walk, Lucy is far more likely to misbehave the next day.  When we're out of town for a few days and she doesn't have any walks, she's a bit wild when we return.  I like to think that walking Lucy is like keeping an eye on our relationship.  Strong human relationships are based on constant negotiations, and your relationship with your dog is no different.

After television watching, our number one pet peeve with American society is probably dog care.  Most dogs we meet are neurotic and/or out of control.  We're not saying that Lucy is the best dog in the world (well, Mark might say that....), but she is a pleasure to be around and makes life on the farm easier.

Lucy keeps predators out of the yard, sits patiently as we eat outside, doesn't hurt our cats and chickens, and only gnaws on gloves now and then.  This week's lunchtime series is a brief look at quick and dirty techniques you can use to turn your pampered pet into a working member of the farm without any inhumane treatment or expensive dog obedience courses.  Chances are your dog will end up happier too.

 

Time to put together the 4 supers I picked up yesterday.

I wonder if some Gorilla glue might work as a quicker substitute to the old fashioned tiny nails that sometimes cause a crack in the wood when being hammered in?

I tried to find something like this in the pet department of the big store I was in last week and struck out.

It's just a compilation of 5 scrap pieces of wood and a folded over flap of screen material. A notch on the right side with a dab of glue seems to be enough to anchor it to the screen frame. I hope our cats are smart enough to adapt to a proper pet entrance which can be easily closed down at night by shutting the window.

Eventually, every homesteader will be faced with the thorny issue of livestock.  Chances are that your homesteading dreams included lots of animals giving you fresh milk, eggs, and meat.  The reality, though, is that animals can use up your time so quickly that you're working for them instead of vice versa.

My first piece of advice for new homesteaders is to make a distinction between pets and livestock.  Use your own judgement on the pet front --- we love our cats and dog and believe that the time we put into them is totally worth it for our own mental stability.  We don't even pretend that our pets pull their weight on the farm with their limited mouse-catching and deer-chasing abilities.  But we also know that having more than our current two cats and one dog would be too much for us to handle.

In the world of livestock, as I mentioned earlier I do recommend that all homesteaders start out with a worm bin.  Most homesteaders will also be able to handle a few chickens either their first or second year, especially if they are careful to start small.  If you are big honey eaters the way we are, I would recommend getting honeybees around year two or three, once you're established and have a bit of time to devote to their care.

What about bigger animals?  We divide larger livestock into three main categories --- draft animals, dairy animals, and meat animals.  Due to our own failed experience with mules, I recommend that unless you've had experience with draft animals in the past and have at least an hour a day to devote to them, you save draft animals for later (if ever.)  To me, dairy animals are in the same boat --- you need to be willing to be tied down twice a day for the rest of your life.  (With just our pets, chickens, bees, and worms, we can go out of town for a few days without needing to find a farm-sitter.)

If you want to branch out beyond worms, bees, and chickens, I would start with meat animals.  Even so, I wouldn't consider embarking on the project unless I had a good pasture and a place to store hay for the winter.  Small meat animals like poultry and rabbits might fit into year three or four of your ten year plan, but I suspect that larger animals would be closer to year nine or ten.

Of course, as with all parts of your homesteading plan, you should decide what's most important for you.  If all you've ever dreamed about is having a milk cow, then by all means move it up to year two and put off the garden until year four.  After all, the best part of a homestead is the way it allows you to choose your own adventure.  Don't forget to have fun!

I've had this 18 volt Black and Decker Firestorm drill for over 4 years now and it's still as strong and dependable as the first day I got it.

Its taken some serious drops and bangs over the years ...proving itself in the heavy duty tool league at a price well below the heavier brands. I've worn out one battery so far...but still have 2 more that provide more than a day's worth of work at an impressive charge time.

We added anti-deer machine#5 to the upper garden to cover a another weak point in our perimeter. I had to use the cat bowl to get a more full dinging sound. Sorry, Huckleberry....

Just found out today from a neighbor that a large black panther* has been spotted less than a mile from us. Maybe this shield of noise will send a signal to this new player in the woods to stay away from us and our chickens?

*"Panther" is the local word for Mountain Lion. Although Mountain Lions are usually light brown, the half dozen sightings we've heard of locally in the last two years have all been of large, black cats.

We found a Chopper1 axe at a yard sale today for just 10 bucks.

Bob Kolonia invented it back in 1975. What makes it unique is the rotating levers on each side of the axe's head. The levers swing out, directing the downward chopping force outward and exploding the log apart from the inside. His website has a nice animation that explains the process better. Ours is missing one of the return springs and pin that holds the spring. I'm sure I can rig something up before winter sets in. Stay tuned to see how well this baby chops wood compared to our Super Splitter.

It's amazing how much beauty is out there on the internet --- the photo above was created by "3 cameras, 3 speedlights, one reflector, one water-proofed studio."  My nude models, in contrast, were much less entertaining.  I call this set of photos "Weekend Sloth", for obvious reasons:

The new Skil drill got a workout the other day when I needed to make a hole through some cedar posts.

I was surprised to see just how much more leverage the side handle gives you.

The 1/2 inch chuck allows for the bigger size bits and the extra 7.0 amp motor provides more than enough power. There's a nice rubber holder near the handle to hold the chuck key and the speed is adjustable depending on how hard you squeeze the trigger.

This should make mushroom log plugging a lot easier when it's not doing duty as our main motorized mechanical smasher.

In the United States, the dog days of summer traditionally last from July 3 to August 11.  These are supposed to be the hottest and driest days of the year "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid."

This year, the dog days entered with a sniffle.  Cloudy skies all week have meant blissfully cool weather, but I did hear the first dog day cicadas begin their summer chorus.  As Mark mentioned, we started to irrigate Friday, and yesterday I had to lower our pump slightly in the well since the groundwater had dropped.

The ancient Greeks sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the dog days to plead for cooler weather, but there's no need to worry --- Lucy is safe with us.

We almost had to bring the sprinklers out this week, but a few good rounds of natural rain made everybody in the garden happy.

Hopefully the rain will continue to be reliable.

A couple of sprinklers mounted on metal fence posts worked well for us last year. The extra height increased the distance a bit and made it easy to reposition.

The water comes directly from a pump in the creek, so the pressure is enough to handle three sprinklers, but two seem to work best.

   

I've heard people say bee keeping is easier than a cat and harder than a dog. Whoever started that saying probably never had a cat tear a hole in their kitchen screen.

The mulch machine is out of commission for a while due to a bent blade.

Heavy vibration and noise are a clear indicator of an out of balanced blade.

Some people might be tempted to whack it with a sledge hammer and force it back into shape. This will cause a weakening of the metal and might break in two under stress, which would be very dangerous for the person pushing it and anything else nearby.

A good dog is very important on the farm, and Lucy is definitely a good dog.  But she does have a few bad traits.  A couple of nights a month, she goes on a barking jag and it's extremely difficult to stop her.  I pull the covers over my head, turn on the fan, and remind myself that folks in the city have to deal with noise every night.

I think I discovered the solution, though, yesterday while listening to Science Friday.   A dog expert explained that when a dog is barking like this --- "Woof woof! pause Woof woof! pause" --- she's saying, "Pack leader!  Come over here and check this out!"

My response --- "Lucy!  Shut up!" --- sounds to her just like "Woof woof! pause Woof woof!"  Which makes her think that I've joined with her in calling for a pack leader, and that she should definitely keep barking.

Instead, the dog expert suggested that I call her over and thank her for barking and ask her to settle down.  That is supposed to make her realize that the pack leader has come out and checked on the problem and deemed it no threat.  I'm looking forward to giving it a shot!

Meow meow meow meow, meow meow's meow meow!

Three more packages of bees are safely tucked away in their new boxes. We paid 2 dollars extra and had the queens marked with a little green dot on this batch, which seems to be worth it for the peace of mind you get knowing for sure she's alive and kicking.

Our quest for a more energy efficient refrigerator came to an end today at a used appliance store on the way to a muffler shop.

We got lucky and found a small recent model that is rated a bit more favorably than the new one we were considering.

Having an energy efficient refrigerator brings us another step closer to being ready for a practical alternative to the traditional electrical grid.

Since I've started learning about bees I find myself paying closer attention to what's in bloom and wondering if it's enough to keep our hive of worker bees busy.

You can barely see it in the picture, but the yellow wild flowers to the right are Golden Ragwort, which started blooming last week around here, and can be expected to produce pollen for about 3 weeks.

       
We had blizzard like conditions at the Wetknee farm that kept me working indoors most of today. I discovered a bounty of royalty free music on the internet that will work in nicely with the video project I'm editing. It's easy to download MP3 formats, and the introductory descriptions make searching for specific music speedy and efficient.

Finally someone has made a weatherproof time lapse digital camera. It can take a picture every hour for a few months before the batteries need to be replaced, or you can adjust the interval from 5 seconds to 24 hours.

It gives a whole new meaning to that favorite past time of watching the grass grow. Now you can watch the same grass grow over and over.

   The rain filled puddles, and the wind whispered winter's retreat.

That massive wooden beam the creek delivered last week is now on dry land thanks to a bit of help from Lucy.

I'm not sure what we'll use it for..maybe the creek knows something I don't know?

Sometimes the latch mechanism that holds a hood down can get sticky, not allowing it to close all the way.

The easy fix is to use a screw driver to activate each of the two springs while dropping a few drips of oil where the metal moves. It's also a good idea to lubricate each end of the control cable.

Open and close the hood several times to let the oil work its way back into the grooves.

This picture illustrates how our little creek has grown up to be a mighty river in the last couple of days. With a bit of luck we'll mount a salvage operation tomorrow morning to reclaim a rather large wooden beam that seems to have floated our way and lodged itself nicely against a Box Elder tree by the footbridge.

Today was one of those farm days where an emergency crops up and you have to spend all day treading water just to catch back up.  Overnight, Strider had climbed 30 feet up a box elder to escape the dogs, and he refused to come down. 

I tried coaxing him from our seven foot ladder, to no avail.  Next try was throwing a rope over the branch and hoisting up a bucket with tuna in the bottom in the vain hope that he might be tempted to jump in and be gently lowered to the ground.  Hah!

We figured that if we made him a ramp, he might be willing to walk down a gentler incline.  But by this time (after lunch), he had hunkered down and wasn't willing to try to walk down our carefully rigged up ramp.  Read more....

                
I finished covering the top area with flashing and completed the carpet enclosure for the main sleeping roost. Got some barks of approval from Lucy and her friend Curly. They recommended I make an over sized access door and I'm glad they did. Now we have a big enough opening to stand inside the tractor once it's open.

At this pace I should have it ready for a chicken test drive sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Monday was so warm that if I lay down in front of the Egytian onion bed and looked through the green toward the sky, I could almost believe it was summer.  The chickens --- who have been craving every iota of sun for the last few months --- begged me to turn their tractors around so that they'd have shade.  Lucy and her doggie buddy (who's visiting for the week) slipped up into the cool at the edge of the hillside.

Meanwhile, I chained myself to the computer for four hours, then could bear it no more.  Many people are greedy for more money, but I'm greedy for more time in the outdoors --- once I've paid the bills, I'm far more likely to be found in the garden than hammering down someone's door in search of more clients.  After all, don't I get more enjoyment out of an hour in the sun than I would out of working an hour and then taking us out to dinner or some other frivolity?  I prepared more garden beds to be planted today and pondered the careful balance we walk between enough time and enough money.

Today was a good day for working outside and building the first stage of our newest chicken tractor or chicken ark if you live in the United Kingdom.

I feel it's important to build the nest box first once you have the frame together. Place it at least a foot above the ground with a big enough hatch for easy egg access.

I've found that the more comfortable and closed in your nest box is the less your hens are likely to lay an egg on the ground.

The TC1840H garden cart has taken some heavy use this firewood season, and an important welded spot near the front worked its way loose. Since the steering bracket is just below the frame I decided to secure the troubled spot through both pieces to add some additional strength.


It was easy to drill the four holes, although it might be neater to space them apart just a wee bit more to avoid the washer crowding seen here in the picture.







Lucy was eager to be the first to test out the new repair, and then she promptly asked for her evening walk.

Yesterday's heavy rains gave the footbridge its first serious threat since last week's attempt at shoring up the base with fence posts and concrete.

It seems to be holding fine with no shifting or additional erosion.

I'm in the process of researching different designs to hopefully discover a low budget answer to a wider and taller bridge complete with handrails and stability.

Project water line ditch is finally at a two feet depth on over half of the distance.

The last twelve inches is pure clay, and requires some extra effort compared to the easy first few layers.

It's good to see the end of a project approaching, even if it might be done freezing by the time we're finished.

These 7 windows have been salvaged from an old high school and with a little luck will be part of our future experiment in making a small green house.

A sizable chunk of winter melted off today revealing some familiar colors.

I got the picture to the left by inverting the panoramic feature on the Fuji Finepix S1000fd.

Someone mentioned that it was Charles Dickens' birthday today, which should be celebrated by drinking a warm cup of tea or hot chocolate with someone and sharing which one of his characters you identify with most and why.

The melting of snow goes along nicely with late winter sunsets.

Today was a good day for slow drips of water who dream of being long and solid.

It was a slow Saturday on the farm today. We try to make time for rest and relaxation on the weekends if at all possible. The photo above was taken just before sunset today out by a curve in the driveway with the Fuji S1000 fd, which is only getting more valuable to me as I delve deeper into it's many cool features. If you're in the market for a digital camera in the 150-200 dollar range you might want to give it a look.

Here's another view of our homemade footbridge taken this evening.

I'm going through a phase lately where I want to replace it with a set of ziplines, although I'm not sure if Lucy would be up for such a ride?

We've been making a bit of progress this week on the cat front.  In fact, Huckleberry has decided he wants to play with Strider --- the whole point of a new kitten!  Unfortunately for all concerned, Strider seems to speak another language and just ignores Huckleberry's advances. 

I'm hoping that the little cat will eventually start to feel a little bit less traumatized --- he'll sit with me and purr, but at the first sudden noise he leaps off my lap to run and hide under the futon.  He's terrified of Lucy and, when put outside, runs in a tail down slink for the old house to hide.

On the other hand, those high end ear meds seem to have whacked out most of Huckleberry's ear mites.  I still see a tiny bit of scratching, so I'm going to give him the second dose Monday.  I can't believe I let him scratch his ears until they bled for over a year, trying one after another over-the-counter meds, and never thought to take him to a vet!

Dog or goat...which is more useful on a farm?
Lee Johnson, Topeka, Kansas

That's a tough question. If you want a loyal friend that will almost always be there watching your back and ready to lend a helping paw, then a dog might be your best choice.

A goat can come in handy when you want to clear some land, or if you need someone to drink a beer with, but they can be a real handful when they get hungry and bored.

With the golf cart not working the old yellow TC1840H steel yard cart has been getting a serious work out these past few weeks helping with firewood gathering.

It seems about twice as easy to pull if you catch the ground while it's still frozen.

Time for a quick state of the farm report:

Cat status: Two feet apart from each other and fifteen feet away from me.  No hissing!

Chicken status: Pullets are laying well.  Old girls are barely laying and may soon be destined for the pot.

Garden status: A deer snuck past our predator eyes just before the new year and ate up the last of our greens.  So the only fresh things we're eating out of our garden at the moment is Egyptian onions.  Luckily, our freezer is still two thirds full, so our weekly grocery bill is pretty low.  I'm already starting to think of spring planting --- just a month until I can put in peas!

Water trench: I gave up on the trench because it hurt my carpal tunnel too much, but Mark's been digging away at it.  As you can see, he's making major progress!

Weather: Gray.  I dream of sunshine....

Creek: Coming back down.

Freelance work: Tricking in nicely.

Book I'm supposed to be writing: I'm actually writing it!  Whipped off the rest of chapter two last week.

Saturday --- time for Strider to come play with the big cat.  I carry him inside through the rain and instantly both cats are terrified of each other.  Huckleberry hisses and flees to the top of the north futon.  Strider meows mournfully and flees to hide under the south futon.

I lie between them, reading about dragons and sailors.  But the cats' war wears me out, and I slide into sleep.  I wake to more standoff, and eventually I put Strider back out in the barn and coddle Huckleberry back into his usual slug-like state.

Sunday morning.  The creek has risen again and is lapping up against the bottom of the footbridge.  Huckleberry won't come to breakfast, so I bring Strider inside again and he settles into the nook between my arms and book.

I feel guilty, the way I've felt all week --- as if I'm sneaking off to tryst with a lover behind Huckleberry's back.  So I go out into the wet and holler his name.  "Huckleberry, Huckle-BER-ry!"  Eventually, as Mark and I start to chop wood, he shows up, wet and unwilling.  He won't raise his back to my stroking hand, and once he runs inside and sees Strider he instantly runs back out.

Over lunch, I lock Strider in the bathroom and pet Huckleberry.  Strider moans, seeming to throw his voice down the hall, but eventually Huckleberry subsides.  That afternoon, as I cuddle up with the last 150 pages of a 1800 page trilogy which has leaked into my life over the last week and a half, Strider falls soundly asleep beside my head and Huckleberry eventually leaps up to lie carefully at my feet.

The peace lasts only twenty minutes until --- with only ten pages remaining and my hero and heroine still at odds --- Strider loses control of his bowels and poops on the floor.  Who ever said it was easy sorting out the differences between two cats?  Only in fantasy worlds do massive differences resolve in the last ten pages leaving everyone to live happily ever after.

I would like to send out a big thank you for everyone who sent me warm and happy birthday greetings.

It was an excellent year being 39, and I'm confident my 40th year will be filled with plenty of exciting and happy events.

The groovy picture is from a hand drawn card sent from Anna's mom which depicts Lucy, Huckleberry, and Strider.

I made it out to the mailbox this evening for the first time in 48 hours.

It's always a relief to see the footbridge make it through yet another beating by mother nature.

The next version will be wider, a bit longer, and elevated about 18 inches on concrete pillars.

Today was a day that begs one to surrender to the forces of nature.

The creek was transformed overnight into a mighty river that seemed to be making up for lost time in its haste to get where it's going.

Lucy likes to monitor the shoreline during heavy activity like this. She knows it will eventually yield something interesting enough to chew on and maybe bring back to us for closer inspection.

The vet says Strider has a four degree temperature and is eight months old.  For $86, we came home with dewormer, antibiotics, and a more impressive ear mite medicine for Huckleberry whose ear mites have been resisting all over the counter meds for months.  The two haven't met, and won't until Strider fights off his upper respiratory infection.  For now, he's holed up in a cozy nook in the barn.

The trip to the vet went pretty smoothly, all things considered.  Strider was a bit of a wiggler at first, but soon settled in and didn't make any sudden moves amid a waiting room full of canines.  The only small problem was a bit of projectile pooping on the walk back to the barn at the end of the day --- Strider really did try to warn me by wriggling and meowing, but I held on tight thinking that he wanted to get down and get lost in the floodplain.  As a last resort, he pooped into midair, barely soiling my coat.  I dropped him in a hurry to let him finish, just as Lucy came barreling down over the hill to greet us.  Mark tackled Lucy while Strider fled into the cave created by an upturned root mass, to be slowly wheedled out again with honeyed tones.  Back in the safety of his barn, he ate and drank ravenously before settling down to pur on my lap.

I have to admit that his manners are impeccable, all things considered.  Yesterday, I talked about trying to give him to my brother.  Today I know he's here to stay.

Huckleberry is about to get a new friend as you may have read in the previous post.

I thought I would post this picture in an attempt to show him he was here first and we are not trying to replace him with the new cat, but to maybe add a bit of feline companionship to his already full and rich life of napping, meowing, eating, and reading on the couch with Anna.

Yesterday, I jokingly told Mark that I'd gone to the dump (the source of our current cat) and found another cat, who I was now hiding in the barn.  No, no --- I changed my mind --- I'd stolen sweet little Bonnie from Mark's mom and had her hidden in the barn.  We both laughed and thought no more about it.

But this morning as I started to move the chicken tractors through winter mud, I heard a plaintive meow come from the barn.  I'd just left Huckleberry sleeping soundly on the sofa, but I thought it was possible he'd slipped out of the house and gotten his dainty paws wet or been chased by Lucy.  So I told the chickens to wait on me and went to check the noise out. 

Cowering behind our array of boxes and cast off belongings was...Bonnie???  The little cat had most of her markings, a white vest and white paws on an otherwise black fur coat.  But this little cat was smaller and oh so skinny when I finally tempted it to let me pick it up.  It was also a boy, just the same size Huckleberry was when I found him --- reaching that gawky adolescent stage where people tend to drop them off.  (Later, Mark found a towel on the road a mile from our house, one that hadn't been there yesterday, confirming our belief that the little cat got dumped.)

Just two weeks ago, Mark's mom asked us if we wanted another cat.  And without even checking with each other Mark and I both said "No!"  Huckleberry's a handful all by himself.  And yet --- if a cat walks a mile through the woods to find us, can we really tell it that we're going to renege on the contract humanity made with cats a few thousand years ago?  The truth is, I'm a sucker for strays.  Looks like we'll be taking the new cat to the vet tomorrow, and if it gets a clean bill of health introducing it to Huckleberry soon after.  I guess I should be a little more careful what I joke about!

Here's a picture of Lucy with our footbridge in the background where the creek has a curve in it. The panoramic nature of the photo is thanks to the Fuji Finepix S1000fd. It has a pretty neat built in feature that allows you to stitch three pictures into one long image.

After you take the first shot you save it in the memory and the next frame has about a fifth of the last image in a ghost like form that allows you to line up the picture exactly where you need it.

This is a picture of hen number 6. Hen number 5 if you ask Anna. She's at the bottom of the pecking order and had to be isolated because it was just too sad watching her getting picked on by the other hens.

Now she gets to roam free on most days, adding a certain flare to the place that makes me feel like I'm on the set of a movie and she's been added at the last minute for additional atmosphere for whatever new and wild scene is coming up next.

2008 was filled with a generous portion of good and happy scenes that make me feel confident I'm exactly where I need to be and doing exactly what I need to be doing.  I offer everyone reading this a warm and happy toast for good tidings in 2009.

The Gorilla glue bond was not quite strong enough to hold up against the heavy pounding a few weeks of wood splitting will tend to put it through. The wiggle is back, and parts of the bond are breaking away from the handle.

The maul has not flown off the handle yet, and as long as it gets the job done we will most likely continue to put it through the many paces of log splitage.

Lucy is often on hand for wood chopping, waiting for just the right piece to snatch up and carry off for safe keeping. We can never seem to get that kind of enthusiasm out of Huckleberry.