I first discovered permaculture pioneer Sepp Holzer when I posted about do it yourself aquaponics back in the spring.

The guy from Richsoil.com got a chance to spend 12 days with Sepp and he did a great job of documenting his visit with pictures, videos, and detailed descriptions of the Sepp Holzer style of permaculture.

Richsoil.com also has an in depth section on his experiences and observations with raising chickens that I found informative and useful.

We have a huge basswood at the edge of the yard.  It shades part of the garden in the late afternoon, but pays for itself in the middle of June when the flowers open up and feed every insect within a few mile radius.  I'm not exaggerating here --- before we got our honeybees, the basswood attracted so many bees from our neighbor's hives that it hummed like a not-so-distant highway.

Like many nectar trees, basswood can't be depended on to bloom every year.  It often blooms heavily one year, skips the next year, then works back up to a heavy bloom over the next few years.  Our tree took last year off, and this year seems to be only blooming at about 50%.

But even 50% seems to be a lot of nectar, and our honeybees are going crazy.  I'll be harvesting more honey today since I suspect our bees will fill up their supers in short order with the current basswood flow.

Need clear instructions on how a Briggs and Stratton engine really works?

Davidsfarm channel on YouTube does a great job at distilling down years of experience into minutes. I appreciate David's simple approach to DIY videos and feel like I've already learned a thing or two from watching what I've seen so far.

Mom picked up another half dozen bags of yard waste along her city curb and brought it out to me last weekend.  "It smells foul," she warned me.  "I think there might be dog poop in it, or something awful."

She was right that the grass clippings and autumn leaves stunk to high heaven, but when I opened the bags and sent my gloved hands feeling around, all I came across were some sodden bits.  My best guess is that a gardener bagged up his refuse last summer, then tossed the bags into the garage and forgot about them.  The moisture in the leaves started some anaerobic decomposition and resulted in a stink, but no real harm was done.

I'd been meaning to hill my potatoes --- you're supposed to hill them at four inches, and they somehow leapt from three inches to a foot this week --- but decided to use Ruth Stout's method instead and just put my spoiled grass clippings and leaves on top of the raised beds.  Technically, I'm not really following her lead since I planted the potatoes in normal soil, but I've read that planting potatoes straight into spoiled hay really only works when you've built up wonderful garden soil, and I was planting in new beds.  Take a look at the embedded video to see a 90 year old Ruth Stout in her garden, or skip ahead to 7 minutes into the video to see her planting potatoes.

In other potato news, I should mention that the potato plants I covered with buckets during the last frost are three times bigger than the ones I let the frost nip.  On the other hand, the beds that I let the chickens work on for five days instead of three days have potato plants twice as big as the other beds, even though the fomer were uncovered during the frost.  I'm guessing the boost of nitrogen let them grow large enough not to mind the cold weather.

Thanks, Mom, for the time-saving mulches!

Mike Turner tells the story of hitting a deer with his AeroCivic in this short video.

If you're inspired to learn more about homemade aerodynamic automobile modifications then you'll want to check out the Ecomodder.com website. It's a community of above average people taking fuel effeciency into their own hands by experimenting with aero modifications and sharing their results.

The removeable boat tail project for a Geo Metro looks very promising.

Big thanks to Vester for pointing me in the flywheel key direction in the comments section of yesterday's post.

I had to replace the blade twice last summer, and it stands to reason that the flywheel key is now the problem with the uneven timing and toughness to start.

Here's a good 5 minute video on exactly how to replace this part, but in the comments section of the video someone pointed out how the guy used a hammer and a large screw driver to get the flywheel off, which can result in damage to the flywheel if you're not careful.

The fear of fly wheel damage prompted me to order a special flywheel puller tool which is pictured above. This type works on most of the Briggs and Stratton flywheels, but you'll need to check your engine number to see if it's a proper match.

The lesson for today is to check out the comments. You might just learn something new about the wonderful world of small engine repair.

I don't think I've ever been happier to see rain in March than I was this weekend.  After our cold, wet winter, a week of sunny days in the fifties and sixties was irresistable and it took the rain to remind me that working from dawn until dark every day requires intermittent days of rest.

The frogs were happy to see wet weather reappear as well.  Spring Peepers and Chorus Frogs were joined by dozens of Wood Frogs (captured in the embedded video) by Friday night.  Ever since the first spring when I hunted them down by flashlight, I've had a very soft spot in my heart for Wood Frogs --- hopefully you'll see the appeal too.

The other important measurement to take when assessing your creek for microhydro is pressure or head.  The two terms are different measurements of the same thing --- potential energy just waiting to turn your turbine and make some power.

Many homesteaders pipe water from a spring down to their house, and the energy in the water line can be tapped for microhydro power.  To measure pressure directly in such a situation, install a gressure gauge in the line and read the dial.

If you don't already have a water line in place, you're better off calculating a stream's head rather than measuring pressure directly.  Head is simply the change in elevation between the highest and lowest points of a stream, and it can be measured in several different ways.  If you have a gps or watch with an altimeter, this can give a rough measurement of the respective elevations, but I found the water level method (outlined in the embedded video) to be the simplest.

To measure head using the water level method, find an inflexible length of pipe and start at the stream's highest point.  Completely submerge the pipe, then slowly lift the downhill end out of the water.  Creek water will flow out of the pipe's downhill end until it is raised level with the uphill end, at which point water will stop flowing.  Measure the vertical distance between the downhill end of the pipe and the ground and you have the change in elevation between the two points.  Now scoot the pipe downstream until the uphill end rests where the downhill end used to be, and repeat your measurement.  Lather, rinse, and repeat until you run out of shampoo...er, reach the end of the stream.  The head is the sum of all of the elevations measured along the creek's length.

The downfall of our property's creeks is their valley-bottom flatness.  Our small creek has the largest head, and even there the total change in elevation is barely over three feet.  Granted, microhydro applications can work with as little as 2 feet of head, but the setup becomes much pricier if your head is less than 50 feet.

Despite wanting to consider energy efficiency first, I was still curious whether the copious water on our farm would be a good fit for microhydro power.  The first step in assessing a site for microhydro is to measure stream flow.  Scott Davis suggests two easy methods.

The weir method is used in large streams or rivers.  The water flows through a notched weir that forms a waterfall.  You can use various tables or formulas to determine the flow rate of your creek based on the width and depth of the water in the weir's notch.  I didn't feel like constructing a weir, so I moved on to option 2.

The container method consists of finding a spot where all of the creek's water runs through a culvert or pipe, then sticking a five gallon bucket underneath.  Time how long it takes for your bucket to fill up, then use the following formula to determine your stream's flow:

As you can see in the embedded video, I found a spot where a huge root mass had channeled all of our smaller creek's water into a waterfall, so decided to try out the container method of estimating stream flow.  I couldn't fit a five gallon bucket under the waterfall, but a one gallon cook pot slipped right in between the roots and filled up in 3 seconds.  Our flow in that creek is approximately:

Our smallest creek's flow is pretty low, but is definitely within the realm of microhydro power.  In fact, Scott Davis notes that you can get power from streams running as slowly as 2 gpm (gallons per minute.)

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

Did you know that checking on your honeybees in the winter can be dangerous?

I tossed together this video of Friday's events to prove it.

Carolyn Roberts from house of straw.com has made a fun and informative 8 minute video that takes you through all the hoops she had to jump through to make her straw bale dream a reality. What sets this collection of information apart from others I've come across is the level of detail she shares when it comes to building codes and materials.

We considered the straw bale approach briefly, but decided against it for multiple reasons, mainly the fact that we get a lot of moisture around here, and it's not really as cheap as you might think.  Carolyn spent 50 thousand dollars and a good chunk of her precious time to finish the above home, which was way out of our price range and would have delayed our garden infrastructure building considerably. Her Walden castle is hands down more beautiful and efficient than our recycled trailer, but we would have had to go in debt to attain that level of comfort, an option that shouldn't even be on the table for anyone who prefers time over money, which goes to the very core essence of what the Walden Effect is all about.

This video started out as a serious summary of Monday morning's work on the homemade storage building.  Then I sped it up so you wouldn't be sitting around waiting for something to happen.  And suddenly the chipmunk noises made me laugh.

Mark watched it and said something along the lines of, "That's nice, dear."  I think I may just have an odd sense of humor....  Hope at least a few of you get a kick out of it.

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.

Two and a half inches of rain following a week of frozen ground means flood!

I'm working on my video skills, so hopefully this one will be more entertaining than my previous flood video.

If you hate videos (Mom), here's a photo of a snail I caught climbing a wingstem stalk to escape from the rising waters.  Also, feel free to check out our newest feature --- a link to the week's top three most visited articles at the bottom of the sidebar.  If you go read all three, it's almost like being popular!

The new chipper/grinder seems to have a problem with sticks and branches any bigger than what you see here in this short video. It's sort of a hassle to stop everything and flip it on its side to reset it once you send something through that's too big.

It still might find a place here on the farm, but today the verdict is too small and wimpy for the level of mulch production we are looking for.

After Moundville, we got on the boat for our five day cruise.  I had been concerned that spending so much time at sea might be a bit boring, but instead the experience was so astounding that we'll definitely repeat it soon.  I summed it up in my second editted video --- this one's shorter and tighter than the last one, I promise.

Now that we're back on land, it's time to bombard you with pictures and stories of our adventures.  We can't force you all to come over and watch a mind-numbing, three-hour-long slide show, so instead this week's lunchtime series covers the highlights.  This way, rather than falling asleep in the dark, you can just skip our posts if they get too boring.

As we mentioned previously, before hopping on the cruise ship we spent a day at Moundville's Native American Festival, the highlight of which was learning to make fire.  I summed up the fire-making experience in a four minute video --- my first effort at video editing, so please excuse my growing pains.  The expert on the video created an ember out of two pieces of pine, a bow, and a cap stone in less than three minutes.  It didn't quite catch in his tinder due to humid Alabama weather, but the concept is extraordinarily well explained.  Watch and learn!

I couldn't resist the urge to grab the camera for a close up view of my window spider embraced in a fierce battle with a wasp 3 times its size.

After several tries I got lucky and seemed to have captured the moment when the spider demonstrates control by securing all the legs of the wasp into one spot as if he's been handcuffed. You can notice less fight in the buzz of his wings and an overall feeling of giving up.

If you listen close you can hear the mule garden deer deterrent in the background.

Anna and I finally got a chance to watch a film my cousin was in a couple of years back and I couldn't resist the urge to swipe the scene under the fair use doctrine. He's the one sleeping on a bench. I slowed down the video to half speed so you won't miss him.

The film was directed by Fred Durst and it's a period piece set in the early 1970's titled "The Education of Charlie Banks". It was a good coming of age story that unfolded nicely and captured our attention.

Great job Ben, can't wait to see what you star in next.

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 had another deer invasion last night. Some minor damage to the sweet potato leaves on the far end of the garden. I'm coming to the conclusion that these anti-deer contraptions have an effective range of about 50 feet.

The 4th contraption was built today with a bonus sound. After the tin smashing sound we now get a thunk or a clink when the golf ball hits the new steel cup which is the same one Anna took around the world during her Watson fellowship.

Maybe now this will cover our entire garden perimeter...time will tell.

 
Another deer made it into our perimeter last night, although it was the section not protected by the 2 noise generators. He even left a pile of droppings as a not so subtle comment on how he feels about the new anti-deer contraptions. The garden suffered some serious damage to one of the best producing beds of strawberries we have.

The short video clip above is the 3rd generation model in action. I used a small metal fence post for this one because there was no trellis post to take advantage of in this new location.

  

After several rounds of adjustments the latest incarnation of mechanical deer repellant is working without fail.

Now that it's working I think I'll try my hand at dressing it up a bit to see if we can't make it look less trashy.

The experimental deer contraption let us down the other night due to the hanger breaking off. We lost a few sweet potato leaves but learned a valuable lesson.

All future hangers will be at least 14 gauge wire or thicker. The smaller stuff seems to break after about a week of pivoting. I shortened the length of tin by about a third, which seems to have eliminated the possibility of jams. It's still vulnerable to a heavy wind, which is a factor I'm taking into account for the next generation of anti-deer, noise making, kinetic, garden sculpture.

It seems like the noise is doing its job of keeping the deer at a safe distance from the garden. The pivot points needed some adjusting due to it getting hung up on the third night of operation. I just increased the hanging loop size and moved it out a few inches.

You would think a noise like that would be hard to deal with in such an otherwise tranquil setting, but the opposite is true. When I wake up in the middle of the night I now listen for the metal scraping on metal, which gives me an odd sense of comfort knowing that we have an invisible cloak of noise protecting the garden.

The closer I watch our honey bees the more I'm impressed with their fancy flying. This video is 15 seconds of heavy return flight traffic as they time each landing with a certain grace that's a joy to observe.

I shot this 15 second video today of our oldest hen drinking from the Avian Aqua Miser, an automatic chicken waterer. She and her sisters are still providing a steady stream of fresh eggs as they turn the corner on their third summer here on the farm.

What happens when you combine a small motor with some scrap tin and a power source? Hopefully a new type of contraption that will make the deer think twice before they enter our perimeter.

This is just over 2 and a half minutes of our fourth bee package install yesterday. The frames in this box have no foundation material. Instead they have a beveled edge for the bees to begin building on. The way I understand it the artificial foundation prompts the bees to make bigger cells, which provide more honey. Building without this mechanism may yield less honey, but a stronger colony. Experimenting is a big part of the fun.

I wonder if people who keep bees tend to be more experimental?

Time for the big test --- can I keep a fire going overnight?

In pre-modern days (according to all the fiction I read, anyhow), if you were in charge of the fire and let it go out, you were in big trouble.  Chances are you'd have to walk miles to your nearest neighbor to borrow a coal from them.  Luckily, we now have matches, scrap paper, and fire starter logs, but I've never quite developed the knack of getting a good fire going.

Mark usually wakes up once in the night to throw more logs on the fire and I've started to consider our woodstove a lot like a linux-box --- it never needs to be rebooted.  I didn't plan to, but I ended up following suit, loading up a mass of box-elder as the first hint of light entered the sky.  When I opened the stove up again a few hours later --- success!

(To be honest, though, I have to admit that it never got below freezing last night and my fire gave off nearly too much heat!)

In the winter, I find myself drawn to yoga.  There's not much I can do in the garden when the ground is frozen solid, and when it's 10 degrees outside I just don't want to be out there.  The perfect time to clear my mind and stretch some muscles with yoga.

Although I love yoga when I do it, I've had less luck finding a way to incorporate yoga into my weekly routine.  A few years ago, I took a class, which was useful for learning the basics but quickly turned into a pain in the butt --- I hated driving half an hour to feel uncomfortable about exercising around other people.  Read more....

We had a small dusting of snow to wake up to this morning which makes our crude footbridge a bit too slippery to cross.

Option number two is a series of cinder block stepping stones just to the side of the ford. This 14 second video is how it looked about an hour ago.

I forgot to mention the fact that these last two videos are of one of the first versions of the Avian Aqua Miser. I started out with a small plastic honey bottle, but found on hot days it was just barely enough water to last all day.

The final product holds up to a half gallon of water, which makes it wider and heavier and eliminates the problem of swinging, which the hens seemed to not mind, but it made me dizzy after watching them longer than a few minutes.

This video demonstrates how several hens can share the same Avian Aqua Miser and be happy about it.

I took this 15 second video yesterday to show our poop-free chicken waterer in action.

Our chickens will never drink dirty water again, and that's well worth the admission price because that warm and fuzzy feeling continues to grow each time you watch them drink with such enthusiasm.

I was supposed to have a meeting this morning --- the good lord willin' an' the creek don't rise.  But the creek did rise and the doppler radar called for much more rain to come, so I called to say I was afraid to leave home for fear of getting flooded out.

While chatting to the folks I was supposed to meet with, I learned that the creek which folks talk about rising was originally meant to refer to the Creek Indians.  Which would make the phrase grammatically correct after all --- I always thought the "don't" in the sentence was just Appalachianese.

Anyhow, Lucy and I wandered down to the uncapitalized creek to perform a stick test on its depth.  Someday I want to install a long stick with graduated markings in the creek so I'll know the actual depth of the creek water, but for now I stick to a more quick and dirty stick test.  I throw the stick across the creek and see how well Lucy does as she bounds after it.  Today, Lucy showed me up for a wimp --- she could walk almost all the way across.  Still, I'm always glad to be flooded in, letting nature win the battle for once.

We just got back from a quick trip down to South Carolina to visit Daddy and explore all of his gadgets!

Here he is showing off his solar-powered deer repellent light.  (He built the stand himself.)  Despite my gift-resistance, I thanked him profusely when he offered to give me a set for Christmas to try in my own garden.  According to Daddy, as long as you move the lights every few days, the blinking lights scare away deer, who think the lights are predator eyes.  I'm willing to try anything to keep our deer away!

Then there's the automatic chicken feeder he built for his Golden Comets and Rhode Island Reds.  This one I'm less likely to emulate (though I'm including it since I thought others might be interested.)  The automatic feeder is obviously best in a stationary coop and I figure it would be too heavy for our tractors.  Daddy told me that his pullets got in the habit of picking all of the corn out of their mash and leaving the rest of it behind!  Darn teenagers and their junkfood.

Finally, I'll leave you with an eight second video of Daddy and his dog --- low budget entertainment at its best.  More soon on a couple of other highlights of the trip.

The EPA has a semi-interesting list of practical tips for building a fire in a wood stove. Mostly common sense stuff that seems obvious, except for the part that instructs us not to spread the coals flat. According to them you should rake the coals into a mound towards the door. I have been guilty of raking my coals flat lately, but now I can see the light of an even more effecient fire.

Another suggestion is to reload your stove with at least 3 pieces of wood each time, placing them on and behind the mound of hot coals.

If you need a little extra warmth try this short video of tonight's fire.

We don't get trick-or-treaters back here in the woods, but we do have a young visitor.  Curly is a neighbor's dog who's spending the weekend with us while his owners are out of town.  As Mark and I ate supper, we watched Lucy and Curly dive into the compost pile in search of a shrew.  I'd been meaning to turn that compost pile!

Please let me know if this video doesn't play for you.  I'm new to the world of video!  You might try right-clicking on this link and down-loading the video, if necessary.

We have a four ton hand winch that really pulls more than its own weight around here. Some folks refer to them as a "come along", I call ours an essential tool for pulling a truck out of the mud, stretching barb wire tight, or bringing down an old house as you can see in this short video clip.  There are several varieties to choose from. The ones rated for two tons can be had for 10 or 15 dollars; we got lucky and found a four ton model for only 20 bucks at the Bluff City flea market. You should expect to pay somewhere between 35 and 50 bucks for the four ton if you want to order it online.

I have a designated gear bag for our winch that includes a heavy duty tow strap, a ten foot stretch of cable with loops on each end, and a good old fashioned chain. These items are needed to attach your winch to a tree, heavy duty vehicle, boulder, etc. Extreme care should be taken when operating any type of winch where several hundred or thousand pounds are being held. The cable can end up holding a tremendous amount of potential energy, and if there is a break or slip then that energy needs to go somewhere, and if you're in its way it might be the last mistake you make. I try to imagine the path the cable might take if it did break, and stay clear and make sure any bystanders are plenty out of the way.

Simon Faure invented a new kind of hand winch during World War 2. He named it the Tirfor and due to its unique design these winches are capable of working in any position, horizontal, vertical, or angled.  What really sets the Faure winch apart from a simple come along is its shear pin. When the machine reaches 125% of it's capacity a metal pin inside the winch breaks, alerting the operator that any more pulling would be dangerous. Replacement pins are stored in a compartment on the handle. Be ready to pay between 300 to over 1000 dollars for such a tool. More details can be found at this website.

I would like to thank everyone who entered our free raffle for 50 Daffodil bulbs. 

The lucky winner is Holly Dukes. I shot a 15 second video of the drawing you can see here.

We still have some bulbs left and are willing to part with them while supplies last. You can get 20 shipped to you for 15 dollars, or for the more value minded out there we are offering 40 for 25 dollars. Go to our Native Plant website for more information.

Daffodil bulbs multiply very nicey when given the right conditions, and they keep popping up every year. They are deer and rodent resistant because all parts of the plant contain alkaloid chemicals that are very bitter and can be toxic if eaten.

Make sure to check back later in the week for another contest involving strawberry starts.

Yesterday was a very educational afternoon for me. It was the second time this year that I got to see first hand how a chicken goes from happy clucking to all plucked out in a matter of minutes. I had my trusty video camera going part of the time and managed to capture several of the steps in this rather detailed process.

I've decided to share two of those steps with you in this short video clip.

I really enjoy a good chicken dinner, and I already feel more connected to my personal link of the food chain thanks to this experience. I owe a debt of gratitude to our friends for sharing their clever set up and operation with us. I was especially impressed with the powerful chicken plucker they built which is featured in the video clip above.

We have talked about taking the rest of the chicken footage and putting together an instructional video for those who need to know more. Stayed tuned for more information on that.

The chicken pictured is one of our Plymouth Rock cousins, and she was not harmed during the making of this post and will most likely live out a life of leisure here on the farm with a few of her egg laying sisters.

Our chicken innovations have also included a homemade chicken waterer.

The only thing I want to add to Anna's post about building the ford with cinder blocks would be a close up of one of the fence posts that we hammered in next to some of the blocks. These posts got sunk into the ground several feet, which is what anchors the whole structure and prevents any shifting of the blocks. If I had to build another one tomorrow I would use the slightly chipped discounted bricks as I'm sure now that you would get the same effect.

Here is a short video clip of a leaf crossing the ford just because it can. I think this leaf is proof that Autumn has established a firm foot hold back in the woods here.