Thank You!

When I first started this blog it was primarily to just keep a record, a sort of diary, of my little garden and what I would learn while developing it.  Before I knew it, my little garden had expanded to a backyard farm complete with chickens, ducks, and goats, and my garden was producing enough food to feed our household most of the year.

Along the way, people, both here is in the US and around the world, began discovering my blog and visiting regularly.  I have made some new friends, and have learned much from all of you.

In the past few months my audience has increased exponentially and from many countries.  It is far more than I ever expected would develop when I wrote my first post.

Thank  you!
~Kathleen

Well Water .... boil, filter or purify?

Now that we are settling in we need to address a few of our basic needs, especially drinking water.

We have an old, bored well which has not been used in at least three years.  There is no septic system so we aren't concerned regarding possible contamination.  But, wells that just sit idle do grow bacteria and we don't need to be ingesting any of those miniscule varmints.

We will be replacing the pump and tank, but in the meantime we use a clean container at the end of a long rope to retrieve well water.

When it was just the two of us we could easily get by with a couple gallons of purchased water daily.  But, now that the livestock is here they use about 5 gallons a day which means the water bill is increasing.

After carefully researching using our available, free, water I have found that making certain our water is pure is as simple as boiling it for 1 minute.  Basically, all pathogens are killed at about 140 degrees F, so by the time the water gets to boiling (212F) they have all been killed and the water is safe to ingest.

Although the pathogens are killed during the boiling, their "bodies" remain in the water and it should be filtered before drinking.  The boiled water can be filtered through coffee filters, or other fine filter.

The only problem I have found is that, believe it or not, water doesn't keep well and should be used within 24 hours.  On the other hand, it is okay to process in mason jars just as we would process food, then it will keep and remain safe to use, indefinitely.   This will come in handy for our emergency stockpile.

Thank goodness for huge stock pots!  I have no problem in putting large pots on a fire to boil everyday.... at least until we get the water system up and running.  The house will be fitted with water filters on faucets, as well as a filter at the well before the water even enters the house.

The plan is to run water pipes from the well to the inside of the home, as well as running water pipes in trenches to hydrant at the animal shelters and also the garden area.

Fortunately, the water "pipes" (the red and blue flexible hoses) are already installed in the bath and kitchen, and the "pipes" for the hydrants are also already installed at the well.

If, for some reason, there is no way to boil the water, such as during a state of emergency and a stove or fire is unavailable, water can be purified by using bleach, without color or scent. It takes only about 6 drops of fresh chlorine bleach to each gallon of water and let it sit for 30 minutes.

For more information on disinfecting drinking water follow this link:  Safe to Drink

Settling In ... Well, sort of.....

soon it will be just a
regular backyard again

It has been an exhausting week so far, having started by taking apart all the fences at our backyard farm, loading all the lumber and household stuff as we could squeeze into a 16' rented moving truck; driving the 600 miles to the farm and then unloading it all.  Nick, along with Sophie as company, drove the truck, and I followed behind with a carload of chickens and ducks.

The chickens were well behaved the during the ride, but those ducks .... two of them kept bickering and pecking and jabbering at each other the entire way!   The only time they stopped the noise was while Cher's voice came through the radio singing "If I Could Turn

the little farm

Back Time".  My thought exactly.

The goat transport arrived a day early, so that allowed us extra time to take down all the fencing and

the pergola is gone

the pergola for supporting
the Kentucky Wonder vines

the pergola which was used for supporting my Kentucky Wonder

green bean vines.

The yard seemed so empty afterward.  Well, no looking back now.

Now, we are at the farm and beginning our new life journey.  The landscape is barren of farm buildings and fences and all those things you'd normally envision on farmland.  But, with persistence, hard work and a bit of good luck we will change that.

unloading

It took two days to unload that truck which carried only the barest necessities to see us through the winter.  Since there is no place to store anything, we must wait until we have the house ready before bringing furniture and those other things that turn an empty house
into a home.

For this year, however, we will be living in the motor-home. What better incentive could there be for getting the house completed as quickly as possible?

The goats have been settling into their new surroundings, and we still must keep the little buckling

Dawson

apart from them.  Penny keeps head-butting the little guy and overdoes it sometimes sending him across the yard with one push.  So, in order to protect him from her, until he gets a little bigger, he must sleep in one of the large dog kennels we placed inside their shelter.  During the daytime, their yard is big enough for him to run away from her and hide-out behind their building or in the tall grass.

lots of bugs make happy
chickens and ducks

The chickens are happy in their temporary run tucked near a corner of the house.  They are doing an excellent job of getting rid of the weeds and vines that we have been unable to eradicate.  We had hoped to have their chicken
built and ready for them, but with the threat of  Hurricane Matthew we decided to wait until the storm passes before putting up those walls.  No need to go through all that work just to possibly have the building blown away.

Only half the flock came with us, there wasn't enough space in the car for all of them, so we brought the best layers.  The remainder will join us later.

Farmer John, our neighbor from a couple of miles down the road, came by with his hired hand and cut all our hay for us.  He and Nick have worked out a barter where we get our hay cut, the goats get enough hay to last until next hay season, and Farmer John gets a few large bales of hay in exchange.

The garden area is in need of more cardboard to go beneath the mulch in order to kill off the grass that lies below.  Where there is cardboard there is no sign of grass, where there isn't any cardboard, the grass is growing up through the mulch, which is as I expected.  I have been collecting cardboard, in as large pieces as I can find and will begin spreading them this week, weather permitting.

The latest weather report has the storm heading out to sea off Cape Hatteras, but we will get about 2"3" of rain, maybe....

For the remainder of this day I am resting and trying to make space to put things away inside the motor-home which seems to have gotten somewhat smaller.   Nick will be adding a few finishing touches to the goat fence, he has found a few places where the little buck could sneak through, or a predator could enter.  It's also time to move the chickens temporary run to another area along the side of the house that needs clearing.  They will be getting a temporary home today also.  Nick is building them a small shelter from pallets,  just a safe place to sleep until the storm passes and their new house is up.

The biggest excitement this week, at least for me, was getting the Internet set-up here at the farm.
Nick needs to have internet access since he will be working from home.  So yesterday the satellite dish was installed and I am now re-connected .... hurrah!  Well, at least for so long as the generator doesn't run out of gas.