Blogs I Follow

Since I'm blogging, I've been asked what blogs and websites do I follow. Well, I'm not a blog fanatic, but there are a few that I check on regularly.

.... http://www.bedlamfarm.com/

     Jon Katz shares his photography, stories about his farm and animals, and relates the
story of his journey through life. I met Jon years ago at a veterinary convention. For some 
reason I liked this , at that time timid, man and began reading his books. I've been
following his stories for years. 

.... http://www.5acresandadream.com/
     Leigh maintains an enjoyable story of her farm projects and life. Plus her site has 
dozens of links to other sites for more information. 
.... http://www.notgrandpaschickens.blogspot.com/
     I happen to know Sue and Pat, so I can relate to their stories. 
.... http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com/
     This blog was recommended by Jon Katz. Jenna relates the ups and downs of trying 
to develop a small farm lifestyle.
.... http://www.fullmoonfiberart.com/

     Maria is Jon Katz's wife. She's a fiber artist and posts pictures of her work, plus chats 
about her life with the farm animals.

There are a number that I check in on less frequently, or that my interest with them waxes 
and wanes. But if you have any to recommend, I'm all ears! 

Kitchen Almost Done

We're finally in the homestretch! The past couple of weeks David and I have gotten quite a bit finished. Two last things still to be finished -- installing the "cabinet drawers" and adding all the little doodads (pot hangers, towel rack, decorations, etc). The drawers are on order and will be shipped bumbye  (sometime, who knows when). And the doodads I can work on in the next couple weeks.

So what got done recently?

........ The sink has gotten hooked up and is now functional. It's 99% complete because we haven't installed the new on-demand hot water heater. But everything is in place for it. The cold water works. The drain works. So nice to have a sink right near the stove, rather than having to walk outside. For now I just heat up a pot of water when I do the dishes. Eventually hot water will come via the faucet. Oh, what luxury to look forward to! 

......... The triangular alcove is completed. All trimmed out now. The tiles laid. The grout and wood inlays completed. Looks real nice, if I say so myself. The tiles are handmade by an artistic friend, all originals. It's one of those nice accents to a room, and I love it. 

Bumped out alcove at the end of the kitchen counter. It will be a great place for a plant. 

........ Moveable kitchen table completed. David did a nice job. I wanted a table that would blend into the rest of the design, but be movable. It could be rolled here, there. Importantly it needed to be rolled out of the way to get at anything being stored back in the corner, but Bob also wanted to have it able to be used in the livingroom when needed. Since I had an extra piece of the black granite, David inlaid it in the top, making a nice spot for hot dishes, or to used as a serving cutting board for cheese, etc. 

So it's been a long journey, but the kitchen s finally a reality! 

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Gee, how many times have I gotten involved with a project, or made a decision, that in hindsight was a poor choice, to say the least. If my foresight was as good as my hindsight, I'd be doing a lot better! But in each of my flops and failures there is a common denominator --- I start out totally optimistic and convinced that I'm making a good choice. 

When we first moved here I bought various bits of equipment to clear the overgrown brush that couldn't do the job. Then there's the time I chose a paint color that turned the bedroom into a nightmare. I recall the time I bought several cases of canned soup that was on sale only to discover we didn't like it. The propane fired "woodstove" was a total and expensive flop. 

Now that I'm thinking about it, there are a few flops that we still talk about ...............

Grow My Own Bananas .... When I first moved here I was entralled by the idea of growing tropical fruits. The most accessible one was bananas. Everybody, but everybody, offered me baby banana trees to plant in my yard. Ah, that should have been a clue. Now, if they had been offering zucchini plants, I would have known what to do -- close the drapes, lock the doors, and hide in the house until they left. But being newly intoxicated on the tropical warmth, I greedily accepted all banana gifts. In the beginning, it was great. Baby banana trees here, there, everywhere. 

Now I've got so many bananas that I feed them to the chickens because I can't even give them away. 

Why in the world do I have so many clumps of bananas? Dang things are everywhere!

Grow All Our Own Food -part 1 .... I truly believed that in Hawaii I would be growing all our own food. I'd garden every morning and reap plenty. I'd can the veggies and fill a pantry. We'd be fat and happy. Based upon my little gardening adventures back in NJ, I calculated that I'd need a rototiller, a cultivator (for weed control), a garden cart, some shovels and forks, a rake, lime, fertilizer, and a couple of truckloads of straw for mulching. I even purchased lots of vegetable and flower seeds in anticipation.
          First problem: head high grass and brush. That stuff was tough as rope and a lot of it had spines and prickles. After struggling to open a small 10x10 area, I was dismayed to see it was loaded with big rocks. I tried another spot that looked lush. More rocks! I checked multiple locations. All rocky! Extremely discouraged, I saw my dream garden melting away.
           Second problem: rocks. I finally concluded that the rocks had to be dug out. Hey, all those beautiful rock walls that I was so familiar with back in New England were built from rocks removed from farm fields. So sure, I could do it too. So I spent many an hour digging out and moving rocks. Being an optimist,  wasn't going to let wall to wall lava defeat me. I'd have my garden yet, though smaller than I had originally dreamed. After much work I finally came up with a nice garden plot about 50' x 100', derocked and well dug. No need for a rototiller yet. Time to plant!!! Not a flop, but it took lots of sweat and sore muscles to make a sliver of the dream come true. 

Grow All our own Food - part 2 ..... NOW the idea of growing food would become a reality! I added lime, fertilizer, planted seeds. Things started to grow. I was so happy. Now I needed the straw mulch. What? $35 a bale? Are you nuts!!!!! I was use to paying $1.50 a small bale, $3 for the big ones. But $35? Well, maybe straw wasn't such a good idea after all. I'd have to do without. Which of course allowed the weeds to grow. I was spending way too much time cultivating each day. And combining the use of the cultivator with the tradewinds resulted in the soil drying out. Which now meant that I needed water for irrigation. Luckily I had a 12,000 gallon tank full of water, but alas no pump or electricity. How to get the water to the garden?  I made do with a garden hose slowly siphoning that water to the garden. But things grew! But not everything. I soon discovered what root knot nematode was. Hadn't a clue before. Then the bugs arrived. Aphids. Whitefly. Stink bug. Scale. Mealy bug. Cabbageworm. Squash borer. Sweet potato maggot. Pickleworm. Fruit flies. My dream garden was a bug buffet! While I was losing the bug battles, in snuck mildew, wilt, anthracnose, scab, to name the few that I could recognize. Plenty more diseaes took their turn hacking apart my dream, chopping me down to size. Um, this wasn't going to be so easy. I finally conceded that I hadn't a clue about how to garden successfully in Hawaii.

Ship Over The Rototiller ..... Pre-arrival, I had dreams of large gardens neatly rototilled. I had one of those hugh Troybilt tillers that was a real workhorse which easily handled my 1/4 acre garden back on the mainland. Surely it could handle a lot more. I also purchased a brand new Mantis tiller thinking it would do nicely to cultivate my dream garden. I was moving to 20 acres that everyone assured me had deep soil and the perfect climate for growing. Well, "deep soil" needed a bit more explanation. Deep yeah, but all that soil was located between lava rocks ranging from the size of golf balls to bigger than basketballs. There wasn't one square foot where a rototiller could be used. Not even a shovel! Maybe a fork, but a pick or o-o bar was a better choice. So the rototiller had been a bad idea and it got sold to help recoup the expense of shipping it here. It took many years of derocking before I dared to purchase another.

Ditch The Cold Weather Gear..... Hey, I'm moving to Hawaii! Land of balmy breezes, beaches, coconut trees. Who needs to ship over sweatshirts, fuzzy socks, warm coats, long pants? We arrived December 15th and promptly froze! I hadn't given it a thought, but when it's 56 degrees outside in the morning, it's also 56 degrees inside the bedroom, livingroom, and worst of all, the bathroom! We instantly drove to Kona and bought a bunch of warm clothing. Leaving warm clothing behind wasn't a good idea. 

Save Money by Raising my Own Eggs .... Looking back, I must have been crazy. Even though eggs cost $3 a dozen in the store, there's no way I could save money by growing my own. But I didn't let reality cross my mind as I ordered chicks (minimum order 24), purchased a feeder and waterer, bought a heat lamp and bulbs, ordered plywood and 2x4s to make a chick pen and the wire fencing for the sides. Adding a bag of chick starter, I now had more financially invested than I'd ever spend buying eggs at the store. But I consoled myself by saying that these eggs would taste better. 

           First problem- electricity. I quickly discovered that a 100 watt lightbulb gobbled up most the power from our feeble fledgling solar system. Now I had to spend more money to rebuild the chick pen to accommodate the newly purchased oil lamp to be used as the heat source. Add two giant bottles of lamp oil to the bill, too. 

           I lost a few chicks to drowning. Go buy different waterer. Lost a few to crowding when the lamp blew out. Go buy a second lamp for insurance. 

           By now the chicks were 8 weeks old and ready for outdoors. Buy 2x4s and chicken wire for a chicken tractor. Yes, I'd wheel their pen around, taking advantage of the grass as feed, and so

recoup some of my expenses so far. Buy a piece of metal roofing for the top because the rains have gotten awfully heavy and frequent. What happened to the sun? Anyway, chicks installed in brand new chicken tractor. One week later, 100% dead chicks and one bloodied happy mongoose. Evidence showed that the mongoose snagged some through the wire sides. The rest he got by digging under the pen and snagging them through the flooring. He only ate one which he pulled through the chicken wire, but killed them all. 

Sigh. Not every idea has been an instant success. 

Things That Chickens Do

I got an email in response to the "Sheep Are Stupid" post saying , "Sheep are dumb, but chickens are the really stupidest animal on a farm." Um, might be true. My vote is that sheep are worse than chickens, but its a close call. But again I maintain, it's not that they are stupid, it's just that they think differently from humans. We put them into a human oriented environment then call them dumb when they fail. Philosophy aside........

Baby chicks appear to have far less sense than adults. They'll step into their water bowl and not be able to figure out how to get out again. I've rescued hypothermic chicks, having to dry them off and warm them up. I finally made mesh guards to prevent them from killing themselves. Then the silly chicks would fall asleep atop the mesh, and as they dosed off their necks would drop. Down their little beaks go into the water. None drowned this way, they all woke up. But they never seemed to learn. I switched to a different brand of chick waterer. Still had to make a mesh guard for it. For some reason some of them can't manage to figure out how to step up to get out of the water.

Another thing silly baby chicks do is sleep atop their food. If they happen to be wet from a near drowning, they effectively get breaded in chick food. Chicken nuggets! Ready for the deep fryer. Yum. I learned quickly why chick feeders had covers with head sized holes in them. It's to keep chicks from breading themselves.....and pooping in their food, which is also something they do. If they cover their food in poop, they no longer can see it or find it. They will starve.

Chicks need warmth the first two months. If the heat source happens to die, the chicks will huddle to keep warm. The only problem is that they see nothing wrong with climbing atop adjacent chicks. In quick time, chicks on the bottom get suffocated. For some reason, the guys on bottom put very, very little effort in getting up. They just lay there and take it even if it means they can't breath. I've seen cases where older hens get trampled the same way. Instead of standing up, they just lay there being stood on.

Speaking of "just standing up", hens will get caught under a deep dish or basin and die. Yup. I've seen cases where a lightweight dish basin is used to hold chicken feed. When the pan is just about empty, a hen stepping on its side will cause it to flip over. Just like a box trap, flip-- caught one chicken! Now that hen will lay there forever. She doesn't try to move, walk, or stand up. The pan is plenty light enough for her to stand up, but she never tries. After a few hours the poor hen is wet from her own respiration, then dies of hypothermia. Many a chicken keeper has lost a hen this way.

When it comes to feeding chickens, there's lots of opportunity for entertainment. First, feeding birds tends to be soothing. I enjoy standing there watching the girls scratch and peck for the seeds I throw to them. But have you ever seen the chicken races? Just toss out a worm or a strip of meat. If the hens have never seen it before, they will all crowd around eyeing it for a while. Finally one hen will get brave and give it a tentative peck. Then all hell breaks loose! One grabs the treasure and RUNS. Instantly she is chased by a mob a hens hellbent on stealing the treasure. Snatch. Hen #2 now runs a different direction, the whole mob now chases her. Grab. #3 now has it and runs. By now whatever they have starts falling apart. Various lucky hens get bits and swallow them. In the end, seldom do the original 5-6 hens get a nibble. Now throw a second piece, and it starts all over again! This can go on for a dozen pieces. Occasionally you'll get a hen who figures out that its best to quickly swallow the worm or meat, but more often not. Next day repeat the process and the hens start out from square one again. Even those hens who quickly swallowed yesterday have seemingly forgotten the nifty trick by the next day. It's the chicken races all over again.   :)

Chickens are not above stealing food, nor are they above eating one another. Yes, cannabilistic. If a hen gets a sore spot somewhere, her sisters will promptly see her as a meal and start pecking. Before long the poor hen is eaten. You'd think she'd tried to fend them off. Get into a corner for protection or into a nestbox to get away. No on both ideas. She'll simply stand among the flock and proceed to be pecked to death. 

You'd think nestboxes would make good places to hide. Hens do use them for that, but not to hide for protection from their sisters. They hide to sleep and to lay eggs. One thing I've noticed about hens is that they tend to all want the same nestbox at the same time. Provide 20 boxes for 20 hens and you'll come out to find 3 hens crammed into one box with a fourth with her head inside while laying her egg outside. The box is small, supposedly the ideal size for one hen. But regardless of the size, always more than one hen will cram in. Literally cram. Side by side, one on top of they other, whatever it takes. I wouldn't mind but the behavior usually results in a cracked or broken eggs. By mid-morning it's not uncommon the have almost all the eggs laid in one nest. The other 19 nests are a wasted investment. 

Sheep are stupid

"Sheep are stupid" , "wolves are mean".....from the movie Babe.  Working with both sheep and border collies, I can fully appreciate those lines.

Sheep can do the dangest things, get themselves into the weirdest situations. I believe it's not because they are truly stupid, but that they think differently than humans. They think as a flock. They react as a unit for flock survival.  So if one sheep panics and runs away from danger, say jumps over a cliff, the rest of the flock could follow. That happened in Turkey where 1500 sheep jumped off a cliff, killing 450 of them. One after another followed the sheep ahead of them, and down they went. Yikes!

I've had other sheep owners tell tales of sheep piling up in corners while fleeing some danger, imagined or real. They'll jump and climb right atop another, trampling and suffocating any small lambs to death. They're just looking for an escape route, but woe to the little lambs if there's no place to go but the corner.

You know the saying that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence? Well, sheep whole heartedly subscribe to that. Plenty of sheep have died with their head stuck through a fence, unable to figure out how to back their head out. Although I've never lost a sheep this way, I have had them get stuck on a fence. Getting them to back out is really difficult. The whole time you're trying to back their head out, they're pushing forward trying to climb through a 6 inch square opening.

Speakng about backing out, this isn't something that sheep are good at doing. It's not a flock thing, but sheep are very poor in the reversing department. They've got plenty of forward gears, but they are hard to get into reverse. Cheap transmissions!

Not only can sheep get stuck with their heads through a fence, I've had a couple get stuck trying to go under a fence. They get their head and shoulders through, but the belly stops them. Ah, again a case of no reverse. I've had to pull them by their hind legs to free them, all the while they are struggling to go forward.

Yet another case of defective reverse transmissions, I've had sheep get stuck between two close young trees. Head and shoulders through but stuck at the belly. They'll jump and push to go forward, but don't try to back out. While freeing these stuck sheep, it's easy to call them stupid. In fact, I admit that I've done it. I've cursed and called them stupid the whole time I'm working to free them. Do they help? Not in your life! They're determined to squeeze between those two trees irregardless of anything else.

I'm not sure why it happens, but I've seen sheep get stuck on their backs. I had one somehow roll onto her back into a shallow depression by a fence. Unable to right herself, she died before I discovered her. Since I check all my sheep daily, she died in less than a day. I've had other flock owners report about sheep getting stuck on their backs too. It's not common, but it happens.

Here in Hawaii it is common to see sheep and goats tied out, doing duty munching down grass and weeds. Goats seem to do fine, but you have to keep a close eye on the sheep. They tend to go forward, wrapping themselves round and round a bush, clump of grass, or some other obstacle. Before long they are out of rope and have been known to strangle themselves. Again, defected reverse gear.

Sheep flocks tend to have a leader, with the rest of the flock following them. One of our friends had a flock leader named Micah who every day led the flock out of the night pen and to the pasture, then back again in the evening. The transition between the two areas meant walking through gate A, across a driveway then through gate B. Simple. When Micah needed to be temporarily removed from the flock to treat a leg injury, the flock couldn't figure out how to transfer from the night pen into the day pasture. There was confusion, fear, no one was willing to move forward on their own. They had been doing it all their lives but couldn't do it on their own. The first day of moving the flock was really difficult until one of the sheep finally made the plunge. Weird, they acted like they had never done it before.

My own flock demonstrated their dependency on their flock leader. As a flock, they couldn't seem to think individually. One day I needed to move them through a gate between two pastures. They had grown up with this gate arrangement, frequently using it with no problem. One day I wanted to hold Stacy back so that I could shear her. I planned to let everyone else go through the gate into the adjacent pasture as usual. Well, being sheep it wasn't so easy. They ran into the fence beside the gate trying to force their way through 6 by 6 inch openings. It wasn't until one finally tumbled its way through the gate by accident that the others followed. I just shook my head and mumbled, "Sheep are stupid."

Lawn Tractor -- New Equipment Acquisition

I finally broke down and expanded my equipment inventory. Another gasoline eating machine, a riding mower, or as I like to think of it, a lawn tractor. Tractor sounds so much more farmy than a mower. Hey, it's got a bar in the back with a hole in it, yes, I COULD hitch up something and pull it. Maybe there's no PTO, but pulling a little cart behind should count for something farmish. So there, that's settled. It's a tractor.   :)

Red tractor matches my truck, in the background. Posing with the first pile of grass clippings. 

Two factors joined forces to make me purchase it. I suffer from a severe shortage of time to get things done, plus I'm getting older, wearing myself out.

I mow grass basically to get mulch. Sure, it neatens up the property and improves the pastures after the livestock has eaten what they like. But mulch is number one. Therefore a grass catcher is mandatory. Mowing with a push mower takes up lots of time June thru December. It's great exercise, but I'm bushed after a whole afternoon of mowing. But it has its pluses - I sleep really good that night. No tossing and turning, more like a coma. Exercise has its merits, even if it is trying to kill me. My doctor tells me that regular exercise is good, it will make me younger. Well at the rate I exercise, I should be approaching 20 years old fairly soon. Won't be long before acne is once again a problem.    :)

So I picked up the mower, ahem....tractor. Friday afternoon was my first opportunity to try it out. Well, love at first ride! Took a bit of practice, but I quickly became a pro. And I haven't even hit a rock with it yet! Mowed for two hours and created 7 gigantic piles of clippings. Only 2 hours! Now this is heaven! See, I'm easy to impress, aren't I? I got much more mowed in those two hours than I would have with the push mower all afternoon. Yes, this critter is going to give me more time to use elsewhere. And I must be sick, because I really had fun mowing! 

More Kitchen Progress

I haven't had time to put into the kitchen but our friend David has. I really appreciate him tackling the kitchen because its way beyond my experience level. First he made the little tables to go beside the refrig and freezer match the rest of the kitchen workwood. Being that the two units are chest types, the tables are very convenient. They make using the chests much easier. Whatever you're looking for is bound to be underneath something else! So moving it out of the way, say to a little table, makes life easier.

Next task-- fit the countertop into its space. Since the basket drawers haven't arrived yet, David couldn't create the final framing, but he could make a frame that could be modified as needed. This allowed him to cut and fit the long counter. Between the counter and the stove I wanted a piece of granite. So with the counter in place, the granite slab could be cut to size and installed.

Next, the sink. It didn't take more than a few minutes to cut the hole for the sink. Amazing, when you have the right tools and know what you're doing. I would have had to spend a half hour just making sure that all my measurements were correct before I would have had the guts to risk cutting the countertop. My nightmare would be cutting the hole a half inch too big!

My part of this project comes next. I'll get all the plumbing parts together for the sink and install them. The sink will be plumbed into the main sewer discharge pipe but will have a diverter valve. I plan to divert this grey water to my flower bed, rather than running it into the cesspool.