Wooden bridge to more wood part 2
This Subaru has hauled anything from motorcycles, compost & chicken coops; it’s only suiting to give it another job.
This 90° turn was a huge bitch.
Almost there.
I’m not sure what I’ll do for boards yet, probably more hemlock cuts. I can’t wait to have it ready to use!
Wooden bridge to more wood part 1
A stream prevents us from taking the motorized wheelbarrow to 90% of the land where good fire wood is. It’s a herculean task to carry it all back across the stream and I’m no Hercules. My landlord tells me that hemlocks take water pretty well and we just dropped 2 huge ones for a clearing. It’s time to make a bridge.
Using a come-along inch by inch; thankfully it was hauled by a car for half of the trip
Getting ready to cross the stream
The tipping point
We’ll want a vertical component on that sucker
Hurray! One more to go…
Hey guys…
guys…
guys listen…
I know what this fair with children running around needs…
a FIRE!
guys, a fire… in a PIT!
I’m pretty sure that’s how the conversation went.
The harvests are finally rolling in
With our late start and the crazy rain, it won’t be a great year.
A website to make the meal math easier on the parents
List of current features:
- It uses the USDA National Nutrient Database as the basis for all the foods you can search (your tax dollars at work).
- You can add your own recipes, ingredients whatever else is not in the base database. We find that we add all the foods we use even if it’s just bread because a bread with a label is always more accurate than the generic/average bread as defined in the USDA database. It’s also nice for adding your family specials once and for all and never have to do the math again.
- What you add is not shared amongst users and it only visible to you.
- It tries to learn which foods come back to help pick them later on.
- It remembers which amounts you last used
- Calculates insulin dose on the fly
- Very simple & streamlined navigation for the least work for the parents
This is still very much a work in progress but has made our meals a lot more agreeable already.
I still don't know how to measure wood amounts in cords
But I estimate this to be around a metric shit ton.
Brood, brood as far as the eye can see
7 Frames full of brood recto verso. Looks like the queen finally took it upon herself to lay some serious egg. In the course of next week I expect the colony to triple in size which will put us on par with last season.
Freedom rangers
25 of them and they all made it through the bowels of USPS. As I introduced them to their new living quarters, I dipped their beaks into the water so they knew where it was right away. They were all quite thirsty traveling all the way from Pennsylvania.
We ordered them from Freedom Ranger Hatchery (have a link), they were excellent to deal with.
Machetes have a bad rep,
but they can clear some serious bush.
This whole area was reclaimed along with the ancient logging road leading to it. This is where the chicken coop will go, rotating the fenced-in area for the chickens with the garden each season.
I wish I had a picture of what it looked like before.
The garden this year
Nothing major but pretty decent.
All fixed with a few finishing touches
All it’s missing now is a window but I’ll wait until after we moved the coop to its new location in a couple of weeks.
Bear
That sac of shit ripped open the coop like a can of tuna, -1 chick :
A day working in the rain later, it’s structurally sound again.
Reinforced the front panel & added extra locking throughout.
Painting will have to wait for more clement weather.
New place to hang out in
The chicks still fit through the fence which is a problem since they’re getting chased by the big chickens. We can’t keep them in the coop all the time so here’s their new protection/containment.
This will be used as shelter during the warm days by the meat birds.
The pecking order
We introduced the chicks to the 4 grown up chickens today. They shared the same quarters for weeks now and were able to get used to each other. Of course the big ones went immediately after the small ones to establish the pecking order.
It always breaks my heart but that’s the way it is. All I do is make sure one of them doesn’t get all the attention. Natural as it is, I’m still angry towards the big ones, especially considering they too were small before. I can’t help but grab a plastic rake and establish my pecking order if they go too hard on them. This has the double advantage of satisfying my need for justice while reinforcing my place at the very top of said order. All the chickens respect the crap out of me now and make way around me. That’s right, I’m the alpha-chicken!
Which is good because Rhode-Island reds are not shy at all which causes problems when locking them up every night among other things. It’s a healthy reminder that they are on the wrong end of the plastic rake.
No pics or video, I was too busy containing this ruckus.