Homesteading on the Road

Such a busy time we've been having.  What with weddings and visitors from overseas and other family crisis, we haven't been on the homestead too much this past month.  But that doesn't mean our whole lifestyle goes out the window.  In fact, our frugal practices only help when it comes to traveling.  Our homeschool curriculum fits nicely in one bag.  Supplies and extras are in a "carschool" bag.  A cooler and a snack bag carry our food.  Clothes and such for Mrs. D and Li'l Homesteader fit into one shared suitcase.  A few business essentials, soaps and some packaging, fit in another bag.  Everything fits into the jeep with room to spare.  All can get packed up and ready to go within an hour. 

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Heating With Wood

How nice it is to turn a knob and be warm.  How expensive!  How grateful we are to have finally installed a woodstove at the homestead.  Our first several years here were all about keeping the thermostat low and bundling up.  Admittedly, heating with wood can be alot of work, especially when you cut your own firewood.  But there is nothing else that takes the chill off like a toasty fire in the stove or fireplace.  An added bonus is that the teapot placed on top of the hot stove will stay warm.

Wood heating is most practical if you have a wood lot, live near the forest, or have another nearby source of wood.  We live near the forest, so heating season starts in April or May as soon as wood permits go on sale.  We make a trip to the Ranger Station and buy our permit, which runs about $5 a cord.  A cord is a neatly stacked pile of wood measuring 4x4x8 feet.  We then tune up and sharpen the chain saw, gas up the truck and head out to the woods.  There are limitations here as to what we can cut, we usually just go for trees that are dead and down.  We get alot of cedar and juniper this way and enough pine to get it started burning.  Cedar and juniper are good, hard firewood choices as they tend to burn hot and for a long time compared to pine, which is very soft and burns fast, which is good for starting the fire. 

We go woodcutting throughout the spring, summer and fall.  It's a great excuse for a day in the forest and keeps us in shape.  There is nothing like watching a young boy let loose his natural wildness and imagination in the woods.  While mom loads the truck, her indian scout prowls the perimeter, keeping away dragons, tigers and bears.   Some trees provide a lookout to watch for enemy soldiers.  Others bridge raging rivers, while small, close stands of trees offer a hideout from bad guys.  While we usually try to go wood gathering on the days the teddy bears have their picnic, we have yet to catch them at it.  We keep trying, I think maybe they'll invite us to join them when we do.

When winter comes we cover as much of the wood as we can to keep it dry and ready to burn.  We bring several days' supply into the house and stack it by the stove with plenty of dry kindling and newspaper.  We make sure the chimney's clean.  Then begins the routine of starting the evening fire, banking it before bed, scooping out ashes and stirring up the coals in the morning and adding more kindling and logs to warm the house.  Sometimes it seems like alot of work, but when we're snuggled up in front of the fire with a good book and a hot drink, it's all worth it. 

Thanks,

Mrs. D

Copyright (c) 2010 by Robyn Dolan

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Water, Water, Everywhere

Water is an obsession here at the Homestead.  We have to haul every drop of it in.  Or do we?  Over the summer, as Mrs. D carefully tended her feeble garden, she spent alot of time hauling water.  Sometimes two loads a day.  And that's with a 425 gallon hauling tank.  It got pretty tedious, and so we decided to earnestly attempt those projects which would make life more productive around here.  Two solutions come immediately to mind - gray water use, and rain/snow collection. 

Being as the precipitation is not overwhelming here, we start with the gray water.  Finances are not unlimited on the Homestead, so Mrs. D sometimes has to do things piecemeal.  For starters, we are saving bathwater and rinsewater from the dishes for toilet flushing.  Not only does this effectively reuse fairly clean water, but a gallon pitcher of water poured directly into the bowl flushes just as effectively as 3 gallons from the tank.  Extra bathwater and dishwater is currently bucketed to the winter garden.  The first real project is to harness that laundry gray water.  At 30 gallons a wash, approximately one wash a day, that's over 200 gallons of water a week, and a summer garden can really soak that up!  Measurements were taken, and fittings purchased at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  Now it's time to get out the saw and glue and divert that water to the garden.  Mrs. D's laundry drain is fairly accessible, so this seems to be the easiest and most effective place to start.  The next project will be to do the same for the showers.  That will leave the rinsewater from the dishes for toilet flushing.

Our final project will be rainwater and snowmelt collection.  Currently the gutters are propped up on 30 gallon garbage cans.  Unfortunately, this does not offer full advantage for the potential we could collect from each storm.  Once the gutters are installed properly, we should be able to nearly fill our 250 gallon storage cube with every storm.  With the acquisition of more cubes, water hauling should decrease drastically.  Two of the water troughs for the animals are already positioned under the eaves of the barn.  More gutters are being collected for the barn.

Right now the Homestead is only using 2-3 loads of water a week.  This is a blessed break from the 6-10 loads during the summer.  With a few dollars here and a few minutes there, some rain and snow, we hope to make our water system more sustainable by summer 2010.  AND THAT"S JUST TURNIN" US GREEN WITH JOY!! 

Thanks,

Mrs. D

Copyright (c) 2009 by Robyn Dolan

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Feeding the Hungry

Now, anyone with common sense would move to a place where green stuff actually grows right out of the ground, if they were planning on raising a whole bunch of ruminants.  Mrs. D's first consideration, however, was to find affordable land.  Any affordable land.  It just happened to be here in Northern Arizona.  We do have some wild grasses that grow, slowly and sparingly, but certainly not enough to support much livestock.  So we import hay.  Lots of hay.  Sometimes we go through so much hay that it really becomes necessary to shop around.  For example, locally sold hay runs about $13-$14 per approximately 100 pound bale.  Hay from Missouri is about $5 a bale.  Shipping on a months worth of hay from Missouri runs about $2,000.  Going to pick it up myself would run about $1,000 just in gas (3/4 ton pickup hauling 3 tons of hay on a trailer).  We are really in a quandary here.

This is just one example.  The point is that it all evens out to being just as well to buy the hay locally.  So we improvise to try to supplement the hay until there's a little bit of grass growing again.  The goats, sheep and cows love to eat any surplus veggies or fruits we might have.  We occasionally come into several cases of cabbage or potatoes or the like, which are a great treat to them.  The rabbits and chickens enjoy them, too.  Any surplus from large canning projects gets distributed amongst them as well.  We suspect the oils in lemon and grapefruit skins may help them stay healthier, in the bargain.  Onions and garlic are always a good supplement for animal health and variety in the feeding program.  If there's a bumper crop of eggs, all the animals' coats benefit. 

An new experiment we're trying this year is to seed between patches of grass and start a rotational grazing system.  This, of course, is old hat to the experienced farmers out there.  Our particular challenges here on the homestead are:  getting the seed to sprout and establish itself, getting water to the grass, keeping it growing, even as enourmous creatures such as horses and cows are wandering amidst it.  The first problem, getting the seed to sprout and establish itself, is under experimentation.  We are raking seed into the soft ground during milder weather and covering it with plywood, plastic, metal, or whatever other cover we can come up with, to keep the birdies out and kind of insulate it from freezes (and from the sun, come summer).  Hopefully this will help it establish good roots, too, by keeping the large animals from ripping them out as they walk across. 

Problem two, getting water to the grass, we kind of worked out last summer.  We are blessed with lots of moisture this winter, but come the dry season, we will haul an extra load of water and put it on the grassy areas in rotation, so as much of it as possible gets plenty of water.  The theory being the extra $4 of water should save much more than that in hay. 

The last challenge, keeping it growing, is ongoing.  The sheep and goats have a low impact on the land.  Allowing them to free range over our ten acres keeps them healthy and well fed, saving on the need to buy so much hay for them.  Last summer, we started letting the horses out to graze in rotation, and also letting the cows graze daily.  This had the effect of grazing out our ten acres in less than a month.  Yet, the horses and cows eat the most hay, and a great savings would be realized by raising more grass for them to graze on.  The horse and cow plan for this year is still not fully formed, but several options are being considered.  The large round pen was broken down and made into two small portable pens that can be more easily moved around the property.  We are considering fencing several more paddocks, or possibly running a solar powered electric wire to create another moveable paddock.  The idea being to allow several paddocks to rest and replenish themselves while other areas are grazed.  It has also been recommended to have the goats graze, then the cows, then the horses, as they tend to choose different forages.  We'll keep you up to date on our successes and failures in this area, for now it's back to work! 

Thanks,

Mrs. D

Copyright (c) 2009 by Robyn Dolan

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Fence maintenance and repair is now an ongoing project, and every scrap of rebar, field fence, chicken wire, barbed and barbless wire, wire coat hangers and baling twine is put to use.  T-posts are like gold.  Several wooden posts had to be reset, and unless there had been a recent rain, Mrs. D had to pour several buckets of water onto the hard clay ground to soften it up enough to dig new holes.  The services of a professional were bartered for the partial cost of one of Maryruth's cows, in order to set the gateposts and hang the gates.  Frequently, in sinking a t-post, we would hit rock and have to reposition the post to get it into the ground.