New Year - Renewed Resolve

Well, it's 2013, and I was really, really, really bad about writing blog posts in 2012.  I mean, really bad.  But, with the new year stretching out before me, I've decided to give it another go.

While my writing was lacking in 2012, progress around the homestead was... less lacking, though maybe far from stellar.  Here's a summary of the improvements we made.

• We reclaimed a couple of acres of overgrown scrub brush that was about waist high before.  I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do with it, of course, but it's much prettier to look at, now, which has value in and of itself from the serenity perspective.
• We cleared out the land down by the lake shore.  We own about 30 feet or so of lakefront, but before it was as overgrown as the rest of the property.  Now it is neatly trimmed, though I still need to do some work with a limb saw.  The neighbors are happy though... they now have some clear space to launch their canoes.  The anti-social curmudgeon in me wants to shout, "Get off my lawn!" every time I see them, but they did ask first, and they're very nice people, so I try to stomp him down.
• We rebuilt the chicken coop.  This turned into a major project, since we decided our portable coop wasn't big enough (it was).  The coop went up in a weekend, but we built an enclosed pen as well.  Unfortunately, we forgot to close the coop one night, and lost a chicken to something.  Maybe a fox, maybe a cat.  So, we had to roof the pen.  That was a painful experience.  Since then, the chickens have done fine, though, even on those occasions when we forget to shut the coop.
• We fixed up our two "play" rooms downstairs.  One is home to our shiny new pool table, and the other we've set up to be a home theater.  New carpet, new paint, new furniture, and the once shoddy looking basement now looks great.  Still some work to do to finish things up (the lighting for one, is terrible) but serious ground has been taken.
• Replaced our water main.  This wasn't something we wanted to do, but the pipe broke and we didn't have a choice.  Fortunately, I was able to do some of the work myself, which saved us some money.  Still had to pay the plumber a small fortune, but what can you do?  
• In happier news, we made great progress on our Dojo/Home Gym.  That isn't really part of the whole "getting back to the land" thing, but martial arts is one of our primary forms of stress relief.  We've got our treadmill and mats installed, and should have our heavy bag in position in the next few days.  We've also got a power cage and a decent array of weights.  Still a lot of work to do around flooring and framing, but it's coming together.
• We finally pulled the trigger on a truck.  This was more out of necessity than anything else.  We hit the point where all the projects that we could do with my car were done, and we needed something with more hauling power.  The plan is to pay it off as soon as possible, and hopefully we'll stay on plan.

So what's coming in 2013?

During the winter, we'll be focusing on improving the dojo.  We hope to have flooring in by February.  The framing and drywalling will take a little more time, but with the truck, we can at least get materials home. 

Two other winter projects that we may or may not get to are setting up the garage as a workshop and swapping out the lighting downstairs.  I can do the second without doing the first, and it is easier (though scarier) so I'll probably start there.

Come spring, we'll be trying the Great Garden Experiment.  We're still experimenting with our soil, and this time we're going to get scientific with it and grow the same things in three different kinds of soil to see what we get the best production from.  We'll probably start from plants rather than from seed this go round, since our experience with seedlings was not great.

The chicken pen is going to get a sand and gravel treatment.  It's amazing how fast five chickens can strip the ground, and we've had so much rain that their pen is a mud pit.  All frozen right now, but as soon as things dry, we'll be putting down a thick layer of sand and gravel.

And speaking of gravel, we've got to re-gravel the driveway and some other areas around the house.  I'm not looking forward to this.  The lazy in me says to rent a Bobcat and call it good, but that pretty much doubles the cost of the project.  We had a lot of surprise expenses last year (I'm looking at you water pipe, and you too heating unit) so I'm trying to keep things cheap.  I'll probably end up putting in the sweat instead of shelling out the extra cash.

Whew... there's more... a lot more... that we hope to accomplish in 2013, but I think that's a good start for now.  I'm getting tired just looking at it! :)

Of course there is one last project, and that's to keep this blog going.  I'm going to try and do at least 2 posts a month.  First January post... complete.  G'night!

Big Chill in the Garden of Good and Evil

Note: Pictures to follow... wanted to get this written while I was thinking about it, since I'm behind on my posting.

Mixed movie references aside, it's been an interesting couple of weeks trying to get the garden going.  We're using a technique called "Square Foot Gardening" which is basically tightly packed containers.  We've spent several weeks building our containers and had such a mild March that we decided to go ahead and transplant our seedlings, as well as plant some store-bought plants.

To do this, we had to get our final (for this season anyway) garden box built.  In a whirlwind weekend, we built the garden box, planted the plants, transplanted the seedlings, and then sat back and admired our handy work.  Shortly after, we learned that mother nature hates us.

Little did we know, the danger of killing frost was not quite so gone as we were hoping.  We finished up our work on Sunday, and then learned that we were supposed to get a hard freeze on Sunday night... and Monday night... and Tuesday night... AND Wednesday night.  Sigh.

So, off to the interwebz we did run, to figure out what we could do about it.  In the end, we decided to try to cover the boxes with canvas, and then plastic outside of the canvas.  The one box that had plants to big to do this, we decided to cover with a heavy tarp, and cover the seedlings within with styrofoam cups.

We did this Sunday, and have been doing the cover-uncover shuffle ever since.  Our seedlings just may survive (remember, they had the added protection of insulating styrofoam) but the larger plants look like they're done for.  We're hoping they'll make a miraculous recovery, but the odds don't look good.

Oh well... at least by planting ridiculously early, we left ourselves plenty of time to re-plant.  :)  Everything I've read says getting good at gardening is as much about time as anything else, so we're just going to chalk this one up to a learning experience.  Hopefully, we'll still get plenty of fresh produce from containers, but I guess time will tell.

Lawn Mower Woes

Last weekend, my riding mower (which has seen only a single season worth of work) snapped the main mower drive belt.  I'm not terribly handy with mechanical things, but I figured it couldn't be too hard to swap out a belt.  The first thing I learned, is there are roughly elenty-million-billion different types of belts out there.  After exhaustive research, multiple consultations with the manual for my mower, and a fair amount of cursing, I finally zeroed in on the right belt, ordered it, and waited blissfully for it to be sent to me.  It arrived last Tuesday, in excellent time.

It was the wrong size.

120" <> 141".  141">120".  Rage = True.

I'll admit, I was mildly annoyed with myself.  There may have been a few choice words that I may have regretted and had to console myself against later in the day... when I did more exhaustive research.  This time, I did it the old-fashioned way... with a tape measure. Why didn't I do that before?  Well, I thought Google was my friend.  We have since broken up.

Eat your heart out, Google.

So, I found, ordered, and today received my shiny new mower belt.  Installing it wasn't terrible.  Sure there were skinned knuckles, a few bruises, a couple of hugs... you know, the normal stuff.  But when all was said and done, we got the belt back on the mower deck, and the mower deck back on the tractor. Unfortunately, our story does not end there.

My mower (at least the same model)... this one might actually work.

Well, all proud and happy, I hopped on the mower and tried to start it up.  Try is the operative word here.  The engine would not turn over, and the mower would not start.  Nothing runs like a deere.  That's been hit by a car.  And crawled into my barn to die.  (True story - for another time).

I don't trust my mechanics skills enough to try and troubleshoot the problem, so time to get on the phone and call someone.  Trying to save some money on this repair may have ended up costing me a lot more money (and did end up costing me a lot more time).  In the meantime, the grass continues to grow.

Who knows what treasures await beneath this verdant sea?

I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but odds are the next time something breaks, I'll try and fix it until it's even more broken.  I could say it's all part of the learning experience of trying to "go back to the land" and do more for ourselves, but in this case, I think it's more hard-coded into the male DNA.  I think I'll go drown my mower woes in some Diet Dr Pepper.

A "Small-Projects" Weekend

It was a long (and at the same time, ridiculously short) weekend here at Kali-Fu farms.  We were hoping to have at least one day of relaxing this weekend, but as seems to be happening every weekend these days, we got caught up in multiple projects.  No rest for the wicked, I suppose.  They were all little things this time, but as always, the little things added up.

The Weekend Project Board

Okay, we didn't really plan to get all that done this weekend... the chicken pen we decided to move to a later weekend.  The rest, however, was the plan.  Did I mention we thought it was going to be a relaxing weekend?  

We started with a rain barrel.  We decided to install one to help watering the garden... plants prefer warm water (or so we're told) and the water out of the hose is ice cold.  With the stairs and distance to any faucet that has warm water (and the cost of watering with heated water) we opted to try rain collection.  Once again, I've done the math, and it will actually take a LONG time for the cost of the water saved to offset the cost of the rain barrel and various materials, but I suppose conservation is a good thing regardless of the cost.

More fun than a barrel of rain.  Well, maybe exactly that much fun.

I was surprised at how quickly the barrel filled up - it's 75 gallons, and it was full after the first rainstorm we had (about four hours of fairly steady rain).  We haven't tried the pressure with a hose yet, but so far, it's great for filling up watering cans.

Which brought us to Project 2 for the weekend: the second garden box.  We're using a technique called "Square Foot Gardening"... I won't go into details here, but the main premise is that you don't need 30 foot beds to get good production.  Instead, you use containers four feet by four feet.  We've got one in progress already (with various root vegetables and lettuces) but we need to get another ready for April planting.  That was the goal for this weekend.

The frame under construction and the initial placement

The boxes themselves aren't too bad to build, but installation is a pain.  We want them to be at least quasi-permanent (we may replace them with brick later) so we're installing them on concrete deck footers.  To make everything square and level, we've sunk them into the earth and graveled the holes.  Lots of digging and heavy lifting... 

We are Garden Bots.  All your base are belong to us!

The end result... a pair of garden boxes.  The one on the left is for shorter plants and fully completed and wrapped in bird netting.  The one on the right has dual lattice action for the beans and peas we'll be planting in April.  We'll be building (and digging - yuck) yet a third box sometime between now and May when we'll plant more vegetable-y goodies.

That would have made our weekend full enough, but we noticed that the orchard we planted back in autumn had become a favorite feeding ground for the deer in the area.  Argh!!  So, no choice but to take care of that problem before we had nothing but bare branches and stumps.  We opted for posts and bird netting instead of caging with hardware cloth (bad experience in the "orchard" from previous homeowner).

Zip ties and netting... always a recipe for fun? 

If you've never worked with bird netting, it's a pain, especially in the wind.  In the wrong light, it's also pretty much invisible.  And those metal stakes aren't too heavy by themselves, but carrying several of them for long distances added up to some more pain.  It was worth it in the end, though:

An orchard safe (I hope!) from deer.

After all of that, we probably should have quit while we were ahead... but I decided if I didn't tackle the grass, by the time I had another chance, I might not be able to see over it to steer.  Unfortunately, in addition to being tall, the grass was also wet, and I wasn't paying attention to the buildup around the top of the mower deck (bad me!).  Friction, clogging, whatever the cause, the result was a broken mower deck belt.

That left us with a half-mowed yard and a half-functioning lawn mower.  The local Tractor Supply didn't carry the right belt, so I had to turn to the inter-webs and now we're at the mercy of shipping times.  Oh well... at least it's an excuse not to mow.  :-)

So, all in all, an exhausting, but productive weekend.  I have a feeling Spring is going to be full of those... but we're still having fun, despite the blood (literal) and sweat (in buckets).  No tears yet, so I'm calling this weekend a win.

Until next time...

Chicken Coopery and Other Goings-On

Well, we have our chickens, and we've been working on a coop for a while now.  We're happy to announce we have finally finished!  So now, the photos!

We started with this.

This may be an actual shot of my garage.

Okay, not really, but I didn't take a true "before" shot and it sure as hell felt like this many materials by the third Lowes trip.

And this is what our original design called for:

The original design.

Unfortunately, our plans lacked key pieces of information, like the angles and measurements.  I suppose I could have done the math, but I haven't done trig in a long time, so we changed plans.  Well, it would be more accurate to say we just winged it.

 

A hen house in progress, complete with nesting boxes.

Our six chicks are getting four nesting boxes, which should be more than adequate for their laying needs.  Our original plan was to make it so we could slide out the dividers between the boxes.

A lid for the nest boxes and a perch for the sleeping.

Unfortunately, our best laid plans went awry when we realized we wanted a top on the nesting boxes, to make the chickens feel all nice and cozy (and increase egg production - I hope... I mean, that's logical, right?).

Next step was adding some doors for the nest boxes, so we can actually get at the eggs.

Nest box doors.

And then doing the rough finish of the back of the tractor.  Beneath the hen house, you can see the part of the area where the chicks can scratch and forage.  At this point, we were starting to get a little worried about the weight.  This thing's supposed to be portable, after all.  But we figured we'd just soldier on and when the time came, lift with our legs.

Back of the bus.

After finishing out the rest of the structure, we started painting.  I call it painting in three parts: one part for the coop, one for the garage floor, and one for my pants.  We went with a classic barnyard red, which looks great on the coop.  Of course, the residue on my garage floor and jeans has given both that serial killer ambiance that's just so hard to come by.  Henceforth, I will be referring to this color as "Dexter Red."

Dexter Red and some of the chicken wire in place.

That left us with two things to go - securing the coop from predators (i.e. stapling on an insane amount of chicken wire and hardware cloth) and roofing the whole contraption.  I think the weight of the staples we used exceeded that of the chicken wire.

 Top and side views.  You can also see the door up front.

At this point, we were beyond exhausted, but we wanted to get this %$#%% thing done, so we decided to power through and roof it.

Plywood and plastic... can't beat it.

And that, as they say, is that.  One chicken coop completed.  The little... ladies... can't even make use of it for several weeks yet, but I'm still glad to get it off our plate.

I was going to post about our garden stuff as well, but this has gotten long, so I'll end it hear.  Next time, I'll share some of the photos of our square foot garden and how we're trying to bird-and-deer proof it.

Spring Chickens!

Kali-Fu Farms is now home to a half-dozen little hens.  We're hoping that in a few months, these little ladies will start providing us with abundant egg production.  And, you have to admit, they're kinda cute.

A six pack of chicks

I've done the math (hey, I crunch numbers for a living) and we'll need to collect roughly eleventy-million eggs for the cost of the chicks, feeder, water-er, food, bedding, coop materials, etc... to actually make owning these little ladies cost effective.

Surprise!  You are not cost effective!

By my math, it's going to take about 5,000 "normal" (i.e. not organic, cage-free, farm-fresh, but the mass-produced kind) eggs to offset all of our start-up costs.  If we get 3 eggs a day on average, that's about 4.5 years worth of eggs.  Of course, I don't think these gals are going to lay for that long.  But that's not really what it's about.

So, what is it about, for us?  It's part self-sufficiency.  Granted, a few eggs a day is a long way from being self-sufficient, but it's a start.  If we keep doing little things, they're bound to add up, eventually.  It's part about having a little more control about what we eat - we've never been too concerned about it in the past, but we're trying to make better decisions with respect to what we're eating these days.  And, when you get right down to it, it's part entertainment.

Required reading for all our animals.

And, most of all, so far the chicks are fun.  Fun to watch and fun to raise.  When they're full-grown hens, they'll be productive and, from everything I've read, they'll only become more entertaining.  They've been a ton of work, too, of course (building the coop - pictures in a later post - and getting everything else together), but it's been fun, satisfying work.  There is definitely something to be said about the fulfillment that comes from working your land and raising (even very small amounts) of livestock.

Playing with our food.

That's where I'll leave it for now.  Much more to come on all of our chicken-y goodness.

The First Post

Welcome to Kali-Fu Farms!

If you read the "About Us" section, you know who we are and have at least a little idea of why we're trying to embark on this whole homesteading thing.  So, here's the first post on trying to catalog what we're after.  So, where to start?  How about with our blog name...

So, why Kali-Fu?  Well, in addition to being amateur homesteaders, we're also practitioners of kali (a Filipino martial art) and Wing Tsun Kung Fu (a Chinese martial art).  We started both a couple of years ago because learning a martial art was something we both had always wanted to try.  It's become a big enough part of our lives that we wanted to make sure the homestead (when we finally bought it) had room enough for a modest dojo / home gym as well.

The Dojo (a work in progress)

Which seems like a good-enough segue into talking about the other things we were looking for in a property.  In addition to the dojo, we knew we wanted a barn... the property had a fairly nice four stall barn.  It needs a little work (and I'm not a fan of the ivy... it's out of control) but with a little work, it will serve our needs admirably.

A view of the barn (the ivy is coming down!)

We went back and forth on how much land we'd need... it was a balance of enough space to do what we want against how much land we could realistically take care of, given that we both have jobs.  And, of course, money was a big factor.  Ultimately, we decided on five acres, and were luck enough to find something that is (technically anyway), lakefront property.  The lake is a goodly distance away, and we only have a narrow slice on our property, but it's full of fish and, we hope, will provide a great source of relaxation and entertainment.

A look down towards the lake

The property also had an orchard on it, but after some research, we quickly found that it was sited in a terrible spot.  Unfortunately, we're going to have to pull it out and start over.

Original homeowner's attempt at an orchard

We also have a creek (of sorts).  Most of the time it's more of an inlet in the lake, but during storm times, it flows freely enough.  So freely, in fact, that it often overflows the banks and swamps the orchard (thus the need for re-siting).

The creek...

That's probably enough for now.  Next post will probably be about the projects we want to do (inside and out).  We have a lot of work ahead of us, but hopefully this blog will help keep us on track and provide a way to track our progress.