This past Saturday was a big and exciting day for us. We finally bought a tractor and had it delivered! We are now the proud owners of a 1975 Ford 4000 with a front end loader. The tractor also came with a bush hog attachment.
Tag: Homesteading
Clearing Land the Hard Way
Back in January our son rented us a bulldozer to clear an area of the land. As exciting as it was to finally feel like we were making some progress we quickly realized this job was bigger than we had anticipated and we had already anticipated it to be quite difficult. After seeing just how many trees we had to clear after they were dozed over we had decided to try to get someone to come and chip it for us.
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| One of Four Large Piles of Trees |
Food, Inc Documentary
Yesterday evening Jon and I watched the Food, Inc documentary on Netflix.
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| Food, Inc. Documentary |
We were already aware of much of the horror unveiled in the film, yet still were shocked at times. This kind of thing is one of the major reasons we started growing our own food. We still have a long way to go before we are self-sufficient, but we do sleep better at night knowing that we are doing something.
View the Food, Inc Documentary Trailer
http://video.pbs.org/viralplayer/1402965302
Synopsis from PBS
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli — the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Bulldozing a Patch of the Land
Since the purchase of our land in February 2013, we have accomplished a few small tasks. However, we have mostly been in a stalled holding pattern until we could get some of the land cleared. Our first priority is to clear off a tear drop shaped patch of land that is about 2+ acres. There is already a logging road cut that goes all the way around this tear drop. Our goal is to build a permanent deer fence around the tear drop and plant our fruit tree orchard leaving a space for our future garden.
Luckily, our oldest son is a diesel mechanic for caterpillar and is able to rent equipment at a discount. We had planned on clearing this section months ago, but it fell through. Since we are depending on the employee discount we are at the mercy of when the equipment is not in use by other “real” customers. Finally, this weekend he was able to rent a D4K Caterpillar bulldozer.
He started pushing at the “tip” of the tear drop. It was about 20 degrees Saturday morning and there was still some residual snow on the ground.
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| Bulldozing the Tear Drop Starting at the Tip |
| Continue reading “Bulldozing a Patch of the Land” |
Garden Harvest Showcase
There really hasn’t been much time to do blogging lately. It seems our “real” jobs, family, church, and our garden has been keeping us busy. It is all a good busy….well except for maybe the “real” jobs. Actually, that is a good busy too. We are both fortunate to have good jobs so I really should not complain. Although, in some ways the unusual weather this year has caused us a few issues, we believe overall this year’s garden is a vast improvement from our first garden last year. Our sweet peppers are a nice size now. The crowder peas are turning purple and popping up all over the place! I love crowder peas. Our corn has several nice ears filling out. They are looking more promising than last year’s corn crop. We’ve also harvested all of the yellow onions and winter onions and they are curing.
Our First Blueberries
Last spring we planted two blueberry bushes. Although, we are quite impatient people and would love to have immediate returns we were really not anticipating having any blueberries this year. So we were ecstatic when we saw how well they were growing this year and saw them putting out blooms. Each bush was a different variety and one of them was about a week ahead of the other with blooms and the blueberries ripening. To our dismay the birds picked the first bush clean before we even knew what happened! But Jon put bird netting over the other blueberry bush along with our other berries and we were able to have our first small harvest of blueberries. We had just enough to eat fresh and some for blueberry pancakes. Two more times we have picked a small handful such as this. The rest we have been just eating fresh and throwing in smoothies with some other fruits. How blessed we are to be able to have our own fresh fruit, even if it is only in small handfuls.
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| Our First Handful of Blueberries Ever! |
Eggs!
Jon found Red nestled in the compost bin on some soft grass clippings.
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| Red Nestled In |
Update On Our Berries Growth
Our berries are well on there way and doing well.
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Blueberries, Our One Raspberry, and Blackberries Galore!
Peak at Our Garden Progress
It seems the weather in April in May has just been a bit bi-polar and our garden is not as far along as we had hoped. But we are finally having some consistent warm days and our garden is starting to improve. Here is a little bit of what’s going on in our garden.
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Contender Green Beans, Carrots, Tomato Blooms, Top-Pick Crowder Peas, Leaf Lettuce, Potatoes Plant, and Oregano
Our Cute Visitors
First, I wanted to share some cute pictures of our recent visitors. Last week Sarah looked out the back door and saw a rabbit inside our fence. We both started watching as it ran back and forth along the fence several times.
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Then we realized there was another rabbit on the outside of the fence. They were trying to figure out how to get to each other.
We then saw a third rabbit come in from the left side of the yard. It was just too fast to get a picture of it. It was as if it was trying to lead the one trapped inside our yard to the escape route in our picket fence. Two sides of our fence are chain link and two sides are a white wooden picket fence. Sarah was amazed that the rabbits were able to get in the back yard through the fence. She admitted she now understood the need for a garden fence. Finally, the trapped rabbit found its way out and our entertaining visitors were gone. What kind of protection do you have around your garden?