Moving into summer - the garden's bounty

The busy of the growing season continues here on the farm.

The headline event for this week was our wonderful neighbor, Kyle Rohr, bringing his tractor and brushhog out to mow the farm.  Normally we would bale the hay, but his baler wasn't working and we didn't want to mess with finding someone else, so he agreed to just mow it instead.  The farm looks so much nicer with all the growth knocked back AND we can confirm to the county that we are continuing to follow our plan to prevent the lespedeza from multiplying. 


The garden has started to really produce now.  We dug all our potatoes this week - yukon gold, red pontiac and white nordland (I think) - and came away with about 100# of spuds.  It isn't our best harvest, but it also isn't our worst.  We only planted 3 beds this year (we've been planting 6) so not a bad showing all in all.  We're also harvesting blackberries, currants, goji berries and our first ripe peaches!  The peach tree we planted way back in 2012 is completely loaded with fruit this year.  It is also infested with moth larvae.  Its so disappointing to see such beautiful peaches and know that almost all of them have worms in them.  Then, tonight, I also saw June Bugs munching away in big clusters on the ripe fruit.  Sigh.  I did some research on the moths and I think next year I'll put up some sticky pheromone traps to see if I can limit their damage.  I'm also picking up all the dropped and caterpillar infested fruit to feed to the chickens.  If I can't enjoy the peaches, at least I can enjoy the eggs!  I've read about a molasses trap for june bugs but haven't tried it yet.  Maybe I'll give that a whirl this week.  Learning how to manage not just an organic orchard, but a no spray orchard is a priority for the next couple of years.

First squash, blackberries and a peach!

bed #1 potato harvest air curing

The same neighbor who mowed for us has a couple of piles of cow manure that we're steadily moving into the lower garden.  We picked up 2 trucks full yesterday and got one of those unloaded.  There were SOOOOOO MANY GRUBS!  I swear that every shovel had 2 or 3 grubs in it.  We collected all the ones we found as we unloaded and dumped them in with the chickens.  They were in heaven!  And, yes, between fruit, scraps and grubs our chickens are totally spoiled. 

scoop of manure being dumped into the truck

Chickens going to town on a pile of grubs

A host of other farm stuff got done this week too.  Beds were weeded and mulched, we got 2 loads of cardboard to continue doing sheet mulch in the garden aisles and we harvested SO MUCH SQUASH!  I picked a 5 gallon bucket full on Friday evening and we still had squash left from the last time I picked.  Everything we eat must have squash in it so that we can keep up.  Normally, we would be coming into ripe tomato season too and most of this squash bounty would find its way into vegetable soup that we enjoy all year long.  Our tomatoes are way behind though, so we just have the squash. 

 It was also time for our regular battery maintenance on Saturday morning.  We have to monitor the water levels in all the battery cells to keep them running at their best.  In the summer time we're finding that we need to monitor them every 2 or 3 weeks.  In the winter, it is less often.  We pull each of the white caps off and top off the 3 battery cells underneath with distilled water, then replace the cap and go on to the next cell.  The whole thing takes about 10 minutes.  This time, while we were working, a tiny toad hopped into the ratchet set!  He was too cute not to take a picture.

 Jacob topping off batteries

 A froggy friend visiting our work 

The most amazing thing for this week was that I got to spend all day Saturday on the farm.  There were no errands or functions or anything else to take me away.  It was a solid day of working in the garden, spending time with Jeremy and focusing on doing the work I love to do.  I need more of these days.  It is good for my soul and body to do real work that I can see, to connect with this piece of the earth and to connect with my family. 

Real rooms and lights!

At the end of the last post, we were starting the flooring in the bedrooms.  Since then, we have finished the flooring and trim and gotten the lights and outlets all done for all 3 bedrooms.  Woot!  We are all in our own rooms for the first time in 4 years with actual furniture (not plastic bins and suitcases).  Wow.  So, back to where we left off....

While Scott and I worked on flooring upstairs, Jeremy cut our leftover car siding into trim for the upstairs.  This way it matches the ceilings and the beams and we don't have to buy more stuff.

Stack of trim waiting to be installed

Once the trim was made, he moved on to finishing out the windows.  We used cedar boards milled from trees we cut off of my mother's family farm (where she was born) to finish out the deep window wells and do the window built in shelves in our room.  They are absolutely beautiful thanks to Jeremy's amazing attention to detail.  There is something really special about being able to tell my kids that when their grandmother was a little girl, she probably played around the trees that are now in their windows.  You can read the story of us cutting those trees 5 years ago here:  http://thelehrmans.blogspot.com/2012/11/logging-again.html

Sealing the boards after they were cut to fit.

The first finished window!

 

Cedar under our window waiting for the built in

 



 



While Jeremy was busy with that, Scott and I hung the ceiling fans in the bedrooms, finished out the rest of the upstairs electrical and hung the doors.   Doing the trim was somewhat tricky in that our beams are not square thanks to the trees growing on the side of a mountain.  That meant that the trim around every beam and collar tie had to be custom cut which was a very fiddly, tedious process.  The end result is beautiful though!

Doors hung

Finicky trim

They were predicting a very cold couple of nights and we really wanted to get the kids into their rooms and out of the RV before that happened, so we were all in on getting the rooms done.  We just made it!  The kids got to sleep in their own rooms for the first time on the first near freezing night of this fall.  Whew!  Then we started moving the rest of their furniture in and put the finishing touches on Jeremy and I's room. 

Jacob on moving day

 

Our room with actual furniture!

With everyone in a more stable sleeping place, it was time to get the power on to the house.  We had been running our refrigerator and a single lamp off of an extension cord from the outlet in the shed since August.  Now that we had all the circuits upstairs and in the bathroom tied off and ready, we started the process to cut power over to the main house panel.  First, we dug a trench and laid the heavy gauge wire in it inside of electrical conduit.

Trench with conduit starting

Then we killed the power to the power system in the shed - inverter, batteries, everything - to make sure no one got hurt.  Then my amazing brother took care of connecting the wires to the appropriate ports on the inverter and in the house while the rest of us buried the conduit. 

Covered trench and Scott working on the cables in the shed.

Then it was time to flip the switch!  As you can see in the sneak preview above, it worked!  There was much rejoicing that we didn't have to keep wearing head lamps around the house to see.  It was a pretty awesome feeling to get to pull the extension cord out of the house for good!

No more extension cord!!!!

 

Let there be light!

Due to the impending cold weather, getting the place for the wood stove ready to go became the next top priority.  The first step was to finish out the electrical by the front door since we needed to close up that wall.  That involved installing the outside light and outlet.  Scott and I knocked that out in about 2 hours last Wednesday.

Outlet and door light

Inside view of the wood stove corner

Now we are focusing on getting the corner ready for the wood stove.  It is going on a platform which Jeremy is busy building.  One step at a time, we're getting there.  It is starting to feel a lot more like home now though. 

Prepping for Winter

Sorry for the long silence on the blog.  We have been busy both with the farm and the rest of our lives.  Here are some quick updates on what is happening:

- We decided to get an apartment for the winter rather than stay in the RV.
- We moved for the second time in 6 months...
- We built and installed an in-ground battery box for our batteries.  This should enable them to perform at a higher efficiency due to having a more stable temperature.  It also frees up a lot of floor space in the shed!

Coming up, we will be repairing and re-affixing the plastic over the hoop house, completing the re-hook up of the inverter/solar array now that the batteries are moved and winterizing the RV.  After those are complete, we will return to working on the joinery for the cabin. 

The blog may be quiet, but we're still going!

Updates

It has been a while since we posted anything, so there's a lot to catch up!  First of all, the foundation for the cabin is finished!  The contractor did an excellent job on it and he's moving on to the septic and water line now. 

Slab with gravel, plumbing and vapor barrier

Crew leveling the concrete

Finished slab

Catherine enjoying her new skating rink (for now)

The timber framing has had a setback, however.  The timbers we have didn't cure 100% true.  We are going to have to individually scribe the joints which will take a bit longer to do.  That process is ongoing and we hope to be back to doing actual joinery soon.  It does mean that we will not be ready to raise the frame before next spring though.  :-(

The weather has been getting steadily colder (not surprising - it is October now) and we've noticed.  This past summer a family of wasps built nests in the heater, so we haven't been able to turn it on yet.  That has led to some additional clothing being worn around the house...

Catherine ready for bed

Jacob bundled and protesting.

The first frost has also brought our attention around to the projects that really need to be taken care of before real winter sets in.  The immediate rush is to preserve the last of the summer garden produce.  We didn't have much variety this year, but we do have a tremendous amount of peppers!  We already made a round of home made tabasco sauce that turned out really well.  Now we're moving on to dried peppers which brings us to the next bit of exciting news...

We now own a solar oven!  It's been on our list for quite some time and we finally did it.  We have so far cooked some delicious chicken stew in it and baked some rolls.  We're going to try using it to dehydrate our peppers for crushed pepper flakes next.  It works like a champ and is super easy to use.  We're looking forward to lots more carbon free and delicious meals!  

On the gardening front, we planted about 150 cloves of garlic and 25 clumps of potato onions last weekend.  The garlic was mostly Music, but we also planted Ukrainian and Silverskin garlic this year.  We planted yellow, white and red potato onions.  They are supposed to be a much longer keeping onion and they are perennial.  The single bulbs we plan this fall should turn into clumps of 10 or so 2-3" bulbs for next year.  They aren't as big and pretty as a single bulb grown from seed or sets, but they aren't as much work either.  It's another thing we've been wanting to try so we decided this was the year to do it.

I think that mostly catches you up with where we are.  This is the sunset from the top of our hill.  Enjoy and stay warm!

Let there be light!

Ok, so I'm a few days late in getting this moment of celebration posted here, but we now have a fully functioning solar power system!  It went live on Monday and has been functioning beautifully since.  We have now regained use of an actual refrigerator and freezer and we can use normal outlets again.  We discovered that our battery bank is undersized for our solar panels, so we are losing a fair chunk of their production each day once the batteries are full.  At some point in the future, we will likely upgrade the batteries to higher amp hour ones to correct that, but for the moment we're doing fine.

A working light in the RV

We also met with the contractor, John Schmidt, who will be doing our driveway, water line, septic system and the foundation for the cabin.  He dropped off this beauty yesterday and we should start seeing some things changing at the farm over the next week or so.  Exciting times are here!

The big equipment has arrived

Salsa and wiring weekend

You know, sometimes you have a weekend where it feels like it was a week long.  This was one of those because of all that we did with the time.  It started on Friday afternoon when we hung the inverter up in the shed.  We were then invited to an impromptu gathering of friends on another farm near us that was tons of fun.

Inverter hung up in the shed and ready to wire

Then on Saturday we started the day cleaning up the garden a bit.  It has gotten completely overrun by weeds.  When you look at it from a distance, it looks very green, lush and jungle like but up close you see that almost none of it is actual food.  The kids and I spent about 3 hours working on it and managed to weed and mulch 4 beds and mow all the aisles.  It made a tremendous difference in the overall look of the place.

The jungle before we started

The (slightly tamed) jungle when we finished

2 beds that we actually finished

In the afternoon, our friends Doug and Bayliss came over for a while.  Doug helped us mount the breaker box and wire our first 2 circuits which was a huge help since we had never done any wiring before. 

You can see the yellow wires on the right going to 2 new plugs

On Sunday, Jacob and I made a quick run to town for groceries and additional school supplies while Jeremy and Catherine wired the batteries together.  A delicious Mediterranean style lunch followed and then a well deserved family nap time.  Ahhhh, Sunday afternoon…

Of course, this is us that we’re talking about so we didn’t take the rest of the day off or anything.  :D  After we got up and around, Catherine and I picked about 15 quarts of tomatoes, a dozen green peppers, a dozen jalapenos and a bunch of onions and potatoes from the garden.  It’s time to make salsa!  This round of salsa making was quite the adventure.  We started out using the camp stove to peel the tomatoes.  It worked great and we had a little over 2 gallons of tomatoes peeled and ready to puree.  Catherine was my helper putting the tomatoes in the boiling water and then fishing them into the bowl of cooler water while I peeled as fast as I could.

Fresh tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, onions and potatoes from the garden

Catherine and I peeling 9 quarts of tomatoes

Then we started up the generator and tried out our new food processor.  It works like a champ but the container is a little finicky to get on and off the base.  Not a big deal – we’ll figure out the trick.  Anyway, into the food processor went the green peppers, onions and jalapenos along with all the tomatoes.  There was so much that we had to mix it all up in a dish tub!  It was delicious though.

Then came the real adventure - we decided to try canning the salsa over a fire.  This was made slightly more interesting by the fact that it was now getting dark (thank goodness for headlamps!).  We managed to sterilize the jars, cook the salsa and get it all into the canner.  We discovered when we took the jars out and let them cool that we must not have had the canner at boiling for the entire time because 5 of the jars didn’t seal out of 17.  Those we will re-can today.  All told, we made right around 10 quarts of salsa to enjoy over the next year or so.

Firelight through the jars waiting to be filled.  The 2 pots in the background are

the canner and the pot of salsa.

It felt tremendously good to be canning again.  I know that many people think of canning as “slaving over a hot stove” but there is just no greater joy to me than knowing that my family will eat wonderful food from our garden all year.  That and canned food is so beautiful!

Finished salsa this morning before being put away.

So that was our crazy weekend!  I hope yours was as good as ours!

Quick update - moved and RAIN!

Since there is not an internet connection on the farm yet, this update will be pretty short.  We are moved!  Everything is out of our old house and the gentleman who is renting it has moved in.  We are settling into life in the RV and shed with few issues.  We also find ourselves re-living some of our ancient ancestor's issues - we have no running water and no electricity.  Luckily, we aren't actually living in the 1800's - we have flashlights, batteries and water available from the spigot by the road.  ;-)

Construction should start on the stand for the solar panels this week with a hopeful goal of having electricity by the end of next week.  Running water will have to wait until the contractor gets here in mid-August, but that's only a couple of weeks away.  Until then, we're doing a bit better than camping, but not much.

On the upside, we've seen baby deer, cayote's, no end of birds (and bugs) and gotten to experience the wonderful silence that comes when you can't hear any man-made sound.  I missed the quiet more than I thought.  It is amazing and so worth it.  You don't realize how much noise there is in town until you're not there.  You also forget how many stars there are - we can see a dazzling number of stars from the farm.  On a really clear night, you can even make out the milky way crossing the sky.  We also got to eat an entirely garden grown meal of cooked cabbage and tomatoes and pan fried potatoes.  So delicious!  Anyway, here are a couple of pictures that I remembered to take.  Hopefully we'll check back in soon with more news!

Home sweet home

Newly brush-hogged top field

Solar components and batteries waiting to be assembled.

Solar panels arrive and moving

For the last 2 weeks we have been steadily moving everything out of our house and into the shed.  We should be completely moved by the end of the weekend (crossing our fingers) so that we can get the house completely cleaned and ready for our renter to start moving in on Wednesday.  There's a rediculously long list of misc. stuff that has to get done for that to happen, but we're working our way through it steadily.

One of the key elements of us living at the farm is having electricity.  A key milestone in that process happened on Tuesday when our solar panels and control system arrived!  We purchased batteries and some other needed cables on Wednesday and started reading the manuals for how to hook this thing up.  Its a mid-sized system at 2.4 kW with 8 batteries.  It should be more than enough to run the RV and, later, the cabin.  Thursday we purchased the electrical panel and associated breakers so that we can eventually have normal electrical connections everywhere.  With a little luck, we'll get the system operational by next weekend.

Then we can work on building the stand for the solar panels to mount on.  That will be a larger project that will have to wait until we get completely moved out of the house.  The gap between getting the panels mounted and us moving to the farm means we will be living power free (read: camping) for a while.  Fortunately, the next 10 days look to be cooperating with unseasonably cool temperatures. 

In other news, we had the farm brush hogged on Monday.  We really needed to get the Sumac cut down so that it will stop spreading.  We hope to get our own brush hog by spring time so that we can maintain it ourselves going forward.  We didn't have time to do that this time though - we're too focused on the move.  It makes quite a difference in how it looks!  Of course, in the busy of moving, we have been lax about taking pictures so you'll have to wait on that for another post...