Catching up - Joinery!

I'm going to try and catch up a few of the bigger things that have happened in the last couple of years (LOL) relating to the farm and building the house.  Today, I'm going to talk about doing the joinery. 

As some of you may know, we have been working on the house for going on 3 years now.  One of the many challenges we faced once we got all the timbers to Kansas was how to protect them from the weather while we worked on them.  Naturally, last summer was one of the wettest we've seen which means having to move and re-level every beam every time Jeremy wanted to work on it.  Progress was exceedingly slow and we clearly needed a better solution. 

Luckily, we have an extra hoop house laying around!  We put up about half of the 30'x96' hoop house over the slab and covered it with an old piece of plastic from our other hoop house.  This gave a sheltered place for Jeremy to work where the beams could stay out as long as he needed them to.  Progress accelerated dramatically! 

Over the course of the fall, winter and into the early spring, Jeremy completed all the beams for the house, an addition and a barn!  Go Jeremy!  Here are a few of the pictures we took along the way.

Checking fit on the top post

Timber splice in the ridge pole.

Part of the second floor test fit before sanding

 Sanding the floor joists

Tools of the trade!  Wooden mallet and hearing protection.

One of the rafter beams assembled with collar tie

First floor post with summer beam

Jeremy admiring his handiwork in the hoop house

Once the joinery was done, we had to get ready to actually build the house, so the hoops had to come back down.  That took a couple of days to do. 

First, we pulled the plastic off and folded it up

Then we started taking apart the poles

Then everything gets loaded on the trailer

And then it gets unloaded in a new place

And here it will rest until we need it again!

Then we had to move all the beams off the slab so that we could start setting up concrete forms.  Thank goodness for good friends!  We managed to move them all in a day and get them stacked up by type near the building site.  I can't wait until we're digging them back out to put in the house!

Started with piles on the slab

Then the piles moved here!

And every one was picked up by hand.

And moved, stacked, stickered and leveled.

The moving crew (minus me - I took the picture)!

 

 

Then we were ready to start building door and window bucks and setting up forms.  I'll save that for a different post. 

Starting the stone!

It has been a very long time since we updated anything here, but we did cross a major milestone this week - we laid the first stones in the wall!  For anyone who doesn't yet know, the future farmhouse is has a stone and concrete exterior with a traditional timber frame interior.  To do the stone work, we are using a process called slipforming which does not require us to be fully trained stonemasons (thank goodness!).  The process goes something like this:

1.  Set up forms that are the width of the wall apart.  In our case, we also cut and fit 2" thick sections of insulated garage door panels on the interior of the form to be our insulation.  You can see the roofing screws we imbedded in them so that they would hold in the wall.

2.  Place wooden spacers at the top and bottom of the forms to set the width of the wall.


3.  Drill holes at the top and bottom and run wire through both sets of forms.  Then tighten the wire ties by twisting them with a nail.  This cinches the forms snug around the spacers and the wire will hold the forms the right distance apart once we pull the spacers out.


4.  Cut and bend rebar to run horizontally and vertically in the wall.  Our vertical rebar is tied to bolts in the foundation.  Each lift of the forms (2') gets a layer of horizontal rebar.  Thank goodness we picked up a rebar sheer and bender years ago at a yard sale!  I can't imagine doing this work without it!

5.  Lay out the stone.  Since we are working with fairly large stones, we can't just start placing them in the wall and find the right rock as we go.  Instead, we play really heavy tetris all the way around the building.  We took the time to put some nice, long stones around each doorway and plan to do the same around the windows.  We are also picking larger stones in a pattern for the corners so that they look "keyed" when we're done.  That's the plan anyway.

6.  Start mixing concrete!  We are using shredded Styrofoam in place of the gravel in a normal concrete mix.  The recipe is 1 part Portland: 2 parts sand: 3 parts shredded EPS.  It mixes up to a pretty reasonable mix that should have around R 1 per inch.  That plus the R13-17 of the garage door panel gives us an R25 or so wall with no air gaps as long as we finish the windows and doors well. 

7.  Put down a bed of concrete and start placing stones.  This is what the first section of forms looks like now that it is full.  We'll see what the faces look like once we take the forms off. 




It feels amazing to finally be working on the walls!  It has been 3 years of prep work to get to this point as we work around our regular lives.  Here's hoping it doesn't take us 3 more years to move in!

Swales!

We have taken advantage of the nice weather in January to build some swales.  The first one was to both clean out the catchment area at the bottom of our driveway ditch and to redirect water that was flowing across the bottom of our driveway into the road.  It went something like this...

We had created a wide, shallow drainage area after the culvert under out driveway.  This allows any sediment to settle out before the water flows on which keeps valuable topsoil on our property and not in our neighbor's pond.  The catchment area had completely filled up, so we dug out this valuable resource.

Kids and Jeremy filling the wheelbarrow

Then we moved the soil and created a berm/swale along the south side of our driveway to redirect water into the roadside ditch instead of across our driveway.

Catherine by the completed ditch

Jeremy did some additional swale digging this week also.  He dug out the next 2 grape swales behind the hoop house so that we can move our grapes from their temporary bed in the garden up to their permanent homes.  That will free up some valuable planting space in the garden and will give the vines a chance to really grow.  Eventually, this hillside will be a small vineyard.

Swales on contour to catch water for the grapes.

Jeremy's been busy on some other fun projects, but I haven't gotten around to getting pictures of them yet.  It will have to wait for another post.  ;-)

We also have a ton of little herbs and onions growing on the seed stand now.  They're coming along nicely and I'm looking forward to starting this year's cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower soon.  Spring is coming...

New year begins on the farm

I don't care what the calendar says, the year doesn't start on the farm until the first seeds go in the ground.  That started last weekend with the first round of onion seed getting planted in flats for (eventual) transplanting into garden beds.  The first of them are just now starting to poke their heads up.

Onions sprouting!

Currently, I have 5 flats of onions planted and 2 flats of various herbs (thyme, lavender, stevia, yarrow and parsley).  As soon as the seed arrives, I'll have another flat of herbs to plant (oregano, wormwood and a couple of other things).  Here in another couple of weeks I'll start the coles (cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower).  It is wonderful to have veggies growing already!  There's a little bit of spring in our living room now.  :D

Seed stand and lights

On the goat front, we traded bucks with some country neighbors who also have la mancha dairy goats.  The loaner buck, Bucky, has successfully accomplished his mission despite a less than auspicious beginning. 

Upon meeting their new boyfriend, the girls unanimously ask, "Who is this guy?!?!" 

The girls spent most of the first week or so running away from him.  Luckily he was predictably persistent and they eventually decided he wasn't so bad after all.  LOL.  We are expecting baby goats sometime in April or early May.

I don't have pictures of it, but we have been busy recently cutting firewood and getting practice splitting wood.  It has been nice to have some not-quite-frigid days to be out in the winter sunshine.  We hope to do a little lumber milling in the next couple of weeks also.  There's a nice downed oak tree in our woods that looks straight enough to make nice timbers, so we're going to give it a shot. 

In preparation for winter, we assembled a section of our second hoop house over the house slab.  It makes a nice, mostly wind free, space that stays a bit warmer than outside.  It should let us work when it isn't completely frigid out this winter and it will let us leave the work out once we get started.  That will save a ton of time spent uncovering and re-covering the timbers. 

Hoop house over the slab

I have yet to do the final tally of garden produce, but I think ended up close to 1000 lbs.  The bio-char trial definitely proved that the char made for healthier plants and higher yields in our tomato trials.  It didn't seem to make a difference for the dry beans we grew or the cabbage and broccoli.  It also didn't hurt either of those crops, so over all it seems to be a beneficial treatment.  We plant to use the remainder of the char we bought last year on our tomato beds for this year and we will likely purchase more to add to our remaining garden beds.

On tap for this Spring's projects (other than the house, of course) are some re-working of our catchment swales by the garden, creating a mini-chinampas bed for watermelon, finishing the grape swales and planting the grapes and (finally!) getting the front hedge row planted.  It will be another busy year for us, but at this point we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves if it wasn't! 

Long time away...

So sorry for the radio silence.  Those of you who connect with us on facebook have gotten regular updates on some of the happenings on the farm, but for those who don't we'll do a quick wrap up!

We're now living with our farm neighbors which is working out great!  Hopefully our next move will be into the house. 

The garden is exploding.  We've harvested close to 350 lbs so far and its still going strong.  It feels wonderful to be canning and dehydrating and fermenting again.  We've put up sauerkraut, naturally fermented pickles, regular pickles, salsa, spaghetti sauce, canned tomatoes, tomato juice, green beans and tons of jelly (blackberry, peach, mulberry and gooseberry). 

Blackberry and peach jelly and peaches

 

Mid summer garden

 

The preliminary results of the biochar trial show a significant increase in yield and plant health in the biochar beds vs. the normal beds.  We'll tally up final results once everything is harvested in the fall.

We hayed our top field and are working steadily to clean out the sumac patches.  The field is also infested with lespedeza which is a noxious week in Kansas.  It is also pretty good goat food!  Which brings us to...

 

Hay in windrows before baling in the top field  

We brought the 3 doelings and the buck (Jack) to the farm at the end of May and all are doing well.  The does are growing well and helping us clear out sumac with relish.  They are truly adorable and Catherine in particular has fallen in love with them.

Our girls (from L to R) - Beldandy, Erd and Skuld

The chickens are also doing well and laying 3-4 eggs a day most days.  They are clearing our north field for us bit by bit in their chicken tractor.  Jeremy built an addition to the tractor that can link up through the gate or not, so they can have double the forage room.  They seem to enjoy it a lot. 

Chicken tractor before wire and paint.  The gentleman in the flannel shirt did most of the building (can't thank him enough!).

 

We are making some progress on the house, although we've found that the busy of the growing season has not left us as much time as we'd like to work on that project (not to mention the two kids, work, sleep thing). 

Jeremy working on joinery

We've been making compost piles with food scraps from Jeremy's job and some of the hay and weeds from the farm.  Its looking promising for having enough finished compost by next spring to put a healthy layer on all the growing beds.  You can never have enough compost!

In the coming weeks we'll be putting in full crops of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage; second plantings of lettuce and radishes; annual planting of garlic and potato onions and a host of other things.  If I have time, I'll update here.  If not, look for an update when it gets cold in the fall!

Quick update

Its been busy lately, but I have been horrible about remembering to take pictures!  Here are some highlights though:

• planted 62 tomato plants earlier this week. 
• Spread a truck load and a half of compost on other garden beds
• Making compost like mad with scraps from Jeremy's work
• Everything is growing at the farm!

Our list of things for the next 2 weeks includes:

• mulch tomatoes
• install rabbit wire around the garden (we have visitors)
• plant green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers...
• paint chicken tractor
• build goat shelter
• fence goat area

We are also getting ready to move again, so there's no end of busy in sight!  Hope you are all enjoying the spring weather!

Biochar trial update #1 - Cabbage and Broccoli

We are participating in a trial to see what effect biochar has on annual vegetable growth.  I wrote about this a bit before, so here's the first update.

This week on Wednesday I inoculated the biochar for the first 4 test beds.  I first measured out 3 five gallon buckets of finely ground char.  Then I mixed the char 1:2 with compost (one bucket char to 2 buckets of compost) and mixed all that up in a big bin.

Next, I watered the mix down so that the microbes from the compost would multiply and inoculate the char.  Then it sat for 3 days.

Put char into the container

Add compost

Mix thoroughly

Water it in

 

On Saturday, it was time to put in the first transplants for the trial.  The first 4 trial beds will be tomatoes, cabbage and broccoli.  When the cabbage and broccoli come out in July, we'll put in a planting of black beans.  This way we'll get to test fruits (tomatoes), leaves (cabbage/broccoli) and a legume.  The steps for doing this are:

Spread compost on all 4 test beds.  Add biochar to 2 of the test beds and spread it out.  The kids were champs and did a big chunk of this.  Then they took down the tomato tunnels we had set up from last year.  This is a big job and I wondered if they would be able to handle it by themselves, but they did great!  In case you're wondering why they were working on their own, I was working on the chicken tractor in the last post.

Next, we re-assembled the tomato tunnels in the new beds.  The tunnels are made of 16' cattle panels pinned between 2 fence posts, so the first step is to pound the T posts in to the beds at the right spacing for the cattle panels.  We put them about 1 foot into the bed so that there is a foot for the tomatoes to be planted on the inside of the tunnel and 3 feet outside the tunnel for the other vegetables.

Assembling tomato tunnels

Then we have to bend the cattle panels between the T-posts to make the arches.  This is a 2 adult job because the panels are heavy and they can spring back and catch you with some fairly sharp edges.  We clip the panels to each other to keep the whole tunnel a bit more stable once their in place.
 
Now we're ready to plant!  We put the same mix of varieties and vegetables in each of the 4 beds.  We planted a total of 72 cabbage and broccoli plants on the outsides of the tunnels.

Then we watered the transplants in and put leaf mulch around them to retain the moisture and discourage weeds.

Watering in the transplants

spreading mulch

Last, we covered them with insect barrier so that the cabbage moths don't eat our crop instead of us! 

Cabbages covered and ready for a good spring rain.

Ta da!  Finished garden beds!