Green Pioneer

On the homestead, the seasons roll through with a rythm and pace of their own. Once Autumn arrives, the harvest must quickly come in, wood is chopped and stored in the shed...or under the porch, butchering is done, and the canning of jellies, pickles, and preserves are neatly stored...row upon row of shiny glass jars gleaming from the shelves.

The animals are also tended to and nestled in for the coming months of winter cold. I promised you a tour of the Mere's marvelous chicken coop once it was complete. So here it is!

Karyn and I both relish the tidied up, all-snug-for-the-winter feeling. Come with me as we wander about their cozy homestead...as the bustling last days of harvest are slowing and the bounty is simply waiting to be enjoyed.

The low hinged door...easily accessible to little hands for egg gathering...

They've just started getting their first soft greenish-blue colored eggs from the young Araucana hens...that happen to be very docile, sweet-natured chickens!

The screen door acts as a perfect gate to the outdoor coop...

Chicken ramp into the backdoor of the chicken house...

Are there any chickens in there?

The meat poultry (broilers and turkeys) are now frozen in the freezer along with those scrumptious berries from the summer, and the rest sits prettily in baskets and jars...awaiting the winter feasts.

One of our fair-weather projects was to get the bunny cage expanded and make it a little easier for the kiddos to access and clean. Andrew used cedar posts with fencing on the ground (to prevent digging) as well as around and above. The board top from the old cage now slides over half of the new cage. It's very solid and the children have spent way more time with the bunnies now that they're easier to get to!

We happened upon the idea for using the cedar posts a.) because we had a bunch, and b.) because our friends and neighbors have used them for their cages with nice success. For example, the Meres have tried a variety of cage ideas...

They used branches to create the posts for the turkey cage then added the leafy limbs on top...

And used the lightweight pvc pipe idea for a chicken tractor...

They've now decided to majorly upgrade and enlarge the chicken coop using very large tall cedar posts along with a spacious new adjoining chicken house that has some nice features as well.

The door they're using was an extra one they had in their shed. Now painted a dark blue, it looks great! The wooden screen door will be used to enter the coop area - another advantage of the tall posts. Steve put a low, horizontal pull-up door along the lower half of the chicken house opening to where the nesting boxes are situated, so that their little ones could easily get to the eggs without having to actually go inside - we all know how messy chicken houses are! They even landed the wooden nesting boxes for free at a yard sale this summer. With a few adjustments they fit in perfectly!

Now Karyn feels that all she lacks is a nice birch-branch wreath to bedeck the wall or door of their new coop. We'll have to remedy that quick! I'll give you the full tour when it's completed.

The wonderful late summer, early fall harvest is rapidly coming in! But what to do with all this great fresh, organic food?

I've found some good sites and books that I'd like to share with you...and keep on tabs for ourselves! The root cellar is obviously an economical way to store the harvest, but what are the particulars and also maybe some other options?  And while we're talking harvest, how about extending the growing season itself...perhaps even into winter?

The Modern Homestead offers ideas for growing foods that don't require any processing at all...and ways to prepare those types of foods. They also give lots of ideas and practical hands-on experience on growing organic gardens and greenhouses, forest gardens, and soil management on small homesteads.

Hobby Farms offers a ton of valuable information on gardening and storage beginning to end. They focus on helping lovers of the rural life get the most from the farm experience - whether as a hobby or full-time operation. I've also happened onto these books with a wealth of information that I can't wait to absorb and begin trying a few of their tips next summer.

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel goes into extensive detail on all variations of root cellars and storage, as well as upgrading the harvest production.

How to Store Your Garden Produce: The Key to Self-Sufficiency by Piers Warren. I first noticed this book in my current issue of Hobby Farm Home, but I found these reviews especially helpful.

And Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from your Home Garden all Year Long by Eliot Coleman. In his book he

"introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. Coleman expands upon his own experiences with new ideas learned on a winter-vegetable pilgrimage across the ocean to the acknowledged kingdom of vegetable cuisine, the southern part of France, which lies on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as his farm in Maine."

This all sounds very intriguing and very promising for those of us wishing to venture on toward the realms of our own year-round, organic foods and produce...perhaps even in the long winter months ahead!

Our summer has been on the rainy, drizzly side plus the daily distractions (like making a living) just manage to keep getting in the way, so we've been somewhat hindered in productive progress on our log home. However, the sun has been out in full force, we're caught up on most of our other obligations--and we have my parents from TX up here visiting who are ready and willing to help! So the past 2 or 3 days have been quite productive--finally!

So, what's the progress? On the first day, Andrew and my dad were mostly trying to get things organized and ready to go. They did manage to also get 3 logs up by that afternoon. The next day they had to put up a new lifting pole in one corner since the other one had broken off. This proved to be more time-consuming than they'd hoped, but it got done and by the end of the day they had another full course of logs up all the way around.

And this is where we ended up the first day.

The next couple of days I was also out there with my mom and the kiddos mowing and clearing out the brush from the front of our land near the drive. We have some lovely small birches and poplar trees coming up and I'd love to accentuate a grove-like appearance with a carpet of grass and perhaps later some wild roses growing along the steep slope up to the road. Sound nice? I also realized that there's a really wonderful massive, low climbing tree perfect for summer adventures--if I could only get to it and clean out all the scraggly limbs and two feet of grass.

We borrowed a huge weed-eating machine from some friends that quickly made short order of the tall grass--and by day 2 the front was beginning to look mighty respectable.

All in all, we've gotten up 10 logs and the last course has all the holes drilled and most of the re-bar spikes pounded in. We're rainy again today and needed to catch up on some watch work and errands, but are prepared to hit it again tomorrow. I'll be sure to keep you posted and put up more photos!

Our neighbor was telling us that when he was a boy he remembered stackin' up a huge haystack around a pole while he and his siblings stomped it down as they piled it higher and higher. Then they put a tarp over the top of it to keep it dry.

Sounded like a plan to us--and we even had a spare pole to use in our backyard--and plenty of little stompers! It was originally put up by the previous owners to hang flower baskets on, but it was in such a weird spot behind the house...unable to be seen from basically every angle....and all the hooks were falling off as well. So no love loss there! Why not just use it for hay...??

Look at how much hay that hay rake can tote!


And here's how it's constructed--cedar posts, fastened with metal posts with board planks on top...

Now all we need is a bigger tarp...and about 105 more of these contraptions!

Letting the hay dry and then rakin' it up...

This hay rake is proving to be handier all the time!

This is just on our two acres at home...and look at all that great hay! Andrew is just cuttin' it with the scythe, letting it dry, and then stacking it up. It's organic and sure beats forkin' out over $3 a bale!

He also found this very handy antique hay rake over at the antiques place in Corinna for  $5. It's cool to still find stuff like this these days!

And as you can tell, Babycakes is wildly exuberant about all this hayin' stuff, too!

Andrew went over to our land day before yesterday to begin the official log peeling marathon required for our new 38 (soon to be more) logs for our log home roof rafters. He had gotten 7 done a week ago and managed to complete 24 the first day. He spent a luxurious evening eating jambalaya over a cook stove and then sleeping on the floor of the shed over there. He got up at 5 am. and managed to complete the log peeling marathon by 7 p.m.--just in time for our lasagna and watermelon picnic over at our friend's house--who happen to own 40 acres on the other side of our lake.

He uses this  bark spud to get underneath the bark. While the tree is freshly cut and the sap is still up in the bark, it all comes off pretty easily. The logs up on the top of the pile were beginning to get tougher from being in the sun, but the ones at the bottom had bark that still slipped off no problem...well, sort of no problem...OK, it was alot of work!

Once the sap begins to flow out of the bark, things get much tougher to get off. Also pine bark beetles begin to burrow into the wood underneath the bark and make holes in the log--not a good thing cosmetically speaking. They will eventually cause the bark to crumble off in time, but it's a matter of dealing with little holes in your logs or not. This isn't so much of an issue with the walls, but we didn't want to take any chances with our roof rafters. So now log peeling is complete--check! And Andrew has had the most aerobic upper-body workout he's had in quite awhile!

Thank you so much for dropping by! We're very excited about what we're learning and the people we're meeting who are also on a journey toward more self-sufficiency and a truly more independent, quality lifestyle!

As you can see, we're still very much under construction here, but we've got some interesting, intriguing information coming up very soon. So please put on the hard hat and keep popping in as we continue to construct what we hope to provide as plenty of encouragement, ideas, and inspiration for green pioneers pursuing the green frontier!

Also feel free to leave your e-mail address on our contact page for updates and new information. We look forward to meeting you and learning about your adventures or interests in this exciting new frontier!

In the meantime, you're welcome to catch up on our recent blogs on homesteading, life in Maine, Root Cellars, and the progress on our Log Home.

Also scroll on down and peruse the site links in the side bar below. Although we certainly don't subscribe to all the various sentiments and viewpoints expressed by the green community at large (as well as what gets interlaced into some of these web sites), we continue to glean good information where we can find it.

For more on our adventures into the homestead, homespun, home school, home life, check out Debbie's web site, The Romantic Mom.com