Here are a few pix of our new 1 year old brother and sister mouse patrol squad. They’ve been here for two days now and are acclimating to the new environment nicely. We are not on intimate terms yet so we’re not sure who’s who gender-wise. Abby is still adjusting to them, though.
Outside the living quarters, basking in the sun.
Closeup
This one loves the velvet interior a little too much.
Here are some action shots of our Abby.
Sporting her new saddle bags. She’s going to earn her meals.
Abby is rewarded after a hard afternoon workout with a Kong stuffed with treats and peanut butter goodies.
In training with the homemade pull harness. Currently she is hauling a short piece of OSB to get used to the harness. But we’ll have her hauling a small wagon of fire wood in no time.
And what a way to end the working day with a little relaxing rodent dig.
It’s time for some Spring cleaning of photos and posts, so here we go… Working backwards… Our wonderful neighbors showed us how to process a deer, (with a doe that they gave to us, God Bless them!), and it was great to learn how to make the cuts from them.
The Hooves gotta go.
It takes practice, but we’ll get it.
Everything cut, trimmed, rinsed, and ready for canning.
Since we don’t have a freezer, we pressure canned our meat. We ended up with 35 pints.
We are both definitely getting Deer tags for next season for doe and buck, maybe I’ll get an Elk tag just in case. I didn’t fill my doe tag last season, but I got close.
Late February we moved the pot belly stove from the middle of the main room to the side. We had to reroute the stove pipe and we built a wood box to rest the stove on.
You will also see some of the papercrete wall plaster we started applying. We still have a lot to do.
In March we installed the sub-floor in the main dome. We leveled the lava rock beneath, added some surgical blues, as shown…
Added a 4-mil vapor barrier, R-19 insulation, framed it with 2×4′s, screwed on OSB, and used temporary linoleum tiles (until we add the final wood planks later). Much better than walking on rocks.
Next major feat was moving the solar panels and hooking up the new system.
We lost a lot of good sun during this past winter, and waited for the opportunity to move the solar panels up onto the shed roof.
We obviously get more sun now. This also gave us the opportunity to shorten the solar panel wires since we moved the new inverter, new charge controller and batteries into the shed.
Here is our new setup. My wife is amazing to understand how this all works, and set it up. I still have to confirm with her which button you press to turn the system off.
Our new Tripp Lite APS750 750W 12V DC to AC Inverter with Automatic Line-to-Battery 20-Amp Charger
Definitely a major step up from the 300W Radio Shack inverter we’ve been using for the past two years.
We replaced our previous 20 Amp charge controller with a Rogue MPT-3024 is a 30 amp photovoltaic charge controller. It actually converts excess volts into amps for more efficient charging of the batteries. All-in-all a big improvement for us.
Since baking is an important part of mountain living, Jen recently perfected her skills in two areas…
Bagels… and
Challah bread. Good thing I own suspenders.
And… our new canine, Abby is making headway in learning the mountain dog life.
She thinks our new bathtub (a 2′x2′x4′ Stock Tank) is her water bowl.
And she seems to have a knack for finding deer shins buried in the surrounding area.
We bought her a new saddle bag and will soon be putting her to work.
And finally, we replaced our kitchen sink’s leaking Shurflo water pump with a Flojet Model No. 03526-144 Triplex Automatic Water System Pump.
This automatic water system pump is Self-Priming, will run even when dry, has soft noise absorbing mounts, and includes an easy to use snap-in port fittings, and… there is no need for an accumulator tank. Sweet!. And it was an easy 10 minute install… we like this.
We were fortunate to get a great deal on a used Sears Craftsman Portable 9HP Wood Chipper/Shredder which we picked up outside of Three Forks today for the amazing price of $200.
Ever since we watched the movie Back to Eden we have been on the lookout for an affordable Chipper/Shredder.
Hopefully we will make Paul proud with how we use it. We’ll keep you posted.
We also took a major step last week by finally getting a dog. Here is Abby, our 3 year old female shepherd mix, rescued from the pound (she spent 2 years in the pound).
She’s smart, lovable, and a greenhorn to the mountains, but she’s learning fast.
She’s also found her first pack rat!!!
We’ll keep you posted on her learning progress… and ours too.
This little hardworking Bobcat Wood Splitter is on our wish-list…
We were recently told about a great little film called, “Back to Eden“. It had such a strong impact on us that we really encourage you to watch it if you have any interest in low impact and low effort gardening.
Earlier, we had decided to ask our neighbors to bulldoze our front lawn into terraces. We kept putting it off and putting it off, and last week we decided to put it off until Spring. The problem was that we had noticed that every time we tore up the native grass, the bare earth looked so sad and dry and almost immediately thistles, and only thistles, would grow in the bare patch. Then we would begin a battle to kill the thistles, who through no fault of their own, were growing in the bare patch we had created.
Then we watched the film. The way that they reveal the growing process in nature and how it can be applied to your garden left us sitting for a while with our jaws open in astonishment and delight. So simple. So obvious. So natural. So we’re going to do it. No bulldozers. No bare earth. Just natural goodness.
Really, we can’t spoil it by giving it away. Please, just watch it.
We had always wanted to build an earth oven, so while our friend Michael was here, he took the reins and built us a great earth oven.
The basic shape of the oven sculpted out of sand.
The clay/dirt/sand mix forming the oven.
After removing the front door brick mold, the inside mold of additional bricks and lava rock are removed.
Fitting the oven door. Additional clay was used to finish the oval shape on the top of the door.
Firing up the oven for the first time to dry it out and cure the clay mix.
We added a quick roof cover which will be covered with shingles for when the weather turns.
Preheating the oven for baking bread with twigs and small sticks. It took 2 hours to reach about 400-500 degrees. (That’s a guess)
Removing the ashes before putting in the bread dough. We made an ash rake and a handy ash catcher to simplify the work.
Here is our test loaf. We crafted a quick handmade peel out of a 1″ x 6″ board. This peel pictured is just a piece of cardboard… which also worked fine for the job.
Placing the loaf into the oven. We baked it for 25 minutes.
Here is our first loaf baked to perfection.
A shot of our homemade peel with a mini pizza on it for a quick snack.
The oven stayed warm enough 5 hours after baking to make rice pudding in it. This will save us a lot of money on using propane for baking.
An excellent book on building your own Earth Oven is Build Your Own Earth Oven.
We found a great and easy-to-make formula for keeping unwanted deer from nibbling on our plants growing outside our fenced garden… Bone Sauce.
You can apply the Bone Sauce directly on a tree, post or stake around any area you don’t want deer to venture into.
We discovered this formula from Sepp Holzer.
Here’s how we made our Bone Sauce.
We bought a large tin for 25¢ at the thrift store.
We added a chicken wire platform inside at a height of 4-6 inches from the bottom of the tin, then placed some cow bones we bought at the local meat market.
We dug a hole to place the tin into.
Back-fill the hole up to the lid.
Pile rocks on top of the lid.
If you are in a fire-prone area, you might want to put some kind of covering over the rocks. Add some sticks and twigs on top and start a fire. Keep the fire burning for about 8 hours. After the tin cools off, dig it out and scoop the residue from the bottom. It should look like this…
You can apply the Bone Sauce on trees, fences and on anything near an area you don’t want deer to go around. It works great and has been known to last for quite some time.
Here are a few photos of the papercrete awnings we added to our earthbag dome.
A simple form using the spare poultry and barbed wire left over from building.
The first layer of papercrete applied to the form. All eight windows are finished but we still need to smooth and refine them.
Summer is in full swing here at the homestead. Here are some photos of what we’ve been up to lately.
It was a battle to get the first base layer up during all of the rain we had a few weeks ago, but we managed to finish, and learned a lot for when we apply the second layer at the end of July.
Our PVC skylights finally have a glass cover on them.
Our garden as a whole is 85% completed, and 95% planted. This season’s garden is five times bigger than last season.
Here are some of the kids who have made an appearance so far.
The tomatoes are off to a good start.
Our onions are happy campers.
Potatoes are starting up.
The walking onions are strutting their stuff.
The horseradish is growing like gang-busters.
There will be more of what we planted as they come up.. stay tuned.
And the greenhouse has three varieties of cucumbers… Parisian Pickling, Cucumber Delikatess, and Suyo Long. We also have some Zucchini, Crimson Sweet Watermelon, Valencia Winter Melon, and Kazakh Melons.
We also planted 300 Siberian Pea-shrub seeds along our road, and around 300 seeds in a bed to grow for root stocks that will be replanted next Spring around the property.
We also put together our outdoor shower. This year we built it out of pallets We still have to install the glass windows at the top, and we’ll be adding pine shakes to the interior and exterior with our froe, and some spiffy floor tiles.
We connected two five gallon buckets and spray painted them black to heat up better in the sun.
We cut a hole in one of the bucket lids and inserted a section of garden hose in it with the connector on the ground for easier access to the garden hose.
The makeshift shower head which works really great.
And… made a sconce out of a wire hanger to hold a pair of solar garden lights to add a night light inside… simple and functional.
More to come later.
