This and That- When You Are Down and Out

I haven't mentioned a lot of what we've been going through on this blog. That will change with this posting to let y'all know what's going on. Why we haven't started filming our YouTube videos yet and post them on our channel. It's been a while since I've even mentioned our channel. Now defunct after a two year absence of any new content. Especially after an anonymous subscriber bought us a new audio set up and still no new videos. Only the subscribers who get our newsy email each week know about three-quarters of what's been going on. Want to join us? Use the contact form in the right column and a valid email to get your copy ever Saturday-ish. Today, I'm getting personal with y'all. I'm not making excuses just telling it like it is.

Well, there are a couple of reasons for this.

Since this May, I've been fighting for my life or some semblance of a life quite literally. For now, I'm battling cancer. I've battled this beast and won four times in my past. By the Grace of God, we will beat it again. Since my seizure in July, really since my car accident in May, I haven't been able to drive. It will be July 2020 before I can do so again with no repeat in seizure activity. All late spring and summer long, it's been one medical thing after another my head, my eye, my heart, my spasticity due to my strokes, my pressure sores on my foot, my cancer returning after being gone for 26 years. I just started getting my stamina back from July only to have a pressure sore on my foot appear.

It's been a perfect storm kind of thing with me dying and being brought back to life. My body is revolting against me and I'm not recovering as fast as I used too. I'm constantly being slapped in the face that I ain't a spring chicken no more. It'll be the new year before all is said and done. I'm praying 2020 will be my return to "normalcy."

Finances have been so tight that we almost lost our homestead. We've gone through periods without electricity, and still have not filled our propane tank to cook with. So we are relying on the electric cook tops, crockpots, microwave, the grill, and a toaster oven  to cook my recipes on. Now, we have the wood stove too so it's a little bit easier. I hope to have propane before I start videoing my cooking spots again. I'm crossing my fingers, but any money we could have saved is now spent on firewood and the price went up this year.

Since May, Mel has been carrying the load by herself once again. She's even had to carry me. As a result, her seasonal depression has been a year long depressive state. Her medication has helped her not hit the suicidal/destructive state of three years ago. But her frustration level increased with taking over the finances (with my money), my health issues, and doing it all. Her once every two months jaunts into town have now become a three times a week thing. She has deemed herself unemployable because of age and attitude. She hasn't held a job for more than a week in three years.

She's writing a new program for her chicken farm record keeping so by mid 2020 she could really be making money to supplement our working capital and homestead. But programming is hardly easy, especially self taught, or without it's own frustration points. Chickens are much easier to raise than angoras rabbits. So her lack of attention won't kill them. At least she's not talking about chucking the homestead idea anymore.

The fact is we are getting older. Even though we've planned our homestead with this in mind, it's still a lot of work. We've only cleared about 1/2 an acre out of two. Trees still need to be cleared and the land terraced to be usable. What can we do when we can't afford to pay someone to do it, and we neither have the ability nor the equipment to tackle this? Both of us being transplants, still do not have "friend"/family base to fall back on, nor know enough people to ask for help. I've been so far out of the loop this year, it shows. To everyone, we've fallen off the edge of the world.

So for now, I'm combing the three pounds angora fiber, four pounds of alpaca, one pound of angora mixed fiber, and six pounds of wool into rolags for me to spin into yarn. I've got my work cut out for me in my usual fall and winter pastime activities. I'm still posting twice a week here, and once a week on my other site. There's my knitting. This winter, I'm planning on completing four sweaters and a bed throw. If I feel froggy, I'll try my hand at beading/ spinning some more art yarn. It will depend on if the muses hits me just right. There's also converting the outside rabbit hutches into quail hutches. I'm still shooting for spring.

So for now, Mel is focusing on her chicken farm. She'll be building her chicken coops and runs weather allowing. So come spring we can started in earnest on her newest venture. She's been researching hatcheries to get her base stock. She changes her mind constantly on the type of chickens she wants to raise. Americanas are a given. I'm firm about them. But RIR, Orpingtons, Barnvelders, or who knows what she'll finally decide on. She's in charge and it's her venture. I'm just funding her start-up again. They'll just have to be cheaper by the dozen.

When in life you are down and out, you better have a plan to get back up again.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Building Organic Garden Soil, Finances, and Homestead Design

Well, the cardboard is laid. At least it is all out of the house. It was quite a pile. Since Mel is in summer mode, she's spending the majority of her time, in not building mode, on the screened back porch because it is cooler. The formal dining room was being used as the cardboard storing area. All the shipping, drink, and assorted boxes are broken down as flat as they can go. All the packing tape is removed. Who wants plastic in their organic garden, not me.

When we get a goodly stack, table and surrounding floor is covered, we set about moving them where they are needed. These areas right now, is the vegetable garden for stubborn weedy patches and the orchard. It's a slow process building soil this way, but we're in it for the long haul. Doing something the right way always takes time, but the end results are worth it.

I'm waiting on the rains next week to thoroughly soak the cardboard in place. Then, I'll cover it all

with straw and hay. I'll wait until it rains again to soak it all in place before I add the compost layer or sprinkle bone meal over the area. I'll repeat this process again and again throughout the fall and winter seasons (without additional cardboard layers). By the time the snow falls, it's time to quit and let it all cook during the rest of the winter until early spring. This type of layering is a "lasagna" gardening technique for building organic soil. Instead of a chopped leaf layer, Mel will blow leaves from the property. Instead of peat moss, we use wheat straw and fescue hay (both are relatively available and cheap here). Two 4x5 rolls of hay ($45) will cover the 1/4 acre orchard in several inches. We roughly measure each layer by the foot.

Worms love the wet cardboard. They are drawn to it devour it, and lay their eggs in it. Then, they will get started on the upper layers during the winter speeding up the composting over winter. The worm tea fertilizes the broken down material. They'll also break up the hard clay. So long as you feed them, they'll stay in the area. They'll multiply at will in the warm, composting layers creating a bio-diversified soil mix. In the orchard, this will be the second year of doing this and the last giving us almost four feet of new soil to plant in.

Building soil this way, on such a large piece of land isn't easy. It's time consuming and often back aching labor. It would be easier and more expensive hauling in three dump trucks worth of top soil and compost in. But there is no telling what is in those truck loads. From experience, I've found "compost" less than half composted material (branches and too green stuff mixed in). Fill dirt and top soil is often riddled with weed seeds just waiting for the opportunity to sprout. I want to reduce my labor not increase it.

Last year, we did a "back to Eden" layering with shredded trees and branches waste with a combination of cardboard and straw for the orchard. We had an abundance of tree "trash" after hurricane Irma blew through. This year, not so much. Thus, the lasagna gardening technique. Sometimes, one method just isn't doable because of the expense. I mean nothing beats free with a minimum of labor afterwards, right?

We're building this homestead on the cheap because we don't have thousands of dollars to do it with  Granted, I did shell out $1500 to have the orchard area cleared and terraced. It was necessary to expand our homestead infrastructure. It will return to me many times over in produce, grain, and straw... not to mention fruit and wine.

This was a major expense on my fixed income. Anything over $500 a month is what I consider a major expense. Still, I'm thankful that I have that amount of sort of dispensable income being on just Social Security and my retirement check. I owe of this all to my beloved's careful financial planning. God give him rest. With Mel full time on the homestead and not working outside the homestead, it's a blessing to be sure.

Cockeyed Homestead layout design

We are planning our homestead with aging in place in mind. After all, nobody is getting any younger. It's only smart. We are both sexagenarians already and women to boot. That's not to say that being women alone is a hindrance, but working smarter, as well as harder at times, does come into play more than if we had a man around to do the heavy lifting. The majority of our housing, barn/workshop, gardens, orchard, livestock are all in half an acre rather than spread out over our two-acre property.  This is only partly due to the landscape of the property. The other part is accessibility  in the design layout of ours.

I had thought to plant my berries and grapes on the top tier of  our orchard but changed my mind and planted them on the second tier from the top. The berries and grapes are easy enough to tend to on the second tier. The berries and grapes enjoy full sun on the second tier and protected from strong winds that can sweep through the hollow. Once the fruit trees mature and grow in size, the berries and grapes will have even more protection, but still have plenty of full sun because of the terraced hillside.

Example of our elevated pallet raised beds

On the top tier is more shaded so it's perfect for the raised pallet beds with herbs. While most herbs love full sun, the sun gets pretty strong and heated in Georgia. The partial shade will benefit them on the top tier. There will also no watering issues because of them being elevated beds. A simple soaker hose system attached to the 375- gallon water tote should supply them with ample wet stuff throughout their growing season. The beds will over winter with a thick blanket of compost and mulch.

Did I mention that these beds do double duty? In the space below the beds we stuff with large, perforated, black trash bags filled with moist leaves. These leaves will compost and form mold that increases the biodiversity. Ants and worms will work to break down the leaves over time. This way the space these beds take up do double duty. To make removal of these bags easier, we tie long pieces of baling twine around the top of these bags with the other end wrapped around a nail on the outside of the raised bed. The baling twine is recycled from the bales of straw and hay we purchased during the years.

We'll even reuse the bags too until they are too torn up to use again for leafing. Then, they will be cut into 3" strips and braided them to form weed deterrent mats under the fruit trees. The braiding will allow water to seep into the ground and it makes them stronger. They'll have many more years of reuse to them. I even reuse baling twine to make these. As the trees grow they will need bigger mats so nothing goes to waste. I'll even leave rows gap stitched together so I can plant garlic in the gaps. Garlic keeps moths and other pests away from fruit trees. On average, every five rows of braids gets a gap row for garlic, onions, or leeks. So once again, this shows multiple reuses/repurposing of items that usually end up in landfills. It doesn't have to be pretty. It just has to work. Nothing goes to waste on our homestead until it is definitely unusable again.

Y'all have a blessed day.