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

Plan, Revise, and Plan Some More

For most plans it goes like the diagram. When you are a homesteader, I usually go through a couple options and revise the dickens out of them. kind of like washing your hair- wash, rinse, and repeat. Or, repeat until it is literally squeaky clean. Don't laugh, but there been times working that I've had to rewash my hair four times to get it to that squeaky clean state. The planning stage of "Set Goals" is a definite goal.

For 2019, the goal is get dairy/fiber goats. I wanted goats for three reasons.

1) They eat bramble so they will help clear areas. We've got an acre of uncleared, heavily wooded land covered with blackberry thickets and poison ivy. Goats love this.  With the over population of trees comes the seeding of new trees, goats devour these too. After they munch their way through one area, we'll move them to a new area via 30 sq. ft. section of electrified fencing at a time.

2) They produce fiber twice a year. We decided on Nygora goats. Since they are herd animals, we want two to start. Two does (preferrable) or a doe  and a wethered buck in a pinch. Why Nygoras? They are smaller than regular goats and command a great selling price ($400-$800) each. They often have multiple babies. Their fiber is mohair with a much longer staple lengththan angora. It can be blended with angora, or sold on its own at a price a little under the price of angora, and within a year they will pay their own way.

3) Food for us.They go into heat every 30 days or so. So we can alternately breed two does for a year around supply of milk. A dwarf nubian cross angora equals a Nygora. As such, they'll produce 1 qt to half a gallon of milk per day. That's plenty for us. I can makes cheese or butter with the overage. If a baby doesn't sell or has unwanted qualities (poor fiber, aggressive), it's meat for our table. Being small, about the size of a German Shepherd, they'll be easier to handle, care for, and even butcher. When butchering you are talking about less than 100 lbs of meat which is great for us. Within a couple of years, we'll have a flock of six to care for (our maximum). So that's the goal.

4) We want a year to get to know our girls before we breed them.

But first, we have to fence off an area. The electric fence is cheap enough at under $200. A solar charge on controller with all the bells and whistles is another couple hundred.(I'm still in the shop around stage)The head stanchion and stand is easily made from scrap lumber or pallets. It's a very good thing that we know a guy for pallets.(grinning) The same goes for their housing and feeders.I want to have everything in place before we get the goats including a good supply of alfafa hay. 

Part of any plan is resource allocation. Everything begins and ends with the almighty dollar, doesn't it? I've outlined a few of the costs above. Eventually, we'll need a ferrier and a shearer services, at least once, to show Mel the ropes. She'll carry the brunt of this load because my one-handed self won't be able to do it even with a well mannered goat.

Mel is also talking about going back to work this year. Yeah, this surprised me too. Being almost 60 and finding a job for a nonpeople person like Mel is hard. I won't say it's impossible, but we'll see. It will put less of a financial burden on me, but more of the day to day operation of the homestead on me. Not that I mind that. It will take some juggling, but I can do it.

The building projects will just have to wait until Mel's time off, but we've got nothing but time. As for the rest of the year's progress, we are coasting. We'll put out fires as they crop up, as they did multiple times last year. Take care of what we can when we can. What else can we do?

We've done the research, compiled our data, revised, our plan, planned some more, and now is the time to implement the plan. We'll be monitoring our progress along the way, revising again and again as the need arises. It all begins now.

Y'all have a blessed day.

Jo

Planning for 2019: Too Early? How About the Next Five Years?

First, it's never too late or too early. I've been looking over my five-year homestead/ self sufficiency plan a pseudo business plan. I've done it every year for the past two years. I allowed for wiggle room in my plans, but I'm a year to two years behind. I tend to do this periodically. But as the growing season winds down, I look and start planning for the next year's goals. A where-do-we-go-next strategy building exercise essential for any operation be it homesteading or anything else while fulfilling your dreams.

What can I say, two Masters degrees in business and marketing are still useful even if it's used only in homesteading. My Momma used to say, "Knowledge gained is never wasted. It's something no one can take away from you."  I'm a firm believer in Plan A, Plan B, and even Plan C with adjustments along the way. I'm a Murphey too, so Murphy's Law is also set in stone.

My "business plan" includes:

• When a project has started, estimated cost, when project is finished, and final cost breakdown on all levels. No one likes surprises when it comes to money especially on a fixed income.
• Black Infrastructure improvements like roadways, bush hogging, transforming the property into usable space, alternative energy, and major building projects. This is my permanent changes for the homestead. Estimated cost breakdowns for each is in here too.
• Green Infrastructure pertains to the gardens, orchard, rabbitry, and chickens (other livestock). They change from season or year. Estimated costs, maintenance, profit and loss are also included here.
• I've also got a separate area that I call my Grey Infrastructure. These include improvements/repair/replacement of things we already have or would like to have that are under $250. Examples of this are the chicken coop and run, revamping the barn/workshop areas, an electrician to hard wire the barn, etc.

According to my initial five-year plan before I moved here, I should well be on my way to being self sufficient (75%) in groceries two years in. In reality, I've just reached 25%. We've had a rough three springs and growing seasons setting up our small, organic vegetable patch.

In fact, it wasn't until this year that we got it fully outlined and fenced the garden patch, and grown our own needs in tomatoes, green beans, and cucumbers for a year. The goats for milk and cheese, supplying our own poultry, and other sources of protein needs have slipped into future plans.   We will always be dependent on outside resources for beef. Sheep and pork may be in our future. Mel's gotta have her beef. It's looking more like 2019-20 to reach this initial goal. This will bring us up to 75%.

Terracing the orchard last year was only a year behind schedule. I grossly underestimated the manpower and time for this, and there's a little thing like money that's necessary.

Speaking of money. This, in a way,  has been our biggest delayer. First, Mel lost her job and still unable to find another one. That's a long story that I won't go into here, but it cut our income by almost half.

Then my daughter who moved into my south Georgia property had financial troubles. I ended up selling the property well below  value (almost $50K less- A Big Ouch!) just to get out from under the mortgage.

That short fall put a halt to any additional black infrastructure plans I made for two years. It slowed any future black infrastructure plans to a trickle which in turn impacted my green infrastructure plans too. I did manage to get the main driveway, the food storage building, the orchard terraced, a new deck and access ramps and a very few other things in the black and green infrastructure accomplished, but not near of what I wanted to accomplish.

There's no use crying over spilled milk. So instead of getting the major black list accomplished in two years, it will now be budgeted over ten years. You gotta roll with the punches and just keeping on.

Best laid plans and all that aside. We are still operating and building the ground work after almost three years here. We are making farther strides to being self sufficient just not as fast as I planned.Well, if it were easy, it wouldn't be cherished as much. For now, going totally off grid is pushed back until 2029, or there about.

You can only do what you can do. At least there is no mortgage here. We have had all our needs met. We are blessed.

We've had some really hard knocks and false starts where our chickens and rabbits go over the past two years. So instead of showing a profit, we are eeking by. They are still taking care of their expenses. That should change in the next six months with babies being born and more wool. The rabbitry has been more of a false start than a failure with the loss of our nonrelated breeding stock, now rectified with the addition of new breeding stock (Lil Albert and Cara), we start again. We aren't as flushed with nonrelated stock as we were two years ago, but it's a start.

We've got the chickens under control again. They aren't destroying the garden too. A repeat of losing 3/4 of the flock shouldn't happen again this winter. We might even start hatching eggs and meet our own poultry needs in Spring of 2019. I've downloaded plans for a grow out pen for the butchering chickens. That's a grey infrastructure deal. That would be another step big forward. I've been in contact with local, no chemical producers of lamb, pork, and beef so that will be another check mark towards being psuedo self sufficient in a protein source since Zaycon went belly up this year.

We'll be planting wheat, barley, and oats again in the orchard next spring. We'll replace the area with fruit trees and bushes as we go. It will go a long way in cutting our feed bills for our small livestock. I'm finally done with the research portion of us acquiring some pygora goats. We'll be starting on the goat pen in mid 2019. Whether we actually get the goats in 2019 or 2020 is still up for discussion. It's a fairly Green/Grey infrastructure expense of between $500-$1500. We'll have to see where we stand before deciding.

In 2020, we'll be clearing and terracing another 1/4 of an acre earmarked for two tiny houses and a grain/straw/hay area. Hopefully, we can entice a couple of folks to come onboard with us in our cockeyed community adventure. We could honestly use the manpower. We ain't getting any younger. Plus, the added income couldn't hurt either. We are still leaning towards widows and single females in our vision quest.

It seems like everything we want to do is costing us $1500 or more. That takes some planning.  Not to mention my daughter's wedding in Tuscon next summer. It only takes money, right? But that which does not grow- dies.

Y'all have a blessed day.

Jo

Prep Work on Next Year's Orchard Begins

Clearing begins

The trees, broom grass, weeds left to grow for decades, and wild blackberry brambles disappear this week. It will be roughly terraced into the planned orchard this week. It's only a year behind schedule, but it's getting done. Next, all the cardboard boxes, mulch, trees chips, straw, manure, etc will be laid for spring planting.

Having a self sustainable, organic orchard on a little under a 1/4 of an acre takes planning especially when talking about fruit and nut trees. To plan this 1/4th of an acre on a steep sloping hill side doubles the work to make it easier to plant and maintain. It takes heavy equipment to clear and somewhat level the area into tiers. Elements like terracing the land seemed like our best option for optimum sunlight for each tree. Keeping the trees dwarfed, will take and continuous effort on our part. A rough 75'x 100' area will be divided into three or four terraces.

We calculated each level to approximately 30' wide giving ample room for foliage spread. We also figured that each tree, of the larger varieties, would be five trees on a 75' level with heavy pruning. Two trees trees would supply us with ample produce for ourselves, but four will allow us to sell some too.  but we are dividing it further for more variety.

my vision on much smaller scale

The first tier, closest to the barn, will be dedicated to berries and grapes. We gathered some Muscadine grape seeds this year. I want to try to start them from seed rather than buy the starts. Yes, I know this will delay harvesting for a few years. I may buy some plants in addition for faster results in between these starts. The plan is for 32' of grape vines and the support system it needs. We also have 10' each of blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries on this tier. None will be over 5' tall. These bushes will require more hands on care so it seemed logical to put them at the top and they won't shade the lower tiers.

The next two levels down will be the larger trees:  cherry, fig, peach, and apples. Maybe a pear tree also, I haven't decided yet. These will also have their growth dwarfed to a more manageable six feet tall. I may espalier these trees for better control and harvest. We aren't going to get a huge glut of fruit this way, but it will be an easier harvest. Higher periodic maintenance is necessary so it's is best on the second and third tiers. I also saw on YouTube how to protect the fruit from insect damage using footie socks. It will be much easier to do by espaliering the trees for a better harvest.

What a difference a day makes!

The last, lowest, levels will be the really tall sweet acorn oaks (Thank you Big Bear Homestead for the acorns), pecan, and black walnut trees.Two each. Lowest maintenance except in harvest time. They don't require the heavy pruning after the first couple of years. They can even be staggered on the rest of the downhill slope into the tree line that remains. Careful planning went into this westerly facing orchard for water run off. We've spent three years watching the sun track across this area in all seasons.

A look at the tiers from 4th level

We're getting older so planting smarter is the key. When looking at our property, only 1/4 of an acre (where the house, barn, and garden is) of fairly level- otherwise it's a 100-foot sloping drop (in some places over a 20 degree grade drop) to the creek.  In some areas, the land drops very sharply 10-15 feet. It's a challenge to homestead this property at best, but we're working with what we've got. This makes 1/2 an acre of our two-acre homestead recovered from its previously abandoned state. Heavy equipment is a definite plus.

Y'all have a blessed day.