Farm is coming together

[colelkhunter]

My wife and I have started getting our farm prepared for self sufficient life. Orchard has been planted and doing great. We planted half grown trees for a faster startup and quicker return. We planted several varieties of apple, peach, apricot,fig and pear. We also planted a variety of vine fruits. Blackberry, blueberry,raspberry, white and red grapes. We also procured our starter of tennessee fainting goats as well. They are just kids and should be weened in about 8 weeks. We purchased breeders and 3 extra to supply meat this fall. 11 total goats. Our temporary cabin is almost done and will be a big change for my wife and I as we start working on our permenant home. We are building a Passive solar earth bermed house using the dry stacked concrete block technique. this website has lots of great information on this construction method. http://www.thenaturalhome.com/passivesolar.html

Construction should begin this summer and we are looking for volunteers interested in learning this construction method, no charge. We have also broken ground for our garden and started working on a containment area for rabbits and chickens. I will update as soon as we get something to report.

[Kelvar]

Sounds like you're off to a great start.

I've heard of the fainting goats before. Is there any benefit to having those over regular goats? (Entertainment value aside)

[colelkhunter]

The tennessee fainting goat also called myotonic goats are one of the three major goat breeds considered "meat goats". They were the best fit for what I want to do. Not too large like the boer goat, taste better than the spanish goats. i ended up getting all registered fainting goats. This serves to protect the bloodlines as well as makes the goats that i don't eat or need for breeding more valuable. They are just damn fun to have around also. Meat and fun. get a 12 pack and a lawn chair, sit in field and make goats fall over. Sounds like an afternoon of cheap fun to me. funny thing is the "myotonia" or stiffening of the muscles actually helps the goats build muscle mass, so the more they faint the more conditioned they get. Like to have shit when I read that. found a local lady who has barred rock chickens that I am going to check out this week also. Hope to get a dozen or so going soon and don't really want to start chicks if I don't have to. She has some young pullets that have not started laying yet. Just right. Next on the list is the rabbits. I will be going with the california rabbit for rapid meat production. garden should help them along this summer and fall as well as keep the chickens in greens.

[colinz]

It's always good when your plans come to fruition.

How much land have you got?

[TacAir]

Looking forward to updates on your soon to be new casa.

[colelkhunter]

We bought 10 acres initially. We have rights to use about 30 or so. also if we decide we want more we can buy it for the origional per acre price. 10 acres is about all that one man can maintain by himself. My wife is dedicated to work and school right now so I am pretty much on my own with improvements to the farm. i have about 300 fence post to set and about 2400 ft of fence. going to be a long road but we have been working towards this for about 5 years. I am hoping to have most of the house dried in by the winter. I plan on doing 90 percent of the work myself with occasional assistance from friends and I will have to pay someone to pour my footers for the block walls. I am looking to have the house livable by next spring. right around the time my new goats will be ready to breed.

[colinz]

You are going to hate fencing in a couple of months, like really, really, hate! How many wires do you guys usually use, and how many battens are you putting between each strainer?

[Ad'lan]

Construction should begin this summer and we are looking for volunteers interested in learning this construction method, no charge.

If it's after my exams, and you'll pay my flight's, I'm yours

Sounds like you are living the dream. Fantastic. I want Pics, updates, and stories of what's going on.

Is there any local community, or other small holders around you? Having a community to help you learn skills and stuff is a major help if you are going to be a small holder.

What sort of fencing are you putting up? How often will it need tightening?

[Blacksmith]

Sounds like you are coming right along. I remember putting my first place together. I made a few mistakes but learned a lot.

[colelkhunter]

Sounds like you are coming right along. I remember putting my first place together. I made a few mistakes but learned a lot.

This isn't nearly my first farm. I grew up on one 'till I was 17 and got the hell out for the military. This is my first self sufficient (from the git-go) farm. My grandfather thinks it's the best thing ever. When I was young all I wanted to do was get off the farm, and now that I am nearly 40, all I want to do is get back to one. He calls it priceless.


I plan to install a woven wire fence designed for goats with 2 wires of electric fence surrounding just to make sure. I have 4 strands of barbed wire encircling my property now. I may beef this up in the future. I have already seen a few stray and misplaced dogs crossing my little valley. This will not do. Several years ago,before my wife and I moved to town, I had a small herd of rabbits in a ground pen near my garden. Every morning before work i would go out sit in the pen with them and drink my coffee. Rabbits can be surprisingly affectionate. They would bounce in and out of my lap and lean into you scratching their head like a cat. I had two litters of kits and they were just getting to an age that they were getting around the pen well and would climb and ball up in my lap. Matter of fact I had to check my pockets before leaving the pen as I almost took a kit to work in my pocket by accident. I got up one morning to go see my bunnies with coffee and camera in hand and instead found three stray pitbull-mutt dogs in my pen and no rabbits to be seen. I quickly set the coffee down snapped about three pics of their bloody faces and set to killing all three of them. Didn't have a gun on me and didn't want to leave them so I went the pocket knife route. I remembered seeing the dogs in the yard of a woman who lived across the street, so afterwards i drug them over there and dropped them on her doorstep. 7am and I woke her up to inform her that I was going to work and calling the cops. I also let her know that she would be responsible for the loss of my property. Deputy that came said it looked like a damn crimescene. I agreed and he said to shoot them next time. I have to admit that although I was eating my little rabbit buddies I liked them a lot. It hurt my feelings to see them all dead, especially the kits. That's what they deserved in my mind at the time. Quick merciless death. Moral of the story? Protect your animals, they cannot protect themselves. Now my K-9 dogs do that job for me.

[colelkhunter]

Construction should begin this summer and we are looking for volunteers interested in learning this construction method, no charge.

If it's after my exams, and you'll pay my flight's, I'm yours

Don't think I won't ........one of my best friends is a travel agent and I have lots of friends in europe. Some will be coming over this summer for dog training, so one more won't hurt anything. Flights are cheaper from the UK than from the netherlands anyway. LOL I may just take you up on this as long as you could stay for a couple weeks and earn your keep.

[Vulcan]

How did you kill three pitbulls with just a knife? What part of the dogs' bodies did you stab? Spine? Throat? Sorry, I *am* interested in the gory details (PM me if it's too bad). Also what kind of knife?

[Ad'lan]

Construction should begin this summer and we are looking for volunteers interested in learning this construction method, no charge.

If it's after my exams, and you'll pay my flight's, I'm yours

Don't think I won't ........one of my best friends is a travel agent and I have lots of friends in europe. Some will be coming over this summer for dog training, so one more won't hurt anything. Flights are cheaper from the UK than from the netherlands anyway. LOL I may just take you up on this as long as you could stay for a couple weeks and earn your keep.

I have two weeks paid leave I could take, if that's enough. I'm strong, handy with an axe, saw, hammer and chisel. I can do greenwood furtniture building, wattle work, I can use a scythe, I can pick rocks, have a little experiance with animals, and I can knap flint, make coradage, bows and arrows.

I could even have a go at building a greenwood lathe.

[zrheard]

Construction should begin this summer and we are looking for volunteers interested in learning this construction method, no charge. We have also broken ground for our garden and started working on a containment area for rabbits and chickens. I will update as soon as we get something to report.

im still learning my way around here...

i dont see your location -but then again im skimming -

id be interested if possible, have some experience, looking for more.
please feel free to e-mail me.

[Payne Dailey]

Where are you planting your blue berries? I have mine in containers. My Legacy & Jersey like acidic ph compared to the black/rasp berries ph requirements.

[Paladin1]

Thanks for the link. I'm planning an earth sheltered home and while I'm set on poured, re-bar reinforced concrete, I may try the dry stacked method on a smaller structure.

Good luck and keep us posted. I know it's going to be a butt-ton of work.

[Resolute]

Where are you located?

Good thread - nice to read about your experiences. You're living the life I hope to have in a few years.

[cdreid]

This is awesome i admire you for the guts it takes to actually pursue your dream. Not many people do. And sorry to hear about the rabbits.. and the dogs. That must have been awful.

What are you doing for power? It sounds like you really want to be totally off the grid. In which case you should really consider unlatching yourself from the power grid (and the monthly bills that entails). It isnt as hard as you might think though you may know this as you're using passive solar. If you have any mechanical skills you can build your own wind turbines relatively cheaply. A 30 foot pole, some magnets and steel and a battery system and you could be almost all the way off the grid fairly cheaply

[colelkhunter]

thanks guys for the compliments. been working out there all week gettin the temporary cabin ready for us to move in. Had a spell of cold weather this week followed by rain, but didn't stop me from getting things done in the cabin. Last week I was able to plow and disc where my new garden will be located. I am not a farmer at all. I grew up on a farm, but never really FARMED. I joined the military as soon as was possible to NOT be on the farm. Now all I wanna do is grow things and get my animals going, funny. I plan to have my garden planted very soon. Started plants mostly, some seed.

My blueberries were planted on the south side of my fruit tree orchard. i didn't have to add anything for them. CO-OP says I am good to go soil wise for most all my fruit trees. My garden soil will have to have a few ammendments, but no big deal. Actually, my blueberries and fruit trees are starting to green up right now. going to till in some fertilizer this week if the weather is good.

We should be out on the farm full time in the next few weeks. We are starting to move things out to the cabin now and make the necessary arrangements. In regards to the last poster about leaving the grid. That is our intention at some point. To be honest it is not as easy as it seems. I have heard people say"oh yeah you just need a couple solar panels and a wind generator"......that is correct if you want to basically live like Frodo Baggins. Without things like a washing machine or hot water. i do not. i want to regulate my house and live on my own terms. I plan to take steps in the near future, after the house is built. That is the immediate goal.....get the house built. initially we will be hooked up to the grid. Then after a while, money saved, we will add a solar hotwater system. Then go from there. We are building this house out of our pocket, no mortgage, no nothing. Going competely solar will cost us about 20k for a sustainable system that will last at least 20 years. That is a chunk of change, and frankly out of our range for now. Until the house is built, I am going to concern myself with what I can afford. More to come.

[KnightoftheRoc]

I'm interested in how you determine how much to plant for your orchards, based on the number of people you expect to be feeding from them. If you wouldn't mind sharing, of course.

I'm working my way towards a farm, myself- about 80 acres, which is more about privacy than productive acreage, but I want to establish it as organic and self-sufficient as possible to do in NY state. I too, am looking at goats, and rabbits, but also chickens as my main sources of meat. The advantage to 80- acres is that there's also game, so hunting will factor in as well. I'm looking at the farm supporting 4-8 people on an on-going basis (actual occupancy is still unsure yet). An area just outside the back door is able to be made into a garden anywhere from 1/4 to almost 1/2 an acre, so that should handle most of our greens. The rest of the open land would be dedicated for feed crops and maybe some cash crops. So, with such similar goals in mind, you can see where I'd be curious- especially since you have the advantage of having farmed before, and I'm just starting to learn.

I am curious tho, about this dry-laid block construction. I didn't see anything on the page you linked that explained how this is strong enough to have an earth berm against it without buckling inward, especially since the pictures showing construction in progress seem to have a single layer of 8" block being coated over. I've seen mortared walls done in 12" block buckle from backfill pressures (a life spent in construction, instead of farming), so the description leaves me very skeptical of this method. However, I'm certainly not the know-all guy of construction, and I'm always willing to learn something new if I can.

[colelkhunter]

do some google searches on the dry stack concrete walls. I had a structural engineer do some research on this before making plans to use it. He researched and found that a dry stack concrete wall is actually stronger than a conventional block wall. it is also about 95 percent as strong as a pooured concrete wall. The secret to it is this. Once the blocks are stacked, they are skinned on both sides with surface bonded concrete. Then every third chamber is filled with concrete and rebar. The other cells in the blocks are filled with sand. Very dense and very strong. Also remember that retaining soil is all about structural integrity, basically cardboard will act as a retaining wall if it is triangulated properly. i have researched this method extensively, it is sound.

House is almost ready. Installed the last of the doors on the interior. Got some trim and paint left to do on the inside and we are ready. starting to get pretty green around the farm now. Garden is ready to plant. Should go in soon.

[KnightoftheRoc]

do some google searches on the dry stack concrete walls. I had a structural engineer do some research on this before making plans to use it. He researched and found that a dry stack concrete wall is actually stronger than a conventional block wall. it is also about 95 percent as strong as a poured concrete wall. The secret to it is this. Once the blocks are stacked, they are skinned on both sides with surface bonded concrete. Then every third chamber is filled with concrete and rebar. The other cells in the blocks are filled with sand. Very dense and very strong. Also remember that retaining soil is all about structural integrity, basically cardboard will act as a retaining wall if it is triangulated properly. i have researched this method extensively, it is sound.

House is almost ready. Installed the last of the doors on the interior. Got some trim and paint left to do on the inside and we are ready. starting to get pretty green around the farm now. Garden is ready to plant. Should go in soon.

Ah, the term "dry" is what was throwing me. I was expecting NO cement products being involved, aside from the blocks themselves. Where I live, the "dry laid wall" is still used for outdoor boundaries, accents, etc. These are slabs of native bluestone, mostly, but the important aspect is that there is no mortar involved, at all. Surface bonded concrete can only be so thick, and without the chambers being filled, I couldn't see this holding up to very much pressure- thank you for clarifying.

[colelkhunter]

Made a lot of progress on the cabin today. It is 90 percent done and mostly painted. Next week will be odds and ends and finish work. Also got most of our garden planted today. Garden ended up being 26 rows wide and 50 feet long. We have planted about everything that we needed to get going, but more will come later for sure. potatoes,onions and the like will be planted later. We are moving out on the 15th of this month and I can't wait. The week after we move in I have to start on the fencing for my animals. It will be a huge job, but well worth the effort. Next comes the shop construction and mews and weathering area for my Hawk. Lots of construction projects this summer for sure. I figure i will be working on it for most of the summer. Hopefully by the time the garden starts coming in I can take a little time off and start canning and put a few chickens in the freezer. Just in time for hunting season....

[KnightoftheRoc]

I hope you don't mind my living vicariously through your farm project here