Living Simple

Fall Equinox

2009-10-02T20:26:00.007-05:00

The fall equinox has come and gone so the days are getting shorter rapidly here in north central Wisconsin. That's a good thing and a bad thing here on the homestead. It's good because it gives me more time to pursue interest like this blog but a bad thing considering the amount of work I need to get done before the snow flies here in about a month. We had a great, productive, summer and fall even if our new garden was somewhat disappointing.

All the fruit trees and canes seemed to have a bumper crop this year and the biggest challenge was getting them harvested and processed in time. We learnt a new mushroom this year and had a good time hunting for those. Our really big event this year was learning to harvest and process wild rice.

The first pic,which didn't load right,is me treading the rice to remove the hulls. Second one is of the pan we used to parch the rice,which is done before you tread it to desiccate the hulls. Next is me poling the canoe, and last Ann knocking rice as we pole through it.

I've got tons to write about but that will have to wait a little while longer. Time for me to get back to work.

Busy,Busy, Busy

2009-07-28T22:14:00.003-05:00

A quick word or three in case there is anyone out there who cares! Have been busy with a dozen different projects over the last few months which I will write about when things calm down a bit. Our garden has required way more work than I'm used to because of it being a new garden spot. The grass and weeds have been tough to get under control and it has been dry so I have had to water a lot. Around here that's done by 5 gallon bucket so getting enough water on a half acre garden takes time!

Now it is berry time and mother nature has really smiled on us in that department this year. We have been picking wild raspberries last week and more this week. I have picked wild berries most of my life and this is the best I have ever seen them. Ann has canned 11 quarts of raspberry pie filling and 18 pints of jam so far. As I write this Ann is cleaning another 3 or 4 quarts she picked today and we will go picking again tommorrow. If we keep this up I'll have enough to make Raspberry Wine. YUM YUM!

On top of those I've been making fence for our livestock, cutting mulch for the garden, hauling dirt for an extension to the driveway, putting in some grape vines, making fire wood ,etc.

More on all of that plus our new herb business next time. I promise it won't be as long.

New Additions To Our Homestead

2009-03-28T20:03:00.003-05:00

Ann and Dane with our Sannan Doe Malta and her triplets. They were only a hour or so old when I took these pictures. Mom and babies are doing fine. These are the first babies born this year. We have another Sannan doe, Beta, who is due soon. It will be nice to have fresh milk every day again.

Are You A Good Bee Or A Bad Bee?

2009-03-26T19:30:00.004-05:00

This is a picture of some old honey comb in a frame. We have two packages of bees coming next week so I've been cleaning up our bee boxes this week. We have ordered bees from several places over the years. It's fun when your order is delivered to the post office! They give you a call to come and get them pretty quick! This year we are once again getting bees from a local bee keeper who drives down to South Carolina or some where down south and brings a whole truck load back.

While I was working on our bee boxes I got to thinking about how different hives of bees have different personalities. Individual honey bees only live a few weeks, except for the queen, but the temperament of a hive stays fairly consistent. Some hives are cranky, some are docile, some are more active than others. You can make any honey bee sting if your careless handling them but some will take a lot more than others.

We don't have very much in the way of equipment. We have a veil and gloves and make do with a heavy coat and jeans. If you don't agitate the bees too much that's about all you need. You try to only open the hive on really nice days, that way a lot of the bees are not even home, they are out gathering nectar!

I have not figured out any way to tell in advance how aggressive a hive will be until you crack it open that first time. When you pry the cover off that hive and a few of the inhabitants come out to see you, I always have one quetion in the back of my mind. Are you a good bee or a bad bee?

BLOGGER DISCOVERS CURE FOR CABIN FEVER

2009-03-11T17:00:00.002-05:00

Well, if you read my other blog you already know, the cure for cabin fever is simple. Butcher two pigs! Butchering provides that much needed stimulus and plenty of exercise to shake you right out of those winter time blues. Plus all the fringe benefits such as family togetherness and a teaching opportunity for economics ,ethics, animal husbandry, and cooking to mention a few. I hate writting the same stuff twice so if your intrested in the butchering and meat curing look on my other blog

http://tightwadconfessions.rfdamerica.com/

I didn't do much but make fire wood all last month but vacation is over now! This last week I got out the pan for cooking maple syrup and started getting set up and every thing cleaned up and ready to go. I tapped a dozen trees so we can watch them to see when they start to run. Nothing so far. I don't like to tap too early because the tree will start to heal up before the end of the run. I'll tap about a hundred to a hundred twenty-five trees this year. We make as much syrup as we can and if we have enough we'll make some maple sugar too.

Next on the list was getting ready to start seeds for our garden. First off was setting up a small 8x8 greenhouse. That went well after I got the snow shoveled out of the way! I have it all set up and staked down so we are ready to go on that. We won't start our seeds until about the middle of April. That will make our sets 5 to6 weeks old when we put them out.

Ann order two packages of bees for delivery in April so next week I will have to get busy cleaning up some hive boxes and supers. We weren't here last year so didn't have any bees so have to start over this year. One of the things to do on my list is to do a better job as a bee keeper this year. In past years I've been a little sloppy on working the hives. Bees are getting way too expensive to have them swarm on you because you did'nt do your part.

I'll try to get some photos of all that stuff up if I have a chance. There are a few on the other blog.

The Mid-winter Blaaaaas

2009-01-27T18:17:00.002-06:00

I definitely have the mid-winter blaas. It has been to cold to do much outside other than caring for the livestock. It is supposed to be a little warmer tomorrow. If it is I can at least make some firewood. Not exactly fun but at least I will get some exercise and fresh air.

With a little too much time on my hands I have been following the news more lately. The economic news is starting to worry me quite a bit. Even though I think Obama is going to try to turn things around I don't have much hope of his getting it done. I think things are too far out of whack and it's going to take years for this to straighten out. I also think gas prices are going to go back up at least as high as they were before.

I don't think hording is a good idea but I firmly believe people should be prepared. It always surprises me when I see video on the news of people rushing to the store two hours before the hurricane is going to hit. People need to start being more responsible for themselves and stop waiting for the government to take care of them. Every one should have enough food on hand to feed themselves for at least a month. Personally, it makes me nervous if we don't have a years worth on hand!

Well, enough doom and gloom. I am starting to plan this years gardens which is always an optimistic project. I am planning to do a small market garden again this year. I think more people will be looking for locally grown food but I expect them to be looking for bargains too. I will probably raise some free range chickens to sell also. Spring can't get here soon enough for me!!!!!

BRRRRRRRRRRR!

2009-01-15T18:43:00.004-06:00

Well, here in the upper mid west we are in the deep freeze. Our high today was 3 degrees and right now it is 7 below zero and dropping. The forecast is for 15 to 25 below in our area tonight.

Living in a small cabin can be challenging when every one is confined to the house due to weather like this. Add to this the fact that we are off grid and right now experiencing some problems with our batteries and it does not leave much for entertainment if you don't use your imagination.

Our first shot at amusing ourselves after our outside chores were done came from a picture I saw on the Internet. Frozen soap bubbles. You would think that a Wisconsin native would have thought of this long ago buy I never had. When it's 19 below zero as it was this morning,if you blow a soap bubble outside, they freeze before they hit the ground. It was definitely worth standing out in the cold for a little while to do it. I tried to get pics but it is hard to see the bubbles against the snow.It's suppose to be colder tomorrow morning so I will try getting some video if I can.

After that we had our son Dane, whom we home school, read to us. He is reading Little House in the Big Woods, so it seemed especially appropriate. We took a road trip this summer that took us past a cabin modeled after the one Laura Ingals grew up in. It's on the original site of their cabin. I posted a picture of it here. It is located near Peppin WI.

Ann spun some wool while Dane was reading and I did some whittling. It's amazing the things you have time to do if the television or game cube don't steal all your time.

Life on Battery Power

2009-01-09T18:59:00.002-06:00

Yikes! I hate the sound of the low power alarm on our inverter. I've been hearing it a lot lately. It's not surprising really considering the age of our batteries and how often I have ran them down well below 50 %. They are definitely due to be replaced but I want to get a better charging system first. We hope to add some solar this year but that will depend on price and availability.

We don't really use much power. A couple of fluorescent lights, the modem and computer, and a 12 volt water pump we use for our shower are about it. If Ann wants to use the vacuum cleaner or some small kitchen appliance for very long we fire up our generator. I'd like to have a lot more battery capacity but big batteries have big price tags.

I'm hoping to build a steam driven alternator that I have plans for but I don't have a heated shop built yet and it's not the kind of project you can work on while stamping your feet and rubbing your hands to stay warm. I guess I won't run out of projects for a while.

Woodpecker Home

2009-01-02T17:58:00.003-06:00

The big rectangular holes in this tree are probably from a pilated woodpecker. I hope so, they are spectacular, being almost as big as a crow! I haven't seen one in several years. They tend to be fairly shy and the few times I have seen them they were moving when I was still.

I spotted these holes while looking for likly trees to cut for fire wood. Although there would be a lot of wood in this tree I will leave it stand. If I'm lucky and it is a pilated's nest site I might get to see it next year. That would be worth a lot more to me than what ever fire wood I'd get from cutting it.

Some of the benifits you get from living as we do are easy to overlook. Having time to admire mother natures work is one of them.

2009 WHAT EVER

2008-12-29T17:25:00.004-06:00

It's tempting at this time of the year to get all wrapped up in what will be or what was. I thought about using that as my topic today but then I thought, Why? What is, is. What was, was. What will be, will be. LIVE IN THE PRESENT.

Life goes by fast enough when you pay attention to it. When you get wrapped up in worries about what if, it slides by without our even being aware of it. Life is short, enjoy it.

Tommorrow the sun will rise, greet it with joy in your heart. It is a new day, who knows what adventure it will bring?

Yule

2008-12-26T18:18:00.003-06:00

There is not a lot of room in our cabin so we get a tree that is only about 3 foot tall and put it on a table. It's always an adventure looking for a tree in the woods. Most people are used to tree farm trees which have been sheared every year. Wild trees are much more open and much more uneven. Charlie Brown trees are the norm rather than the exception.
We only covered about a 1/4 of a mile to find one this year. I don't know if that means we are more realistic in our expectations or if we got lucky. Some years it seemed like we put on 10 miles! Snowshoes would have been a good idea but for some reason we didn't wear them. Oh well, the snow was only a foot deep.
We like balsam because of the wonderful scent. After we had cut the tree it looked a lot thinner. A lot, lot, thinner. Not a problem, we just cut another thin tree and put them together! The second one was a white pine so we had a ball-pine or a pine-sum or some such thing. Anyway, it looked fine. The goats get our tree after we're done with it and they love them. They don't leave much but the trunk and biggest limbs and they take the bark off those. This spring I'm going to transplant some balsam to the edge of the field. Out in the open they grow much thicker even if you don't shear them.In 5or 6 years I won't have to look as hard to find a tree.

Ann is baking,Yum Yum!!

2008-12-23T19:19:00.011-06:00

Ann is shown kneading bread dough. She baked 3 loaves of bread and a bunch of buns for burgers. It won't take us long to go through those! Even though Ann bakes almost every week we sometimes run out of homemade bread and pick up a loaf at the store. What a poor excuse for bread that stuff is.

Ann adds lots of goodies like oatmeal, cracked wheat, flax seed, etc., to her bread. It really makes a hearty loaf and the whole grains seem to keep it moist. In case you couldn't tell, I'm a really,really, big fan of Ann's homemade bread.

Well, while Ann was baking ,our son Dane and I were cutting fire wood. It was below zero so we had to bundle up which makes it harder. Just moving in those extra clothes adds to the job and of course as soon as you start working you over heat and have to shed some of them.

I found several elms that were standing dead. While I hate finding trees that have been killed by Dutch Elm Disease they do make excellent fire wood. They seem to make it for 30 or 40 years and then it gets them. It really is a shame we have lost such a magnifecent tree.

Most of the firewood I cut is from blow outs or tree that have died for some reason or that have been damaged badly by ice storms or wind. I always try to cut so that I improve my wood lot and don't do too much damage. I leave old half rotten snags for the woodpeckers and build brush piles to help provide cover for song birds. I do every thing I can to protect our sugar maples as we love making and using maple syrup.

Busy Time of Year

2008-12-20T18:10:00.001-06:00

This year for Yule my wife had a short wish list, only two items. I was lucky because I've
managed to get them both done. The first wish was for me to get windows installed on the east end of our cabin. That was easy enough except for one little detail. I had to build them first.
Building a fixed glass window is not really very difficult. It's merely a shallow box,the jamb, with another shallower box fastened inside of it, the exterior stop. You apply a strip of self adhesive foam tape to the stop and then set your glass onto the foam. Now make another box, the interior stop, and nail that in against the glass. You then run a bead of silicon caulk against the exterior stop/glass joint and you have your basic window. Now apply what ever sort of exterior trim you want and you're ready to cut a hole in the wall. Of course I had to do it 4 times,but I was set up for it so it was still fairly quick.
Her other wish was for a real floor in the cabin. Not a unreasonable request since we have been living on a dirt floor covered with plastic that's covered with Masonite that's covered with carpet. That was a little bigger project but not too bad. I basically just layed in 2x4's from side to side for joist. A 2x4 would be awful light so I have blocking under them every 4 feet. Then I nailed 3/4 inch chip board on them. I used cheap self stick tile for a finish. As of this post I've got both wishes fulfilled so I'm a happy man since my wife is satisfied with the results.

2008-12-16T18:18:00.000-06:00

Here's a pic of one of Ann's spinning wheels. We formerly had a flock of Shetland Sheep but had to give them up when we moved. Now we are starting to build up a new spinning flock for Ann. So far we have one Suri Alpaca and one Shetland Sheep wether. This flock is going to be mostly neutured males so that it does't grow as fast as the last flock which ended up numbering over 60. Way beyond hobby flock!

Today Ann was carding some wool. She dyed it pink using Koolade! This year we will be adding dye plants to our garden . We have a nice loom but neither of us has learned to weave yet. Hopefully one of us will have time to do that one of these days.Meanwhile,we have quite a pile of wool left to wash,card and spin from that former flock.

5 below zero{F.} and dropping

2008-12-15T21:11:00.000-06:00

We are in the first real cold spell of the season, Our high here today was 3 degrees above zero and we had strong winds with it giving wind chills of 15 to 20 below. Yesterday we had 37 and rain! Now the ground has a lovely layer of ice under a thin coat of new snow,can you say ,"ahgggggggggggggg! @#$$$##@!!!!!! expletive deletive ice". I did. My butt hurts.

2008-12-12T18:29:00.000-06:00

Goldfinch in their winter plumage.

The only bird seed I bother buying is sunflower seed as it seems to be what most of the birds eat. This year it is so exspensive I wasn't going to feed the birds but my wife brought a bag home the other day so I guess we are going to feed them. I'm glad she did because I enjoy watching the birds at the feeders. The red squirrels haven't found them yet but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.Next year we are going to try to raise enough sunflowers that we won't have to buy seed for the birds.

2008-12-11T20:27:00.000-06:00

This is a old rail right of way from logging days. It was abandoned in the 60's. Most of this section, which was built on corduroy, is sinking back into the swamp. We had hoped to use it for our access road but now we're not too sure. It would take about 200 yards of fill dirt to get it back above water level and then it would still need to be ditched. Guess we'll keep walking for now.

We like to snowshoe so it does make a great trail most of the winter. We have a 1/4 mile of it on our property. We try to make a mile or so of packed down trail every year. It's great exersise and keeps us in shape over the winter. Of course,we have plenty of other sources of exersise living the way we do. For one thing we heat with wood and you get a good workout making firewood. We also raise most of our food including livestock so there is really no lake of exersise around here!

2008-12-11T20:08:00.001-06:00

Here's the road into our cabin. I use the word road figuratively.It's really just an old logging trail and is only usable with a 4x4 vehicle. We usually just walk in and out. It's a little under 1/4 mile each way. We do have a truck that can get in and out but we try to only use it for heavy stuff.

In the winter we haul in things with a sled and in summer and fall we use a wagon. Spring is a problem because parts are underwater if it's a wet spring. The best part about it is that when someone comes to visit, you know they really wanted to see you!