Smart chickens.

Not only have they managed to survive outside for two months (shattering the previous record by...two months), but our chickens suddenly learned to fly... ...and they've invited, albeit cautiously, some new friends over to play in their sandbox.Now if they would just make us some eggs!

The new barn gets an old floor.

I had intended to mill the wood flooring from our salvaged barn timbers, but that was before I found the deal-of-the-century at a local estate sale. I lucked into some wide plank paneling that had been drying in an old-timer's shed for 30 years. These were all 'character' boards, complete with the knots, staining and wormholes that tell a much more interesting story than flawless premium lumber. They look right at home in the rustic barn. By installing them upside down, the square edges were up, and it looks just like regular flooring. I was able to get enough to do the whole loft of the barn for about 25 cents per square foot! After two days of planing and shimming to get the timber floor joists leveled, I put down 3/4" plywood subfloor using screws and Mean Green Adhesive, followed by a soundbarrier layer of Homasote 440, then finally the plank flooring. The board widths varied from 6" to 11", so I alternated each row between narrow and wide boards. I toenailed them with a finishing nailer just to hold them in place for now. Here is the rough product:After the whole floor was down, I went back and face-screwed through all the boards and into the joists. Then, plugged the counterbored screwholes with 1/2" mahogany plugs. Finally, rented a floor sander to clean and smooth out the surface, then applied 3 coats of shellac (diluted 2:1 with denatured alcohol). Here is the finished product: And a close-up of the plugged holes. The darker mahogany is a nice contrast to the lighter pine boards:

Goodbye greenhouse.

We had a greenhouse along the edge of our field. Built a half-century ago, it started out as an impressive structure with glass walls and a nice barrel stove inside. At some point the glass was replaced with fiberglass panels, which eventually weakened and started caving in. Had I intervened 7 years ago when I bought the farm, it might've been salvageable. But I was more interested in working on the house back then (heat, running water and a dry roof all seemed like higher priorities at the time). ...So we emptied it out and tore it down, saving whatever lumber was still solid. All that remains is the foundation and the old barrel stove, still ready for business. I put the lumber scraps to work immediately, framing in a shelter for our rainwater tanks. Here's a closeup of the plumbing. The garden hose at the bottom is the where the water feeds into the containers from the rain barrels around the barn. The rest of the system is plumbed with 2" plastic pipe, and attached to the tanks with Fernco flexible couplings. I covered it with leftover siding from the barn, and some salvaged metal roofing (the entire roof is actually a separate, removable framework so I can access the tanks from the top if necessary). The wood was all treated with Lifetime Wood Treatment, a new product we are trying around the farm.

Hot sun and cool ideas at the MREA fair

Lisa and I attended the Midwest Renewable Energy Association Fair in Custer Wisconsin this past weekend. This is an annual event that began 20 years ago for the hardcore solar power enthusiasts, but has since diversified into "all things sustainable." With hundreds of workshops and exhibitors (not to mention AWESOME food and live music venues), there is definitely something for everyone here. We took in all three days, learning about everything from medicinal herbs to straw bale construction to bio diesel engine conversions...lots of ideas to keep us busy back at Green Gate! Here are a few pics. Note the solar panels and wind towers in the background. Here is the alternative fuel/vehicle area. They had a variety of rigs converted to electric, veggie oil, bio diesel, etc.

I, of course, spent a lot of time in the natural construction area, where they were demonstrating straw bale, cord wood, straw-clay, earth block, and whole tree methods...

...Our next guest house is already taking shape in my mind.

Back inside the barn.

The last task prior to the upper floor installation was to frame off the stairwell. For this I installed a 4X10 header, supported by a post on one end and the ledger/joist at the other. I also added a center post, which seemed more aesthetically pleasing and will provide a sturdy attachment point for the future stair railing. The floor joists were notched and set into the mortised header. I used a housed mortise where the header met the post for additional strength. It also looks cool! A pair of angle iron pieces (dug out of a friend's pile of scrap iron) and some huge bolts connect the header to the wall- the only mechanical fasteners used in the timber joinery. finally, ready to put in a floor...

Project no-mow.

I do not like mowing the lawn. Ours is actually more of a weed and dandelion patch than it is grass, and requires considerably more care and attention than either of us want to give. And this is unfortunate, because we have quite a lot of it. So in conjunction with our gardening effort, we are aiming to get rid of as much of the lawn as possible- what we don't turn into vegetable and flower gardens will eventually get converted to no-mow turf or wildflowers... and yes, this will definitely be a long term project. We started last week by renting a "sod cutter" from our local hardware store. This machine quickly became my new best friend, and by the end of one afternoon a big chunk of the yard had evaporated. After putting down some fresh soil, Lisa got to work planting all the vegetables that have been growing in our house for the past 2 months. In this photo, she is working on squash, zucchini, cukes, and THIRTY SIX tomato plants (this is not a typo, the girl likes her 'maters). Our sod removal project continued up to and around the old pump house foundation. On this end of the new garden space, I put in raised beds (made from cedar slabs given to us by our local sawyer friend) and surrounded them with wood chip mulch. Then we planted them with every vegetable we could think of, and a few we've never heard of (anyone tried claytonia?).Yum.

And the Deer Will Play...

What... ...the garden is finished?

Wahoo!

Dinnertime!!!

Let it rain.

With showers in the forecast, I installed the remainder of the rainwater collection system so we could see it in action. As I worked on this project last summer, I was stuck with the dilemma of how to divert the snow melt away from the rain barrels during the winter months (there are several diverters on the market, but they are expensive and none of them were compatible with my design or our over sized classic round downspouts). But while browsing at Menards recently, I found some flexible downspout adapters and knew they would do the trick. They were only $7 each, so I got 4 of them and went to work. First, I dug a trench along the foundation wall and buried a section of 3" DWV pipe with inlet stub outs at each rain barrel location. The outlet of this pipe terminated at grade (in the forefront of the photo below) and was covered with a cap that I drilled several small holes in. Then I installed the Galvalume gutter downspouts to the walls of the barn, terminating each one a foot or so above the height of the rain barrel. A white flexible downspout adapter was then attached to each gutter downspout and bent in the direction of the rain barrel inlet. In the Fall, I can simply extend the flexible adapter down to the in-ground drainpipe stub out to divert the snow melt around the rain barrel and away from the barn foundation. The next photo shows the two collection barrels on the south side. Holes were tapped on the bottom of each and fitted with 2" irrigation pipe and shutoff valves. Each barrel is plumbed in series to a common irrigation pipe that travels around the perimeter of the building (you can see the black pipe on the ground between the two barrels, which will eventually be covered with wood chip mulch). Eventually this "trunk" line will extend about 100 feet towards our vegetable garden and connect with larger capacity storage tanks, but I cannot complete that until we finish some site excavation this summer. So just to get the system up and running, I setup the storage tanks nearby and connected them to the rain barrels with an ordinary garden hose. This was done by tapping a hose bib into the bottom of one of the rain barrels and running a garden hose from it... ...to the storage tanks about 20 feet away, as shown below. The garden hose was adapted back to the 2" irrigation pipe fittings which connect the two large storage tanks to one another. These storage tanks are 250 gallons each, so together with the four collector barrels we have about 700 gallons of capacity. There is room on the stand for a third tank in case we want more capacity. The vertical section of pipe to the right of the barrel is the overflow for the entire system- when the water level reaches max capacity, it can spill out of the vertical pipe and drain back into the ground. It had already rained for awhile when this photo was taken, and you can see the water level rising (it had collected 200 gallons in a short time). Here is the south view of the system. There are two more rain barrels on the north side of the barn, connected to these via the 2" irrigation pipe. Since I installed all of the rain barrels and the storage tanks at the same elevation, the entire system will fill and discharge at the same rate, using gravity. No well, no pump, no electricity required- just rainfall and gravity! When building the gardens last summer, I installed a branch line that tee'd off the irrigation pipe with a stub out terminating inside each raised bed garden. With the system now ready for water, I clamped hose bibs to each stub out and laid down a short length of soaker hose. Our gardens can be watered anytime with a just twist of the hand valve :) I will still need to cover the large storage tanks to protect them from sunlight (which can allow algae growth), but for now we can see the system works. The rain barrels are opaque, so they will not need to be covered. Since I often see single 55 gallon rain barrels advertised for over $100 each, I am happy to say our entire system only cost about $400, which includes all 6 of the recycled tanks and barrels (bought off Craigslist), and all the pipe fittings, clamps, valves and paint. For another $50, we can add another large storage tank and have about 1000 gallons of total capacity. I built this system around the irrigation pipe because I had most of what I needed lying in the field from the previous owners. But the fittings, clamps and valves for this large pipe got to be very expensive and I could've simplified the system and reduced the price by about 1/3 by designing it differently...ahhh, the cost of R&D!

Our Website

Our website is up and running. We are very excited! It was designed by Jennifer Gordon of Idun Design. She is excellent to work with, very creative. It's official! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Moving Day.

Back in 2003, my first attempt at chicken-rearing was a dismal failure. After raising the little chicks inside the house, I moved them out to one of the barns where I had fashioned a nice little coop for them with some 2x4s and chicken wire. The chickens looked content in their new home, until a weasel got in a few hours later. The death toll included all the chickens and the weasel, and I suddenly became a Norwegian bachelor farmer with no farm animals. Trust me, dead chickens are not much fun. Hoping to increase their life expectancy this time, I made the chickens a new and improved portable coop. They get a sheltered area up above for roosting and laying, and a screened-in space on the ground where they can pick for food all day long. It's not as good as free-ranging, but hopefully it will keep them alive beyond our previous record of 3 hours! Here are the photos from moving day. The side panels are removable so we can clean the roosting area. The nesting boxes on either end are accessible via hinged doors. I also made a little ramp that can be raised and lowered from the outside via a rope and pulley system...pretty slick, and I built the whole contraption using reclaimed barn boards from last weeks deconstruction project. Getting the lay of the land. Here's Lisa teaching them what a door is all about... But you know how kids are- they insisted on doing it "their way": Finally...they figured it out on their own.

More unbuilding happens

Our five-year plan includes deconstructing one structure each year- We took apart the big barn in '07, the pumphouse last summer, so 2009 called for the other barn to be put to rest. With the help of family and friends, we dismantled the whole building in a refreshingly quick 3 days...if only all my projects could go this well.

So here's how it looked just before the prybars and sledgehammers came out:

Day 1- removing shingles (there were 3 layers) and roof boards:

By the end of day 2, only the brittle skeleton remained...

...and we were happy about that:

Day 3 involved knocking down the walls and pulling apart the timbers, saving what we could for later use:

In the end, we're left with a crumbly foundation and a much improved view of the new barn:

Growth happens.

With a little heat and alot of light, our seeds sprouted and took right off. After a week, we were transplanting them into larger pots. Note the wire cover on the chicken box- the little girls learned how to fly on day #2, and had to be restrained! When you remove the chicken wire, they do this:

They love to fly up to the ledge and see what's outside, but none have gotten up the nerve to leave home just yet.

Our cucumber plants on the heat mat, growing at about the same rate as the chickens.

Earth Day, every day.

After several years of dabbling with the simpler life (actually, being whipped and beaten by it), Lisa and I decided to put forth a more serious effort at growing our own food this season. Purely by coincidence, we kicked off our "keepin' it local" project on Earth Day by picking up our first batch of chicks. We got six little peepers, half of them Brown Leghorns and the other half Gold Star Browns. The photo below was taken at naptime...they often segregate, but can also play nice when they are all awake. We also started a variety of seeds for our expanded garden. I built a stand for the seed trays, complete with grow lights (which we found out in the barn) and heated pan underneath. The heat lamp for the chicks also seems to be keeping the seed trays warmer too. We have all this setup in our office/guest bedroom, which is now the warmest room in the house and smells like pine shavings...happy Earth Day!