Pulling the ripcord. Major life change

Very cool. Keep it coming. 

In reply to ShawnG :

Are you able to sell the garlic scapes? They seem to be sold at the local farmer's market.

Yes, you need to pull the scapes for the bulbs to form properly. 

We can sell them as well  I've eaten them before but was never a big fan. I need to find some decent recipes that use them. 

Maybe include a recipe when we sell them to help motivate sales.

In reply to ShawnG :

I've seen them and never tried them.

Got a lot done today.

I had to clean quail cages this morning. We have Coturnix quail, sometimes called Japanese quail. We're going to try them for meat and eggs since they seem like less of a pain than chickens and we've kept quail before (Button quail).

This is a rooster:

This is a hen:

The rooster doesn't have the spots on the chest that the hens have.

Here they are in their cages, we're just keeping six for now to see how they fare over the winters here. I'll be installing heated waterers for them and some straw for them to tunnel in for the winter.

The hens will lay an egg a day all if you give them 16 hours of daylight with supplemented lighting, otherwise they will be seasonal and stop laying in the fall.

It takes about three quail eggs to equal one chicken egg but quail eggs don't seem to bother people who are allergic to chicken eggs. Just use them like chicken eggs.

For meat, I like chicken but my wife is a vegetarian. Roasting one quail for dinner will be just about right for one person.

They're in some surplus ferret cages right now, two hens to one rooster. If all goes well over winter, I will be building them larger accommodations in the spring.

You can't free range quail. Well, you can but only once. The domestic ones like these have lost most of their survival and breeding instinct, most of the time they won't sit on their eggs to hatch them, they just leave them wherever so leaving them to go outside means an Easter egg hunt every day. We will need an incubator to hatch any babies if we decide to have more quail.

We always have a dozen chickens, and I did not think there was an easier thing to farm than a few chickens. 5 minutes in the morning 5 minutes at night and fresh sawdust every second Saturday.

It was hay day after that. We're getting our winter supply of hay in and we put our new tractor to work.

The wife unit is running the tractor.

This is a bale spear:

It lets us do this:

This is half of what we have coming. The horses will eat more in the winter to keep themselves warm, we need about 20 bales to get us through the winter.

This is our indoor riding arena which is serving as a barn until we can get some outdoor shelters and paddocks built.

This was a horse property many years ago but the previous owners just let the place fall apart so we have to repair or replace all of the perimeter fences and paddocks. Everything is rotting and falling apart.

Lots of work to do come springtime.

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

We always have a dozen chickens, and I did not think there was an easier thing to farm than a few chickens. 5 minutes in the morning 5 minutes at night and fresh sawdust every second Saturday.

We're considering chickens. The wife unit doesn't like chickens.

Re: garlic scapes, there was a lady selling pickled garlic scapes for $10 per 1/2 quart mason jar at the local farmer's market yesterday,

I've never heard of Horses eating the round bales due to mold issues.   It was always square bales.

No mold issus, just cheaper and more convenient.

I'm back from a week on the coast, dealing with my father's estate. Got the ball rolling on stuff anyway.

We're thinking of buying a backhoe attachment for the tractor since I have water lines to install in the spring.

I scored several free 7' tall triple pane windows for a greenhouse project yesterday! woo!

In reply to ShawnG :

I think the back hoe is a great idea. It can be used to mix the muck pile, and if the neighbours don't have one cash or barter points. Also let's face it who doesn't want to play with a back hoe.

Will you be growing your own hay there?

In reply to Rons :

Better playing with a back hoe than a side hoe

We -could- grow our own hay but that requires cultivation, seeding, irrigation, cutting and baling. The cost of that equipment far outweighs what I could save from buying the hay.

Having the horses on pasture for the summer means we only need to feed in the winter. 

Example, to plow that rock hard ground and get it ready for cultivation would require a bigger tractor.  I have an old 12', 16 shank chisel plow sitting in the back field that could be put back into service. The old timers tell me to figure on 10hp per shank. That works out to a 160hp tractor. My Kubota is a 49hp tractor.

Even something small enough to work behind my current tractor wouldn't be worth it because of the fuel burn doing twice as much work with a small tractor. Also my time would be burnt up cutting hay to feed the wife's horse rather than making money.

I'm better off just managing what I have at the moment. Maybe one day down the road we will cultivate and use more land but right now I'm further ahead to rent it to the neighbor. Even if I didn't do anything with it, I would have to keep it mowed and fenced. Right now I have a guy paying me to maintain 30 acres of my land and I just have to deal with the 14 that are left.

In reply to Rons :

I'm sure I'll find a ton of uses for it.

I called a friend of mine who's a machine operator and picked his brain. The best advice he had was: "You'll always be able to use the backhoe, you might not always be able to pay someone to do the job for you".

I think we're buying it.

First egg from our quail the other day:

I placed the order for our backhoe attachment this morning, it should be here in April.

We received the last of our round bales yesterday, they're all in the arena. We've got plenty of feed for the winter.

We've been getting two eggs a day from our four quail hens, they seem happy with the arrangement.

Looks like I was too late getting our cover crops in because the frost has arrived and killed what little had grown. As an alternative, I've ordered some straw round bales and I will be mulching the garden with that for the winter. It will also be winter bedding for the horses and the quail.

Talking with the locals, apparently I'm getting paid too little for the land I'm renting out. I'm going to do a little research on what is a reasonable amount and then have a conversation with the neighbor who is renting. When I did my research initially, what was being paid was what is accepted for bare land but apparently I should be getting a percentage of the income from it as well. I'm fine with where we're at right now but I'll re-negotiate next season.

Construction on our propagation room has started. We had a sparky come out and replace the very sketchy, not-a-proper-panel in the outbuilding we're using, he was really professional and did a great job.

We're too far north for a greenhouse to work properly in the winter. The sun is too low for a glazed roof to be of any real benefit. We have a 20 x 14 garage with a wall that faces due south. The sun currently reaches all the way to the back wall and when winter hits it will be even lower. We're going to insulate the building and glaze the south and east wall, this will allow us to get a couple months head-start on the transplants that will need to go out in the garden so they will be ready as soon as the ground can support them.

In the summer, the roof will block the direct sun and keep the building from overheating. We're dividing the building in half along it's length to make a cold storage room on the other side. This will give us a place to store the picked veggies before they go to market. There will be a small room to wash and pack as well.

Plants stop growing once they receive less than 10 hours of daylight so if we want to grow all year long, I'll have to supplement the lighting as well.

The garage is very old but still pretty solid. We love the look of it and don't want to ruin it so the plan is to build a new structure inside the old one and tie them together to make everything solid. This will give us nice thick walls too for plenty of insulation.

I'll get some pics up in a bit.

This is the old garage that will be our propagation house, wash / pack shed and cooler.

This is the south facing wall, the old and busted sliding door will be removed and the whole wall will be glazed floor to ceiling.

This is what I'm working with. P/O was going to put a hot tub in here. It has water, power and a drain that runs down to our pond. I dug down and removed the home-made trap that he installed in the line. It was a loop of 3" abs with no vent. If you poured water down, it just backed up and overflowed. Now that it's straight, I can run a garden hose for half an hour and everything flows nice down to our pond. Just don't put anything down it that you wouldn't pour on the garden. The waste water is just going to be from washing vegetables.

The sill plate is bolted to the concrete foundation and it's all reasonably solid. We put down a vapour barrier over the dirt floor, put a ledger board on the foundation, blocked and screwed it to the studs (24 inch centers) and hung the floor joists from it. Everything is pretty solid now.

Had a local electrician come out and put in a new panel for us, the old one was a sub-panel that someone used as a main panel so no master shutoff. This makes me feel much better.

Next up, insulate between the joists and put the subfloor down.

Plumbing in, insulation in the floor is about half done.

More to do tomorrow.

Found the hardware store in the next town over. Set your watch back 40 years:

I think I'm in love.

This is one of my favorite active threads. I love what you are doing there. The concept of pulling the cord and doing what you are doing is very very appealing. I appreciate you sharing it. 

Bowman Brothers.  Kee-rist, that bolt bin is at least 45 years old.

In reply to NY Nick :

Thanks very much man!

I took a break today and sat there looking out the door, wondering if I'd completely lost my mind doing this.

20 years ago if you told me this is where I would be and what I would be doing, I'd have told you that you're crazy.

For the first time in a long time, I'm really happy.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

It's at the Swap N Shop in Viscount if you want to check it out.

ShawnG said:

In reply to NY Nick :

time, I'm really happy.

You haven't had a month of -30 to test that happiness yet.