What did you do in the garden today?

[TJAnonymous]

Came to pick out an onion for dinner from my storage bin and see I have some sprouts... Think I should plant them?

 

[WthrLady]

Managed a rip roaring thunderstorm last night and some small hail. .64 inches is a drop in the bucket to what we need, but I'll take it. I have some spectacular lightning shots.

 

[TJAnonymous]

Managed a rip roaring thunderstorm last night and some small hail. .64 inches is a drop in the bucket to what we need, but I'll take it. I have some spectacular lightning shots.

We got FAR MORE in our 15 minute downpour than I originally thought...

 

[chickengr]

If it was a coon that was eating berries and woodsy stuff, contrary to what people want to say, they ARE good to eat ! If you cook them right they are very tasty. If it's a trash panda now, you'll want to do what you did and bury it.

electric fence - you don't need a massive fence, just a hot wire, and basically put some poles into the ground, put some insulators on it and pull the wire pole to pole giving a wrap around each insulator to hold it in place, run it around ground by windows or doors or where it can possibly get in. it touches wire, is standing on ground and gets zinged. Wiith standard house current / the simplest method of that will only get you 120 volt, which won't do much with a bear. Get a pro shocking unit or up the voltage but DO REMEMBER if you make it lethal to a bear, it's lethal to YOU as well.

egg prices, oh do NOT get me started. I get butter and stuff in mass quantities,like I used to buy it 100 lbs or 48 lbs at a time and get a huge deal on it. I retired last july 2021 from my cough cough.. job, and was selling butter at work for like $1.48 Lb, which is basically what I got it for. I just seen butter in the store today it was over $5 a pound I almost choked. Bacon I was getting for like 48 dollars for a 15 lb case.... now it's like 6 dollars a pound in the store. I was saying to myself, jesus Aaron WTF you going to do with 50 lbs of butter, as I was putting it into the freezer, and shoving it between the 115 lbs of bacon I had stashed in there !! You will have butter for YEARS you stupid hoarding hillbilly !! I shuffled through that freezer today re arranging stuff to make room for the shelves and shelves of stuff I am freeze drying, it's a prep stage and thinking, wow there must be 1000 dollars of food in this thing now and it's nothing special. good lord...

Eggs, I give a LOT away, I get 4 a day, roughly, eat maybe 2 a day so they add up, I give them to the neighbors, to the mailman, my doctor, whomever i interact with, eggs and my coffee I roast. I seen eggs for 4 dollars a dozen, when they used to be 10 cents an egg. yah, and you all laughed when I told ya I give the girls a kiss at night time,.. do the math, that kiss was worth thousands !!!

if I had the room Id get a cow, and would love a goat, for the milk but man oh man, i get mad when the chickens get into stuff.. a goat, Id be burning the neighborhood down chasing after it cursin so NO goats !!


on a more serious note though, I am really thinking now, putting out the money i should have 3 years ago and get a REAL pen / coop built and raise them for meat. just keep maybe 10 or 15 rotating and it'd be a good thing. With half an acre of land, I honestly think they'd do ok for the most part free ranging, it would at least cut down a LOT on the feed bill till I cut them. still doing research on this one.

Aaron

red rangers are tastier than white meat chickens.

have you ever considered raising rabbits for meat? they breed like mice, grow fast and provide huge amount of manure.

 

[TJAnonymous]

I read tonight that some people in Germany are scouring the countryside looking for horse poop to burn for heat...

I know we have some European BYC'ers on this board from time to time. Haven't seen or heard from @Phaedra Geiermann in a while. Hoping she and her family are OK...

Anyway, I wanted to throw out an option to anyone interested. A couple of years ago I made burn blocks with crushed dead leaves and shredded paper. I think there's some YouTube videos on it somewhere but essentially you create a slurry with dead leaves and shredded paper. Pour it into a mold, squeeze out water, and let it dry. When the water is removed you have a solid block that burns really well. You can also add wood chips or sawdust if you have it. I know wood is at a premium there right now which is why I suggested using the leaves to make the blocks.

 

[Elyrian1]

WOW! Do tell! Will you use it or let it stay deserty? A combination of both? I'd love more land and if we ever came into a good bit of land it would likely be left at least partially wild.

Bit of a combo. We like privacy so we're discussing leaving a 20-30 foot mesquite border all around it and carving out the middle. It's mesquite scrubland right now. We drove out and looked at it this evening. No neighbors visible. Mesquite is a nitrogen fixing tree (and apparently not native to this region, it came from Mexico with cattle back in the day) so if we go in there and start chopping, that soil will get a massive nitrogen infusion. It's also a heavy water drinker, so it'd be good to clear a lot of it. We could stack what was big enough for firewood, and then chip the rest. The center we want to carve out we would "green." Check out youtube for fun videos of other people greening the desert.

We would also be looking at building an earthship, because they are essentially perfect for this climate and the abysmal 14" of rain we get each year. Where we live now is quite trashy. Literally trash everywhere. Grocery bags, trash bags, old tires, cans, bottles, you name it, you'll see it on the side of the road, in people's yards, stuck in mesquite trees everywhere. When we drove out to the property... almost nothing. A couple of crunched water bottles in the ditch out front, evidence that a semi pulled over a few days before, but that's pretty much it. There were also no well pumpjacks within sight, which bodes well for water quality.

And best of all... no permits needed. No restrictions. No nothing. At most we'll need a septic permit, but that's it. We're looking to get the ball rolling, start making an offer, wait for counteroffer, on and on. We'll see what happens. If it falls through, it wasn't meant to happen, as so many other things in our lives have happened, lol. But we're willing to give it a try, and if it works out, great.

It is definitely out in the boonies though. We'll need to see about setting up satellite internet, maybe starlink, and we'll need to plan on coming back to live in town if/when we are getting ready to have another kid because there's definitely no chance a midwife would get there in time. Lol!

 

[jerryse]

Fire hazard here today and tomorrow . Dry air and wind . Humidity predicted to be in the 20's . Leaves are falling and I will soon have to start mulching the garden with them . I noticed a seedling maple worth moving . I have silver maple and Autumn blaze maples . This seedling has silver characteristics but fall color . So I think I will move it . Likely a hybrid between the 2 types of maple . Maybe I can get pictures .

 

[TJAnonymous]

Fire hazard here today and tomorrow . Dry air and wind . Humidity predicted to be in the 20's . Leaves are falling and I will soon have to start mulching the garden with them . I noticed a seedling maple worth moving . I have silver maple and Autumn blaze maples . This seedling has silver characteristics but fall color . So I think I will move it . Likely a hybrid between the 2 types of maple . Maybe I can get pictures .

I just received an alert for extreme fire hazard which is expected to last through at least next week. Wow... That's incredible since it rained yesterday and supposed to rain a little more this weekend.

We need a week of sustainable rainfall... Not in the cards though... Yet they are predicting 32 degree temps early next week. It's just mind boggling to me.

 

[WthrLady]

Also extreme fire weather here, but it's been that way for a week, and will be for a few more days, and honestly, it's that time of year. Don't like it, but it is.

Cropland is bone dry, and the harvesters spark easily.
Rain does nothing for dry vegitation.

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

I just received an alert for extreme fire hazard which is expected to last through at least next week. Wow... That's incredible since it rained yesterday and supposed to rain a little more this weekend.

We need a week of sustainable rainfall... Not in the cards though... Yet they are predicting 32 degree temps early next week. It's just mind boggling to me.

Yep we just got one here too!