December 26th, 2019 Boxing Day

A little something every day...

Today I got Ann's kitchen cabinet in. A gigantic toolbox on wheels which has a wooden top to add counterspace as needed, and padded drawers. It holds a ton and can be repurposed after we are done roughing it and move into the house.

And I got the curtains up. All three windows for $12.99 and the rods.

It's getting more homelike every day.

December 22, 2017 Christmas Carpet at Camp Creekside

Having exhausted all possibilities for flooring we finally found the right stuff.

The right stuff had to be the cheapest thing that would work. This is the philosophy behind builing the Cabin, a teepee on wheels, made just good enough to become a dog kennel when we are through with it. I had always envisioned carpet, but always thought traditionally and this included padding, seams, tack strip, etc . . ..  The idea is to always keep to the least expensive option and carpet was somewhat expensive even if on clearance.

We found a light automotive carpet for about twenty cents a square foot.  Bought a little spray glue and thin seaming tape and we were all in for under a hundred dollars. 

Done in three hours.

Not fancy, but plenty respectable.

The view of the kitchen area.
I even carpeted the bathroom.

There wasn't much space for noise echo inside the Cabin.
Now there is none.

December 20th, 2017 Christmas at Camp Creekside

December 19, 2017 The Cabin at Camp Creekside

The front door and one of the end uses for the plastic pallets I wrote about three weeks ago.
Sometime soon I shall build real stairs.

It might not look all that much, and it isn't, but this is a big deal for us and took all of ten months to build. Then came the problem of moving it to Camp Creekside without destroying it or getting a ticket for not having a registered trailer or permit to move it on the public highways. But this whole project was a crap shoot from the start. Sometimes we win.

This is the view from the South-eastern corner of MacGregor's Garden

MacGregor's Garden plot after I tilled it last night.
You can't see it, but the day was very rainy and so to step out
onto the garden would be to sink in about a foot of fluffy mud.

The view of the back side.
We already have four gallons of barn red paint.
Waiting for a dry day and the time to paint it.

This is the kitchen.
We have a huge rolling tool chest to put under the counter.
A propane stove and refrigerator are on the way.

The living space doubles as the bed space at first.
The television looking thing is a false fireplace with a heater.
It is cozy and dry. All we wanted.

This is the shower stall.
A pedestal sink will go under the medicine cabinet.

December 15, 2017 The Turning Point

Yesterday we successfully delivered the Tiny Home Cabin to our Farm.

This is a significant event because it took nearly a full year to complete the New Year's Resolutions of 2016 and 2017: Get on the Farm. Also significant because the open question was: Will  the hopelessly under built trailer, we made from scratch, and which was planned in my head as I went along, make it to the Farm by freeway without blowing up, blowing over, or some other means of not making it to the Farm. It did.

And one other big thing to report: The Farm is now a real farm because today I tilled the soil in MacGregor's Garden.  We made it and our New Years Resolution can finally change. But first . . .

Here's the story so far. I'll try to be brief. . . 

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Back in 2013 Ann and I went to Las Vegas to get re-married. Look  here for the entire story, but the conclusion of the tale was that we decide to open a wedding venue that looks a lot like a farm. We would need money to buy the land, and a whole load of luck, and God's good graces.

We had no money so our plan was to: get some money by raising hounds, use the money (along with the equity in our house) to get the land, build a farm, build a wedding venue, and live happily ever after. The land came two years earlier than we thought it might. If you click here you can find out that in securing the land we did everything right, even though the land itself was too small and there was no house on it. Click here and you will find out how we bought the Farm, in January of 2015, and made the money we needed. (Not one penny more than was needed.) The short answer is that we got the land even before we had dogs to sell. Somehow it worked.

In 2016 the dogs began to produce for us (just slightly after I started keeping this Web-Log). This link will tell you more than you might want to know about the milestones we reached in 2015. The pups sold all too easily because we planned everything carefully and things broke our way. I won't give you a result in dollars, but we sunk every penny into the land once we got legal claim to it and the history of the place is this very Blog. The dogs have done well and we love them.

Our next challenge came at the mid-point of 2016 because it became clear that we would not be able to access the equity in our home without first selling it. The plan morphed into moving ourselves to the farm (living in a Tee-pee if necessary) and sell our house to finance the Farmhouse build-up. After a long search of possible solutions, to the problem of cheap temporary housing, we settled on a plan to build a tiny home. Click here and read the entire thing, but you already know enough about it.
Once deciding on building a tiny home the new project began immediately, and finished today.

So you have the jhist of the progress we made so far and need read no further. But you might not know the plan. Click here and see what we wish to build.

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End of story.

We made it this far and it feels like everything we will do from this point onward ought to be easier than the previous efforts were. We have a house, even if temporary. We have the land, even if . . . And we have the Farm, even if we are calling it Camp Creekside today. We'll change the name to Creekside Farm once we have a crop.

November 30, 2017 Continued Progress

As November winds down and December begins, we are rapidly getting ready to move the tiny home Cabin to Camp Creekside and things are getting done daily.

We were able to get a 275 gallon "IBC tote (a re-purposed industrial liquids carrier) for $60.00 (about half price). This tank will become our black water tank, handling toilet waste. The tank will need some improvements: an intake port for the waste, a paint job so that we don't have to look at the waste, and a vent to dissipate water vapor out of smell range and extend the time between pumpings. But all of this is relatively easy. We will need to have the tank drained about every two-hundred flushes so at first we won't need much. After we move there full time we will have to have it pumped out about every two months.

I am nearly through with the interior stuff. I will get this all done this weekend and finish the plumbing as well. Also, the cables to plug the cabin into the power panel should be here tomorrow or Saturday. We are well on our way to having a cabin at Camp Creekside.

Then real stuff can happen.

November 26, 2017 A Thanksgiving Weekend We Are Thankful For

The long weekend might have given us time to finish the Tiny Home Cabin, but we got busy acquiring things we needed and doing things that needed done, instead of nailing things that need nailing.

• On Thursday we got the $499 rolling toolbox (for $154) to use in our Cabin's Kitchen.
• We found and retrieved the free Bamboo from Kailash Eco-Village on Friday.
• Did the Exterior Christmas lighting at our home and at Camp Creekside on Saturday.
• On Sunday (today) we found a very nice (very cheap) propane range for our Cabin.

A good weekend to be sure, saved a theoretical $600, but we did do a lot of driving.

November 28, 2017 Camp Creekside Christmas

Like so many things we have done with the Farm property, the Christmas tree lighting was a compromise.

We intended to light the big Doug Fir tree "Doug" this year with the 50000 twinkle lights I bought last year on closeout at Home Depot. The tree is at least sixty feet high, so you would be able to see it from a great distance away. We had a bucket lift rented a few days ago. But things just didn't line up. So we compromised and decided instead to decorate Doug's little brother which sits at the north-western corner of the driveway. We always intended to keep this twenty foot tree for decorating, but didn't think it would be the first one.

The morning was fairly nice, merely cloudy and cold with just a hint of drizzle, so we loaded up and journeyed out to Camp Creekside with about 2400 multi-colored twinkle lights, fifty feet of extension cord, and a light sensing timer to keep the electric bill lower.

Twenty feet of tree is quite a thing to light. I have done Christmas lighting professionally since 1997 and this provides a few tricks. But having ladders and a pole to push things where you and them only makes the job do-able, doesn't do the job for you.  But we got the lights up.

Our first display is small, but significant.

The little tree can be seen from Highway 26, starting at about 4:30 and turning off about six hours later. Next year we'll do "Doug" at Creekside Farm. This year we'll make due with the little tree at Camp Creekside.

November 24, 2017 Bamboo from Kailash Ecovillage

Looking at Craig's List for stuff paid off once more, and just as it did before, we found something interesting.

I watch Craig's List pretty regularly so I knew that some Bamboo would likely come along when needed. We wanted some to start making irrigation stakes and maybe plant stakes ahead of the need for them and I figured this would be a good time to start looking seriously. Bamboo is interesting because it can be used for anything a stick can be used for, but that's not what this is about. This is about the place we found it.

Kailash Ecovillage calls itself a model for sustainability and community and is set on a two acre piece of land in South-east Portland. It is nearby Reed College and has a low rent housing component, and about half the place dedicated to growing food for the community. A great many groups use the space for their individual and group gardens.

I immediately called it a commune, but this is an outdated term for what this place is. They also do a great many other things which ought to be supported in addition to gardens and housing. You can go check their site out by clicking on their name.

Ole (perhaps the leader of the group, I don't know) came out to meet us and show us the piles of Bamboo to be carted off. He seemed a nice man, interested in new things.

Of course, we got there in late November and the weather was mild, but they had bees buzzing, people doing stuff, and green stuff growing (or rotting everywhere) you looked. It just so happens that they also have maybe two hundred feet of their perimeter plants in Bamboo as well, so much the better for us. They apparently had a Bamboo thinning party which left them with a bunch of the stuff and no real use for it. So once more, I needed something. The world opened up and gave me everything I might need. They needed something, the world sent us.

The ad did not mention the amount of Bamboo, but we took all of the big stuff (which I am sure they needed gone). We didn't have room for the smaller stuff, but took as much of it as we could.  It now sits at the ready in a pile along side of the pile of rocks from Polscher's place, and the plastic pallets from Gathering Together Farm.

That's a whole lotta Bamboo.
Thanks to Ole!

November 18, 2017 A quiet evening

Ann and I went out to the Farm late this afternoon to put out about twenty-five pounds of Crimson Clover seed. The Clover is intended to begin the long process of choking out the weeds and grasses we don't want.  We also spent a bit of time spraying those few pesky berry vines missed in the last spraying. It looks like we'll actually tame the berry problem in the first year of cultivation.

While there, we added a truck load of leaves to the compost heap, which has grown to twice the size it was when we pushed it together in the Spring tractor day #6. The heap sits in a two foot deep depression just inside of the front gate, now a mound about four feet high.  I figure there's maybe five cubic yards of compost in that pile. The compost will be the basis of MacGregor's Garden's organic fertilizer once we get it all sifted out. We planned this compost pile from the start of the project and have been seriously composting everything we could for two years. Sifting compost is a project designed for early December, but we won't get to it until early January, once we are spending the weekends at Camp Creekside and building the first market garden.

I am planning to re-purpose the trailer from my landscaping business into a box trailer to haul things around in. I'll put a chain link cover on it and then throw the compost on top of the fence to sift the big pieces out, leaving a fine mulch to use as soil amendment.The result of the compost screening might cost as much as twelve dollars a cubic foot to buy at the garden store and if all goes well we will be able to keep the compost heap producing for us indefinitely. A real savings, and better produce. Eventually I will need to make a real compost sifter, something with a fine mesh and a powered screen shaker. I have seen these screens made into a motorized barrel which  sits at a slant and the big stuff fall into a pile suitable for burning, but I have no idea if I can build such a thing. So a flat screen will need to be the thing for the time being.

After our work was done (not a big work day), we walked around and had a great time talking about things to come. This is one of our favorite passtimes, talking about where the tiny home will sit and how much fun the dogs will have once we make the permanent move to Camp Creekside.

Darkness falls pretty early in late Fall, at the base of Oregon's coast range, so we headed home just before dark.

It may seem to be too much information to continue this, but it is important to the history of Ann and I as a couple, and also the history of the Farm.

---

After returning home we made a dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I also made biscuits using Ann's new pancake and biscuit pre-mix (something we might wish to sell in our Farm Store someday). This new biscuit and pancake mix uses all non-GMO flour and non-GMO sugar. This is important because the GMO flour and sugars have so many downsides.  I've used Bisuick brand biscuit mix since I was old enough to cook, but the GMO flour and sugar made continuing to eat the stuff impossible. The heart burn and upset bowels stemming from the herbicides and pesticides used in making the grains, beets, and corn is a national tragedy in the making. Now, having a new mix, I can return to making a simple pancakes and biscuits instead of waiting for Ann to do it from scratch.

Though I am a good cook, I am not to sort to use measuring utensils or recipes, so a mix is better for me if consistent results are your goal. I once heard the WC Fields could never read the same line from the script twice the same way. The food I cook tends to come out well, but I make it up every time so things come out different.

The flavor of our new mix is really very good. Perhaps a little sweeter and the baking soda flavor comes through more than with Bisquick. But the mix works the same for me as the Bisquick once had and the results are very good.

Dinner was superb. But the day did not end there. Afterwards we took a bottle of champagne out to the Cabin tiny home sitting in our driveway. Drinking champagne in front of the electric fireplace watching Amazon Prime on a smart phone while pretending to already be living at Camp Creekside was a nice way to end the day.

November 18, 2017 Electricity

The tiny home cabin has been near completion for a few months now. No real reason to devote too much attention to it since we are stuck in our house with puppies (stuck really nice). But the puppy thing is coming to a close in about two weeks and we need to get our little cabin finished and moved so that we can begin the next step. Yesterday I figured a way to get electricity from our house into the tiny home so that we could test the thing I built, and maybe have heat and lights.

The electrical system was finished a long time ago,
before the exterior walls, insulation and interior walls were put in.
This is the Kitchen area, behind it the Bathroom.

I am not much of an electrician, but can do most small stuff so I figured I could wire a small house. It turned out I was right, but not without reservations. The first thing I needed was a box to get the power from the pole outside into the cabin. I bought a kit I found at Home Depot which was a generator thing to get power from a generator into a trailer, but it turned out not to be the right thing. So I spent an extraordinary amount of time standing in the isle at Home Depot looking at little power distribution boxes. I picked the smallest one they had, usually intended for putting in a basement circuit sub-panel. The rest was pretty easy: Romex wire, switches, outlets, and finding outlet boxes that weren't too deep to fit into our shallow walls. I even picked out a few outlets with USB charging ports. My only real concern was getting the power into the wall from outside, but the generator kit had a small box with an outlet designed to get 220 volt power from a generator, and our pole had 220 volt power, so easy-peasy.

I took the generator kit back to Home Depot and bought the outlet box all on its own, along with some heavy wire to get the power from the outlet and into the distribution panel. Then we began building the outside walls and roof. Then the interior. I didn't test the electrical system because the house is 110 volts and my outlet was for 220 volts. Instead I used extension cords dragged through the window. But Fall came suddenly, puppies came soon after, and we had to put off moving the cabin to the Farm. So the project sat a little while. waiting for a higher priority. We chipped away at it occasionally, when there was time after work.

This picture is the last time anyone has seen
the inside of the cabin. 

As Winter comes in the cold and early dark made it hard to work on the Cabin's finishing touches. So I began thinking about a work around to get power into the cabin in our driveway and extend our work day a bit. Yesterday I figured it out and now we have power.

First things first. I knew that a 220 volt circuit is really just two independant 110 volt lines merged together. I know this from the scant experience I gained working as a contractor and handyman through the years. None of the stuff I have in the cabin is 220 volt (though we will eventually have a 220 volt electrical clothes dryer and we toyed with the idea of an electrical range cooker for a bit).  The water heater,and everything else is high efficiency 110 volt stuff.

So when I visualized the electrical system I thought that what we were really doing was taking two 110 volt lines, merging them in a box to create one 220 volt line, and then splitting them back in to 110 volt power running to outlets and lights and stuff. So I ask myself: why not just take a 110 volt line, and wire it straight into the two 110 volt lines in the little box? It would still make 220 volts, but at fifteen amps. My thinking was that we would have 110 volt power, but not as much of it. So we couldn't run everything at one time. But we might have at least some light, and some heat.

I bought a outdoorsy plug, wired it into a bit of Romex, and tied the one plug into the two wires of the 220 volt system in the outside box with some big wire nuts. Then I plugged the outdoorsy plug into a heavy duty extension cord and it worked. We have heat and lights enough to work the project in the Winter.

We bought the cabin's only heat source at Costco for $99
It gives off enough heat for about 800 square feet.
It also gives off fireplace light and sits on the wall.
The television will hang over it.

The Camp Creekside Cabin Project has been going on for ten months, but is nearing the day when we move it to the Farm and it becomes our temporary home. The place is a bit rough, but also a ready to handle most of what we will need to survive the period between moving onto Camp Creekside and building what will become Creekside Farm.

The Cabin heats well, but slowly. But the remote control for the fireplace heater has a remote thermostat built into it, so we will leave the heat on low and only need to make s shorter jump to 68 degrees when we are in the cabin. The walls, roof, and floor are adequately insulated, so other heat coming from the stove, light bulbs, and warm bodies will contribute to the coziness of the place. Also, the heat helps to keep the place dry, and Oregon is not at all dry three months of the year.

We're planning to move the Cabin to the Farm in about three weeks. Then we can begin building the place in earnest on weekends evenings and during weekdays devoted to farming. Eventually we will make another of these tiny homes to contain a real bedroom, laundry, and a large closet. This will sit side by side and we will open the side of the Cabin to pair the two, making it a larger, but still quite tiny, home. The home will stay until we build the farmhouse. More to follow. . .

The first public viewing of our living room.
It will also be the bedroom for the time being.

This is the kitchen area.
I still have to put in the shelving and buy the appliances.
Under the counter we will use a large rolling tool box from Home Depot.

Note: last night at three in the morning I woke up remembering that I had not flipped the break to turn the water heater off. The water is off, but the heater is full, so probably no harm was done to it.

November 10, 2017 Gathering Together Farm

This morning I spent a few minutes on Craig's List looking at free stuff. I do this often, looking for things to help our project along. I find all sorts of things which might  come in handy, and then don't go get any of them because we already have enough junk laying around. But one day I will be able to go get those little gems I see and make use of them.

However, we have been looking for free plastic pallets for a few weeks now. I hope to use them as a base for a foot path from the gravel driveway, over the mud, to the front door of our tiny home. I also intend to use them to elevate the hay bales we will put out as dog bedding inside of our first hoop house kennel, giving the dogs a warm dry place to spend their days while we are at work. This morning one of the first things I saw was a 22 foot camp trailer (which I want but cannot use today) and 14 plastic pallets (which I need). The ad was for a place in Philomath, which is near Corvallis, about two hours drive from the Farm.  I sent a text message to Ann asking if she thought I should take the drive. She said to go.

So I called John and he agreed not to give the pallets away to anyone else. This is a kindness, which he didn't have to give, and I appreciate it. He said that he was also a farmer and that farmers need to help each other out. I got dressed, went out to Creekside, filled up my tank, and headed down the back way through Corvallis to Philomath. After a two hours drive in the rain what I found there was special to say the least. Another Farm in the vein of what we hope Creekside Farm will be some day.

Wait until you get down to the inside pictures of this place.

Upon arrival I immediately spotted that I was on an organic vegetable farm. I came in the side door (so to speak) and found a small band of fairly attractive young people cleaning purple potatoes using a medium sized tunnel washer (a sort of tunnel where the produce enters one end and comes out mostly clean at the other). Asking around I didn't find any John persons, but I saw the stack of pallets I had seen earlier in the picture in Craig's List and ask some nice woman nearby if I could just start loading them up. John came along about three quarters of the way into the loading.

I finished loading and, both because I an nosey and because I'm really interested, I ask about the place. He said I could take a look around, that it was about five acres, and that another guy named John had built the farm over the past thirty or so years. They sell produce at about eight farmer's markets, their own farm store, and maybe an organic produce broker. From where I stood, I counted at least eight workers (all young, all pretty good looking people). I wandered around the back of the place. It looked pretty much like you might expect of an Oregon farm in winter. A bit old, a bit dirty, really beautiful to me (whose aesthetic sense runs a bit farm-y as of late).

Continuing to wander I came around to find the farm store entrance and look around for ideas to steal. If you have been following along this blog you know that this is a fun activity which Ann and I do quite a bit (when we are free to do things). I first ran into the sign above. Nice. Straight forward. When I turned around from taking the picture I saw this next one:

The entrance to Gathering Together.
They have a much better picture on their web site (link below).

It looked more like a restaurant than any farm store I have ever seen, so I had to go in. It started pouring down rain as I mounted the stairs. 

This is not a very good picture of the counter,
but one day  I hope to build something like it.
They have a small baked good case on the counter (at the back).
Behind that us the Coffee Station.
Next to the organic milk case.

Inside I saw maybe seven tables, mostly seated with people eating what looked very much like very good soups served with what looked like very good bread. Taking pictures of this might have been seen as an intrusion, so I continued into the place until reaching better photographic quarry.

The farm store had no people in it, but the parking lot was full, mostly with customers for the restaurant.

Everything looked warm and inviting, the wait staff was nice and everyone, even the potato cleaners standing in the rain, looked happy and shiny.

The place was laid out much as I might have done. Everything was clean and brightly lit. I am taking Ann to lunch there very soon. They have a nice little wood fire pizza oven too.

A horribly blurry picture.
Local organic meats are in a case just off camera to the left.
A refrigerated case next to that,  followed by non-refrigerated produce,
and other products and art for sale on the walls.

I didn't stay long, just enough time to take these few pictures and try to find the guy who built this little bit of genius. But I will return very soon to find out more. I did delve deeply into their web site, reading menus and thinking they do a very nice job of fooding people. They added a few idea to the long list of ideas we already have.

They built nearly everything we intend to and have made a good enough business out of it to have a full parking lot on a rainy Friday morning in late Fall. These are my new farming heroes.

Here is their web site:

Gathering Together Farm

25159 Grange Hall Rd,
Philomath, OR 97370
(541) 929-4270

November 2, 2017 About Potatoes

We are going to plant things, to eat and sell. Our first garden is plotted out and the ground is being carefully prepared for tilling. The basic garden plans are all made, so it is time to start thinking about particulars. today we are thinking about potatoes.

Nothing is simpler to grow than potatoes and few things are less expensive as a result. Americans rarely use more than three or four varieties, most know only the Idaho Spud, the basic Russet Burbank.  There is nothing wrong with the Burbank it makes a fine French Fry and a good baker. But the Russetting trait makes the skin tough and thick on an otherwise smooth skinned tuber, interfering with the flavor and requiring wasting the skin before eating. During the seventies it became popular to eat the skins, some even took to stuffing them with cheese and sour cream. Not a bad way to mask the truth of an otherwise unpalatable thing.

Eventually, industrial sized farming practices started to make smaller crops sold at farmer's markets desirable for those interested and willing to pay (even if these did keep prices very low). Other, more tasty, less trashy, potatoes started making their way onto the market. In the Pacific Northwest the Baby Red got to be a regular, at first with the farmer's market crowd, then  with the supermarket buyer as larger farms found the market right. Today we see five or six types of potatoes at the farmer's markets and perhaps three or four at the supermarket. The Organic foods trend brought organic varieties to the supermarket shelves, but these are most often the same potato varieties found in the regular selection. Not new stuff, just a few things to raise the average slightly.

But no matter the variety, there are few things easier, to put in the ground and then pull back up, than the potato.

Our plan is to offer much the same variety as the supermarket, using organic factors and clean soil, though not certified organic. We will not plant the Burbank potato because it is a lower order of spud. We will plant the Yukon Gold, Baby Red, and (my favorite new variety today) the German Butterball instead. The selling price for these at the Farmer's Market is slightly higher than the Burbank, but with a few tricks I believe we can make these a wonderful eating and best selling product for our fruit stand.

• Firstly, we can plant enough of them. One plant can yield ten pounds. Each taking space along side of other crops and harvested as needed.
• Secondly, we can plant each variety in two different means to produce two different sizes of spuds. Both baby and large forms of potato can be grown for each variety simply by chitting them differently (dividing each seed potato differently before planting).
• Thirdly, we can make seed potatoes which people can buy to plant in their own gardens. This is really just another way to sell small potatoes, but seed potatoes are an emerging and growing market, so we want in.

Each of the three varieties will yield three products. Each product sell to a different need, for a different price.

The only thing left to do is to find the best way to get this thing started. Only time will tell if we are to be successful; but by planting the right thing, at the right time, in the right soil, with the right water, we should be.

October 28, 2017 MacGregor's Garden Footprint

While not quite as big as I planned (it really never is) the footprint for my first market garden will be a vast area of forty feet by one-hundred feet. About fourteen rows. We mowed it flat and then covered it with thick black plastic. This does two important things:

• First, it takes the light away from the existing grasses and weeds right at the time they ought to be storing energy for winter. Instead they will expend nearly all of their stored energy trying to reach the sun. The plants will either die outright, or go dormant with few reserves on hand to start the new life in Spring.
• The second thing this does is to warm the soil and bring moisture to the surface, encouraging the millions of seed trapped in lower layers of soil to sprout. In about six weeks we will come out and pull the plastic back for one week, then cover it up again. Those plants which sprouted will run out of energy quickly

In December we will come and deep till the soil, but we will need to cover the ground once more. Seeds buried a hundred years ago, but brought to the surface when we turned the soil, will sprout and covering the garden one more time will wear these out.

Weeds are perhaps the biggest ongoing problem in new gardens. Hopefully these early steps will help to keep things a bit easier to maintain.

Creekside camp fire.

Perhaps on the best, and last, weekend in October, we ventured out to burn a medium pile of branches and logs found all around the home site near the North eastern corner of the Farm. We also came to cover over the MacGregor's Garden site in 6mil black plastic.

We got all 'As' in Fire Building 101.
This pile was hot, and short, leaving a low pile of charcoals.

It was a nearly perfect day. I hope that on another day , something just like today, I can invite people to come see for themselves.

The view from my bench seat near the fire.
Beers in hand, roast beef sandwiches for lunch.
A sky so blue it almost hurt your neck from staring at it.

October 28, 2017 The Fall Sky

October 24, 2017 Fall Colors

We decided at dinner to take a trip out to the Farm and begin clearing the ground for MacGregor's Garden. The only problem with our plan was that by the time we got out there the sun was already below the horizon. But the fall colors were very good, even in the heavy dusk, so I took some pictures.

You can drive along Sell Road the entire length and not find a stand of deciduous trees with such good color. I had thought that we might have to plant some color in the public right-of-way. The idea being that we want a place where people want to go and see what is going on. Our little stretch of road is a riot of Reds, yellows, and regular Oregon golds.

A nice view of the East Meadow.
Most of these are the Plum trees we have left after removing hundred of others.
Most of these won't remain where they are, we will need the space for Apples and sunshine.

Oregon native trees don't usually stay colorful, they tend to devolved into browns before dropping their leaves. The trees along the road are a mix of species, some native, most not.

Since these pictures were taken with low light, the colors a a bit lower key than the real thing. After dark they glow, collecting what little light there is in the atmosphere and shining it back into the world around them.

On the farm property itself, we have Maple, Walnut, and some others, mostly colorful, but mostly doomed to fall to our chainsaw as we open more ground for planting. Our hope is to plant many new species.

This tree is likely to remain with us.
There is a willow behind it which will not

Each of our new trees will be picked out carefully for the amount of interest they will bring the whole year around. My thinking right now is that we will use the Mimosa Tree very heavily along the path at the back of the property nearest to Dairy Creek. Mimosa has a good structure, great leaves, and flowers all summer long. Then they turn vibrant reds and yellows as the seed pods ripen to a gold color. In winter the leaves all fall off, leaving the seed pods to turn dark brown. The only time when the trees are not very pretty.

We spent the evening walking around the place until the darkness and mosquitoes chased us out. Then we crossed the road and walked a bit of the Banks-Vernonia Trail in the near darkness.

Eventually we hope to have a tree-house deck built into this little grove.
It will sit just to the right of our home site.

We didn't want to leaf. (Sorry.)

Our Walnut. Doomed!
But very pretty in the last light of Fall

October 20, 2017 Farm Update

Things are moving at a good pace these days.

• The rains came a bit early, but this isn't a real problem. 
• Carmen had her litter of pups last week, money is rolling in. 
• The spraying we did to the Blackberry plague has worked well.
• The tiny home is nearing completion. 

And the Plan for our first market garden is coming along nicely.

I had been working on a plant knowledge database for about six weeks, amassing a large amount of abstracted data intended to point me toward which crops to try and where to put them.

The darkened area is called MacGregor's Garden.

We have a "market garden" planned in the overall Farm picture called "MacGregor's Garden (from the Peter Rabbit book). The area where this garden will be built was never used for much, never had a house on it, and we haven't subjected the land to much herbicide, so anything we grow there should be fairly clean (chemically).  It is all of one-hundred feet east to west, and about seventy feet from north to south, next to the proposed Farmhouse. This is a large project, intended to give us produce to sell at a produce stand at the front of the property (a set of little maroon squares near the driveway at the bottom of the picture).

This is a low resolution copy of the layout.

The produce stand itself is not really intended to show a profit, just get us on the market and let the people on the Banks-Vernonia State Trail know that we are in business. The garden itself is intended only to allow me to get my hands dirty as a farmer. There will be a significant amount of crops there.

The plant knowledge database was intended to provide inputs that I would use to make a garden plan on graph paper, I had already taught it to make a graphical time-line to point out significant dates for what plants to put in first, which to sow in a hoop house (a sort of greenhouse structure). As I began looking seriously at drawing out the plan I found a nifty online application which did most of the stuff I had already planned, but a bit easier, called Garden Planner. I highly recommend this application for quick precise, and nearly complete home garden planning. It gives you both the visual plan itself, but also generated plant lists, irrigation plan, and structural stuff as well.

Garden Planner also allows you to order plants and seeds from many of the major catalogs, but I probably won't because prices and availability varies quite a bit. And I have a large number of plants and seeds to be ordered.

You can click on this to get a better look.

This plan is estimated to produce something in the range of 3500 pounds of produce through the year, all to be sold at our "honor" produce stand. (where we put the stuff out there and the people coming to buy simply take what they want, and pay what the will, by leaving cash or checks in the box. This is a time honored traditional means for small farmers (particularly small farmer's wives) to gain earnings on excess produce without putting a great deal of time into the project.

The above detailed plan also contains a small chicken run, to produce eggs, and a large hoop house to allow us to get things started in late winter (before the ground warms). The amount of things we intend to start in the hoop house is nearly as large as the complete list.


Providing that we get the ground till before the freezing in mid-December, we should be able to have the hoop house up in January. Only time will tell.

September 9, 2017 Banks-Vernonia Trail Adventure

One of the things that first attracted me to the Farm property, when we started to think seriously about buying it, was the Banks-Vernonia State Trail.

I knew nothing of the trail's existence prior to researching the Farm, though I might have seen some signage driving to Vernonia. The Trail is a twenty-one mile re-purposed rail bed which once operated as an alternate rail line. Now people ride bikes, horses, and hike between these two fairly small towns. It winds lazily between mile-long stretches of blacktop. For the most part the grade is very shallow, and long, making this a seriously long bicycle ride through wonderfully wooded low mountains. A whole bunch of fitness types use the trail. But this was not how we do things.

Instead we rode the Trail on E-bikes. Might be the coolest thing I can write about.

An E-bike is a fairly expensive hybrid bicycle. Electrical battery powers a small motor taking some, or most, of the work out of climbing hills or going fast. The two E-bikes we rented from E-bikes of Portland were between twenty-four hundred and three-thousand dollars. The three days rental for both was two-hundred dollars. So this is an expensive proposition, but worth it. This included helmets, locks, bikes , and chargers. We picked them up on a Friday, to be returned on Sunday.

Imagine two middle aged people, average body types, neither having ridden a bike for decades, deciding to make a thirty-six mile round trip bicycle journey through mountains.

But this idea, as silly as it might seems, came early on in our questioning what Creekside Farm might eventually become once it was completely built to include something like a bed and breakfast. We figured that most of the people who might use the BnB would be couples, these people needing things to do. The proximity of the Trail seemed a perfect opportunity for these people. Some might already do biking. Most might do biking if bikes were made available. But some, those not into biking, might only want to do biking if it were dead simple and easy to do. These, the mostly lazy but somewhat adventurous people like ourselves might want engage in such an adventurous thing as this. But first we had to see what it might be like ourselves.

Once we had the bikes we went immediately out to the Farm to make the short ride (three miles) to the Banks end of the Trail. We decided to ride into town and get Chinese food for dinner. It took only a few miles to figure out how to balance leg effort with the E-bike's power. The ride into Banks is mostly flat, but not being in any hurry the trip took about twenty minutes.  Dinner was good (for a Chinese food place in Banks, Oregon). The return trip took less time. It was a good night and we slept hard.

The next day, today, started off slowly. We had charged the E-bikes during the night, so there was little chance of the power running out, and had them both ready to go. We arrived at the Farm at around ten in the morning and took off for the Vernonia end of the Trail for lunch.

The morning was glorious. Sixty degrees and sunny. The beginning of the Trail had little slope only a few people sharing the road. The grade began to rise as we approached the Buxton Trail-head, so I punched up the power a little. every time the rise got steeper and I felt a bit of strain on my old knees I simply pushed the button and the bike's motor took the strain away. The trail passes through nice farms and tall trees. Rarely breaking into the sunshine, it would have been chilly had the leg work not been  working the blood up a little. We managed about twelve miles an hour climbing to the summit of the Trail. Not a drop of sweat to be found at the top of the hill.

The trail crosses the highway to Vernonia only once at a place where there was once a long high tressel had crossed high over the highway. The tressel had burned down years ago, so they just put ta quick drop down the the highway where the tressel had once been, followed by a quick rise back up on the other side of the highway. The high point of the trail descends rapidly prior to the crossing and care had to be taken as the Trail switched back and forth. There is a trail head at the bottom of the steep drop, then the crossing, and then a steep climb back up to the height of the rail bed come trail. The bike made the climb easy. Just adding power to high range gears wasn't enough, but I would probably be reluctant to walk up such a steep path. The bike too the load off and the lowered gears made the climb nearly effortless.

From there there was a long downhill run into Vernonia, past farms and through forests. The day was heating up, but the bikes went about fifteen miles an hour as we descended into the valley.

Vernonia is a small timber town tucked nice near the Nahalem River. Occasionally the River comes up and causes a great deal of trouble for the people there. But they love it. The downtown is about three blocks long stretched into six, so there is space in between the buildings. The Bike Trail has brought some prosperity to this little town and two restaurants serve the needs of the bikers. There are a few taverns there as well, another type of biker hangs out at these. I can see a great deal of opportunity for business in Vernonia, some day the town will begin to become more well known.

We had a lunch at the Mexican restaurant, the food was very good and we had a few beers and a long lunch before heading back to the Farm.

The return trip took no effort at all since the range of these bike's power cells is three times that of our need. We increased the power settings so that there was almost no effort, but this didn't stop the grinding of our backsides again the seats of our bikes. This saddle wear was the only complaint to be found though as we pumped lightly up and down the hills. Arriving at Hill-top Trail-head once more we climbed the steep rise to the summit. And then things got very easy.

The descent into Buxton is about nine miles long. The bikes fell down the grade at about twenty miles an hour. So fast that occasionally we had to use the brakes. The Trail had become much more congested in the afternoon so we had to weave in and out of traffic. But the lack of pedaling was welcomed, our butts were getting sore.

From Buxton to Manning is about two miles, half a mile further was the Farm.
Then loaded up we headed home to North Plains.

Thirty-eight miles that day. With my bad knees it could have been very bad for me. At the end of the ride my knees were jelly, but not injured. My legs hadn't worked that much in many years. The E-bikes surpassed all of our expectations. We are hopeful that we can put these things onto the Farm and rent the same experience to those fortunate enough to find us.

And soon.

September 23, 2017 It was a good day.

Yesterday Ann called the Burn Permit hotline and they had opened agricultural burning, so out to the Farm we went.

We had a burn pile the size of a school bus that had been building up since they burn ban went into effect in early Summer. But we are good at building fires, so fifteen minutes into the burn we had a fire twenty feet high. High enough that we had to hook up hoses and water down some trees that were a bit close. But all ended well and the fire burnt down to a manageable level fairly quick. Lucky it did too. A local fire department  fellow drove by about then and we had a nice talk.

I raked up a bunch of the loose bits of trash between the new driveway and the  we had, for the first time, a pretty clean front end. This only took two years, so there you go.

Ann started in pruning a plum tree as I finished up the raking. Then we had lunch under a beautiful sixty-five degree sunny blue sky. Following lunch Ann we back to pruning. I must say the she has never shown much interest in working with trees, so this was a good thing to see. We worked the tree together as the burn pile shrunk by half, then loaded the trimmings onto the burn. For the rest of the day Ann trimmed berries off of the trees and cut suckers. It was a lot of work, and the east side of the Farm looks nice.

As for me, I began loading herbicide into my backpack sprayer and began spraying berries. Fifteen gallons later I had sprayed every Blackberry vine, ivy, Oregon Cucumber, and odd vine looking thing on the place, both inside and outside of the fence.

By four in the afternoon we had to stop work. But the Farm is about ready for tilling.

It was a good day.

September 3, 2017 The plan in action

It's really hard to use the word "plan" when writing about Creekside Farm. Nothing goes according to any "plan" per se. But that doesn't mean nothing is getting done.

We are about two weeks from moving the tiny home to the Farm (95 percent complete). Plumbing holds water, the sinks are in this week, the walls are all up and insulated. The little thing is roomy enough and will certainly do the job. And it's nice in there. We have puppies on the way in October to keep the money rolling in. And we are spending the Labor Day weekend mowing down the weeds in 95 degree heat. So much is getting done. All part of the plan.

And you can see the changes from space!

This is where we started.
You can't see the garbage because it was completely covered in greenery.
The ground under the trees was as bad as the ground not under the trees.

This is a big new picture.
It shows the driveway we just put in and the clearing so far.
You can walk under the trees.

This is the layout of the Farm in Phase One.
So many of the trees in the above picture won't make it.

August 8, 2017 Change of Plan

Plan 36, alternate three,  contingency one, failed this weekend.

Jack left my company and went out on his own. This leaves us short of manpower to make the plan we were working come in on time. The house needed to be on the market by month's end or we'd be living in a tiny home through the winter with four dogs. No big deal, just another plan going south on us. Happens all of the time. This was Plan 36 after all. Shit happens. But plans need to change or the bigger dream dies.

So Plan 37: Winter in place.

This sounds funny because we are in the middle of Summer. But this is a homesteading project and like the pioneers you don't leave Saint Louis after May or you won't make it to Oregon. It is more important to make the move when the chances of winning are right. The window of opportunity closed up on us. But this is merely a set-back on an otherwise good plan.

We were making good progress, and this isn't lost. We have the tiny home nearly completed, we have the money to do the project, we have the property, things are not all that bad. But we do need to winter over in our house or we won't get the price we want, making things harder than they need to be.

Plan 37 includes letting Carmen and Clarke give us another litter, so these two love birds are out in the front yard making whoppie even as I write this.  (We were keeping them separated and they weren't as happy about it as you might think.) If all goes as it should we will have puppies in 64 days. Delivery date eight weeks later.

Plan 37 includes moving the tiny home as planned in Plan 36, but using it only on weekends until Spring. We might buy the tractor soon after we have a place to work from, so that construction of the farm can begin before we arrive permanently.

Plan 37 includes selling my truck and using the money to fix Jack's truck for use as my primary truck. This solves the problem of my needing a true pickup while opening up the space we need in the driveway. Plan 37 includes building the second half of the tiny home in the driveway instead of building it on the Farm.

We will still continue with most of the other parts of previous plans. Divest ourselves of excess stuff, buy stuff, and all the rest of it. Just not try to sell a house when the season of selling isn't right.

Plan 37 includes building in the Spring of 2018. God willing and Dairy Creek doesn't flood us out.

August 3, 2017 Update

The past few weeks have seen our continuing to build the tiny home, a few nice evenings sitting on the Farm dreaming, and a few setbacks. We have the tiny home insulated, plumbed, and electrified. If it makes it to the Farm (and there are no guarantees that my work will hold up) we will be living there in less than two weeks.  Our setbacks are not dream ending, there is nothing that will stop us this time.

Today marks the day when our resolve to move on August 12th is final.

July 25th, 2017 Camp Creekside

Not too much to report today, but thought ought to be recorded on a journal sometimes. We decided to rename the Farm to Camp Creekside, so long as we are living in a semi-primitive glamper trailer house. Once the farmhouse is built we'll go back to Creekside Farm. Names are important.

We got about two thirds of the insulation into the tiny house on Sunday morning, and the water heater for the house came in so Ill get the plumbing done soon. And we went out to look for ideas about interior finished walls and decided on the shower stall. So progress is being made.

A conversation during all of this led us to believe that our best course might be to divest ourselves of most of the stuff we own. The furniture goes to Habitat for Humanity, the rest to Goodwill. We will begin going through the closets and getting rid of stuff this week. But space must be regained or we simply will not fit or well waste resources on renting a storage unit for the furniture. Money won't be the only issue but it certainly is a big part of the issues that exist. We decided to lose the television cable and move our internet connection over to cellular. This ought to cut costs by about $200 a month. I bought an amplified digital antenna and the channels are more than sufficient, so Comcast goes away in a month. Part of the plan to stop paying out every cent we bring in. Our credit has taken a large jump, there is both money and credit to make our project happen. Now all I need is some time to get things done.

My worries about Jackson and our business are starting to slack off. The big projects I took, out of desperately trying to keep his head above water, are wrapping up. He's looking for other work options. My business is a tough one and I never wished for him to be in it in the first place. I am sleeping soundly once more.

Nothing much else is happening. In a few weeks we should make the move. Camp Creekside, here we come.

July 9, 2017 We have siding and a roof.

We really put some time in this weekend and got the siding and the roof nailed up. I even got my finger nailed up for a moment or so. So we have some blood in the trailer project. A sacred thing.

This is the view from front to back.
The wall is the bathroom wall.
The electrical is roughed in.

This is the view of the front door.
We bought a slightly used RV hide-a-bed for the interim bed and couch.
And there is one window installed.

July 9, 2017 We have siding and a roof!

It took a long hot weekend, but the thing is dried in and square (ish) enough. Putting the siding and roof on stiffened the trailer significantly, the thing feels solid.

On this side is the pass-thru doorway.
We covered it up with siding for transport
and until the second trailer is built.
We'll cut the hole open then.

July 6, 2017 We have water!

Everything we do toward making the Farm idea work seems to take more time then you would think. The simple steps to making water work took months when you figured it would only take money. In this case we finally made it. The money finally got us electricity, which eventually turned into the water being made available. And what good water!

We worried that the well had been open to the air for so many years that the water might have grown some biological stuff, but Ann took a sample to the lab at the hospital and they checked it out. Aside from a bit of rust, which we will filter out using a simple particulate filter, you can drink it right out of the tap. The pump puts out 90psi of pressure and the well supports this pressure all day long.

So another big step is taken. The basic stuff we need to live is all there, except for the septic tank, a few projects to go before we tackle this one. Now all we need is to finish the tiny home and we'll be there.