December 26th, 2023 Boxing Day and the Winter Plan

 Every year, about on this same day, and Christmas being done, our thoughts turn back to getting things done on our Farm.  There is a bigger plan in place which we are still working toward and we are not for sitting.  But there is a limit to our energy and daytime sunlight.

It rains nearly every day in Winter and four of seven years there was snow on December 26th. Not a whole lot of motivation for getting out there and getting things done. So we kid ourselves and begin planning for the coming year on this day, every year. Since we have little money, and less time every year, planning is usually a bit more aspirational than actual. A few years ago we might have looked at plans left un-finished as something of a loss.  But we've adopted a new philosophy. Good planning means making larger plans than will actually be done and then letting our actual time and money trim tthe list down. 

This iss the new layout for 2024
The newer areas are highlighted in white.
The rest of it is how we built it so far.

We need to do quite a bit of work on our Kennel spaces. This will happen in the first weeks of the year and be our first priority. We need to make the Doghouse walls tougher and put in some better flooring, and there's a few electrical and plumbing things to work through. The Doghouse had been our Bedroom and Laundry in its previous life, so making it a good Doghouse isn't too much work and more about parts than labor. The Kennel area needs a good fence and some ground cover to keep the mud down. All of this is a high priority since we need to grow our Kennel business.  We will eventually offer boarding and grooming, as well as the breeding and coat businesses we already do. Plenty of work to do.

We have been in our new home for a bit over two years. Some of the finishing work that we hadn't time or money for when we moved into the house is still not done. So we are making a "punch list" of stuff in the house, like moldings, and small  finish flaws, (stuff that can be done on rainy days) and prioritizing them for January and February. When we built the house we painted everything, but the paint was more of a primer color that we could get in recycled paint. So we will re-paint the Bedroom and Bath and this project includes some finish flaws in the drywall and texture. None of this is necessary, but would be nice to get it done. We also never got around to painting the door jambs, window sills, and didn't have the cash to do door and floor moldings, so these too will be a thing this Winter. Our Office has been a catch all for random stuff since we built the place. We have an office, but can barely walk into the room right now. So gathering furishings and putting up shelving will take a higher priority this Winter. We will concentrate most on the Bedroom end of the Farmhouse even though there are things needing done in the Great Room. If there's time we will attend to the Great Room stuff which includes paint and moldings, but these might not all get done.

It is our habit to make our gardening plans in January. These too are often quite large and there is never enough time or energy to get them all done. This year we are rebuilding our chicken coop since our initial build was for fifty hens and we gave up trying to supply the world with eggs last year. So we will scale down the coop and move the hens to a new place with less space and more out of the way. The space we open up moving the chickens will be used as farming space. We will move the Greenhouse once more, having moved it three years ago, to a place inside of the old chicken run. This will add quite a bit of planting space to the Market Garden. We will also add twelve more feet to the length of the Greenhouse to accomodate more planting tables. Adding the length won't cost much and the greenhouse plastic we have will cover the newer length. We will also change the orientation of the place to catch better light and use our heating system and grow lights better. Much of the remaining plans still need to be worked out, but we have experience and most of the equipment is already here. 

Our basic Garden Plan is going to be much the same as last year's planning, but a bit bigger, with less row building to do. Our pest control plan and half the irrigation system is ready to go, but we will need three times as much of everything and this will be our goal for 2024. At some point we neeed to make money of farming. Sprouting a few thousand plants and putting them into dirt is most of what Spring and Summer will look like. 

At some point we would like to get the permanent Farm Stand built. This larger trailer design will be settled inside the Farm's fenceline and we will have parking for customers. The new stand is going to have a large refrigerated walk-in and shelf spaces for canned and other farm made goods. The whole thing will need new fencing, water, and electrical power. We already have much of the stuff to do the work but this might become project for next year since we already have our Farm Stand trailer to work with.

There are a few dozen more items which will have to become part of our bigger list. But the number of items will be bigger than there will be time, money, and physical power necessary to do them. We have never shied away from lofty goals and always make grandiose plans. We'll have to count the successes up at the end of the year. But if the past tells us anything, we always get a lot of stuff done. 

December 09, 2023 Our Christmas Letter

December 1st, 2023 Pest Report

 

Last January I wrote a long(ish) article about our intended strategy for keeping bugs out of our gardens. (You can read about it here.)  And through the Spring and Summer we got the bulk of the tactical plans that came of these thoughts implemented. This article is merely a recap of what happened and can be skipped by most people as trivial.

Our Lettuce Row Covers
kept the rodents away.

Our rodent population this past year was small. Our main concern, after putting in rows of barrier plants and using those few idea we had laying around to keep them off the plants, became moles and voles. These didn't really do much damage to the crops, but appears in every row as a small hole near the end of each row and some few places where the wee beasties had to come up for air. Our no-till growing strategy meant there was deep enough soft ground that these two sorts of animals were able to keep their tunnels much deeper in the dirt. Moles eat worms, of which there were plenty of Compost Worms (Red Wrigglers) above the level of the soil, and Earth Worms (mostly black worms) under the compost layer in the soil. (I did see one fairly large furry little Moles in one of the Compost piles when I moved it with the tractor. Our tangle of Bassets caught it and there was some happy carnage for a little bit.) Voles eat vegetables, mostly root systems. We didn't have much plant predations, though there might have been a little, so Voles weren't really much of a problem. We didn't really see many Moles or Voles, but when we did find an open hole we dropped two or three Mole Bait Pellets into the open hole to keep the numbers down where we could without adding a lot of pesticides to the soil. I saw an open hole this morning, so they are still out there.

We had a bit of a Chipmunk problem in late Spring and I had to shoot them where I could with my 22lr rifle. I got good at it and the chipmunks were mostly under control through the Summer. We had few squirrels, but this Fall there were plenty coming onto the Farm to gather Walnuts and I let them be. The squirrels aren't living on the farm but they are put on notice. We also had a rabbit at the back of the Market Garden. He's a slippery little guy and avoids us. One day I was working in the garden and he walked out of the brambles to lay in the sun. I told him he ought not lay out where I could see him because I definetly would shoot him if I could, so he agreed to lay out somewhere else and we never really had any rabbit troubles this year. I carried my rifle around with me for two months in late Spring and this solved the problem of Chipmunks for the most part. 

We had no Japanese Beetles this year, which were a concern a few years ago, but toward the end of the Summer we did have a few common Cucumber Beetles in amongst the squash and bean plants. These were the only insects that our efforts did little about. We planted many barrier and attractive plants in long rows throughout the gardens and this seemed to do the trick. We had a few Flea Beetles in the Potatoes early on, but a fine kitchen sifter and some diatomaceous Earth took care of it. We applied nematodes to the rows in early Summer and I don't know what effect they might have had. Our only real problem was Flea Beetles. In the bottom half of Summer we had an explosion of Flea Beetle populations throughout the gardens. There were millions of these highly destructive bugs which might have done some real damage to the crop plants. But they were more attracted to the Nasturtiums than anything else and their millions were wiped out in one application of Diatomaceous Earth. Two days after they showed up and turned the Nasturtiums black, and ate nearly every leaf, the plants began to recover. By Summer's end the plants were looking robust and covered in flowers once more. 

There were few slugs in the gardens to worry about. We did find them around the house and in the wood piles. We also saw some Strawberry predation, though this might have been Field Rats or Chipmunks. There wasn't enough trouble to address, so we let it go. Our first year of the new Strawberries was great, next year we'll put in three times the number. 

Our little Farm Stand

Bottom line, the strategies we adopted last Winter worked pretty well. The only real trouble was the Flea Beetle explosion, which we saw immediately, got on top of, and solved easily since the combination of an attractive plant and an organic solution worked easily.  The rodent populations will continue to be a problems since clearing territory only gives outsiders an opportunity. I suppose that vigilance is the price of lettuce and hunting them out seems the only way to control the damage. We'll likely try adding barrier plants to the edges of the Farm next Spring. I'm thinking allium types will give us a crop plant that rodents don't seem to want to cross through might do the trick. 

Winter is setting in at Creekside Farm. Our Christmas lights are up and we can't wait to find a tree to dirty up the Farmhouse. Our Farm is looking pretty good and we're pretty sure of the future, so long as things continue as they are. Life here is good, if not easy.

I read a story a very long time ago about the Laziest Man on Earth. Born on a farm he thought it would be better for him to avoid all of that hard work by doing the easier work of thinking, so he went to school. That he became a mathematician isn't the moral of his story though. I learned from this that thinking things through, when you have the time to do it, was one very good way to avoid as much of the physical labor as one could while still being a farmer. Our pest controlling "dogmatic" thoughts of last Winter seemed to have not been a waste of time. 

November 28th, 2023, Our Rocketdog Winter Coats are for sale

This is Rocketdog Rockford Rhoades in last year's coat. 

About four years ago we got tired of buying dog coats at the feed stores. Their coats were okay, but they never really worked easily and usually broke down in a year. So we started messing around with making our own. It took a while. . . .

The first attempt used reclaimed parts from all of the older coats and a used cheapo Singer sewing machine bought on Craig's List. We had received a nice "picnic" blanket from a client some years earlier and this had a nice flannel side and water resistant coating on the other. The results of that first effort were good at first. But we hadn't counted on the totally destructive nature of Basset Hounds at play.  They shredded their new coats in just a few days. The best part was that as they tore the black waterproof layer the red flannel layer showed through. Our Hounds look like the victims of an axe murderer.  But the basic design of the coat was good. Re-using strapping to hold the thing together got us into the warmer months despite the horror show. We resolved to solving the problem before the next Winter came.

We found a nice Buffalo Print at the fabric store and I bought new straps and buckles and laid out a pattern based roughly on the previous year's effort. The result was a good coat, though a bit smaller than we liked. And though we have changed the pattern a few times, and changed the way our coats were made, those early attempts are still working fairly well. We use them for our guests or use parts from them to make new coats for our dogs. But the process got easier and the coats came out better nearly every time we made one. 

Two  years ago we decided to sell our Winter Coats to those people we knew who had  adopted our puppies. So we began letting them know we had coats available and sold a few. Then last year we let a few more people know about what we were doing and  we sold a respectable number of our coats around Christmas. It seemed we had a good thing going after that.

Don't click here

This year we sold as many on our first week as we had in the previous year once we let people know about it. But this presented some new problems. Shipping them cheaply had to be figured out. A box to send them out it had to be found. We had the coats pretty well settled, but the details needed worked out. And we did it. But while we worked out the plan we found that one of the steps, the part where we put the parts into the box the coat would eventually be shipped in, offered another possibility. So we began thinking about selling the box full of parts to those interested in sewing their own coats.

We had to come up with instructions. And then we had to find a way to handle the increased traffic. But eventually we got it all working. Today I put out the first advertising for our expanded Coat project.  We're selling four sizes of Ready to Wear coats and Do It Yourself Coat kits, along with an option to make Coats and Kits for other sized dogs on an ad hoc basis.  We have a good way to handle the transactions securely and now all we need is for about fifty customers to show up and participate. 

Creekside Farm has always been pretty wide open as to what we would eventually become as a business. Coats may or may not work out. But the journey is the thing. We have out first really good product and it is being sold to the public. There's really no telling where this may go. But we're looking forward to getting there. 

If you need a coat. Head on over our Rocketdog Bassets Blog.

November 12th, 2023 Late Fall in Effect

Not too surprisingly, Fall landed on Creekside Farm on time and completely within one week's time. The rains started about mid-October, just as the leaves began falling , and it hasn't stopped since. We've had three days of relative dryness, but even those three days had rain in the darkness of late night.  And about ten days ago, just as October ended, the trees all turned Golden-red as leaves began raining down and covering everything like snow. So while the place is a real mess, it's a beautiful mess. 

Our Pirate Organic Flag
So far nobody has noticed it

Occasionally the sun peaks out from behind the clouds for a moment and you have to stop and appreciate the colors. The small windows of sky are bright blue and the sun reflects off of the recently fallen leave, washing everything in the bright yellows and reds of the recently fallen leaves that haven't had time to turn brown and grey. It is really quite beautiful. But the bad weather has us staying indoors quite a lot more than usual. The gardens look like hell. Decaying plants are everywhere, covered in leaves or not. We had a hard frost for three consecutive days at the beginning of November which killed off nearly all of the plants in our Garden rows and the stuff remains where it fell. 

Part of our farm plan is to do something called "Chop and Drop". This is where we use the plants to feed the soil by composting in place. The idea is to chop the plants off at ground level and leave the roots in place. Any of the nutrients not used in making fruit is recycled back into the soil. We haven't been out in the muddy gardens to do much of the chopping, but the frost did quite a lot of making the stuff lay down so it will rake up nicely when we do get out there to work. Following the chopping, our plan is to layer on a few inches of leaf compost to protect the soil from rain and ice erosion. Something we still need to do. 

We have taken in four or five truck loads of leaf debris this year, about a hundred yards. Last year we took in four hundred yards and used most of it to build garden rows and we don't need as much. But even if we needed a lot more we wouldn't really have room for it. After we moved the tiny home to behind the Farmhouse we don't have much room for piles of compost back there. So we are putting the leaf piles out front of the house this year and there isn't nearly as much space.  It makes it much easier to bring the truckloads in, and much easier to take the stuff into the gardens too. 

Moving the tiny home into the back and splitting it into two parts has really improved how they are being used. After the move we sealed up the eight foot hole which served as a pass-through between the two halves with a sliding glass door making it a nice, but tiny, apartment where our son is living. We put another sliding door in the similar hole in the second half and now it has become the "Dog House". After the move I built stairs onto both halves and we painted the exteriors before the rains started last month. 

The New Dog Bed
in the new Dog House

The Dog House is rough, but after we built a ten foot by three foot raised platform inside for a dog bed, and put a heater under it, our hounds are very happy to sleep there. We go out every evening after dinner and spend an hour or so cuddling them. We also put a wireless web cam in there and a small wireless television for entertainment. It's cozy and looks great from the outside, but we still need to re-do the interior with drywall and new flooring.  So we're on hold for money. But the bad weather and lack of capitol haven't completely stopped progress.

We are still harvesting potatoes. On one slightly less wet day a few weeks ago we pulled two hundred pounds from four rows. A month or so back we took another hundred pounds. Now there are five rows remaining and we are running out of space to store spuds. But the quality and size of our potato crop is very good. No-till gardening is high in micro-nutrients and so our potatoes have excellent flavor and texture. They are a delight. 

In between rain storms, we have finally begun pouring concrete steps and decking under the porch surrounding the Farmhouse. So far we have two steps and about eight linear feet of decking. Pouring concrete is hard work, but we ought to have a full set of entry steps in a week or two. What there is now is so much nicer than the ad hoc wooden sets we built to satisfy the building inspector last year. We had bought a large amount of bagged concrete then, but hadn't found the time to mix and form the stuff until now.  I'll put up a picture when the thing is finished, until then it is sort of a mess. 

The New DIY Rocketdog Coat Kit

In other news we thought our girl hound Laffee Taffee was having a litter of pups near Halloween, but it turned out to be a dud. Only one puppy took, and it did not thrive, so Taffee and Clarke will get another try in Spring. Our Rocketdog Winter Coat has sold relatively well this year. Our hounds love theirs and orders for the coats are up quite a bit from last year. We are adding a sew-it-yourself kit to the line-up this as we work to increase sales without increasing labor. We are using a pretty good set of marketing tools that Square.com offers and will even have gift cards for sale there this year. Time will tell, but gifts and other products are a part of our longer termed growth plans.

We fully expect a drying trend to happen some time soon. Last year was pretty wet, but there were times when we could go out and clean stuff up. We still need to get the Greenhouse up and running. The heating system we have in there needs a bit of work, but the Greenhouse doesn't get much planted until late February, so there's time still. Despite the weather, things are going along pretty well here and we're looking forward to next Spring.

October 16th, 2023 A Quick Update

 There are many small things going on here as we slide into Fall. El Nino has Fall coming on hard this year. The rains started nearly a month early, but nothing too heavy yet. And the leaves are coming down heavily in Town.so we're getting deliveries of leaves a full month early.  

We have the doors and stairs on the Tiny Homes we moved last month and got them both painted. The place looks quite a bit less ramshackle. We are still working on the kennel, but it isn't ready to put the dogs into. We need to get this done before cold weather arrives. This week we will stay above fifty degrees so no missive hurry yet. 

I began the concrete work for the Farmhouse Porch floor. I didn't have the time but we need a porch and steps before Winter and I have been putting it off. The project is pretty large, so I am breaking the project into a large number of small pours. More to come on this later. Our immediate goal is to put steps and a landing in first. I bought the bagged concrete for the start of the project a year ago and from what I can tell we didn't have any spoilage. This is the last large House project and we have done without for too long a long time. 

We are due to have puppies at the end of the month, but so far Taffee isn't showing signs and this is a bit worrisome. She may just have a small litter working. Time will tell.

I have no pictures to share with this posting, nor is there much worth writing about. So I will keep this short. 

September 11th, 2023 Undoing What We Did.

On August 29th, 2017 we got our first permit to build something in on what someday would become Creekside Farm. Our permit was for a temporary electrical service to power our building efforts. This marked the beginning of our plans in action. We figured to have it for two years.

Today we ordered the "temporary " wires taken down since all trailers  tiny homes, internet services, and wells, are relocated to more permanent power sources. The temporary wires will be gone on October 11th.

September 8th, 2023 Summer Winding Down

 Summer is still with us for a few more weeks. Today it is a wonderful seventy-five degrees and clear skies. While this isn't very good for farming veggies, it is wonderful for working in. We have a lot to show for all the work this year. 

We got the Tiny Home Cabin(s) moved a few weeks ago. The project was planned years ago and there were some significant issues we needed to address to make things work out.  We needed to expand the electrical, water, and septic infrastructure to make the tiny home(s) usable once  we got them moved. 

On the left is the Tiny Home Cabin we moved to the Farm back in early Winter of 2018.
On the right is the same space (note the telephone pole in both pictures) as it is today.

Since we have a serious iron problem with our water we have built our water system with house water is very well filtered. This house water system had to be tapped into to provide good water the the Tiny Homes (now called the Guest House and Kennel). Then we had to expand the electrical system to provide power to the Guest House and Kennel as well.  While we did the electrical work we also included inlets, outlets, and switching to bring in generator power when it is needed. And finally we needed to put in piping to remove septic waste. Each of these projects was difficult to accomplish, even if not very expensive.  Once we got all the preliminary ground work done it was time to separate and move the two Tiny Homes to their permanent places behind the Farmhouse.

The new Farmhouse layout.

When we built the first trailer we did the work in the driveway of our home in North Plans and towed the thing out to the empty lot that would become the Farm (pictured above).  A few weeks later we built the second half, making ours a double wide Tiny Home Cabin. We lived in the Cabin for nearly four years as we cleared the land and built our new Home. Taking them apart was not the biggest part of our plans when we built them it took some work, as did moving the small garden and accumulated stuff added to the place after it was built.

Moving these two large trailers took an entire day using a large rented tractor. Towing them was a tricky proposition once they were separated. But once we got them moving it came down to jostling the two halves into their permanent places. This  proved to be the most difficult part of the job.

The Guest House eventually settled into a place where the front facing side ran parallel to the Farmhouse Porch. The Kennel side eventually came to rest immediately behind the Farmhouse on the back wall where there are no windows. Both buildings needed the eight foot pass through hole sealed up against the weather, so we are installing sliding glass doors to keep the rain out and the heat in. The piping and wiring were the easy parts and once we had the two trailers jacked up and level. Eventually, the end of the largest temporary part of our early plans for building our farm came yesterday, when we moved my brother's camp trailer to it's new place near the Utility Shed.

A Wooly Bear Caterpillar.
This one say it is going to
be a long, cold Winter.

So now the entire area in front of the Farmhouse is cleared out and cleaned up. We hadn't been able to see the front of the Farm from the Farmhouse until just yesterday. So this is a major change in how things look. Perhaps more importantly, the view of the Farmhouse from the Road is now much cleaner.  Now the place looks as it should. 

I remodeled the Guest House interior during the cold months last Winter. Putting the glass door on it allows me to finish the job and do some upgrades on the exterior, including a fresh coat of paint. Eventually I will put skirting on both buildings to keep animals from playing around underneath them and refinish the Kennel building to make it useful. We will also put in a fence to contain our tangle of hounds behind the Farmhouse and reduce noise a bit out front.  But for the present, the job is mostly done until Farming winds down and we settle into Winter month projects.

Farming this year has been quite good. We have been selling produce for many weeks and eating quite a lot of it ourselves. While we haven't  had the growth we wished for, we have done roughly ten times more planting than we did last year. No-till gardening is really a great way to grow things and our planting and pest control plans have all performed much as we expected they would. A few weeks ago we have our expected flea beetle infestation, but instead of them stressing our tomato and potato plants they attacked the Nasturtium plants we had planted as a pest attractor. We dusted the Nasturtiums and the problem was solved in a few days with little actual damage to our paying crops. And we got some really goods crops.

We planted three flights of potatoes this year, each a few weeks apart. The first flight came up easily and the spuds are absolutely wonderful to eat. Rich flavors, perfect flesh. Our cucumbers and tomatoes have thrived this year and we had put quite a lot more of them in the dirt. They are heavy with fruit  and sweet. Tomatoes are selling like hotcakes. The peppers haven't done as well as we expected, but our cool peppers are doing very well and selling out as quickly as we can pick them. The Corn crop has been disappointing. We put in so many and got so few ears out of it. The Corn cobs we did get is smallish, but the flavor is wonderful and we are enjoying eating it despite not being able to sell it.  Melons are doing very well and selling out for the most part. So the gardens are producing well even if we do need to make some changes next year. 

Lemonhead Lucy

We think Taffee is pregnant with our (planned for) Fall litter of pups, but we won't know for sure for a few weeks. This will be Taffee and ClarkeBar's last litter and they will be retired after this. We love having puppies around and are really looking forward to the work raising puppies brings.

Our newest addition to the kennel is Lemonhead Lucy, a wonderful little white and red female. She is well accepted to the Hound's social group and is quite well liked by everyone who she meets. Lucy is very chatty, with a great many expressive howls and barks that make her unique in our kennel.

We have had loads of visitors this Summer. Some coming for the produce, some just to visit. All are welcome. So if you find yourself on the Highway and looking for some place to stop by, think about stopping by and seeing all the changes at Creekside Farm. We are making constant improvements and it will be nice to have you see it all. We have plenty to keep us busy here as Summer begins to close down. We look forward to the change in seasons and are ready for whatever comes. 

In the middle of this image you will find the telephone pole seen in the upper images.
This is the place before we found it, taken from a real estate advertisement.
Taken from the Western edge of the property, where the Market Garden is today.

This is the same telephone pole.
This picture taken on the first day we came to the property, but from the back of the place.
This is approximately the angle seen from the Bathroom window of the Farmhouse.

This is the same telephone pole.
Just before we brought the first tiny home here.

August 6th, 2023 Deep Summer

 It has been nearly perfect weather since my last post, and a lot got grown and done since then. So much has been done I really haven't had much time to write.  Summer has caused an explosion in growth here.. No-till gardening has solved nearly all of our soil fertility problems and the produce we are getting is exceptional. In the next week or two, once our produce is ripe and ready, we will be opening our little produce stand in an attempt at making a dollar. 

The stuff we have planted is roughly five times what we planted last year. But our much larger plan is still not quite large enough. We might be able to grow twice the amount we have in the ground next year, but we will need to plan for a much bigger grow. We put in seventy melon hills this year, where there were only fifteen last year, and the plants are doing quite well, but I think we could grow five hundred just as easily so that's the plan going forward. We put in five times the cucumber plants too, and a trellis to hold them all up. Next year I think we will need to tripple the cucumber grow and we certainly have the space for it. Our squash and pumpkin grow is also quite a bit larger, perhaps double last year, and the results are extraordinary. But I'm pretty sure I could still do five times the amount with little trouble.  And our corn crop is easily eight times the number of stalks we grew before, might be more, but we have space for double this number right now. 

Since all of this year's plan involved converting to no-till gardening and drip irrigation, planting is much easier, harvesting is half the work, and watering is a snap. Also, the sort of weeds we usually have are tough to handle. Thistles and berries are difficult to pull out of hard pan clay. But in a no-till scenario these sorts of weeds don't do very well and pull out of the ground easily. This is not to say that there are no weeds, crabgrass has really done well this year, but crabgrass and the other worts growing in the garden are relatively easy to chop off and when we let them rot in the ros they make a mighty good mulch which blocks sprouting. But there's other reasons why weeding isn't really so much of a problem now.

The drip-tape irrigation system I put in only waters the top of the rows, not the spaces between. So weeds don't get all the water they have in previous years and grow slowly. With far less growth potential we can work the spaces between rows quickly using a stirrup hoe knowing the weeds will not grow back quickly. Most of the weeds we have don't have energy storage, so most won't grow back at all. This new way of growing is half the work, or less, so our days aren't as long and there's plenty of time for other projects.

Our new house plan.

We are on the cusp of moving the tiny homes to space behind the Farmhouse. I had always envisioned moving them to the edge of the Farm, near the back fence line, but actually looking at the project seriously made us change the plan. While we prepare for the move I have upgraded our electrical power plan to include two generators and enough wire to service the two new outbuildings behind the Farmhouse. Each will have water and power and the stuff is already buried in the ground ad waiting for the move. My Brother, visiting while planning his retirement moves, has a large camp trailer which currently is placed near the tiny homes. When we move the tiny homes he will also be moved to a new place where I recently put in power and water connections. The only thing left to do is septic hook ups, but these have to wait until we actually move the buildings. And there's so much more to do than just this.

Our Farm is exploding in growth. Fruit is ripening and will soon need sold. So there's much to do. 

Our Produce Stand is in fine shape and the area where it will be accessible to the public is currently parking for all of our cars and trucks. So we will spend a few days shifting things around and cleaning places up to get ready for opening day. This year's plan is to tow the Produce Stand to the end of the road five days a week and sell produce down there. But the Stand will be parked outside of the fence where it was last year when it is not at the end of the road so some allowance must be made. We should be opening in a week or so. 

 I thought of another new thing to try. Our government has added some burdens to the Organic Farm movement and I have recently run into it while talking to food buyers about taking on some of our produce. 

Pirate Organic Farming

In order to call ours an organic farm we must become Certified. This involves a lengthy application process and about a thousand dollars in cost borne over and above the cost of actually growing things. What this does, and my central argument against it, is that what is expected is a loosely governed branding process where a farmer pays a certain amount to be able to say they grow food without the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides,  fertilizers, and seeds. These factors of producing food are already in place and we do these things, but applying for the certification has some other hoops to jump through and costs to be borne, not the least of which is a thousand dollar fee.  We are allowed to sell our produce without these hurdles, but we would not be allowed to use the term "Organic" in any form. Not just this, but grocery store buyers require the certificate, as do farmer's market administrators.  If you have read this BLOG I stated early on that these were just the sort of regulatory things we would not wish to participate in.  So we will not. And for some very good reasons.  So we are now going pirate organic.

We will no longer worry over using the term "organic", instead we will fly a flag I designed (above) and trust that our buyers will get what it is we are doing.  It might be a good conversation starter.  A sort of rebellion against being regulated.  This is the only change to how we have been doing things. We will still produce our fruits and veggies without chemical inputs, we will still be using very sustainable farming practices, and our produce will still be of the highest quality we can grow at this scale of production. But we won't even try to call it "organic". 

In other news, we delivered all of our puppies to their new homes since the last journal entry and brought what may be our last puppy home. Lemonhead Lucy is a wonderful little "lemon" Basset female. She is full of life and has become central tour tangle of seven hounds. We have always planned to be out of the dog breeding business in under ten years to make room for the wedding business. So Lucy will likely be the last breeding female in our kennel.  This year we have had a bit of trouble with fleas where we have never had this sort of trouble before.  So we do spend a lot of time washing dogs and vacuuming them in between washes.  It will take a bit of time, but we will get the problem licked before Fall. 

Life here has been very good for a long time now. Our house is spacious and comfortable. Once the tiny home's are all moved the way the Farm looks will change drastically. Our dogs will soon be moved to a place where they don't have much access to the people coming to the Produce Stand too. So much has happened here since we started. And there's a lot more that will.

June 30th, 2023 Summer Opportunities

 Summer setting in at Creekside Farm mean opportunities abound, far too many to get them all done. So the priorities will be chosen based on time and money. 

Our Farming practices are mostly in place. The Gardens are planted, such as they are, and the watering system we planned for in the past few months is all in and working. The planting being done, all that is left is to grow and harvest produce, then sell it as quickly as we can. We have a good plan for this and our produce trailer is just as good as it was last year when we built it. We will fill the trailer as things come available and haul it down to the end of the road once we have sufficient produce to make the investment of time worth while. We had a very large gardening plan mapped out this year. Had we had a good handle on the scale we could have increased the plan by another half measure. When we laid down our first sets of rows we found that the first set was twelve rows larger than we planned for the space. So we hustled the plan a bit and moved quite a lot of the Kitchen Garden plan to the Market Garden. I am still working in the Kitchen Garden to lay down the new rows, but there's not much to put in the new dirt we've created there. The produce opportunities are in very good shape, hopefully we will pull a good sized profit out of our dirt. The goal for the year is $25k in Farm produce sales, we're ready, but we'll count it all up at the end. 

The Farmhouse still needs a concrete porch, and this is an important thing we must get done before late Fall, but there's a few things with a bit higher priority to do first.

We have to move the tiny home to the back of the Farm, behind the Farmhouse. This was always a part of the plan. The double wide tiny home is to be split into it's two halves and make a guest house and a dog kennel from the two halves. We spent a lot of time in Spring remodeling the Guest House section. It is now a two bedroom with a central shower room and water closet. The entry is re-oriented for installing a sliding glass door, though there's now a huge window at one end and a door at the other (neither of which will be used as an exit).  When we built the tiny home we used nothing but the least expensive materials to save money and weight. Now the place is completely sheathed in drywall and the electrical an plumbing has been upgraded to something less primitive.  Our son will live there for a time, once he's moved out we will rent it Air BnB style. 

The Kennel side will be an open and easier to clean proposition. We will have a grooming and whelping room for our puppy and boarding business. And we will have adequate electrical and water infrastructure to make it comfortable in there. Our Kennel will take on an appearance of a Living Room. A comfortable space for the dogs and for us to stay out there with them in the evenings. The area surrounding the Kennel will be fences in three foot chain link. I've already collected the fencing and we'll put it in after the Kennel is moved. There will be two yards around the Kennel. The main yard will be for the Hounds' daily use, the second much smaller yard will be for segregating the boys from the girls and for letting the new puppies out once they get to six weeks old. Past this there's nothing more planned.  In order to make all of this happen we need to put in electrical, water, and septic service to these new spaces. To that end I have been collecting parts and plans for quite a few months. While we do these things we will also make some changes to our basic plans. 

Since moving here in 2018 we have had a fairly stable electrical service, but this has changed in the last few years. PGE now turns the power off rather than take a chance that their electrical grid might start a fire. We bought an generator once we began planning to move here in 2017, but hadn't had much need for it until this past year. But the generator, as big as it is, isn't enough to power much of the Farm and the uses we have for power are no long just a tiny home. So we bought a second generator, a much bigger generator, and have a plan to put in transfer switches and stuff like it to power the essentials without having to run around with long extension cords. The plan is in place and I've been busy finding the parts for it all on CraigsList. The goal is to make all of these moves by the end of July.  So there's a lot going on. Luckily for us there's no puppies on the way and we have some help to get some of this done. 

My Brother came to visit in late Spring and has been living in his very spacious camp trailer parked next to the tiny home while he figures out his retirement move. The trailer will be moved near to the Utility Shed where I will put one of the generators and be able to power everything from there.  The Utility Shed is also the place where our clean water system is centrally located too, so all we need do it figure out  the septic hook-up and he'll  be set-up. Since our septic pipe between the tiny homes and the septic tank run close by the site for his trailer we'll be set-up in a jiffy.  Getting water and septic to behind the Farmhouse is a bit more of a job, but nothing we can't do easily and without a great deal of expense. 

So our plans are moving forward and all is going swimmingly. In other news there really isn't much more to talk about. We traded one of Abba Zabba's last litter with another breeder and Lemonhead Lucy has been with us for about  two weeks.  She is a fireball and fearless little white and red girl Basset. She's a joy and will have a good life here. Eventually we will be out of the puppy business and Farm and hospitality businesses take over, but there's years to go before all of the parts of our plans are in place. 

The heat of Summer came this week. Crops are growing quickly. Produce is just a few weeks away. Life is good. You might want to come and visit. The produce that we have will be in the picture bar at the top of this page. It will be the best you've had. We promise.

June 11th, 2023 Summer Weather

The end of May brought a string of 90+ degree days, then things went back to our normal near eighty for a few weeks. The heat didn't really change much in what we had to do, planting the assorted crops, but the results have been a bit better than we expected. The plants are doing very well and outgrowing the weeds by just a bit.

The plans we made in January are nearly all in place. Our row building plan is almost four fifths complete. Dozens of neatly made rows of varying lengths, each oriented exactly from North to South to grab maximum light no matter the season. These will all be permanent rows, after this year the tiller on our tractor won't have too much use and I might just dismount it. In our no-till scheme what happens is addition of organic matter (leaf compost) directly on top of each row as we take plants out and put new plants in. This, along with loosening the soil with our heavy Broadfork, should keep out plants healthy and growing more vigorously every year. But there were three bigger plans for the Gardens.

We specifically designed the rows to keep our pest problems down by putting the right plants in the right places. Some plants discourage pests from crossing between rows. It is hard to prove these are working because the effect is nothing, but we are guess things are going along just fine since there hasn't been much animal predation of our starts and seeds. We had always planned to put Nematodes into the Gardens to keep larvae down and we did this two days ago. So far no new is good news, but the Flea Beatle population doesn't seem to have been effected much. The main target for the Flea Beatles has been the tomatoes so far and a little bit on the potatoes. We walk along the row the rows  and squish the little black specks a few times a day figuring the dead ones can't breed. And we hope the nematodes do the job down in the soil. If the Beatles get out of hand we have a few more tricks we can use.  Our only other pests are the few mammals we have seen.

Radishes

There have been a few Moles working the rows. They are easy enough to track, but the previous years of gopher tunnels gives them a super highway to whatever part of the Gardens they think are nice. So we are flooding their holes, ruining their tunnels, and hoping they will either go away or attract an owl. Either will do the job. Moles eat Worms, of which we have a great many, so they don't do much damage to the crops except for messing up the rows a bit, an easy to fix.  The few field rats we had seem to have either been killed off or have fled. but not before eating quite a few watermelon and bean starts. We planned for this and over planted starts so that we might replace them as quickly as we can. This doesn't replace the growth, but we have a lot of growth and most of the plants are unhurt by rodents. Aside from these few things it seems out pest plans are doing okay. 

The third part of our plan is crop rotation and bed flipping. We haven't moved far enough into the season to start thinking about this seriously, but there is some movement. The used forty gallon plastic stock tanks we bought have all been carefully filled with the right soil components and planted in Radishes, Carrots, and Bunching Onions.  The seed have germinated and we're hopeful of getting these things to grow quickly. The plan is to plant two new rows of these three every few weeks so that there will be a steady supply for the Produce Stand.  Fingers crossed. The rest of our rotation thing can be discussed later. 

The month of May was so much more cooperative this year than last. And the presence of  Ann and I in the Gardens nearly every day means things are slightly cleaner and quite a bit better laid in.  We are watering a bit less this year due to the thick compost mulch cover put on every row. So too the weeds are greatly decreased and easy to remove, but it's an uphill fight. There are still quite a few trouble areas for weeds, but I am burning and cutting a few times a week trying to stay on top of the weed problem. And there's still much to do that is not  digging and planting.

Pickler Cucumbers

We have a new irrigation thing happening soon. I invested a bit in a drip tape plan to directly water the plants at the dirt level. This is a big job but the parts are all here and once I get a minute to start putting it all in things will go along swiftly.  

My Brother, visiting in his first few months of retirement and looking for a job and permanent housing here, has spent a few weeks siding the Utility Shed. This was something that needed done before next Fall and today it is nearly complete. We will caulk and paint it in the next few weeks. 

Very soon I will need build build the parking lot area that will allow us to begin opening the Produce Stand. This is more to give the four cars here every day a place to stay and allow people to use the driveway outside of the Farm as they access the Stand. We're shooting for mid-July opening and things are looking good. 

Other than this a great many smaller things still need doing. We need to set up a backup power generation plan to make this place habitable when PGE turns off power to avoid wild fires. We need to put in the infrastructure to make the tiny home move immediately ready to use. I'll be looking for the parts in the coming few weeks. 

Jalapeño

If it seems we are really busy, we are. At our age we have a good five or six hour work day available, and this about four days a week. But the lack of the forty hour week doesn't seem to be holding up our plans. We just have to keep moving.

May 4th, 2023 Spring Update

 Things are humming along at Creekside Farm. The weather turned warmer and a whole lot dryer this past few weeks, allowing us to move out into the gardens in earnest. Today it is raining quite a lot, but this isn't supposed to last for very long and we'll get back to work. 

Our farm grows weeds better than most. We never use chemicals unless something is very wrong so weeds can get ahead of us if we take a day off. I have spent the last week or two moving and tilling leaf compost into the gardens.  Tilling has the dual effect of killing weeds and allowing us to add compost to the soil, so the ground is looking pretty good in most places. We're heading into a no-till permanent gardening practice, so sooner or later I'll take the tiller off of our little tractor "Rosie". I won't go further into no-till than I have in previous articles. If you don't know what I mean there is an archive of articles to look through and you are welcome to look through it. We have a large garden plan based on our previous plans, the chief difference is that all of our rows will be completely new, all of them very heavily stocked with soil organic matter in the form of compost and mulch, and nearly every one of them will be aligned in a north-south direction to get maximum light.

One of three garden plans for this year.
This is the first one we have been planting.
It turned out that we had seven more rows than we had planned for.

We spent some time a cutting down, or limbing up, the sky depriving trees shading parts of our gardens. There was one seriously dangerous deciduous tree shading the east end of the Market Garden which we took down a few weeks ago.  Yesterday we went out to fall three large and healthy pines, but thought better of it once we took a good look. These are all along the front fence near power lines. We called a friend who cuts down trees for a living and will see what it might cost to take them all down next week. We did take all of the branches off up to about twenty four feet and there's plenty to do without the little new gardens removing these trees will produce. 

Ann has been spend a lot of time in the Greenhouse this year. We heated the place and added some fans to move air around and the plants really took off. Once I built some new rows and the weather turned nice she got out there and started putting plants in the ground. Strawberries, flowers, and the first flight of corn (there will be five this year) are all in. A multitude of crops are ready to go in or ready to plant. All is on schedule/ 

This garden sits to the south of the first one.
The areas for basil will have to move until we get the trees down.
This is a huge increase in garden spaces and we'll grow hot peppers here.

The Kitchen Garden area will hold our potato crops and cooled down peppers. Tis year we are adding a cool version of the Habanero Pepper. The hot version is one of the hottest peppers humans can use, but ours has not heat to it. The cooled Jalapeños and Habaneros have all of the great chili pepper flavors, none of the heat, so they will soon become a favorite on our produce stand. I tilled the Kitchen garden spaces in the last few days so we hope to begin planting there in a week or so. Peppers take a lot of heat to thrive and it just is not that warm out yet. Potatoes really don't care much when they are planted.  We will plants flowers and herbs wherever there is space and time.

The Kitchen Garden spaces are nearly ready for planting.

We are aiming to make the Farm profitable for produce this year and all is going pretty much according to plans. But there is certainly more work to do than we have time and energy. Things will happen in their own time. Our goal is to have the Produce Stand moved down to the end of Sell Road where the people are every day. So picking in the morning, selling in the afternoon. We shall see how it all works out. Farming is going along as we thought it might, but there's a lot going on here right now.

We had a litter of puppies about seven weeks ago. Most of them will leave us for new families in a bout a week's time. This is a big part of our lives and livelihood. We love to see them come into our little world. Love to see them grow and learn. The we love to see them go so that some semblance of cleanliness and order can be restored. Mostly we love it, but there are days . . .

We ran into a bit of trouble with our fresh water system in these past few months. I thought it might be overloading the water filters that was causing it so I went out to add more filtering capacity. As I was working through it I figured out that something was wrong in the pipe routing that brought water from the well to the filters, so we dug the problem out, swapped a few pipes, and this fixed the problem. Last Tuesday I replaced the filter media and things are cleaning up as we go along. Since I made the mistake a few years back, when we were building the water system, the rust and resin got thoroughly into everything so it might take a while to get it all out. This morning the water was clear and iron free. Hurray for us!

Jack and I have nearly finished remodeling half of the tiny home cabin, the part he will occupy once we have it moved behind the new Farmhouse. It looks great, but there's still a few things to do. As is always at Creekside Farm, so much to do.  The second half of the tiny home will also move to the back and become the new kennel and grooming area. We'll remodel it once it is moved. Hopefully we will get these things shifted around once all of the compost behind the Farmhouse is shifted into the gardens. 

As a last note, to those interested in our longer story, we talked to our lawyer yesterday. For those who don't know we ran into a problem with our ownership of the Farm last Summer while trying to finalize the sale of the property. Things got really tense and terse for a month or two and then we found a lawyer worth the money and stopped worrying so much. While things still are not entirely settled, it looks like they might we be in a few months. He has this thing well in hand. 

Time goes by quickly if you don't pay attention to it. We are lucky to have each day and none of them go by unnoticed. If anyone reading this would like the opportunity to get fingers into good dirt, come on ahead. Working in the sunshine is wonderful. Someone said you had to stop to smell roses. I say there's plenty of sweet thing to smell while moving around and working. 

April 1st, 2023 On the Cusp of Spring

 These past few years have had wet and cold Spring seasons. Growth doesn't really happen until soil temps come up to an average of sixty degrees. This is also the temperature soil microbes begin breathing and the smell of soil is in the air. I expect by the second weekend of April we will begin smelling Spring. It will certainly be very nice.

It is a bit too wet out on the fields to till or begin making ready for planting. There are some sizable projects that need done while we wait.  We finally had the time and courage needed to take down one of the larger danger trees. This tree also deprived a large portion of the Market Garden of morning light and had rotted out at least five times.  It was difficult to tell which way things might fall when cut off. But we got it down safely burned the carcass almost to ashes.  The project meant taking down the hand tool rack and East fence of the Market Garden.  In the end the fence project compacted the wet soils we never got planted last year; they will take a bit of fixing. These repaired rows will be the first planted. We have a few new strawberry plants to go in. Moving the fence allows us to move the greenhouse to its permanent placing  near the house in late Fall. In late Summer we will move the tiny home and kennel to its permanent placing behind the house. Next year will be a bit more open. 

Our gardening plan is large this year. Lots of beds to create and restore. Our Greenhouse is full of plants. Everything is being held in ten by twenty inch flats. Each flat hold between 20 and 92 plants, depending on the pot. We have a great many plants ready to go and as soon as they are planted the flats will be replanted with more. We will direct sow when the average daytime temps reach seventy degrees. This will be toward the end of May. Until then we have plenty to do. 

We had a litter of Basset Hound puppies in March. Nine beautiful little hounds. They are finding new families very well and Ann is doing much of the marketing. It is a happy business, not unlike the Christmas Lighting business I once did. The pups come, stay until they are the best sort of fun, but dirty. And then they go to happy families and we can get some sleep. And it helps support the Farm plan in a significant way. We need all the help we can get. 

I will complete the tiny home remodel this month. The plumbing and electrical are all in and working, the walls are all covered and the flooring is bought and ready to put down. What is needed is drywall finishing and paint, the rest isn't easy, but there's not a lot to do yet. Finish work. Then, once we move the halves to the back, I will begin remodeling the Kennel and fencing off the dog yard. 

There's so much happening here right now, but the days don't seem hectic or overly full. The weather keeps us indoors quite a bit. But stuff is getting done every day.

February 21, 2023 Quick Chess

Quick Chess

 I made a new game out of a very old one. In our first tries we found the game easy to learn, very quick to play and, relative to the Classic Chess Game, very fun to play. But this new game has not been explored sufficiently to know the problems or gauge response. So follow this link and let me know what you think.

February 11, 2023 Five Years Seems a Long Time.

Today we celebrate another anniversary. Five full years of our living on Creekside Farm. But it seems like we've been here much longer.

We built our home here.

Five years ago today I built the frame for the first Greenhouse. This first attempt worked well that Summer, collapsed the next Winter, and then rebuilt twice. Eventually the Greenhouse was crushed by a tree-fall which nearly killed us both, but didn't, and there have been six such greenhouse structures built here since. Two are standing today.

Five years ago today we built our heated dog house in the temporary enclosure attached to the side of our still unfinished Tiny Home Cabin. Our indoor-sy dogs were destined to become outdoor-sy dogs so I built them a dog house and put a little electric heater in it. Our hounds decided it was pretty nice in there and soon quit complaining about sleeping outside.

Our Tiny Home Cabin on Day One 

Everything we were doing five years ago was supposed to last only a year as the Farmhouse was built and new Kennel completed. It turned out those things were a bit more difficult than expected. Our Farmhouse took just under four years start to finish and there's still a concrete porch floor to pour.
The Greenhouse is now heated, water supplied, air ventilated, and grow lights lit. Our Farm Plan was finished on time and early seed went into pots last week. The bigger open questions are about organic pest controls and the first shots in our War on Pestilence were fired last week. We got control of the weeds last year. This year will be controlling insects and small animals. If weather permits we will have produce in our Produce Stand in June.

The Tiny Home Cabin we moved into five years ago is now two-thirds remodeled. Our little Cabin was worn out by living in it for so long and we had planned a remodel after we moved out to make it ready for Air BnB rentals. It seems like we are on track. Our tiny home Cabin is producing a small rental income today and hopefully more as time goes on.

We've Come a Long Way

Our initial 2013 "ten year dream" (made ten years ago) and "five year goal" (begun five years ago) was to have a Farmhouse built and a Farm producing a profit. We did this, if only just slightly over the line.
Our ten year anniversary goal will come in February of 2028. The Farm ought to be fully open to the public by then, tiny homes and camper spaces booked, a Farm Store selling produce and products every day, and Café serving food to people coming here to wander through a peaceful retreat from city life or be married in a purpose built Chapel space. . . We're still "swinging for the stands".

Our Produce Stand

Let's see what happens.

January 31st, 2023 Collette Kramer's Rememberence Day

 We celebrate two Collette Kramer anniversaries here on the Farm. The annual Birthday notice, and this secondary day of remembering her after-life. I write about her a few times a year in remembrance, this is a seven year anniversary so perhaps more important to me than others.

I wrote this public obituary on Facebook seven years ago, prior to this I had kept her name out of my postings for the most part:

Collette Kramer passed on this weekend after fighting for a month or so against a stomach tumor which came out of nowhere. She was sixty-four (near as I could tell) and the person who I bought the Farm property from. She lost everything more than once during her life, never had anything worthy of any notice, collected everything she found in hopes of someday having something she could call a life achievement. I found her living on the street in her broken down Toyota and all life is precious, all is temporary, all is suffering. She lived like a tiny boat on a big sea that didn't seem to owe her anything. She fought against almost everything and everyone in a effort to keep her dignity. In the end the pseudo-dignity she got from having a fingernail hold on a peice of property was really all she had to pin her hopes to. She sold me that property in some pie in the sky scheme to eventually find herself a permanent home. Her life didn't amount to all that much in the end. A short story with a bunch of sad chapters. Tragic only because it was so short. The shortness becoming something of a mercy.

As for us and the Creekside Farm Project, nothing is ever easy. We haven't done much that was over-funded or straight forward except being married to one another. Our successes have all been hard fought. We have the plan and it might work whether we build it in Manning or some other place. She left us with a bunch of legal hurdles to jump before we can call the place ours by virtue of a deed with our name on it. Only time will tell.

I think Collette would be proud of what we have built here, had she made it. There's still a bunch of legal hurdles to jump over before we finally get the place to ourselves, but things look okay going forward, at this point. 

She lives on in our memories.