EM-1 Fermenting

After three weeks, I had almost forgotten about my adventures in microbiology experiment where I decided to try to ferment some new EM-1. I had mixed the recipe, sealed the bottle and left it in the laundry room sink to do its thing. 

On Saturday afternoon I found it laying on its side in the sink. The bottle was as hard as a rock and the bottom had pushed out and no longer sat flat - a sure sign that life has begun and the various microbes are doing their thing in there.

Here is the recipe I used...

1 part EM-1
1 Part Molasses
22 parts (non-chlorinated) water

Mix the molasses and water and heat to 100°. Stir in EM-1 and seal the entire mixture in an air-tight container (EM-1 is largely anaerobic). If you can keep it warm, the fermentation process will begin quickly. The cooler the mix is, the longer the fermentation will take. I left mine at room temperature and had to wait almost three weeks before seeing signs of life.

Project Mushroom

For the record, I am not a huge fan of mushrooms. I'll eat them if I have to or if it would be too hard or too messy to pick them out, but they're not something I choose to eat. Because I don't like mushrooms, I'm not really sure why I started this project. It just seemed like a cool process that I would like to try. I guess I will have to learn to eat them soon. I spent Sunday afternoon working to inoculate several oak logs with shiitake spore plugs. The process was fairly easy and if it works, we will probably be swimming in the things sometime in 2014.

1000 (more or less) shiitake plugs

To start, I ordered 1000 shiitake spore plugs from Fungi Perfecti. This was way more than I needed but I never do things small and knew I would need more than the next smaller bag of 100. The plugs arrived in a box very shortly after I ordered them. Included in the order was a bag of soy wax chips for sealing the plugs in the log once they are inserted into the logs.

For the growing medium, we had a small oak tree that, for some reason, had been bent over and looked like an arch over the pasture fence. I cut the tree down and into 4' lengths and let it age for about three weeks. This allows time for the tree's natural defense mechanisms to break down. Then, on Saturday, I began soaking the logs in water for about 24 hours. On Sunday afternoon, I "planted" the plugs using a 5/16th" drill bit. According to the instructions that came with the kit, the holes should be 1.25" deep and 4" apart.

Plugs before they are tapped into the holes

Sealing with wax

After drilling the logs, I placed the plugs in the holes, tapped them until they were flush with the log, then used a bolt to tap them the rest of the way down into the holes.  After the plugs were all the way in, I sealed the holes with soy wax injected with an old syringe.

The process was not very hard but it was a little time consuming and took the better part of the afternoon. Now all we do is place the logs in a shady area, water occasionally and wait for the right time to harvest. We will update the blog once things start happening with them. Until then, here is a link to The Urban Farming Guys discussion on growing mushrooms; pretty cool stuff.

Preserving an Alpaca Hide

Here is Sangria

We're not sure why, but Sangria the alpaca had not been well for about two weeks and we have been trying to nurse her back to health. After two trips to the vet, daily medications and lots of effort it became apparent that she was not going to make it. On Friday afternoon she died quietly in the shelter with her alpaca friends sitting watch.

Not being one to miss an opportunity, we turned her death into a learning opportunity. For those who are a little squeamish, stop reading here.

One of the main reasons for raising alpacas is for their fiber. Since Sangria was no longer going to need her's anymore, we decided to learn about tanning hides.

When I found Sangria dead on Friday afternoon, I picked her up and moved her to the back of the property. I had already prepared her grave there the day before because it was pretty apparent that she was not going to survive. I approached the task with some trepidation. While I looked forward to the opportunity to learn a new skill, I was not looking forward to the task of skinning the alpaca. It turns out it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

The skinned hide

Once we had her in position, my son and I worked together to skin her. It was relatively easy once we got it started. We started on her chest and worked our way around her body. The hardest part of the job was working around her legs. We skinned down to her elbows an around the leg. Once we got past that part it was easy and the skin just pulled away.

Scraping the hide. I really had to get into the
work to hold the hide in place while scraping.

After skinning her, we placed her in her grave, sprinkled a little lime on top and buried her. The next task was to scrape the hide and remove any fat and muscle that was still attached to the skin. This was the hard part. It doesn't come off as easy as you might think. At first I tried to scrape the hide with a knife, but I found that to not be very effective. Then I moved to the machete and worked on the curved surface of the log. That worked much better because I could apply firm pressure against a 1-2" section of the hide at a time. I worked from the center of the hide to the outside edges, making sure I removed all fat and muscle.

Once the hide was scraped, we had to salt the skin side to help remove the water from the skin. We laid the hide out, skin side up, on chicken wire stretched between two saw horses and poured about 5 pounds of salt on the it. Since then we have had to change the salt out several times because it soaks up the water and stays wet. I figure that can't be good for the uncured hide.

Salting the hide with about 5 pounds of
non-iodized salt.

I'm not sure if this little experiment will work, but we'll soon find out. I halfway considered doing the tanning myself as well, but didn't want to mess with the chemicals and the proper disposal of those chemicals. I think I'll leave that to the pros. In the meantime, we will continue salt-curing hide. Here are some of the links I used to educate myself before attempting this project:

This Mother Earth article talks about how to tan the hide:  http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/how-to-tan-a-hide.aspx#axzz2hhLGreFl

http://www.dutchhollowacres.com/2010/03/28/alpaca-death-preserve-alpaca-hide-fur/

Also, YouTube has a wealth of information on how to prepare a hide for tanning. There were several videos that were particularly helpful, but I can't find them now. 

Erosion Control Update

Back in January, I decided that I had to do something to control the erosion on the property. Several years ago, the previous owner had clear cut the land and anything that remotely passed as top soil had long since washed away leaving us with nothing but thick, red clay (hence the name). Worse yet, there was a huge gully running down the middle of the side pasture that had developed over the years. Looking back at the old Google Earth pictures, that gully was here long before the land was clear cut.

This is just a quick update to my update earlier this year. After one of the rainiest summers on record here in the Midlands of SC, I am proud to say that my retention dams have, for the most part, done their job and remained strong. There are a few spots where the water washed over the dams and eroded little bits of the dam, but for the most part, they have done well to help control the flow of water down the hill. I have even managed to get a little grass growing on them to help hold them in place. My focus now is to improve the quality of the soil so I can get a better stand of grass growing, but that's a subject for a later post.

That's the good news. Now for the bad... While the upper part of the hill is doing well, down at the lower part of the hill the gully is beginning to re-emerge. It's steeper at that point and we had several large downpours that did some particularly bad damage to my work. I've got to get the box blade out again and do some more work. This time, I think I am going to have to reinforce my work with rock gathered from the property. Time to call out the troops to start picking up rock!

Guinea Fowl Update

Back in May of this year we added 9 guinea fowl keets to the Red Clay menagerie. The idea was that they would patrol the garden and property for insects and eliminate them. We were able to control the keets until they were about 5 weeks old. At that point, they were too large to keep in the brooder and it was getting warm outside so we moved them to their own place out behind the garage.

That arrangement didn't last very long. Soon after they moved outside they found a way to get out of their enclosure, which, at first, wasn't a problem. They hung out around the house most of the time and went inside to roost each night. But as time went by, they began exploring further and further away. First it was the front yard, then they were in the front pasture. One day I went to pick up the mail and found them on the far side of the highway foraging in the grass along the road as cars wizzed past. I figured they were gone for sure at that point. Every night they would find their way home but their numbers would dwindle each time we saw them. One morning we awoke to find a pile of feathers in the front yard. We never did figure out what got that one (I suspect Buddy the Farm Dog had a good meal that day).

And then one day there were just two left. These two must have been the smarter of the group because once it was just them, they decided to stick around the house and do their jobs. They have stayed in the area ever since and hang with the other chickens in the pasture.

They have proven to be very useful birds. I don't know how much of a dent 2 guineas can put in the insect population, but they do a great job of scratching up and spreading the horse manure which is good for reducing parasites and improving the soil quality. On top of that they are hilarious to watch. I'm pretty sure that these must be some of the dumbest birds on the planet and they provide hours of entertainment for the whole family.

The Persimmons Are In!

A small bucket of persimmons

We have a large persimmon tree in our front yard and I can tell it's Fall when the persimmons start falling off of it. This year looks as if it will be a bumper crop! Persimmons just taste like Fall to me and I look forward to all the great goodies we can make with them; persimmon pudding, persimmon bread, I may even try my hand at persimmon wine if we get enough. That might be good.

These are the native species of persimmon, not the big Asian varieties one can buy in the grocery store. They are small, seedy and kind of a pain in the butt to use because of all the large, black seeds they contain. After we gather the fruit, we rinse and dry them, remove the tops and then throw them in our food mill to make a persimmon pulp for use in our recipes later in the year. Most don't look very nice because they are very soft and get a little mangled after falling from 20-30 feet to the ground. I grind them up anyway so it doesn't really matter what they look like.

We used to take the time to pick the seeds out of the food mill and get as much of the pulp as possible, but this year I have decided it is not worth the effort for the little bit of extra pulp we gain. I am just running the persimmons through the mill once with a big screen and discarding what doesn't go though the holes. I then run the pulp from that through a smaller screen to make it just a bit more fine. A medium Tupperware bowlful of persimmons will make enough pulp for a double batch of persimmon pudding (about 2 cups)... Mmmm Mmmmm!

If you would like to learn a little more about persimmons, read this Clemson University Info Paper. Also, here is a great persimmon pudding recipe to try from food.com:

1 cup very ripe hachiya persimmon pulp (Editor's note: Of course you can use the wild species as well)
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup milk
1/4 lb butter or 1/4 lb margarine, melted
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Directions:

Combine persimmon pulp with sugar.
Beat in eggs. Mix in milk, then butter.
Sift or stir flour with baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg.
Mix with persimmon mixture.
Pour batter into a well greased 9-inch square cake pan.
Bake in a 315-325°F oven for approx 60 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

Do you have a favorite use for persimmons? Leave a comment.

Home Made Yogurt is Good!!!

Just a quick update on the yogurt making from Friday evening....

On Saturday morning the yogurt was done. It had a good, yogurty taste and was a little thicker than it was as plain milk. The next step was to separate the whey from the concoction to make it a little thicker. 

To do that, I lined a screen strainer with cheese cloth and ladled the yogurt in. At first I was concerned that the cheese cloth was a little too thin and the whole mix was going to run right through but after a few minutes, the holes is the cheese cloth clogged and the clear whey started dripping from the bottom of the strainer.

Straining the whey

I let the mix drain for about 90 minutes. After it became an acceptable thickness, I scooped it into a large Tupperware container. It got even thicker after cooling in the refrigerator.

Finished Yogurt... Mmmmmm

This is probably some of the best yogurt I have ever had. I don't know if that is because I made it at home or because it is made with whole milk and is loaded with fat. It is smooth and creamy with a nice sweetness and a great vanilla taste. It was pure luck because I didn't really follow a recipe or measure the ingredients. When I was heating the milk, I added about 3/4 cup of sugar, a little honey and two dashes of real vanilla to the gallon of milk. 

Now I have a tupperware container of yogurt and a pitcher of whey that I saved from the straining process. I found this site that gives 16 ways to use the whey. I'll have to experiment with a few of these as well, but I think the most practical use for us it to give it to the animals. 

That's it for now.... Have a happy Sunday.

Adventures in Microbiology

I am trying two experiments this evening... The first is my experiment to ferment some EM-1 (I'll explain what that is later). The second is making yogurt.

Crockpot Yogurt in the making

I'll start with the yogurt since that's the easiest. Let me start by saying that I like Yoplait yogurt. I'll eat at least one cup a day with my lunch. Unfortunately, the government shutdown has impeded my ability to enjoy yogurt. You might be wondering how that could be. It's really quite simple. Because of the shut-down, our military commissaries closed and I was forced to shop at our local Food Lion grocery store. At the Food Lion, Yoplait yogurt is almost .35¢ more a cup than what we pay at the commissary. Did I mention that I was cheap? Hence, a science project is born, and let's face it, with bacteria, heat and milk, making yogurt is much more science than it is cooking.

I found the project list at the everythinghomewithcarol.com blog at this link. It was pretty straight forward. The supplies for my experiment cost about $4 which will represent a HUGE savings if it actually works. I'll update tomorrow and let you know.

My "new" bottle of EM-1 (if it works).

The second experiment is fermenting some EM-1. For those of you who are not familiar with EM-1, go to this link. I purchased a bottle of EM-1 from teraganix earlier this year for an experiment in Bokashi composting (more on that in a later post, but it is essentially a method of fermenting waste to break it down). Since that time, I've used it for a number of purposes. It's supposed to be good for the septic system so we've tried that. It's supposed to be a good pro-biotic as well. While I have not tried it personally, I have given to the animals and they have not yet died (before anyone calls PETA on me, I did some extensive literature reviews before I started feeding it to the animals). We mix it in the chickens' water and with the four-legged animals' food. I don't know if it makes them any healthier, but I guess it can't hurt.

Anyway... I digress. Today I found myself with the last 1/4 cup of EM-1 in the bottle and I started to wonder if I could culture some more. It's just some bacteria and yeast so how hard can it be, right? After a short Internet search, I found a recipe for fermenting more EM-1 at this link (third post from the bottom), so I decided to give it a shot. It seemed pretty easy... EM-1 starter, molasses and water in an air-tight bottle. We'll see how that one goes. It takes about 7 days to ferment properly at lower temperatures so I'll report back on that in a week or so.

More later.... 

5 Things to do with Shredded Paper

In an effort to combat identity theft and reduce the waste we produce in our house, we shred all of our papers with personal identifying information, most of the junk mail and many of the light cardboard food boxes and toilet paper/paper towel rolls that would otherwise end up in the trash can. This makes for quite a supply of shredded paper for which we have to find a use. Here are five ways we use our seemingly never ending supply of shredded paper:

1. Use as a compost additive. Paper has a high carbon content and us usually somewhat absorbtive so it lends itself well to mixing with high nitrogen content compost items such as grass clippings and food scraps.

2. Use as chicken coop bedding. Once every couple of weeks I add a thin layer of shredded paper to the chicken coop. Again, it's high carbon content mixes well with the high nitrogen chicken waste to produce a fairly nice compost once it is cleaned out and stacked for a while. Rather than adding it directly to the garden, we put it in the compost bin and mix it in with the other compost to make sure it cooks for a little while to kill any pathogens.

3. Use as worm bedding. Worms love paper. When starting a worm bed, I will add damp shredded paper to the bed first to give the worms a good start. I also occasionally add the shredded paper to an established worm bed to provide some additional food.

4. Use as a packing material. Cross cut shredded paper makes great packing material. It's free and it's much better for the environment than styrofoam peanuts.

5. Use it as kindling for starting a fire. Shredded paper ignites quickly and burns well, making it an excellent kindling. We use it to start our annual New Years Eve bon fire with great success.

Bio Diesel Update

The biodiesel project is complete! After washing the concoction and letting it sit for about a week and a half, the water finally separated from the diesel and it is ready to use. The table top recipie I used called for 1 liter of new vegetable oil and 250 ML of sodium methoxide. That mix yielded 875ml of usable biodiesel. The next step is trying it out in the tractor... I'm not sure if I am ready to see the results. It passed the flame test with flying colors... no sputtering or anything. I wonder if there is a better way to test it? I guess it'll be mixed with about 6 gallons of petroleum diesel so it will probably have little effect, even if it was bad.

We'll see soon enough...

Natural Pest Control

Wouldn't it be great to have built-in, organic pest control for the yard and garden that doubles as an alarm to let you know when people are visiting? Guinea fowl to the rescue! Nine guinea keets of varied colors (helmeted, lavender and white) and joined the staff here at Red Clay last Friday morning after hatching on Thursday and are doing well. Of course, it may be time to get them out of the dining room and into something more secure before they start escaping from their make-shift brooder.

Guineafowl are great for pest control. They patrol the area searching out bugs and sometimes even snakes. I understand that they especially enjoy ticks. They are much more garden-friendly than chickens because they don't scratch the ground looking for food like chickens. As an added bonus, if somebody enters their area, they will raise the alarm and let everyone know. These guys will have the run of the property and hopefully will help us with some outdoor bug control over the summer. Boy, do we need it!

If you're planning to add guineas to your place, here are a few tips:

Don't buy adults because they will most likely wander off an disappear. Guineas imprint on the place they were raised and will feel little attachment to a new home as an adult. They must be brought in a keets if you want them to free range.

Find a reputable local source for your keets. You can buy them from hatcheries for reasonable prices, but hatcheries have rather large shipping fees tagged on to the price at checkout. I found my source on craigslist.org and had a long conversation with her before agreeing to buy from her.

Keep your keets warm and well fed for the first few weeks of life. You can find an abundance of information about brooding guinea keets on the internet by doing a quick Google search so I won't attempt to recreate that info here. The bottom line is this; for the sake of the birds, do some research before jumping in.

These little guys are fun to watch. They are much more amusing than the chickens ever were. Get yourself some guineafowl today and enjoy!

Aquaponics Update

Just a quick update on the aquaponics experiment....

So far, the goldfish are doing well. I've not found any floaters and they are self-sustaining, subsisting on the algae growing in the tank (of which there is PLENTY). 

The lettuce is doing well. In fact, it is taking over. It is crisp and tasty and makes a great salad. The tomatoes are OK.  I have some sort of fungus developing on them. I think we also have spider mites as well. I'm not sure what to do about that. The pepper plants have been crowded out and are not doing much. I many have to move them around.

The arugula did not do well. Apparently, it does not like to be wet all the time. It bolted quickly then died.

I have recently planted some luffa gord plants in the grow bed with the intent of letting the vine grow and cover the water tank. If it works, then hopefully the plants will shade the tank from the intense SC summer sun.

Biodiesel

My First Batch of Biodiesel. The top, lighter layer of
liquid is the biodiesel, the darker layer at the bottom
is the glycerol separated from the cooking oil

A few years ago, I worked with a guy who ran his '80's something Mercedes diesel on used cooking oil he got from a friend of his who ran a diner. He would filter the cooking oil as he poured it into his garage holding tank, and then pumped it straight into the fuel tank when he needed a top-off. I always thought that was a great idea!

It's entirely possible to run a diesel engine like this, but it can cause some problems with the engine over time (which is why my friend used an old car). He said that he would frequently have to change his fuel filter and that his car smelled like french fries going down the road.

There are relatively simple processes that will allow a person to convert used cooking oil (animal or vegetable) into biodiesel that can be used by any diesel engine without the challenges that burning straight, used cooking oil presents. Today I spend an hour or so learning to make my own small batch of biodiesel.

There are many places to find info on the subject of biodiesel brewing, but for this table-top version, I turned to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service and their biodiesel page. They have a PDF entitled Biodiesel: Do-it-yourself production basics that has the recipe for this small batch. I was surprised at how easy it was to make it - just three ingredients and about 45 minutes and it was done.

For this particular batch, there are a couple more steps before it is useable biodiesel. I still have to separate the glycerol and wash the biodiesel to remove the soaps, residual glycerol, methanol and lye. Then it should be good to add to Bob the Tractor's fuel tank. The idea of being able to make my own fuel from waste oil is exciting! In the summer we use about 6-10 gallons of diesel every month. That's a $30-$40 savings every month if I could make enough. Plus, it removes waste oil that may be sent to the landfill and is cleaner and more efficient than petroleum diesel.

If you decide that you want to make your own diesel, be careful! The process uses some pretty nasty chemicals; methanol and lye specifically, that are bad for you. Make sure you wear rubber gloves and eye protection. Also, make sure that you don't release the chemicals where they can contaminate the environment.

Red Clay Alpacas

I am probably crazy but we are now an alpaca farm.

Over the past month I made a deal to purchase a small herd of alpacas. We added 8 registered females and three males (one registered) to the three (unregistered females) we already had. The person who owned them prior to us lost her battle with cancer and her farm was liquidated. These animals needed a new home.

So, what does one do with 14 alpacas? Well... stay tuned and find out. As soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know.

Happy Earth Day!

Today is Earth Day! Take a little time to do something good for this wonderful, beautiful planet that supports and sustains us!

- Plant a tree
- Plant a garden
- Ride a bike
- Walk
- Drive less
- Reduce, Reuse and/or Recycle
- Compost
- Start a worm bin
- Find a way to reduce your energy consumption
- Sit outside and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine
- Think of ways to incorporate some of these things into your day, every day

Happy Earth Day, but lets not limit it to once a year!

Aquaponics Experiment Up and Running

40 goldfish all named Dave

After a long time deliberating and trying to find a good source of fish, I finally settled on getting goldfish for the aquaponics experiment (see related posts here and here). They were easy to locate, produce lots of waste and are pretty hard to kill. We've had some goldfish in out animal water tanks (helping to keep them algae-free) for almost a year now. They seem to thrive on neglect.

So, on Sunday, I bought 40 little goldfish and introduced them to their new home. I then planted four tomato plants, three arugula plants, three romaine lettuce plants in the planting bed. I also pulled a bunch of lettuce out of our winter garden to see if it could make the transition.

Three days into the operation with no goldfish floaters and the plants seem to be doing well. I will monitor the water temperature over the summer and see if I will be able to keep it at a suitable temperature for tilapia, or something similar. If so, we will eventually transition over to a more useful fish.

So far, so good. Everything seems to be doing well. Lettuce from our garden is in the foreground and right. Romaine is to the left, arugula to the rear, tomatoes in the middle.

Worm Bin Expansion

New worm bins in place. 

Today we expanded our worm family by adding this new set of worm bins. This setup was very simple to make. All that is needed to make this is a clean barrel (that didn't hold toxic chemicals in its past life), one 8' 2x4, a jig saw, a drill with 1/4" drill bit and a straight edge and Sharpie marker for marking the barrel.

I simply cut the barrel in half with a jig saw using a multi-purpose blade following the lines we marked on the barrel. Then, to make the cradle, I cut the 2x4 in half to make 2 each 4' sections. Using the barrel as a guide. I marked the 2x4's with the curved profile of the barrel, placed the 2x4s together and gang-cut the barrel profile. For this I used my band saw, but a jig saw will work, too. Finally, I put two 1/4" holes in the low end of each barrel half to allow the barrels to drain.

I added this to show the profile I cut into the 2x4's

That's all there is to it. To set it all up, I placed the 2x4's parallel on an old pallet and put the half barrels on top. After creating the bins, I added shredded paper on one end of the barrel for bedding and wet it down to the consistency of a wet sponge.

We filled the half-barrels with a wheelbarrow load of pre-composted worm food each, leaving the shredded paper uncovered. I dumped a half-tray of worm castings and worms from my Worm Factory 360 into each of the barrel halves on top of the shredded paper, and voila.... a couple of new worm bins are born!

The worms loving their home and food

Completed and filled worm bins

Now we just sit back and let the worms do the work. To help keep the temperature somewhat cool and to maintain moisture, I placed the barrels under a shed and put a waxed cardboard box over top of them.

Waxed cardboard will help keep them from drying out too fast
and help to provide the dark environment the worms love.

Fall Leaves

My mother had 22 bags of  leaves from last fall sitting at the end of her driveway so I brought them home. There are lots of things you can do with old leaves. They can be composted, turned in to leaf mold, or used as bedding in the chicken run.

Today I put ten bags of leaves in the chicken run. The chickens LOVED it! Apparently, there were some tasty morsels nestled in the leaves because the chickens were scratching and pecking all afternoon long.

Eventually, these leaves will disappear as they are ripped to shreds and eventually buried in chicken poop. We will keep adding leaves until they are all gone. Later in the summer, we will clean out the run and spread the litter as fertilizer in the garden. It will be well-seasoned and high in nitrogen. 

The Eggs Are Here!

The chickens are FINALLY earning their keep! These are all eggs produced at the Red Clay Farm by our wonderful chicken staff. Of course, each of these eggs probably cost about $25 a piece, factoring in the building of the coop and six months worth of feed, but with each egg they produce, the cost per egg drops!

Six hens are not going to make enough eggs for us to sell them, but we will have waaaaay more than we need. We are getting 3-4 eggs per day and will probably hit six a day pretty soon.

Let us know if you want some fresh eggs. I think we'll have a few to spare.

New Kids on the Block

Elvis and Priscilla just hours after being born.

Things have been pretty slow here on the Red Clay Farm until yesterday.

I walked outside to go for a run yesterday morning and heard a strange bellowing coming from the back corner of the pasture. I knew exactly what it was the moment I heard it. For weeks we have been waiting for Prissy to kid. We knew it was imminent because she looked like she was about to explode.

As I got to the back of the pasture I saw Prissy standing over two baby goats. One was up and moving around, the other laying down. As I got closer, I saw that the on laying down had its leg caught in the fence. They were mostly dry and clean so they had been around for a couple of hours, but not much more.

I untangled the leg from fence and tried to get the little kid to walk around. He would not use the let at all. Instead, he would drag both rear feet behind him, kind of like that half of a zombie dragging herself across the town square in that show, The Walking Dead. After some quick research on the 'Net, we decided to splint his legs and see if that helped him. It did. A few hours later, he was up and moving around on all fours, looking rather stylish in his purple and white splints!

Elvis and Priscilla are doing well today. They are strong and active! Unless something bad happens, I believe we got them through the rough patch!

This is Elvis trying to get to his momma and
dragging his leg behind him.

Priscilla just after being born. It's amazing how
quick they are to stand up and get going!

Donkey Wrastlin' and Plantin'

Saturday was a great day, weather-wise. The sun was shining and it was warm. If I were to have one complaint, it was the wind, which was rather strong. It blew bird houses of their stands, the trash cans went for a tour of the back yard and the buckets I had sitting in the driveway wouldn't stay.

About a week ago, I ordered some plants from Ison's Nursery. They arrived Friday evening, delivered by FEDEX and wrapped in a plastic sheeting and a thick, brown paper bag. I got two more muscadine vines for the grape trellis, four raspberry plants, another pear tree, a peach tree to replace the one the goats killed last year and I couldn't resist trying out a pomegranate tree. So, with buckets, plants and shovel in hand, I headed into the orchard to plant me some trees.

This is the first time I've ever dealt with bare root plants and I sure hope I did things right. For each plant, I dug the hole about twice as large as the roots (except for the pear tree which had really long roots - I would have had to dig to China). Then I took the dirt and mixed it with some home made worm castings in about a 2:1 ratios (dirt to castings). As I filled the dirt back in around the roots, I would add a little water in the hole to help settle it down around the roots.

It took much longer to plant nine plants than I thought it would. It was mid-afternoon by the time I was done. After all that effort, I sure hope they live!

By the time I was done planting, it was time to feed the menagerie. I walked down to the feeding area to get the feed bowls set up and was greeted by 15 hungry animals. (I guess I should explain here that Rosalita, the donkey we acquired in Jan, has proven to be uncatchable ever since the farrier trimmed her hooves two months ago. This is unfortunate, because she has a bad case of thrush and her hooves are over grown and need lots of attention) Rosalita got just a little too close to me and a quickly grabbed her halter. When a 350# donkey doesn't want to be caught, it can put up quite a fight, but I managed to hang on and drag her out of the pasture.

I tied her up to the horse trailer and fed her separately, trying to make this as pleasant an experience a possible. I brushed her, gave her a carrot and then started working on her feet. That's when the real fun began. It was a tussle, but I managed to clean, treat, and file her hooves as best I could. Buddy the farm dog was a casualty, though. He got a little too close to the action and took a hoof to the right shoulder. No permanent damage, but I think he developed a very health respect of the donkey at that moment.

Anyway... That was my Saturday at the Red Clay Farm. At the end of the day, I was dead tired, but it was a good tired! Lots of fresh air and sunshine. Spring is in the air here in SC!

(Editor's Note: I will add pictures later. One of the things I've got to do better is take more pictures. Nothing is more boring than a blog without pictures! Who wants to read all the time?)

A Very Blue Trailer

When you have a farm, even a small one like ours, you need a flat bed trailer. They are handy for all sorts of things; hauling tractors, hauling hay, picking up 16' fence panels or hay rings, or even for transporting five cubic yards of mushroom compost.

I bought this trailer a few months ago. It is a well-constructed, sturdy trailer with a 7000# capacity, but it had a few problems. First, the brake lights didn't work, and second, the tires are in horrible shape.

So what started out as fixing the brake lights turned out to be a major project. I first started out to fix the taillights but once I managed to unbolt them, it became clear that they were unfixable. The body of the lights were rusted through and wire casings were cracked. I decided to scrap them and buy new ones.

Of course, if I buy new lights, I might as well re-wire the trailer while I'm at it, right? And before I bolt the new lights in place, I ought to clean and paint the tail light bracket so it doesn't rust any more. Once I painted the tail light brackets, I decided I might was well paint the rest of the trailer while I'm at it. Oh, and the wood could probably use some wood preservative since I don't have a shelter to park the trailer under; Thompson's Water Seal to the rescue!

So here it is, in all its blue glory. In retrospect, blue probably wasn't the best color for the trailer. But it does now match the tractor color, as you can see in the picture. Plus, blue is my favorite color. The paint job is what you would expect from a spray can paint job. It has its share of runs, drips and oversprays, but it still looks better than it did before. Bob the tractor will look sweet riding on this trailer!

All this and I STILL don't have the brake lights on or the tires changed! It's not safe, but it looks good and that's what's important!

Pre-Composting Worm Food

I love my experiments!

We've been throwing old produce into the compost bin and layering it with alpaca manure for the past week. The intent is to pre-compost it just enough and feed it to the worms. As you can see by the thermometer (even if it is kind of hard to see), we've started to see an increase in the temperature. It hit 120° today. I expect that it will reach 130° - 140° sometime this week and then start to drop off. When the temps start to drop, I'll mix it up and let it cook again. In about two more weeks, it will be perfect worm food - soft, mushy, rotting and loaded with bacteria and fungus. Yum, Yum!

Isn't science cool?

IBC Aquaponics

I finally finished building the aquaponics experiment I wrote about earlier in the year. This week I got it filled with water and have the pump going to cycle the water. All that's needed now is a source of fish so I can stock the thing.

Here's a list of what I needed to build this system, cost and sources.

IBC Container - Craigslist.org - $75. (Delivered)

Two each 2"x4"x10 - Lowe's - $7.

1" PVC pipe and misc fittings - Lowe's - $23.

4x65# bags Sunleaves Rocks Growing Medium (.5-1.5" diameter) - The Urban Garden - $97.50

EcoPlus Submersible Pump ECO1056 and 1" flex tube - The Urban Garden - $82.75

All totaled, I've spent about $280. on my experiment. That's not especially cheap, but not too expensive, either. I'm not sure how much fish will cost me yet but as soon as I find a good source I will update this post or add another.

Alpacas Join the Team

I've always said that I would like to raise alpacas. They are great animals. They are clean, pretty easy keepers, easy on the land and just so darn cute!

Well, this week, Mrs Red Clay Farmer purchased three learner alpacas for me as a Army retirement gift. These girls have been pets for the past year or so and the previous owner decided he was too busy to keep them. They are named after the characters from the Golden Girls. Dorothy is the white one, Rose is Brown and Blanche is the black one. They came with two donkeys as well - Scarlet, the mom and her son, Harpo.

The girls and Harpo have made the transition to the farm and seem to be well adjusted. Scarlet, on the other hand, has not made it to our place yet. She has proven to be a challenge to catch and seems to be very happy at her old home. We are going to make one more attempt to bring her home later in the week.

Grape Pruning Time

February is grape vine pruning time, or so I've heard. I don't think the grapes on our trellis have ever been pruned and the trellis is a little worse for wear as the posts rot from the top down and the cross beams are dry rotting as well.

Back in early January, I got motivated to cut out all the wisteria vines that had wrapped themselves around the trellis and interwoven themselves among the grape vines. That was quite a chore. Once I chopped out all the vine pieces, I shredded them in the chipper and mixed them with a pile of horse manure to do a little bit of composting. Later in the spring, I will spread the piles out on the pasture.

This week, I pruned back the grape vines in accordance with the guidance I found in the Ison's Nursery and Vineyard website here. They provide a variety of guidance on how to care for grape vines, fruit tress and more. I also ordered my strawberry plugs from them and was very pleased with the plants I got.

Anyway, here are the before and after shots. Hopefully I didn't cut they back too much. I am looking forward to a good grape harvest this year!

Here's what the trellis and vines looked like before I pruned them. This fall, there was more wisteria than grape vine.

Here's how it looks now. I replaced a few cross boards and straightened the trellis. That big pile in the middle is grape vine trimmings.

Sustainable Williamson Project

I wanted to take a moment to share a project from a fellow Appalachian State University alum who is making a difference in the World!

From his most recent email release:

Dear Friends,

On March 1st, 2013, we are launching our campaign in an effort to raise support for making the coalfields of central Appalachia sustainable and economically diverse! 

Our hope is to start a movement to make Williamson an example to other communities in central Appalachia and across the nation, changing how we approach economic diversification and sustainable development.

We aim to create a replicable model from our existing projects that positions Williamson as a hub for sustainability throughout the central Appalachian region.

We invite you to join us, taking action in sharing this campaign with your friends, family, communities, and networks. And as we begin our Campaign Tour across the east coast, stay tuned to our upcoming event to join us the national celebration for sustainability. 

We sincerely appreciate your support, and look forward to working with all of you over the next two months and beyond! Get excited with us! 

The Sustainable Williamson website goes live on 2 March. Check it out if you have a chance.

The New Garden Update

The garden is slowly taking shape!

I added four cubic yards of mushroom compost from Allen's Market this week and mixed it in with the tiller. Then, planted two rows of potatoes (both white and red), a row and half of onions (white, yellow and red) and seven cabbage plants. We're not too fond of cabbage in our family, but we are going to try it again. Maybe it tastes better when you've grown it yourself. I sure can't wait for things to start growing!

The folks at Allen's were very helpful when it came to offering advice on planting the potato and onion sets I bought from them. As I've said before, I'm pretty inexperienced in this gardening stuff. They also have some very reasonable prices on started plants. You get a three pack of plants for $1.00 - not too bad.

As for our sustainability score, I think we get an A+ for expanding out garden area. This new garden will really expand our ability to grow our own food. We probably get a D for the addition of the mushroom compost, though. While the compost will definitely improve our growing capacity, I later learned that it was shipped from mushroom farms all the way up in Pennsylvania. That's a long way to transport compost and I'm sure required a fairly significant quantity of fuel to get it here (and all the other places it was shipped). In the future, I will have to find a more local source of compost.

Prepping a New Garden

We broke ground on a new garden this week. After all, it is the season to start planing! This brings us to two garden plots now. We started one beside the house the first summer we were here.

This particular garden is going to be a challenge. It's a 35' x 30' plot on a little bit of a slope. The area where we placed it used to be grass (kind of), and I've spent hours trying to rake out all the grass roots but they seem to keep popping up. I know I will be pulling grass out of the garden all summer long! Being on a hill, I sure hope the dirt doesn't all run out of the bottom side in a big rain storm.

I will be adding some mushroom compost to it soon because it is nothing but hard, red clay with a few rocks here and there. It definitely needs some organic material in it. It probably also needs a little lime added. We have some pretty acidic soil here.

We are going to plant some potatoes and onions in the near future. I think that's all we can plant at this time. It's not quite warm enough for anything else.

More to follow...

New Windows

There are hundreds of ways that houses waste energy. In the case of our house, I think we have thousands. Today we are taking care of one of those issues.

We are replacing the windows upstairs with new double pane, low-e energy star rated windows. The old windows original to the house were single pane wood frame windows. They had cracks, holes and the glazing was dry and cracked. It was time for them to go.

The new windows are Simonton brand windows. They're not the absolute best in the world, but they are pretty good, especially for the money we're spending. These particular windows are Energy Star rated in the south east (and other areas).

It's going to be interesting to see if these new windows make a difference in the comfort of the rooms and efficiency of the heating system. I can tell you that they look a heck of a lot better than the old windows did! 

My Hairy Ass

The Jennet hanging out with her new friends, Moe and Curly.

Yesterday we drove up to the Raeford, NC area to pick up a donkey. It is a rescue donkey that had been mistreated and abused at its former location some friends of ours had acquired and tried to keep it at their place. Unfortunately, their neighbors didn't appreciate the braying of the donkey and our friends asked us to pick her up as soon as possible.

So, how do you load a stubborn, scared donkey into a three horse, slant load, stock trailer? Very carefully! After 1.5-2 hours of coaxing, bribing with food, brute force pulling/pushing, we finally got the jennet  loaded on the trailer. Then it had to be properly restrained, which was a whole other challenge. The problem was she was just short enough that she could get herself under the dividers if she worked at it. We tried a number of different tying configurations before we found a way to restrain her that we felt comfortable with.  

The ride home was uneventful and she rode well. By the time we got home, it was dark. We considered the idea of giving her food and water and leaving her in the trailer over night, but she was eager to get out of the trailer. Rather than traumatize her further, we lead her into the pasture and put her into a paddock separate from the horses. The horses were very excited to see a new pasture-mate! I hope they get along.

So, the jennet has some issues... Her feet are overgrown and need trimming bad. I think she has thrush based on the smell I smelled as I struggled to load her. She also has a very hard fat deposit along the crest of her neck which indicates some metabolic and nutrition issues. If I can catch her this morning, I will clean and treat her hooves for thrush and we have the farrier is coming out on Thursday to fix up her feet. In the meantime, I think we're going to have to put her on a special diet to lose that fat on her neck. 

More to follow... Let the hairy ass jokes begin!

Erosion Control Success!!!

Well, after some pretty big storms and lots of rain last night, I'm please to say that the retention dams did their job well! Woo Hooo! Time to start looking at terracing for the rest of the pasture now. Hopefully I can get some grass growing on these dams to hold them in place.

From the top, looking down. You can see where Red Clay Farm gets it's name!

The water adds some definition to the size of the dams

Erosion Control

One of the challenges we have here at the Red Clay Farm is that we are on the side of a hill. The road is to our front and the land slopes away from the road toward a stream that runs along the back of the property line. In all, it's about a 50 meter vertical drop from the front to the back.

Courtesy of Google Earth

When we first moved here, we had a huge gully that ran through the middle of the property. It was terrible and in places is was at least six feet deep. One day I couldn't find our little goat, Timmy, anywhere. I walked the pasture for an hour before I heard a faint Timmy call. I had to listen for a while to figure out where he was. I finally found him at the bottom of the gully, covered in red clay from head to toe. He was so deep that all I could reach was his horns.

After saving Timmy, I decided that I had to do something about the gash that ran across our property. So, the following week, I burned all the brush we had thrown in the gully to stem the flow of water and got the tractor and box blade out. I spent the next few days using the box blade to push in the sides of the gully and fill it in. Over the next few months, the soil settled and the gully started to reappear. There were low spots developing in area where the gully was the deepest. Water was still flowing down the hill pretty fast in this area.

Today, I pulled out the box blade again. This time, my goal was to create some small retention "ponds" along the gully to keep water from flowing like a river down the hill. After about an hour and a half of work, I had created four retention dams along the area where the gully used to run.

From the top of the hill, looking down.

I put the dams on the down-hill side of the low spots that formed. The smallest dam is about 1.5 feet deep and 12 feet across. The largest is about 18 feet wide and 2.5 feet deep.

The bottom-most dam. Also the biggest. The picture doesn't show the depth very well.

So that's how I spent my day here at the Red Clay Farm. I won't have to wait long to see how these dams work. There is a big frontal system bearing down on us tonight and we are due to have strong thunderstorms and rain. I'll report on how they held tomorrow.