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Showing posts from January, 2013

Beating the Winter Blahs

Wintertime is always hard for us. I'm not complaining because we live in the south and, generally, winter is not terribly bad. One year (2009-2010) snow stayed on the ground from December 20 to March 20 but most of the time our winter weather comes in "events" that pass in 3 or 4 days. We still get the blahs. I think the biggest reason is the lack of daylight. It seems like I never see home in the daylight from November to March! Michelle stays home but it still affects her as well.  This year we've had mild weather but also some simple things we're doing as a family have kept us in a better mood. I thought we'd share a few with you: Expectation Sadie, our Nigerian Dwarf is expecting a kid sometime around the end of January. I've heard it jokingly said that the secret to happiness is to always be expecting something in the mail. Well, this kid isn't coming in the mail, but we are excited to be waiting on it! We have put siding on a little shed a...

Our "New" 33 Year Old Homestead Truck

Some of you may have read and saw in my post about  our outdoor wood furnace  that our firewood truck is a little 2wd S-10 Chevy. The S-10 is a great little truck but I have often wished for something a little bigger and also 4X4 so I can get access to the wood up on our mountain. Well, I had an older Camaro just sitting around so I placed an ad on Craigslist. Just a few days later we swapped for a 1980 Ford F250 4X4 with a flat bed. I am so thankful for it because it is exactly what I was hoping to get. It has the 300 6-cylinder engine and a "granny" low 4-speed transmission so it will creep around. I've already had our 8-year old driving it out in the field (yes, train them up in the way they should go!) Anyway here's a pic: Not exactly a yuppie-mobile but perfect for the homestead!

Building a Whizbang Wheel Hoe

I am a fan of Herrick Kimball from  the Deliberate Agrarian . I have read every blog post at his web site, built a whizbang chicken plucker (see it  here ), and own most of his books. So imagine my joy on Christmas morning when I unwrapped a Whizbang Wheel Hoe kit from Herrick's  Planet Whizbang  web site.  The contents were just some metal pieces, bolts and washers: