Happy Cow Happy Pond Project: Cram Session

This weekend I started on what was to be the most daunting stage of my rain-water harvesting project...

Getting the water to the tank.

Now I do not have my tank yet. The decision was made to save that purchase until later in the season for cash flow reasons. I have the specs and a rough idea of what I am going to do with it.

This is my "rough" design (blue boxes are filters, diverters, and the tank).

I drew up the above diagram last week and sent it off to the folks at Watertiger to get confirmation that this was the intended layout when they came out initially. Now I just needed to get the pieces I would need.

Operation Chicken Fort: Don't sweat the small stuff

Don't sweat the small stuff, we say. Well all the small stuff remaining on the chicken coop certainly left me sweaty this past weekend.

We wrapped up the metal roofing this week...almost. We still need the cap but all the panels are on and secure. It looks good.

Our new roof.

Happy Cow Happy Pond Project: Start your engines.

Finally got a chance to bring everything to the team last night. I reviewed what funding we had received. I explained my decision to drop the chicken barn from the rain-water project. I explained the fencing and rain-water numbers. Approval.

So now I need to figure out how to move forward with this approval. I have been given the go ahead to do gutters and PVC piping in the spring and install the tank and pump in the fall. I also have approval to purchase the fencing and proceed with the fencing I laid out previously.

The inner fence will be the spring project, followed by the outer fence in the fall.

Operation Chicken Fort: Getting closer

Another weekend. Another big push to complete the chicken coop. Cliff, Marc, and Josh made some excellent progress on both Saturday and Sunday. Hannah was out at 4-H and Charlotte was napping on Saturday afternoon so I managed to pop down to assist with the efforts.

The walls are up already.

At this point, the entire main room had walls with plywood already attached. They had even cut out a doorway. Josh and Cliff were inside building the roof trusses, so Marc and I set about building the walls for the side room, which was roughly 4' x 8'.

Operation Chicken Fort: Building Walls

I can't say that I have had much influence on this project this week as I work all week. I did stop by to check on the progress though. The flooring went down on Monday. It revealed the un-squareness of the base. It was not too bad though considering we were on such uneven ground.

I popped down again yesterday while Marc and Cliff were continuing work on it. The first framed wall section went up the other day. The second half of that wall and the two ends went up yesterday. A few more wall sections to go and we can start sheeting and looking at the roof.

I will post pictures with my next update.

Operation: Chicken Fort - Fundamental Foundations of our Fortification

We are always looking for ways to maximize the use of our farm. At the end of the day, it is the use of the farm that provides the money which allows us to live here. Some ideas are crazy. Some ideas are good. A few are excellent and need to be pursued.

We are in the business of wholesaling laying hens (layers). We have a supplier which raises them up island. We pick-up our batches four times a year and they are often sold out well before the pick-up date. Cliff and Susan own a number of layers at their place and make a decent profit selling their eggs to local restaurants. Locally grown food is the bread and butter of what we do as a farm, and Victoria is big on it's locally grown food.

So Cliff put forth the idea to have laying hens. We decided on a number which was both manageable and profitable and set to work. We needed somewhere to put them though and we needed it fast as the next batch is arriving in May.

Finding water in a peat bog

Water is not something you would think as being an issue when living on the Wet Coast. It falls in buckets all winter and even the summer is not a stranger to rain clouds. But water is a core issue for some of our farm endeavours.

We are based off of a well. Its not a massive well and it often runs dry in the summer months if we are not careful. It feeds three houses, five horse stalls, and a chicken barn. Thankfully our blueberries do not pull from it as they are nestled nicely in their native environment of a peat bog.

Building a Lemonade Stand (Part 2)

I managed to find some time this week to get out with the kids to give the stand a good coat of white paint. After the first coat, I hit the jackpot and noticed some cedar roofing/siding in our wood pile. I threw what I could on and here is where we are at:

    

Building a Lemonade Stand

My daughter wants an iPad. Wow. Kick in the wallet. Not going to happen.

My daughter wants to earn money to buy an iPad. Better.

Hannah is determined to save up for her own iPad. She has been saving money from the Tooth Fairy (seriously, when did it become $5 a tooth!?). She has been collecting cans and bottles and helping me sort and count them. She has been selling iced tea or lemonade when we have our busy customer days.

Building a dock ... my DIY Experiment: Part 4

Part 4: Finishing Phase 1 and 2

I managed to get out the next day and finish off phase 1. Phase 2 was going to be a walkway onto the dock. I managed to wrangle some materials to start the skeleton of this.

Here is what the dock looked like after phase 1 was complete:

                                  

Building a dock ... my DIY Experiment: Part 3

Part 3: Finishing the frame and adding planks

Sunday was another nice day. After wrapping up a few necessary farm chores, I rounded up all the older kids and headed down again. I took all the same items as the previous day as I might need them.

Once I was down there, I decided I would put another 2x6 on the inside of all of the posts. I put a chunk of post at the end on the right side to space it out properly. I used my level to keep the two boards level. 

After completing this, I proceeded to go through my remining 2x6s and cut boards. The length needed was approximately 53 inches, so I was able to get two planks per board for the most part. The excess I used to pick off split ends. After using them all up I realized I would need another 5-6 boards to complete the job. The kids were good but it was time to go in. 

Building a Dock ... my DIY experiment: Part 2

Part 2: Building the frame

This weekend was very favourable for me. I enjoyed a wonderful morning of worship workshops with Worship Victoria, then had time to spend out by the pond with the kids building my dock project.

On Saturday afternoon, I had a few hours where Hannah was with her grandparents, Charlotte was napping, and the boys were in my charge. I threw on my swim trunks and grabbed the boy's their boots and headed down to the workshop.

One man's trash - Finding new uses for old freezers

I mentioned in my stories that this farm of ours does not meet my expectation of a farm. I am from the prairies where farms are rolling as far as the eye can see. That being said, our peaceful little valley can seem quite big sometimes when we consider all the things we need to maintain.

We recently had a batch of pigs which went to slaughter in late April. The past month has been booked up with visits, events, and other work projects and so we had not been out to tidy up.

I was out by our cow barn, which serves as a holding pen for livestock before pickup, as well as a storage area for hay and any grain that does not go in the silo (mostly food for the pigs). I stopped by the barn with the truck to load some more hay for our horses. While I was climbing up to open the top doors, I noticed our pig grain had been invaded by rodents.

Building a Dock ... my DIY experiment: Part 1

Part 1: Dreams and Plans

For a while now, I have been eyeing our pond and wondering how hard it would be to build a dock for it. I'm thinking of a small dock, no longer than 8-10 feet out. Something to tie a canoe to. I don't own a canoe. Details...

Innovating and recycling

Maybe it is some sort of brainwashing from my time living here, or maybe it is how I am wired. I seem to be getting more and more excited about reusing things. I built a garbage pad, mostly out of reclaimed 2x4s that someone had discarded in a pile somewhere on the farm. I'm planning to build a rickety dock for our pond using more reclaimed stuff.

I just started mulling over a recent issue that I noticed. Our bags of grain which we use to feed our pigs, get left out in the barn between batches. Normally, with two visits per day, two cats, and a few traps, we have little issue with rodents getting into them. Well, they have been completely unattended for several weeks and now I can see the evidence of little paws and mouths making a mess of them. So the search began...

How do I store bags of grain without using a hopper or silo?

I came across a brilliant solution. Old freezers.