Mechanics of Home

This post will be a bit more technically informative than entertaining, so bear with me. As I consider ideas and projects for the new place, a thousand things come to mind. And since I'm just a LITTLE ADHD, it's very difficult for me to avoid starting 507 of them TODAY, and never finishing any of them. So I'm doing my best to work on things slowly, and in stages. My end goal is twofold. First, I'd like to be as near complete self sufficiency as possible. Second, I want to 'Produce', rather than constantly consume. With these goals in mind, I have started a few small projects, and hope to build on these over the years:



First, I just started a small garden. After looking at several methods of gardening, I settled on the Square Foot Gardening method, developed by Mel Bartholomew back in the 70's. It's based on planting in 4'x4' squares, rather than planting in rows. Proponents claim that this method uses about 20% of the space, much less water, while taking much less time to manage. It was very simple to set up, although a bit more expensive to set up. But the soil is perfect - so for me, it was a fair trade off. It definitely takes up less space, which takes some getting used to. (It just seems like I should be doing more!) But I currently have almost as much planted in an 8'x 8' area (4 - 4'x4' blocks) as I planted in my last conventional garden - which was about 20'x 30'. If you'd like to know more about what's planted, or the method I'm using, let me know.

Next, I set up a little pen for my chicken. I say chicken in the singular, because a family of raccoons got the other 5 in the fall. I have 15 chicks on order for the first week of April. But for now, Pinguena, the 'pet chicken', is our only hen. She's very unhappy to be sleeping outside again, as she spent the winter (such as it was) coming in every night for bed in our chihuahua's pet carrier, and has grown quite accustomed to human and dog company. Before today, She could usually be found lounging with our great pyranees, or pecking flecks off the lab's back (much to the lab's displeasure). But it's back to the pen for a real hen's life, in hopes that she will become the mother for the 15 babies coming next month. If you'd like to know more about chickens, let me know and I'll write more. I can't say I'm an expert, but I have about 10 years of mistakes to draw from.

And those are the current projects. I hope to start raising meat birds this fall, and plan to set up a rain water catchment system in the next few months, as well. Minor projects in the foreseeable future will include electricity to the garden shed, more water faucets - to the garden and maybe the equipment shed. A host of other ideas orbit in my brain, but for now, I'll leave them off the list.

As the sun started to set, I frantically dug out the third box of my developing 'Square Foot' garden. My wife came out and pointedly asked,"Are you going to dig in the dark, dork?" And, quite honestly, I had intended to do just that - that is, until the 'dork' comment. It then occurred to me that I probably looked to all the world like a crusty old miner, frantically digging out his stake, SURE that I was going to hit the Mother Load any seccond... I reluctantly loosened the iron grip on my shovel, grunted my acquiescence and headed into the house.

Once there, I just couldn't sit still - so excited I was to finally be working on our new place! There was SO much to do: put in the garden, set up the chicken pen, get the brooder arranged in anticipation of the laying hens, build the moveable pens for the meat birds, and the list continued. But, with the sun already set, and everything settling down, I found all I could do was write.

So, this is where I find myself. We just closed on our own little slice of Heaven (5 acres in West Texas), last Friday - and raring to get started experimenting with a simpler, more self-sufficient lifestyle. Not only am I an amateur at this, but I'm also a COMPLETE beginner at blogging. I hope you find my site edifying, and welcome comments, shared experiences and suggestions. . I will do my best to chronicle my experiences. If there's something you have questions or curiousity about, please don't hesitate to ask!