Chickens Soon to Arive

I have been working for the past week on the chicken coupe and as slow as its going I hope I will get it done before I am ninety.

It should be done today though and this Sunday morning is a Swap Meat that I hope to pick up about 25 chickens 24 laying hens and 1 rooster. Lord willing they will be there and at a price I can afford.

Here are a few pictures to show the transformation. What the pictures don't show is the inside...it is finished inside. I just have to do a little more masonry work on the outside and get the fence attached to the building...and I am done!

The smaller holes make it easier to keep the chickens from getting out while getting the eggs...that was my thinking anyway. The vent at the top is to let in air because I am worried it will be hot in the summer time so I have lots of vents. I can close them up in the winter time.

Brandy's Hyacinths are blooming full out.

Well there's the update. Hope your hooked for another post. Take care.

Fun Weekend...Finally!

We went down to Harrison Arkansas and fiddled around...literally. At the NorthArk College, the Arkansas State Oldtime Fiddlers Association had a convention that had hundreds of Fiddlers from all over the state of Arkansas and other states.

Rooms all over the college had dozens of Jam sessions going on at any moment. We were there Friday night and Saturday morning to afternoon time.

There was also a stage that various people performed on.



I got a few tunes of my own and others playing and with this first tune, I wanted to show my fiddle teacher, Ashley Hull - A student of the late Bob Holt's, who was playing my new favorite tune. Its called Kansas City Breakman Blues and I have only heard it once before but apparently she has known it for a while.

I have played Soldiers Joy on here before but I thought I would give you a look at the improvement of the tune since the last time I played it. I couldn't play very fast last time but its much quicker now!

I also decided to throw in Gold Rush:

Brandy took this picture and I thought it was interesting. Normally the base players I see stand...this is a neat way to take care of sore legs.

Here is a small update on the garden stuff. The seedlings are sprouting for the Bell peppers, Tomatoes, Dill, Huckleberries, and Marigolds.

Thanks for lookin'

Look at the change

Okay I thought I would put two sets of pictures side by side so that you could see some of the changes. Now unfortunately I didnt take a full 360 degree shot for the February layout but it I think covers enough to see a little difference. Sorry you may have to click on the picture to view it and then slightly turn you head to get a perspective. I tried in the second picture to keep part of the roof of the house in the shot so that you could get a feel for the direction the camera is pointing in relation to the house. I wish there was a way to animate it but I dont really know how to do that.

One of the main things you can see a difference in is the Chicken coupe and the tilled ground in front of the house.


February Layout:
















March Layout:

















We began figuring the layout of our booth for the farmers' market. My wife and I were just trying out a few things and thought we would take a picture to show you all.








We also were able to get some relaxation done on Sunday so Brandy desided to relax while Crocheting.

At McClurg, a friend of mine, David Scrivner, was back from Texas where he is in the process of getting his Doctorate and we had a blast playing.

The next post I hope to have some music videos of a few tunes I am learning. So if nothing more important comes up between now and then, thats what you can expect.

Thanks for looking

Chickens and Bees Please!

"Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him-for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work-this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart." Ecc. 5:18-20 (NIV)

Why should he reflect on the days which have passed that are filled with trouble? Give him a focus, a work, a purpose, and he will rise to show the Glory of God in all he does regardless of the circumstances to which he lives. Life is given as a gift and just as any gift could be used in ways unintended by the giver, so can life. Purpose - that is the word that describes my thoughts and with each piece of the puzzle known creates thousands more unknowns.

How can a man leave the rat race that he is part of, and go in the direction of his calling? One answer; "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path"-Proverbs 3:5. Whether he falls or flies, he will be directed by the Lord and the Lord will be his Strong Tower and Mighty Deliverer so that no one can say that he works of his own accord but has the light of the Son shining on his paths.

As I write these words, I am filled with gladness and reverence because the Lord is good. "I lift my eyes unto the hills - where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip - he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." Psalm 121
When we called out to the Lord, He heard us and showed his mercy on us.

It's hard to transition from a mood of satisfaction and praise to the Lord to one of giving information of the farm but the mood continues through the information because it is the information that created the mood.

We have sold our car and are able to get the things we need to get the bees and the Chickens going right away. If we are careful, we can make it last quite a while and even pay off two debts and have some savings.

A smaller than planned Chicken coupe was started but was never finished. Here is where it stands currently. I will probably use rocks for siding because itís free and I can get portlan and mix with sand which I can get from the creek and save a ton of money and keep the coupe cooler too (because I have a metal roof on it-because it was free). I should have room for nest boxes on 3 sides of the building and two tiers of them. I should have room for 20 or more nest boxes from a 5x5 building if I do it right.

We have had 70+ degree weather here so I was able to get the cold season crops planted and made progress on the Chicken coup and pen.

Brandy and I planted the Potatoes and Onions last week on Saturday the 8th.

This week I planted Broccoli, head and leaf Lettuce, Spinach, and Carrots.

Someone asked me: "how do you grow anything where all they grow is rocks?" So I told them. Hereís how. First, it depends on what you're planting. If its Onions or Potatoes, you don't do anything really special other than what they normally call for. Onions go strait in the ground and Potatoes need a deep area so that as they grow up you can pull the dirt over them and they will sprout spuds along the plant trunk after itís covered up. Now for other things like Lettuce Spinach and other finer seeds and less forceful plants, I did this last year and it worked well then so I am doing it again. I take and hoe out a trench, and then I sift some dirt (using half inch square hardware cloth) into a wheel barrel and in doing so I get rid of the rocks in my garden (though an insignificant amount) then put the sifted dirt into the trench about a couple inches worth, just enough for a seed bed. The plants grow and then can dig their way through the rocks once started.
Now for things like Carrots that need unobstructed growth down, I have a lot of work to do. Because people in this area do not usually grow carrots and sell them at the market because the ground is so rocky, I decided to put the effort into prepping the ground to grow Carrots and take advantage of the opening and possible premium price opportunity.

A day and a half later of this and I am done. Whew! You talk about back breaking. I was able to go 5 feet an hour sifting dirt in one row to make a place for Carrots. Hopefully my work will pay off.

Below is 60 feet of garden. I call it Plot 4 I have one other plot its size and another that's a little bigger. The row that says "Tomatoes-Broccoli" only has Broccoli in it right now but when its time I will plant the Tomatoes every 5ft. I have figured out that they are easier to get to and around when they are spaced more than 4ft apart. Planting these two together, like this, then having the carrots on one side, helps with the growth and creates a natural insecticide. Tomatoes compliment the Broccoli and visa versa. Carrots make Tomatoes grow better and help to ward off Tomato worms.

I am looking for old hoses that no one wants anymore. They can be full of holes or pieces of hoses because I will cut them up and poke holes in them anyway. The frugal way to make soaker hoses.

I have finished the Bee hive and purchased frames. I bought the plastic frames because I think they will last longer but they were more expensive but should pay off in the long run. During the icy spell we had a week and a half ago I was able to dust up the house sawing and Routing in the living room and finished the roof and the inner cover. You should have seen the mess - well okay, no you shouldn't. The inner cover took me more time than a box took because it was so small and the routing had to be exact or it would destroy the piece of wood, it was not fun. After we sold the car we could afford to get all the equipment and frames and $260 later I have this:

Before Painting-

Detail of roof vent to allow heat from roof to go out. The roof is filled with spray in foam to add insulation and keep heat down and it may help provide leak protection but I am not sure.

In this picture I am in the process of painting the hive. It rained that night and the next morning were little bubbles all over my paint. I let the sun heat it and dry it and all the bubble went a way...good thing because I thought I was going to have to sand it all and repaint it again. The only exterior paint that I had on hand was brown so I used it. From what I have read brown is okay to use but it will retain a little more heat than white. My hive will be in the woods so it should have decent shade. At least my hive wont stick out like a sore thumb and invite someone to steal it-that happened recently to a big time local bee keeper almost $80,000 worth of hives and equipment.

Here the hive is painted and assembled. I have one hive body and two supers - right now any way, I plan on finishing the other hive body so that I can have two brood chambers and two honey supers. If you look at the bottom box you'll see a white plastic thing on top of the frames and the box; that is the queen excluder. I don't want bee larva in my honey so I will use the excluder to keep her from laying eggs in the honey supers.

Another view of the hive.

I do need to put a piece of tin metal on top to keep from weathering my roof quicker than it should be but for the most part it's done. Now I just need to set it up in its pen and get some bees.

Here I am sporting my brand-new Bee suit and a really scarry grin.

McClurg was fun last Monday, there were some new people there I hadn't seen before. Ashley was tearing into a tune playing it at breakneck speed as always.

Everyone had a good time as always.


Well thanks for taking a look. Hope you enjoyed. Let me know if you have any questions.

The Farmer's Market a go and BeeHive to Show!

Wew I am running out of catchy titles. We have been working our tails off with some good results and some not so good. But on the whole, we are progressing. A friend of mine showed me this site beesource.org and said that he thought I could probably build my own hive. Well So far he's right, I went there and got the plans to build the hive and its coming along. I have been reading book called Backyard Beekeeper that has a lot of good information in it. I have made a few modifications to the beesource.org's design by looking at the Backyard Beekeeper Book. So if you would care to see a few pictures I will show the progress. I am not finished yet but I am well underway.

So mark the boards to cut to length. Cut the boards to length. I am using a hand saw because the Skill saw of mine is not accurate.

After all are cut to length, no rip them to the proper width. I dont have a lot of tools (more than most but not a carpenters shop) so I rigged up this bracing to hold to pieces at the same time.
Ah Oh, Look out I have a power tool! Its a plainer that turned out to be much easier than cutting the boards to width. I just plain them off to width -It was much easier and faster then hand sawing.
I later decided to get goggles on because the wind was blowing sawdust into my eyes.
Sand the edges flat.
Mark the box joint lines
Now I normally use a scroll saw for this but on this box I broke the blade right as I was starting so since its like 30 minutes to town I thought that I could save time and just get out the coping saw. It worked but I wouldn't recommend it for them all. The joints were not as nice as the scroll saw joints also.
Finished board.
Glued and pre-drilled holes for nails in each joint.
Example up close of joints.

Here is the modification I made to the original plans. They called for a piece of plywood to be placed in the bottom of the landing pad. I had researched this and decided to put screening on the bottom of the hive so that I could monitor for Verroa Mites.
This picture is kinda blurry but you can still see the groove that the white piece of something (wood or plastic) will slide in underneath the screen.
Well here is where I am now. I am working on the roof and I decided to change that too from the original drawings. The original drawing had this as a flat roof. I dont think roofs should be flat because it invites water to leak. Sure I could set the hive on an angle but this is better. Also makes more room to vent heat so that it is not so hot in the hive.
So now all I have to do is make an inner cover, paint the whole thing, and buy the frames and the foundation and I am ready to go. The fenced in area is set up to keep the bears out (yeah right!) and its a great spot.

Okay, to switch gears on you, we went to the Greater Springfield Farmers' Market meeting last night and we were accepted to sell there. That is good because they have a capped membership at 96 vendors and we happened to get there when they decided to up the capping to 100. What number were we? Yes you guessed it 100!

Thanks to an individual who noticed my lights were up too high, I have taken his advice and lowered the lights. When its nice outside I take the seedlings out to get good light.

Started another plot. This one is for sweet corn. It will be the biggest plot when I finish. Right now its 20x26 and I plan on planting a set in there and then tilling more and planting more in a successive timing so that I have corn at various times of the year and not all at once.
Produce isn't the only thing we grow here at our place. Those Darn Rocks!
Well I hope you enjoyed the viewing. We have lots more to do so stay tuned!

Drop a comment if you can thanks.