Starting the house

2021 was a busy year for lots of the world and here on Green Journal Homestead – we finally started a house!

The plan had been originally to move into the trailer on the property and fix it up. Quickly we discovered that on the old 1970s trailer, homeowners insurance was going to be impossible.

We spent the next few years trying to go through options that gave us the most control over the process. We looked into having an existing house moved to the property but those aren’t always available or close enough to safely move. We thought about maybe another mobile home but they don’t allow for the amount of customization we wanted to do. Looking into a traditional builder was way more than we wanted to spend and also they all wanted to turn in a turn-key building. Nothing wrong with that at all, but just not what we were looking for. Eventually , we settled on a metal building turned into a house or shop houses that have become more popular – aka “barndominium”.

There was a company somewhat local that drew up blueprints, to our exact specifications and we started the process.

First, we had to clear the land in order to get ready for the gravel and concrete slab.

Then the framers could come out, after the concrete cured to start putting up the outside frame.

Interior walls and roof trusses went up as well.

House wrap and porch roof.

It has been painfully slow, seems everyone everywhere is building right now, so getting people to do the things we can’t has been a struggle. One of the draw backs of not having a general contractor to sub contract out all these jobs to.

We love the look of the metal and with the doors and windows in, it looks like a real house.

Electric and Septic has been the hardest to get, and when we do get them they are so far behind or something is out of stock they need.

But it is still moving forward and we are excited to be able to do so much ourselves. It will help keep the costs down and will be a home we both designed and worked in without being told it might hurt re-sale value. When you are building your forever home, who cares about re-selling!

Chicken / Rabbit Tractor

We wanted our chickens and rabbits to have lots of time on grass but we can’t have them running loose on the homestead. Fencing off large chunks of the property isn’t really an option either. So we figured a chicken tractor would be the best way to go. And when it’s not in use for chickens, it can be used for rabbit litters to grow out.

One key thing we did to make it rabbit friendly was put some fencing on the bottom. It is wide enough for grasses and clover to be reached but not so wide that the rabbits can dig through. It does make it a little tricky for chick feet. Have to move the tractor carefully so no feet get caught.

We used some of the tin that came off the original barn. It went across the whole top and half of one side.

The tractor is 8 ft long, 4 ft wide and with the lid, 26 in tall.

We made a split top, to open on the left half or right half.

We’ve used it successfully for chicks to grow out and also for rabbit litters to grow out. We plan on building more because they have really worked great for us. And the grass is so much better the next time around.

Adding a New Garden Spot

The layout of our property has two really good garden spots that are about 25ftx50ft. They are near the bottom of the property. We have a third one that is on a hillside that is the same size and it is ok. The sweet potatoes loved it and we got a few watermelons. We are hoping a year or two with chickens on it will improve it .

We tried a spot on top of the little hill next to the orchard, for about 2 years but both years it failed or the wind got too bad up there and it destroyed everything that grew.

So we planted more fruit trees in that area so we would not be tempted to use it again. It works out well, because the very top of the hill doesn’t seem to like the orchard trees lots and this gave us lots more room to expand.

With the three garden spots, we are rotating our chickens to a new spot each year. So we really only have two a year we can plant on.

There is a spot between where the grapes start and the herb bed that could work. It is on a slight hill , and will be shaded the first hours of the day. So while it isn’t ideal, it’s what we have at the moment. Maybe it can be for lettuces or a long term bed for asparagus.

Eventually after the house is built and we know where all the water lines will we can have more options on where to put garden spots.

We’re still very happy with our process of using the chickens to improve the soil. It’s about as natural as you can get and while it does take some time, we love getting the eggs and just enjoy the chickens.

We got the new spot tilled up. Going to plant it this year. Will be interesting to see this year compared to the next when the chickens have had time on it.

Orchard / berry update

2019 was a good year for the blackberries. Unfortunately, we lost 2 plants so blackberries will be in very limited supply in 2020. We also lost 2 blueberry bushes. The ones remaining look pretty healthy and do have some fruit on them. Hopefully we can get a few before the deer or other critters eat them.

2020 saw the first time the peaches really started to bloom. It almost seemed like too many for their first year so we made sure to pinch off at least every other fruit, before they got too big. Sadly, this was a year of a late frost, right before Mother’s Day. It really wrecked the peaches. They all split and seemed like they were oozing their sugars. They basically stopped growing and stayed rotting slowly on the branch. We’ve been giving them to the chickens though and they seem to like the treat.

One of the pear trees did great! We got so many pears! They are not the prettiest pears but they tasted good.

We had a few little apples on one tree. We had several turn red but stay the size of a golf ball. We also have some issues with cedar rust on the apple trees. We’re still holding out for the apples to start producing. They could do with another year or two of growing before they really start producing.

It seems like were losing a different pear tree. We had another apple tree there the first year and had to replace it.

We’re figuring the highest part of the property maybe just isn’t a good location for the fruit trees. We’re not sure if it’s too windy or maybe all the nutrients in the soil run downhill and nothing good stays at the top. Also, a power line runs along the back edge and the county periodically comes out to spray under the lines to keep the plants down. Of course, we can’t tell the herbicide to skip over our trees so they certainly get some of that exposure.

Chicken move timeline

With getting ready to garden, a large part of that was getting the chickens ready to move. With the easy coop we built. Read more about it, below.

Chicken Coop

The net moves quickly which with the rotational chicken grazing plan. That is why we bought it .

The chickens enjoyed the move, at least we didn’t hear anyone complain, and within an hour the net and charger was set up and the chickens were in their new home.

With three 25ft by 50ft beds they have plenty of work to do . The plan again is to let them stay on one garden bed and plant on the other 2. With only doing this on one plot so far, we are already seeing improvement in our plants.

As you can see the chickens are already fast at work . Only a month in and they have already picked everything they wanted.

The only thing left for us to do is go in and knock down the things they did not want and then to start giving scraps, wood chips, and give them a compost pile to work .

The garden results this year were fantastic. We planted two sections – one that had the chickens on it for 6 months and one that only had compost spread by us on it. The chicken prepped garden grew over twice as fast and produced ten times the vegetables. We knew it would help, but the level of success was even more than expected.

With the limited land we have getting ten times more out of the same space just makes sense.

As you can see, it is time for the chickens to move again, to till this plot up and let us get to planting!

What happened in early 2020?

For GreenJournalHomestead? Nothing much new or different, really. We had our gardens, we added to the flock and really just kept doing what we already were doing.

We used some Christmas money to get metal barrels for the chicken and rabbit feed

Things were off to a very good start!

Meat Chickens

Once the barn expansion was done we started plans to do our first batch of Meat Chickens.

We ordered Cornish Cross, online from Murray McMurray Hatchery.

Chicks showed up happy and healthy with zero losses.

We ended up with 27 and did have one loss as an adult , and the rest went to the freezer.

It was an enjoyable process. They go from hatched to freezer in about 60 days so that is a lot of growing to do in a short time. We would like to add a way for them to be on grass to help the feed bill, but that will come in the future.

There were not as easy to process as rabbits, but pretty close. It is nice to have variety in the freezer.

As we said we ended up putting 26 in the freezer, with an average weight of 6lbs and a total weight of over 150lbs processed. The smallest was 3lbs 14 oz and the largest was just over 8 lbs!

After we have been eating these , it will be hard to every go back to store bought chicken again.

More chickens

We originally got chickens for the eggs and improvement of our garden plots with rotational grazing. We also knew we would end up with some roosters in the mix for the freezer. We had no idea how many , which we covered in a previous post.

The chickens were doing so good, we even got a second batch to replace the roosters and build the ranks. We are loving the eggs ( so are our friends and family) and how easy they are to take care of.

We also loved that where we kept them for the past year is now a beautiful garden. Years prior to the chickens we couldn’t get anything to grow there. Now it is our best looking garden so far this year.

With all the benefits, it was an easy decision to get more this year .

So we got 10 Ameraucana chicks locally. Trying to add some color to the egg basket. They did great moving from our brooder, to our chicken/ rabbit tractor. Moved in with the additional flock with little trouble (once we removed the 4 roosters out of new batch.

We have absolutely enjoyed the chickens and their role on the homestead. Watching them peck and scratch is a great way to spend some time. Their benefits to the soil can’t be denied. If you can do only one thing a year around your place, we highly recommend chickens.

Trying potatoes again

The first year we grew potatoes, they were in stacked tires. To be more precise, we TRIED to grow them. Sweet potatoes did pretty good, but everything else just turned into marble size things that would not soften even if boiled an hour.

Last year we tried to plant them traditionally in rows and had even less success. Now we are realizing that our soil needs more work than we thought, the chickens and rabbits are helping with that, but was still the overall issue we believe. The plants did great, but nothing happened underground.

This year we decided to try a different approach . Talking to friends who had had some success, we just tilled a plot. Put the potatoes on the ground and covered in hay.

Super easy , our concerns were are all the heavy storms matting down the hay as fast as we put it on there, and ants. We have all the ants, so if you are missing any, we have them. They are some of our best producers, unfortunately.

We ended up getting about a wheel barrow full. Excited to try this method again. The only thing we would change is make sure the ground under is tilled better. Even though they are planted “on top” of the ground , we found they stopped shallow because of the lack of tilling.

Trying to grow mushrooms!

We saw a local park offering a class on mushroom logs and the idea really took hold. We figured it ought to be easy enough and we really like eating them. Mushrooms would be a good addition to the homestead.

The class was good, gave us some good information and then we got our own logs to inoculate with mushroom spore. We learned that hard woods are the best. You drill a hole in and pack the sawdust mushroom spore mixture in it and seal with wax. Then let it sit and grow!

The class gave us shiitake mushrooms for our demo log and we got some oyster mushrooms to try at home.

We ended up using some Bradford Pear logs from a tree that came down in a storm. This isn’t a hard wood tree but the timing was too good to ignore it.

Stacked on pallets to get air circulation

Unfortunately, we didn’t get mushrooms from any of these logs. We’re not sure if it’s the wrong wood that was used, the wrong wax or maybe even too much wax.

Our demo logs finally did make mushrooms but they were not shiitake. They maybe got too hot or too dried out. I think we’ll try it again eventually but we’ll need to try and really set up an ideal location. Maybe we can try one of the box kits before trying logs again.

Let us know if you’ve had any success growing your own mushrooms, in the comments below. We’d love to hear about what worked or didn’t work for you.