Hardscrabble Products September 2016

We don't have much off the farm this month. The garden is doing poorly for the most part.

Chicken:
We still have a couple of extra broilers in the freezer. Price is $5 per lb for pasture raised chickens. Whole or parts available.

Goat milk:

I have one milk share available this summer. Contact me for details, this will supply you with around a gallon a week.

I do sometimes have misc milk available for soap or feeding animals, cheesemaking, ect. Supplied by the quart, courtesy of Opal. Ask about supply beforehand, also willing to barter for farm eggs and produce.

Culinary and medicinal herbs:

I have fresh rosemary this month in large quantity.

Golden Lemon thyme available in small quantities.

Lemon balm available in quantity.

Aloe vera available in small quantities.

Echinacea flower available in small quantity. Flowers are dry.

Herb prices vary and are sold by the oz.

Contact me for pricing or availability any time.
Hardscrabblehomestead@gmail.com

Hand Cut Posts

So I decided I needed some extra supports for the loft in the shed, and have tenative ideas about pulling half of the loft out in favor of lighting and a ceiling fan sometime in the future. It would give the structure a less claustrophobic, hobbit hole kind of feeling and open up some needed headspace.

It would also reduce my total square footage, not that the loft space is very big to begin with. We will see, but the supports are needed whether or not part of the loft gets cut out.

Off to find some support beams.

Here, we have rough lengths from a standing dead knobcone pine that was cut down several months ago.

This is what the poles look like when I drag them out of the woods.

I cut all the pine cones, branches and rough cut limb ends down with a handsaw. I strip the bark off with my pocket knife.

Pine beetle damage underneath the bark. This is what killed the tree.

All peeled, bucked, cleaned and sanded with rough grit sandpaper.

I finished one post this morning and am more than halfway done with the second post. When I am finished, these will be cut to length and then the ends will be sliced up to be put into the walls.

Cordwood Shed Build, part 1

A few months back, I decided I needed a hay shed. So I grabbed some warped 4x6s from the scrap lumber pile and drove them into the ground. They weren't square what with the poles warping and my lack of carpentry skill...but hey, it's just for hay! 

Then I added loft framing, and roof rafters. Here is the framing on the shed almost complete.

By this time I had started thinking,
"hey this thing is pretty cool, wonder if I could enclose it for a studio?"

Uh-oh, sounds like I've just talked myself into a lot of extra work.... and I'm STILL going to need a hay shed one of these days!

I added plywood to the loft area first.

Then I added plywood for the roof sheathing.

I used rolled roofing to cover the shed.  Then I sawed off all the ends that stuck out from the loft framing.

The ladder makes the roof looked bowed, but it is not. The ladder is pushing down on the roofing overlap.

Scrap lumber to cut down to size for the walls.

I used cinder blocks with rebar driven into them for wall foundation. I am using this Cordwood method for just two walls for now, to see if this is a good building idea or not.

Cement added to the middle of the cinder blocks and around the rebar anchors.

At this point, I realized that these walls aren't going to be square. Buy hey, no cordwood wall is ever perfectly straight!

The next step was to mortar all the cinder blocks together at the ends. I tried to be careful but my masonry skills just are NOT up to par. Anyone who tells you cordwood masonry takes no skill, is a liar!

Two and a half rods of cut down rebar, eleven cinder blocks, two and a half bags of concrete (mixed and poured by hand), and about half a bag of mortar went into two small wall foundations.


This wall is totally gonna look like a girl built it...... because guess what, she did!

When the foundation was finished, I used the extra mortar mixed in with about 20% wet sawdust and filled in a small part on the base of the smaller wall. I am still waiting on more scrap lumber ends and 6 inch cordwood rounds!

My frank opinion of this building method, so far, is not that great. This is a lot of heavy lifting, lots of mortar and concrete to mix, there's a ton of bending and stooping involved, and more time consuming than I thought imaginable. This is a LOT of work to put up a wall!!

The economic savings aren't very big, but hopefully this will insulate sufficiently so I won't have to insulate and finish the inside of the walls. If nothing else, it sure looks cool...

To be continued --

Hardscrabble's Tiny Solar System

Here is our small DC solar system.

This is a 45 watt solar array that powers the electric fence for the time being. First, the panels on the shed roof. Very dusty, I'm going to have to do something about that!

Next, the charge controller. This is a cheap 3-amp charge controller, about $20 from Harbor Freight. Not the best quality, but it's been in use over 2 years without issue.

Charge controller goes to the battery. This is just a regular deep cycle marine battery.

In this picture the solar panels are not hooked up to it, because apparently charging the battery while the electric fence is hooked up is NOT a good idea. The battery gets charged once a month or so unless something shorts the fence out, then more frequent charging is required.

This DC electric fencer is wired directly to the battery.

Currently, the electric fence is the only thing this system is running. I do have plans to run one or two DC lights off this system, but have no plans to hook an inverter up to or overuse such a small system.

This setup will give you basic DC lighting and power on a small scale.

Milking The Goat

Meet Opal. She's the star of my one goat, off the grid dairy. Opal is a first generation Mini Alpine. She is a wonderful little goat, and has lived her entire life on our farm.

Tonight, I'm going to go over the details of our milking routine and show you how it's done around here.






First, and probably most importantly, you need to keep your milking equipment sterile. This includes your hands, please wash the grime off before milking. I milk by hand and wish to keep contaminants to a minimum.

My milking equipment is pretty basic: milking containers, disinfectant solution, a rag to wipe off the udder, a brush to keep excess hair out of the milk, bag balm, and milk filters. Here is some of the bare bones equipment for milking, sitting on the milk stand all ready to use.




Next, I get a bowl of sweet COB for her to enjoy while I milk her. Sweet COB is corn, oats, and barley mixed together and sweetened with molasses. This keeps the goat occupied while I milk, and also keeps her in decent body condition while she is lactating. Opal is a heavy milker for such a small goat and needs these treats to maintain body condition. An added bonus is, the grain makes her produce a little bit more milk.

The COB goes into a bucket hung on the front of the milk stand.




After getting her grain ration into her bucket, I open the gate and let Opal out of her pen. She invariably runs over to the milk stand, hops up all on her own and starts eating her grain. Opal LOVES being milked-- please don't ever let someone tell you that milking an animal is'abusing' or 'raping' her. This is absolute nonsense.
Notice how in the above picture, I don't even have her hooked to her little leash. This is all of her own free will.




I brush her off with a medium bristle dandy brush first. This keeps most of the loose hair off the goat so it doesn't fall into the milk. Remember, sanitation is paramount to milk quality. If the milk gets contaminated it can take on a "goaty" taste. Normally the milk tastes very similar to cows' milk, in fact it is difficult to tell the difference between the two species' milk if properly handled and used within a reasonable amount of time.

After brushing, I put a little bit of weak disinfectant solution on a rag and wipe her teats and udder down. We don't want any stray bits of manure, hay, ect. getting into the milk. This also helps minimize bacteria.




After the prep is done I start milking. You need to squeeze the top of the teat off to trap the milk and prevent it running back up into the udder, then squeeze the milk out the end of the teat. This does take some practice to get proficient at, but the basics here are very simple.
At first you may not get much milk per squeeze. Your hands may also get sore partway through.  That is OK, you do get better at it with time! With regular milking, your hands should stop aching within a few weeks and your overall milking time will drop down to just a few minutes.




Here is the result of this evening's milking. When this is all filtered and the foam on the top is accounted for, it equals about a quart and a half (6 cups) of fresh, raw goat milk. The foam at the top of the jar does not filter properly and usually gets fed to the cat.






Now, before I do anything with the milk I finish attending to the goat. I take a smear of bag balm and wipe it on her teats to keep them soft and supple, and to prevent chapping.
Then I put the goat away and feed her a ration of high quality alfalfa hay. The goat does not like to go back home on her own, if you don't lead her back to the pen she will be raiding the turkey feeders and knocking down the fruit trees to girdle them and munch on the foliage. This is destructive, expensive and her extra snacks can give the milk a weird taste. I try to prevent this kind of goat antic at any cost!






All that's left to do now, is filter the milk and get it chilled as quickly as possible.

I put a milk filter over a one quart Mason jar and pour the milk through the filter. This insures there is no hair or bits of hay or anything foreign lurking around in my milk. It takes two jars to hold the contents of this evening's milking.


Milk ready for refrigeration

My first yogurt attempt--it exploded on me!!

After that I screw the lids on the jars, label them with the date and AM or PM milking, and refrigerate in the coldest part of the refrigerator. Believe me, the labels are necessary when you are getting this much milk. Any milk left over in my refrigerator after about a week gets made into cheese, dumped to the dogs, or mixed into the poultry feed for a nice turkey and chicken treat. And don't worry, the cat gets his share too!

I have made cheese, goat butter, and yogurt so far but my methods can still use improvement. I find that milking a goat actually is cost effective versus buying all these dairy products in the store. The feed and supplies I put into the goat cost far less than all these dairy products cost if store-bought, plus I get the satisfaction and peace of mind of knowing exactly what went into the milk products.

Simple Off Grid water system

Filter









Today I would like to show you our off the grid water system. This system is cost effective, easy to install, requires no pump for water pressure, and suits both our agricultural and domestic needs.

First, we have the water tanks. There are three tanks that were bought used, total water capacity is 2,750 gallons. Water is brought in by truck, we get deliveries of 2,000 gallons at a time.
When the tanks are refilled, a small amount of bleach is measured and poured into each tank to help insure the water source is clean and safe.



All of the tanks are connected into one water line. The line at the tanks is 1 1/2 inch and 2-inch PVC. From the main line at the tanks and right before the line goes underground, there is an auxillary hose running right into the vegetable garden area.

The water main then runs underground. Under the earth where you can't see it, the line is reduced from 2 inches to one inch, and then from one inch to 3/4 inch line. The reason for this is to increase the water pressure at the end of the main line. With sufficient water pressure, no pump is needed.

At the end of the main there is a simple spigot. From the spigot, water runs either directly into a hose for the livestock, or continues on to the water filter.

The water filter is a basic whole house filtration setup, and is protected from the elements with a box built around it. From the filter, water runs either directly inside as the cold water line, or continues on to the water heater.

From the filter to the water heater there is a simple hose run in between. When the water reaches the on demand propane water heater it splits off to a shower head and then another line brings hot water inside. So we have hot water both inside or outside, which comes in real handy for things like washing off muddy boots or giving the milk goat a bath.

So that's the basics of our water system. Once again, this can all be done without a pump if you set your water tanks uphill from where you need to run water. I hope this information helps others looking to set up a gravity fed system, and allays any fears some folks may have that we "don't have running water", or don't have a water source.