Sacred Grove Gardens

Winter time is a pretty crazy time in Texas. It's warm enough into January to work all day, but the sun disagrees with that. I suppose it's nice not to push till 8pm every day. We tend to celebrate family Christmas before the actual event so that we can get the most attendance from far off relatives, so the actual day is fairly low key. Banana pancakes, coffee, pig ears (for the dogs) proceed a small gift exchange. I got a spare tire carrier for my trailer, and Laura got some pottery tools. In a few days, I'm taking a mini-trip down to  Hog Trap Ranch  to get a little bit of dairy goat training as well as some general info on the little ones we'll be getting in January. I'm a little nervous of goats to be honest. I'd like to extend calf sharing to goats, but I'm not sure how to do it. I think we'll have some time to figure this out though, as I believe we're getting babies and I'd like to keep them a year before breeding them. That will give m...

So we let the dogs out every evening to let them do their business and stretch their legs. We're out in the back yard hanging out, and I look out into the field and see the cows swarming the well. And I mean swarming like bees. They're moving in circles around it, agitated, and moo-screaming. So I grab the snips and head out there to see what's up. I had just put a fence around our new well yesterday. And cows being the curious creatures they are, had taken quite the interest in the new fence. As I got close, I found that a few cows had gotten behind the fence (tore the door off and trampled the opposite side), and were now basically in a small fenced in area completely terrified and freaking out. I quickly cut down the back side of the fence and opened it up, and she saw the new way out and took off like a rocket. Then I started mending the fence, cutting a new panel off and twisting the ends around each other (like you do). There are a few baby cows in the herd, and b...

When we bought this place, it came with a rather squalid shed. It was put up pretty shoddily, just stud board with metal siding. Even with western red cedar, it still didn't stand up to termites after 40 years and studs were starting to buckle and fail. At the same time, our well failed and had to be completely redone. I may have mentioned this already, but the guy who came over to look at it put his hands on the tank and said, "My granddad dug this well by hand 50 years ago". So I think it's done its job. The well and the workshop are related though, as the pipe that puts water to the house comes up through the workshop foundation slab. So we have kind of been without water for a while. We have partial water, since the local water co-op has a house line that goes into the kitchen and showers. But soon, we'll have water everywhere! The workshop has 4 areas, an office/hobby area, a woodshop, an outdoor veg processing area (sort of like a carport), and a giant coo...

It was my birthday this weekend, the 35th in fact. It's been a really big spring so far. I had picked up some blueberry bushes from one of the better nurseries in town and was looking for some pots. You know the routine, old whiskey barrels and feed troughs. I figured since I was out antiquing, I could pick up some antique crocks for some kitchen stuff. It's really ridiculous how overpriced this stuff is. Four stores later, I hadn't found a crock that wasn't fearfully overpriced, and the garden container pricing was even worse. I can get brand new feed troughs for 17 bucks at Tractor Supply, beat up ones shouldn't cost 35. Anyway, after several hours of frustrating antiquing later, I was about to walk out of the fourth store and found a beautiful handmade casserole dish for a pretty good price. So a few cheap throughs later, I had vegetarian shepherd's pie in the oven and I was mixing potting soil for these amazing blueberry bush planters. The pi...

Big setback we've been going through. While we're quite fortunate to have had very little hurricane impact, we have had hurricane damage to our new home. Wind damaged the shingles and water came into the ceiling, causing a cave-in in the living room. There were also a few trees damaged (though thankfully, nothing we could see from the ancient ones). When I called a tree company, they said they had 700 calls in two days. Roofers are similarly backed up. Hoping we can at least get on the schedule for both this week, as we've been trying now for about a month. That has been quite a trial. I can't begin to tell you how horrible it feels to have a 3 foot hole in your ceiling with a plastic bag taped up on it. There's quite a bit of fascia board that needs to be replaced, so there may be some even greater delays as its best to have that all done before the roof goes in. The one good side about it is that we're finally getting a metal roof. I've wanted one for ages...

Boy what a month! Wait... It's been two months. Moving is really hard when you do it on a shoestring budget. It takes a ton of preparation and fitting packing and sorting in the evenings so you can move stuff in the weekend. In the mean time, you now have 2 houses to deal with, contractors to schedule, repairs to be made. At some point, although you have 2 houses in 2 different cities, you are effectively homeless living out of a backpack for a few weeks. The internet situation in the new place leaves much to be desired. I am not really sure if I can upload youtube videos on this 1.5Mbps farm internet. We shall see. I have been upping my book reading though, crossing off another 3 books from the list. One day, we need to learn how to harvest the energy in reading lists. I finish a book and cross it off in the list, only to see it has grown with new books to read. The cows on the land are pretty much all Angus cows. The breed originates from Scotland where they have summer tem...