Nearly done moving
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 temperatures in the mid to high 50s with grey skies and drizzly rain. Well, these cows daily face double the temperatures they were bred for with no rain for weeks. This means they act like desert creatures. They lay down under trees all day, and they roam around at night eating. Literally every night between midnight and 2am I can hear cows right outside the backyard eating and mooing happily now that they aren't being slow roasted (pun intended). I heard of a farmer in Florida breeding in some cows from Africa for heat tolerance to great success (only 25% genetics I believe).
When the cows rest under shade, they tend to do so in the same few areas. This causes a basin effect under the trees which I believe will ultimately cause great damage to the oaks. There are simply not enough mature trees in the pasture today to provide shade where the cows are, so they come up to the same few groves for shelter. The sad thing is that I by far have more trees than all my neighbors combined. It's quite funny to see them setting up car ports for the cows. I'll probably just grow pecan trees and honey locust.
Back in the 1970s when this house was built, it was somewhat common to connect electrical outlets in serial. Meaning the outlet (or lightswitch) connects 2 wires directly and closes the circuit. Thus when the outlet fails or the live wire shorts out in it, the entire wall goes dark like old christmas tree lights with a burned bulb. It's interesting that this apparently didn't bug the previous owners. It makes me wonder how much more electricity we use than they did (despite being fanatical about watching and limiting power usage like all good ecologists).
If you have never read Tree Crops by J. Russell Smith, you should. I'm a little under half way through with it, and it is quite apparent that this book was the source for a lot of Mollison's perennial food theories. I am reading this one right after finishing Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard. Restoration Agriculture may as well be the cliff notes for Tree Crops this work is so instrumental. And while I found Restoration Agriculture to be lacking, Tree Crops is shaping up to be in my top 5 "you should read this" books.
Soon we begin rebuilding the shed and outdoor post harvesting station. That will be quite a big project. The original construction used non-treated wood with no sealed siding (it's just metal on wood), and the studs are failing due to termite damage. I'm looking to replace this soon, as we are just one bad storm away from losing it. Inside the shed is the well pump, and I would very much like to not have a catastrophe when the roof comes down. Moreover, the electric lines are far too thin for the distance they are being run, and the shielding has charred from the drain on it. So we are going to attempt to fix that all at the same time.
Following the shed will be the nursery area, deer and electric fencing, silage tarps, walkway fabric, barn fixup, front yard garden restoration. And after the wasps go into hiding for the winter, the exterior house work will start. That is basically a lot of soffit/fascia board replacement, sealing cracks in the exterior, and repainting.
Did I mention we're not entirely out of the old house yet? Still need to finish packing, painting, repairs, mowing, shutting down the garden, and deep cleaning. Then we can finally get it on the market.
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 temperatures in the mid to high 50s with grey skies and drizzly rain. Well, these cows daily face double the temperatures they were bred for with no rain for weeks. This means they act like desert creatures. They lay down under trees all day, and they roam around at night eating. Literally every night between midnight and 2am I can hear cows right outside the backyard eating and mooing happily now that they aren't being slow roasted (pun intended). I heard of a farmer in Florida breeding in some cows from Africa for heat tolerance to great success (only 25% genetics I believe).
When the cows rest under shade, they tend to do so in the same few areas. This causes a basin effect under the trees which I believe will ultimately cause great damage to the oaks. There are simply not enough mature trees in the pasture today to provide shade where the cows are, so they come up to the same few groves for shelter. The sad thing is that I by far have more trees than all my neighbors combined. It's quite funny to see them setting up car ports for the cows. I'll probably just grow pecan trees and honey locust.
Back in the 1970s when this house was built, it was somewhat common to connect electrical outlets in serial. Meaning the outlet (or lightswitch) connects 2 wires directly and closes the circuit. Thus when the outlet fails or the live wire shorts out in it, the entire wall goes dark like old christmas tree lights with a burned bulb. It's interesting that this apparently didn't bug the previous owners. It makes me wonder how much more electricity we use than they did (despite being fanatical about watching and limiting power usage like all good ecologists).
If you have never read Tree Crops by J. Russell Smith, you should. I'm a little under half way through with it, and it is quite apparent that this book was the source for a lot of Mollison's perennial food theories. I am reading this one right after finishing Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard. Restoration Agriculture may as well be the cliff notes for Tree Crops this work is so instrumental. And while I found Restoration Agriculture to be lacking, Tree Crops is shaping up to be in my top 5 "you should read this" books.
Soon we begin rebuilding the shed and outdoor post harvesting station. That will be quite a big project. The original construction used non-treated wood with no sealed siding (it's just metal on wood), and the studs are failing due to termite damage. I'm looking to replace this soon, as we are just one bad storm away from losing it. Inside the shed is the well pump, and I would very much like to not have a catastrophe when the roof comes down. Moreover, the electric lines are far too thin for the distance they are being run, and the shielding has charred from the drain on it. So we are going to attempt to fix that all at the same time.
Following the shed will be the nursery area, deer and electric fencing, silage tarps, walkway fabric, barn fixup, front yard garden restoration. And after the wasps go into hiding for the winter, the exterior house work will start. That is basically a lot of soffit/fascia board replacement, sealing cracks in the exterior, and repainting.
Did I mention we're not entirely out of the old house yet? Still need to finish packing, painting, repairs, mowing, shutting down the garden, and deep cleaning. Then we can finally get it on the market.
Extremely useful information which you have shared here about Pest Control Franchise for us .This is a great way to enhance knowledge for us, and also beneficial for us. Thank you for sharing an article like this.
ReplyDelete