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Author Archives: lee
Adding to the BCS family
About a year ago, we bought a used BCS 830 tiller off Craigslist. It was a typical used-market purchase for me: I paid too much for something which ultimately had too many problems. It will be an excellent little tractor … Continue reading
Posted in Gardening
15 Comments
Don’t eat all your mistakes
There’s a fairly common mantra in homesteading circles: “You can always eat your mistakes.” This is most often applied to livestock ownership, such as when a breed turns out to be poorly suited to your property or management style. When … Continue reading
Posted in Homestead Skills
18 Comments
The very good bad year
Blogs share an incomplete portrait of the authors’ lives. Projects are often planned and completed in rapid succession, with no account of the intervening drudgery of late nights and setbacks. Posts may discuss everything from plasterwork to pasture management, while … Continue reading
Posted in General
38 Comments
Lovey dovey moovy groovy with a touch of danger
Our slightly lame one eyed adopted stray cat Jack has turned into a deadly weapon. She has reliably been leaving one rodent a day by our back porch to show she is earning her keep. She doesn’t bring them all … Continue reading
Posted in Pets
12 Comments
Ice day
December has brought us lots of cold but very little rain or snow. On several nights the weather has turned to freezing fog, and morning’s light broke upon an otherworldly landscape of icy shards.
Posted in Nature
10 Comments
European red slug
We came upon this large red slug one evening and because of the hole in its head we at first thought it was a Leopard Slug. After a bit of research, we discovered that it was actually a European Red … Continue reading
Posted in Nature
4 Comments
Front of our 1937 farm house is finished
Three years ago when we bought our house it was seriously lacking in the curb-appeal department. After the initial “cute!” impression wore off, you quickly realized that the deck was out of level, the front window was broken, there was … Continue reading
Posted in Renovation
25 Comments
The first three years
Three riotous lush summer gardens, and winters of shivering at night, Three springtime’s first flushes of flowering, and setting fall woodstoves alight. Three years of successes and losses, of planning and strides and delay, But from three hundred meters the … Continue reading
Posted in General
11 Comments
Reconfigurable range shelter
In May we built a reconfigurable chicken house to hold our new flock of chicks. Since we planned to build a moving rig for it, we located this mini-coop near our back porch for convenience. (Bad idea.) Unfortunately, the summer … Continue reading
Posted in Farm Structures, Livestock
7 Comments
Building more corbels
I needed to build 7 corbels for the construction work we are having done. Three large corbels go on the front gable of the house. Four smaller corbels go on the new garden shed. The garden shed was built with … Continue reading
Posted in Renovation
7 Comments