Art Shack Micro House Update

 

 The winter here has not been nearly as cold as it could be. We have only had a dusting of snow a couple of times and a couple of very magical frosts. I think I can speak for all of us at the Homestead when I say that we are not sad to have missed carrying buckets of water to the livestock on skating rink quality ice. We've had our fair share of frozen rain the last few of winters.

The mild winter (easier to work in) and the fact that we have stayed at the Art Shack ourselves several times, have culminated in a lot of additions to the coziness of said Micro House.

 We have settled on a combination of furniture that functions well in such a tiny space, like the "gate leg" table that will fold to a skinny 8" against the wall if more space is needed. The foot stool/ottoman opens to hold games and toys for our littlest visitors. It also doubles as a chair at the table.

So does the "slightly shorter than twin bed size couch" we made from two Ikea cabinets with a foam pad on top.

 Another luxury that just can't be beat is HEAT. I am very happy with this wall mount propane heater. It was very inexpensive and heats the place in no time flat. I will say that I think it would be better if it had a thermostat to turn it on and off but I was going for off the grid (no electricity) style heat and this was very affordable and easy to use. A wood stove would have taken up far too much floor space in an 8'x12' room. Since you must keep a wood stove away from walls it would have practically been in the center of the room.

I also installed a co2 detector in both the Art Shack and Oasis trailer. A very important thing to do when you are heating with gas.

I concocted this crazy mess of hoses to create an outdoor shower, which is a huge hit with everyone. It's so magical to be taking a steamy hot shower in the outdoors. Usually under the stars.

 

I also gave the dogs a bath with it after another skunk episode.

The shower floor is an old wood pallet that I put these modular cedar squares on top of. Someone gave these to me so I don't know where they came from, but I have seen them for sale before.

Another nicety that I am very happy to have is a way to do dishes with hot running water.

I set up an old laundry sink at the back of the outdoor shower and now we can use the same shower head and hot water heater to do the dishes.  It doesn't seem like such a big deal until your there with a pile of greasy dishes and it's about to rain, voila! Fast, hot, soapy water.

I cannot say enough about how much I love these little water heaters.

 We have two outdoor showers run by these and they are fantastic. I payed $115 for each (they came with their own propane regulator and hose, most don't.) They have been real work horses and shockingly efficient.
 I will say that you have to turn the water volume down quite a bit if the in-coming water temperature is below 55F. So it is a balancing act to get enough hot water for a shower when it is 45F or lower outside. But hey, it's the best "camping" I've ever had!


 WARNING: If you are an Oasis travel trailer purest, this might offend you.

 The least "off the grid" and, admittedly, nicest to have addition to the Oasis trailer has been this little electric fridge.

I cut the center post out of the closet and intercepted the hardwired 110 electric heater thermostat, that was original to the trailer, to make a plug-in for it. I had to settle for this refrigerator because propane versions started at $600, used. No thanks.
I did put in a 2x4 header on the top of the closet  frame just in case the center post was load bearing.
I lined the interior of the closet with cedar fence boards that I planed. I used Liquid Nails to put them in.

 The biggest roof leak in the Oasis was right over this closet, so it was in very sad shape to start with.

Entertainment cannot be overlooked and  I found myself at an odd little Humane Society thrift store last summer where I picked up this old "tube" radio/record player. It has been so fun to put on a ZZ Top or Credence album and sit on the porch drinking coffee.

Although digital music is very handy, I have to say, there is a certain sound quality of the vinyl that just can't be beat.

At the same shop I also bought this freaky thing. I don't know why, I just had to. Maybe to keep me warm next winter.

Mid-Winter Update

Our winter has been very mild so far. Tonight is expected to be the coldest yet this year, with a low of 22. It is probably the 5th night this year to dip below freezing.

In some parts of the country it might sound like I am bragging, but those people might not be too quick to trade their cold days with clear skies for our gray and overcast.

Be that as it may, we are doing fine here. Our wood pile is still strong, and a bit of wind last month has insured that we will be fine next year too.

It did not seem that windy that night, but this 100' tall Doug Fir snapped. Fortunately, it landed where no damage was done. In fact, it is in a pretty convenient place: just next to the burn pile, and easily accessed with the trailer. The small branches and fuzzy bits go on the pile, and the rest will stacked and split there, and hauled to town next fall.

And what is this? Another contribution to the wood pile? Why, thank you. 

The downwind fork split off this tree. It took out part of an old fence, but did no real damage. Between the two of them, that is just about enough wood for next year. And it is only January.

The loafing shed is doing great in its first full winter. Two horses enjoy it daily. Gotta keep up on the shoveling, as a dry, wind-free area encourages them to pile it all up in the same place, but that kinda makes it convenient for removal.

Phoebe is a huge fan of stall mats, and not just for stalls. Once we determined where the horses would spend the most time, we put down mats. Even when the horses track mud on them, or low spots hold rainwater, it is still so much better than the muck they would be standing in.

Stall mats are not cheap, but they make a huge difference in mud control in the winter. The horses appreciate it, and we feel better about their situation when they have a good roof over their heads and a nice place to stand.

The Short Tale of Silver the Rooster

Back in March, as you may remember, Long John Silver the unplanned and unloved Americana rooster  was a feathers width from the chopping block.

He continued to be unreasonable with the hens to the point that they all, one by one, mutinied. Every day, one more Americana hen would move out of their pen and into the Cuckoo Marans pen to roost for the night.

Finally Silver was alone with his over sized libido and after a couple of weeks of watching him jumping out of the bushes to grab hens and cornering unwilling hens in the open pens, it was deemed by all the inhabitants of the Homestead that he was to be sentenced to solitary confinement and if we could not find a home for him this summer, he would meet his maker and/or our soup pot.

Silver himself was informed of this decision, his door was firmly latched and the search began for a new home. But it seems there are many more roosters in the world than there are homes and so Silver was to be dispatched as soon as someone had the time.

And so he did dwell for many weeks, alone in one of the chicken pens, eating kitchen scraps and waiting. That is, until the day he escaped while his water was being filled...

After a lifetime of living with chickens I will be the first to tell you they are not really the smartest animals on the farm, usually.

There have been exceptions.

There was for instance a hen named "Tweetie Bird" who came into my mothers life as an orphan and was raised by her, after I had moved away from home.

Used to being the apple of my mothers eye, I actually became jealous of this bird. Whenever we would meet for coffee, she would go on and on about how smart Tweetie Bird was.
She would interrupt phone calls with me to talk about what Tweetie Bird was doing right then that was so cute or smart.

Of course I always took her stories with a large grain of salt, and then one day I called my Mom and got the Answering Machine. Instead of the usual greeting, the recording was 3 minutes of Tweetie Bird singing the happy chicken song (if you have chickens, you know what the happy chicken song is) and then a beep.

The message I left was a chastisement of how my mom had taken her relationship with this chicken too far.
She called a couple of hours later and had no idea what I was talking about.

What we finally figured out was that Tweetie Bird had come onto the mud porch where the answering machine lived and had stepped onto the correct buttons in such a way as to leave an outgoing message.
I never doubted my moms stories about Tweetie Bird again.

Another was the hen named "Qweet." She was, again, an orphan rescued by our, then, 6 year old daughter June.
Qweet was not an electronic genius like Tweetie Bird, but she was an amazingly companionable hen.

She would sit on Junes shoulder and share Popsicles. One bite for June, one bite for Qweet and so on. Bird Flue was certainly not on our radar back then. Qweet endured all of Junes games, costumes, falconry garb, matching calico dresses (sewn by my mom) and just about any whim that caught Junes fancy. All with a calmness and happy go lucky attitude I would only expect from an elderly Black Lab.

And now we may have to add Silver to this short list of poultry personalities.

I wasn't at the Homestead when he escaped so my first clue that something had shifted was when I fed the horses and down in the stall with Rio was Silver clucking and preening and gobbling up hay seeds.

"What is the meaning of this weird event? The Rooster has moved in with the horses?" I pondered this for the rest of the day. There was no way I was going to be able to catch him in the daylight so I would just watch him at dusk to see where he was roosting and catch him then.

I got busy that day and forgot to watch him. Days and then weeks went by, and Silver remained at the top of the hill, where he never ventured more than 20 feet from the horse pasture. I have to admit that even though he had been nothing less than a heartless marauder in his past, he was now an odd guy who really just wanted to be left alone with his new comrade Rio.

 

I have to admit it became impossible to think about chopping Silvers head off when I would watch them out grazing together.
If Silver had found a new peaceful life for himself, who was I to interfere?

Even though the other hens would forage their way up to the top of the hill every day, Silver would pointedly ignore them, choosing to stay inside the boundaries of the horse pasture instead. Roosting at night on the corner post of the up-hill fence.

If you have a good sense of the heroic story, you have probably guessed that this story does not end happily.

Silver was, well, silver. This is a color that is highly visible at night. And populating the night are many things that love to eat chicken.

Six weeks after his escape, on Thanksgiving Day (Oh, the irony!), we found no rooster in the horse pasture, but instead, a small puddle of silver feathers.

I had known that day was coming, chickens are very low on the food chain, but it was a little sad anyway to see him gone.

But, as Buck pointed out "At least he died the way he wanted to, with the wind blowin' in his hair."

The Old Barn

This summer has been a lot of work for Buck and I. We have been so busy going back and forth this summer that not a lot has been done on the Homestead besides maintenance and winter readiness.

Because of the work we have done this summer, our other house where my dad, son and new daughter-in-law live, has an improved septic system and we have saved the garage from collapsing on a crumbling foundation. It is now a fully functioning art studio where no mice are allowed! This makes my new daughter in law a very happy painter.

We have also started work on the old barn on the property which has some sagging issues and a hole in the side where a hay door used to be. The door had been missing long before we bought it.

This was not taken with a fish-eye lens, it really does sag that much.

What shall we do with this frail old icon of our communities agricultural past? It would break our hearts to see it fall, but we can't justify too much money being spent on it for it's present use- storing outdoor furniture, 3 barn cats and a small amount of hay for my dads ancient (she turned 36 this year) Arab mare. Since we only have .5 acres of pasture, the barn will never really be used for much livestock or hay in the future.

It could be used for more- a workshop, art studio or maybe a farm store... It just needs to be re-purposed in some way. But for now we have to settle for just keeping it from falling down.

I drive by at least 15 barns on my way to the Homestead (a 15 mile drive) and every one but 2 of them are falling down. They are far too costly to repair when their original use is extinct. Sentimentality is a luxury few farms can afford these days. I know at least one farmer who found it was much cheaper and faster to replace the old wood barn with a steel building. The cost to fix the roof on the old barn would have cost the same as his whole new building. In my opinion, the very best hope for the survival of these old barns is to convert them to modern activities, not restore them as relics.

The underside of the barn is supported by peeled fir logs and 12 by 12's. There is something definitely wrong with the 12 by 12 in this picture. That's next on the list.

The main reason we are plugging the hay door hole is because it is like an amazing wind tunnel in the winter. It is also letting rain in and the interior is showing signs of rot. We decided we would put windows in the hay door hole since it would be very dark in the barn if we just covered over the hole with boards.

It won't really look original, but the fact is that barns like this, built to house plow horses and the hay they ate in the winter, have no relevance in our modern lives. Keeping a barn interior dark was an important feature- the sun destroys the quality of hay, but more natural light would be a better feature for it's future.

We have had these turn of the century french doors out of an old factory for several years. We had planned on using them to enclose a porch, but changed our minds.

I did a lot of image searches for old barn windows and found that most old barn windows were just salvaged windows put in in no particular way. Perfect, we can do that!

We have trimmed the doors to look more like windows, given them a fresh coat of paint (it's much easier to do on the ground!) and when the rain lets up a little we will mount them in the frame we have built out of local, full dimensional lumber to match the rest of the barn.
Next summer the barn will get a full coat of paint, red and white stripes and all.

 

In the next couple weeks we will be digging a french drain along the uphill side of the barn to divert the rain water that constantly threatens the old foundation.

Then we will have our carpenter help us jack up the sagging East wall and let it sit over the winter to flex back into position before we put in new posts and piers to hopefully hold this sweet barn up for another 100 years.

Fall

This fall we have been very busy. In addition to all the normal October things, our son is getting married on Saturday. It is a home grown affair, with the two of them doing most of the planning. So, yeah, it is busy here.

After a slow start at the beginning of the summer, our tomatos came in really nicely. We had a very warm and beautiful first half of October here, and have been getting our fill of tomatos When the first rain came last week we had to get them in before they split.

This is apple season too. One thing about this year is that the fruit is huge. The tomato is one of Phoebe's hybrids. She has been proving the seeds for a few years, and they are really lovely and yummy. And usually big.

The apples are a King and what we call a Mystery. (So named because we took it to the apple fair and the old apple guys could not identify it. Probably a unique hybrid or an heirloom type that is not well known.) The Kings, left, usually get big, but I have never had Mysterys this large.

Hank helped me get the hay in a while ago, so that is all taken care of.

The boys helped me split, haul and stack the wood that had been drying over the summer. 3 trailer loads and 2 pickups full will get us a long way through the winter. There is still more to haul but that will have to wait until after the wedding. It is tarped and waiting.

We like to burn a lot of bark this time of year. It is not that cold out, and often we just need to take the chill off in the morning or evening. The bark is kind of a pain, in that it does not stack well and is really splintery, but it is perfect for days like today.

And of course, apples mean cider. We did not do our usual party this year; too busy to think about that. And our septic is still a little tender, so we wanted to go easy on it. So the boys and I pressed 10 gallons, 5 each of the King and Mystery. We thawed out 6 gallons of the Grav we did in August and mixed them together. They make a lovely blend. A few were gifted out and the rest went back in the freezer to get us through the winter.

Finally, I have been really enjoying riding my Honda 110. If I have a reason to go for a little ride, to the bank or post office, I always try to find a little more to do. One thing I love in the late summer/early fall is to ride by the dahlia farm down the road. It is always a beautiful sight.