Autumn 2021

October

I finally got around to building the shelves inside the art studio. There is a set on each side of the double glass door plus one long one above the door.

And the harvesting continues. Here's Carolyn with her first crop of ginger root.

November

Still more harvesting and canning going on. But the most exciting thing was getting a custom exhaust pipe bent to connect a non-standard muffler for my wood chipper.

December

Dawg

One of the best things to happen to me all year was the arrival of this little gray and white pitbull puppy. We thought he might have been a cast off and tried for several weeks to find his true owner. No one ever came forward so I gave him the name of Dawg and took him to the vet to have him examined and vaccinated. He was an early Christmas present indeed.

Christmas

Our Christmas tree as usual consists of a small pine cut off the property. This year it was warm enough to actually sit outside around a campfire on Christmas Eve. And on Christmas Day, Carolyn prepared us a wonderful dinner as she does every year.

Summer 2021

July

Birthday

As you may know July is my birthday month. This year was my 70th. Carolyn pitched in and helped me buy a brand new dump trailer. This will make unloading wood chips, gravel, sand, topsoil, etc. much easier than by hand. I also put new tires on my little garden trailer.

An unexpected birthday present came in the mail - a gift certificate to my favorite store, Harbor Freight Tools. Thank you Sara Smith! 🙂

Strange "Crops"

Many mushrooms pop up and flourish during the month of July. Our favorite is the Black Trumpet. They taste delicious. The only drawback is that they turn whatever they're cooked with a dark color. Also this month I noticed we had some paw paws on our scrawny little paw paw tree. Unfortunately the deer or something else got every one of them before they had a chance to ripen. Last but not least was broccoli! We've never been able to grow broccoli before but for some reason this year we succeeded.

Visitors

This month we had visitors! Sara came down with her girls for a few days. M_ie and the gang had great fun cooking and making tie-dyed t-shirts etc. A good time was had by all :-) We wish they would come more often.

August

Dumping Ground

I got wooden sides built for my dump trailer so it could hold a good load of wood chips and I made my first delivery to the garden. That was an easy chore to empty all those chips -- just push a button!

Travel

Carolyn's family from Italy came to visit so she rented a large house in Virginia where the whole bunch gathered for a family reunion including Carolyn's 101-year-old  mother. Of course, despite having been vaccinated against it, we took the COVID test to make sure we weren't packing the virus along.

First Big Harvest

When we got back from Virginia the garden had been busy at work the whole time. We gathered up our first big harvest and then the canning began. 🙂

Art Studio

Carolyn hired Nathan and his crew to convert the screen porch into an art studio. This is a project that was started months earlier but had to wait for the windows to be custom manufactured. At the same time we had Nathan put a little shed roof over the front porch. It really improves the look of the house and protects the front door.

September

Not much exciting happened this month. The biggest thing for me was getting tracker back after a very long wait to get his brakes and clutch adjusted. The mechanic is very good and thus very busy.

That's not to say we weren't busy harvesting more fruits of our labors and canning and preserving them for future use. Check out my bite-size watermelon 🙂

Feeding the Worms

I guess you've all been wondering where we've been the past two months. Well, right here in the woods. As I mentioned in the last post I had started work on a vermicomposting flush toilet. It is now complete. The following pictures will summarize the process but generally speaking this is what had to be done:

1. Remove the old toilet
2. Finish the tile floor
   The former toilet was a built-in bench seat that was set diagonally in the room, The tile did not go under it. Fortunately we had just enough whole pieces and scraps left over to replace the diagonally cut tiles.
3. Build the enclosure for the worm tank
   This was necessary for two reasons; to ensure good slope in the sewer line from the house and to help maintain a more constant temperature for the worms. Just don't do what I did and try to destroy your work while back-filling 😢
4. Run the sewer line
5. Prepare the worm tank
   This entailed making four aeration stacks to ensure plenty of oxygen in the system. These stacks consist of 3" PVC with about 20 one inch holes drilled in each then wrapped in fiberglass window screen. The tank itself is a 1000 liter IBC - a big polyethylene container with a 2 inch drain valve in the bottom. A layer of fist size stones was laid in the bottom of the tank then covered with several inches of gravel on top of which was another layer of fiberglass window screen. Finally the tank was filled with aged wood chips. On top was placed a layer of green kitchen waste (vegetable scraps) to give the worms something to munch on until the system was inaugurated.
6. Run the drain line
   The drain line carries the liquid that has filtered through the bed of wood chips and gravel out to the greenfilter.
7. Prepare the greenfilter
   Also called the "soakaway", this element of the system handles the bulk of the flush water. It is a shallow pit (mine is about 3x5 feet and about 18 inches deep. It is also filled with wood chips. The drain line empties into this pit and is covered by about 4 - 6 inches of wood chips.  Natural soil bacteria in the first few inches of earth consume the excess nitrogen and generally clean the effluent.
8. Run waterline
9. Install new flush toilet
10. Build roof over worm tank for shade

The new system has been in operation for almost 2 weeks now. The worms seem happy and there are no foul odors coming from the tank. So far so good.

Of course, that is not the only thing going on around here. Besides tending the garden - tying, spraying, pruning, weeding - we've had to deal with three broken vehicles. First my Trailblazer started running very rough and about the same time my little tractor had a clutch failure. And, just because bad things seem to come in threes, my riding mower had a catastrophic blade failure. I was able to fix both the mower and my car but the tractor was taken to a mechanic over in Rainsville.

During the storm that cut across Alabama on Juneteenth, I lost a couple of trees. Sadly they were both red oaks. One I was expecting to loose relatively soon to disease. When it went, it took another healthy one with it. Such is life.  Now I have other things to do - make wood chips, split firewood, and saw lumber. Yay!

Since the middle of May, we have sighted six snakes around the house, shop, and garden. As good luck would have it, they have all been the kind you want hanging around - rat snakes and king snakes mostly plus one milk snake. These reptilian friends not only keep rodents in check, they are very territorial and do not tolerate venomous snakes. 

Well, that's about it.  If you have any questions or comments please email me. We'd love to hear from you.

Russ - rustygrey@gmail.com

Carolyn - csmith7173@gmail.com