They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
Early this year, in January, I think, we had two big willow trees on the farm cut down from some 30-40 feet tall to about 6 feet tall. There were several reasons for this. Both were in inconvenient locations. One was shading the garden and slowing the soil warming in the spring. The other was… Continue reading Tree Hay
Bit of a time crunch, but we got it done (enough) in plenty of time, at least two hours to spare. Saturday morning, bright and early at the Home Depot when they opened at six, Ryan made the decision to save over a hundred dollars by switching to 3/4" PEX instead of the 1" PEX… Continue reading Plumbing and Trenching.
"Daddy, do you need any help?" Little Miss "I'm-Almost-Two-I-Don't-Need-To-Nap!" Of course I do!
Uncle Adam got time to do some digging yesterday. And... He found our water line! Only about 20" down or so, which is not typical for water lines around this place. It also makes me feel a bit ridiculous for having dug four feet down for part of the trench. We will leave that little… Continue reading Found it!
Another hour and a half of digging, still no water line.
Well, we have been digging diligently, trying to extend the trench from the rain catchment tank out to the driveway to intersect with the water-line that extends out to the pasture. By Tuesday morning we were more or less in line with where we had templated the water line to run, based on a straight… Continue reading Nothing Like a Time Crunch
Actually, it probably will not be the last ditch. But we have broken ground on the next stage of the rainwater catchment project. This is the trench that will run water out of the tank and splice it into the line running out to the pasture. And this is why hand tools for digging rather… Continue reading A Last Ditch Effort
Time is running out before daddy hast to leave for National Guard for a couple weeks. Time is also running out before the hot and dry season is upon us. Trying not to repeat the mistakes of last year, where we lost a number of orchard plants due to drought,we are working on getting all… Continue reading Mulching the Orchard
Well, the water collection system survived its first rain storm... Mostly. We got a little over an inch of rain from Friday morning to Sunday night. The gutter downspout simply didn't work, it just ran out the fitting around the pipe. So Uncle Adam took the top off the manway on the tank and jammed… Continue reading Water Catchment System, Damage Report
Our rainwater catchment system has three parts, in the simplest analysis. Collection, storage, and retrieval. Phase one, and by far the most expensive part, was setting the the storage system, that is, the big 5,000 gallon tank. Phase two we knock out last weekend, setting up the collection portion of the system. This is the… Continue reading Rainwater Catchment System, Phase II
Little Farm in the Big City 