End to the year and plans for the future

So the year comes to a close and if anyone had told us at the start of the year that we would be in our own homestead with a dog, we probably would not have believed them.

We have quite a few plans for using the land, and a kind of time frame for these ideas, but as it is our first winter here, the main job is to get through the hard weather to come. The driveway is steep and curved so if we get snow or ice, it will be a little tricky to get out without slipping into the gulley. The well has already given us concern this year, and although it is working perfectly at the moment, we are still not sure if there are any pipes that are exposed and run the risk of freezing.

We have a dead oak in the front yard, that if it comes down in any direction will cause severe damage. We have had several people come knock on the door and offer to take it down, but only one of them mentioned insurance and the quotes have ranged from $100 to $500. We don't have the cash available at the moment but as soon as we do I will be getting it taken care of.

One of the things we want to do is keep some bees. I have spent the Christmas break building the hive so it will be ready for them in the Spring. The type we will be using is the Tanzanian Top Bar Hive. If you don't know of this type, it is a very simple design of hive consisting of a box with bars resting on the top. There are no frames as there are in the regular hives, rather, the bees build their combs on the underneath of the bars. This produces a much more natural comb although it makes less honey.

We have ordered fifty wild fruit trees from the MDC and they will arrive in March. Most of them will be planted around the edge of the orchard with the remainder planted sporadically around the pasture.

The main fruit trees will be ordered in the next month or so. This means we will be digging a lot of holes come springtime.

The other projects for the coming year are to build a chicken coop and raise some laying hens, buy a couple of cheap dairy bull calves and then feed them up for the fall. There are a few squirrels and rabbits on the property, so I would like to work at maintaining habitat for them as well as farming it. It would provide an alternative meat source. We have already started a small vegetable garden but there are plans to build on this and provide us with enough vegetables to prevent the need to buy in.

I wrote this today so we can look back on it in twelve months time and see what worked and what didn't.

Happy New Year to you all from Outlaw Farm.

The arrival of Jack

When we talked about moving to the new house, one of the subjects was whether we would get a dog. I had planned to eventually get a guard dog for when we have livestock, and maybe a dog for hunting such as a beagle or retriever. But definitely nothing that would become a house pet.I wanted a dog that would earn its keep and not just lie around the house all day being petted.
If you read my earlier post about the water problem, you will appreciate the level of stress we had in the house for those sixteen days. Well right slam dunk in the middle of that our friend Joyce tried talking us into taking a stray pup that had turned up at her door. To say that Jack is a good looking dog would be a lie, but he has one of those faces that you can read too well. And when we went to see him, just out of courtesy for Joyce as she had been helping us with our water problem he kind of worked his magic on us, or should I say he worked his magic on Lea Ann.
Lea Ann will tell you that she is a cat person and not a dog person. She will tolerate them but only if they don't bother her by asking for affection. I expected her to come up with some valuable excuse for us not to take Jack, but it never came. Instead she started talking about getting all the supplies and equipment needed to keep a dog. So much to the delight of the kids, we were going to have a dog. But not yet. We all decided that until we had the water problem sorted, Jack would stay with Joyce.
We finally picked him up a week later and brought him home. He quickly settled in and apart from tearing the carpet under the door that separated the mud room  from the sun room on the first night, he was a perfect puppy. And clever too. He quickly worked out that if he was to get his feet under the table, the one person he would have to impress would be Lea Ann. She went round mumbling things like "Darn dog" and then when she thought no one was paying attention, she had him in her arms or on her lap, tickling his ears or rubbing his belly.
We are still working at house training but even that is going pretty well. I have to say that for a terrier type of dog, we aren't sure what he is specifically, he is probably one of the sweetest natured dogs I have ever come across.

Water, water everywhere...

Labor weekend was a good time to get a few jobs done around the house, so I decided to replace the pressure switch in the well house. It had been causing some harsh words whenever we did the laundry as it would start to quit on us halfway through a wash. I drained the system, turned off the power and changed the switch without a hitch. The hitches came when I went to re-pressurize the tank. I realized that the 12v air compressor would not reach all the way up to the well house, so I would have to do it with a foot pump. That was going okay, considering it was 95 deg and I had the same amount of room in the well house as a sardine in a tin. Halfway through pumping it up, I turned my head and cracked it against the heat lamp bulb, breaking the bulb and splitting my head open on the broken glass. I rushed into the house with blood pouring from the wound and instinctively went to the back bathroom to clean the wound. I was doing this while trying not to alert Lea Ann to the blood everywhere, as she faints at the sight of blood, and there was a lot of it. Stood in front of the basin, I then realized there was no water to wash the wound. Only one thing for it, I called to Lea Ann that I needed her to go out to the well house. She called back from the living room 'Okay' while still chatting with one of our friends on the phone. 'Now please!' I called. 'Okay, I'm going' she replied, while still chatting to her friend on the phone. 'Um, I'm bleeding here!'
'Oh crap' she replied as she said good bye to the friend and dashed out of the door. 'Turn the freaking water on for me!' Moments later the water started coming out of the faucet and I was able to clean all the blood off and check the wound.
I was soon back out at the well house and before long had the system back up and running.
Later in the day, Lea Ann happened to mention that the toilet in our bathroom was not filling up very quickly. I checked it and realized that the water supply to that end of the house was down to a trickle. It took me a few minutes to realize that there was a bunch of sand in the faucets and the cistern valve to the toilet. I eventually managed to clean it all out and everything was running perfectly. I was finally happy with the job done.
The next day was Sunday, the day I do our laundry. I put the first load in and away it went, until it came to the first rinse and the water supply stopped. Cussing profusely under my breath, I went back to the well house and flicked the breaker switch off and on. Nothing. The pump had decided to stop altogether.
I eventually came to the conclusion that it was now a job for the professionals. But there was another problem. It was Labor Day weekend and there would be no one available until Tuesday. Tuesday came and Lea Ann phoned a few companies and we eventually chose one from a nearby town. But they could not come out until the following Monday. This meant we would have to ration bottled water, fill the toilets from buckets filled from either friends houses or school, shower either at friends houses or school and do our laundry anywhere we could.
The guys came out on the Monday, and they pulled the pump, pipe and cable up out of the well. The pump definitely had packed up, but they said as far as they could tell, the pipe and cable were perfectly okay. This was good news as the price of $2000 they had quoted was for all three items to be replaced. This would knock $400 off the bill. But they said they did not have a pump with them and would have to order it. It should be here by Wednesday at the latest and we would have water back on by Thursday at the latest. They also had mentioned that the old pump was about twenty five years old and usually these pumps had a service life of about twelve years, so if we get the same life out of the new one I will be happy.
Thursday came and went and they had not turned up. Lea Ann phoned them and they said the pump had not come in but it was due the next morning and they would be out with it as soon as it arrived.
It didn't turn up. By this time we were experts at water management but really sick of  not having running water. It's not until you don't have it, that you realize how much modern life revolves around running water. I don't think being without power is as bad as being without water. Anyway the company promised us that the pump had been sourced from another supplier, it would be in on Monday morning and they would be out with it as soon as possible. Monday morning came and guess what? They phoned to say all their crews were out on emergency jobs after the storms over the weekend.
They eventually came out on Tuesday and fitted the new pump without a hitch. Relief is not the word to describe how we all felt. After sixteen days without water, we have all learned to appreciate the value of that very simple liquid.

The start of a new life

Few people get the chance to live out their dreams. More people have dreams that are never followed. I was one of the latter until a few years ago. After a long, failed marriage, I met my present wife, who was also in the same situation. But there was a small problem. I lived in England and she lived in the USA. So, taking the bull by the horns, I went through the immigration process, sold, gave away or just dumped everything I owned and moved to NW Arkansas.
That was four years ago, and in the meantime I had got a job at the school where my wife taught, as the school tech geek. The problem with that was, we lived in NW Arkansas and the school was in SW Missouri. The 35 minute drive each way soon became a chore neither of us needed, but we didn’t want to leave the school, so we started looking for a house closer to the school.
This is where our dreams come in. Both of us had a yearning to have a little bit of land as well as a home. I love to hunt, with rifle, bow and camera. My wife always wanted a garden where she could grow vegetables, and fruit. I also wanted to raise some animals to supply us with meat (my hunting skills would not keep us fed).
After looking at several properties, we found one we both liked, and after the usual haggling, we agreed on a price. The house is about fifty years old with lots of character. The previous owners had built a beautiful, manicured front yard and several of our new neighbors mentioned how they spent a lot of time keeping it that way. We think this was their way of giving us a friendly warning about us keeping it that way too.
At the rear, and to the sides of the property was pasture, which the immediate neighbors had been keeping down with their cattle. There was an old pole barn, a storm shelter, which the kids had named the Hobbit House, a garage and a tool shed. To the east of the house was also a small pond.
So here are my long term plans. I am going to start some top bar beehives and place them right at the back of the property. This way they will hopefully have enough food sources not to bother us or the neighbors.
Next will be the chickens. A small flock of layers to keep us in eggs, supplemented each season with a dozen broilers for the table.
When both of these are running well, the main pasture will be utilized, and for this I want to raise some Boer goats. Have you figured out yet that I like my meat?
Meanwhile, the small patch of pasture between the pond and the house will be turned into an orchard for apples, pears and also raspberry and blackberry bushes.
My wife’s vegetable garden will be on the other side of the house.
So there you have it. Hopefully you will join us on our journey and see how we fare. You now have our plan for world domination and you can come back to it later down the road and see if we kept to it. Either way, I hope you enjoy the ramblings, photos and videos we produce doing it all.

I have few vices. My wife sees to that. But one I have got is I like to sit on the front porch and smoke my pipe, or read a book. I was sitting out there the other morning and a SUV went down the road. It then went around the bend and turned around. It drove back up the road and pulled into the neighbor’s driveway across the road. Then it reversed out a few feet and drove back in a few feet, I could not figure out what the two guys in the vehicle were up to. Then I saw it under the front of their truck. A black snake. It kind of annoyed me that they had taken the trouble to come back and try and kill it just because it was a snake. It then shot off along the grass verge and then slipped into the storm gulley.
The two guys then saw me sitting there and called up to me ‘That was a big one!’ I gave them a sickly grin and called back ‘He’s our rodent killer.’ They then shot off down the road and that was the end of it. Until that evening, I was sat out there once more and suddenly I saw Blackie sauntering back across the road towards our gulley. I then heard a couple of vehicles coming up the road. The first car managed to miss him, but the second one went out of their way to try and hit him. I cursed, as he seem to ball up and roll a foot or two. I was expecting him to remain there, but in a flash, he straightened out and shot across the remaining black top and into our ditch. I called the kids and we took off down the drive to see if he was okay. Sure enough, he was laid there in the gulley with his head up looking at us. I had asked one of the kids to get the camera, and I managed to take a few shots before we left him to recover from his ordeal. Not before having to grab Sophie and stop her from climbing down to take a close look. Sophie is our snake girl. What I mean by that is, if you are walking in the country, and Sophie is with you, you will see a snake. But she also seems to have very little fear of snakes too.
A few nights later, after dark. You’ve guessed it, I was out on the front porch with my pipe and I noticed something lying in the grass just a few feet from me. I slipped inside to get the torch and shone it on the object. It was Blackie! I called Lea Ann to come see and she came to the screen door, wanting to keep something solid in between her and whatever I wanted her to see. We watched him slither around for a while, and Lea Ann actually came outside with the camera to try and take some shots of Blackie. I slipped outside several times throughout the evening and he was always there somewhere, hunting down the lizards and crickets that inhabit our front yard. It was nice to see he was none the worse for his traffic adventure earlier in the week. Also, it was good to know we had a resident vermin control specialist about the place. As long as he stays out of my chicken coop when I build it, then I think Blackie and me are going to get along okay.