Amateur homesteading

You probably already know this -- diatomaceous earth is great for all kinds of parasites, external and internal.  Just make sure you get food grade, not pool filter quality.  The chickens could use it as a dust bath or you can apply it the same way as the permethrin.

Yeah, I have a bag of that. Their dust bath (the one I made, not their DIY version) is extra fine play sand and DE. Normally they use both dust bath areas, but their covered outdoor area is pretty small, so the rain was still able to made both dust bath areas a wet soggy mess.  

We did water testing.   Our radon results came in.  Our radon level in the water is 1,798.2 pCi/L.  However, the test results don't give a reference, at least, not for New Jersey.  So I look it up, and New Jersey doesn't have a safe level listed.  Neither does the federal government.  Some states do, and their "safe" levels range anywhere from 300 pCi/L, to 10,000 pCi/L.  New Jersey wanted to declare 800 as the level for safe drinking water, but for whatever reason, never made it official.  New Hampshire lists 2,000, Vermont says 4,000, Connecticut says 5,000.  Meanwhile, in Massachusetts so long as your water is below 10,000 pCi/L they consider it fit for human consumption.  Aren't these things supposed to be based on science?  And if so, why such a discrepancy between states?

As far as radon in the air, we did that test during the inspection period, and it came back fine.  The radon in our water at a level of 1,798 pCi/L is expected to add approximately 0.2 pCi/L of radon to the air, and so long as it is under 2 pCi/L that is fine.

We did some other tests, arsenic, alpha gross, and water hardness.  Those will take another week or two to come in.

what happens if you decide the radon is a bit on the high side?  (Given there’s no standard)

joanne said:
what happens if you decide the radon is a bit on the high side?  (Given there’s no standard)

 We’re going to treat the water.  I’ve been looking into systems.  Aeration systems are the best for reducing radon in water, but they’re also susceptible to mineral build up from hard water, which we also have.   Granulated activated charcoal (GAC) systems also work, and don’t have the issues with hard water that the aeration systems have.  GAC filters don’t remove as much radon as aeration systems do, so they are only recommended if radon levels are below 30,000 pCi/L, but ours is way below that. 

Then there is whole house vs point of use.  Since the radon level is low enough that we don’t need to worry about radon being released into the air in significant quantities, we’ll probably go with a point of use system at the kitchen faucet. 

Seems sensible; for some reason I was thinking you were testing water in a stream or dam. Glad it’s a much smaller (and more manageable)quantity! 

Joanne, out here in Kingwood we don't have city water.  Each home has their own private well.  This is new to me, since in Maplewood and Millburn I always had city water.  And city sewer.  And natural gas.  I've only ever had natural gas water heaters, so having to use a different system is new to me also.  Options out here for hot water are propane, electric, or oil.  I'd never heard of oil for hot water, but out here it's actually quite common.  We already had a boiler in the basement, and the hot water is apparently a pump that is attached to that.

In Ulster County, NY, a frequent topic of conversation is home heating. Central heating is pretty rare. People have wood burning stoves and various other things. As is common, our house has a mixture of many things. We have a wood pellet burning stove, a heat exchanger, and space heaters. We've also installed water pipes in some of the floors for radiant heating, but we haven't gotten the system up and running yet.

It seems that most houses have propane tanks outside. We have one and use it only for our stove. When we moved out of Maplewood, we installed a new stove so that it would match the appliances in the kitchen. We bought it used on craigslist. The guy who sold it to us had been using it with propane. He gave us a set of nozzles to switch in. You're supposed to use one set for natural gas and another set for propane. My theory is that you need less volume with propane. Our stovetop burners in our upstate house run too hot, and we probably are using the wrong nozzles. One of these days, I'll see if I can find nozzles to fit this stove. In the meantime, when we need to simmer on low heat, we use a flame tamer which is a metal disk that goes between the burner and the pot.

We get periodic propane deliveries to the tank. Since we use less than the minimum amount, we are subject to a charge that doesn't correspond to our actual usage.

We have solar panels on the house. We hope one day to be generating hot water from that or something else clean or renewable. Maybe we'll have a rooftop heat collector. We may end up heating water with propane to run the radiant heat.

Our water heater is electric. It's not cost efficient, but since we're mostly there only on weekends, it's OK. It's a very small unit.

The space heaters are in a room where heat from the pellet stove doesn't reach. We hope the radiant heat can replace them, because, of course, they are not cost efficient.

Four rooms have ceiling fans. They help a lot with heat distribution. And the ceilings in most rooms are only seven feet high, so that helps.

What do (or will) you do when you go away? Who takes care of the chickens?

Yes, we've run into quite a number of people out here who use wood stoves to heat their homes.  We hope to do that in a few years, but for right now we can't afford to have the chimney made safely usable, so it will have to wait until we can hire a professional.  Same for installation of the wood stove, that is not something I'm comfortable doing as a DIY.  We were originally thinking of a pellet stove, but one local told us that there is always free hardwood being offered, you just have to keep your eyes open for it.  In fact, he was telling us this as he was giving us free maple that he had cut down.  He uses a wood stove to heat his home, but already has over three winters worth of wood stacked, so when this tree needed to come down he just couldn't store any more.  So when the time comes we'll probably go with a wood stove instead of a pellet stove.  And he's right.  We now have a ton of logs stacked out back, all oak and maple, that we've picked up here and there.  We're going to rent a log splitter for one day, and we already have the firewood holder set up behind the barn.

I loved ceiling fans in our Maplewood home, for both summer and winter, but in our new home the ceilings are too low for them.   The upstairs is especially crazy, I can touch the ceiling without climbing on anything, and I'm not especially tall.   Our bedroom, the one section of the house that is modern, has normal height ceilings, so we'll likely put two ceiling fans in here (it's a huge room) but for the rest of the house they just won't work.

We also use propane just for the stove.  We're here full time, but a stove/oven alone won't use that much.  Right now they're doing regular deliveries to gauge how much we're going through, and then they'll put us on  a delivery schedule based on our normal usage. 

As far as travel, right now we're just about broke, so that won't come up for a bit.  My mom has said she would come take care of the chickens for us if we go away.  Longer term I might end up hiring someone local to stop by every day and refresh their food and water and collect the eggs.  Overall they're pretty low maintenance.  We're planning on building them a bigger coop, with a bigger enclosed run.  When we do that we're going to install a solar powered automatic pop door, so someone won't have to let them out every morning and lock them up every night. 

Wow, those are low ceilings. I actually like that cozy feeling. And it's nicer acoustically.

Wood is the cheapest fuel. We chose pellets for a few reasons. We can stoke it, and the computer-controlled machine feeds the burner on and off as needed. Depending on how cold it is outside, a bag of fuel can last two winter days. You could look at old wood stoves, but the new ones are worth looking at. They have advanced circulation systems and even catalytic converters, so they pollute a lot less than they used to. Our pellet stove is even better in that way. The required chimney has to protrude from the roof only a small amount because so little heat goes up it. That means we get nearly all the heat it makes.

We also have a well and a septic system. When we moved in, we had the water tested by a lab, and they found there were bacteria, which is common. We ran the cheaper test. The more expensive test would have told us the types of bacteria. We installed an ultra-violet filter which zaps the water as it passes through. There is a funny side effect. When the water hasn't run in a while, we turn it on, and the cold water comes out hot, and the hot water comes out cold. I thought the spigots had been swapped. We are in the area that provides water to New York City, and the water has that nice taste and texture. It's very nice. We also have a particulate filter for it.

So apparently the birds aren't stupid for being out in the rain.  It depends on the breed.  Fluffier breeds, like Orpingtons, need to stay out of the rain as they can easily get wet to their skin.  But my hens are mixes of Rhode Island Reds and White Rocks (sometimes called Golden Comets, Cinnamon Queens, and a few other names depending on who is selling them) and they have feathers that are better able to keep water from reaching their downy layer.

I was also worried since I've read that chickens and ducks should never share a hen house as ducks make a wet mess everywhere they go, and wetness/dampness inside a hen house is dangerous to chickens.  For this reason I worried about the chickens getting wet in the rain and then going inside while still damp.  But I guess the normal amount of rain that falls on a chicken isn't the same as the amount of moisture a duck will bring into a hen house.

When we look at birds, they look like getting wet will be unpleasant, but I guess it's not. I used to have a cockatiel who loved showers. She would stand on my shoulder and get herself as wet as possible. It looked bad, and it made her smell really bad, but hey, she liked it.

This isn't my video.

A lot of the birds here (natives and introduced) will make a point of sitting in rain for a while and fluffing their feathers, really washing them out. That includes our ducks and water fowl. I think it helps with pest control, as well as their other grooming behaviour (scratching, dust baths etc). It’s funny watching them on their outdoor perches, power lines etc drying like washing on the line

But I have noticed they don’t like getting too wet, or wet for many hours. 

I’m going to preface this by stating that I’m against homework for younger children, studies have shown that it does not help with academic success and in some students can cause some students to actively dislike school.  That said, for now both of my school aged kids are happy doing homework, so I haven’t pushed back on them getting assignments 

Today my middle child came home with his kindergarten homework, and happily sat down to do it.  At the bottom are some drawings. He is supposed to color in the items that start with the letter b, and leave blank any pictures that don’t start with the letter b. 

The note on the bottom of the picture is from me. I’m sure it was inadvertent, but damn, kindergarten is kinda young to introduce the kid to trick questions

Tom Reingold’s post got me wanting to try planting something, so we bought a peach tree.  Personally I would have tried apples, but my son wanted peaches.  Also, I can’t stand how many peaches at the store are rock hard and never ripe, so maybe growing them makes some sense

Our neighbor said he planted two, but before he got around to fencing them off the deer stripped them bare. So we fenced ours right when we planted it.  The tag claims we don’t need to cross pollinate, hopefully this is accurate.

The bucket in the picture is for water. We drilled a small hole in the bottom, then put the filled bucket at the base of the tree.  It takes awhile for the water to drip out, giving it a deeper water than just pouring water on the surface of the ground for a minute or two with the hose

Great idea with the bucket!  More efficient use of water than the hose would be too.  Must remember that trick.

mulemom said:
Great idea with the bucket!  More efficient use of water than the hose would be too.  Must remember that trick.

 They do have specially made water bladders that you put around tree trunks that you only need to fill once a week. Treegator is one I saw by the Turtle Back Zoo when they put some new trees in there.  But if you're on a budget    then the bucket trick works well enough.  However, for new trees you'll need to fill the bucket about 2 or 3 times a week, whereas the tree bladder gizmo only needs to be filled weekly since it releases the water over a few days rather than the few hours the bucket does.

If you do get a bucket, make sure to get the lid.  If you fill it with water but don't use a lid then the water drips out too fast, minutes rather than hours. You do want a slower drip since that supposedly helps the water go deeper into the roots rather than a quick water which stays more on the surface. 

I suggest you plan what you'll do with your peach harvest. The peaches ripen at the same time, and then they rot at the same time. Apples are convenienter than peaches. Be ready to make jam or give peaches away.

This year's harvest was a disappointment. One of our two trees didn't bear fruit for some reason. My wife thinks the erratic weather caused that. The other bore a moderate number of peaches but less than last year. And the deer discovered the tree or found a way to get beyond the fence, as we found lots of pits on the ground. Or maybe it was the bear who ate them.

A neighbor also has pawpaw trees. She tells us it took seven years for them to bear fruit. But what special fruit it is!

We bought a dwarf tree, so I'm hoping it doesn't bear too much fruit.  I do know what you're talking about in regards to too much fruit.  When I was younger my grandmother had a concord grape vine.  This thing ended up getting huge.  And all the grapes ripened at the same time.  When I was very little I remember her spending days cooking down all the grapes to jelly, and canning it.  But when I got older, and she did too, she no longer had the patience to spend a few days dealing with all the grapes.  We would visit and she'd send home grocery bags FULL of ripe concord grapes.  More than we could possibly eat.  One year we happened to not visit when they were ripe, so she instead drove them over to us.  She didn't know what to do with all those grapes otherwise   

My mom wants paw paw.  I found a guy about half an hour from here who sells the trees.  I'm thinking of buying a few and seeing what happens with those.  Though with those I'm told they go from unripe, to beautifully ripe, to rotten in a matter of days, which is why we don't see them in stores and rarely see them at farmer's markets.  They're very hard to bring to market and sell before they go bad.

Save some of the peach pits - they’re useful for making pectin for jams made with other fruits. 

There are some other uses too, but I can’t remember now - I found a useful list in an old pioneer book ofhousehold hints.  

Tom, Carole is right: the fruit yield is heavily dependant on weather patterns. I’ve forgotten now, most of what I knew beyond them needing a good frost to ‘set’ the fruit (I.e. wake up the internal timer that starts blossom changing to good fruit). However if there is insufficient honey bee activity around blossom time, you’re not going to have good fruit set. 

It might be worth seeing who has local bees, and finding out what you can rent or exchange for, for access to your blossom trees

Our neighbor with the pawpaw trees said she manually pollinated the trees by rubbing flowers from one tree onto flowers of the other. This was advice she received, though she says she doesn't know if it actually helped.

Joanne, thanks.

A friend erected a beehive on our yard, but the local bear took it down.

I don’t think paw paws use honey bees for pollination, they use flies.  I’ve read about some desperate paw paw farmers hanging rotting meat from the tree to attract flies.  Though Tom’s suggestion of hand pollination is probably more aesthetically pleasing

I’m trying not to laugh - truly, Nature at work, with that bear!!

Your neighbour with the flower-pollination: yep, she’s playing the part of an exceptionally large bee. Some people use large bird feathers to gently brush pollen from one tree’s flowers to the other’s. Other people might gently use a medium portrait-painting brush. The flower trick is much gentler. 

Edited to add: you’re making me homesick for Howlong!

No, I didn’t grow these. A farm stand down the road sells peanuts. I never knew they grew this far north, I thought peanuts were a Georgia thing.  They taste okay raw, but they taste more like beans than peanuts.  Google says I need to hang them to dry for a few weeks, then I can roast them, or save the seeds to plant next spring. Right now I have them hanging in my kitchen since that room has the best airflow and I have less of a chance of them getting moldy

oh, you'll have the BEST peanut butter (eventually)! YUM!

Yes my neighbor said she also heard of putting road kill at the foot of the trees for that reason.

I know somebody who has a roaster, although its mostly used for coffee beans.

hey, Spontaneous, I’ve been meaning to thank you again for that home-made furniture  cleaner/polish. Finally got around to actually using the batch I made from your recipe. The antique furniture came up well (I was a little unsure, because I usually use beeswax on it but really couldn’t be bothered lately), and a particularly greasy cupboard in the kitchen cleaned really easily. 

And the house smells so clean! Not a chemical-clean, just fresh. 

So thanks! I think of you whenever I come home now.  

I’m glad you liked it.  The original recipe I came across called for half a vanilla bean.  Don’t get me wrong, it smelled wonderful.  But it wasn’t budget friendly. Of course, the only store I was able to find vanilla beans in was Whole Foods, if I could find them somewhere else at a lower cost I might consider adding it in again.  But even without the orange and cinnamon smell lovely together and do a great job cleaning stuff. 

It’s getti colder here.  I don’t plan on heating the coop or adding light bulbs. Both work to keep the chill off, but if you lose power and aren’t able to get a back up source running then they can  suffer since they haven’t adjusted, and the sudden change can even force them into a molt, which could be fatal mid winter.  Allowing them to adjust to the cold gradually and just making sure that they don’t have a draft on them at night seems to be the better method for us.  It isn’t that cold at night, but to prepare them, and me, for the winter routine I’ve been closing them in the coop at night and shutting their pop door, and then letting them out in the morning.  They have ventilation, but it is at the top of the coop to encourage ammonia fumes to escape while not catching the birds in a draft.  I’m told that if the temperature drops super low putting Vaseline on their combs and wattles will help protect them from frost bite.  So long as they’ve had a chance to harden off naturally their feathers will do the rest.

One thing about not having artificial heat or light is that they will naturally slow down or even stop laying eggs.  For production hens this is bad, but these girls are more pets than livestock, so I’m okay with allowing their bodies to take a break.  Some people say that giving them the winter off means they’ll lay eggs longer in life, and also have a longer lifespan.  I don’t know if either statement is actually true or not.  

There are a lot of power losses out there.  Even in the summer they’re problematic since we all have private wells.  No power = no running water.  We have a generator, as do most of our neighbors.  Our one neighbor has lived here for years.  He only bought a generator only a few months ago.  Apparently he was debating starting amps, running power, and a bunch of other things that went over my head.  Turns out that he is an electrical engineer.  I can’t imagine dealing with regular power outages for years before finally buying a back up.  On the other hand, I have been guilty of overthinking things many times myself.  

PS, please excuse any glaring typos.  We’ve moved a bunch of things around the past few days and the computer is still disconnected and sitting on the floor.  Typing a short post on the phone is one thing, anything over a paragraph and it starts to get difficult for my middle aged eyes to catch all the typos and autocorrects. 

If it's any comfort to you, I lived on a farm in West Virginia for five years and our hen coop was not only not heated, but had gaps between some of the boards big enough to stick your fingers through, and we never had a chicken get frostbite nor lost one to cold.  We stacked hay bales against the windward wall when there was going to be a big storm, just so it couldn't snow into the coop too much, made sure there was plenty of hay in their nest boxes, and fed them extra in the winter months.  The chickens were free to roam at will all the time, usually they all returned to the coop at night but every now and then some would decide to stay in the horse barn with the peafowl instead.  We also had a duck who roosted in the catalpa tree by the back door.