For our first installment I’m going to talk about some basic things you’ll want to have handy to get started woodcarving. Some of these are things you already know and some of them you may not have thought of but I have found them all to be very handy.

Wood

I bet you already had this one figured out. If you didn’t know you needed wood to be a woodcarver you may need to find a friend to help you along. Read more…

Posted on February 14th, 2008 by John
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Here’s photo one of the chicken tractor. As you can see the ladies make themselves comfy. The tractor is 3′ x 8′. It’s not the most attractive thing you’ll ever see but it is sturdy and functional. The 1/2″ hardware cloth is there because I learned the hard way that 2″ x 3″ holes are too big. Racoons will reach through and have themselves a nice dinner! Read more…

Posted on February 4th, 2008 by John
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In our journey toward having a hobby farm we decided that plants would be easier than animals. Besides laying hens (which we don’t consider hard animals to raise) and the blueberries we already mentioned we also planted some strawberries.

We eat strawberries almost every morning. We make a very nice breakfast smoothie out of frozen strawberries, yogurt and juice. It’s quite delicious so it made sense to add some strawberries to our little farm.There are two types of strawberries: June-bearers and Ever-bearers. The ever-bearers make throughout the year while the June-bearers make a large crop all at once sometime around June (duh!). Since we are going to be freezing our fruit for future use we wanted to harvest it all at once so we picked a June-bearer. The particular variety is called ‘Jewel’. This variety is supposed to have a great flavor and tolerate freezing very well.

We have started with 25 plants which isn’t a lot but it’s enough for testing the waters. If it goes well we can expand next year. I went with a bed setup as opposed to some of the other ideas. This was mainly precipitated by the location we wanted to plant them in.

Strawberries are a cheap plant to purchase and they put out runners to spread so it’s easy to aquire more plants for the next year.

Posted on February 2nd, 2008 by John
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This is very basic overview about rabbiteye blueberries. In general blueberries prefer colder climates which can be a problem for those of us here in Georgia. Lucky for me someone was smart enough to breed some plants that are well adapted to our area. Read more…

Posted on February 1st, 2008 by John
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Now that I’m back in the country I’ve become really interested in raising chickens for eggs. We don’t have a lot of chickens but just enough so the we can have eggs and maybe a few extra to give away. The main issue is managing where the chickens go and keeping them safe from predators. Make way for the chicken tractor! Read more…

Posted on January 15th, 2008 by John
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