Today's post is brought to you by the letter "T"

Hi All, Rich M suggested this post should be brought to you by the letter T for Tardy, which I certainly am. Once again I've been working for a friend's company so a lot of the progress you're going to see was done by Susan. In order to have a chicken Tractor (notice the "T") that is easier to move around than the previous one we built a new one on a much better frame. We also improved on it so the feeder was integated and would hold more food. For some of the structure we used some wood from a tree we cut down and took to a local saw mill. Below is a picture of Susan using an ancient Japanese technique for perserving wood called Shou Sugi Ban (we learned about it on one of our favorite TV shows Homestead Rescue.) These pieces became the roof.

And a couple of pictures of the finished product...

We had some Trespassers from next door show up for a while.

Susan finished up our automatic Turkey waterer as well. Here's the rain catchment system on the Turkey Taj mahal.

And the waterer inside...

While I've been away at work Susan also put up the Tile for the backsplash in the kitchen

And put in the flagstone on the mudroom porch (sorry, can't come up with a T for this one.)

And last, an update on the Turkeys. We have two babies that are growing up nicely. Here they are with their Teacher, a chicken.

One of the adult Turkey hens has been sitting on a clutch of eggs for a couple of weeks. We're not sure how many eggs but it looks like a bunch. This last week the other hen started "helping out." We're calling them mothers, not sure if they identify as mothers but they haven't displayed any displeasure so far.

That's it for now. The letter T worked out pretty well. I noticed the last post was brought to us by the letter S. That means U is next. I have no idea how I'm going to work that in. Brian

Today's Post is also brought to you by the letter "S"

 Hi All,

It's time for another post focused on the letter "S". As I mentioned before, this time it is mostly about solar. We've finally done it! We're pretty much running our house off of solar power. It has been a long journey, starting back on July 5th of last year when we signed a contract with a company to install a solar system for us. Four months later they told us they wouldn't do what we wanted to do. So after much research we forged ahead with installing the system ourselves. With some help, of course, starting with Northern Arizona Wind and Sun who provided us with a great deal of consultation, sizing and the vast majority of all the pieces we needed. Grady Reeves and Amanda, after helping us build and install the solar water heater helped us dig holes in the ground and get the ground mount structure in place. Our friend Michael provided some expert welding, as well as help carrying the 80lb bags of concrete. The final step needed the help of our electrician, Jamie, who took care of getting the AC power to the house. Susan and I were not casual observers, we did a lot of the work but it would have been nearly impossible to do this without the help of others. Now for some pictures.

January 26 - Drilling holes for the ground mount structure

March 2 - Susan and I started putting the rails up for the solar panels

March 4 - The rails are up, as are the first two panels

March 16 - All 32 panels are up. Just how big is it? 42 feet wide

 

After getting all the panels up still had to trench and lay cable from the combiners to our "solar annex" and get the panels and batteries hooked up to the charger controller / inverter. 

The solar annex is an addition we built on the back of the well house.

 Here's what it looks like inside.

We still may have to do some tweaking, even potentially buying another battery, but we're up and running.

And just to prove there is never a dull moment around here and still going with the letter S...

The copperhead (sans head) we found by our back door as we came back from a walk

 

 

That's all for now. I didn't go into a lot of detail on the solar system but will do the best I can to answer any questions. Take care.

Brian

A Big Day for our feathered friends

 Hi All,

Yesterday was a big day for some of our fowl friends. A couple months back a friend loaned us his incubator so we thought we'd see if we could hatch some of the eggs our chickens have been laying. About a month ago seven out of the nine eggs hatched. Yesterday we moved those seven in with the adults. All is well!

The seven youngsters just before being released into the general population

Also yesterday, after approximately 28 days, three baby turkeys hatched. There are five more eggs in the incubator with two different "due dates". Getting turkeys to adulthood isn't as easy as with chickens but hopefully since we've had some luck in the past they'll all make it.

Our three new additions under a heat lamp

That's all for now.

Brian

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "S"

 Hi All!

This post is for Rich who has been texting me for a couple of weeks asking for an update. So here it is!

The first "S" topic is Solar, as in the passive solar water heater we constructed and installed with the help of our friend Grady. The idea is to have the sun heat a tank full of water that will then supply the electric water heater in our house. We often laugh when we hear or read about "hot water heaters". If it is hot water, why do you need to heat it? But now it seems we may actually have one. The bad news is since we installed the solar water heater, the sun hasn't shined so we haven't been able to see how much difference it makes.

We used the skid steer to lift the almost completed water heater on to the roof

In place and ready to go

The valves that allow us to bypass either of the two heaters if need be, like today

The other "S" topic is today's snow. The forecast for last night was for seven inches of the white stuff. I'd say they got it about right.

On the way back from watering the chickens and turkeys. Duncan

 is wondering why we've stopped.

Normally when it snows I feel like I need to hurry up and get some pictures before it melts. We're not supposed to be above freezing until Saturday so I have plenty of time.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for the next installment of "S is for Solar". Take care.

Brian

Turkey Taj Mahal

 Hi All,

First post in  a while. This one will be mostly about things other than the house. To start with we have ordered some grapevines we plan to plant this winter. Our California and French friends shouldn't get excited, in Texas about all you can grow are muscadine grapes which aren't all that good for wine.

Killing grass for where grape vines will go

Our other big project of late is the Turkey Taj Mahal. The story goes like this...  We decided to put in a solar well pump so as not to use our crack house tenant's electricity to pump water for the garden, orchard, vineyard and poultry. Because of all the trees around the well house we decided to put the solar panels out in the middle of the pasture, basically next to where the vineyard is to be planted. We quickly decided it made more sense to build a building and put the panels on the roof, that way we got another building for storage. But wait! How about we use the new building to house the turkeys? So now we need a concrete floor. We called our concrete guys and got a bid on a 8' x 10' concrete slab. Texted them on Saturday, called me back on Sunday, came out Monday to look it over. Before Adan and Adan Jr got here on Monday we staked out where we wanted the building. Man, 8 x 10 sure is small. Let's make it a bit bigger, how about 10' x 12'? Well, now we've gone from mixing bags of cement to getting a cement truck and we're going to pay for a whole load whether we use it or not. Now we're up to 12' x 14'. We told them to hurry up and get it done before we made it any bigger. Two days later, it was done. The concrete part anyway.

Slab poured

Three walls up

Starting to look like a building

It's done! Including rainwater catchment to water the turkeys

Took an evening off with friends to see the world famous Kilgore College Rangerettes perform at halftime of a Kilgore High School football game. It was very impressive!

And then there were six

That's all for now!

Take care.

Brian

Hallelujah!

We have finally finished (no pun intended) the wood floor in the living room and dining area! Not much to say, just thank goodness we're done with that project! Here are some pictures.

The floor as it originally went in, notice the furniture out on the front porch.

Sanded

Stained and two coats of clear poly

Phew! That's it for now. Take care.

Brian

Update on the Birds and the Bees

Hi All,
The attempt to split our two bee colonies into four didn't go as planned. The jury is still out but I think we'll at least be able to keep two colonies and there is a chance we may have three. It will be another couple of weeks before we have a better idea. They are fascinating creatures.

Oh boy, how the turkeys have grown. They have denuded the ground in their "house" so we let them out for a while most days to get their fill of bugs. This year we have a bumper crop of grasshoppers and crickets so they can get their fill pretty quickly. Here's a video of us taking an evening stroll.

In other news, we contracted our neighbor's son to build some cabinets for us in the mud / utility room. They turned out great! And of course continuing with the rustic look.

Before: Looking this way

Before: Looking that way

After: Pantry and storage

After: More storage

One other development since we last talked, we've signed a contract to have a solar system installed. Our original plan was to install it ourselves. The more we looked at the roof, specifically the pitch of the roof, the more we thought we'd pay someone to install it. As it turned out we found a good deal and it isn't going to cost us much more than if we had installed the system ourselves. I won't go into all the specifics but if you're interested drop one of us an email or message and we can go into the details.

That's it for now. Hope everyone is well.

Brian