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

Birds (Turkeys) and the Bees

Hi All,
In my previous posts I mentioned we had a renter in the house formally known as crack house. All is going well there. We originally thought we'd get a grad student or intern to rent the house. Since that wasn't the case we really didn't do a crack up job (pun intended) so went back and did a few improvements once our renter moved in.

There was no place to put her washer and dryer so we added a covered back porch with all the necessary hook ups. Here's what it looks like...

This past week we also moved the turkeys to their permanent home - a hoop house that Susan had in Georgia. It took us a lot longer to get it back up than it did to take it down.

The turkeys are getting big and appear to enjoy their new digs

And last but not least, we attempted to split our two bee colonies into four. It'll be a couple of weeks before we know if we were successful or not. One thing I can tell you, it's not great fun when a bee gets inside your bee suit with you.

This is what it looks like when you get stung on your eyelid

I'm going to go ice my eye some more. Take care.

Brian

New Neighbors

Hi All,
Since our last post we've gotten some new neighbors. One of them has been in the neighborhood for a few weeks. We've seen her visiting others in the neighborhood but she finally came by to introduce herself the other day.

Dulce Dos talking to Susan

She had to check out the chicken tractor

We've named her Dulce Dos after a friend's pet / tame deer Dulce. Susan and I were working on cleaning out the chicken tractor when Dulce walked up, very quietly, and nudged the back of Susan's arm with her nose. Susan liked to jump out of her skin, not knowing anyone or anything was behind her.  Dulce Dos stayed around about 30 minutes, following us around to see what we were doing. She and Duncan got along ok at first but then she seemed to be getting jealous of Duncan so she charged him once or twice to run him off. Duncan stayed clear of her after that.

Today we added two new neighbors.

Buffy has been sitting on some eggs for what we thought was two weeks, guess it's been at least three.

When we noticed Buffy sitting on eggs, she had three. While a hen sits on eggs she won't lay more eggs. Obviously when Buffy would take a break to eat or drink another hen would jump up there and lay an egg and add to the clutch. Breakfast was suffering so Susan wrote numbers on the eggs and from then on we'd take any new additions. That was after the clutch had grown to nine. Looks like they are stating to hatch.

One correction from the last post. As the turkeys have gotten bigger and their coloring has changed we've decided one of the Bronze has survived. That makes the count three Bourbon Red, three Narragansett and one Bronze.

That's it for now.
Take care.
Brian

Good News and Bad News

Good News / Bad News: Mostly Good

A little bad news to start. Shortly after our last post another of our baby turkeys died. We started off with three Bourbon Reds, three Bronze and four Narragansett. It was all three of the Bronze that died. :-(

The seven remaining turkeys moved to new temporary housing outside on Saturday. About sundown on Saturday four of them were outside the pen. We got them back in and fixed the places where we thought they got out. Sunday night before going to bed we checked on them- two were missing. Generally when they get out they stay right by the pen because they don't want to leave their flock. We looked all around and didn't find them. You know how parents worry when their kids aren't home on time. Well, they came dragging in at 6:00 this morning. I scolded them, told them to never do that again and grounded them for a week. What started out as bad news is now good news.

While I was trying to catch the two night owls and put them up I saw Duncan take off like a shot. I don't think he got the skunk but the skunk definitely got him. This was VERY BAD news. By 9:00 he's already had two baths but it doesn't seem to have helped a lot.

And finishing up with VERY GOOD news, the "crack house" is rented!  We thought we'd end up with an intern or grad student working at the Texas A&M Agri-Life Research Farm next door. But we ended up with someone even better. Our tenant (as of today) is a sweet 80 year old lady with a lot of spunk. She doesn't even mind we call it the crack house. We already like her a lot. We've made a few upgrades for her. We've put a new deck on the back of the house and today we'll start working on the roof over the deck. The deck ends about 4 feet from the property line, on the other side of the barbed wire fence are Texas A&M's cattle that are very inquisitive. They'll be checking on her anytime she's out on the deck.

That's all for now.
Take care.

Brian