Naming our new lifestyle

Quenching the thirst for Reading
My wife Sue and I are hooked-on-reading. Sue is a professional writer/instructor and she pours over newspaper and magazine articles, self-help books and women's fiction novels. In her girlhood-years she read the Little House on the Prairie series and a number of biographies. As a youth I began with comic books, including Classics Illustrated, moved on to Science Fiction, history and biographies. Today I include religion, philosophy, self-improvement and real science, among the subjects of the books I read. Out here in the country our thirst for reading is being partially quenched by visiting two local libraries, where we also check-out a few movies. A couple of weeks ago, while visiting the one in Everson, WA. I wandered over to the magazine rack. Since Sue and I have been developing our gardening skills I was looking for related magazines. I selected three and brought them home.

Identifying a style of living
Once at home I leafed my way through all three, looking mainly at the pictures and titles of the articles. Two of the magazines in particular caught my interest, Farm & Ranch and Countryside. After reading them almost cover-to-cover I decided I had struck gold with one - Countryside & Small Stock Journal. Farm & Ranch is fun and has really nice glossy color photos and interesting articles, but I found it short on helping me add to my outdoor skill-set. In comparison, Countryside has only a few photos, most not in color and only the cover is glossy. However, the content is what is important and Countryside holds a marvelous treasure. This magazine is full of practical information for those of us who are already in the country, planning to move out into the country, or are turning their city-home-lots into kitchen gardens. Countryside magazine is a forum for the sharing of ideas, failures and successes in the writers attempts to live in closer harmony to the natural world. It also contains articles by experienced homesteaders, providing information on a wide range of topics related to living the homestead life. Sue and I liked the magazine so much we picked up another issue just yesterday and plan to continue as new issues come out.

A light comes on!
It was not long after Sue had read a few articles in Countryside that she learned the term for the style of life we are now living. Back when Sue and I first moved into the country we thought of a few names to call our place, we really liked the names of the estates in Jane Austin's novels. Finally we settled on Berryridge Farm. Sue and I did feel a bit funny about calling our place a "farm" because we don't plan to grow anything for commercial purposes, at least not yet anyway. From the Countryside magazine Sue discovered that what we were doing this past three years is called, by those doing more or less the same thing, homesteading. A term we both knew of course but never thought about applying to our situation. The Countryside & Small Stock Journal opened our eyes to just how big the movement back to valuing a land-based lifestyle really is.

On the Internet
The Internet can be either a useful tool or a place of addiction or obsession. I try to use it more as a tool but I can see how seductive it is too! Countryside magazine has its share of Ads, the cost of publishing is not cheap. Fortunately the advertising is related to farming, gardening, stock raising, home & out-building construction etc. Most of the advertisers have websites listed, so you can visit and survey what they have to sell, which might solve a problem you're having. In the magazine I discovered there is a website devoted to homesteading, the Homestead Exchange Network or H.E.N. I now have it marked as a 'favorite' on my browser.

Berryridge Farm - Homestead
The snow arrived this morning and cold northeaster winds are predicted for tomorrow and the next day. Sue and I have been putting more wood up for the 2009-2010 burning season. Our garden is pretty well put to bed for the winter, Sue covered many of the beds in straw. I did plant garlic for this coming summer and we still have some of this season's potato crop in the ground, to be dug up as winter goes along. Sue has been editing her memoir, which we now hope to have published this coming spring.

Well, I'd better go put another log on the fire - stay warm & safe this Holiday Season!

November Rains

Late September
I just don't seem to get around to up-dating my blog but every month or two. Sue and I have had lots of fun since my September entry. We continued to harvest zucchini, beans, snow peas and a late ripening Raspberry called Autumn Bliss. Once the tops of our potato plants started to turn yellowish Sue dug up a few Yukon Golds to test their flavor, She pronounced them delicious.

Since Winter would be hard on the heels of Fall, I thought I should get started our fourth wood shed. Sue had expressed her desire that the roof on shed three be raised. It was indeed too low for both of us to move around in and not risk conking our heads on something. The solution seemed to be to remove the roof on shed three, build and frame for shed four and then build one large roof over both. Dismantling the roof on shed three turned out to easier than I'd anticipated. It did not take too long to set the frame for shed four. The hard part was trying to figure out hoe much higher to make the roof. I didn't want to have to replace the 4X4 posts in shed three. I settled on setting the roof on the tops of shed three posts - which raised the roof about 8 inches, but it was just enough for head clearance for me.

I was able to get the work done in a couple of weeks, only working on dry days and I did take time off to visit my daughter and her family in California, at the end of September. I had a wonderful time seeing my grand-daughter for only the second time. We went to the Huntington Gardens one afternoon and the next day to the Getty Villa. I was impressed by both and took a fair number of photos so I might draw on them for garden designs at home. At that time my daughter was nearing her term with baby number two - who finally came into the world on November 1st.

Early October
I was able to finish shed four in early October. Part of the project entailed putting in a gravel floor and pathway around the perimeter. As soon as shed four was completed Sue and I began bringing up the 45 inch broad-leaf maple tree logs from the slope on the East side of our house. In most cases I had to split the logs length-wise, the logs were just too big in diameter, in order for us to carry them up the steep hillside. At the top of the slope there is a nice flat Douglas Fir stump I used for a cutting station. Using Sue's birthday present, I couldn't believe she ask for one, an electric chainsaw, I began cutting the 45 inch logs into 15 inch sections. Once I had the really dry (standing dead portions) logs cut and split, Sue stacked them into shed one, where we put the wood ready to burn. During the rest of October Sue and I brought up more of the greener sections of the two maple trees - but we have lots still to be brought up.

As the end of October approached I connected the gravel path from shed two to the one around shed four. This connection made the whole wood shed complex look and feel like a unified complex. Sue and I turned our attention to clearing an area just South of the wood sheds to be the site of our Garden Shed. It will house our gardening tools and serve as a potting shed and maybe even a partial green house.

November Rains
The rains of November have come to the foothills and them Sue I spend more time inside. She, writing & editing her book and me, taking care of my Masonic Lodge secretarial duties and now finally adding to this blog. Though the rain does dampen our spirits some, November weather does have its own beauty. The clouds are often low and sit in the valleys between the hills and mountains, reminding me of Taoist and Zen paintings where Mountains seem to float in the air and streams emerge and disappear into misty banks of fog. When we do get a break from the rain or its only misty drizzle, Sue and I venture out to do some weeding, clear more brush or put straw on the garden beds. Yesterday Sue brought in three of our beets. She cleaned, peeled and roasted them for dinner, they were just delicious.

Soon I hope to get a few photos scaled down so I can post them for you all to see. Have a wonderful Holiday Season everyone.

Fast Forward

The first Summer (2006) and Winter (2006-2007) were challenging months for us, which my wife Sue is writing about in a book we hope to have published within the next year. In hind-sight Sue and I were glad the first year in our house tested us because we no longer take the basic necessities of life for granted. I think we also have learned to really value the process of tending to life's basic needs. For example, we actually enjoy cutting brush, preparing the garden, harvesting the fruits, cleaning and cutting vegetables for meals. After a hard day's work dinner tastes so much better and we love the fact that many of our meals now come from plants we grow.

I may have mentioned it in an earlier posting, but some time ago Sue and I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and we loved it! Sue and I were motivated by this book to become "locavores" - what we cannot produce ourselves we attempt to purchase as close to home as possible. After we were able to get fully settled Sue and I began looking around our community for local farms who sold their produce by farm stands or via phone orders. It turned ou there were more farms doing this than we imagined. In fact, several local organizations joined together and annually publish a guide map of the farms in Whatcom County, WA identifying what items they grow and sell. It also and provides location and contact information. We go to a local Blueberry Farm to do you-pick for about $1.25 a pound - this year Sue has frozen about 50 lbs. of blueberries. Our own strawberry crop, this year, netted us over 9 quarts of frozen berries - not to mention the amount we gave away to neighbors or ate fresh ourselves.

At present our garden harvest is winding down and I'm spending a good deal of my time building up a supply of firewood for heating our home this Fall and Winter. We hired a couple of professional loggers to fell two very large multi-trunked broad leaf maple trees, which were growing on a steep slope just east of our home. Both trees were slowly dying and there was a good deal of standing dead sections, which we wanted to use for firewood. I had the loggers fell the trees and buck them up into 45 inch-long logs, which I will latter cut and split up. This will take some time. I'm working on the dead portions first because I can use them for firewood right away. Well, have to go, its about time to go out and cut some firewood.

Frozen pipes - December 2006

When I lived in town I never really had to worry much about our home's water pipes freezing. If the power went out it was most often back on in a matter of a few hours. What's more power outages were pretty infrequent. Not so out here in the foothills. We've had the power off eight or nine times in the past three years. And instead of being off for only a few minutes or hours we've been without electrical power for 38 hours on one occasion and 52 hours on another. Years ago I had experienced frozen water pipes when I lived in a mobile home. That year I learned about heat tape, which one wraps around your pipes and is plugged into a receptacle, often located under the mobile home near the crawl space access. But that presupposes you've got electrical power. Out in the foothills I learned how to unfreeze frozen pipes.

After a northeaster had knocked out our power we soon had no water and no way to protect our water system. [We did have a gen-tran system installed at the pump house but we did not yet have a generator]. Naturally the pump house froze. Once the power was back on I called Gary, our contractor, and he talked me through solving the problem. Our system was complicated by the fact that we had a water meter in our line. The cold had popped out the freeze plug so just thawing the pipes would not get the water flowing. The good news was there were no obvious cracks or ruptures in the pipes in the pump house. The first thing Gary had me do was to remove the water meter and replace it with a spare he had left in the pump house. Next I plugged in a space heater and turned in on to let it run for several hours. I set the heater so it would blow warm air on the pipes and the nearby wall to get the pipes and surrounding area warm. I also turned the power off to the water pump during the warming period. At home we turned on our electric furnace and let it heat up the house in hopes of unfreezing any pipes that were frozen under the house.

After several hours I went back out to the pump house and turned the power on to the pump. At first nothing happened. Several anxious minutes went by, then I noticed the arrow on the water pressure gauge start to move, just a little. After a few more minutes the arrow started to bounce a bit and then all of a sudden I heard ice breaking - I jumped a little and then realized the pipes were still intact and the pressure gauge was rising. I quickly returned to the house to let Sue know and to see how the water situation was there. To my relief the water was flowing just fine, no apparent breaks had occurred in the pipes under our home.

As a result of this learning opportunity we now have a nice generator for back up electrical power. We had a gen-tran installed at our shop, to serve the shop and the house. We also had a wall mounted thermostatically controlled heater installed in the pump house. Sue and I found we could cope because we had good friends to call upon for assistance.

Water - October 2006

When one lives in the country you learn not to take the basics of life for granted, like food, shelter and especially water. I had the opportunity to observe well-drilling in action. The company arrived and set up the drilling rig beside the well casing, which at our place protrudes out the ground 30 inches or so. Here is what I observed.

The crew began by measuring how far down the water level was presently. Then a trench was dug on the side of the well-pipe so the plastic water-pipe, leading to the pump house, could be disconnected. Next the wells water-pipe and pump were pulled out of the well and set aside. A new 20 foot long length of well-pipe was raised up and welded onto the existing well-pipe and then the drill was lowered down the well until it hit bottom, then drilling began. While the drill bit was chewing up dirt and rocks it was lubricated with water. Air was forced down the well and the water, dirt and gravel creating enough pressure to force the dirt and gravel back up the well. The dirt, gravel and excess water were blown out onto the ground. After the drill bit went down several feet the drilling stopped and the well-pipe was hammered down further into the ground. This process was repeated until the new well-pipe had only about 30 inches remaining above ground.

Due too a layer of clay a second length of 20 foot well-pipe was added and drilling commenced again. A good source of water was found by deepening the well about 40 feet. Once the drilling portion of the operation was completed the pump and water-pipe had to be placed back into the well. First however, the water line leading from the well to the pump house was reconnected. A hole was cut into the new pipe, about 2 feet under ground level. A brass fitting was placed around this hole, with parts on both the inside and outside of the well casing (pipe). The inside part of this brass fitting was slotted so that a corresponding part on the water pipe going down the well lock onto it with a rubber casket sealing the connection so it would not leak as water was pumped up from the well and pushed into the water tank in the pump house. With the pump back down at its new depth, about 180 feet, and electrical cables reattached, the pump was run for 15 minutes or so, until the water ran clear.

One of the things which impressed me the most was how small the water pump appeared in comparison to how much water it could raise up the well. I think my wells casing is about 6 inches and the pump maybe only about 4 inches in diameter and 24 inches in length. That pump is quite a little work hours - thank goodness.

September 2006

The month of September was great for the most part. The weather was warm, mainly sunny and our rough little garden was doing ok, though the tomatoes weren't ripening as fast as we would have liked. There was still so much ground yet to bring under control. I began the construction of our first wood shed, opposite the west side of the shop. I dug post holes by hand and braced the 4X4 posts up so I could set them in concrete. Once the concrete was cured up I quickly added the horizontal members, to hold the siding and simple sheet metal roof. The contractor who built my shop left several partial sheets of metal siding/roofing, enough to cover two small sheds. Shed one was completed by early October.

One thing that Sue and I observed, as September became cooler, was that the flies and lady bugs liked to bask in the sun's warmth by attaching themselves to the exteriors of our house and shop. We were very glad that, earlier in the summer, Sue had asked that we get screen doors for the front and rear entries of our home. Still, some of the flies and lady bugs made it inside. Sue and I were pretty ruthless in getting rid of the flies, whereas we attempted to get as many of the ladybugs outside alive as we could. A few we just chose to tolerate. Ladybugs, you see, are friends of the gardener, so we are not upset by their presence around us.

Summertime Greens and Blues

Our first summer at Berryridge Farm was both a joy and a frustration. There was just so much to do and the vast majority of it had to be done by hand. To our dismay, the money we'd gotten from the sale of our previous home, did not stretch as far as we would have liked. Sue and I had had to make some serious priority decisions. Having spent money to replace the carpet in our new home meant no office in the shop for me. Actually, we didn't feel we could even put in the washroom facilities in the shop. In respects to our garden, it meant we had no money to purchase tilling equipment but we did set aside the money for plants, as described in the previous post.

The Summer of 2006 was hot and Sue and I labored hard and made pretty good progress for two fifty-somethings doing it all by manual means. The orchard was planted over a two week period. Not all our fruit/nut trees went into the orchard on the North side of the house. We planted two walnut trees West of the house and South of the shop. The vegetable beds slowly took shape and we put tree debris into piles which we carefully burned. The work in our yard was not the only activity Sue and I had going on in our lives, however.

In June of 2006 I attended the Grand Lodge of Washington, F.&A.M. as I have done for the past several years. But this year was special, I was appointed and installed as the Grand Orator by MW Charles McQuery, Grand Master for the term I would be Grand Orator. We had a very busy year, opening Grand Lodge some 15 times to lay cornerstones, constitute new lodges and celebrate the 100 Anniversaries of several lodges. I truly had a wonderful time but my duties put me on the road and to some small degree broke up our work on Berryridge Farm, but I would not have missed the experience of being Grand Orator - it was great!

In September of 2006 we made great progress in completing the landscaping between the shop and the house. The rock-ringed raised planting bed was finished and the graveled paths were pushing out into the south yard area. As October neared I realised that we would need a place to put our firewood, to keep it dry during the winter months. I had gone merrily along my way all summer, not fully appreciating just how much wood it was going to take to heat our home for the up-coming winter. I like to think that I am one of those persons who actually learns from his mistakes. Although sometimes the first time round the lesson isn't fully learned in every detail. Sue and I had begun this adventure a little naive but we are growing with our experiences and having fun in the process.