Another Day in Life

Here is a little photo journal of today. Just one day in life on Lavender Hill.

7:00am - Time to rise. Days starting a bit later now. Day breaks around 7ish. Today after my morning tea, I was looking at all those zucchini that on the table and thought I would make a nice zucchini bread. So before I started my outdoor work, I mixed up some bread dough and got that into the oven. For the rest of the day, the house smelled like baking cinnamon. Mmmm.

8:00 - Outside making the rounds. First stop was the Chicken coop. I need to let the little ladies out into the run so they can pick at the ground. Every evening they get locked up in the coop for their own protection. We have had fox and skunk making the rounds lately and I don't want any "encounters". So when dusk falls, and the hens go inside to roost, I close the door.

Here in the picture, is one of the Araucana hens making her way down the gangway to the tractor run.

Next stop was the vegetable garden. I wanted to check on the veggies. Figure out "what's for dinner" tonight! Lots of summer veggies still in production. I hope it lasts though. Last year we didn't have a freeze until late November. However last night got down to 37. Burrr. We'll see how much longer we can go w/o a frost.

This vegetable collage shows some of the delicious food growing. Wonderful zucchini (we saw some of her sisters in the previous photos of the bread!), peppers, tomatoes, and pumpkin. You can see the photo of the grapes that the birds have ruined them. The peck them, and then they shrivel up into raisins. These are Cabernet grapes, so lots of seeds. You know I just had an idea while writing. The Chickens absolutely LOVE grapes. I wonder how they would like picking at these shriveled vines? Tomorrow I will harvest and throw into the coop. We'll see if they like these!

Looking at the mercury, I am a bit sorrowful to think that soon the summer produce will be gone. But every season brings rebirth. These last few weeks I have been working on my winter garden. It will begin as summer dies. I took a looksy. Not much going on yet. Just planted recently. Wanted to make sure the ground was damp and it didn't require irrigation. All was well. The weather has cooled down quite a bit these last few days, so the water it got a few days ago. If I can get a few more days without frost, perhaps the new spouts will be present to console me as the summer crops wither.

After surveying the vegetable garden, it was time to do a walkabout in the lavender fields. I had just irrigated the day before. Unfortunately I found one of the irrigation lines chewed clean through. Judging by the looks of the scat nearby, it was probably the skunk that has been hanging around lately. It was a simple fix, but the ground looked pretty damp. Those plants got a good watering that day I can tell you.

10:00am - I started working on a new field. This is a protected field that will be fenced in from deer and other critters. A safe place to grow crops like basil and other aromatics that need protection from munching deer. This soil is going to need a LOT of work though. It hasn't supported much more than weeds until now. It is very fine and hard. I'm thinking about growing a season or two of cover to build it up before I plant. We'll see. The field is a bit sloping. A bit precarious for the tractor. A little light shaping mades it a bit safer for working.

2:00 - Once the ground work was done, I started surveying the surrounding trees. Some of them could use some trimming. So I spent the rest of the afternoon trimming and clearing away the brush piles. Trimming trees is heavy work. That part I don't mind. But I don't particularly relish climbing. There is nothing like hugging a branch 20 feet above the ground with a running chain saw to make Mr. Newton and his musings seem relevant. I guess that's what you would call a real "tree hugger" !?

7:00 - I quit a bit early today. Had to get ready to head up to Santa Cruz. My neighbor and good friend Kelly is in radio. That's Kelly there at her control console. Today I was invited on her KUSP radio show Talk of the Bay to discuss genetically modified foods, or GMO. Click here to listend to the show.


I am working with a local group called GMO Free Monterey County. We are working to educate people about potential human and environmental health risks of GMO. You can find out more about this effort at http://www.gmofreemontereycounty.org/. There is a petition asking for a moratorium of GMO crops in Monterey County until adequate safegards and regulations can be established. Please sign the petition here. Hopefully the show will be posted on the website shortly if you wish to listen.

Ahh, time for sleep now.

Trip to the Village Blacksmith

Well, it's time to overcome those "technical difficulties" and get this chicken buggy moving again. If you recall from the last article, the Eagle was grounded after her maiden voyage. Well those chickens have completely pulverized every last weed underneath the tractor in about three days. It's time to move the tractor down a length, but we're going to have to get those difficulties resolved first.

We actually had two difficulties, one with the coop, and the other with the tractor. Both were going to require metal work. As I don't have the equipment for that on the farm, I needed to pack up the broken parts in the truck, and head on down to the village blacksmith. Well, I guess Bob is a black smith. The sign says Live Oak Forge. Bob makes some pretty amazing stuff. His shop is full of cool little forged pieces of metal from fire irons with dragon faces, to metal signs, fire place screens with spider webs and weeds. The last time I was in there he was making an amazing iron gate with a sunburst, white oak leaves and acorns. This thing was a true work of art. I like to joke that the stuff I bring him is like asking Picasso to paint your bath room. Oh well, he helps me out! :) And I appreciate that.

On the tractor, the wheels deploy by pulling a lever that rotates the wheel forks down, lifting the tractor off the ground. That tractor is heavy, and there is a lot of force acting on the cam and the lever hub. While positioning the tractor, the force was apparently just too great, shearing the lever shaft right where the bolt attached it to the cam. CRASH! The whole thing came down with a bang snapping one of the 2x6 beams right in half.

The lever shaft needed to be redesigned with solid tool steel instead of the drilled hollow pipe that sheared. Here you can see a photo to the right of the new design. Now THAT ain't going anywhere. The bolt will shear before that goes! We even made up another lever for the other side to take the stress off the one side during transit.

On the coop, the tongue that attaches to the tractor bent. It was a case of a very heavy coop, and a trailer frame from China. It was supposed to handle up to 1475 lbs. Well, you know what they say, you get what you pay for. Well in this case what I got was a broken chicken coop. The metal just folded right in half, and the front end of the coop was dragging on the ground. If you look closely in the picture from the previous article, you can see the front of the coop jacked up on jack stands.

After straightening out the metal frame, we welded a 12foot piece of 2x2 steel 1/4" thick right down the middle. I can attach this to the entire underside of the coop carriage. This way the stress will be distributed better and hopefully solve this problem once and for all. It will be nice to get that coop moving again. You can see the newly fixed part ready for installation in the photo on the right.

Hopefully this weekend I can get these new pieces installed and move the coop and tractor down a length. I'm sure the chickens would love to start pecking at some new dirt. But right now, they seem content to dig holes and take the occasional dirt bath.

And if you need any amazing metal work done, go visit Bob at Live Oak Forge!