Five years ago today

Five years ago today, we stumbled into our new home, exhausted beyond belief. (For a review of that chaotic period of moving from our old place, see here, here, and here.) Honestly, we felt that move took a couple years off our lives. It's one of the reasons we've concluded we're never moving again, barring unforeseen circumstances.

We (mostly Don) have made endless improvements during the last five years. He graveled the driveway. He built a pantry and built a library. He installed the wood cookstove. In the barn, he's built two shops (the one Older Daughter uses for the woodcraft business, plus his "man cave"); built two storage lofts above those shops; built a storage room; and built a feed box for the cows. He addressed some enormous plumbing woes in the house (at which time he also built an outdoor shower) and we had a 500-gallon propane tank installed. He did some much-needed deck repair work. We had a massive yard sale to offload things we no longer needed. We fenced in a corral for the animals, fenced the pasture, and (obviously) got cows. Don partitioned the house, including a separate entrance and porch, for Older Daughter's quarters when she took over the woodcraft business. We fenced a yard for Darcy, began the installation of a comprehensive garden, and planted blueberries and peaches. He built a woodshed and installed a roof-runoff system for rainwater collection.

And this doesn't count a plethora of smaller projects, most of them accomplished by Don: Building gates, repairing a clothes-drying rack, installing fairy lights on the porch, improving a jar washer, making a shelf for holding cook books, random graveling projects, trimming an overgrown grove of trees, things like that.

This past year we (mostly Don) accomplished yet more projects. He built a deck storage room, as well as all the shelves, movable shelving units, and doors it required. We continued to build up the garden infrastructure, including the critical component of super-dooper high deer fencing.

Don built a cheese press. He started building an awning for the barn. He built a calf pen and milking stall.

We subdivided the main pasture. We fenced the sacrifice pasture.

This doesn't count for endless smaller projects Don has accomplished in the last year: Building and insulating a well house, building a door for the well house, installing a sturdy floor in a shed we hope to someday turn into a guest house, building a box for the tractor to transport stuff, building a haybale-moving platform, building a large firepit, and rocking in the corral.

And, of course, there's our writing: Dozens of articles, several inspirational romances, and our self-published indy romance.

So yeah, we've accomplished a lot in five years. No complaints.

The dirty side of homesteading

Too often, homesteading articles, blogs, websites, and videos (including this one – guilty!) show only the successful side of homesteading. The abundant harvest, the completed projects, the fresh eggs and baby chicks and overflowing milk, the healthy livestock ... by golly, this lifestyle must be easy-peasy, right?

Yes and no. Of course things go right. And of course things go wrong. But what is seldom shown is the nitty-gritty day-to-day dirty side of homesteading, including the daily chores that must be done for the comfort and welfare of animals. For that reason, I thought I'd show you something I do every day, rain or shine; namely, cleaning the barn.

This, dear readers, is what the barn looks like on a typical November morning. Lovely, n'est-ce pas?

The mess includes puddles of urine, which tend to concentrate at one end of the barn (the building may have a slight slope to it).

The regular weapons in this fight against a messy barn include a dedicated rake and flat-edged shovel...

...and a dedicated wheelbarrow.

I work from one side of the barn to the other, starting with the milking stall (left) and calf pen (inner right).

Stormy, who is the calf of our milk cow Maggie, spends the night in the calf pen, so I make sure it's as clean and cozy as I can make it every day. This means raking out soiled hay and manure, scrubbing and refilling her water bucket, giving her a bit of grain (as an enticement), and making sure she has a pile of fresh hay for feed.

Here's the soiled hay and manure I removed from her pen.

After the calf pen and milking stall are cleaned out, I mentally divide the barn flood into six "quadrants." I clean one or two quadrants at a time, working my way toward the other side.

(Yes, the barn mats are a mess. We know that.)

By this point, the wheelbarrow is ready to empty for the first time. I usually have between two and three full wheelbarrows each day.

Here, I have the remainder of the barn waste accumulated in one corner.

Halfway through the process, I'm warm enough to discard my coat and scarf.

Time to fill up another wheelbarrow.

Once that's full...

...I cart it out to the waste pile.

Never undervalue a barn waste pile! Barn waste becomes compost, and compost is just about the perfect food for the garden. Believe me, we view the pile in the photo above as black gold.

Still, you can understand why this chore requires boots.

Cleaning up the barn waste is the hardest and heaviest work. Once that's done, the chore gets easier.

The next task is to clean and refill the calf's water bucket, which tends to get messy overnight.

I give the bucket a quick scrub...

...then refill it with fresh water.

Since I'm at the water tap anyway, I confirm the big tank is full. Here in mid-November, we're still able to use the float valve. When freezing weather comes, we'll remove the float valve (which would otherwise freeze) and insert a stock tank heater, at which point we'll have to manually fill the tank morning and evening.

I had been banging around the barn, inside and out, for about half an hour, without disturbing the two does that were lying down a few yards away. Deer are extremely common here, and these animals know we're not hunters and therefore not a danger to them. These two ladies stood up when I got within about twenty feet of them, but they were barely alarmed.

After filling Stormy's water bucket, it was time to sop up the puddles of urine in the barn. We do this with sawdust. Older Daughter's shop is on the other end of the barn, so she routinely shovels sawdust into a garbage can for me.

On a shelf inside the calf pen, I keep a number of necessities: A wind-up lamp, my milking crate, Maggie's leg hobble, scrub brushes ... and sawdust (in the white bucket on the left). This bucket is kept brim-full at all times. If I'm milking and Maggie suddenly urinates in the milking stall, believe me when I say I need sawdust fast. I toss it liberally over the wet mess and it sops it right up. I never want to get caught milking without that bucket full of sawdust handy. (It's amazing the sheer volume of urine a cow can unleash.)

During afternoon cleaning, I apply sawdust to the barn floor as well, putting an extra amount anywhere it's especially wet. It gets shoveled up during the next day's cleaning and added to the waste pile.

Then I top off the bucket with more sawdust, and return it to the shelf in the calf pen.

Next it's time to put out grain for Maggie and Stormy.

We used to give grain to all the animals, which trained them to come into the corral at night. However, gradually, all the animals sort of ... lost their taste for it, I guess. Now we don't bother graining Romeo (our young steer) or Mignon (our yearling heifer), since most of the time they just ignore it anyway. We still make a scoop of grain available for Maggie in the evening, but for the last month or so she hasn't wanted it. She will, however, eat a scoop in the morning when I milk her, and Stormy enjoys about half a can (shown in the photo above), which entices her into the calf pen each evening.

Next I give Stormy's pen a pile of fresh hay for eating (piled on the left),and her pen is ready. Of those two white buckets, grain is in the left bucket and water in the right.

Normally this is where I finish the daily barn cleanup. However about once a month, I clean up the duff that tends to accumulate on the floor between the hay bale and the feed boxes.

This material is too small and choke-y to feed the animals.

So, using a push broom, I sweep it into a pile...

...and then pull that pile through the gate into the livestock side of the barn, and spread it out.

Now the barn is clean and ready for livestock. The whole chore takes about 45 minutes to complete.

The very last thing I do is close the milking stall and calf pen gates. Otherwise, when the animals come in for water mid-day, they would eat the grain and hay, and foul the fresh bedding in the calf pen.

This, dear readers, is one of my daily chores. Some people react to manure and think "Ewww, cOw PoOp" and refuse to have anything to do with such tasks. But for me, it's just something that has to be done, and it's no more onerous than any other household task that needs doing.

In fact, by some measures it's the ability and willingness to do these dirty chores – day after day, cheerfully and without complaint – that will help determine whether someone is cut out to have a homestead.

Rocking in the mud

Last winter was the first winter here in our new home during which we had livestock. Before this, we had never "tested" the corral behind the barn on how things would hold up during winter conditions coupled with livestock use.

What we learned is the back corral gets muddy. Very very sink-down-deep muddy. We mitigated it as best we could be laying down a heavy layer of gravel, but that only went so far.

Part of the problem is the barn is built downhill from a small slope, which means water drains right to the opening of the barn doors and makes a muddy soup when it's churned up by bovine hooves.

The mud right outside the barn door was so deep, in fact, that moving a heavy wheelbarrow full of barn waste was very difficult. Immediately outside the door, the wheel of the wheelbarrow would instantly sink several inches down, plus I was pushing it uphill to boot. No fun.

To this end, we often laid down boards to bridge the worst of the mud, then take the boards back up after the barn was cleaned. The barn waste is dumped in a pile in the corral. (A couple times a year, Don uses the tractor to transport the waste to a more permanent compost pile.)

Don is in the process of correcting the drainage issue with a two-pronged approach. One, he wants to build an awning that would offer the animals a bit more shelter during adverse weather conditions. And two, he wants to trench and lay a French drain that would divert water from the slope and direct it over the hillside immediately outside the corral fence.

But, this being autumn, the weather caught up with us. After several days of unrelenting rain, the corral transitioned rapidly from damp to soupy, making it impossible to dig trenches. The skeletal infrastructure outside the barn is the support posts for the not-yet-built awning. (Note the outside water tank on the right.)

So, as a stopgap measure, we decided to lay down more rock. Thankfully we have a generous supply on hand of this vital homestead resource.

Don started by building a "road" of rock so the tractor wouldn't sink into the mud and get stuck. He did this by driving the tractor in until muddy conditions prevailed, then dumped the rock and scraped it flat. With the next load, he was able to advance another five feet and dump another load and scrape it flat. By this method, he was able to bring the machine to where he needed it to go.

The first section we tackled was a tight corner where the water tap and water tank are located. Roof runoff renders this area extremely muddy. (Yeah, the barn has no gutters. Go figure.) To the right, where the horse panels fence off the edge of the corral, is a fairly steep dropoff. I started by using a hose to siphon out and empty the water tank, which needed a good scrubbing anyway. I also wanted to level the tank, which was leaning a bit.

Unlike last year when we laid down rock, however, this time we used weed cloth to make a barrier in hopes the rock wouldn't just sink down and get enveloped by the mud.

First load of gravel.

Load by load, sheet by sheet of weed cloth, we rocked in this section.

Finally we were able to pull the rocked area to the front of the water tap, which was as far as we planned to go for this section.

We raked everything flat and leveled a pad for the water tank. Then, while Don started working on the pad in front of the barn, I scrubbed and cleaned the water tank, got it set up, and refilled it.

Much better!

The next spot to tackle was the mud pit right in front of the barn door, through which I needed to push heavy wheelbarrows full of waste up to the waste pile. Don started by scraping a path backward with the tractor bucket.

Oddly enough, he didn't have to scrape very deep before he hit the layer of gravel we laid down last fall, so that was good. Then, while he went to fetch a load of gravel, I laid down the first section of weed cloth.

Dumping the first load of rock.

This is a much finer grade of gravel, the kind that packs down. Coupled with the underlying layer of larger gravel from last year, as well as the weed cloth, we have hopes the area outside the barn door won't become a morass of soupy mud over the winter.

We only graveled to just where the awning will end, where the downhill slope levels off. In other words, we made a graveled ramp. At the end of this ramp, hopefully soon, we'll be able to trench and lay down the drain pipe so water gets diverted away from the barn.

When all the gravel was in place, we raked it flat, then linked arms and waltzed around the pad, compressing the gravel. In country parlance, this is known as a "hot date."

There are still deeply muddy spots between the ramp (left) and the water tank (right), but at least the rocked areas are dry. The cows can either stay in the barn, or farther out in the corral, to find dry spots during wet weather.

Since the tractor was in the corral already, the last thing Don did was to pile and consolidate the barn waste. Come spring, we'll move this waste onto the compost pile, while moving the older compost onto the garden beds.

We have a dry spell coming up next week, and Don hopes to finish building the awning and French drain during that interim.

Meanwhile, another autumn project is done.