DIY Wood Shed and cleaning up the woods!

Apr14

Seems we have started a tradition where we do a building project in between snow storms for the winter months to keep us active and off the couch. Last year it was the chicken coop build and this year it was a wood shed. A part of that tradition also seems to going a little over the top. We didn’t really need such a big chicken coop and we probably don’t need two oversized wood sheds. 🙂

We have a fireplace and while we would love to say we are using wood to heat the house, we are just not there yet. So really we don’t need THAT much firewood. The wood sheds became a building project for this year because we took down several large trees to clear a new garden area, as well as several piles of firewood spread across the property from storm damage or downed trees. My Lovely Wife (LW) decided we needed to “clean up the woods”. While I tried to protest and explain the woodland animals didn’t care if we left the woods a little messy, but she was having none of it. Yes Dear!

The plans we started with were once again from HowtoSpecialist.com – wood shed plans. Of course we had to expand on the plan sizes and build two. The base is 4X8 and they are about 6ft at the front. The building is complete with a little work to do on the roof, since we ran out of shingles. We used pressure treated lumber for the base and post, the remainder being un-treated. We spaced the floor boards and side rails to allow for good airflow and save a little on lumber cost. I know there is some alternate opinions out there, but if you consider a cord of wood to be 4X4X8, then each of these should hold about a cord of wood.

Here are a couple of pictures for your viewing enjoyment.
Right Side Complete Wood Shed

Both Wood Sheds

Left Side Complete Wood Shed

Both Wood Sheds Full of Wood

Left Side Wood Shed Full of Wood

Stone Hill Ridge Spring 2016 Update

Mar28

So thought I would give a quick update on the things going on at the Ridge for Spring 2016.

Gardening
While we are waiting for the last average frost date to come and go (April 10-15) we have started seeds indoors. The artichokes, tomatoes, and peppers (Carolina Reapers – hot, hot, hot) are well on their way. The squashes, pumpkins, and watermelons have just been started with a few poking out of the soil. The plan is to do a three sisters garden (corn, beans, squash) using the started squash and melon plants. The lettuce has been started outside, but with the cool weather it has had a slow start. There is a small remnant of fall spinach that over wintered and I am hoping it will grow larger. We also tried something new – winter sowing. Google it, but basically you start seeds during the winter in mini greenhouses (soda or milk bottle) and when the weather is appropriate the seeds know what to do. We used only herb seeds since that is also new for us. So far I have seen some sprouting of Thyme, but nothing else.

The rest of the property is getting revved up for spring. Daffodils have bloomed and the red buds are starting. The forest floor and the trees are starting to turn green. The first thing to leaf out is the invasive bush honeysuckle, so we have been pulling as much as we can after any rain or snow melt. The roots are shallow, so it makes them easy to pull. Some day we hope to have goats that will love to eat the stuff after we pull it, but for now we stack it and burn it on non-windy days. While the glade hasn’t really started yet, once it does there will be a day to day parade of wild flowers.

Finally, we once again ordered trees from the conservation department for spring planting. The downside is there are 80 trees/bushes to arrive next week that need planting. Part of the reason we call this Stone Hill Ridge, is there is little possibility of digging a hole more than 2 inches deep that doesn’t hit bedrock. This makes the prospect of digging 80 holes less than appealing. A lot of them are berry bushes (black berry, choke berry, elderberry) and I have been preparing a south facing hill side for the berry patch. By preparing I mean cutting down cedar trees. The plan is to use the cedar trees to create a small wall to hold dirt that we can plant the bushes into instead of digging. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Finally, we purchased some Antonovka Apple seeds. These apples are said to be both cold hardy (like Russia in winter cold hardy) and one of the few known apples to grow true from seeds. This means the resulting tree and fruits will be the same as the original that created the seeds. Apparently this is not true of most apple seeds. The seeds are currently in our extra fridge stratifying and we hope to plant them in small pots for the spring/summer. Then they will get planted permanently this fall on the northern part of the property.

Bees
We lost both bee hives over the winter, so there is a package of bees ordered, but won’t arrive until mid-May 🙁 I hope it is not too late in the season, but time will tell and if need be we will be feeding a lot of sugar. Mean time we ordered and installed a swarm trap. We filled it with empty comb from last years hive. We will see how that goes, but our hope is that a feral swarm will over winter better and not require as much intervention on our part. The trap is in a large tree on the edge of glade, the expectation is scout bees will find it as soon as the glade starts blooming and if they swarm they will already now where to find a new home. Funny thing right now is the lemon balm oil that came with the trap as a lure makes my hands smell like I have been cleaning the house with a lemon fresh cleaner of some sort. Just hope the bees like it as well.

This bee swarm trap is installed on the edge of the glade.

Chickens
We have seen a little attrition in the chicken coop. I think I have shared it here, but we lost Kazooster the rooster due to my negligence in locking up the hive one night. So I have been searching for a replacement this spring. No luck, so far all the stores that usually sell chicks have only pullets or mixed sex of the wrong breed. In a week or two I will break down and order some online. The other losses have been due to what we like to call rogue chickens. We allow the birds to free range in the afternoon most days, but there are birds that like to get out earlier, i.e. going rogue. They also are the ones we have to hunt down from a forest roost location and place in the coop at night. When we cant locate them in the dark we sometimes loose one to predators. So we currently have 9 hens and 2 guinea fowl.

Rabbits
Big changes are coming this year. I continue to use the The Livestock Conservancy to guide my livestock choices. The goal this year is to move from a mixed breed rabbitary (mostly new zealand / flemish mixes) to a only pure breed American Blue Rabbits. We recently went to see my daughter in Chicago and just before leaving I found a breeder within 2 hours of her that had rabbits available. So we now have the start of a breeding trio in the form of an American Blue buck. He is 10 weeks old and doing well so far. Now to find him a couple of unrelated girl friends.

This is our American Blue buck.

River
We had a historic flood over the winter. Crazy stuff, middle of December we got three days of concentrated heavy rains that didn’t reach the house but we went from a long walk to see the river to having river front property. The silver lining was this flood was about a foot over a 33 year old record, so I am thinking we have at least 30 years before we need to worry again. Seriously it would have to beat this record by about 15 foot before the house would be in danger. The upside it we now have a good idea of where not to build on the property.

Winter projects
We are almost complete with building our two firewood storage units. They are a lot bigger than I thought they would be, but guess you can never have too much firewood on hand. This should have only taken a couple of weekends, but the truck was out of service for a while right in the middle of prime building time and we had no other vehicle to haul wood from the hardware store. So now we are trying to finish them in between other stuff. We will post some pictures once completed.

Final note – we have had our first snake sighting of the year. By that I mean specifically a copper head, which being one of the few poisonous snakes in this area is the only kind I care about. And more specifically only those that come close to the house. So this one being 5 feet off the front porch had to be dealt with swiftly. Not being one for taking a life without purpose, I chose to exempt the poisonous snakes that come to too close to the house. All other snakes, cooper head or not, found on the property are left alone and avoided with due diligence.

2016 Home Grown Food Summit! Starts Monday, March 7th! Free!

Mar4

The home grown food summit starts Monday. There are a number of great speakers, Geoff Lawton, Justin Rhodes, David The Good, just to name a few and it is all presented for FREE!!!

“30+ Free Presentations On Growing Your Own Food & Medicine Sustainably In Your Back Yard”

Check it out and signup here: http://homegrownfoodsummit.com/

Late winter means maple syrup and sugar buzz!!!

Feb3

Things get a little crazy this time of year as we make maple syrup. I am “forced” to constantly check the flavor of the simmering maple sap to make sure it is good and by doing so keep myself in a state of sugar induced high energy! 🙂

Maple syrup is one of the our greatest discoveries on the property. At our old suburban location I tried to grow sugar maples from seeds with the intention of one day having our own place to plant them for sap collection. None ever made it and I gave up the dream. That was until we had a conservation agent come to the new property to help us determine what potential the property had for wildlife and changes we could make to have more deer and turkey. The agent did a tree survey of the property and much to our surprise there was a big stand of sugar maples just up from the house. Yippee!! Interestingly enough these trees are considered invasive in our area because they grow too fast and shade out oaks and other wildlife beneficial plants. Conservation doesn’t recommend planting them, but if you already have them they don’t expect you to remove them.

Let’s talk trees for a moment. There are several types of maple trees and all can be tapped for sap. There is the silver maple, the red maple, Norway maple, etc. The sugar maple is the desired tree because it’s sap tends to have a higher concentration of sugars, which means less boiling time. I also understand you can tap other types of trees as well like walnut and birch trees. I found this article about 22 trees that can be taped. In addition, it is recommended that you only tap trees that are at least 10 inches in diameter. Any smaller and taping it could cause irreparable damage. According to the Cornell Sugar Maple Research & Extension Program between 10 and 17 inches in diameter you would use only one tap, between 18-24 inches in diameter you can use two taps on a single tree, and greater than 25 inches in diameter can use three taps. Tree identification is a learned skill, using a lot of pictures and google searches. Specifically for sugar maples it is easiest to identify in spring and summer when the leaves are on the trees. It looks a lot like the Canadian maple leaf. In late fall and winter it is harder because you have to look at the bark and limb structure. We would recommend practicing during both times of year. Identify some by leaves and then go back and look at them again in mid winter. Yup, this is what we go for fun on the Ridge!

So the next big factor in syrup collection is the weather and the season. Maple syrup season in the Midwest is in late winter to early spring. For the sap to be “flowing” best the temperatures need to be below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. The bigger the difference in night time verses day time temperatures will mean a better flow. So what does “flowing” mean. What happens in the spring is the trees start to pump the sugars stored in the roots up to the branches and leaf buds in order to support spring growth. We take advantage of this and use it to pump the sap out into our collection system.

Now how do we get at the sugary goodness? Taps! Maple sap taps come in many shapes and sizes, but have the basic design of a short tube. Some have hooks and others don’t. They can be made from metal, wood, or plastic. If the tap doesn’t have a mechanism for holding the collection vessel, i.e. a hook, then you can attach a tube to direct the sap into your collection vessel. The old style taps are a metal tube with a hook that hold a metal bucket with a lid to collect the sap. More modern versions are plastic taps with tubes running to a collection bucket with a lid sitting on the ground. Personally we bought our “modern” taps for less than $6 on eBay here – Maple Syrup Taps and tubing. This item comes with 12 taps and we cut the tubing to equal lengths. Commercial operations even use longer stretches of tubing to run the sap all to a single collection location some times hundreds of feet away. We did a little math and it became a little too expensive to run tubing all the way to the house. 🙁

Regarding the collection vessels. We use recycled milk jugs, they are free and will hold up to a gallon of sap. I have had a rare case on a GREAT day with a BIG tree where more than one gallon was produced, but usually there is between one third to one half of a gallon on normal days. This assumes you collect daily, if not something larger is needed like a food grade 5 gallon bucket. So size your container accordingly. We strongly recommend the container has a lid, regardless of hung on the tap or setting on the ground for two reasons: bugs and rain. One or the other will get in your sap guaranteed. In our case we drilled a 7/16 hole in the milk jug lid and the tube fits perfectly. The finished setup looks like this:

Maple syrup tap installed in tree and using a recycled milk jug as a collector.

Most people are shocked to find out how little sugar the sap actually contains. At about 3% or less, if you taste the raw sap from the tree it taste like plain water, no sweetness. It takes approximately 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. So there is a lot of collection needed. Daily we collected the sap from the gallon jugs into a 5 gallon water jug. It had a handle for easy caring through the woods. We then use 55 gallon food grade barrel to collect the sap into until we had enough to begin boiling. So between all the containers we could have up to 55+5+12= 72 gallons at any one time. 🙂

5 gallon water jug recycled into use for maple sap collection.

Maple sap collection barrel and equipment

55 gallon food grade barrel used to collect the maple sap.

Now you have all the collected sap and time to begin boiling it down to remove the excess water. The goal is to go from less than 3% sugar to around 67% sugar by removing excess water through evaporation. We did a small batch using an old propane tank I needed to have emptied and the rest over a fire, which was much cheaper, i.e. free firewood. Here is the propane setup:

Using propane to simmer maple syrup, quick, easy, and efficient.

And the wood fire setup, which was just cinder blocks to contain the fire/heat and support the pans (again bought on eBay like these SPF6 Full Size 6" Steam Pan)

Simple evaporator made from cinder bricks. We use local firewood to fuel the process.

Maple sap evaporator setup - just started

This is our maple sap evaporator setup. Cinder bricks to contain the fire and support the pans.

We start with the three pans, refilling as they condense the sap. Once all the collection vessels are empty we go from three, down to two, and eventually one pan on the fire. At this point we are close to being finished and move indoors to our stove top. This allows us to use a candy thermometer to actually watch the temperature. Why? Because without a fancy Maple Syrup Hydrometer‎ to determine if you are at 67% sugar, the next best way is to use a candy thermometer which we already had on hand. Using this method the extra sugar raises the boiling temperature of the water, specifically at 67% the boiling temperature increases to 219.1, plain water boils at 212 degrees. Depending on your elevation you can adjust this calculation by adding 7.1 degrees to your normal boiling temperature.

Once all the sap is condensed to fit in my pot, it goes to the stove top with a candy thermometer to finish into syrup goodness.

Finally after all the hard work all that is left is to store the sugary goodness. Any food safe container will work, but we chose to use canning jars because we have them on hand. If you boil/sterilize the jars as you normally would for canning, then hot syrup can be placed in the jars and they will cool and seal per normal. We use cheese cloth (or old t-shirts) to filter the sap when placing in the jars. My understanding is this will allow for up to two years of storage, but please do your own research to determine storage times. Safety first! We ended up with just over a gallon of syrup, here are a few of the pint jars waiting to be consumed! YUM!

Three pint jars of finished maple syrup

The Robin Invasion!

Dec7

Strange happenings here on the Ridge! Well “were” happening. I started this post a while back, so this was actually in late November.

One of the things we love about living in the woods is the variety of wild birds we get at the feeder just outside our bedroom window. We even got a book so we could identify them. We have chickadees, grey titmouse, 2-3 varieties of woodpeckers, on and on. One odd thing is the cardinals seems to show up just at sunset, so we started calling them vampires. :). The one bird we had not seen and thought was weird was a robin. Had plenty of them in the city, but none since we moved out.

So in the last week of November I started noticing a lot of movement out the window. Upon closer inspection I discovered it was a large flock of robins. Hundreds of them! None seemed to be interested in the feeder, they were just working through the leaves and underbrush.

As odd as this was, even odder is it went on for several days. And then as quickly as they appeared they were all gone. A quick Google search shows that Robins do migrate, although more sporadically than some species. Just glad they chose to route through my back yard this year!

And then there was one – beehive that is

Nov24

Well as a new bee keeper I figured there would be some loss, but I also expected to find out about it next spring. We purposely started with two hives in case of a loss and good thing we did. I had been noticing on the warmer days there was some activity at only one of the hives. I gave it a while thinking it was just not warm enough. Well it finally got back into the 70’s (go figure in early November) so I popped the top off the hive to find nothing, well almost nothing. The was not a single bee alive or dead, but what there was turned into a full out invasive of hive beetles. They were in every nook and cranny!

While I knew I had hive beetles in both hives, I believed to have them under control. I was fogging the hives every 10 days until the cold started and I had beetle traps in the top boxes. Not really sure if the beetles caused the evacuation or if they just took over after the bees left, the result is the same. After disassembling the hive further I found honey stores in the top box and nothing but empty comb in the bottom box. If anyone has any insight besides the beetle infestation please share in the comments.

So now we baby the remaining hive and hope they are still here in the spring. Specifically we will be adding a candy board in early December to make sure they have enough food and adding a pollen patty in mid to late February to get them though to first bloom.

Feel free to share though s on what happened or your own stories of hive losses.

And then there was one – beehive that is

Nov24

Feel free to share though s on what happened or your own stories of hive losses.

Pictures of Fall 2015

Oct23

Went down to the river last night with my beautiful wife and did a little fall small mouth fishing. While the fishing was just so-so, the view was incredible.

Moon over the river bank

Sun setting over the river

River with fall colors

Fall colors

As an added bonus there was a great sunrise this morning. If you look close you can see my beehives in the lower part of the picture.

Sun rising over the bee hives

Egg hunting – not just for Easter

Oct12

When we built the chicken coop last winter, one feature we added was a loft for storage. We had a couple of random things up there at first, but a couple of weeks ago I bought 4 bales of hay to feed the rabbits. The loft was the perfect place to store them and keep them dry. I knew the chickens would eventually figure this out, but I stacked them in the loft so that it made it difficult to access. Earlier this week I noticed a missing hen and when I went looking realized she was in the loft. I chased her out and found 2 eggs. So I reshuffled things to try and keep them out and told me wife we need to build some sort of door or something to keep them out.

At this same time I have noticed a change to less and less day light and the expected drop in egg production. As the days get shorter the chickens naturally slow down laying eggs as nature intended. So much so that over the weekend we were actually out of eggs at the house, we only had whatever the girls had laid that day. Turned out to be a good day, 8 eggs from 12 layers. Side note here, there is an argument for either letting nature take its course and give the chickens a rest period from laying over the winter months. The other side is the by providing 12-16 hours of artificial light they can continue to lay through the winter. I have done both at our old house, but since we are here and in this for the long term we will let them rest this winter. There are breeds that are better winter layers than others like the Buff Orpingtons and Leghorns. I have also read that most breeds will continue to lay well the first year, but will molt and lay less the second winter. The fix to this is to stagger the age of your flock so you always have new layers going into each winter.

That leads us to this morning. I went to let the girls out and offered up some scratch. Then I proceeded to use one of the roost as a ladder to check the loft for any more random eggs. At first there were a couple near the edge, so I decided to rearrange the hay bales again to try and keep them out. This is when I discovered the mother-load on top of a hay bale. Ugh! There ended up being 27 eggs in the loft (that I found, might be more if I do a through cleaning). Good news is the egg shortage is over, but this does move up the schedule to build an access door to the loft.

Happy Egg Hunting!

Fall = football and deer hunting

Sep15

I so look forward to fall! I love to watch football and deer hunt. When I say football I mean Nebraska Cornhusker football. Go Big Red! Being born in Omaha and raised on Nebraska football by my dad’s side of the family it is in my blood. Whether they are doing good or bad I wear my red “N” covered clothing with pride. While I am not so much a NFL fan I will occasionally watch and specifically the Super Bowl because it comes with good food and funny commercials.

Deer hunting is a whole other deal. For me it is really about spending time in the woods. For example it is opening day and I am actually writing this from my tree stand. The sun is just coming up and filtering through the trees, the birds and squirrels are active, my rooster is crowing in the distance, just a wonderful time of day. The truth is I am not very good at deer hunting. In the over 30 years of trying I have only bagged two deer. My son did that in his first two years. I really do enjoying just being out in the woods. Then there is the little adrenaline rush you get when you hear something that might be a deer, but never is. I am hoping for greater future success now that we own the land and I can hunt literally in my own back yard. Once the leaves fall I will be able to see the house from here. I am hoping I can see and recognize the patterns of the deer and use them to my advantage. If not, well I will still enjoy the time spent in the great outdoors. Here is a shot of my view this morning!

Fall Deer Hunting