This post is part of a monthly series, Then & Now, that uses photos to show the development and changes taking place on the farm.
October might be the best month of all in the Brushy Mountains. Peak fall colors happen in the last two weeks of October, and just stretch into early November.
The heat of summer is gone, so it is an excellent time of year for outdoor projects. The nights get cool, even dipping below freezing. Our first frost can happen anytime after mid-October, as best I can reckon. The cool evenings provide perfect conditions for sitting around a bonfire.
We hope you enjoy the photos and videos linked below!
October 2020
In last month’s installment of Then & Now, we highlighted Rachael’s developing skill at hatching out birds (chickens, ducks, guineas…).
This little group of ducklings started out in a bin in our bathroom.
Ducklings are messy, so from time to time we’d give them baths in the kitchen sink.
It’s always nice to snuggle a duckling while watching a scary movie on a spooky October evening…
They grew fast! As they got bigger they graduated from living in a bin in the bathroom to living in our shower.
Before showering we just rinsed the duck poo down the drain - easy! After two or three weeks of this they were big enough to join the flock out in the chicken/duck house.
October is a good month for home improvement projects. Here we used reclaimed wood from taking down the porch and deck off the trailer to make a decorative coffee mug holder.
I started building some shelves and a small desk in my office. Simple design using metal pipe sections and fittings for the structure, with stained pine boards for the shelves.
One Friday Rachael brought home an orphaned lab puppy with worms and some skin issues that needed treatment over the weekend. It was meant to be short term foster care, but I really liked her and wanted to keep her. In a decision I’m sure she regrets, Rachael said yes. I named her Ursa because she looked like a little black bear cub!
October 2021
Ursa got big quick! Here she and Ruby are slobbed out on the futon in my office. I gotta say, my office mates don’t get much work done.
We had some spectacular fall mornings when I’d go out to move the sheep and goat paddock.
I also started my millwright work, working on a grain elevator and bins during the corn harvest at a farm down the road from our place.
Lotta fun climbing around on grain elevator…
…and great views as a reward.
Accidents happen! Whoops!
Truckload o’ puppos!
L to R: Emmy (Ember), Roxy (Roxanne), RooBot (Ruby), Ursa, and Ginny (Virginia). And Lola of course (the truck)!
October 2022
More October home improvement projects!
Our house has a lot of design quirks. One thing that has annoyed us for the past 2+ years is that the back deck was closed - i.e., there is no back yard access from the deck. So to go out back, we’ve had to go out the front door and go around the house. Not a huge deal, but annoying and an inconvenience. So I finally got around to building that set of stairs I’ve been talking about since we moved in…
First step: materials acquisition. Here we are putting Lola to the test on a trip to the feed mill and the lumber yard. 800 lbs of feed, 300 lbs of cement and sand, 300-400 lbs of lumber, and a pregnant lady! Lola hauled it all back up the mountain just fine!
The boss lady inspects the work-in-progress.
Not bad for my first time building a staircase!
I helped my millwright buddy put a new roof on his mom’s house one weekend. This little clapboard cabin was built by his grandma and grandpa in the mid-1940s, and now his mom lives there. Roof leaks have gotten to be bad and the cabin has taken some water damage. We stripped off the original tin, and some of the original chestnut purlins that were rotted. Hard work and long days but we got it done over a Saturday-Sunday.
My neighbor had a bunch of watermelons in his patch that didn’t ripen well enough to sell at the farm stand down the road. He said I could take them for our pigs. I scavenged a whole pickup truck load of melons out of his field - the pigs loved them!
We also ventured out into the wild world of raising pigs in forest paddocks, using only a single strand of electrified poly tape (or wire) to contain them.
With labor help from friends who came to farm day, we built a training pin and put three barrows in it. After a few hits of 8,000 volts to the snout they learn to steer clear of the white poly tape.
After four or five days in the training pen I enclosed a ~2,000 square foot area of forest with the electric tape and turned the barrows loose in it.
I’ve been making a series of short videos that describe this experiment, and show how pigs transform an overgrown forest into a rooted and tilled up patch that can be planted with forage grasses and selectively logged for firewood in a process of succession towards creation of a sparsely forested park-like savannah grazing zone for sheep and goats.
Start of project
After one week
After two weeks
Tune in next month to see our continued progress with this project and what pigs - AKA, nature’s little skid-steers - can do to clear and improve land!
With nights getting colder, it was time to start up our wood fired boiler. This provides all our heat and hot water through the cold season. Here’s a video explaining how it works and showing the startup process.
Rachael’s best friend threw her a baby shower in their hometown in Virginia. I drove up so that Rachael’s sister could take some nice pregnancy photos of us. The fall colors were great!
And I got to visit Ruby at her new home! She spends all day playing in a big forest paddock with goats and another beagle her age named Daisy. I miss crazy lil RooBot, but she has a great setup on Rachael’s friends’ farm.
Baby’s coming soon! You won’t want to miss next month’s installment of Then & Now…
You’ve been busy! Congratulations on getting so much done.
Yeah very impressive the amount you get done in a month!