Homesteading

[DeepseekerADS]

Driveway pic earlier in your thread alone showed they weren't poor ,poor.

I put that driveway in, several times actually, whole lot of work done on that. I had it first cleared out in '84, and then continuing work over the years. I sent the checks, the work got done.

I'll put a couple pics take today up.



On the left you'll see the old chimney from the log home my house replaced



Here's me in front of that house in '52 or '53.

They worked hard, didn't have money but had Mother Nature aplenty to nourish them!

And, that is my plan too

 

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[Oregon Viking]

Gotta feed the fire, etc... I may have to shrink each picture to fit on here, they're all right at 1.5 MB each.
I think you are allowed 5.0 MB, when using the insert image button. I spend a lot of time in "my daily snapshot"

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Okay, I'll show a little of my basement, two months work now clearing it out, and got a bit more to go...



This is of course "Command Central"



And a few more...

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Some of the land...

This is right out the door over past some bushes, my West yard...





You'll see Granny's chicken house on the right



The chicken house is now on your left as the camera sweeps North. In the distance is the wash house I need to disassemble.



This is the wash house, and inside you'll see Granny's wood cook stove. I was told something had broken on the stove, but it was always too dangerous to go in that wash house and look. In a week or two, my brother and I will pull the sides down away from the stove, and then go treasure hunting - no telling what's buried in that mess.

 

[releventchair]

I put that driveway in, several times actually, whole lot of work done on that. I had it first cleared out in '84, and then continuing work over the years. I sent the checks, the work got done.

I'll put a couple pics take today up.

View attachment 1110324

On the left you'll see the old chimney from the log home my house replaced

View attachment 1110326

Here's me in front of that house in '52 or '53.

They worked hard, didn't have money but had Mother Nature aplenty to nourish them!

And, that is my plan too

Heck yes.
That young fella picture is great..
The cabin with hand hewn timbers probably,squaring sides really upped the labor. Woman like flat walls inside.Dovetail corner notches special for quality and permanence of corners shedding rain ect.. Getting a window frame in and having enough play in fasteners so not to break some thing or have gaps must have been an art. One Calvin Rustrum (sp.) recommended slots for nails holding frames to allow movement. He may not have ever used locust pegs though..
Chimney a whole nother story. Someone knew what they were doing on that too for sure. Still looks plumb. Must have a well constructed base.
One heck of a history there. Sweat equity and craftsmanship. And still goin.

I see that crick behind the wash house and coop. Nice .

 

[DeepseekerADS]

And, may as well throw in the Family Tree, and me.

When I was a child I remember we could see my great great grandfather's initials carved into that tree about 20 ft up.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

The cabin with hand hewn timbers probably,squaring sides really upped the labor. Woman like flat walls inside.Dovetail corner notches special for quality and permanence of corners shedding rain ect.. Getting a window frame in and having enough play in fasteners so not to break some thing or have gaps must have been an art. One Calvin Rustrum (sp.) recommended slots for nails holding frames to allow movement. He may not have ever used locust pegs though..Chimney a whole nother story. Someone knew what they were doing on that too for sure. Still looks plumb. Must have a well constructed base.One heck of a history there. Sweat equity and craftsmanship. And still goin.

That house would built around 1803, and was the third house on the property. The first was just a place to live in as they settled the land. Then they built one a little larger on the other side of the crick, and then built this as their family home. My ancestors settled this land sometime after the William Penn survey in the early 1730's. There were still plenty Indians in the area then. We don't know for certain when we settled, as the courthouse burnt in about 1834. And it stayed in my maternal side down through the years. Lots and lots of history.

 

[releventchair]

Amazing. That is a people being well established. Deepseeker has some deep roots.
My family sold the land on the maternal side. Great grandfather had a store and Indians did some business there. There were barrels or kegs of beads stored in the upper level grandmother used to mix when overtaken by naughtiness. My mother and her sister used to find beads in the sand out in the woods. Their house burnt. Wood stove. Their grandfathers store burnt. Lightning. Kerosene tank caught. Only thing saved was a shotgun from inside the door.
Lots of creeks in the area the natives had followed throughout history.
Paternal side never had any land to my knowledge.

 

[bill from lachine]

Deepseeker,

Just tripped over your thread....brings back memories when I was a kid spent many summers at my Uncle's mixed/subsistence farm....they grew enough for their needs and sold or bartered the excess for coffee, flour, sugar, etc....a lot of work but not much cash required to put food on the table.

Thanks for taking the time to share your journey.

Regards + HH

Bill

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Deepseeker, Just tripped over your thread....brings back memories when I was a kid spent many summers at my Uncle's mixed/subsistence farm....

Thanks Bill!

I guess this has always been my fate, just go away from the crowd and live in complete peace doing for myself. The farm had always been sanctuary for the family, all the family. Most came and stayed here because they had no where else to go at the time. Granny and her mother before her always kept us safe and fed us well.

And it that part, feeding us well, which appeals to me now If I want a darned pot of beans, I'll cook a pot of beans! And neighbors are a good piece away!

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Looking at the picture I posted of the family tree, I notice it is kinda twisted, sort of like the life my family lived. I hadn't seen that tree in that way. It's a Beech tree, a forester coming through estimated it as 450 to 500 years old.



Here's a picture of the tree when the wash house was still kinda standing. Still looking for a picture buried somewhere of the whole tree.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

View attachment 1110335

If you open this picture, see the light bulb hanging there?

Granny was the last person to use the wash house, and she passed in '83. It's unlikely she used the wash house other than very occasionally for as much as 10 years prior to that. So, that light bulb had been hanging there for 40 years, in the elements.

I took that bulb out today, and it was 100w

Took it to the basement and replaced one of the bulbs there, and turned it on. It still works!!!

That was from when the USA still made quality goods!

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Chimney a whole nother story. Someone knew what they were doing on that too for sure. Still looks plumb. Must have a well constructed base

In the olden days, it was a custom to place a gold coin - or any coin depending on the wealth of the owner - beneath the hearth stone for good luck.

I almost pulled that chimney down long ago when I wasn't thinking about the history of the chimney. And then reason took ahold of me and I left it be. I will never know what is beneath the hearth stone.

 

[bill from lachine]

deepseeker,

Here's a guy that's pretty good at square foot/intensive gardening.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

deepseeker, Here's a guy that's pretty good at square foot/intensive gardening.

Thanks for posting Bill!

I'm still reading his book, pretty darned interesting. So I hadn't looked on Youtube for a video yet. Not saying I really know anything about what I'm doing. Raised in the old row type gardening when I lived with my grandparents. She had me doing the bug work and stuff like that, she didn't want me to touch her plants. About 1980, right after I bought the farm from Granny in '79. Gave her lifetime rights. It was in '80 when I saw a Mother Earth News on the stand, bought it, subscribed to it, and still take it. In the early 80's the real serious raised bed gardening really changed to a different level, the "miracle" back then was French Intensive gardening, and even that has been tweaked so ingeniously that we have this square foot focus. I really do like what I see with this, and it focuses you with solid direction. Really like this book.

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Yesterday I rummaged around the property and found 11 cinder blocks. I knew they were there, I'd stumbled across them before. So, I lined the blocks up into an impromptu compost pile. Sat it right on the grass, layered "clean" cardboard on the bottom (books say no fancy ink or shiny large lettering. So, I layered in mulch, leaves, sawdust on top. Then another layer of cardboard, mulch and sawdust.

As I said, it was kinda impromptu, needed to get that stuff out of the way of my work area, and it's about darned time I started a compost pile. I'd been reading about layering it to begin the pile. I have zero expectations this will be ready in time for Spring - that's only two months away. But I got one started - I guess about a cubic yard of materials. And I can always stir it up, move it around - or to a different compost system. It rained most of the day. At least I felt like I got something done instead of just feeding the stove.

What I term my mulch was the barks, and waste from cutting up the firewood - the small stuff. The sawdust was the pile built up from cutting up the trees on my cutting blocks. The sawdust alone came out to a wheel barrow full, which testifies to the amount of wood I've cut up. The tree leaves were easy - they're hiding everywhere I look under my shrubbery. I'll be piling more of them on - never waste an opportunity kinda thing.

I do need to go back to reading more about composting.

 

[bill from lachine]

Deepseeker,

We've been tending a garden in our back yard for close to 30 years using mostly that method.

Sorry the picture came out sideways but you get the idea....lol.

Regards + HH

Bill

 

[DeepseekerADS]

Deepseeker, We've been tending a garden in our back yard for close to 30 years using mostly that method.Bill

Thanks for posting this Bill. Looks like you're doing mostly flowers and the like? I do see a grape vine, and in the back you've added the trellis for climbing plants. You've added to my idea list and bank

We have no snow here, but just 6 miles up the road North of here begins the Appalachian Plateau, and so far they have 2-3 inches!

From the emptying out of the basement, I have a whole pick-up truck load of junk and trash to take to the dump today. My stove fire wasn't doing well this morning, so I filled the box with some good hot burning wood. Still dealing with too much crap wood, need the hot burners to keep that going, but if I don't keep active watch on it, it doesn't stop burning but it'll cool down too much to heat the whole house. Yeah, I accept burning the crap stuff - it's free, and it helps clean the land. That first picture of my West yard goes up the holler, and there's one heck of a lot of clearing to reclaim that bottom land. That was Granny's main garden back in the day. But with it overgrown all these years, a stream cut its' way through the bottom, so I've an island there. Good for the needed water, but divides up a full acre or more of farming/gardening land.

Roger

 

[joncutt87]

Composting can take up a lot of time, I keep a list of the carbon rich and nitrogen rich materials. I have two piles one with more nitrogen, and the other with more carbon. so that I can add what I have on hand to whichever Pile needs it.

 

[bill from lachine]

deepseeker,

That picture was taken early in the season so after the tulips die back we plant vegetables there....the left hand section with the plastic red mulch is for a dozen or so tomato plants and the trellis at the back is to support climbing beans.

We also have another raised bed at the edge of our patio about 3 feet high which we use for mixed lettuce, etc...

Regards + HH

Bill