I think I've been doing myself a disservice not putting the date in my titles. I didn't learn it was March til the 3rd. What the hell happened to February?!
Roughed out shape for the temporary chicken run
Today's a bigish day. Yesterday was spent at a friend's house. I pruned his trees (a Willow and some crape myrtles) and felled a couplr big hackberry trees while he and his brother struggled on inside projects. He ended up with over 60 Willow cuttings and probably enough small twigs for five gallons of Willow water. Not to mention two huge trees for a new hugelkultur.
Five Willow cuttings. Hopefully they root, Willow is a great food source for rabbits!
Two sides up, leaving a small space for a plywood gate
Melissa has been out of town for a girls weekend with her friend. They went to a women's retreat, then extended their away time with a hotel stay and a friendly white girl tattoo session. I'm having a similar time next weekend with the man scouts, so I'm glad she took the time out with her friend.
Chiggins in a chugging run
Our projects today focus on preparing for animals! I'm taking down the chain link fence on the front of our property because we want a nice cedar fence up there. The chain link will be used for a temporary chicken run, trellises, and a pig pen. The cedar fence will also serve to give us some privacy from any snooping passersby. See, I'm intentionally not looking into the legality of homestead pork production in my town. I don't care a lick, because banning animals is the same as banning a garden. I consider it a basic human right to produce your own food in an ecologically sound manner, and that's exactly what I'm doing here.
This is a heckin insurrection!
Nate, when someone asks "is that legal?"
The almanac says we're now past our 50% last frost date. We've only just begun starting seeds, but that's more than we did last year. Lots of peppers and tomatoes this year, we're trying to grow a lot of pasta sauce, and I'm on a mission for beans and corn. I went to clean up the area that will be our pig pen, mostly just getting out the old leaf bags. The leaves can stay, but I don't want the bags being in there as a choking or pollution hazard. These are leaf bags from fall and winter 2019, as I didn't actually gather any this past year. They apparently sat long enough for the worms to turn over a dozen of the bags (I pulled out over twenty) into some grade A premium worm poop. Man, I love having so much poop on the homestead. Along with rabbit poop, these six 20L buckets of worm poop will be our planting media for the year. We'll dig a hole in the mulch wherever we want to plant and fill it with miscellaneous poop to plant into.
Six buckets of PRIMO worm castings
After pulling down the main length of fence, about 60' (20m), we got wood for the fence. Nice cedar planks, some non-treated 2x6s, and lots of hardware. I'll be working on it throughout the week to get done what I have material for. They only had enough fence planks to finish out 45' of the fencing, but there's plenty of all the rest.
Wood for most of the front fence
After the fence is done, I'll be compiling materials for the pig pen fence, which I'm going to try and make with pallets. I've got some wire and insulators left that I'll use to electrify the fence, and a tarp I'll use as a roof for their little pig house. I've got a guy here in one of our partner communities that is willing to take Fiat, so don't forget to upvote all my things. Nate needs some homegrown bacon...
Stay tuned, there's more coming! It's springtime and there's projects a plenty here at Foxfire Homestead!
Love from Texas
Nate 💚
If the pigs reach any sort of size, they will destroy pallet wood....
Chain link will work, if you bury it in cement 18" deep. The cement doesn't need to be 18" (but wouldn't hurt), just down that deep and well set. They will root it out otherwise...
Awesome, thanks for letting me know that, I'll adjust course a bit! It won't take much to do that. Would t posts driven 3' deep suffice instead of concrete?
Only if they had a concrete base. The pigs root, and would under mine them, and they'd start to lean...
Cool, so it's gonna be a little more permanent than I'd originally thought. But we can still run that.
Burying the chain link will only leave 30" above ground. Is that high enough? I guess I could stand pallets up against that if it's too short.
It is a bit short. By and large, pigs aren't jumpers, but they can. You could go 2' and then have the rest above ground... Any pallet you put in there will be a destroyed toy... Think nails...vet bills....
Vet bills. Yuck. I'd like to avoid those if at all possible. I'll run a hot wire over top, that'll do the trick.
It's more what's available to the at nose level. I was at a farm 2 years ago that had a small pig stuck between slats of a pallet, the inner and outer ones, not the sides...
You really don't want the pallets anywhere they might get at them. A hot wire only works until they shovel dirt on it....
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