Dawn419 & doc's LSTA: Confounded Computer!!!

[GOOGLE NIKOLA TESLA]

i wanted to say how awesome your posts were the other day !! i really enjoy the starting of your self sufficient property!! going from forest to usable land! very cool stuff! getting everything set up, amazing all the team work and support! the journey is soo cool too! going from one place to another! love this stuff
good luck with everything! great work i see!!!

 

[Denim Deb]

You posted a pic of a dead kitty! Love the sunset pic. And, w/the cattle panels, do you have 2 together to make the hoop? And, what do you have filling in the ends?

 

[snapshot]

Dawn--Family! I think some of my family is related to some of yours! Great photos and I really like the hoop coop! Showed it to my DH. Thanks!

 

[Dawn419]

NGT,

Thank you for your post! We've made small steps to keep the land as natural as possible since we're in the mind frame of living with the land as opposed to clearing it all off and then building something. We hated taking out all of the trees that we did, but the more we cleared, the more damage we found and we know we are doing right by this place. We have a nice sized blackberry patch that we raided last year, this year...not so much as it's been too dry so I'll get up there and thin out the dead stuff and bring it back to life for next year. We have a lot of low-bush blueberry plants, too. No luck with them this year either due to not enough rain at the right times and too far from the rest of what we are working on to deal with irrigating them. It kills me, but I know we'll get there eventually!

DD,

I'll gladly trade you my dead psychotic kitty for a normal one! Smoke rules this kingdom! She's a ghost around here until you make her mad and then your ankles/feet/toes pay for the wrath of "Spookie Pookie". She's a great mouser so I'll gladly donate a bit of blood and the little girl isn't afraid of big snakes. I'm glad it's our black snake family she acts brave about. I unknowingly (until recently) did see one cooperhead when we first moved here but haven't seen any since, thanks to the black snakes. They're immune to the venemous rattlers and coppers!

The hoop coop "was" going to be temporary until a few nightmares with the family help. We agreed on one thing to our faces and when it came time to collect, well the story got bigger, and it was usually when doc and I were separated. They did our clearing for a set amount (to me) but when pay day came, they gave doc another story...they got away with none of it and haven't been brave enough to bring any of it up.

I complimented on the great tear down that the guys did with the coop in TN...we got here and I realized that they'd ditched quite a bit of hardware cloth as it isn't here. That huge run was 18' x 18', with the cloth 3' up the bottom of the run and 3' all along the outside. I looked but there just isn't an emoticon/smiley to expess...how mad I was!!!

Anywho,

The hoop coop here and now is four, 4' x 16' cattle panels tied together with electric fence wire. Bottom 3' covered with 1/4" hardware cloth and we used large rocks from the property along the outside to deter digging. The back end is a section of cattle panel with chicken wire (I know) under a tarp and so far so good. I'd like to make all of it stouter but we're in the throes of trying to do too much, all at once. We've been fortunate, so we're running with that for the time being. I think the Australian Shepherds that we've had (Pepper before, Bubba now are a major help).

You can see the pretty much entire process of our huge hoop coop here: Playhouse Coop

snapshot,

I think we're all related here somehow, through both the good and/or the bad!

I was so gonna be in bed by now...y'all are enablers! and I so love ya's!

 

[keljonma]

It sounds like this has been an interesting journey, Dawn! Thanks for sharing the pics.

 

[Dawn419]

Thanks keljonma! We are having the time of our lives out here and wouldn't trade it for anything!

Okay, time for a few more pix from our 1st week here.

Doc requested that I post this one, our out house:



Part of the flock out ranging:



My Silver Spangled Hamburg girls plotting the Easter Egg Hunts:



Within one week of living here, our driveway is finished and we have to camper moved to it's new home:



A few of our EE's checking out our new digs and the outdoor kitchen:



We were so excited to get the camper moved back here to the clearing and get started on working only to have the rains start back up on us again.

The lower end of our wet weather creek:



There's a small pond just off of our northeast corner and this is what happens when we get alot of rain, The Bayou:



Around the middle of October '09, doc started working on building the frame of a shed around the camper in preparation of our first winter:



And due to all the rain, we added another tarp over the hoop coop. It was so wet that we swore we heard the chickens quacking:



And we added 7 Guinea keets to the madness:



I want to jump ahead for a second, before I close this...we messed up on the hoop coop and didn't have any kind of support in the center of the "hoop", this one came back to bite us, so if you're thing about using this kind of set-up and get snow and/or especially ice in the winter, you can't go wrong with adding a 2' x 4" center support. We learned this one the hard way and should have known better...sigh:



More tomorrow!

 

[dragonlaurel]

Smoke looks like my old girl in that pic! She was a happy, tired girl. Is she a Russian Blue?
I don't know if my girl was much of a mouser, cause we never saw any around. I have a feeling she was the gray shadow of doom.
http://i831.photobucket.com/albums/zz236/dragonlaurel_photos/Puppycats/Ashley3.jpg Sorry it's fuzzy- I wasn't used to that camera.
I really like the hoop coop. Thanks for the reminder about snow weight. We don't get much, but it is usually sleet first- then a few inches of snow. Wouldn't want the run-roof going down on my hens someday.
That outhouse is a pretty good setup. Zipppp. No wasps buzzing around when you're occupied.
Your place is coming along really well. I thought about buying land in northern Arkansas before, but we traveled through Hot Springs and felt like it was home. But it costs more per acre around here. oh well . . .

 

[Dawn419]

Good Morning, dragonlaurel!

Wow! Smoke looks so much like your girl that it isn't funny (and she's glaring at me to tell you so! ). Smoke's just a by-product of a friends mama cat, she was the only gray one in the litter that reminded me of the Russian Blue that I used to have years ago. She's so much like him in attitude that we jokingly call her life #2. Doc's not a cat person and he loves her to death! I was willing to have her as an outdoor cat, the second day we were out here he says (within her hearing range)" She can come inside in the winter, we don't want her to become a kitty-cicle" ...she proceeded to walk into the camper, climb up into the middle of the bed and she's been in control, ever since!

Our first year with the "out house", the brown wasps made a nest up in the rain fly. This year, the Carolina decided to make a dummy-nest in the corner mesh shelf system. We'd noticed leaves in it but didn't think anything of it and were just glad it wasn't my nemisis...the dreaded red wasps. About a week ago, doc got a surprise when one of the wrens flew out of the nest and proceeded to give him the what-for! Their main nest is in the gourd birhouse down at the garden, I guess the Mrs. kicked the Mr. out for a spell, I don't know? They were both down at the gourd this evening.

Once doc's training at work is done, we hope to be able to visit the Hot Springs area and maybe we can catch up!

I'm looking forward to getting into 2010 on the journal to tell about doc's birthday present...the lack of center support in the coop comes into play, and we have another doozy coming up about the soft-side shed and high winds, too!

 

[Country Homebody]

Hey Dawn,

Thanks for sharing your journey. I'm enjoying reading along.

Blessings,

Country Hombody

 

[dragonlaurel]

I don't know what kind of cat Smoke's Momma was but I bet there was a Russian Blue Daddy cat in the neighborhood somewhere. They are very smart cats. I'm not surprised that she understood what he said and took advantage of it immediately. After all, an opportunity to enlarge your kingdom shouldn't be wasted.

Does Smoke talk alot? Ashley did. It sounded like she was complaining all the time- till you listened carefully enough to know the differences in tone.

LOL Getting surprised by a pissed off wren was funny. For us anyway. I've got a feeling that he probably has a winter birthday. Must've had nasty weather for you to need extra support.

If you come to Hot Springs- It would be cool to get to get to know you.