Olla and other waterers

I read about olla waterers for gardens .... basically big clay pots that are buried where you want constant watering. Like a drip irrigation system. Only you need to keep filling up the clay pots.

Question 1: Is it possible to use the small (empty/clean) plastic gatorade bottles for this? Or maybe even 2-liter plastic soda bottles? Hubby drinks lots of the individual gatorade but not as much 2-liter sodas, and we don't buy gallon milk very often.

Question 2: In a 4x8 foot bed, how many bottles (assume 2-liter) would we need to "plant" in the center of the bed. Three?

Question 3: Would we need to replace them each year since plastic does (eventually) degrade?

Question 4: How big would we make the drip holes ... a pin prick? Maybe on all 4 sides?

Question 5: Shouldn't I keep the top screwed on so bugs can't get in, drown and clog up the drip holes?

Remember... I'm cheap! I don't want to spend $25 for a clay pot waterer!

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We still don't have the baby chicks. Supposedly today. We'll see. If they don't come in to the feed store, I might cancel if I can find them from somewhere else.

Yesterday (or was it the day before?), Hubby and I decided to hold off on getting more quail and a boyfriend for our angora bunny. We need to work with the chickens and goats and garden and so forth. We're still getting about 5 eggs a week from our pair of quail but still...

My hands still hurt. Started taking water pills yesterday just in case it's due to water retention but doesn't seem to help yet. Need to remember to pick up some arthritis med (OTC) before I get the chicks.

Finally finished my chocolate birthday cake and sent the plate with Hubby today to give back to his mom when he goes over this afternoon after work. I haven't done anything at all with my diet for months but I'm feeling worse so I'm gonna start back on it.

We're eating some greens from our indoor garden and they are very yummy! Sure wish the weather would cooperate so I can get the outdoor garden planted! Yesterday, before the snow, I broadcast some "green manure" over the area where we're gonna build the goat and chicken pens... hoping they will find their way to sprout from the snow-moisture and start growing for when the goats and chickens move to their new homes.

Need to remember to contact our new "handyman" ... he lives in this area. Need him to get started on building the chicken and goat pens in our dog run/backyard. Hope to move both goats and all chickens to those pens by Memorial Day. Need him to rototill the 3 areas where I'm planting (1) corn, beans, pumpkins/squash (3-sisters), (2) sunflowers, cucumbers, watermelon, and (3) amaranth. That's in the back. There's also a spot in the front that he needs to rototill for another 3-sisters patch.

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Please plant a nut or fruit tree today.

Began a Headache Diary

Busy day yesterday. Left around 9:30 to meet new doc and discuss increasing frequency of headaches. Not all are migraines. Suggested I keep a "diary" of what I do and eat and etc. all day so we can figure it out. Said I'm taking migraine meds too frequently, so I'm scaled back to 2-3 a week. Said I also need to make a schedule for everything (eating, tasks, errands, etc.) that will help knowing the headache causes and help me eat a little more healthy. Five meals a day (small, yes).

Then since the Kid and I were in town, did lots of errands. Five places? No, six. Plus getting gas, lunch, and a few supplies to construct goat pen. (Didn't get everything because a headache had started.)

The ride in our area doesn't help. Unpaved and very very very bumpy. My 1984 car hates it and has started losing bolts and such. Plus really bad for my headache and back.

Home. Within 5 minutes I had a call from our tax preparer. She had messed up and the IRS had rejected our electronic federal tax return. She wanted me to drive right back into town (over our bumpy road!) and sign the revised form. Why on earth no one could have called my cell while I was in town I don't know. I told her no. Print it out to file by mail and provide an envelope. Hubby picked up on the way home. We took care of it last night (angrily!) and he'll mail it today. The 15th. I hate last-minute things.

After Hubby got home, he fixed the workshop door that had broken loose during the windstorm the other day. That's good.

I did end up taking another migraine med last night, plus 2 aleve. Had severe nausea so didn't really eat dinner (couple bites of yogurt that didn't want to stay down). The soy protein drink I had during the day didn't help either. Did finally get to sleep, dreaming of my angora bunny attacking me!

Awoke, tho, with a lessened headache. Good. I have lots to do today. Hopefully I can get the Kid to do the lifting to rearrange the workshop so we can build the barn area in there tomorrow and Saturday. Also have lots of writing to do, and my seedlings need attention. Have a great day, everyone!

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Updated 11:30 a.m. Figured out my daily schedule and kinda-a-diet too. Already had breakfast, exercised, moved some things around downstairs, had a banana for a snack, checked on my seedlings and watered as necessary, and found a recipe for gf granola.

The Kid, however, is not concentrating and thus, although he's been up since 7, has only completed 1 assignment. Gotta light a fire under him!

Sunday Evening Came Fast

Well, here it is, 7:18 p.m. on Sunday evening, and we still haven't started our taxes or finished painting the guest suite. But we did...

-get a 5x8 trailer full of pallets (for goat and chicken pen building)
-found a 4-compartment rabbit hutch that we will pick up next weekend
-took a walk around the neighborhood and found lots of dogs, goats and chickens
-bought 3 rabbit carriers that will work well as quail pens
-bought 2 kerosene lanterns ($2 each) at the same garage sale
-almost bought a duckling just because they are so cute
-met our next door neighbors (with the alpacas) - wonderful people!
-took mom-in-law out for Easter Linner (lunch/dinner)
-bought an intercom system for house (so we won't need to stomp!)
-figured out where to put our fence but still need to mark it
-saw how two different families keep their chickens and goats
-saw how two different families keep their alpacas
-discovered feed stores push Purina even tho I said "no purina goat food"!

...and last but certainly not least, discovered that the wind blows here ALL the time and we better get used to dirt in our mouths and eyes. Pulled so much sand out of my eyes this morning, I could have slept in a sandbox! Gonna have to make sure we plant the windbreaks immediately.

HOWEVER.... Remember how I started a flat of seeds on March 31? Wednesday? Saturday morning (Apr 3) I peeked at the flat and couldn't believe it! Some had sprouted... 2 lettuce, 1 broccoli, and a marigold. This morning (Apr 4) I peeked again, and even more had sprouted... several lettuce (2 kinds), cabbage, broccoli, and more marigolds! I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR!

I'll take a pic of the flat of seeds tomorrow. I'm thinking... I might sell lettuce and herb seedlings through craigslist. I have so many seeds and can't possibly use them all. Hmmm... maybe we can actually earn enough to get the greenhouse built before Autumn.

Today we get pallets and a hutch

Yesterday the Kid and I went out for errands to the second closest town, about 40 minutes drive. First to the health food store where I picked up a couple packets of quinoa and lentils. Also got some millet for the quail, us, and trying to plant. We'll see. The Kid also got several loaves of gluten-free bread, gf brownies and gf cinnamon rolls. I grabbed more dried soup veggies, because I go through a couple of packages of those a week.

Next to Bed, Bath and Beyond because the Kid needed an organizer for the shower next to his basement bedroom. No where to hold his shampoo! Looked at shower curtains too but everything was so expensive so just got the organizer. (Sidenote: couldn't believe it but he found a porn mag in one of the basement bathroom drawers... unbelievable! At least he brought it to us as soon as he found it but we sure did have to answer a lot of questions.)

Then to Wal-Mart for essentials necessary for the bathroom the Kid just vacated up here. Not even a soap dish or towel rack! I picked out some stuff that will do nicely in this "guest-suite", and goes well with the newly-painted light green walls. Picked up a few other things, but by the time I was ready for check-out, my body was ticked off at me so we hurried home, unloaded, put the car back in the workshop and I didn't move for another hour.

I've been thinking about space lately, and I think that in addition to using the other suite up here as a guest-suite, I'll put my planter-shelves in front of the two south-facing windows, and when the seedlings are ready to leave the mini-greenhouse after they've sprouted, I'll repot and place on those planter-shelves. After all of my seedlings have been planted outdoors, I'll use that space to grow lettuce and herbs indoors year-round. Maybe even a tomato! Yum! Nothing beats homegrown veggies.

But today.. we have lots of things to do. That woman in the nearby town will be waiting for us to pick up the 10+ pallets, there's another person in the same town that has a 4-compartment hutch that we should be able to modify for the quail, the country store that will be providing our chicks at the end of this month is holding a sale on livestock feed so we'll stop by to pick up some goat food, AND a nursery in the same town is calling our names to visit and explore and order our fruit trees!

What else to do today (Saturday): Hubby still needs to finish painting the guest-suite (high places and edges) so I can finish moving things around there. We need to find the frame for the Kid's full-size bed in the basement (he's almost 6' at age 13). Want to plant peas in the ground so they'll start germinating and growing ... fresh peas eaten straight from picking are very delicious.

Oh yeah, the most important thing we need to do this weekend: open boxes to locate our paperwork to do taxes! Once organized, I just need to call H&R Block to make an appointment for next week. With selling the house and other things, our taxes are just a mite too complicated this year. Next year we'll do them ourselves.

As for Sunday... driving into Denver to take mom-in-law out for Linner (Lunch/Dinner). Probably won't put up another post till Monday so everyone have a good Easter.

Fencing and Chicken Coops

Spent yesterday looking online for prefab chicken coops or even kits to put together ourselves. Wow! Expensive! Found some great websites that gave links but either they were in the UK or just too expensive, even without calculating in shipping. Then I talked with the neighbor in the back and she said she'd looked too, and they just ended up building one. Still expensive to gather the supplies.

We can build a big "box" but I don't know how to cut a hole in for nesting boxes, or some other design items I want.

Craigslist was next. Found several that interested me, and still kinda expensive. One was 4x4 with a 3x4 "run" (we will increase it's size as needed... 3 pix to the right). After Hubby got home from work and attached the trailer to his car, we drove off to take a look. Nice people ... stopped with the chickens because they didn't lock them up one night and a fox got them all. Will try again sometime but meanwhile, we got their chicken coop. The roof slides down to access the nesting boxes but I'm gonna have Hubby cut holes so I can get the eggs without sliding the roof. And we'll increase the size of the run.

Still need a second one because I want to keep our two breeds of chickens separate. We have a little time tho. They haven't even been born yet!

Now comes fencing. We still can't find the buried rebar posts that mark our boundary lines so I found a copy of the plat map that we got in January. Hubby's gonna print it out at work, along with a copy of the google map. I'm gonna super-impose the plat map onto the google and hopefully this will give us an idea. Yep, we're going to guess, erring on our side and hoping the map we got during closing is correct.


Called Home Depot installation department and they're going to come out and give an estimate. Wish they would have called me back today to set up the appointment. But we need a load of top soil first in our "dog run". Gonna have to call it something else. We've decided to keep the chickens and goats in a third of it, and in the other third, have our veggie garden and a relaxing area... with a swing (kinda like a porch swing), bar-b-que, picnic table, and a little grass to tickle our toes. Keeping the basic veggies in this already-fenced-in area will reduce how much we will be spending on fencing.

What kind of fence for the perimeter? Strong enough to withstand our severe gale-like winds, tall enough to help deter (notice I didn't say stop) deer from coming in, posts every 5 feet, and with heavy chicken wire to keep our critters in and others out. Two gates.

I called Home Depot because they do free consultations, including the measuring of the property. Ah ha! We'll know exactly how much we need! Anyway, the fence company will call me within 1-2 days to set up an appointment. No matter what they quote me, I'll get another 2 quotes elsewhere and choose the best one. I'd like to get Hubby to install our fence and gates, but with so much going on (still haven't done our taxes or built the goat pen or unpacked the kitchen or finished the Kid's room or ... argh!), I'm concerned that we won't get the fence up before the chickens and goats come home.

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I think we have enough to do this year so I think we'll wait until next year before growing pasture for our critters. We'll have two separate "3-sisters" cornfields, an amaranth area, herb garden and large veggie garden in addition to getting all of our perennials in place (berries, rhubarb, asparagus, nut and fruit trees, etc.). Hope Hubby's ok with this. We have so much soil-amending to do that I'm hoping a year of goat and chicken poop will help us for next year.


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Yeah, we're rearranging our plans for this little 2 acre plot. Better to change our minds now instead of after we've planted or built. Hopefully we've have time for the Kid and I to go out and measure so I can come back in and start planning with accurate square footage.

Oh, and really need to get those seeds started!!

Pix of New House

As I wrote yesterday (or was it Saturday?), the inspection of our new house (homestead-to-be) went well. We will have to make some improvements, like replace the roof and furnace within the next year or two, and the soil is mostly sand and weeds, but we're still excited. The inspector gave his opinion that it was a good house, and worth the money and trouble.

I took this first pic (above) as we drove up for the inspection. Hubby let me out and drove on while I took some pix. Isn't it great? Lots of front space. On the left (north) side of the driveway we'll plant the taller trees like walnut, pecans, apples, etc. On the right (south) side we'll plant the bayberry and elderberry bushes, plus all of those berry brambles and bushes like blueberry and raspberry. Gotta have our berries!

ABOVE: I started walking the property line, to see where we'll need to lay fence or fix existing fences. Imagine my surprise when I looked up at our next-door-neighbor's property and saw these alpacas looking at me. Stopped by that fence, perhaps they wanted to come over and say hi.

ABOVE: While I was out walking, I saw these guys at a back-of-the-property neighbor. Actually a whole fenced-in area with lots of critters. Notice the two guinea fowl on the right, and the white chicken. What kind is it?

ABOVE: Love it! Here are more of the poultry in the neighbor's yard. I tried to take a good picture of the turkey (to the left) but it wouldn't stay still! It sure did gobble loudly tho. As did the rooster.

ABOVE: And looky here! See that black critter towards the right? It's a goat. Can't tell what kind as I couldn't get close enough but it sure does stand nicely. Wonder if it's the only one?

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Hubby said he heard ducks across the street, too There are also horses and cows on this "block" too. I'm glad we're not going to be the only "weird" ones in the area. Won't have to worry about breaking any rules because it's obvious that the subdivision is ok with farm animals / livestock.

We are soooo excited now. Even more! I wonder if I'll be able to keep the Kid out of the neighbors yards, especially the one with the alpacas. Hey! Here's a thought. IF they have the alpacas to sell the wool, wonder if they need any angora fiber to go with it? We can provide! Beautiful white angora rabbit wool.

Just my thoughts.

Inspection of House

The inspection went well. Will try to post pictures on Monday. Turns out the neighbors to our south have alpacas, and the neighbors to the south-east corner of our backyard has chickens, guinea fowl, turkey and a big ole brown goat! We won't be the oddest people there... that is REALLY exciting!

Walking the perimeter wore me out. Two acres might not seem big on paper, but walking it being as overweight and disabled as I am... well, it'll be a good way to get me in shape. I'm gonna have to revise my planting-plan again, and probably the location of the greenhouse and barn.

Looks like the owners/sellers started dismantling some permanent fixtures, tho. Gonna have to e-mail our agent about that and make sure they don't take any more of those things, like the medicine cabinets!

Look for pix on Monday!