Just had a look through an old directory on the computer, and found some pictures from when we left England and came (back for me) to America.
This photo is the last one I took in England. It looks a bit like Craig’s flat!
This photo is the first one I took in America. This plate used to belong to my Great Grandmother. It is hanging on Grandma’s kitchen wall now. I think this is the second poem I ever memorized, after that one about ducks and religion..!!
Our most recent investment in the chickens has been a new coop! A few weeks back a couple of our hens disappeared and we immediately launched a bit of an investigation into it, suspecting coyotes or maybe even a dog, but while out checking on some Christmas lights I heard the very distinct sound of an owl hooting in the big pine tree at the west end of the house. That settled the idea of what to do with some scraps of wood Jordan has been getting from some of the neighbors here while working for them. So Jordan and I set ourselves right to work against a frame that we had started for a larger coop that we don’t yet have supplies enough to finish. What we ended up with is a lean-to against that frame which is intended to eventually serve as the yard to a much larger chicken coop.
The only part I did not use scrap for was the door, since I really don’t want to be replacing the door very soon.
Inside I have our newest feeder that I bought through Amazon.com which is designed to hold some 30 pounds of feed for the hens! This feeder really helps with the other sky bound predators that taunt our chickens, which are the local doves!
As you can see in this picture, the new feeder is pretty large. It is also inside the netting of the coop, which prevents the doves from getting to it, making our feed supplies last a great deal longer than they were when the feed was outside! Given a 50 pound bag of feed costs $20 at out local feed supply store, this is proving a tremendous saving for us! The feed had one problem that I was worried about though, which is to do with the metering adjustment pictured below.
The wire bit just pushed through the hole at the desired level, and nothing was there to stop it popping back out. Given the kids we have bringing large feed bags out to feed the chickens, I was not about to leave that design as is, and have the bottom literally fall out on 30#’s of food and let it fall to the floor. So I put it in, and got a pair of pliers and put some welly behind it until the hook was bent enough that it was difficult to push through the hole, making it impossible to accidentally get knocked loose. With some effort I can still adjust the metering, however I just don’t see the need to!
The old watering fount has been put into the shed as well, and elevated out of the hay so the water doesn’t get easily contaminated with so much hay that it is impossible for the birds to get to it!
The coop is built in an area in the yard between the old horse washing station, and the old swimming pool that the goats now inhabit. This provides the coop with easy access to water for the fount, and electricity for the lighting.
The lamp hanging from the ceiling provides enough light to keep the chickens active for the advised 17 hours a day right through winter, although we have to work it manually until there is enough money to get a timer with a photosensitive eye built into it.
When it comes to the latches on the door, I think two on the outside will prevent any unwanted intrusions by a fortunate animal who accidentally happens to get one undone. Only one latch is inside since one of us will be in the coop any time that latch is being used. They are cheap, easy to maintain, and look the part on such a homemade coop.
The diagonal piece is to hold the hanging side of the door level with the hinged side, especially as the door ages. Yes, there should be two of them on this door, however I have been building on a tight budget, and as of yet I do not have more than handsaws (no power saws at all!) to do my cutting with. Hand saws are just not as accurate in my hand as a good miter saw could be, so I will save the construction on that second diagonal until I have the ability to really cut it accurately! The door won’t hold a bull in, but then, it doesn’t have to. If you think about it, it won’t even have to hold the wind in as it is covered in chicken wire so we can see who we are going to run into when we open it. I have again opted for the step in door as it makes it that much more difficult for the chickens to escape while the door is open for one of us to pass through.
The older coop is now serving as a home for a couple of Pheasants, and our flock of Rhode Island Reds. We are hoping to get some breeding done in there before the hens get put back in with the other hens. So far, all of the chicks we have hatched have been Production Reds that were brooded on by one of our white Ameraucana hens.
We did try to put some Production Reds into the new coop with the main flock the other day, and I do not recommend doing this! I think that in order to successfully accomplish integration, we need to put a cage for them close to the netting on the chicken coop so the birds can all see each other for a couple of days or even weeks first, and then integrate them at night so maybe the birds won’t notice the absence of the netting dividing them. Putting them straight in resulted in one of the Production Reds being pecked so badly that her left leg no longer works! She is now being cleaned and nursed to see what happens with the leg, but quite frankly, I think her head is going to have to come off as we had a Turkey with a leg injury not too long ago, and that bird just up and died one night. It is not like they have three more legs to compensate for the gimp leg. Once one leg is badly injured, they are pretty well doomed, and the other chickens will peck them to death. If you are seriously considering a flock of chickens, beware that you will come to the point when you will have to differentiate between pets and food, and the chickens are food. If you can manage a way of keeping such a injured bird, then well done on you for keeping your conscious clear. I would like to keep mine pretty clear too, but I have got a pragmatic situation to consider, which is the flock over the individual birds.
Our goal is to keep a large enough flock to provide eggs for ourselves, for us to sell, and to eventually provide meat for our family. In the long run we want to be able to say we truly eat almost everything off our own land. We want to have our own chickens, beef, milk, and vegetables and some fruit from off our own land. We aim to achieve self sufficiency as soon as the end of 2013. I think that will be possible so long as we can get 2012 past us with all goals accomplished! Fingers crossed and I will keep you up to date as these goals are achieved! The biggest step is getting grass under hoof to provide for most of the animals!
“The Prospering Peasant”
Mr. Kelsey J Bacon
Okay, so I am a bit late on wishing you that Happy New Year wish! Christmas came and went here without it ever feeling a lot like Christmas. I think for me it was the lack of snow, or even cold for that matter. The evenings chill here, but the desert is just not the place for me to call home in the sense that my views on the winter holidays were really formed in Colorado as a child. We did enjoy the festivities and all! But now that they are over, it is time to head in the direction of the next Holiday Season while making the very most of the year in-between!
At the moment there is nothing to announce, but we hope that by the end of the year we will be living with grass under hoof for the horses, and with a flock of chickens that is laying well and a bit larger than it is now, and a milk producer of some sort, at the very least! Missus would like to have some sheep too! She’s got this crazy idea that’s where wool comes from!
There is a post above this one that is to do with our new chicken coop. I posted that at my self sufficiency site; http://www.theprosperingpeasant.com which is a site I run and hope to grow a whole lot over the coming year too!
Jordan is off school today feeling a bit poorly. I have him with Kirynie now, and am free to type for a bit, but I will need to check on them soon as Jordan keeps falling asleep, then I need to go out and get some work done in the yards, as well as some laundry rotated around. But before I do, here are some goals for the coming year:
Yes, you read that last one right. We do not have a car of our own at all! It would be very lovely to get one that we can pay cash for, and maybe even reliable enough to get us out and about a bit so the Brits can see a bit more of the country than they have so far!
I don’t think I have come up to be a materialistic person. It is in relation to my own philosophies in life, but the things I want are to do with assuring that I live, not that I have things that make me look like I have been living.
Happy New Year, and don’t forget to check out The Prospering Peasant!
Kelsey J Bacon
I rolled out of bed around 7:00 this morning, despite the two hours lay awake last night. I woke up around 1:00 AM in the morning, thinking how funny it was that I could not at all remember going to bed and falling asleep last night. I am amazed at the hangover I had without the party! Work around the house finished by lunchtime, and a hearty lunch stuffed in our gullets, we took off for the Mormon Mesa, and to an earthen artwork called “Double Negative,” by Michael Heizer. The forty bucks of diesel we put in the truck before we went up the mesa should more than last us all week.
After coming back down, we went right into Overton and shopped at True Value, and had our ritual visit to the library. For retailers, this may be Black Friday and they may be jamming to AC/DC’s Back In Black. They can have it! And anyone shopping today, knowing that this is the biggest retail day of the year in the U.S., well, I think it was far too beautiful of a day today to pen even the sheep up!
The highlight of our day was when a neighbor called up to tell us that two of our pheasants were in her yard. We brought cages, and borrowed a net from her, and after some amusing times watching the boys chase the pair across the desert on foot… Did you know that a pheasant can reach 60 miles on hour in flight? Jordan actually managed to net the male, and we caged him and brought him home! The pheasant, that is!
So, of the four pheasants Dylan let out in terms that could be best described as stupidly, two of them are now back, and the two out still are females. Maybe they will come to the male!
Happy “Black Friday” all!
Kelsey J Bacon
As a word of caution, this post deals with the very unpleasant circumstances of the death of one of our horses, and for me it has truly been difficult to write, and may be as difficult for some to read. I want to give you that caution before you go any further so that you may have the opportunity to turn back now. I have to put it in this blog because this blog is a journal, and it would not be complete in any way without this entry.
Last week I had the unpleasant experience of saying goodbye to an old friend. This friend was one I had a lot of trust for, and one who I have known from the earliest parts of his life. He was one that I have worked with, played with, and entrusted my life with. Okay, he was a horse named Patches. But what I cannot emphasise enough is that he was a good friend, which made it all the more difficult in arranging for his death as he was losing to cancer on his penis.
I am positive I have said before in this blog that when he came to my family, he was badly injured from an event that left a bad scar all the way around his back left leg. Upon investigation by a vet, it was found that the electric fence he had gotten himself tangled into had not merely broken in one place and come out, as one would have expected, but it broke in two places, leaving a piece about eleven inches long inside him, wrapped tightly around his bone and undiscovered for about a month, allowing the bone to begin to grow around the wire. When the vet pulled it out, he became the second one to recommend putting Patches down, insisting that because of the injury to the one leg and the deterioration that compensating on the other leg would cause to the hind right leg. Still, we persevered in rehabilitating him, despite the vet advising that he would never be ridden.
I usually held the lead rope while David, my grandmother’s husband, would wash and treat him each day, and after he was finally able to walk more than a few steps, it was me who took Patches for walks in the little pasture next to the house, and then longer walks in the field over the road. At last, one day Patches started to hop and run a little, and that finally broke into faster and faster trots till one day he passed me by, and I had no choice but to let go of the lead rope.
Finally I had to go away to England for some years, but upon my return Patches was a fully capable horse that David would ride every day. The scars remained, but the horse was strong and very able for riding. I got possession of Patches and his daughter, Precious! But the summer here in the Nevada heat and sun proved too much for him in the end, and despite his now magnificent strength, he was not able to fight off the cancerous tumour that developed on the sheath of his penis. A friend and neighbor offered to arrange what was for me almost completely unthinkable, because no matter how much I did not want to think about it, Patches was losing and he was suffering.
A man by the name of Frank Pendleton came over with a backhoe and a .423 rifle. I had more than enough time to consider the gravity of the event about to occur on the day Frank arrived, and despite Frank’s almost pleading, I remained to watch, and to assure the dignity of the event.
Now For The Hard Part
I put an old halter on Patches and a black lead rope, and lead him from the corral where all the horses are kept just as Frank appeared to be finishing up a hole in the place I had asked him to dig it. It was a place where my grandmother asked me to put him, as he had been her horse for much longer then he had been mine. I honestly could not walk him any further than that, as the ‘green mile’ of this scenario was right down into his own grave. Frank took him to the edge, and as you could imagine, he was not to eager to go into a hole in the ground. Frank made a shelf in the wall, and I gave Frank some alfalfa cubes to put on the shelf. With some pushing and pulling, Patches walked down in and was soon eating from the small pile of cubes. I helped Frank out of the hole, and he asked me one more if I really wanted to be there for it. I assured him that I did, and he went back over by Patches’ head, where the rifle was leaned against a green t-bar post.
Patches was eating as Frank lifted the end of the barrel to his head near and above his right eye. I stood away and behind a pile of dirt, but still able to see clearly what was going on. Frank waited for the right moment, looked at me once more, and the waited again. He was clearly uneasy about me watching, but I fixed my eyes on Patches. Finally the shot reported like a thud against my chest and in my ears, and Patches dropped as though he were anesthetized for a moment, and then he slumped into the hole as what seemed like a couple of gallons of blood rushed from his nostrils. Frank jumped quickly onto the backhoe as I watched the latent movements of breathing on Patches’ side fade quickly away. The sound of the shot that has killed him was still so fresh that it seemed like the force of the sound was still bouncing off my chest as the sand began to pile in on Patches. I watched till the last of his ear was covered up, and he was finally gone into the earth, and reassured myself that I had seen him die just as instantly as he could have possibly done, and that there was no possible way he could have even realised he had died.
I said to Frank after he finished burying Patches that when I hear someone report of how a person died instantly in a car accident, I think, and Frank interrupted “bullshit!” I agreed. But I was glad to see that in this case it was really the truth. Frank gathered his things and left after a brief conversation. Within the next day or so we rearranged the pens so there was no longer an empty pen to remind us, and now, a week and a half later the idea of it is getting a bit easier to handle, though not in this kind of detail.
Patches was, in the end, my first horse, and I cannot possibly see how he will ever be my last, especially as we have two more here! Maybe I will get a horse shoe to remember him by, and maybe I will bend it closed, as a reminder of the circle of life, and the complete circle we came to when I let his lead rope go for the first time, and for the last time as he passed me by.
The grandparents are back down from Idaho, and I am back to work as more than just a daddy, and a husband, but also a grandchild and a chauffeur as well as a handy man and and whatever else is needed. This week the baby and I are going to load into the car and drive my grandparents up to Idaho to help them load up some stuff and close down the house for the winter. It will make a nice road trip for Kiry and daddy, at alst, and a chance to get out and see the house up there, in the fall weather, maybe in the snow! It has snowed up there already this year! Yes, this is truly when my work a day life gets going for me!
We are all doing well at the moment, and that is good. We have had some worries about our chicken flock as one of them was killed recently, and others keep running out beyond the boundaries of the yard and into open desert. It would be not nice to find them laying around dead out there where the coyotes or the bobcats or neighbor dogs could get them! But these are some of our worst worries as long as everyone is getting along.
Kelsey J Bacon
There are a lot of bleak assessments of the world we live in right now as far as the economy goes. Everyone is in trouble, from Europe to America, and even the Chinese, despite their money hording. The ones that have not really kicked up much of a fuss that I have heard of is the Russians, which I suppose is because financial disaster is business as usual for them!
Despite the impending doom that is certainly forecast for the coming 365 days, and despite the gloom that will ensue, I am optimistic that our family has learned to live within its means and we are learning to make more of what we have got! On Friday I was shown how to make Mozzarella cheese! I have an article ready for editing which I will post on The Prospering Peasant so you too can make your own cheese! I have to thank Anne Hall Brown, our Bountiful Baskets coordinator for showing us how to do this! It is a fairly simple process with exciting results, and when we have learned to make the cheese to taste by adding spices and the like to it, I think we will add even more value to an already valuable skill. Thanks Anne!
We have a healthy chicken flock, and turkeys and pheasants. We have horses too! We pay no house payments or rent to speak of, and the bills are pretty manageable. The only area where I find myself wanting is for people to act as customers to my photo business! I really could use some profits there! I am crap at marketing! I’d love to see some orders fulfilled there, or someone in front of the camera posing for their portraits! That could generate us enough income to help get us through a rough patch that is coming in our budget! Yes, we have a budget, and can tell you exactly how far in the red we will be going, and on what dates, and why! When it’s all said and done, we could use a couple of hundred bucks to get things moving and out of the red!
Now, this is not a complaint! I feel very lucky to have what I do have, and to have the family I have got! We live in a nice place, with great neighbors, and lots of personal space. We have not got a lot of personal possessions dragging us down with maintenance costs, and we have not got a lot of wants that are unfulfilled because we know better! I would like to get my KitchenAid mixer to make working in the kitchen easier and more fun. I’d also love to have a little buggy to pull behind one of the horses. But apart from that, all I want is photographic customers! Get me the one, and I will sort out the others! If those are the only wants I have, then there is not much to complain about!
So, I write this as an assessment of where we are. We are not rich, yet we are very wealthy! And with every new skill we learn, and new friend we make, we are wealthier still! So my assessment at this point of time is optimistic! Facing the gloom of an impending recession, that is a pretty good place to be, and I hope that a month from now, it is even better!
I called the customer service line at Wells Fargo to ask if there would be any problem if we were to bring in a check issued by Her Majesties Customs and Revenue Service of the United Kingdom, and was assured that there would be no trouble at all, and that some of the funds would be made available the day we brought it in, and that there would likely be a hold on the rest for a few days. I asked if there would be any fee for cashing the check, or cheque, in this instance, and was told there would be none. I was specific in my questions and in the nature of the check, and got very assuring and very specific answers from the customer service representative.
Yesterday we took our little check in to the Mesquite branch to cash the check, where the customer service representative had assured us there would be no complications and the male teller, who was not wearing a name tag and did not have a name plate up, took the check and examined it for a bit. He seemed a little confused by it, then prepared to put it into his computer. As we talked, Katrina reminded him that the amount was in British Pounds, and so he examined it further before admitting that he was looking for the Pound sign on the check. Katrina pointed towards the numeral field and said, “you mean that great big one right there?” Sure enough, there was a very large “£” right before the numbers printed in the numerical amount field. The teller then fetched his manager as he became very unsure of how to deal in the foreign currency check.
Kerry, the manager on duty came along, entered the situation, and informed us there would be a hold on all the funds for six to ten weeks, and that there would be a $75 fee for cashing it. I said to her that the customer service representative that I had called said there would be no fee, and that there would only be a short term, partial hold. Kerry then smiled a cocky little smile and asked me if I had “informed the customer service representative that the check had been issued in January, because the date is the first thing I look at on a check.” Katrina stepped in right away and reminded Kerry politely that the check was a British check, and that the date 01/08/2011 was dated the first of August, and not the 8th of January. So, in the end, we have to pay a fee of $75, deal with a total hold for up to a quarter of the year, and deal with two people who cannot answer why their customer service misrepresented the process, why their institution does not operate efficiently enough to handle this sort of transaction efficiently, or their internal communications process accurately. We then asked if they had a form or an address to communicate this to the company office, or even a phone number we could call, and were told they don’t have that information at the branch.
We found this event extremely unprofessional, especially for a goliath like Wells Fargo, and I wanted to complain about it in public because as Joe Small, I don’t like being the little guy who gets stepped on by a bank, then ignored afterwards! It may be true that the fee is correct, that the hold is correct, and so on, but that should have been communicated accurately at the Customer Service point of contact! And the cocky attitude of the manager was less than appealing, even if we did correct her on the date for it.
For this, I do not recommend Wells Fargo, and would love to state publicly that I would love it so much if the corporations that are taking over the small towns could remember that many of us still want to be treated like we are in a small town, and like we are people, rather than profit margins.
Kelsey J Bacon
Today we poured a quart of transmission fluid into the transmission on the truck, crossed our fingers, and hoped for the best. So far, it has run perfectly, and doesn’t seem to be leaking anywhere. If it continues on like this, then the transmission only overheated and the fluid boiled over through an overflow and scared the crap out of us on Sunday. The idea of a repair that could cost as much as $4,000 has been unbearable, and a nice reminder that we need to be extra careful with the resources that we have got! I suspect it will be fine from here on out, but to be honest, I am going to be watching it closely!
Next up for it is a set of tires! The truck needs tires so Kirynie and I can road trip up to Idaho later in the month and help my grandparents down from their summer home there. It needs tires and more road testing before setting out!
The photo above is one I took a couple of weeks ago, and is the out of camera J-peg, not retouched at all in Photoshop. Mostly I put it in because I find that more people read this blog if there is an image to call their attention to it in Facebook. So do tell, did it work?
I have been volunteering at the local Bountiful Baskets pickup, and our volunteer coordinator has offered to teach me how to make a pound of Mozzarella cheese out of a gallon of milk. Watch for that experience on The Prospering Peasant next week!
I ran out of chicken feed today, so I want to mention that my grandmother’s cousin, Charles, came by to give me a ride to get food for the birds, food for ourselves, pay a phone bill, and get transmission fluid for the truck today. We’d have been in big trouble today without him, and I am publicly mentioning this with much THANKS!
The only thing left to say now is that the forecast is for hotter weather again, crossing back into the hundreds. When there is nothing left to do but complain about the weather, then that means I am out of things to talk about till next time!
Kelsey J Bacon
I get up at five in the morning even though I don’t have a job to report to. I don’t get paid a salary, but I do get pay out of it! This morning’s wake-up paid in electricity. Not everything that I shoot with my camera gets posted, but here is what I didn’t delete during the storm.
Normally I would put the camera on a tri-pod and let it expose for 20 – 30 seconds, however this morning I put it on and ran a series a five second exposures so that the Noise Reduction did not take as long to recycle the camera to a ready state again. I kept the button depresses when the car passed through the photo, but otherwise I followed the rule of five second or so exposures so the shutter was open for more overall time during the storm.
The last photo was almost tragic in the sense that there were actually two more bolts on either side of what was in frame! But nonetheless I got a strike on the radio tower, and I am pretty excited about that! Feel free to buy a copy of it by clicking on the photo and going to my website! Or click here!
Kelsey J Bacon
