15/10/2024
🍁SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER UPDATES: We were blessed to receive some future dinner for us, in the form of 3 gifted roosters (yes, they are noisy, which we all hate 🤣). This fine fellow was raised on good feed in freedom and will give our family sustenance. That is life on a homestead. Many people live hand to mouth and we aren't outside that category, though we work hard and have great endeavors for a better tomorrow. We certainly are not in a position to go buy chicken at the store. In fact, I haven't grocery shopped in 3 weeks. If we don't grow it, we don't eat it. Tbh, I don't remember the last time I bought chicken from the grocery store. All the same, we aren't in the position to grow out roosters ourselves either. The only time we can process roosters is if they are gifted to us. So, we felt very lucky that we will soon be eating chicken. Perhaps it will be for when we make the birthday dinner for S, which is coming up soon!
🌱FALL PLANTING
We just finished planting all our winter crops, which mainly are a ton of broccoli but also include peas, lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and we do keep forgetting to plant the garlic but we will. Eventually. We still have until November to get the garlic into the ground. The lemons and avocado are in the greenhouse still. We have basil and some bell pepper in planters. We'll have to drag them into the underground greenhouse soon, as the nights are starting to cool down. Speaking of the greenhouse, it needs work on the roof, as always.
🛖THE CABIN
For this week, we're hustling to get the little cabin for Mr. E finished first, as we're promised two good weeks of weather. Today, we're putting on the roof of the little cabin. And it is little! Maybe it is 70 sq ft. Maybe. By Sunday, the horizontal wall planks will be cobbed and covered with shingle siding. Next week, we begin work on the outhouse and outdoor kitchen for Mr. E. All in, we haven't spent more than $300 on it, which was pushing our already stretched budget to the max. To put it in perspective, $300 buys my pantry food for the year. Not for the month. For the year. This was a lot of money for us to spend.
- $200 of the money went to cement bags and rebar to reinforce the high side of the cabin foundation, as it was built on a sloped area.
- $60 spent on sourced wood for the original deck and corner framing (4 posts on corners plus 3 beams for the roof), from a tire shop that sells 4x4s for $2 a piece
- $0 The walls were framed out between from free pallets.
- $30 for new plywood for the roof - We had corrugated plastic (a bandaid solution until we get tar paper and corrugated metal to finish the roof).
- $0 for shingle siding comes from those same free pallets, which means a lot of hand sawing
- $5 For cinder block foundation pieces (we already had some).
Then there are the remnants of a house that washed into the creek many years before we lived here. As a result, we have a stockpile of bricks and rocks from that old house. We are collecting the rocks to reinforce the foundation under the 4x4 deck we originally had before building the cabin. So, that is all happening this very week! Future pics to come of the tiny cabin.
🦋FUTURE PURCHASE
The building of the tiny cabin has proved to be so much work and labor intensive, that we won't likely build another structure on this property but rather opting to buy a badly needed prebuilt toolshed, though higher in price. This might be financed by the spring tax refund. To be determined.
That's all for our major fall updates! Smaller updates coming soon 😊
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original source of plank house pic: https://www.springspreserve.org/education-conservation/archaeology.html
