The Sifford Sojournal

Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.

Page 90 of 97

Animal Rotation Pens Expansions

January 19, 2009 / / 1 Comment

Part of our plan for our animals was to rotate them through a set of pens, which would provide various types of fertilization in an effort to revitalize, improve and maintain the efficiency of the soil. Also, with the need to separate out our male goat from the female goats to control the breeding process, I decided it was time to add a couple more pens to our current set of two pens. Our neighbor Kelly was looking for some work, so we hired him to build these for us.

Before starting on the new pens however, some work needed to be done on the previous pens to bolster the support structure of the wood posts. On a few of them I had hoped to get away with just a single post without supports. Even though I didn’t stretch the fence that tightly, it still had been putting enough pressure on the posts to begin to pull out of the ground a little. And so Kelly added some “kickers” (the diagonal posts) and “dead men” support (the small posts to which the lower part of the diagonals are attached) to help with that problem. This also would set a better design precedent for the new pens. Further, in the way I designed the first two pens, I had the entry gates for each pen (which were 12 foot gates in order to allow for the driving through of the tractor and disk plows) next to each other so they would share a common post to which the opening side of the gate would latch. This was in order to try to use fewer posts. Although not perfect, this has seemed to work fairly well in being able to move animals from one pen to the other:

However, in adding the next two pens, we could use this same design between them; but if we were going to be able to move animals from pen 2 to pen 3, it would need to be done through gates that would be nearly 200 feet apart, which would probably require a pathway between those two pens. And so instead of that, Kelly added a gate to the side of pen 2 that would allow for free movement between it and pen 3:

Then he set to work on replicating pens 1 and 2 as pens 3 and 4. We plan on adding a 5th pen at some point, so he implemented the same pass-through on pen 4 that he added to pen 2:

We thank Kelly for his work, and once again for the Lord for His resources and provisions. We pray that God always guide and direct us in our decisions in how to build our homestead; and that, despite ourselves and any lack of understanding or foresight, He lead us to do the right things and to those that will work well in the future, for His glory.

— David

A Tail of Two Puppies

January 9, 2009 / / 10 Comments


When we attended the Homestead Heritage Craft Fair this last November, I had the opportunity to observe their sheepdog demonstration. Needless to say, I was impressed with their ability to round up animals. With our attempts at rounding up animals either gruelingly on foot or industrially with trucks, I thought that having sheepdog capabilities around the land would be of great benefit to all involved for all of the various animals we have to sometimes corral and/or separate. The Homestead Heritage folks had decided on Border Collies for their herding breed, and so I figured I would follow suit at some point.

Well, that some point came quicker than I had expected. Recently, an ad was placed in the local classifieds paper for registered border collie puppies. Even though they were pricey as registered dogs, I called, in case the owner had or could recommend non-registered ones which would cost less. When I talked with the owner and explained what I was looking for, it so happened she was moving and was willing to sell one or both of the remaining registered pups from the latest litter for 40% off. We thought that was just too good to pass up. At first I thought we’d only get one, but then reconsidered, given the deal she was offering, that the two dogs would have each other, and to allow us to potentially breed them; and so, we decided to get both the male and female she had left.

And here they are. We decided to give them Scottish names because Border Collies originate from the border area of England and Scotland, and we named them different sounding names to help them differentiate between themselves when being commanded. Please meet Brodey (pictured to the right above) and Nessa (pictured to the left above). They’re quite playful and friendly, and we look forward to being able to train them to be functional animal members of the community:



Here is a video of them just after arriving here on the land:


The Lord is gracious in granting us these animals, especially in the way He did; and we pray for guidance in training them.

— David

 

Gary the Gander Gets Gigi the Goose

January 4, 2009 / / 1 Comment


When the offer from Mrs. Judy came for Gary to have a potential mate, as much as it is fun to have him hang around me, I figured it would be great if he could have his own goose; and so, we accepted her offer of bringing one down during this last Fall’s Ranchfest.

At first, we didn’t know what to name her. But I kept calling her “Girlie Goose”, because, well, she sort of is. That led to us thinking about the first initials of that name; and so, we decided to call her Gigi, which also sounds nice with Gary’s name :).

Here is a video of their introduction and other times together. At one point on intro day, they went off into the woods together; and so we had to chaperone them back. The video ends with our nightly walk back to the barn where they spend the night:

This video has Gary bringing me back from work so he can show off for and try to impress his “lady”:

While Gary still follows me around if I am in the area; all of the rest of time, he sits with Gigi, mostly next to the goat pens. I am hoping he makes the switch to her at some point to make her his mate. Mrs. Judy said perhaps this might happen during her “cycle”, perhaps in Spring.

There have been signs of her wanting to be around him as well, shown in a couple of ways. One has been what seems like her sometimes squawking when Gary is not visible to her. Another has been that she is often hesitant to come into the barn at night unless she knows Gary is already in there. Gary will squawk at someone making a coughing noise; and sometimes when she is undecided about whether to enter the barn or not, I will fake-cough enough to get him to squawk several times; and she will turn from where she is going and then come into the barn.

We’re thankful to Mrs. Judy for giving us Gigi, and to the Lord for granting Gary hopefully a mate (even though I’ll miss his company 🙂 ).

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Calf “Leandro”

December 26, 2008 / / 1 Comment

The Lord most graciously allowed yet another calf to be born to one of our cows. Introducing Leandro, which means “lion-man”; of course he’s not a man though :). Rosa gave birth to him this past Monday, and he is our first bull (male) calf:

Here is another picture of him:

And here is a video (which was shot Wednesday):


God is very gracious and merciful, and we are thankful for Him granting perpetuation provisions.

–David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Calf “Sarita”

December 14, 2008 / / 3 Comments

The Lord in His graces and mercies granted a new little heifer (female) calf be born this past Sabbath (Saturday) to one of our cows, Amistosa. The calf has a little “dot” of white fur on her otherwise red (brown) head, and that reminded us of a East Indian princess, which apparently is not what the dot means and was just an improper perception we had; but we decided to go with it anyway, so please meet Sarita, which means “princess” in Spanish. She was up and about following her mother in just about 6 hours, we figure.

Her mother’s name means “friendly” (because she has been from the moment we got her), and it appears this little one picked up the gene, because she walked right up to us, which allowed us these pictures:



And this video:


We are very grateful once again to God and His many provisions.

— David

 

Summer Kitchen Update

December 11, 2008 / / 4 Comments

The Lord is gracious in allowing more homestead improvements and fellowship with the brethren, one of those for us being what we have planned to be a summer kitchen project. With me being a rookie building designer, things “ended up” being a little different than the original plan.

In including windows but desiring them to be horizontally sliding, I purchased some from the local home improvement store that were typically used as vertically sliding windows thinking I could simply spin them sideways and thus make them horizontal windows. Well, it worked ok, sort of, but not, because I discovered that, not only was there a spring line attached which is meant to help in opening the windows up against gravity, but since mine were tilted over 90 degrees, that resistance made it difficult to close them. Further, when it rained, water puddled in and leaked over the lower sliding area. Something was amiss.

I soon found out that vertically sliding windows are not designed to be installed as horizontally sliding windows, and that there were indeed windows specifically designed to be horizontally sliding.

Sigh.

So, after understanding a little more about windows, I ordered the proper, left-right sliding windows. When they had arrived, I began the replacement operation.

The biggest obstacle was that the open space I had built into the window frames was horizontally too short for the new windows. However, in thanks to God for how I originally constructed it and for the idea, I was able to just cut out with a reciprocating saw one of the side 2x4s of the window frame and replace it with a 1×4, thus allowing for the needed space and therefore resolving that, quite possibly complicated, issue.

When replacing the first window, which I had silicone-caulked originally, I thought I would sort of “work” the window loose. When I did that, I apparently twisted the window beyond capacity, and the outer pane of glass shattered. Sigh, again. Ok, so then, when installing the new window, after setting it in the window frame, as I was trying to screw it in place, the top of it fell forward, hitting my head (which took off a nickel-sized piece of skin), and the screw that I had been planning to use to secure it was now found to be buried in the screening of the new window. Sigh, again, again.

Anyway, I learned very quickly that what I had been doing was apparently not, at a minimum, the best way to proceed. I figured then that I should spend more time prying the old windows’ edges from the caulking before trying to remove them. Wonder of wonders, this worked much better. 🙂

And so with all of that, here are a couple of pictures of where we are with the summer kitchen, which includes screen doors, hopefully allowing maximum ventilation:


It has been a bit disheartening and sometimes frustrating, but during these situations hopefully the Lord is graciously granting us more meekness (Part 1, Part 2) and contentment, which are some of the graces for which we try to daily pray; and difficult times certainly offer the opportunity to examine ourselves (especially right at the moment) and then continue to seek Him for His graces.

We are ever grateful to God for His provisions, spiritual and temporal.

— David

 

Garden 2008 II Update

December 2, 2008 / / 2 Comments


With water provisions graciously granted by the Lord, and with His graciousness in allowing us to store quite a bit of it, we were able to keep the garden going. Some of it didn’t make it so well, I believe partially because of how the double-dug beds are sloped and still only have original top soil, which at this point forms a hard layer after drying. Lord willing, over the winter in preparation for next Spring, we hope to build up the soil on top of the beds with compost, vermiculite and peat moss.

Despite that, God has granted us some provisions off of the land from the current garden. Besides the one shown above, here are some pictures of the growth:


And here is a bowl of green beans and bell peppers:

And one of squash and broccoli:

And her are some carrots, which were planted in the Spring and survived the drought:

Here is some of it being prepared for long-term storage:

And then canned:

Here is a watermelon. Interestingly, we didn’t plant watermelon seeds this year at all!

There were some logistic issues to the fall garden. I did try to time our planting based on the noted harvest times of the plants with the theoretical first freeze for this area (which for us is Nov 15). The Lord has been gracious in not permitting a hard freeze to come through here as of yet, and so that has allowed us to gather from the garden even beyond the predicted harvest times.

During the last few weeks, on freezing or near-there nights, we have covered the garden with 10′ wide, 6mm thick, white plastic, so the sensitive plants wouldn’t be directly exposed to the cold; and that appears, by God’s graces and mercies, to have helped on those nights. However, it seems there is a point with some temperature-sensitive plants where, even though they are covered and temperatures don’t reach hard-freeze levels, they are still affected and essentially stop growing their “fruit.” But, the vegetables themselves were not destroyed, and we were thankfully able to still cull them.

Right now, we have collected all of the above-ground vegetables. Sue’s next job with the garden is to pull the carrots (planted in the Spring!, but which are root crops, therefore below ground, and thus more protected from colder temperature) and then process the cabbage, which we are probably going to try to store as sauerkraut, as that is a common agrarian method of long-term storage.

All thanks be to God for His graces, mercies and provisions in allowing us food off of the land.

— David

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