And We Are Back

Okay I know, it's been a year. I fell off of the blogging wagon. To be honest, I fell asleep at the reins, fell off and was run over but, I am back and ready to talk homesteading. This will be a quick catch up from our last adventures back in February. A lot has happened and changed in that time.

We were getting over a dozen eggs a day starting in the spring. We had so many we could not hope to eat them all so Dara started selling them at work. This was offsetting the feed cost for the most part, when Dara wasn't spending the egg money on snacks and coffee at work.

One of our chickens developed a limp and the other chickens started picking on her to the point that we had to separate her from the rest. Chickens can be real cloaca-holes. She was put up in her very own condo with her own food and water for about a week and half. She started walking fine again and was reintroduced to the flock with no further problems.

In other news, we have a duck that thinks she is a chicken and took over a nesting box in the chicken coop. Muscovy's are great mothers and when they go broody there is almost no stopping them from sitting eggs. The chickens didn't seem to mind and this was a good spot to get fresh duck eggs until I let her raise up some ducklings.

Here is the proud mama with her newly hatched ducklings. All total our two mature females raised up 18 ducks this year. They would have hatched more if I let them.We are down to 5 ducks now and a full freezer. More on that in the future.

Muscovy's love to play around in the water. When you have 20 + ducks on your property, you have to change this water everyday. The hardest part is making sure our border collie is no where around when I turn the hose on. He loves water in any form.

I put in a couple duck ponds around the yard. The only problem with a set up like this is changing the water every other day. If you have some elevated land and plumb the bottom of the pond with a drain hose, this would work very nice. I don't have any where to do that so I only dumped and filled this pond for a couple months. The baby ducks loved it.

I Know

I Am

Forgetting

Something...

So Many

Things Have

Happened

In The Last

12 Months...

Oh yeah, we got married in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. We needed witnesses so we each invited our only siblings to bear witness. It was a great day and beautiful scenery. We both love the gorge, so it was an easy decision to get married in the wilderness. We are standing next to a 100 ft cliff, you know, just in case she got cold feet. 

We got another puppy. His name is Darwin and we thought we were getting a catahoula cattle dog crossed with a shepherd. At least that's what the pound said he was. Turns out he is a great dane mix and is over 100 lbs at 13 months now. He is a gentle giant and we love him.

Higgs caught the bouquet and promptly ate part of it. I want to thank Aaron, Dara's brother and Sharon, my sister for being our witnesses and dog handlers. 

Something

Else

Happened

Recently...

Let's see

Ducks

Puppy

Marriage

What am I missing?...

Oh yeah, so we had a baby. His name is Oliver and he was born in September. I was lucky enough to deliver him, cut the cord and gave him his first bath. In fact, he never left our sight the whole time. We were not paranoid about something happening to him, well maybe a little, but it just felt like the right thing to do was to always be there for him. "They" say children change you and you can't know how much until you have one, "they" are right.

This is Oliver's second trip to the gorge, his first post uterus. The Ergobaby carrier is awesome. We are on top of natural bridge. Oliver did just fine being hiked all over the place.

We are looking forward to being the best parents we can be. Ours lives are changing more than just adding a baby. I am leaving my cubicle jungle to stay home and take care of Oliver. The thought of strangers raising our baby at a daycare didn't sit well with us. It will be hard with the drop in income, but I know we will pull through. He is totally worth it. 

More regular posts to come soon...

Burning A Bowl

Okay, its not what you think. Unless you are into primitive technology, then maybe it is what you think... My friend Phil and I went backpacking in the Red River Gorge in January. We decided to burn a wooden bowl around the fire one night.

If you have never been winter backpacking you are missing out. No bugs, very few people, you can see much further through the woods and a fire is actually needed, not just a luxury. You will need the proper gear and knowledge to have a safe and enjoyable outing. Find a friend or a group that goes out in the winter to learn from. You will quickly learn what draws me into the woods every winter.

First order of business, fire. No Bic lighters were used in the making of this fire. Before all the primitive purists out there start trolling the blog, I know my K-bar is not a primitive tool, neither is the ferrous rod we are using, but I would never step into the woods without them, so just let it be. 

Reddit edit: I have learned you should not use the blade of your knife on a ferrous rod. If your knife has a 90 degree edge on the back, use that instead. If you have a K-bar like me, use a file and remove the coating to expose the metal first.

As I mentioned, we used a ferrous rod to start this fire. Let me tell you, it is not easy starting a fire with one. If you carry one of these and have never used it, try starting a fire with it the next time you are camping. Know your gear and its possible limitations. If you needed a fire immediately, because you slipped and fell in a stream, you would definitely not want your only source of fire to be a ferrous rod. 

Next order of business, bacon. When you have bacon, all of life's problems seem to melt away. 

I would like to bring your attention to, the backpacking hammock. No amount of padding or sleeping pads can equal the comfort of these light weight hammock systems. Once you try it you will never go back to a tent. 

My wonderful fiance Dara, bought me this Chainmate handsaw. It is made out of a chainsaw like blade. When I first looked at it I thought, well this is novel, but I bet it won't perform like my folding saw. Let me tell you this thing is amazing. I sawed through the downed log pictured on both sides in a matter of minutes. Sure my folding saw could have done it, but not as fast and easy as this piece of kit. Plus, it compacts down into a very small pouch.

On to the burning of the bowl. You will want a log about this big if you want to do a burn down the center. I have burned a bowl into the side of a log before, but the log needs to be very large and it is not typically movable, once you are done.

Start by carving out a small depression in the center. Place a coal in it and apply oxygen. If you have a tube of some sort this is much easier. We sacrificed one of Phil's cheap trekking poles to use as a blowing tube.

You will want some way of keeping the coals in the depression. A knife, or in this case, a Kukri works very well. Once you get the inside of the depression burning, you will no longer need to add embers, it will keep burning down and out as you add oxygen.

You have to be mindful of the sides burning out to far when you get close to the edge. Some clay or mud works well to stop the sides from burning while letting the burn continue down.

Keep burning it down until you get a vessel deep enough for your needs. Unfortunately for us, the sides of the log we used turned out to be very punky. Before we started burning it was very hard and seemed like a good piece of wood. Once the heat got to the outer part of the log it turned soft. Oh well, we still learned from our mistake. It is soothing having something to occupy your mind around the fire on a cold January night.

Unfortunately, since the punky wood made the bowl not usable, I didn't get a picture the next morning. Sorry. I will do this again, and make sure I get a finished product picture. 

Building A Foot Bridge In The Wilderness.

Are you one of those lucky people who have a few acres of land with a small stream running through it? Well this post is for you! If not, join the crowd and read on anyway, maybe you will learn a new skill set. With the help of some friends, I will show you how to construct a foot bridge in the woods with mostly hand tools. Some of you may know that I have been a member of the Red River Gorge Trail Crew for going on a decade now. The RRGTC is a group of dedicated volunteers who meet once a month in the beautiful woods of east central Kentucky. The RRGTC helps keep the trails, bridges and back country of the Gorge safe and accessible for the general public to enjoy. 

Okay so first things first, you will need a large tree. What part of the country you are in will dictate the type of tree you will use. In the Gorge we use the eastern hemlock. The hemlock grows very straight and tall making it ideal for use as a bridge. Used properly the wood will last a long time in the elements. Once you have selected your live tree and felled it, with good sawyer techniques I hope, you need to strip the bark off. If you leave the bark on you will create an area for moisture to rot out your bridge.

Sad side note: The eastern hemlock is under attack in the US by the woolly adelgid. The woolly adelgid is a small insect that sucks the sap of the hemlock, desiccating the tree, causing the tree to lose needles and not produce new growth. After a hemlock is infested it typically takes 4-10 years for the tree to die. Even if it lives, it will be weakened and susceptible to disease. Unfortunately the woolly adelgid has made its way to the Gorge. Most of the Red River Gorge is going to have a completely different ecosystem in 20 years.

Okay after you have dried your eyes for the eastern hemlock you will need to find a lot of wedges. It helps to have friends with tools. You want to split the log so you have two equal and usable pieces. After you have figured out where you want to split the tree, mark it with a line of chalk or a string. Now start pounding the wedges in along the line.

This takes a while and it helps to have a lot of people around to switch off when you get tired, which you will. Even though hemlock is considered a "soft" wood, this stuff is pretty tough.

Once you get the metal wedges in a ways, you need to switch to wood wedges. Our sawyer cut up a bunch of them on the job site. As long as you keep applying pressure with the wedges you will eventually get the log to split.

The wooden wedges are just small diameter trees or limbs with an angle cut on one side. The bad thing about them is they break up pretty easily when beaten with a sledge hammer, the good thing about them is we could make as many as we needed.

Eventually you will win the battle if you keep at it. I have a lot of respect for the people who had to do this back in the day. We only split one log, with a lot of help and modern tools.

Ideally you want to get two usable sides out of each split log. This one split weird so we could only use one side for the foot bridge. I don't have a picture of it, but we used the other half to make a bench near the bridge.

Like I said you need to get all the bark off so the bridge doesn't rot. Having a bark spud is key to doing this fast. It is basically a chisel with the correct angle to peel the bark off in strips.

Okay so I said mostly hand tools. Our sawyer is cutting down into the log to specific points on both sides of the log. We measured the lowest points on the log and marked the sides. He then cut down to the marks with the chain saw.  Because he couldn't see the other side of the log, I sat across from him, and by using my hands, showed him how far away he was from the line. When my hands touched, he was at the line, and stopped cutting. It was raining off and on the whole day, so we did not bring out the crosscut saw. You could do this all by hand if you wanted to, and had the correct tools. 

The reason for notching the log with the chainsaw was so we could use this useful tool called an adze. This is an ancient style of tool dating back to the stone age. You can see this person using the proper technique of having one foot over the other and chopping towards them. This allows you to be pretty precise without worrying about adze-ing your shin. If you can't imagine the jokes around a tool called an adze, let me give you a few. "Get your hands of my adze" or "You sure know how to work an adze" or "Your mama's so fat her adze was made out of a manhole cover"... moving on.

You can see how smooth this log is getting. You don't want it completely smooth. You want to leave some grooves and imperfections for tread when it is wet. You can also knock the wood off with a pulaski, shown above.

Here is the other end. When you have a good adze in your hand, you can do amazing things...

We used these log movers to bring in the base of the bridge. Out in the wilderness, simple tools and manpower get most jobs done.

After the bases were striped of bark we used a brace to drill some pilot holes for re-bar "nails". You want to drill them at an angle so the base has less of a chance of moving in a large water event. Another hole was drilled on the opposite top side of the log with the same angle but going the other way. This pins the base into the ground with the re-bar going down like this ^ .

One of the best lubricants for pounding re-bar into wood is kerosene. We also use kerosene when we use the crosscut saws. It helps dissolve any saps in the wood and lubricates the blade.

Here we are setting the bridge in place. We then marked it so we could cut out divots on the bottom. This allows the bridge to sit snug on the base.

You would think that with how much wood you have to work with in the base you would notch it instead of the thinner bridge. If you were to do that, you would create a depression for water to collect where the bridge meets the base. This would slowly rot out the base and all your hard work would be for naught.

You can see how smooth you can make the wood with the proper tools. You might even say it is as smooth as a babies adze...

We repeated the brace and re-bar technique for the bridge. This thing is not going anywhere. The re-bar we used was about 4 foot long.

So here is the final product. An inviting foot bridge in the middle of the woods, crossing a small stream. If you are interested in seeing this for yourself, just hike the Whittelton branch trail east from the camp ground and you can't miss it.

Thanks to all the volunteers who come out month after month, year after year, in the rain, snow and cold. And a special thanks to our fearless leader Charlie, the forest service is lucky to have you and so are we. So I didn't have to fool around with getting everyone's permission, all photos are headless and taken by me.