Mulberries

There's an area in between the cabin, workshop, and rabbit barn that seems like a great place for a garden. Unfortunately, the soil isn't that good and there's a lot of shallow roots from the oak trees that shade it. So, we decided this would be the perfect spot to do a coppice garden.

Coppicing is when you can cut a tree or shrub way back and it will regrow, bushier than ever. The white mulberry tree is one that is excellent in this capacity and makes a great feed for our rabbits. We will also add rows of black locust trees at a later date.

We have planted 100 of the little trees, about two feet apart in rows that follow the contour. It's pretty hard to see them at the moment, as they are dormant (therefore have no leaves yet) and small, but they should become more visible in the Spring.

If they perform up to expectations, we should be able to coppice them every three months, and once they mature, each plant will produce about 5 lb of leaves per cutting. They are high protein, similar to the nutrient profile of alfalfa. This is a renewable and long-lived form of producing a high protein animal feed.

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Mulberries

Basketball

Although the boys had sports at their last school, they never got to compete. The schools in our rural area were so small that they only had one team each, which was usually selected out of the older grades.

Here, there are sports outside of school that you can sign your kids up for, and both Leo and Nick really wanted to do basketball. So, practices started a couple of weeks ago, and the first games were this Saturday.

They both had a blast. They lacked confidence at first, seeing as they had a lot less experience than the other kids, but they got into it and were doing really well by the end of it. The went on to spend the rest of the weekend practicing (we have two hoops set up in the workshop bay, one for each kid, at the height that they need). They are looking forward to practice tonight with the team and next Saturday's games!

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Basketball

Camry

We've been looking for a Toyota Camry for a while now, but they're pretty hard to find, mainly because the good ones get snapped up so fast! But this week, we found one we liked, and, miracle of miracles, it was still available.

It's a 2009, in good condition, and has relatively low miles. It drives great and is very comfortable, with a lot of space. We're all super happy with it.

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Camry

Water Tanks

At the moment, our house runs on well water. However, we plan to set up rain water catchment as soon as we can get around to it. We have a lot of catchment area, as we have the roofs of the house, shop, car ports and cabin. Plus it rains here throughout the year, so do not have to prepare for 9 months without rain. Those factors, coupled with the fact that the well water has a lot of rust in it and cannot be accessed in the event of a power outage, makes catchment a great option.

At our last place, we built cisterns. However, due to the amount of work we have to do, setting this place up, we decided to go with the quick and easy option - plastic tanks. We got a deal on three 5,000 gallon tanks, so we had them delivered. They looked pretty huge when they came on a trailer - 12 feet wide and 8 feet tall. At the moment, we have them on their sides, waiting to be set up. We'll put two on the catchment system, and one will go at the top of the property, to gravity feed the orchard.

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Water Tanks

John Muir

"How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!" - John Muir

Puppies

When we moved from Mexico, we had planned to take our dogs, Sam and Sophie, with us. We hadn't even considered leaving them behind, although we did have some misgivings about moving them. The most important issue was that they were both used to running. There was nothing around our old place, and they had gotten into the habit of taking off, sometimes for a couple of days at a time. We knew that this would be a problem where we were going, as there are more people (and roads) around, and we had figured we would have to build some kind of pen for them until we could fence the whole property.

So, when one of the guys that had worked with us on our place told us he really wanted them, it set us to thinking. He had known them both since puppies and loved them, and would definitely take care of them, but were we prepared to go without them? After a couple of weeks of going back and forth, we decided to leave them, which was extremely sad, but probably best for everyone. We're still in touch with our friend, and he says that both dogs and his little kids are all very happy together.

So, after we had settled into to the new place, one of the first things we did was get new puppies. Each kid got to pick out a pup, and they made excellent choices.

Leo chose Chip, a rat Terrior. He's a character and a half, thinks he's human, and spends half his time walking on two legs! Nick chose Candy, a Catahoula. She's beautiful, extremely smart, fast, and a little wild! Both of them are going to make great dogs, and the kids especially adore them.

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Puppies

Marcus Aurelius

"That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees." - Marcus Aurelius