But Will figured a way to make it less painful. In the past, we had six 50-foot hoses connected to our frost-free hydrant in the yard, running down to the horse pasture below where our new barn is. That meant six 50-foot hoses to drain every time we ran water to our stock tank — which is every other day; we can’t run a water heater in the tank because we’re off-grid. And, of course, sometimes (often!) one of them would freeze because it wasn’t drained. So we had to haul it to the house to thaw. It took all day to water! Chopping ice is bad enough, but dragging all those snowy hoses was a real pain. This year, we have a new frost-free hydrant in the new barn. But the water line was only run 100 feet toward the well before the dry sand started to cave in as the excavator dug the 8-foot deep trench.

So we stopped till spring. Will rigged up 200 feet of 1-inch black poly water line above ground and inserted round heat tape, meant to be used on roofs to prevent ice dams. (We did that with our house water line, running under the driveway. It froze every winter until the heat tape was inserted. Now it doesn’t!) Now to water the calves, pigs, and horses down below, we turn on the generator, plug in the heat tapes, and wait from ten minutes to half an hour, depending on how cold it is. Then I turn on the pump, go down and pull the handle up on the hydrant, and water! How easy! I do have to drain two hoses, but one is only 25 feet and the other is easy, compared to last year. I’m done watering in half an hour, including chopping ice. Will even figured out how to completely clean the calves’ bathtub water trough. When it gets ice-choked, we chop out what we can, then turn it over. He heats the bottom evenly with a weed-dragon type propane torch and the huge ice cube pops loose. A totally clean tank! How cool is that? He then shoves the ice cube out of the corral with the tractor or throws out the pieces if it breaks…which it often does.

It’s goat-breeding time, so we’ve separated the does and bucks. We have three different bucks this year, all young bucks from this spring: a Boer and two Nubians. So each buck has his own harem. I can’t wait to see the kids born next May. We’ll have quite a bunch by our first seminar. (By the way, there are still several spots available if you’d like to come.)

We work hard all day, but evenings are for relaxing. Check out this picture of Will, Spencer, and Mittens (the new kitten) relaxing by the fire. Notice Spencer’s collection of “babies.” Every time I go to the thrift store, I pick up a small stuffed animal for Spencer. He just LOVES them. He used to de-stuff them, but now he’s content to just play with them. He goes around and finds all his babies and makes a pile before he stretches out to relax after a long day of being a homestead dog. What a life! — Jackie

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No, it isn’t an iPod, home theater, or other electronic gadget. It’s a small kitten named Mittens. This fall, Will and I went to a neighbor’s yard sale and noticed a sign for two free kittens. The lady told us her husband told her she had to get rid of the kittens at the sale or he would shoot them. Will asked to see the male. Out came a tiny bit of a 6-week-old kitten and Will tucked him into his shirt. He’s been home now for a month and a half and is one of the family. Even our Lab, Spencer, loves Mittens and that big dog and tiny kitten romp and play like family. (Our animals are strange: dogs love cats, bulls love doeling goats, and goats sleep with chickens.)

We’re having a ball watching Spencer and Mittens play tag and “fight.” Spencer is so gentle with Mittens, it’s unbelievable. We won’t be bored this winter.

And we always find new projects. David picked up a load of new bricks when his church youth group cleaned out a storeroom at school. I didn’t know what I’d use them for…maybe a small entry area by our front gate? But so far, they’ve just been piled up, waiting. Will and I talked about putting them around the wood stove in the living room, for a heat sink, and last night, he started hauling wheelbarrow-loads of bricks into the house. We cleaned and stacked bricks until 10:30 last night and finally, this morning, it was finished. And not only will the bricks hold the stove’s heat a long time after it burns down, but we also think it looks nice.

Will’s planning on rocking up the walls behind and beside the wood stove, but until he gets working on that, our new stove surround will do famously. — Jackie

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Our new Hud-Son portable bandsaw mill (that we got this past spring) is a wonderful addition to our homestead. It’s already sawed tons of beams, floor joists, and dimension lumber quickly and easily. Plus all the slab wood that was left over has been cut up and is now inside, ready to provide nice, dry kindling and kitchen range fuel. BUT winter’s coming. We already have two inches of snow on the ground that will probably still be here, come spring. And our bandsaw mill sits on planks on the ground…soon to be buried in snow. So Will wanted to make a trailer to haul our sawmill around and keep it up off of the ground.

Sure, we could have bought a trailer package for our saw — for plenty of extra cash, which we didn’t have. But he wanted to build our own trailer — at a deep discount.

A neighbor, three miles away, had a ratted-out old mobile home in his yard and Will eyed it when we went by. He called him about the possibility of getting it (free of course, for the dismantling and hauling). The owner was more than happy to get rid of it. The aluminum siding had been stripped years ago and the roof had blown off. It was truly an ugly beast, sitting there.

Will hired a friend (we hope he’s still a friend!) and they went over with the tractor to empty out the trailer and pile the walls into a burning pile, which the neighbor had started years ago. Turned out that the trailer, which had no roof, had been filled several FEET deep with assorted junk. They worked hard for three days shoveling trash, along with dismantling the “palace.” David helped out the third day, then they tried to pull the empty mobile home frame out of the spot where it had been sitting for decades. David’s 3/4-ton Chevy with a Duramax diesel, our 3/4-ton Ford 4×4, and the tractor barely budged it! The tractor tire went flat and the afternoon was past. Will figured he’d have to bring our dozer over to pull it out.

The fourth day it was snowing and Will didn’t have the heart to ask our friend to help. He went over to put a repaired front tire on our tractor (nail from the junk). I stayed home to do some canning and laundry. Several hours later, I heard stomping on the front porch.

Will was home, AND he’d hauled the mobile home frame home — well nearly home — with the tractor! In fact, over at the neighbor’s, all alone, he hooked the tractor on to the frame and tried to pull it. Just for the heck of it. And it came away easily! So he just kept going. All the way home. Kind of. There’s this hill 1/4 mile away and he knew he’d never get up it without tire chains. So he parked it and just came home.

The next day, he took Old Yeller down there and hooked on. Without incident, it pulled home easily. Now it’s cut into thirds. The center third twisted and bent badly during the move and haul. But Will only needs the straight parts for the sawmill trailer. Junk to useful homestead equipment is such a good thing! I laugh and tell him we’re the ultimate recyclers!

We still have a few spots available at our May homesteading seminar, here on our homestead in Northern Minnesota.  If you’d like to have more information, check out the past blog and e-mail for a flyer.  We’d be so glad to meet you! — Jackie

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It always seems that this time of year, we have so many jobs we want to get done “before winter!” We keep hacking away at them, but it’s getting colder and colder every day. This last few days, we’ve been busy putting the garden to bed and hauling composted horse manure onto our back yard. I got the garden all cleared up, then plowed it to turn in the thick reed canary grass mulch I’d put on the tomato, bean, and potato rows. Our tiller wouldn’t handle that thick a mulch and we wanted to get it underground to rot over winter. So I plowed it, then ran our raggedy old disc over it for half an hour. I’ve still got some work to do on it, but it looks pretty good now.

Will’s been hauling black, composted horse manure — by the dump truck load — from the pasture onto our back yard. Previously, it was very rough, steep, and rocky. Full of wild raspberry bushes and weeds, it was not a thing of beauty! He spent an afternoon, grading the old yard with Old Yeller, our trusty bulldozer. Yesterday, he finished hauling the black dirt-compost and got it all smoothed out nicely.

Not only are the big rocks buried deep, but we also have MORE back yard and it’s much flatter. Eventually, we’ll put in a nice goldfish pond and flower beds. But next spring, we’ll just seed it with grass and wil be able to keep it mowed and under control. Gradually, we’ll put in a retaining wall for our someday walk-out basement and we’ll add flowers, shrubs, and herbs here and there. For now, we’re tickled pink with the huge improvement! — Jackie

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Winter’s quickly approaching! First we had a terrific freeze (down to 20 degrees) with a hard frost. The frost was pretty, as it made beautiful patterns on our truck and lawn. But right on its heels, was SNOW. I’m talking about an inch here, not a few flakes! Boy, does that shove us into “getting ready for winter” mode!

Yesterday, before the snow, I spent the day pulling tomato cages, piling spent vines, and stacking tomato stakes. I did three rows of 14 cages/stakes each. I still have another row and a half to go, but I’m getting there. I’m piling the plants to burn. Burning spent tomato vines helps reduce the possibility of blights or insects wintering over in the dead vines. And the resulting ash is good for our acidic soil.

Meanwhile, Will has been busily working on the barn and also picking up various “messes” around the yard. Some of these included some old lumber and logs, which we sawed up for firewood. I helped split them and we ran them into the house in the wheelbarrow just before rain came. Now our back porch is piled high with emergency wood and the woodshed is getting really, really full. What a great feeling. Especially when we woke up to that inch of snow this morning! — Jackie

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We are doing the normal getting ready for winter stuff; splitting firewood, canning, weatherizing the buildings and everything’s going nicely. Everything except for three half-bushels of peaches I bought “cheap” because the market owner said some were going bad. I found out the next day that one whole box and most of the other two had dry rot from being in cold storage too long. I was frustrated to only get 10 pints of peach preserves from a bushel and half of peaches. Here in northern Minnesota we can’t grow peaches and sometimes I really, really lust for peaches! Oh well, you win some and lose some; I lost this week.

In the high tech world, my satellite service (Hughes Net) has been disrupted and poor Lisa at the magazine has been spending lots of time on the phone trying to get things resolved. So far, I’ve had spotty service at best; I can only get online every four days or so! As soon as we have this resolved, I’ll be back blogging as normal, with photos. Until then, I’ll just keep on canning. — Jackie

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Yep, we had it — a killing frost. With night temps dipping into the twenties, the garden got fried. Tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, beans, and corn look so sad, all blackened and droopy. But, luckily, the fruits didn’t get damaged. We knew it was coming (although not how bad it actually got) and got up at 5:30 am to turn on all of our sprinklers in the garden to (hopefully) protect it from “possible” frost. Maybe that saved the fruit…maybe not. But at least we can harvest what’s left.

The peppers, in the hoop house, were another story. Outside the door, a volunteer tomato sustained light damage. Inside, the peppers look great — no damage at all. And the house wasn’t even closed up tight! What a difference that plastic makes! I’m still harvesting huge, thick peppers by the basket.

I’ve been canning heavy duty for a couple of weeks now, so we’re not in panic mode. But I’m still canning at least two products every day. Yesterday it was spaghetti sauce with mushrooms and mixed corn and tomatoes. Today it’s more plain corn and sweet relish. I try to mix up and do one water bath food and one pressure canned one so I can work them in together and only can one at a time while getting the other ready to go. That way I don’t mix up times or get too harried.

Yes, canning is work, but then you get to eat all that great food for months and years to come! It’s definitely worth it! I’ll stack our homegrown, organic, fresh-picked, home-canned foods against any gourmet foods at any supermarket! And no added chemicals. — Jackie

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After months of site prep work, moving tons of gravel to raise the barn site and level it off, Will is finally ready to begin building! He had sixteen holes, four feet deep, bored with the tractor auger, but he had to manually clean them out and enlarge them. What a job that was! We have rock, gravel, and clay. And more rock. He finally hired a new friend, Eric, to help with the heavy work so we could get the barn roughed in by winter. (We have two seasons in Minnesota: Winter and getting ready for winter!) With all of the festivities, including David’s graduation, open house, our wedding, then the MREA Fair, we both felt that we were losing ground this spring. I’m still planting garden!

Eric came yesterday and he and Will hauled 200 cedar fence posts home on the flatbed trailer, then began cleaning out holes. They finished today and began setting those huge used power poles in the holes. Today they got six of the biggest ones in the ground. Already it’s starting to look like something magnificent.

I’m madly trying to till and get more corn and squash planted and the weeds are laughing at me, I’ll swear. But when they get a little bigger, I’ll have the last laugh — I’ll eat them! They’re mostly pig weed and lamb’s quarter. They make tasty greens and can up nicely. — Jackie

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