Juan Montes

I've been using vodka.  I know a higher alcohol content solution is recommended, but this is readily available where I shop and I haven't run into any issues with preservation and mold. So far, so good.

Interested in seeing fire pits. I'm working on designing a solution to my issues, which is that I use fire, for making charcoal, I'm planning some metal casting, and outdoor cooking, fire hardening wood, etc, but I live in a place where wild fire is an issue.  It's important to me that I am able to safely and privately work with fire in the dry season, which means I want to take into account things like clearance to combustibles, screening, spark suppression and more.  I'm jealous of you all who can plop a ring of stones somewhere at anytime.

The homestead work this last week was progressing pretty slowly.  The big project that I need to push forward is automated irrigation. But the task is pretty epic. Right now we have a "secondary" water system piped from the creek, going through buried pvc, and several spigots available on the property.  The previous owner set this up, and originally had a pressurizing pump, pump water from the creek downstream and into the system.

I converted it so that water flows, starting upstream, into a 200 ga tank. Then feeds into a pressurizing pump and into the system.  The ultimate plan is to use a solar pump to pump it from the tank uphill to the top of our property to two 300 gallon tanks I have already set, and use gravity pressure.

I want to reduce daily labor and have automated irrigation.  But this must be powered. And I could pepper a bunch of 9v irrigation controllers into all of our growing areas, but I am not interested in maintaining batteries in the long run, and I want to group this problem with another problem I have, garden path lights and also power for other uses.  So I'm setting up a whole-property 48v system, to reduce voltage drop, and I'm going to drop it down to 12v anywhere I install a controller. I'll start out by powering the system with a transformer, but eventually will switch to solar.

Whew, anyway, here's a pretty picture of a thing I found while cleaning brush creekside. It's an antique fisherman's float, the second I've found so far. I suspect people on the property here were collecting them and hanging them from some structure that no longer exists, they fell to the ground, and were buried for me to find.

Riona Abhainn wrote:Juan, congrats on your foray into husbandry! you will be closer to your land, your goals and your growing now that you only have to do software work part time, I'm really happy for you!  And maybe if things at the homestead become lucrative then software can fully kick the bucket.

I like reading these blogs about what people are doing and growing and learning and feeling on their homesteads.  

We're not in a position to buy anything, much to my sadness, but our goal is to at least be able to rent something more condusive to our goals, our lease here in our apartment-with-a-patio ends in June and I'm working on finding us a place where we can have a yard and grow things, because my little pots are starting to not cut it anymore.

Thank you, that's exactly what I'm hoping for, transitioning to homesteading full time. But I need to spin up some production! I'm thinking about making some artisan crafts, I have some plans in the works.

I certainly hope you manage to find a bit of land for your household.  The PNW is definitely my favorite part of the country, and I might be stereotyping, I'm seeing Ren Faire and Oregon in your sig, Is there perhaps a maybe a hippie-ish collective in your future?

This my first week as a "husband". I was really intrigued when I learned the roots of that word. In old Germanic, the roots of English before French and Latin were introduced "husband" as a word is not specifically gendered and also it isn't directly about a relationship between two people.  It directly translates to house-bound, a person who is a steward of the household, which especially includes the land.

And that's what I've decided to be, first a hous-bond, then a part time software developer, just to keep some money flowing. I told my boss that I wanted to scale back, he's supportive and will try to find a place for me.  This is not totally unexpected, he's a good guy, but also he screwed me over recently, which is one of the reasons why I thought it was time for a change.  Anyway, right now I'm on a 4 day workweek, and we'll be talking about going to part time.

And my girlfriend is cautiously supportive. She loves gardening and doing permie stuff. Also it helps that I've been miserable with my work and with life, and have tried several different attempts at making it work, and she sees that.

The main goal in the near term is to reduce expenses. From a hands-on homestead point of view this means prioritizing homestead maintenance and instituting some new things to reduce cost.  The focus this week was taking on laundry.  I have some improvements in mind, moving to handkerchiefs and cloth napkins, and doing line-drying when the weather permits.  But in the past the girlfriend did the laundry and there's no way I'd be able to convince her to take it on, and I didn't feel like I had the time, myself.

But now, laundry is my priority.  I've been doing it all week in anticipation for the hankies.  And I have some laundry line hardware in the mail, but it'll take some effort to get that setup.  I need to sink a couple posts and get some of the tick population in control in the garden.  But it's all progressing.

I own a small mini excavator, a mini-mini. 3/4 of my property is steep south facing hill, the rest is a creek valley flat. I feel like I've got the hang of it and am ready to start making trails to plant some avocado trees where the sun shines.

I'm "Make Plan", my partner is "Make Plants".  I'd like to say we meet in the middle, but we really end up being "Make Plants".

I'm a techie.  In a way we all are, Permiculture is a type of tech, and obviously we're on a forum.  But I am a hard core computer techie. I've got a homestead server, I've got camera's setup to identify if deer got into the garden, I've got weather sensors setup everywhere and working on collecting and displaying data, automating irrigation for more traditional garden beds.

Growing and producing sustainably grounds me and is a very needed distraction from my techie brain, but it's just part of me.

There's probably a lot of reasons, many good ones being discussed here.  I'm not Black, but I am a PoC, and one that Paul touched on is that rural America is kind of scary to people with darker skin. The only way I can describe it is that, kind of like, if you're from middle America and go into Oakland unknowingly, it's unfamiliar and threatening feeling. And there are actually real dangers.  But once you know the area, you actually know what's sketchy and what's not. But it's a big barrier.

I spent a lot of my life in the rural Midwest, and I definitely met plenty of racism, good ol' boys. Some casual and harmless-kinda, some ignorant, some dangerous, some not. Also, lots of really nice people.  But if you don't understand what's going on out there for your own safety, you don't even see a rural kind of life being an option for you.

Still even, with my girlfriend when we hike. She just loves to trespass if she sees a neat tree or an intriguing landscape. I always put my foot down.  It's only recently that she finally realized, it's not that I'm a stickler for the rules, I just have a greater chance of getting shot poking around on other people's properties.

Yelling at them. We value our privacy and bought a 4 acre lot tucked waay back at the end of the street in "town", by town I mean a small village on the edge of a state park. What we didn't know is that there's been a concerted effort by the neighbors from a more cluttered part of the town to declare our private road and utility easement along our creek as public property, so a number of them started a campaign to use it as walking path.  Again, we're private people, and I also get up to weird and maybe not the most legal stuff, like making charcoal, and I don't want people wandering through our property.

I put up signs and turned away anybody who came on without business.  I mean anybody, old men and women, groups of middle aged ladies, local utility company people checking on things in their casual clothes with their personal vehicles.  One of the signs from previous owners that I left up says, "Beware of dog", we don't have a dog, I joke that I am the dog. After about 2 years, they finally gave up and stopped coming.  Now we're the crazy anti-social people at the end of the road who get up to who-knows-what. Technically, that's true. lol