Marissa Little

I had the chance to get out there too about 3 years ago. It was before I had a blog, so I never wrote about it!

While I wasn't disappointed in my visit like Jay was, I would certainly say it was different than what I had thought it was going to be. The rabbit-chicken house smelled so bad that my eyes were burning just looking in. On the other hand, his pastured laying hens looked great. It's all different systems, different tolerance levels, etc.

I found Joel himself to be very personable and he answers all of my questions kindly. I think he is genuine.

Search for "cactus fence" and you will see what we have around here.  I always thought that would be cool.

So I'm not a permie - I'm a "sustainable agriculture" person (sustanie?  ).  So I guess I don't have the desire for all-things-manual.  We have a tractor, a Troybilt horse tiller, a small chipper and a beast of a chipper (one of those pull behind your truck things).  I know a thing or two about using them and what I wish I could do with other equipment.  Honestly, hadn't considered a hammer mill before.  Good exercise for me to look into it!

I know I want to make animal feed, fuel pellet's, soil amendments, and animal bedding with it

Animal feed:  we currently get feed from a local mill.  Honestly, I wish it were whole feed.  I've been thinking about mixing our chicken feed just to get away from all the little tiny crumbles.  Our goats get whole (well, rolled) grains.  I guess I'm just not big on milling feed.  What benefits are you looking for here?

Fuel pellets: Super cool.  So you first use the hammer mill and then some sort of pelleting machine?  Do you have the raw materials to make this worthwhile?  If so, this sounds like an excellent reason for this equipment - if you use this type of heat often.  Here, I could hardly justify equipment to heat my house as it is likely to be 90 all winter.

Soil Amendments:  These are so expensive to purchase these days.  I recall buying a bag of dolomitic limestone for our acidic soil.  Stupid bag of dust cost way more than I wanted...plus the fact that Central Texas IS limestone.  If you could really crush bone, rock, etc into amendments with this thing, it would be very useful - again if you have the raw materials available.  I wish I could tell you if it really would work.

Animal bedding:  Not quite sure what you mean here.  We use straw/junky hay for the goats.  The big pieces means it doesn't get everywhere like pine shavings do.  We are trying a new thing for the chickens (read about it here!) and using wood mulch as the bedding.  We used to use hay for them as well.

It sounds like a fun piece of equipment.  I wish I had some experience to relay to you.  The only hammer mill I've used was an expensive coffee grinder!    Well, the big chipper is part hammer mill, but not what you are talking about (I don't think...)

General equipment buying suggestion:  Find a used one, well taken care of and talk extensively with the owner.  Most people in the farming world will be honest with you about its capabilities.  This lets you shop different types if there are more than one make available.  Also, buy non-chinese when possible for older stuff.  Newer stuff from China is not as bad but old stuff can really be the pits.

Crikey. 

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
In any case, I'm going to plan accordingly. 

Does this involve a suitcase and a plane ticket?

Why exactly am I planning my new vegetable garden?  Sigh.

Robert Ray wrote:
I guess I was making a disinction between food and cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and prescription drugs.

Illegal food in the US:

Raw Akee fruit
Magosteens (actually now they are legal but weren't until 2007)
Sassafras oil
Red Fish (outside of MS)
Wild Beluga Caviar
UK Haggis

And it's illegal to slaughter a horse.  But you can slaughter a cow.

So there is no grounds to stand on with the argument we can eat what we want or raise what we want to eat (i.e. horse).

But trust me.  The raw milk ban in most states has me upset.  It's just nothing new that what we eat/consume is being regulated.

By the way, I drink raw milk every day...I don't want that taken away from me!

Eh, I don't get it.  Why do people think we have a right to put what we want in our body?  Do I have a right to take cocaine?  No.  Do I have a right to drink alcohol under the age of 21?  No.  Do I even have the right to grow certain plants like marijuana?  Hell, I don't even have the right in Texas to grow about a dozen plants that aren't even used for drugs.  I could be ARRESTED for growing water lettuce and serve up to 6 months!

The guberment has already taken away my rights to consume what I choose.  Why is this so different?

Don't get me wrong.  I think all of it is crap (well, maybe not prohibiting hydrilla...that stuff is evil).  It's just that this ISN'T NEW.  We DON'T have the right to consume what we please.  The lawyers need to use a different argument here because the judge is right.

Isn't Paul always saying something along the lines of never say never?

Beet transplants are indeed a feasible way to grow this crop.  Just do a little google search.  You have to be careful, but I have a book that actually says they end up better off.  I tried it last year and saw no difference.  But that also means that my transplanted beets did just fine.

Ducks seem to me to be overly cautious about stuff.  Give it a few days.  They really love to muck up any water they can and I bet they will be back.  I bet it'll be 3 or 4 days sometimes when I never see a duck in the pond.  Then the next morning all 30 of them are packed in there like sardines.

Do make sure they can get in and out easily.  We've actually had ducks get waterlogged and start to sink when they haven't been able to get out of a pond.

Eh, I've kinda given up on adding any more images.  It's a pain to wiener them down to 50K and then they don't look all that great.  They will all need to be re-uploaded if that restriction is increased.  Any plans on that?

I like that book.  I actually haven't tried to make anything inspired by it, but it's fun to read.

We mostly brew just boring old beer.  I've tried watermelon wine but the rats got into it (chewed through the airlock!).  I've been doing beer on and off for I guess 10 years now (mostly off...).

I like to make a really hoppy IPA.  We have planted hops a couple of times but they are tricky here.  I'm thinking about growing a beer patch of barley.  It would certainly be fun to grow as much of it as possible!