Update and More Pics for YOU

5/1/08 - 5th Day - After Breakfast. It seems to have been spring here for some time, but as usual we continue to have wild swings in temperatures. After having 90's most of the week during Ranchfest, we woke up to 34 degrees and some frost the other morning. That is the second time in a fortnight that we have had mid-30's in the morning. Well, so some of my onions bolted and started putting up a flower stalk. Why? I asked, and looked it up on the internet. Well, it seems that onions don't like wild 50 degree swings in temps, and some of them probably thought summer was over and it was fall and time to put up a flower. Not much to do but pick those, even though the onion itself was still pretty small. I'll eat them anyway.

Today we are expecting "blowtorch". The blowtorch is when a dry-line goes through, and we get strong winds from the Southwest. Southwest of us is the deserts of Mexico. So when they are calling for 94 degrees and very high dry southwest winds, we can expect the blowtorch. It is usually about 5 degrees warmer here than they call for, so let's just say it will be pretty brutal today, and the wildfire warnings are out. How many weeks have you had when you get an almost freeze, and the flame-thrower in the same week?

The rest of the garden has faired pretty well, only some of my basil, my mustard greens, and even some of my lettuce has bolted already here in early spring. The grasshoppers have devastated my cabbage leaves. I bought some grasshopper semaspores from arbico-organics and that is supposed to eventually control our grasshopper population... that and the chickens. The semaspores are not supposed to affect the chickens or anything else but the grasshoppers. We are getting quite a few green tomatoes, and I even see some peas emerging.

Yesterday for supper we were planning on having a Quiche made out of stinging nettles (we call it "itch weed") and eggs. We learned in the Perennial Vegetables book that stinging nettles are actually a very good food, and they are very high in vitamins. If you cook them for over 1 minute, the irritating toxin disappears, and you are left with a very tasty perennial vegetable. We get quite a bit of itch weed in different places on the land, particularly down by the creek. Well, we found some itch weed yesterday, but it is still too small and there is not yet enough of it to make a whole meal, so we improvised and picked a bunch of spinach from the garden. We added the onions that I picked because they had bolted, and our first two red tomatoes of the year, and about 8 of our farm fresh eggs. It made a very nice Quiche with a side of garden salad. Now, I know that some of you older folk may have a very poor joke from a book in the 70's running through your mind... something like "real men don't eat Quiche". Well they do.

Ok, so I know how you so love pictures. Judy over at Tabletop Homestead posted a picture of her grandchildren hiding in an elderberry bush. Well, not to be outdone, here is a picture of our little Sarah Grace hiding in our new elderberry bush:


Speaking of Judy, she has a great post up this morning on Lard for Lighting. I just happened to be working on the same issue here yesterday, and I have been running several tests on lard lamps. Here is a successful lard lamp (candle):


That is pure lard from our own pigs, and it is burning via a wick made from the rope out of a cheap mop, which is suspended by a coil of wire. We added 3 drops of essential cinnamon oil, and you know... it smells just like a cinnamon candle. I burned these fat candles all night out on the porch (about 12 hours) and each used a little more than 1 tablespoon of lard. This, friends, is a very affordable and easy petroleum substitute. I also manufactured a very large wick lard candle, it was made out of 4 of these rope mop wicks all wrapped tight together. I made a larger wire coil to hold the wick, and it all worked fine - except that the coils weren't tight enough and the candle produced copious amounts of black smoke. However, the candle did work and produced a lot of light. We also could have easily cooked by it. So my testing will continue. I want to manufacture some good lard lamps that will produce a lot of light without too much smoke. I figured that about 5-7 of the lard candles (as pictured above) would be sufficient to light the inside of our small cabin (no serious reading though), and they would provide some heat too. So a quart of pure lard would likely last us from 7 to 10 days for lighting alone during the winter, which means that 28 quarts would get us through the winter for minimum lighting, which means the lard from 2 pretty good sized pigs. That wouldn't be a problem at all. I can see we will likely be butchering from 3-5 hogs a year, and as I said in the previous post, we will likely be letting them get much larger in order to get much more lard per hog. The Siffords came over and I showed them my lard candles and I told them how important I think it is going to be for us to get off petroleum products. I think this is certainly one of our answers... and, they smell like cinnamon! I will be talking more about lard lamps and lard lighting in the future.

Ok, here is one of our peach trees. We have about 5 peach trees, and 3 of them are really loaded with peaches this year.


One of Tracy's Californian rabbits had bunnies yesterday. She has a regular business going on rabbits now. A man is supposedly coming out this weekend to buy three of them, which just happens to be how many were born yesterday. I told her that the money has to go to feed and rabbit housing, and that she will not likely see a profit for a very long time. She understands. She is planning on selling rabbits at the Funtier Days celebration in Santa Anna later in the month. I believe Funtier Days is the third weekend in May, which would make it the 17th and 18th this year, in case any of you are planning to come down. It has become a great tradition for us, and we are really looking forward to it. Anyway, here is a picture of one of Tracy's rabbits:


Hey, I gotta run. Y'all be cool!

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Scattershooting in the end of April

4/29/08 - 3rd Day - Late Afternoon. This is the second post today, so make sure to read the other'n first. I hope you were able to watch the butchering slide show. If you watch it again, and you will click on the first picture, it will add a "commentary" with titles and descriptions of all the pictures.

The Revolution will NOT be Pasteurized... a must read article. For those in our group here, I really mean that it is a must read, as in... you must read it because I am assigning it. After reading it, check out another great article from the same writer: Swine of the Times.

"In short, we're facing a crunch in just about every natural resource you can name"...
Which is fine, so long as no one starts hoarding food.

Herrick Kimball is a Wheat Hoarder... and so am I.

From ShelfReliance.com:

Rotation Suggestions for Properly Packaged Dry-pack Foods

(when stored in a cool, dry place under ideal conditions)

Baking Soda 25+ years
Beans (dried) 6-8 years
Carrots (dried) 8-10 years
Cocoa up to 20 years
Cornmeal up to 5 years
Eggs (dried) 3-5 years
5 years
Freeze Dried Fruits and Vegetables up to 8 years
Fruit (dried) up to 5 years
Milk (nonfat dry) up to 20 years
Pasta (Spaghetti/ Macaroni) 6-8 years
Potatoes (instant) up to 30 years
Pudding 5 years
Rice up to 8 years
Rolled Oats up to 30 years
Salt 2indefinite (best within 5 years)
Soup Mix 4-5 years
Sugar indefinite (best within 2 years)
Sugar (powdered) indefinite (best with in 12-18 months)
Sugar (brown) indefinite (best with in 6 months)
TVP up to 10 years
Wheat up to 30 years

Rotation Suggestions for Wet-pack foods

(when stored in a cool, dry place under ideal conditions)

Canned Fruit/Vegetables 2-3 years
Canned Soups 2-3 years
Chili/ pork & beans 2-3 years
Honey 1-2 years
Jam/jelly/preserves 1-2 years
Syrup/molasses 12 months
Mayo 6-9 months
Peanut butter 6-9 months
Salad dressing 9-12 months
Vinegar 2-3 years
Ketchup 1-2 years
Canned Meat 1-2 years
Canned Fruit Juices 2-3 years
Tuna Fish 2-3 years
Shortening 3-4 years
Oil 1 year

Storage Suggestions

Store dry-pack items in a cool, dry location away from sunlight. Store them on shelves or on a raised platform rather than directly in contact with concrete floors or walls. Also, make sure to rotate water yearly.

Now, I am a food storage advocate and I have been for a very long time, but I must say that storing purchased food is not a permanent (or even a very good) answer to the fears and concerns Herrick mentions in his blog. The long term answer is for us to produce and store food that we have grown ourselves, or that we have purchased, bartered, or traded from a neighbor, or a fellow Christian brother. The permanent answer is to return to a lifestyle that does not require us to buy food from stores or industrial suppliers. For supper last night I had pork (from our pigs) and rice (from storage), but the rice could just as easily have been potatoes or sweet potatoes that we grow here. For breakfast I had goat sausage (we made) and Malt-o-Meal, but the Malt-o-Meal will one day be oats or wheat we grow here. For dinner (noon meal) today I had a great salad from our garden. For supper we will be having cooked greens with pork. Once we are able to butcher a few beeves, we will be able to mix up our meat offerings a bit. If the Lord wills, we will be butchering a steer this fall. Anyway, the point is that God intended us to be producers and not consumers. This manipulative vulnerability to swings in the availability and prices of food "commodities" ought not affect us.

What is Time to a Pig?

Tempus porco nihil est.” -— Time to a pig means zilch. (Boynton 5)

We think of time as a concern to people, rather than farm animals. But “while pigs are not people, they are part of history, and indeed may be occupying it far more fruitfully” (Burstein 121–122) than a certain similar tasting mammal.

Pigs, in fact, do think of time, but metaphysically, and in so doing they doubt that it properly exists. They only know the present is as indefinite as what's for dinner, the future has no reality other than as a present hope of the next pleasurable indulgence, and the past has no reality other than as a present memory of the last succulent scent or morsel.

So for now, those time framers who ask such questions can watch ontology beating up on epistemology, as their considerations about time are mocked by time meaning nothing. But for the rest of us who appreciate the time difference, the fact that “to a pig time means nothing is… a position to be envied” (Burstein 122).

This all comes from a pretty nice website devoted to Pigs: Welcome to Porkopolis, and the Pig Timeline

It is interesting that hogs were once raised primarily for lard - for lighting, cooking, food storage, etc., and tasty meat was really just an added bonus. People wanted really fat and happy pigs. But after 1859 when Edwin Drake struck oil in Pennsylvania, demand for hog lard, and thus for pigs, declined. Now, people raise pigs for meat, and they really don't want or need the lard. This is why so-called pig "experts" will tell you to butcher a hog at 200-250 pounds. They will say, "after 250 lbs., the pig puts on more fat per pound of feed, and thus is less efficient. Well, first of all we ought to be feeding our pigs what they naturally eat (free range and slops) and not grain by the pound. Second, if we will wean ourselves from petroleum products and grid electricity, we will find that the pigs we raise provide plenty of oil for lighting and other needs.

A necessary lecture on free market economics (as it relates to food shortages) from The Moscow Times of all places.

All of this is making me hungry, and all I had was a salad for dinner.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Butchering Pics and Our New Holstein

4/29/08 - 3rd Day - Midday. Ok friends, here are some pics and a slide show for ya. The first is a slide show I made out of our pictures from processing the goats into sausage. The pictures are from two different days, but basically they will walk you through most of the process, from killing the goat to processing the meat to stuffing the sausage. I just thought it would take forever to put all the pics up on here. For those of you who have not followed the story, Brother Chris Woods volunteered two of his goats for Ranchfest, so we decided to use them to butcher the goats and process the meat into sausage. We had a couple of really cold mornings out of the blue, so I took the opportunity to give a butchering class. We butchered a goat each morning and then, when several of the Ranchfest guests were here, we made sausage. To go straight to the slide show, CLICK HERE. Come back here when you are done.

Ok, to the left here is what the sausage looked like right before we ate it. It was delicious.

I don't currently have many pictures from Ranchfest, though I know a lot were taken. I think some people said they would email me the pics, and if I get them I will post them, but also look for Ranchfest photos on the blogs from others in the community - which can be found on the right hand side of my blog in the blog roll. For some great Ranchfest pics, check out the Irby's blog: Click Here

Hey, we finally received our Holstein heifer. We bought her for a milk cow, so now we just have to get her pregnant and wait 9 months to start milking her. Actually, I bought her as an investment, since I don't plan on keeping her (unless the Lord wills, of course). I would prefer to invest in a miniature Jersey or two, but I got the Holstein at such a bargain price, I figured it would be worth it to get her and keep her until she is fresh and milking, then we might sell her - since fresh milk cows really go for a premium around here. Of course if no one buys her, we would be glad to keep her and milk her, since we will need the milk anyway. So here is a picture of Beulah. You should be able to click on the pic to get a closer look:


I plan on doing a little scattershooting blog post later today, but I wanted to get these pictures to you this morning, so I hope you enjoyed them.

Michael

Post Ranchfest Rain!

4/27/08 - The Lord's Day - After Dinner. Well, we finally got some decent rain. It has been relatively cool for April and we received enough rain to really help out with the gardens and crops. Most of Ranchfest folks are leaving today, though some have already left. We had a great week, and we got a lot of fencing done.

The critical wood for the rafters and the floor joists in the office never arrived, so we did very little work on the office. We are not worried though, since we will be able to get those projects moving as soon as the wood gets here. We completed two fence lines and we partially completed a few others. I am very grateful for the work we did get finished. Fairly soon I will be able to easily free-range the pigs, and the goat(s) will have a fenced area as well.

I have a bunch of pictures to post next week, so check in early and often. I'm sorry I have been absent most of the week, but we had a very busy Ranchfest, leading up to about 32 people being here for Q&A last night at the Siffords.

Speaking of the Siffords. David and Susan have started a blog, and I have to tell you it is one of the best (and best written) Agrarian blogs I have read. You have to go back to the first blog and read them all as they go forward, because the whole thing is a biography or story of their process in coming out of the world system and separating to a true Christian Agrarian life. Make sure you read all of them, it is an awesome and inspiring story. After you have read them, make sure you bookmark the SiffordSojournal in your blog-roll or visit it daily from my blogroll on the right hand side of the page.

I want to thank everyone who came out for Ranchfest, and all of the men and women here too - for all their help and their gracious volunteering during the week. We praise God for the love and care shown to us and to our needs here on the farm. Thank you to all of you out there who donated for Ranchfest as well. We all had a wonderful time, and it was a great time of learning and fellowship. We plan on having a "Super"-Ranchfest this coming fall, with every intention of making it the biggest Ranchfest ever. We are right now encouraging everyone to consider coming out to Ranchfest this coming October. I will be posting Fall (Super)Ranchfest 2008 dates in the next week.

So stay tuned for many pictures - If the Lord wills I will start posting them tomorrow. Also, be checking out the other blogs from folks in our community (on our blogroll), because many of them will be posting pictures as well.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael

Ranchfest Update

4/20/08 - The Lord's Day - After Breakfast. Greetings y'all. Well, Ranchfest is up and running. Some of the folks started arriving on Thursday - in fact most of them did - which makes this the earliest starting Ranchfest ever. So we have been busy the last several days doing tours and showing people around the land and the farms. We had a very relaxing Sabbath yesterday, and we had a fun Q&A session last night, followed by a campfire down in the camping area.

On Thursday night and Friday we made goat sausage. I'll have some pictures to post later on, but basically we got together and made sausage out of the two goats we butchered last week. We did about 8 lbs. on Thursday night as a test, then we immediately smoked them and cooked them up to test the recipe. They were very nice and had a great flavor and we all enjoyed them. I think it was interesting for our guests to get to try homegrown and homemade sausage on their first night here. Then on Friday we made sausage out of the rest of the meat, which we will be eating (Lord Willing) on this next Thursday night.

Today we will be having a Passover Seder sometime in the afternoon, which will be fun and I am looking forward to that. Our work here for Ranchfest will officially start tomorrow. The wood for the project has not arrived, so we will be starting off tomorrow morning by working on some new fences. Hopefully the wood will arrive soon and we can get to work on the office project.

Well, we hope you all are praying for us.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Pre-Ranchfest Rush

4/17/08 - 5th Day - Midday. I can't believe Ranchfest is here already. It all kicks off tomorrow, and kind of semi-officially sometime Saturday. We are trying to get everything prepared, etc., and suddenly we get a call from the butcher last night... the pigs we sent in are ready to be picked up. I half expected and hoped for it this early, but suddenly I am wide-eyed at the concept of processing 240 lbs. of meat (plus 60-80 lbs. of goat meat) in the next week. So this morning I went and picked up the meat, and we are hurriedly cutting up goat for making sausage today and tomorrow. I also need to begin the curing on the hams and bacon. Then, during Ranchfest, Danielle and the ladies will likely be canning pork almost every day. We have to constantly remind ourselves that the freezers are not a long-term storage solution. Virtually everything will have to be processed quickly and put into the root cellar, or will have to be cured and prepared for cold smoking. I just ordered another book to study; it is called:

"Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques
Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage,
and Lactic Fermentation"

Long name, I know. I'm looking forward to getting into it.

I suppose if the wood we ordered for the Ranchfest project doesn't get in pretty soon, we will be doing fencing and pork canning for the first half of the week.

The gardens are doing well, I got my grape vines planted, and we picked our first tomato (it was a bit green, but I wanted the plant to get on with making more tomatoes).

The Prognosticators are calling for maybe some rain tonight. We pray and hope for it.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Perennial Vegetables

4/16/08 - 4th Day - After Breakfast. I would like to recommend to you an absolutely necessary book - mandatory reading I would say - that I received in the mail this past week. The book is entitled PERENNIAL VEGETABLES and it was written by Eric Toensmeier.

If you are homesteading, are planning to homestead, or have any intention of every homesteading, then you need this book. If you are even an urban or suburban resident, and you have the slightest interest in gardening, you need this book. If you have no interest in gardening, but you plan on eating in the future, you really ought to get this book. Toensmeier has done a great service to the right-thinking homesteader by putting together this volume, and I would guess that this is the first book of its kind - covering this topic - ever produced. I know of books on edible plants, books on permaculture, books on perennial fruits and trees and herbs, etc., but I know of no other book that has all the information you could want on over 100 perennial vegetables - many of which can be grown by you wherever you live.

Now, I have written about this at some length, and many of you know of my philosophy on the topic. In a recent article that I wrote before I even knew that Toensmeier's book existed - part 11 of the Off-Grid Living for Agrarians series - I discussed permaculture and the necessity of seeking out and utilizing perennial crops as opposed to putting all our eggs in the basket of the annual garden and annual seed crops. I mentioned how I believed the most primitive societies (including Biblical Israel) focused on perennial crops and only augmented their perennial food supply with some annual seed crops. I talked about how I believe that a successful off-grid homestead ought to return to the idea and philosophy of perennially growing food supplies. Well, lo and behold the book to help us get to where we need to be on this topic is now available (published just this last year).

I will be discussing this topic more in a future part of the Off-Grid Living series, but I wanted to give you all the opportunity to purchase this book and read through it as soon as possible here during the planting season. I know the book is not cheap ($35 in most places, but about $23 on Amazon), but I believe it is a worthwhile addition to your library, and will rank up there with Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living as one of the most used and worn out books you own.

I also want to encourage those of you who read this blog and my other Agrarian sites who have a product or some literature like this that you think will be helpful to our audience. I do not now accept any advertising or do any paid product endorsements. However, I do always hype what I think works and is useful to my readers. In the past I have had merchants, suppliers, inventors, etc. send me free samples of their wares. If I think they are useful or helpful or that people ought to consider buying or owning them, I am more than willing to give my opinion on the product here and on my other sites. So feel free to send me free stuff! Back in '99 one of the guys from the Global Sun Oven company gave me a sun oven with no strings attached, except that if I used it and liked it, I would tell other people about it. Well, I would conservatively estimate that in the last 9 years I have personally been responsible for the sale of more than 100 sun ovens. Likewise, If my readers have an ounce of sense, a desire to succeed at homesteading, and $23... I would bet that most of them will be purchasing Eric Toensmeier's fine book. I do not know Eric and was not paid a cent to give my endorsement to the book.

Here is the publishers blurb on Perennial Vegetables:

The garden that never stops giving.

There is a fantastic array of vegetables you can grow in your garden, and not all of them are annuals. In Perennial Vegetables the adventurous gardener will find information, tips, and sound advice on less common edibles that will make any garden a perpetual, lowmaintenance source of food.

Imagine growing vegetables that require just about the same amount of care as the flowers in your perennial beds and borders—no annual tilling and planting. They thrive and produce abundant and nutritious crops throughout the season. It sounds too good to be true, but in Perennial Vegetables author and plant specialist Eric Toensmeier (Edible Forest Gardens) introduces gardeners to a world of little-known and wholly underappreciated plants. Ranging beyond the usual suspects (asparagus, rhubarb, and artichoke) to include such “minor” crops as ground cherry and ramps (both have found their way onto exclusive restaurant menus) and the much sought-after, antioxidant-rich wolfberry (also known as goji berries), Toensmeier explains how to raise, tend, harvest, and cook with plants that yield great crops and satisfaction.

Perennial vegetables are perfect as part of an edible landscape plan or permaculture garden. Profiling more than a hundred species, with dozens of color photographs and illustrations, and filled with valuable growing tips, recipes, and resources, Perennial Vegetables is a groundbreaking and ground-healing book that will open the eyes of gardeners everywhere to the exciting world of edible perennials.

This morning Perennial Vegetables was ranked 21,923 in books on Amazon (a very, very good rating). I will check back today and tomorrow to see if we pushed it up any.

Michael Bunker

Butchering a Goat, and the Pope's President

4/14/08 - 2nd Day - Midday. Hey y'all. Well, we had a great weekend. The Sabbath was nice and peaceful, then we had a busy, but fruitful Lord's Day. We had read that we were going to be getting a few cold mornings and a possible frost on the first and second day mornings, so we planned on doing some more butchering. Chris Woods had raised two wethers (a 'wether' is a castrated male goat) for us and we decided to butcher them for a Ranchfest meal. Well, we had 44 glorious degrees yesterday morning, so most of us on the land gathered round at 7 a.m. and I had an impromptu goat butchering class. We had the goat butchered up and in the freezer in about an hour and a half, so we were still on time for fellowship singing at 9 a.m. After fellowship, the field planting team got together again and we planted the rest of my pasture - this time in buckwheat. Then we had to get the gardens covered up for a possible frost since we were expecting colder weathers overnight. We got everything covered up with plastic and buckets, and just hoped the temps wouldn't dip below freezing.

We woke up this morning to 34 chilly degrees (in mid-April! in Texas!) and we butchered the second goat under clear blue skies. This second one took us about an hour and fifteen minutes. Both butcherings went very well and we now have probably close to 80 lbs. of goat meat in the freezer. Our intention is to get together later this week if my pigs come back from the butcher and make goat sausage out of the two butchered goats.

The last several work days Robert and I have been working on the floor of the office, putting up the floor joists. The wood we ordered for Ranchfest should be delivered sometime this week, so we are hoping to have the entire floor finished before everyone gets here this weekend. Ranchfest is coming up on Friday, so we are trying to get everything squared away and ready for guests (though we have guests all the time, all year round!).

Ok, so many of you may not remember me back when I was a traveling preacher many years ago. Back 5 or 6 years ago I did a video entitled "The Papal Presidency" about Bush's ties to the Romish Church. Here is a description of that video I found online:

The Papal Presidency - Videotaped live in Portland, Oregon, this video is an expose of the Bush ties to the Pope and the Vatican. It details how the Bush clan intend to control all future elections, handing all temporal control and authority back over to the Papacy.

That was not my description, and I don't know who wrote that, and it is probably a very light description of what is on the video. The actual tape was three hours done mostly from memory - a history lesson on the Bush family and their connection to the Papist created and led intelligence community in the US and around the world. Anyway, a friend sent me this today:

Subject: as if you didn't know
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:04:45 -0500

I think you have been way out in front of this story but it is interesting to see it get this much attention:

A Catholic Wind in the White House

I guess you are just ahead of the times.

Here was my response:

Yeah, I was laughing reading this to Danielle just now. We said, "we ought to get out my 'Papal Presidency' video and watch it'". I guess there's only so many "i told you so's" that people will put up with though.

Thanks for remembering though.

Michael

Anyway, if anyone is just interested or fascinated with what I said about this a long time ago, we might be able to get someone to get a copy of the original tape and transcribe it, then we could post the whole thing (it would be very, very, long) online. If you are interested in doing the transcribing and can do it pretty quickly, contact Elder David Sifford (he will probably hate me for doing this) at david (at) biblicalagrarianism.com and see if he can come up with a DVD or something of that talk. Who knows, I didn't talk to him about this first, I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here... kind of like I did during that talk.

It does make me think though (by way of saying "I told you so" over and over again for so many years) that you people pushing Ron Paul (a Pope praiser if ever there was one) down our throats ought to heed some advice from someone who knows. Ron Paul is NOT the answer, unless the question is "What new antichrist is the 'freedom movement' pushing today?".

Gotta get back to work, all this is really old news to me.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Bluest Skies in Texas

4/11/08 - 6th Day - Mid-Afternoon. Preparation of the Sabbath. Robert and I have been working on the office, preparing for Ranchfest which starts officially in 1 week. I have been working on the floor and trying to get it pretty well finished before Ranchfest starts, so when I have the help I need, I'll be working on the parts of the project that require help. For now, Robert is doing very well as my helper... plus he has a bicycle, so he is good at riding back to the cabin to get things I need.

Today has been gorgeous. Breathtakingly gorgeous. 72 degrees, and the bluest skies in Texas. It is so peaceful back there by the creek where we are building the office. A hammock and I can guarantee you no work would have been done. Maybe that is why I don't have a hammock.

Today is preparation of the Sabbath, so we are doing or best around here to get ready for the Sabbath tomorrow. I just went down and checked the pigs to make sure they will have food and water enough to make it until the Lord's Day. It is funny seeing only 3 pigs down there. The three at the butcher are likely dead by now. So I found out we are supposed to have a cold spell tomorrow night, so it is likely that Chris Woods and I will be butchering a goat or two on Sunday morning before fellowship. If that project is successful, we will have a goat bar-b-q during Ranchfest.

Anyway, everything is good here... what about where you are?

Michael

Off-Grid EBS and Update

4/10/08 - 4th Day - After Breakfast. Hey, this is my 300th post in this iteration of my blog. MichaelBunker.com has been around a whole lot longer than that, but there have been 300 posts since we went to this blog - so if you haven't read them all, then you best get started.

Off-Grid Emergency Broadcast System

Well, we had a pretty good storm blow through last night. Not much rain, but we are glad to get what we did receive. About 1 a.m. we had to activate our "emergency" tornado warning system here in the community, and it worked nicely. For those of you who are new to this blog, we live in a completely off-grid community here in Central Texas. There are seven households here on the land, and we have another brother who lives nearby in Coleman, Texas. So some time ago we developed an emergency response system for storm season, and it has developed over time. During our first few years, when there were only about 10-15 of us on the land, our emergency system was pretty rudimentary. In our first storm season we didn't have a root cellar, so we toughed it out the best we could. It could be quite frightening at times. Before the second storm season I completed my root cellar, so when very severe weather would threaten, we would all call each other on cell phones, and everyone would come over to my cabin. If things got pretty bad, we would all go down to the root cellar. Last year, I think we ended up in the root cellar about 3 times. This got pretty "friendly" when there were 17 or more of us down there. Well, this year David finished his root cellar, so we now are divided into two groups. We implemented a radio alert system whereby everyone has a small hand-held radio that is tuned to a specific channel during severe weather. If we know we are going to have some weather coming, we will call everyone and get them to make sure their radios are on. If it happens suddenly in the night, everyone is instructed to turn their radios on as soon as they detect any rain or high wind. Most of us have NOAA weather radios too, that come on automatically if there is an alert, watch, or warning in the area. So, then we have an alert system. We have an Orange alert, which means that it is very likely that we will soon be calling everyone to report to the storm cellars, so everyone should get ready; and we have a Red alert, which means that everyone should move immediately towards the storm cellars. Half of the people go to David's cellar, and half go to my cellar. Then David and I keep in touch with one another and everyone who is to report to our cellar via radio, and we let one another know when everyone has arrived. Last night, when the tornado warning went off and it was imminent that we were going to have some very severe weather, we activated our alert system - including calling our brother who lives in Coleman. We were able to get everyone up and in the cellars in just a few minutes, and we waited out the storm in safety. I am thankful to God for the safety of everyone here, and that we didn't receive any serious damage. I read on the weather page that some folks lost their roofs in Coleman and there was some serious damage in some other nearby towns.

Anyway, living off-grid does not mean that we do not act prudently to insure the safety of our families and those who are in our care. We make use of alternative power to charge radios, etc., and to power laptops and the wireless internet so we can watch the Doppler radar. David and I stay up on these nights to watch and alert the rest of the group to danger. The whole system worked very well.

Pigs to Butcher

Yesterday we successfully delivered the 3 pigs to the butcher. So we are looking forward to receiving the meat and to processing it. I have been studying processing the bacons and the hams, so I had the bacon and ham left "fresh" or uncured, which will save me quite a bit in the processing fee.

Yesterday I also planted a small patch of corn. I don't know if it will work, or if we will get any corn, but we did stick it in the ground and we hope to get a crop. The rain last night should really help our pasture we planted on Sunday, so we are hopeful to see that crop shoot up very soon.

I have to run, more later.

Michael Bunker

Pigs and Pics

4/09/08 - 4th Day - Time Traveling. Actually I'm writing this on the evening of the 8th, because tomorrow should be a busy day, and we are expecting (and hoping and praying for) some rain. Well, today (or yesterday since you are reading this tomorrow... or today) we successfully got two of our three male pigs into the cattle trailer, then got them into the front part of the trailer as well. My thanks to Danielle, Jennifer, and Tracy for their help in the pig capture. It really went quite well. Then we drove the trailer up to the Sifford's land and backed it up to David's pig pen to hopefully capture his HUGE mammoth hogzilla hog. Getting his pig in the trailer went shockingly well too, so within a relatively short time, we had about 700-800 lbs. of pig in the trailer. I drove the trailer up to the front of the property under a cool and shady tree to wait to for us to haul the pigs to the butcher's tomorrow. My two pigs are two of the 7 that were born here on the land on September 9th of last year. One died real young, and we butchered one a couple of weeks ago. David and I swapped a pig each since he had no females, so I received a male from him. With these two males gone and with the male we received from the Siffords, I have two gilts (two young females who have not had a litter) and the one male - so three left total. I expect (if the Lord wills) for the two females to have litters sometime in August. We'll see.

Ok, so here are some pictures... my thanks to Joseph for taking the pictures. This first one is of me picking a salad out of the garden on the Lord's Day:


This next one is of my raised double-dug #1 which is mostly onions and garlic, but which also has some broccoli and cauliflower too. The onions are already way bigger than in this picture, which was just 4 days ago:


Here is me picking some succulent greens for my salad. I was thinking of how good it was going to taste and totally forgot that Joseph was taking pictures:


Delicious salad. The big bowl is for me, and the small bowl is for the rest of the family:


Ok, after the meal we are gathering together to hang out and talk. Some of the fellas are planning to help me put in a crop with this borrowed seed drill. I think you know which one I am... Elder David Sifford is on the far left with his brown shirt on. Kelly Sustaire is in the background and behind the grain drill. Larry Plumley is in the foreground with his white hat, and Joseph Honaker is in the bright flowery shirt. Chris Woods is behind Joseph with a feather in his hat that, apparently, he has called macaroni:


Ok, in the next picture we are off and running. Robert is in the back of the truck relaying messages from the seed riders to me (the driver). Robert threw down his bike in the last picture which explains his helmet in the next one. Chris, Larry, Kelly, and Tracy are riding on the grain drill to make sure the seed is falling properly and that the bins stay pretty even:



The next three are more of the same, but you get the picture:


The seeding team here asks you to pray for us to have a bountiful harvest. We need some rain. A good soaking couple of inches over several days would be great. Your prayers are needed. After the work, we all got together and prayed over the field, that God in His sovereignty would bless our crop and bring it to fruition. Here we are posing for a picture. Tracy took the picture, but she was part of the team too:



Well, maybe more later. Got to get some sleep. Y'all be cool and have a great day tomorrow (or today).

Michael Bunker

Preparing to Meat some Hogs

4/08/08 - 3rd Day - After Breakfast. Today is a big preparation day. We are preparing to take some hogs to the butcher tomorrow, and we are still preparing gardens, trees, etc. Here this afternoon I will go pick up Elder David's trailer and I will try to load up my two hogs. Then when they are loaded I will take them up to David's and he will load up his hog. They will sit, then, until morning when we take them to the butcher. That means that we are also preparing to process meat. I am estimating my biggest male to be about 250 lbs or so, and the smallest one to be in the 200 lb. range. Which means we should get an absolute minimum of 250 lbs. of meat, but probably more than that. Oh, and I bought a sausage stuffer, and today I will be picking up a hand meat grinder, so we are also preparing to make sausage for the first time. On this order, I will not be paying the exorbitant butcher prices for ham and sausage. I will be having the butcher make the bacon this time, but it will probably be the last time. I will make my own hams (at least 2 of them) and my own sausage. I am also hoping this is the last time we go to the professional butcher for anything except a cow. So in the next few weeks we should be processing and canning pork, making sausage, and curing a few more hams. This is a perfect time, since we will not be doing any major canning of garden produce for at least several more weeks, and probably at least a month.

Our garden is doing well and so are our trees. We are praying for rain for our crop that we planted on the Lord's Day, and now the prognosticators are calling for rain maybe tonight but probably tomorrow and tomorrow night. I have prayed for 1 to 1 1/2 inches because that would give us a great start and would tide us through Ranchfest if it didn't rain again.

I received a booklet in the mail on growing Paulownias (fast growing trees) so I wanted to say THANKS to whoever ordered it sent to me. It is very interesting. I am looking forward to getting more into Paulownia growing.

Ok boys and girls, I must be getting to work.

Peace,

Michael

Busy Bees

4/07/08 - 2nd Day - Late Evening. I haven't posted in a few days. We had a great weekend. The sabbath was pretty peaceful. We had a visitor who drove in from east Texas to visit, and we showed him around and gave him a tour. On the Lord's Day we had our fellowship, then we had a grand time as several of the men came over and we planted a pasture of mine. I spent a few days last week talking to the seed houses and finally decided to plant a couple of acres in Sorghum/Sudan. We borrowed a grain drill from a friend of Chris Woods and we pulled it behind my pickup truck. It was fun. We had four people riding on the drill making sure the seed was falling and planting properly. The rest of us rode in the truck and we had a good time. We planted about 4 acres total and it didn't take long at all. Next week or so we will try to plant the rest of the pasture in buckwheat or corn or something, but we'll have to see how that works out.

So now I need everyone reading this to take a break and pray that we will get good rain this week to help us make a crop. Stop now and pray and then we'll proceed....

Thank you.

Today, Danielle and I spent all day in Bangs and Brownwood picking up some needed things for the gardens, some perennial herbs and other plants, etc. Then we came home and the whole family worked in the garden, watering, planting, etc. It was a great day. We are putting in the order for supplies for Ranchfest tomorrow, and we are still short of everything we will need to get what we need to get done during Ranchfest. Prayerfully more will come in between now and then. We are looking forward to getting to work on the project though.

Anyway, things have been very busy here with planting and gardening season in full swing, but we are having fun. I know I haven't posted much, and it has been awhile between sermons, but that is the way things are this time of year.

Y'all understand.

Michael Bunker

Pondering Cattle

4/03/08 - 5th Day - After Breakfast. Well, we really need rain, but you gotta be a bit nervous in Texas when the prognosticators are calling for "damaging wind and hail". Hopefully we'll have none of that. We could use the moisture though.

Yesterday was our monthly First Wednesday community work day. Elder David and Logan Ante built a goat shed over at David's land, and the rest of us (Chris, Joseph, Kelly, and I) were over at Kelly's land putting up a fence for a goat pen. The ladies worked over on another section of land getting it cleaned up. We were working in the large pasture which encompasses most of the Ante's and the Sustaire's land, which is the pasture our Longhorn cattle are in right now. It was an inspiring thing to see our herd, which has grown so much, leisurely grazing in the pasture. I remember when we had our first 2 cows, and being giddy when we doubled our herd the first year. Here is my current stock:

Maria (1/2 Watusi Cow - Pregnant) - We will be getting rid of Maria this year. She will calf sometime this summer, but we hope to sell her before then. If she calves here and she does not sell, then she will go to the butcher in early fall.

Pita (1/4 Watusi Heifer - Pregnant) - Pita is being trained to pull and to ride. She was our first calf born here, and she will be 19 months old towards the end of this month. Her calf will eventually be sold, or will go to market, or will be raised just for meat.

Mariana (1/4 Watusi Heifer) - Mariana is about 9 months old, and she will eventually be sold, taken to market, or butchered.

Pedro (Pure Longhorn Steer) - Pedro was born quite prematurely, and we had to start him on a bottle. He is now close to 18 months old and he is still pretty small. He will eventually go to the butcher, but it will depend on if Maria sells or if she is the one that goes to the butcher this fall.

Chico (Pure Longhorn Bull) - Chico will most likely be traded with another rancher so that we will have a pure Longhorn bull that is not related genetically to our herd. Chico is a good looking bull who is currently about 9 months old. He is almost as big as Pedro already. Hopefully Chico will be traded for an older bull, one that is already a year or so old, and who will be ready to do his duty in late summer or early fall this coming year.

Lucia (Pure Longhorn Cow - Pregnant) - Lucia is a very productive young cow. Her first and second calves (Bonita and Cholula) are with us, and she is currently pregnant with her third. She is probably getting close to four years old. Hopefully she will keep up the pattern of having heifers, and we will have a third calf from her this summer.

Bonita (Pure Longhorn Heifer - Pregnant) - Bonita is a beautiful 1 1/2 year old red heifer who should drop her first calf this summer.

Cholula (Pure Longhorn Heifer) - Cholula is another reddish brown heifer who came out of Lucia. She is currently about 8 months old.

So out of my 8 cattle right now, we should have either 3 or 4 new calves this summer depending on if Maria sells before then or not. 2 of them (if the Lord blesses and wills) will be pure Longhorn cattle. If I get rid of Maria, Pedro, and Mariana - then I will have a net increase of 0 or 1 cattle (2 if you count my milk cow which should be delivered today or tomorrow). That is not much of an increase in a year, but we should have at least one beef to go to the butcher, and we will have shed ourselves of at least two animals that are not Pure Longhorns. If I were to guess, I would estimate that we will have 10 animals on the ground by this time next year, but 6 of them will be Pure Longhorns and at least 5 of those should be pregnant females, so our big surge in pure Longhorn production will be in the late summer of 2009 if the Lord blesses our endeavors. Of my four remaining cattle, one will be a milking Holstein, one will be a working cow (Pita), and the other two we will raise for meat.

Ok, so David currently has 7 Pure Longhorn cows or heifers, 5 of which should be pregnant and dropping calves this summer. The Ante's have Holga who should be pregnant as well. So we should have either 9 or 10 new calves total later this summer, which will make our herd somewhere between 24 and 26 by the end of the summer. That should drop by 2 or 3 before summer 2009 with my butchering and/or selling plans, and then our big surge (if the Lord wills) would happen in the summer of 2009 which would put our herd up near 35 head, which we figure is probably our maximum herd size on this land. The Lord has certainly blessed us so far, and we pray that He will continue to do so. We definitely should be looking for some kind of leased grazing land sometime this fall or next spring.

I'm looking forward to the day when we will be able (by the Lord's grace) to butcher several cattle a year.

Talking about it makes me hungry.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Big Trees

4/1/08 - 4th Day - Mid Afternoon. Hey y'all. Well, today I went into town with Logan Ante to pick up some supplies and plants, etc. and some wood for some bookshelves he is building. I also got my tobacco seeds in the mail today. Yesterday I received my Paulownia Tree seeds in, and I planted about 25 of them in peat pellets this afternoon. I have a Paulownia I bought last year and I didn't take care of it and it died to the ground, but this year it is coming up and it is already about 5 inches tall. I have heard of them growing 10-12 feet or more the first year. I haven't read of anybody starting them as seeds, but I figured I'd give it a try.

I can't give any endorsement to the Paulownia yet, but my studies have led me to believe that this tree could be the perfect homesteading/woodlot tree. If someone out there has experience growing and harvesting Paulownia, let me know. Paulownia is extremely fast growing; some species of the tree can be harvested for hardwood timber in as little as five years. When the tree is harvested or cut off at the ground, they regenerate from their root system and can usually be harvested again in 5-10 years. So a Paulownia woodlot is self-regenerating, and sustainable. Paulownia are grown widely in China a very similar environment and climate to ours, because it provides large amounts of hardwood, and it is able to reclaim stressed, overused, or ecologically damaged areas of land very quickly. Its roots break up the soil, and its huge leaves provide large amounts of organic material to the soil. The Chinese use Paulownias to reclaim huge areas that have been strip mined or clear cut for timber. A huge Paulownia forest with trees over 50 feet tall can be found in these areas within 5-10 years of them being planted.

The leaves of the Paulownia provide good fodder for animals and cattle, and when, and when they degrade on the ground they replenish and provide good content for new soils. The tree can grow up to 18 feet in the first year, but 10-12 feet is a good expectation. Most folks say that if you want the trees for wood, you should cut them off at the ground after the first year of growth, but it is not absolutely necessary. The information is sometimes contradictory. One article I read said NOT to cut the trees down, because if you do not you will end up with a straighter tree. I don't know yet, but I hope to find out. Harvest for wood can happen at 5 years, but at 12 years you will have a huge tree with a bunch of board feet. When you chop the tree off at the ground, it grows back quickly because of the developed root system, sometimes hitting 30 feet the first year after coppicing. One article I read suggested harvesting your first harvest at 5 years, then chopping them down (in rotation) every 10 years after that. I found a place that sells the seeds, and I ordered 150 seeds which I will try to grow in seed pots and larger pots for planting next year.

I'll let you know how it goes.

So yesterday it was 90 degrees and about 51% humidity, then we woke up to temps in the high 40's this morning, and cold and windy today.

Danielle is canning bacon and getting the freezers prepared for two more hogs to get butchered next week.

Hope all is well with you all,

Michael