Picture Update

In my last post, I promised some pictures from around the farm to update what is going on. 

This is our entrance to the Krooked Pine Farm.  As you can see our namesake is very visible as you come into the place.  Also, may Ol' Glory always fly above this great nation and our home.

This looking down to the new wellhouse.  It holds our well pump and pressure tank.

 

 

 

Inside of the well house and its heating system for winter.  The heater has a thermostat and tip over safety control.  It has worked great.  With the aluminum backed bubble wrap insulation it sometimes stays warmer than the house. 

 

 

This is our tractor that is coming in handy.  We have a couple more attachments to get, such as, the post hole auger so that we can start fencing our ten acres.  Then we can get our livestock, goats.  YAH!

 

 

 

 

We have a lot of sassafras growing on the farm.  These are a couple of examples.

 

 

Sassafras is a very unusual plant in that it has three different shaped leaves on the same tree.  First you have the three lobed leaf.  Kind of looks like a dinosaur's footprint. 

 

 

Then, it has a leaf that looks like a mitten with one lobe and also has another leaf that has no lobes but just a straight leaf.  You can see both in this photo.  Sassafras can be used for a couple of things.  The roots can be harvested, dried and then used to make a type of root beer.  The leaves can be harvested, dried and ground up for file that is used in Cajun food.   Nice to know that we have it on the farm.

 

Just a little pictorial to update what is going on. 

Thanks for visiting.

 

We are home and off the road, finally.

     Sorry to be gone so long.  Some how along the way, I got locked out of my blog.  But I am back now and ready to catch up on the news. 

    We are finally off the road.  My other half has a new job working locally and I am still looking for something to do to bring in extra money to help to take the pressure off of him. 

    To catch you up on doings around the Krooked Pine, we now have a well.  The well digger had to dig down 160 feet to get good water.  BUT, it isn't all that good yet.  It seems that we have what is known as "clear water iron".  We can wash with it, clean with it, but can't drink it.  If we heat it up it turns red.  If  I make tea with it, it turns the tea black.  If we were to drink it, it would poison us.  Thanks to a Royal Berkey we are able to drink it.  We will have to have a special filter added to the well system to be able to drink it straight from the tap.  Right now, it is a little out of our price range at about $2600 to $2700. 

     We, also, have a tractor now.  My other half is so proud.  It is a Dae Dong, diesel tractor with a loader.  It is so handy around the farm so far. 

     We have started building our rabbit hutches.  After starting the hutches, my other half had to have hernia surgery, so that kinda put on hold our building much of anything so the hutches sit incomplete out at the shop.  Hopefully, we will get to finish soon and go get their occupants. 

     I did some canning last year and some this year.  I put up a large amount of grapefruit marmalade and some orange marmalade.  I put up some pickled okra last year and my other half ate every jar.  This year, I put up quite a few more.  But I had a mistake in these though.  The recipe called for one third cup of pickling salt for the batch of okra that I was working on.  Somehow, I grabbed my one half measuring cup.  To say the least, these are very salty.  O well, lessons learned to pay closer attention.  I also, canned quite a bit of bread and butter pickles and some watermelon rind pickles. 

     Now that I am back into my blog, I will post some pics of the accomplishments we have achieved up to now with my next post.  Til then May God Bless.