Archive for March, 2009
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How to Fell (Cut Down) a Tree
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
With the saw running I was ready to go cut down a tree and get the house warm. But how exactly do you cut down a 30 foot tall tree without ending up on the 10 o’clock news? It’s actually a pretty straightforward process that starts with some simple observing. I can’t stress enough the importance of this step. Take a good long look at the tree, walk around it, get a feel for it. Ask yourself the following questions…
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Chickens: How Huey Lewis Helped Us Build The Floor
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
Looking at the junky sketches and all the lumber in the yard we were getting a bit overwhelmed. Before deciding to buy lumber, we had tryed out some makeshift coop ideas using salvaged materials and old pallets. Needless to say, none of these turned out so hot and they were all dismantled early on in construction. Because of these previous mis-steps we felt like everyone expected us to build a crappy chicken coop, if we were even able to get one built at all. We needed a bost of motivation, someone to come by and work along side us and say, “Nice work!” or “You’ve got it now!” with a big eighties thumbs-up. For Taryn and I, that person is Huey Lewis…
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Chickens: Breed Selection and Purchasing
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
Looking for birds that were as industrious as we hoped to become, we turned down offers from friends and neighbors that were looking to thin down their own flocks. There were a lot of decorative bantams and modern leghorn breeds designed to look stately and lay fancy colored eggs. We couldn’t find anyone around us that kept the dual-purpose breeds that we were interested in. As such, we started looking into online hatcheries. We were planning on starting small with a flock of 10 or so. Some where around late February we learned about “hatchery minimums”.