Kamil K. that property pictured is not agricultural at all. Look again and on the pictured R.H. side is just half of the dug out rocks. Straight ahead in the picture is an 80% rock berm, that neighbor pushed up; not as careful to soil separate.
This small hill top was only ever good for trees, forestry. Or housing.
We are taxed at housing rates “Best Use” for empty land to force us to sell.
There are three different 90% deferment taxing programs that can be applied for. Thousands $'s in applications and environmental survey fees to do this. Then near lifetime locks or reverse out with penalties and interest to convert it back. I was for this risk. My wife, was not. Her property from inheritance. Yes. Taxed for that too.
1/2 acre of the two acres of treed we retain is seasonal flooding. Ha! I am trying wet foot tolerant Ash trees there. Their 3rd year. Not drowned dead. Maybe . . . maybe not. Derr keep chewing them back. A frost pocket. The water sucking willows I tried there frost died within there first six months. First a May; hard frost. Then a September hard frost.
Property ownership is taxed punished from three special interest groups directions:
The ownership churning selling real estate lobbyists and associated industries. Banks.
The environmentalists.
The always needing more revenue social services government people.
And ALL of these want no generational property transferring now in the State of Washington.
Many of the tents camping homeless are those given up racing on the hamster taxing wheels. Wheels that only the top 10% in intelligence can ever hope to stay current reading and understanding to comply with. And compliance is top 10% outside earning employments to afford.
Norm that stump is another angle deceiving picture. This was a modified Humbolt cut. My foot was on the the directional/ safety face under cut. They shallow undercut and over hinge them to ease them down slower. Less whip breakage on these 130-160 footers. Gillete Logging will wedges pound. But they limit it. Down here in ash fall land time must be spent debarking back past the 1980 ash pockets. Saves the cutter sawchain.
They do a lot of backside jack pocket cutting; and then jacking over if the tree is anywhere near a road, or structure. Actually they are very, very fast at that.
S.U.
If by organic you mean food grown without chemical pesticides and fertilizers then you are in some murky waters. I only use what are considered organic pesticides such as Neem oil, Spinosad, BT. ect. I plant mostly in raised beds now and amend my soils with wood ash, bone meal, compost and gypsum, epsom salts, for the general soil but a lot of my plants are started indoors now and planted out when they are at least three to six inches tall and in the hole I plant them they get bio-char, worm castings and more compost. My plants get worm casting tea every couple of watering cycles and I also use a folular spray of worm casting tea and epsom salts. I’m not producing nearly what I once did but I’m enjoying it much more. I still plant potatoes, corn, beans, peas in rows but that’s about it. The last few years I’ve been shifting to hydroponics, Dutch Buckets and Kraky. Big fan of Bobby.
I set my greenhouse up for Aquaponics but am not going to make the jump until I know I have 24/7 power supply. I’ve seen a lot on sad tales of what happens to very expensive systems with even a one day outage.
Most of my greenhouse planting is not organic per say. I use Masterblend fertilizer to feed the buckets and kraky tubs. https://www.amazon.com/MASTERBLEND-4-18-38-Complete-Combo-Fertilizer/dp/B0727VTWH5?tag=outdoorgearco2-20
In my opinion and experience, bio-char is the most important amendment. If you put it in your soil raw it will suck the nutrients out of the soil but if you charge it with NPK as in soak it in Urine, epsom salt and wood ash. It will hold those elements and slowly release them back into you plants.
Got any beavers causing problems in that creek Steve? Im a state certified wildlife control officer so I can do removals. On a job in orting right now removing a new spring pair that are cutting down some prized apple trees. Like I said hippie logger, I choose what tree needs to go and I’m always in favor of fruit trees to stay!
Hrmp.
A greater part of applied Don’t Ask (permissions) Don’t Tell (what you are doing) is to keep mouth shut so’s as not to insert feet.
Beavers? Beaver? I hear tell there used to be beaver around here. Nope ain’t seen any for years.
Elk? Elk? Yeah back in the Indian days. Shoo. Get your asses back up out a sight!
Bear? Bear? Naw. The dogs would tell us. eh. Wifie quit bouncing me about of bed for your barking dog.
The fun ones to see are bobcat. You can hardly believe. Do I really . . . no . . . it couldn’t be could it. True forest ghosts.
Wolf here like up there you have to go way up in.
Coyote? Coyote? ‘Bout every 2-3 years I hafta’ . . .
Yeah. Yeah. Shoot to scare 'em away from the chickens. Opps. Missed too close. So sorry.
My real nemesis are the chicken killing hawks. I only any more have a very narrow safe down range. Restrict myself to the wifie’s, boom-boom Joe Biden special. Who . . . meee?
Owls and eagles it is just a wave bye-bye! chicken.
S.U.
It’s amazing how many bob’s we have in our state, but seldom seen and so difficult to find there sign. Iv attempted to catch them before but during the fur trapping season they don’t seem to like my cages, they turn there nose away every time. Like to stand around for the game cam though! I can locate them very quickly with prebaiting (beaver carcass in a tree) which also locates the bears. Timber company’s around here have been implementing bear control to protect the timber and I can sell off the beaver carcass ( I keep the backstraps, hind quarters and front shoulders for my own consumption) to another wco who sets up bait stations for the bears to tear up instead of the trees. Hancock is a big part of that program along with plum creek. Another buddy runs bears and cats off if they become problems with dogs for the timber companys. Lucrative business to be on big timbers good side when DOW is the goal!
My chicken run could hold wolves if I wanted to, it’s built like a prison. Our predation stems from the trash pandas and they only pick off the stragglers coming back in at night. I attempt to keep them in check as well since the chickens are what got my dad his farm designation and saves on taxes
You have the same animals we have Steve. Yes the Bobcat we see his tracks at the river with the Mountain Lion tracks. We were blessed with a Moose on the other side of the river last year very rare down in the Wenatchee area, but deer walking by the house on our driveway. We have lots of Seahawks or Ospreys here every spring to fall. Todays walk at the river was two Bald Eagles eyeballing the ducks in the water got home and squirrels and yellow belly marmots out in the back yard rock pile. Who needs to ever go to a zoo, when you have all of this.
I spent a half hour on the way home today watching a herd of elk, going through town got to see the albino and palamino deer that are resident, 2 deer in the yard when I got home. Saw a coyote whole out checking traps in the farm yesterday. We do have a great wildlife population down low in elevation around here
Here is a real useable tool that I’ve promoted in the past:
search up “Honda EU2000 exhaust heat collector”
These plastic housing enclosed “suitcase” inverter generators expel ALL heats out one end.
Most add on baffle extensions are made to just get these blown heats out of a generator enclosure like on a motorhome.
I once could search up one offered that had the cooling heated air separated from the engine exhaust flow to use that hot air for tents and hunting cabin heating.
I tried ours for wood chunks drying. Works great. So what if a bit’o exhaust smell and hot oil smell, eh.
Prooves that an engine and generator heads heats could dry a system’s input fuel wood.
Steve Unruh
It gets murky really fast even with organic approved pesticides and fertilizers. i try to avoid pesticides like the plague. I was just wondering how much your gardening practices have changed over the years. and how that affects both the work involved and the yields.
Obviously hydroponics is work but that is a lot less weeding.
Do you use charcoal as the growing medium?
Do you add your casting to the compost heap or do you directly apply?
I need to start doing composting because I have been listening to some of Elaine Ingham’s lectures on microbial parts of the soil. I am not going to go all out for composting, but the compost tea and spraying it on is doable. Having a good aerobic compost pile and flipping it a bunch of times has to be on a schedule I may not be able to keep.
I kind of want to do no-till to not disturb the soil as much which is just the opposite of how I was brought up.
I use the composting in my garden regularly for more than 10 years with one year rotation. Every fall I spread the compost made during last year on the ground before I do fall ploughing. At the same time I start new compost with all leafs and bio residuals found around the garden. When spring come, its time to add some hard pieces, so all branches from winter cut go through the chipper and end up in the compost. This make more airy and soft parts stop to create big putrid chunks. Around May, when my wife replants our flower boxes, compost receives good part of old substrate, which also improves the structure of the compost. And at last, for half an year since first to last lawn moving, all grass goes to the compost as well as any bio from kitchen or garden. I mix it over regularly every three to five weeks. And by the end of October, when all leafs are again on the ground, I have nice heap of black, soft, granular soil just ready to be spread over my garden.
Yes. Yes. Exactly the very best plan for small acreages.
What we have been doing here on this 50% glacial rocks, poor, poor ash fall, will not hold water soil land.
You make the annual growths and generated “enrichments” from the overall properties and activities concentrated onto you actual food growing garden plot.
Big scale farming it is inproving enriching 20-100 acres.
Small lived on acreages it is improving at most 1/2 acre.
Three generations of digging out and removing rocks from our garden plot.
Gathered up chickens manures (previously cow and goats manures) dug into it’s soils.
Before the chickens I would shallow trench over the winter ;all kitchen green scraps and coffee grounds into the garden.
We do not have the deciduous “brown” leaved here to balance out the “green” for the balance of a good separate composting.
And of course the wood ash is a given. With super low ash Douglas Fir there is never enough. And low carbon basis then ALL my carbons get burnt for heating. This has been the hardest to explain to hardwoods folks always ranting on and on about bio-char.
Sheez. You do what you can.
Where you actually live. Not someone else’s fantasies land.
And tune out all of the “best” noises. Noises that have no applications outside of narrow specific usages.
What? You say?
Royal bee jelly as promoted Life-Extension miracle. NOW open field standing hives are being human-bears destroyed for their royal jelly. The latest black market highest value concentrate.
Steve unruh
I started out with John Jeavons french intensive, Bio-dynamic from early Mother earth News posts Sean. Then didn’t have time to really garden for about thirty years… Went back to the French Intensive on an acre including berry bushes. Each year I would build more raised beds and ease away from heavy tilling. I broadcast compost and wood ash and char over my beds each spring and fork it in. I’m down to about a quarter acre total now, not all raised beds but all my salad crops are grown in them. Hydroponics and other alternative growing just the last two years. I don’t put a lot of effort into my compost. I have no livestock so can’t make hot compost. I just pile up my fall shredded leaves in rerod mesh cages and let it sit for a few years. I like composting in tires. Stack them up and fill them. Then pull them apart setting the top on the bottom and filling the uncomposted material on top into the bottom tire. Restack like that. The stuff in the bottom few tires will be transformed by then helped by the fact that the tires are black and absorb heat and can also be spaced with two by fours to let more air in. I also have tumblers made out of 55 gallon barrels. What ever I pull out of the garden after harvesting goes in either the barrels or the tires, Not that much work. Keep it damp, rotate the tumbler about once a week. Not a lot of effort.
As I said I’m pretty much just stating with the Dutch buckets and normally they are filled with perlite, but I see no reason why char would not work better. I will be doing some buckets like that this year.
Worms are your best friend. Red Wigglers. I should expand my operation but right now I maintain tow 27 gal totes. No real work involved. Dump some shredded leaves and kitchen scraps in on a regular basis and they are happy as can be and there is nothing I can think of that feeds plants better than worm castings. I just throw a handful in each planting hole with come bone meal and gypsum before I stick in a tomato or pepper or what ever. You will never make enough to broadcast it across the garden. Compost and worm casting tea made with an air bubbler is your best pour on the soil around the plant fertilizer. If you have coffee grounds they will boost your nitrogen levels but a little pee in the mix works too. Also with epsom salts as a folular spray. Just like with wood gas, it’s all trial and error but a good friend of my assures me that going hungry is a real bad plan.
No Norm.
I’ve used a corded electric chainsaw on the wooden shipping pallets.
Bailing twine bound trimmed sticks. Then the Stihl MS260Pro.
Cut a pickup bed load of log discs once for a fellow to experiment with stampimg chunking systems.
ONLY did that once! He asked why? Damn man. I could have cut up 3-4 cord of fire wood for the saw/bar/and chain wear! You want a cord of these; I want $500. Still want? O.K. Then, $800.
These produce the saw chips for chicken bedding.
Also used a neighbor thrown away pivot swing radial arm saw . Not bad. Just tedious. Need to foot pedal convert.
Sean French? a working framer-builder, modified a table saw to be foot pedal pop-up blade. Was fast.
A flywheel driven shear chunker is a full project. Do later after the working gasfier system. Then the need with get you motivated.
Steve Unruh
Hey Norm,
Look above the end of the gate rail in the distance at the field to tree line.
You can expand out this picture a bit.
See them tan butts?
This is on a south valley us neighbors property. They, family, have 320 acres. Opps. No. They are down to ~250 now.
Ha! Elk are not something can be supported on just five acres.
Our five is just past the Verizon regional uplink satellite dishes. Seen in the background past the corner on my glasses.
S.U.
Nice little herd you have there Steve, as deliciose as they are it’s nice to see them out and about around the homestead. It’s definitely hard to support a herd like that without proper acreage, but they can come and go as they please anytime they like. Around me the elk on about a 12-15 day cycle of coming through my back yard. Nocturnal though. A few groups are around that are daywalkers this time of year but not a whole bunch. Everyone of them is alive because they know where private safe places are, and what timber company’s sell elk permits. Probably 500 elk in a couple hundred different small groups around me spreading a few thousand acres of the foothills out into the puyallop and orting valleys up into elbe ashford and over to morton and packwood. They know very well where and when is safe. 8 years of archery hunting, the score stands elk 8 norman 0 a few oppurtunities have arose, but I error for the meat and the proper animal. A big dry cow is my choice, after she has long served her purpose to propagate the herd. Tag soup sucks (even hurts the pocketbook worse with license and tag cost) but the beaver backstraps marinading in the fridge right now are deliciose as well. Can’t eat the horns anyway!
5 acres is enough for a small herd of angus cows, we did black angus growing up on the small farm in carbonado. Uncle’s and cousins in carnation and duvall have several hundred dairy. Nowadays on less then an acre we do hogs,chickens, and stepmum has a heard of show goats…still don’t understand those things…
I wonder how well goat or elk droppings would supplement woodgass. Or cowchips, all biomass right?
