hansjurgen

I have made a little more progress on our multi-purpose building. In my last post, we had graded an area for the building. Our first choice was to have a concrete slab, but at $130 per yard it was too

It is commonly believed that a cow has four stomachs. That is kind of correct, but technically a cow has one stomach with four different compartments. They are called rumin, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum.

The number 1 pest on our homestead is the common housefly. We have wasps, hornets, Japanese Beetles, stink bugs, ticks, chiggers and mosquitos, just to name a few. However, flies are by far the most bothersome

As the days get warmer we look for ways to stay cool on a hot afternoon. I would like a ceiling fan, but without electricity, I did the next best thing. I took a solar attic fan painted it white and hung

According to the 1790 census 95% of American lived in rural areas. The 5% of Americans living in urban areas lived in small villages and cities like New York and Philadelphia with more than 2500 people.

The Homestead Act of 1862 was passed on May 20 that same year. The act encouraged settlement of the western territories. Families were awarded 160 acres of public lands for a small filing fee and continuous

We manually pump water to the header tank on the roof which gives limited water pressure at the kitchen sink. Finding a faucet with adequate flow has been a problem. New faucets look nice, but they will

I started a new project this week. For me it is a bigger then the other projects I done so it will take some time. The plan is to build a 24 x 50 foot multi-purpose building for a meeting place during

The cold weather is behind us so it is time to clean our wood heater to get it ready for next winter. I like to do this job early before it gets too hot to be on the roof. These are the tools I use. Six-inch

May 5 was International Respect for Chickens Day and the whole month of May is International Respect for Chickens Month. So we missed International Respect for Chicken Day, but it is okay, you have the

It’s back with a vengeance. Last week it looked like this. We were away for five days and when we came back it looked like this. It is a very pretty plant that blankets the ground under the trees and it

This past weekend we attended the Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival in Mansfield, Missouri. We drove up Friday afternoon and spent Sabbath camping at Baker Creek, so we could get an early start Sunday

Seventy percent of the RED meat eaten in the world is goat meat. Pork is the most consumed meat in the world. We do not raise goats so I had to take a picture of our neighbor's. Our favorite red meat:

With the summer just around the corner, I wanted to add more water capacity for the chickens. I looked online for automatic drinkers, but I thought they were kind of expensive so I looked around the homestead

Yesterday I had to do a little generator repair. Not long ago two of the brackets broke off the muffler holding the muffler heat shroud, leaving two holes in the muffler so my generator was not running

I saw this quote recently and it got me thinking. Can any successful homesteader or farmer be lazy? There is always something to do from sunrise to sundown. It does not mean you have to work yourself to

It is commonly misreported that you can lead a cow upstairs, but not downstairs because a cow’s knees can’t bend properly to walk downstairs. This is not true. Cows can walk down stairs. Have a great day!

A few weeks ago, we had a rain storm which dropped almost six inches of rain. It washed out our road and saturated the ground. Water running off the mountain flooded into the chicken run making two inches

When I am in my workshop, my 5-year-old grandson Kaleb likes using his imagination to work on his own projects as well. It is usually a weapon of some sort. I provide the supervision, but he does the work.

The Mayapple is an interesting little plant. In early spring the little umbrella like plants begin to pop and blanket the forest floor, but by the end of May when the weather starts to warm up they are