Another weekend of cleaning up the homestead has come and gone.  This weekend I focused on hauling scrap iron to the local recycler, picking up trash and cutting down some trees to make room for a pole barn.

For those of you following this blog, yall know some of my family members, and their friends, used a piece of the homestead as a landfill.  They did not have permission to dump trash in a washed out area, they just did it.  Most of the stuff is glass, metal and plastic.

My brother has a tractor with a grapple on the front it, which is what we used to pull a lot of trash out of the hole.  Now that the trash is in a pile on flat ground, it’s time to sort through it and dispose of the trash properly.

When we first started cleaning out the hole we started loading various pieces of scrap on the trailer.  This weekend right off the bat the first load was ready to go.  The scrap metal on the trailer was a mixture of wire, box fan, washing machine,,, and a few other things.

Here in Jasper Texas on hwy 190 east we have a metal recycler. Which is where I have brought 2 trailer loads of scrap iron so far.

To make room for a shed a pole barn some small trees needed to be removed. The logger did not cut these trees, so I had to do it by hand.

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Now that the trees have been cut and some of the small timber has been thinned, its time to call in a stump grinder.  A stump grinder is machine with carbide bits which cut the stump down to below ground level.  No digging around the stump, no burning the stump, no pulling on the stump with a truck,,, nothing but a machine that turns a tree stump into chips.

Instead of buying a stump grinding machine that would rarely be used, I called a contractor that works by the hour.  In 3 hours the contractor had ground 109 stumps.

There are a number of stump grinder designs on the market, some of them look like large tillers.  The one the contractor used attached to the back of a tractor and was operated by the power take off (PTO).

Why are we having stumps ground?  The stumps are in the way of driveway, chicken yard fence, chicken coop and where the shed is  going.  Instead of having to drive around the stumps, and waiting for them to rot, now the stumps are ground 6 – 8 inches below ground level.

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After several weeks of having to manhandle debris while cleaning up the homestead, we finally got some heavy equipment on location. The tractor we were able to get was a Mahindra 4530 4-wheel drive with a grapple, bucket and brush hog.

The main goals for this weekend include – get the brush piled up, clean out the hole that had been used as a trash dump and clear out various small brush.

Piling Up Brush

A couple of weeks ago a buddy of mine, my son and I thinned out a bunch of small trees. Instead of pulling the trees to the burning pile like we did the day before, the trees were pulled into an opening so they could be pushed by a tractor.

While the loggers where cutting the timber, they left a rather large mess in a 2 acre field directly across from where the house is going.

Besides piling up the trees that had been thinned out a couple of weeks ago, the debris left by the loggers also need to be piled up. For one pile the operator of the Mahindra 4530 used the bucket to push the trees together. On the other pile, the bucket was replaced with a grapple. the trees were pushed, pulled, lifted,,, and whatever else it took to get the debris cleaned up.

The 4-wheel drive capability of the Mahindra 4530 tractor is what saved the day. Some of the tree trunks that had to bee moved would have stopped a 2-wheel drive tractor in its tracks. The grapple allowed the debris to be stacked, rather then just pushed together.

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During the last trip to the homestead we focused on thinning trees. The largest and healthiest trees were flagged so they would not be cut, the smaller trees and underlying brush were thinned out.

On February 1st and 2nd we focused on cutting tree stumps down to ground level so the heavy equipment can get in there next weekend.  This part of the land has been used was an makeshift family trash dump back in the early 1980s. Most of the stuff  dumped in this location is scarp metal, tin, hot water heater, cans,,, stuff like that.

Now for the rest of the story.

February 1 – Started off like any other day.  My wife and I got up around 6:30am, got our shower, got dressed and headed out the door.  On this Friday I had the day off work.  so instead of going to work, I headed to the homestead for another kind of work.

On the way out my wife, my daughter and I stopped by the Shell station at the corner of Hwy 63  and FM 777.  We were thinking about going by the donut shop, but decided to stop by the shell station.  The store sells breakfast sandwiches and breakfast biscuits that are freshly made.  I got a breakfast sandwich with sausage, egg, cheese.  To wash breakfast down I got a low-carb monster energy drink.

One of the things I wanted to do Friday morning was to try and burn a pine tree stump.  I had an idea how things were going to go, I just wanted to burn the stump to say I tried.

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Some people build coops with either a wooden floor, or pour a cement slab.  Due to the cost of having a wooden floor and the cost of pouring cement, I am going with a bare earth floor.  Also, a bare earth floor is natural to the chickens.  This is the way chickens have been raised for thousands of years.  My option is to either build a pole barn, or build a leanto chicken coop.  At the current time I am leaning towards a pole barn.

Issues that need to be addressed:  Square footage, security, food, water, lighting and laying boxes.

Square Footage – Its recommended that each chicken have at least 3 square feet inside the coop.  For example, 30 chickens multiplied by 3 square feet equals 90 square feet.

In another article we discussed how many chickens are needed for SHTF.  In that article we talked about having as many as 60 – 80 laying hens.  Lets go with a high number of 80 chickens.  80 X 3 = 240 square feet.

Keep in mind 3 square feet is a bare minimum.  The more space chickens have, the better.  When chickens are packed together, they get bored and will start fighting and pecking each other.

The pole barn I am looking at building provides 192 square feet, which is 12 feet wide and 16 feet long.

The local building supply stores sell metal roofing in 8 and 12 foot long sections.  Two pieces 12 feet long will be enough to do one end.  Four pieces 8 feet long will be enough to do one side. This way the metal does not have to be cut to size and there is no scrap material left over.

192 square feet divided by 3 = 64 chickens.

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Now that the loggers are finished, we can get a survey of how things look. So today my wife and I made a trip to the homestead. Man oh man, what a mess. Its not that the loggers left a mess, its the tree limbs that have to be removed before the logs can be hauled.

There are tree tops that had to be cut off before the trunks can be hauled.

A couple of the pine trees were forked at the top, so the fork had to be removed.

The top of a sweet gum tree is laying in a field, it needs to be cut up and burned.

Related Article – Moving to the homestead part 1

Chicken Yard

Now that some of the trees and brush have been cleared out, I can get a good idea of how large the chicken yard can be. Why should I pay so much attention to stuff like the chicken yard? Because chickens and other small livestock are part of my long term SHTF survival plans.

Using a 25 foot tape measure, my wife and I were able to estimate the chicken yard to be 25 feet wide and 50 feet long. Which equals 1,250 square feet.

After my wife and I get moved, we want to increase our flock size to around 24 hens and a rooster. Lets go ahead and say 25 chickens.

In anther article we talked about how many chickens would be needed for a long term SHTF event.  In that article we gave a summer time low of around 30 laying hens, and a wintertime high of around 70 – 80 chickens.

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My wife and I made a trip to the homestead this morning (December 15, 2012) to look at the land after some of the timber has been cut.  Now that some of the brush, pine trees and sweet gums have been cleared out, we can get a better idea of how everything is going to work out.

If you have not read the first part of this homesteading series, please take the time to do so.

Moving To The Homestead Part 1
Moving To The Homestead Part 2
Designing a long term survival garden

Chicken Yard

The first design of the garden and chicken yard called for the chicken yard to be divided in half, and placed directly behind the house. The chickens would be switched between the two yards, with one year in each section. While the chickens were using one area, I would be using the other as a garden.

After thinking about the water requirements of the garden and the chickens, wind direction, and the amount of time and effort to build the fence,,, I decided to scrap the plan and start over.

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This is part 2 of a moving to the Homestead series.  See this link for part 1.

Where do you want to be in 10 years, how about 20 years?  That question is not about financial stability, or your career, where do you want to be physically in 10 years, what do you want your life to be like?

I want peace and quiet in my life.  I want a back porch where I can grill some steaks, listen to the wind blowing through the trees, hear the chickens,,, and that is all I want to hear, except maybe some music.

I want a small garden that my wife and I can get fresh food from.

I want my chickens to be able to free range as much as they want, because happy chickens lay plenty of eggs.

Where do I want to be next year (2013)?  I want to be living in peace and quiet. But first, my wife and I have to get there.

One of the things that has to be taken care of before we are able to put a house on the land, is some of the timber has to be cleared.  As much as I despise cutting trees, we have to make room for a home.  Not only room for a home, but the fence rows need to be cut.

Nobody has lived at the Homestead full time since the late 1970s, which was when my grandmother passed away. Mom and dad moved from the Jasper Texas area in the late 1970s and have lived in Bridge City for the past 35 years.

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The time has come to move to a rural area, get the farm setup with a garden and livestock. My wife I currently live about 4 miles outside Jasper Texas. Its time to move ever further away from town.

With the way this nation is heading, families need to be looking at how they are going to afford to buy food and provide basic essentials for their families. One example, my wife and I buy canned refried beans to make homemade burritos with. In the past 2 years the price of the canned beans has gone up almost 20%. I bet your wages have not gone up 20% in that same amount of time. The price of ground meat has gotten terrible. Pork chops used to be cheap, and now they cost a pretty penny.

At 44 years old I am getting too old to go back to school to retrain for a new career. Instead of waiting until the last minute to make my retirement plans, I want to start 20 – 25 years ahead of time.

This morning my wife and I made a trip to the farm, took some measurements and talked about what we wanted to do.  The main things we wanted to focus on were shelter, food, water and sewage.  These are the basic essentials that anyone would need during a long term SHTF / TEOTWAWKI survival situation.

Click the image to enlarge

On the left side of the property is a wilderness area owned by a local timber company. Due to the way the terrain is laid out, nobody will ever be able to build there.

Description of the above image

A – Fence line is not the actual property line; I wanted enough room to drive a truck or bushhog between the house and garden and the fence line. A basic my wife and I started with was 10 feet. This should give us enough room to drive all the way around the garden and house.

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