Sue has been so busy lately; she’s following in the footsteps of Leonardo Da Vinci and building Gabion Walls! What are those, you ask? Well… (this is from Wikipedia) A gabion (from Italian gabbione meaning “big cage”; from Italian gabbia and Latin cavea meaning “cage”) is a cage, cylinder, or box filled with rocks, concrete, or sometimes sand and soil for use in civil engineering, road building, military applications and landscaping. For erosion control, caged riprap is used. For dams or in foundation construction, cylindrical metal structures are used. In a military context, earth- or sand-filled gabions are used to protect sappers, infantry, and artillerymen from enemy fire. Leonardo da Vinci designed a type of gabion called a Corbeille Leonard (“Leonard[o] basket”) for the foundations of the San Marco Castle in Milan. We’re simply using them for hard-scape and, to a small extent, to help direct or block wind around the house. Continue reading
Gabion Walls
05 Monday Dec 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
We have the best friends and neighbors! When people hear what we’re working on, or stop by and say, “What are you doing with that field?” and they find out we need something they have, they just say “Come get this, we don’t need it.” Or “Whenever we have some, we’ll drop it off.” It’s so great! It’s also been happening with people we’ve hired to do some type of work around the place. For instance: Sue had a plumber come out to fix and old faucet that was just continually running out by the dinky house, he saw that she was working on some rock walls and he gave her some pointers and offered to give her some materials that he wasn’t going to be using… she stopped by to pick them up and got some more info, the materials that he had, and a huge box of iris that they were cleaning out! Never say no to “free”! This photo is of some windows 
that our contractor friend, Brent, dropped by a few weeks ago… they came out of house that he was doing some remodeling on… now one will be a part of the new chicken coop, and the other will be part of the green house. The doors for the goat shed and the pump house were dropped off too! Remember all that stuff going into the ditch for our Hugelkultur area? Much of that was donated by our neighbor, Tom, who has a landscaping business. He’s also dropping off cuttings for our berm project in the upper field. The people who put in the new flooring in the house had a truckload of pallets for us, we used them to make the compost bins!
Today’s weather… was absolutely beautiful! It was in the low 30’s around 6:30 this morning, but when the sun got up over the eastern mountains, it warmed up to a wonderful day. Tomorrow, it should be clear and up into the mid 60’s. Saturday morning we woke up to snow on the mountains above us. We had rain, but it didn’t even frost at our place. Just had the pretty white dusting around 5000′. This photo is a little small, but you can kind of just see it there on the mountain tops. It’s really been beautiful!
Today was kind of a sad day; we said goodbye to Mr. White, one of our Barred Rock chickens from the first batch of babies. He was our first injury, and therefore an unplanned euthanasia. I guess they are never planned. We found him one night, unable to stand or walk, we thought he might have broken something – so we isolated him from the others, made sure he had food and water… helped him eat and drink, and kept him warm for a few days, but he continued to deteriorate. Today we saw that he was no longer eating, and we didn’t want him to wither away slowly. 
So, here he is discussing things with Sue as his guys frame up the foundation for the coop. We might have it poured on Tuesday, barring the presence of a rain storm. Things happen fast around here!!! We’ll definitely post some photos of the pour.
The There are many different ways we’re trying to plant and grow our food over the long term. We’re on some densely packed soils and we have long dry periods, without much precipitation, so one thing we’re trying out is Hügelkulture. Hügelkulture is a type of raised bed gardening that replicates the natural process of decomposition that occurs on forest floors. In general, you mound or pile wood, leaves, weeds, garden debris- cover with compost or soil and plant on top. Over the long term, the gradual decay of the wood and other materials provides a consistent source of nutrients. Soul aeration increases as the debris breaks down, continually tilling itself over time. Also, the logs and beaches act like a sponge; rainwater is stored and then released during the dry times.
So, this Permaculter Class Sue and I are taking through Oregon State University has been really quite informative. Some of the design questions that need to be answered or addressed are rather common sense, if you’re paying attention to the environment, but others that we’re studying make me go hmmm. One of the common sense ones is: paying attention to wind direction; however, our wind directions are quite fickle, and gusty! They play havoc with our gardens because we can water in the morning and then in a couple of hours everything is completely dried out. We’re trying to decide where to plant a wind break, but the wind comes from all directions~ we can’t just wall in everything (tho’ we might have enough rock to do that!). AND sometimes it’s so incredibly strong that it just picks up the chicken chalets and tosses them around. How rude! 
We had an exciting morning today~ as the sun came up and Sue was out with the goats and I had just started setting water on the trees, we were entertained by the sudden evacuation of three Collared Peccaries, or Javelina. Some people call them wild pigs, but they really aren’t related. They were over investigating what we call “the dinky house” and the garage that housed Sue’s tractor. I think they were looking for some goat feed. Sue scared ’em up and they took off across the field. Actually, I think Sue was surprised as they were, but she had her wits about her and was able to catch this action shot of the mama leading the escape. Boy, I was surprised at how quickly they were able to hot foot it out of there. We think it was a mama and two teenagers. One teenager hid and then got separated when he didn’t follow the other two. Hopefully they will get back together later.
I think they’re kinda cute, really, but I guess that they’re noted for wreaking havoc in gardens and flower beds. On Fort Huachuca, during Halloween, they were imploring those that live on Post to NOT use real pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns because they attract the Javelina and then they run amok through the neighborhood. On their FaceBook page, Fort authorities were putting up WANTED posters for specific Javelinas caught in the act. They were just tongue and cheek, because the hunting season doesn’t begin until January. If they camouflage themselves as well as they do around our place, hunting must be difficult. The photo to the left is really two of them in the middle of the field (other side of the fence), but, in the morning sunrise, they just look like two little bushes.
It seemed like a long day today, but we spent a great deal of it in town, rather than home on the farm. We weren’t really able to get to many projects today, but the afternoon was exciting for us, and for the littles. Today they graduated into the chickshaw. We wanted to give them some roaming room~ they’re getting so big really quickly~ and we weren’t sure about letting them out with the bigs. So, we put up the smaller electrified poultry net, 50′ long, that you can sort of see behind the chicks, and wheeled in the new chickshaw. They aren’t laying of course, so Sue just temporarily screwed up some of the siding over the area where we need to add the nesting boxes. We moved ’em in the evening, so they would overnight in the chickshaw and tomorrow morning they will have a whole lot of new ground to cover! The wooden door you see unlatches and becomes their ramp in and out. Normally, we’ll have the food and water on the ground, not in the pen because they’ll only go in there at night. They don’t know it yet, but they’ll be so much happier. Then, we’ll be able to easily move them around to different areas of the property, when they’re ready to start working. Small steps, but important ones.
Sue returned with Goats on Monday! Two young males who are really good buddies. Their names are Taco George (the brown one) and Mine (the black and white one). Those are the names they came with… Sue keeps calling them “Taco Bell” and “Mime”. We have them in an area that, we think, was used to pasture burros previously. It was already fenced in pretty well. However, we are also re-purposing a small workroom as their night time dwelling, and the fencing around that particular area is rather sketchy. If they wanted, the little guys could just push it right over and walk away. Luckily, if that happens, they will still be in a fenced in area; it’s just not as secure. 
So~ Sue and I are currently enrolled in an Intro to Permaculture class through Oregon State University. It’s a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and we just started today. It’s over four weeks for a total of about 16 hours. I think it’ll help us in our fledgling design process. I really enjoy the overall concepts of Permaculture and the ethics behind it. We’ll be learning about these more in-depth and about the people who are truly the forward thinkers of this movement. One of the “fathers of Permaculture”, Bill Mollison said about design:
Wing and a Prayer 