My first attempt at mason bees.

                                                         This is my future rocket stove.

Wood is still in a pile.

I'm a testament that a timber frame project can take many years. Mine is a small project but is taking a back seat to trying to create a Homestead Farm due basically to my disillusionment with government, the financial instruction and world events, not to mention the job.  I would like to retire in 5 years and basically live off the farm. This is taking quite some time. First I wanted to get the trees in the ground. I planted many nut trees along with just about every fruit I could think of. I've made 2 herb spirals and and beds for vegetables (lasagna  style), which is described in Gaia's Garden book. I've made a Compost Tea bin for table scraps with red wigglers and still need to make a compost bin. We live on a small ridge so I have built swells on contour to push the water into the ground and also divert the excess to a low spot for a future woodland pond for wildlife.  I am currently finishing my tractor shed which will be used to cover my timbers so that I can get them out from under the blue tarp in the yard with ever increasing in size holes.

Here is a really neat idea. This is an herb spiral. It is best located close to the kitchen. Really neat idea from Gaia's Garden book. Probably the best garden book, in my opinion.

Deer Feed Plot!

I don't know if you can tell from the picture but I am building swells on grade to capture the runoff water and force it to settle in the ground, therefore building up the soil and watering the roots of the plants on the downhill side.  Hopefully if I get them wide enough I can run a chicken tractor on them which will further help feed the plants with nitrogen rich chicken poop. I believe there is plenty of information on both swells and chicken tractors on websites like permies.com. 

It's alright to be Little Bitty!

Our home is going up. All 1,200 sf. We're downsizing!

Look out Cousin Eddie!

This is where we lived for about 10 months while we were building our home and working on our storage barn and planting trees. I would do it again, it was great but very difficult at times. We started off dry camping with one battery.  I carried water from the spring with a 4 gallon backpack. Electricity was supplied by a large gas generator. Later a 30 amp Yamaha generator was added and 3 more marine batteries in parallel.  The 4 batteries would keep the heat going all night with plenty of power left over in the morning and the 30 amp generator was much quieter.