Target Practice

Started the day off by testing dad's new mini-14. It needs to be zeroed in, but shoots well. I love the rate of fire; with a thirty round magazine, you can cause some serious damage quickly.

Dad firing away

And me firing away

After firing a few clips, we headed back up to the house to harvest some of our veggies from the garden. Our harvest amounted to three and a half gallons of green beans, a bucket full of beets and turnips, and about half a dozen tomatoes. In the next few days, about a hundred more tomatoes should be ready for harvest. Turns out chickens don't like turnip greens, but rabbits do!

We also finally put together the used swing/bed that mom & dad bought last winter. The cushion and top have dry rot from the weather and will have to be replaced, but it didn't turn out bad. Kinda comfortable too. Holds all three of us plus the dogs, or me and the dogs as you can see.

Before heading in to get ready for dinner at the nearby marina clubhouse, dad and I cleared the insanely tall weeds from the flower box in front of the propane tank. The lilac bush is the only plant that survived (aside from weeds), so a complete redo is in order for that space. I'd like to remove it completely, but mom doesn't want to see the propane tank from the house, so we'll have to put something in there.

It's barely distinguishable as a flower box

As we were putting away the tools, dad flipped his lid and attacked me with a pick-axe!


Don't worry though, I'm still in one piece. Tomorrow, dad's renting a sod remover and we'll start phase three of the sidewalk project. Then, sometime next week, we'll pick up some lime at the local quarry and lay the pavers. The project is going much faster than I expected. Stay green!

Increasing Storage and Solving Rain Problem

As always, at the last minute plans were changed today, so I didn't get around to building the composting toilet. It'll have to wait till this weekend. However, we did finish a lot of incomplete projects that have been waiting for an extra day off.

First, though, I want to bring you up to date on the sidewalk project, which is still in the early stages. Due to the unusually high amount of rain we've had the last few years, the backyard has been pretty soupy. Getting the loaded dolly to the chicken yard has been very difficult and is creating ruts in the yard, which look bad. The solution: a sidewalk that runs along the building to the entrance of the chicken yard.



On Monday, we picked up about 600 cement pavers, as shown in the first photo. Tuesday, I unloaded the trailer, stacking them on the driveway within easy reach of proposed path. Took me most of the day and wore me out, but the first phase of the project (collecting materials) is now complete.

I started phase two, preparing the site, today. At the terminus of the sidewalk, we painstakingly moved a large cement pad to the entrance of the chicken yard. I had dug out the area needed ahead of time so that the pad would sit only slightly above the surface to enable the gates to swing over it, but placing the pad still required a lot of heavy lifting.


Notice the two smaller pavers under the gate. They are two of the new ones we got on Monday and fit perfectly in the space. On the other end, I laid out a few blocks to decide which pattern would work the best. We want the path wide enough to move the dolly easily, but not invade the yard too much. I finally figured out the best pattern and laid a few extra along the leg. They fit perfectly as you can see.

The landscaped area against the building will encompass the entire area within the sidewalk when the project is complete. Next step is to finish staking out the site and removing the topsoil. The pavers are only 2 inches thick, so not much needs to be removed.

Also today, we finished building the shed addition. It still needs to be painted and door handles installed, but the construction is complete. We started about two months ago by pulling the shed forward about thirty feet to its present location. After jacking it up and supporting it with concrete blocks and bricks, we repaired the front door and reattached it. Since mom will be using it as a potting shed, I spent a day building shelves along the back wall to put all of her pots on. With that done, dad and I began framing the new tool shed onto the back of the shed.


After a few weekends of work, putting up the walls, then the tin roofing, and finally today the doors, the tool shed is done!

Potting Shed with Stained Glass Window

We also cleared almost everything out of the back building in order to assemble another segment of pallet racking for additional storage. By the time we were done, we were all beat, having worked out in the heat all day. But the place does look a bit better and we have a lot more room in the back building, even if it doesn't look like it.


Tomorrow will be a short work day as we all have other places to be, but I'm hoping to at least get the wood cut for the composting toilet. Stay green!

What a Way to Begin!

How exciting! A blog. I've never really had anything to blog about in the past, but with all the projects I've been working on, I can't wait to share what's going on with everyone. Hopefully, I'll have the time to update regularly with photos and text showing progress on the projects. It should be fun, as all good projects should be.

The next project I'm working on is building a composting toilet. To clarify, a composting toilet is basically a wooden box built around a 5-gallon bucket with a toilet seat on top. The toilet is used as usual, except that instead of flushing and using up to six gallons of water, the user finishes by pouring sawdust over the "droppings" to cover smells and begin the composting process. When the bucket gets full, someone puts a lid on it, carries it outside, and dumps the contents on the compost pile. After a year, this becomes some of the best fertilizer you can use, rich in nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon.

Now, I know this sounds pretty disgusting, using human waste as a fertilizer, but it's actually very sanitary once fully composted and if done correctly doesn't leak any foul smells into the house. Tomorrow, I'll be cutting the boards for the toilet and putting it together. All I still need is a toilet seat. Definitely beats spending $4000 to put an up-flushing toilet in the basement. Not only do we conserve hundreds of gallons of water per year by using the composting toilet, but we don't contribute to the sewage waste that is eventually dumped in the landfill or ocean by waste treatment plants. Nor do we make use of the chemicals that the treatment plant does. Plus, we derive the added bonus of an awesome fertilizer.

I'll ensure to take lots of pictures during the building process and give detailed instructions in the next post just in case anyone else is inspired to build their own composting toilet. Stay green!