Winter in South Texas

Tres Colinas on the road less graveled



 

 

Blizzard conditions at the barn. 

 

With Christmas and New Years behind us we have optimistically moved into 2014.  After last winter in Knoxville, I was looking forward to "wintering" in South Texas.  I had heard that I should expect a few mornings in the 30's and the occasional light frost but should also expect days in the 70's.  Not exactly. We've had a lot more 30's and very few 70's.  We had our first Knoxville friends drop in for a visit.  David and Nancy-shown left in the picture with Pam-were visiting their son and daughter-in-law in Austin and drove over to spend the day with us.  They lived in Texas for many years and were used to the quickly changing weather. As you can tell from their coats it was chilly but nothing like what was to come in a couple of weeks.  We had a good visit and got them a chicken fried steak fix at the Longhorn Steakhouse in Bryan. 




They got out just in time.  The polar vortex that gripped most of the country hit us a week or so after they left.    While we are acclimated to  high temperatures, anything near the other end of the thermometer results in a lot of complaining in these parts.  When the temperature hit 9 degrees it was the equivalent of a four-fold rip in the ectoplasmic continuum.  This was the result of a "blue norther" that came through and actually stayed almost a week.  We didn't make it to the grocery store but I am confident the Lone Star beer and salsa chips (Texas equivalent of milk and white bread) shelves were empty.  We had more of an ice storm than snow accumulation but you can see the devastation in the pictures to the left and below.  Thankfully, two days later the temperature was back in the 60's allowing life to return to normal.  I can only imagine how much worse it would have been without global warming.

 

Hungry children left SOS messages in the snow



 

This warmer weather gave me the opportunity to do some tree planting.  I headed to a nursery near Independence, TX and bought a trailer full of fruit trees and shrubs.  Maybe I should send this picture to President Obama as an example of what "shovel ready work" actually looks like.  Here's what I bought:  three fig trees (Brown Turkey, Celeste & LSU Gold); four peach trees (Sam Houston, TexPrince, FloridaKing & Earligrande); two pear trees (Moonglo & Shinko); one Sugar Cane Jujube; two Fuyu persimmon trees; three apple trees (Dorsett Golden, Anna & Einsheimer); one Gold Kist Apricot; two Burgundy plum trees; one Wonderful pomegranate; one All-in-one Almond tree; thirteen blueberry bushes (Climax, Tifblue & Premier); nine thornless blackberries bushes (Natchez); six Heritage raspberry bushes;  two American elderberry bushes and three muscadines (Black Beauty, Black Noble & Black Old Fashioned) .  I managed to get them all in the ground in a day and slept pretty well that night dreaming of cobblers, jelly and wine.

 

 

 Work on the house has continued at a consistent pace with the roof, doors and windows installed (the front door is temporary so the house can be closed to the elements-hogs, dogs and cats, mostly).  The walls have been insulated and all of the plumbing and electrical is roughed in.  As you can see in the pictures below, the sheet rock and the stone have been delivered and are ready for installation. 

 

 

Meanwhile, back on the farm

 

 

 

We bought a bull to keep the cows entertained (one is ours
and the other belongs to Pam's brother-not sure which is which).



 

I bought some fish for the tank (bluegill, crappie, catfish and fathead minnows) to provide some amusement and maybe some food for the table.  As it is a new tank I needed to provide some structure to give some of the fish a little protection (the fathead minnows are basically food for the other fish) from each other and the local blue heron that flies over.  Here I am on my pontoon boat dragging some cedar trees out to sink in the center of the tank.  That's the first time I've used that boat in several years.  I used to take it to the Clinch River and float with the current as I fished for trout.  It's basically a lawn chair mounted on two air-filled pontoons.  Since we moved to Texas, it's been far less nobly utilized, spending most of the time in the barn providing the cats a comfortable place to sleep during the day.  Matt the cat hissed at me when I shooed him off it that morning. 









Hot biscuits straight from the Dutch Oven

I built a fire in the fire pit and used some of the coals to bake some biscuits in the Dutch Oven.  I felt a little like Gus McRae when they turned out well (I used the Tupelo Honey biscuit recipe which results in a crunchy outside and fluffy inside).  They were as good as they look with a pat of butter and some jelly.

There was a spectacular sunset that night

We sat by the fire that night and as you can see Matt had forgiven me for disturbing his nap earlier in the day.  He was mesmerized by the fire until it waned to smoldering coals.  He curled up and went to sleep soaking up some of the heat.  We called it a day about ten. 

Building Activities at Tres Colinas

Tres Colinas on the road less graveled

In my 12/1/2013 post, I outlined my plans for our chicken coop along with my intention to build a swing/play set.  I also shared that our house construction was finally underway.  The weather was uncooperative for about a week but that left plenty of time for lots of accomplishments.

Chicken Coop Update

I managed to get most of the coop built and one coat of paint on it before we had a week of rain and very cold weather.  I finished it around the middle of  December.  I used finished broadly as I still have to install my feeding and watering systems.  As, we won't be getting any chicks until around mid-March, I will wait and use the cooler weather for other outdoor projects (fencing and fruit tree planting being top priorities).  Here are pictures of the coop construction:



The framing is in place and the metal roof is on.  You can see
the hardwire mesh floor and venting just under the roof eaves.
 



The siding is on and the nesting boxes are built.

 
 

Painted and basically finished.

 

 

This shows how the nesting boxes are accessed from outside
the coop.  You can see the "human" door on the left.  The
"chicken" door is on the opposite side, going to and from
the chicken yard.

 



 

Swing set Construction

This little project was a Christmas gift for Ava and Cora, so only had a week to complete it.  Fortunately, it was fairly easy and the weather was good.  Here's how it was done:

Framing the play fort with 4x4s and 2x6s. 
It should handle anything the kids can throw at it.

Decking, railing, ladder and roof support added.

Finished product.  A little tricky building it by myself
(especially installing the swing legs and beam).  That's why
tractors have front end loaders.

House Construction

After signing a contract in August and seeing no activity until mid-November when the foundation was framed (picture in last blog), we were a little discouraged about the lack of progress on the house construction.  We realized a good deal of that time was spent on finalizing plans and other paperwork but still thought a lot of good weather days were passing without any construction.  Then December arrived and so did the builders.  Here are pictures showing the major phases of construction to date:

The plumbing is roughed in.

Digging out for the beams.

Cables in place and ready for concrete pour.  These blue cables
will be stretched to increase the concrete's strength.

Starting the concrete pour.  We used about 90 yards of concrete.

Concrete pour half finished.

Pour finished, finishing work underway.



Slab finished and curing. Note the cables (not the toe plate bolts
sticking up) sticking out near and horizontal to the ground.

Finished slab curing for about ten days.

Applying 33,000 psi of pressure to each cable to
stretch it tight.  Each cable was stretched five inches.

Walls going up as the framing begins.

All walls up along with some OSB siding.  Starting on the
ceiling and roof.

OSB siding on and major progress on the roof.

Framing essentially complete with moisture barrier in place. 
Adding soffits and siding at the eaves.

At this point, the house is considered forty-percent complete.  It's amazing to me that this required a total of eight days of work.  Allow me a moment to editorialize about that work.  So far almost everyone that has worked on our house has been of the Hispanic race and most likely Mexican heritage.  Many have limited English speaking abilities.  It is fascinating to me that so many Hollywood types complain about racism and stereotypes when almost all of my stereotypical opinions are due to what I've seen on TV and in movies.  Everyone knows that Mexicans are slow and lazy...always taking siestas (again from Hollywood productions).  I've been blown away by the work ethic of every one so far.  They arrive about fifteen minutes before sunrise and get prepared to work.  As soon as there is enough daylight to see, they go to work.  The first break they take is for lunch (many worked while they ate-especially the concrete workers) and that lasts about thirty minutes.  They work non-stop until it is too dark to see and then return the next day to repeat the process.  Everyone was busy all of the time, NEVER standing around talking or wasting time.  They have been professional, polite and respectful.  While this is the work ethic that made America great, I suspect it's hard to find among most citizens now.  That's all I will say on that other than I am very impressed with the workers I've seen to date.  

 

The next steps should be the installation of the windows, doors and the roofing.  Once that is done, I just might start sleeping in it.

Chicken Coop Plans

I have been researching chicken coops most of the summer.  There are a lot of plans and ideas on the Internet but none seemed to be exactly what we wanted.  Raising chickens is growing in popularity but most coop plans are designed for small yards (less than eight birds) or for someone intending to make a living off chickens by raising hundreds of them.  We plan to have between fifteen and thirty birds and so fell somewhere between what is commonly needed.  So, I was left to take what I considered to be the best ideas from various coop designs, mix in a few ideas from local farmers and meld them into a coop design to meet our needs. 

 

Here are some standards/requirements for a chicken coop:

• Minimum of two square feet of floor space per chicken
• Eight inches of roosting space per chicken (roost should be at least two feet above the floor)
• At least one nesting box per four hens
• Protection from predators (snakes, raccoons, foxes, etc.)
• Good ventilation

In addition, we had the following preferences:

• Easy external access for egg collection
• Easy provision of drinking water and food
• Easy cleanup of the coop
• Easy collection of waste products (chicken manure is a fantastic garden fertilizer)
• An attractive coop

After taking all of these factors into consideration, we came up with the following design features:

• The coop will be eight feet wide, eight feet deep and approximately five feet high.  This sixty-four square feet of floor space will accommodate up to thirty-two birds.  While that might be a little crowded, they will only be in the coop at night and will have a thirty-by-thirty foot pen for daytime use along with some free-ranging opportunities (after I train the dogs to ignore them).
• There will be eight nesting boxes that can be accessed from outside the coop by lifting a hinged door. 
• The coop will be three feet above the ground with two doors and two windows.  One door will be for the chickens (with a ramp) and the other for us.  All doors and windows will have spring catch locks.
• The top six inches on all walls will be open and covered with hardwire cloth for ventilation as will the windows.
• There will be a PVC feeding tube that is accessed from outside the coop to drop food into a pan.  The tube will be big enough to hold several days of food.
• We will buy and install an automatic drip watering system.
• The floor will consist of two inch by six inch joists covered with one-quarter inch hardwire cloth.  This will allow chicken waste to fall to the ground for easy collection with a shovel and no need to clean the coop floor or have or replace litter.  In fact, we intend to never go inside the coop.  Any inside cleaning can be done with a spray hose from the door. 
• The coop will be covered with wood siding (painted barn red) and covered with a white metal roof.

I hope to have it finished by the end of this week if the weather cooperates and will post a picture of the finished product.  Pam plans to order the chickens for spring delivery.  She has been studying the various breeds with a strong interest in heritage breeds.  She claims she will be the queen of the chickens after I get the coop built (we shall see). 

 

Once the coop is finished, I have to construct a swing/play set before Christmas for Ava and Cora.  I bought a kit that has everything but the lumber which I will buy, cut and put together.  Any spare time will be devoted to continued clearing of brush and repairing fences.  Last, its time to plant fruit trees and bushes.  While I am busy with all of this, we hope to see significant progress on our home construction.  The builder only worked about two days in November so this is as far as they got.

 

 

After twelve months, twenty four days and twenty and a half hours of living in this camper...we are ready for this house to be built. 

Garden Plans

Garden Plans

I've been busy preparing for both my Fall and Spring garden and thought I'd share my plans.  I don't consider myself a radical survivalist but to quote Jason Robertson, "Food from grocery stores scares me."  I don't think we have any idea what we are eating any more.  Between the pesticides, herbicides, hybridization and genetic modifications the food we buy to eat has changed dramatically over the last fifty years.  Most of these changes were designed to improve productivity and not necessarily nutritive value.  Some may be harmful over the long term.  Anyway, I am going the heirloom and organic seed route as much as possible.

I've got about an acre inside my fence that I am preparing for the garden (includes fruits and vegetables).  A diagram of what I am working toward is shown below.  Our soil is well suited for blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, persimmon trees, figs trees, peach trees, citrus trees and any type of melon.  It needs some improvement for apples, pears, plums and most vegetables.  At the beginning of fall, I planted a mixture of oats and Austrian winter peas in all of the garden areas.  When these crops mature (around January) I will cut them down and disk them into the soil.  This will add both Nitrogen and organic material to my sandy soil.  After allowing three weeks for the soil to absorb these new nutrients, I will plant all of the berries and the fruit trees and get started on the Spring garden.   

You can see that I have divided the vegetable area into three sections.  Each is fifty feet wide by one hundred feet long.  I will rotate using them for vegetables every three years.  The other two years they will be in a cover crop or in some other phase of improvement.  This avoids overuse of the soil, allows time for soil improvement and avoidance of plant diseases (common when the same soil is overused). 

 

I did plant a small Fall salad garden (20'x20') this year.  As the soil wasn't quite right, I had some topsoil delivered and spread it around.  I planted: radishes, carrots, mixed greens, butternut lettuce, broccoli and kale.  It's been raining so everything is coming up and looking good.  With the weather patterns in south central Texas, we can have a Fall garden continuously through the "Winter" and can generally start a Spring garden in February.

 

I saw an article on the Internet recently proclaiming that Texas was the future of America.  It supported this claim with a list of ten reasons including jobs, land and housing cost, cost of living, low taxes and finally the rise of new cowboys (people moving to Texas to find a better and more self-sufficient lifestyle).  I guess I fall into that category as I wasn't born in Texas but got here as fast as I could.

I Should Have Been a Cowboy

Longhorn Visitors

I returned to Tres Colinas after a brief trip to Caldwell and found these visitors in my front pasture.

I spent most of the morning trying to determine where they came from and who owned them.  I'd not seen any Longhorns while driving up and down our road.  They aren't that common as there are much better beef breeds available.  After numerous calls to neighbors and the Sheriff (they handle wandering cattle problems), I finally identified their owner was my neighbor on my south property line.  I've never seen any activity on that property but it seems he dropped them off on Saturday and just assumed the fence was good enough to hold them.  When cows are moved to a new pasture, they often try to return to their prior home.  While they couldn't get that far, they could cross to my land. 

So, I fired up my tractor and herded them back through a small hole in the fence.  This was a little tricky as the hole was only five feet wide.  I guess their cattle drive genes kicked in as all I had to do was keep the leader moving in the right direction and the rest followed.  I did give them my best Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood) stare a couple of times.  I repaired the gap and thought they would stay as they had plenty of grass to eat and access to a stock tank (water) on their property.   I was wrong as I guess they prefer my grass and water.

They were back the next evening, eating my grass, drinking from my stock tank and wreaking havoc on my deer feeder (like a bad brother-in-law).  I guess they could smell the corn in it and decided it was a candy machine for them.  They knocked it over and managed to get the top off, giving them access to 150 lbs of corn that I had recently loaded.  That kept them busy (and happy) for awhile.  The dogs are keeping them from getting too close to us and Pam did yell that we were Aggie's not Longhorns (that had little affect).  I don't like to think what those horns could do to our vehicles or the RV. 

Hopefully, their owner will round them up in a day or two, although they are pretty.  Fortunately, they can't get to my black angus or I might have some Longhorngus's next year.  Yippie-ki-yo-ki-yay.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Busy September

Tres Colinas on the road less graveled

I said I would try to blog more frequently but I've been pretty busy this month. 

Patiently waiting in line to buy Kolaches

 First, we had the Kolache Festival.  It was the same weekend as the Texas A&M-Alabama Football game so the attendance was less than the typical 12,000-15,000.  Still, there was a big crowd and lots of Kolaches to sample.  I may have said this before but Caldwell was originally a Czech settlement and this festival celebrates that heritage.  It began with the singing of the National Anthem, the Texas State Song (also known as the Texas National Anthem-I like the sound of that) and finally the Czechoslovakian National Anthem.  Then you lined up to buy Kolaches.

Kolaches bagged up for sale

Personally, I went for the raspberry, blackberry, poppy seed and key lime (like a summertime party in your mouth they claimed) versions of the Czech pastry.  I had to stand in line for an hour but it was worth it.  There were also lots of arts and crafts as is typical of festivals like this all over Texas (every town seems to have some type of festival during the summer).  All are centered around some type of food (sausage, fish, beef, etc.) and/or some form of arts and crafts.  It gives us something to do instead of drink beer all the time. 

 My next big event was attending an A&M football game.  I've attended college games in several different stadiums and they all have their traditions and unique spin on how to support their football team.  After visiting Kyle field, I don't think anyone beats the Aggies.  They have the Corp of Cadets that march in and sit together, they have a military style band that plays military march songs (kind of like watching Ben Hur, Patton and a couple of WWII movies at the same time) while executing precise military march movements across the field, they have cheers led by Yell Leaders (all male) who use hand signals to tell you what to cheer (this is why they have midnight yell practice the Friday before each game), the students stand the entire game (this indicates their readiness to respond if called on to play-hence the 12th man concept, they yell "Whoop" after each first down and high five each other around the stadium with each touchdown, you kiss your date after each score, they play their fight song a couple of times and everyone sings it while swaying arm-in-arm (some schools play their fight song ad nauseam) and finally (this really wasn't an all inclusive list) the Corp members chase, catch and throw the Yell Leaders in the campus fishpond after a victory.  Between these activities and getting to watch Johnny (Football) Manziel, it was one of the best college football games I've attended (Gig'm Aggies!).

 

 

Foundation

Either side of these events I started building a well house.  I needed it to get the sun off the water tank (we essentially had hot water all the time without a water heater) and to protect the pump wiring from the dogs (who decided it was chewable).  I'd never built a building before so it was trial and error.  I built it on pier blocks to make it easy to level and because I didn't need it to have a floor.  Then I added the walls, roof joists and the siding (I also anchored it to the ground with anchor rods and straps.  Sounds simple enough but there were several "learning opportunities" at every step.  I also hadn't worked with sheet metal and learned (the hard way) a few tricks on how to handle it.  I plan to add some white trim to the door and as the shed is 8'x12' will also build some tool storage inside.  With that experience behind me, I'm ready to start on the chicken coop in a couple of weeks (have to let those metal splinter cuts heal first).   

 

Walls up

 

 

Essentially finished well house

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While all of this was going on, we were finishing the tank (pond) digging process.  The digging was completed on a Thursday afternoon and at that point it had about 2' of water from the spring seepage.  It rained 2.5" the next day which recharged the spring resulting in about 5' of water in the tank within two days.  The spring ran for another day or two and then stopped but started again the next Thursday when it rained another 2".  The spring has continued to flow into the tank filling it to overflow.  I planted both ryegrass seed and Tifton 85 sprigs and both have begun to grow with the rains.  This all happened so fast I felt like I was watching the Genesis Project (old Star Trek movie) come to life. 



Finished Digging (you can see Mattie on the right bank waiting for water)

"Where's the water you promised me I could play in?"

 

Add water and instant tank!

Hauling the granddaughters around the Fair

We wrapped up September with the Burleson County Fair.  I'll have to admit being a bit disappointed in the animal showing portion of the fair.  I expected (or at least wanted) to see a variety of breeds of cows, goats, sheep and chickens but that isn't how they do it.  There were some different breeds of cows but everything else was the same breed and color.  I don't know if this makes the judging easier or is considered a level playing field for the competitive entrants.  It was interesting to see the auction held after the judging is finished.  The top five in each category (chickens, rabbits, steers, goats, pigs, lambs, etc.) are auctioned to the highest bidder with the proceeds going to the child (typically a 4-H member) who raised the animal.  It's not unusual to see these animals sell for tens of thousands of dollars.  The buyer views it as marketing expense and a tax right-off and the seller gets a leg up on college tuition.  In total, the fair raised over $1.5 million from ticket sales and this auction (pretty impressive for a rural county).  Of course they had all the rides and fair food (red velvet funnel cake was one of Pam's favorites). 

 

The heifers are doing well (eating grass and adding weight) but we lost one of the cats.  Miss Kitty (the white one with grey spots) disappeared one day and hasn't returned.  That leaves us with the odd couple of Lilly and Matt.  They seem happy with their surroundings and Lilly captured and killed a gopher last week.  Fall arrived on the heels of a norther Saturday evening so the morning temps are in the low 50's with daytime highs in the low-mid 80's.  We are seeing several deer around the tank but haven't seen any hogs since all the tank digging started.  I expect them back any day.

 

Finally, I will end with this picture of Shane.  I said in one of my first blogs that I planned to use the dogs as a deterrent against wild hog interventions in the garden.  It's obvious that Shane took his training very seriously as he literally is using his body to protect a pile of dirt in the garden.  With that kind of dedication, the garden should be safe.