Building a Hobby Farm- from woods to eggs

[jonbravado]

great posts - i have a similar scenario w/ 5.5 acres here in central SC.

Tororider - are those trees evergreen? messy?

keep up the posts on progress - i'll be posting mine soon.

congrats on your farm.

J

[tony123]

Toro, The reason I didn't think twice about chipping was the expense of the chipper. I didn't think about using the chippings though. I could pave my entry road with them. I'll make a call to see what a chipper would cost us.

Just called. $100 for half day and $180 for full day. Chips up to 4". My brush/tree pile is about the size of a large cement truck. I'm guessing 2 days work. I'm not sure its worth that much to me? If anythings bigger than 3" I'll burn it in the fireplace, and the rest might not make the best chips for roadway anyhow?

[tony123]

J, glad you're enjoying the posts. I'll be on the lookout for your project to learn more about it. I imagine in central SC you're flatter than we are. Do you have this much grade to work around?

[jonbravado]

it's fairly flat - but in 600 feet it drops almost 40 feet to the creek.

it's a strange tract, 260x1000 ft. roughly. a good homesite next to an old barn. 2 acres or so of prairie grass. and 3 acres of woods. it's surrounded by farms so it's more secluded than we would think at first.

i like the elevation changes upstate, but i know they can be tricky!!

J

[ALBALD1]

I started with chickens about 3 years ago. You shlould check this out. Backyard Chickens - Message Board - ezboard.com
That's the best chicken information site I've found & the people there are quick with answers if you have questions. I suggest reading in the archives to help plan your housing. Small suggestions you will find on there can make things a lot easier. You might start w/ 4-6, but most likely will end up with more. Chickens are very addictive. By the way, most of your laying breeds will start laying around 20 weeks old. After a couple months, they will be laying everyday. When winter comes on, they slow down somewhat unless you have artificial light. Their laying is related to daylight hours.

[Tororider]

Jon, Unfortunately they are decidious. I wouldn't call them dirty until fall when they have a ton of what are very much like weeping willow leaves, as with most leaves, easy to clean up when dry, not so much when wet.

Tony, I was lucky enough to be able to talk my dad into buying a wallenstein chipper, works great. We have almost 19 acres and a lot of dead ash thanks to the emerald ash borer. Not to mention lots of other dead wood so we figured we would use it a lot and was more efficient to buy than to try and rent for several weekends. We probably have 20-25 yards of chips already. For us, stuff over 5-6" is firewood so we have some pretty good chips from the 3-4" stuff, although the smaller stuff isn't terrible.

Can't wait to see the updated pictures later this week.

Albald1, I will have to check out that site too, then I can try to convince my wife we need chickens, hehe.

[tony123]

Al, thanks for the chicken link. I've spent an hour or so there already and it will be a big help. So far though, they make predators sound like a real pain in the rear end.

J, sounds like an interesting piece of land. I look forward to your thread.

The grader is doing our job as a moonlighting project, so we get an hour or two done each night before the sun goes down. Last night he worked an hour past dark. I hope to have some photos posted soon. Bear with me.

tony

[ALBALD1]

Just make your coop so you can close it up tight at night. I've found 1 coon & 1 possum trying to get in the pen, but they couldn't have gotten into coop anyway. the only predator deaths i've had was my own dogs grabbing a few.

[tony123]

Alright, I've got some update info finally. The excavator is finished with its work. I'm very pleased with how it all came out. Now if we can just keep the rain from washing the whole farm down the hillside we'll be doing well.

I ended up with about 80' of road out to an upper pad of roughly 70x30 then over to a midlevel pad of 30x30' for a pole barn and further down the ramp to the lower level pad of roughly 90'x50'.

I want to plant a cover crop over the exposed dirt, but with all the work left to do I don't know what would live through the trampling and tractor traffic. Any suggestions?

I don't have very good "overall" photos. My wife did all the picture taking and she seems to be more interested in the kids than the farm Just kidding, I'm sure you guys will enjoy some photos including the kids too. Like I said, they're the whole purpose for all this anyhow.

On to the photos.

This is how we started the morning today. Took the kids out to check the mail...it's a decent ride, at 600' of driveway.



This is me boxblading the upper pad. You can make out the 30x30 pole barn clearing just behind the tractor.



Some of the trees needed to be hauled out of the woods to a cutting area. Did that today. Probably about 10 sticks like this one. Again, this is the upper pad.



Excavator left the grapple in the way.....that **** thing is heavy.


With the density of all the small trees in the woods, we're cutting about half of them out and dragging them out this way. You can see the ramp on the right side, and I'm on the lower pad.


What you can't see is that those trees are attached to about 50' of wire mesh fence that I just pulled right out of the woods in one peice! It was awesome! Seemed like I was pulling half the forest with me.

I hope tomorrow to get some more panoramic shots for you all to get your bearings.

I told you we'd get to tractor photos.

tony

[3RRL]

tony,
Those are great pictures man.
I love that hay wagon ride and also your red dirt. Does it stay that color like after being exposed (dug up)?