Official Poll : What project are you planning to start this 2016?

[Support]

2015 has passed by like a breeze and it's now time to start planning for the year 2016!

So tell us, what project are you planning to start this 2016?

If your answer isn't listed, you can vote for "Others" and reply to this thread with your answers.

 

[Dances With Critters]

In 2016 I'm hoping to get some chickens to produce eggs. So that's my major project.

 

[Mini Horses]

Let's update some of our efforts as many things we planned are happening about now. Or should be. I have 24 chicks on my back porch that are 3-4 wks old, plus 2 trios of Mrans for eggs to hatch later...not laying for another couple months. Most of the chicks are pullets and are some Marans and some blue egg layers I got from Pet Chicken. We'll see how that goes.

My March due does gave me a single doeling, twin doelings & a single buckling. All good. One doe due in early Jun & other 3 had 7 bucklings between them in early Feb...yes, all boys! So there will be sales....Easter is 3/31 and early borns will be ready for those looking for young stock to butcher for that holiday time. I still need to wok on milking the does from all this. Just no time between all else. I see some slowdown after next weeks jobs (gotta get that check!). Milking will start then.

Getting ready to move pigs to their new area. House there for them, fence 3/4 done, just another 100-150' and then they can be "herded" there. THAT will be fun!! Yikes. The garden spot is so very more than plowed.....I will have to get in there with the tractor & tiller to work it over. Probably some grader blading will be needed. Hey, they sure took out some deep grass roots!! With about an acre of pasture in the new lot I hope to have less rooting. If it gets bad, they're gone. LOL Simple.

Should be planting and transplanting in garden by end of March. Chickens are laying very well. In fact, too well. Cooking some tonight for egg salad and even some pig treats. Never ending cycle, right? Almost all the frozen milk/cheese is out of freezer now, too. Milk from the does "training" will be great for both pigs & chickens as it will be far more than I need or can use...even for cheese. Seeds here for the forage patches in the various pastures and hope to get those out next weekend, so some can be grazed early summer. Our grass is just start to wake up!

How is everyone else coming along? This is really everyones busy time with birthings, milkings, gardens, etc., etc. Spring!!

 

[baymule]

We moved in February 2015 to 8 acres. I planted a garden but it was a bust. After years of successful gardening, that was hard to take. I'll be planting fruit trees and berries. We have 3 feeder pigs, one for us, two for friends, so we are raising our own meat. Bought 4 ewes to raise lambs, and plan to sell the lambs. I already can, dehydrate and freeze our own food. Already had chickens for eggs and meat.

 

[tortoise]

I could only vote for one so I went with income generating. 2016 will be my second year of large garden and preserving food, so I still have a lot to learn!

We will be doing some chicken breeding. Our goal is to raise some rhode island reds and some first-generation Cornish Rock crosses. We had decent success incubating eggs last year, so it sounds like a fun journey... other than butchering/processing.

DS8 and I are saving soda cans to make a big solar heat collector for the chicken coop.

We haven't butchered our first lamb yet, so that will be a 2016 project.

I will be homeschooling DS8. Waiting until the registration opens on July 1 to do the legal paperwork.

I want to add strawberries. We have loads of raspberries and blueberries. I just happen to adore strawberries and want to put a patch in at this property. It was hard to leave my berries behind when we moved.

I want to figure out starting plants from seed. I've tried every year for a decade and always fail. This year I had success with oregano and thyme. The rest of my stuff didn't make it through transplanting. Lighting is a problem, and I think I found a reasonably priced grow light set up. I hate buying tomato and pepper plants every year! If I can be successful, it will pay for itself in 2 seasons (the cost of the seedlings we buy), plus I'll be happy to be able to grow things I haven't been able to get started and am unwilling to buy.

I want to start a Food is Free project to share our excess produce.

And I want to grow BOSS for chickens! The pocket gophers ate 4 plantings of seed last year! But a fox has dug out the gopher holes, so I hope for better results in 2016!

 

[Mini Horses]

Beehives -- I'm sure you know to move them at night. As for grass around them, black plastic now to kill grass, garden weed cloth before move, cover with rocks. Won't be totally foolproof but sure close. Or, if you just want close around, put piece of an old pool liner, then cover with rock....or straw. Anything like that will work.

 

[Denim Deb]

If I could only do in a day everything that I come up with that needs doing, I'd have so much more time for relaxing!

 

[ChickenMomma91]

Last year was a bust for me. All I got was a good amount of cayenne peppers and my chickens started laying (right now they're free-loading molters). So this year were gonna try straw bale gardening. Oh and for those who knew we were trying, WE SIGNED ON THE HOUSE IN AUGUST!!!

 

[Beekissed]

My projects were bees if the Lord wills it and I had prayed that He put the materials for it in my path. Well...He has been doing so in strange and wonderful ways, as per His usual. I had advertised for wanting old hive bodies, no matter how old or in disrepair, as I planned on knocking two of them together to make a long body hive. Didn't even get a nibble.

But...one day in town we stopped at an unlikely looking yard sale and I saw a nightstand/end table for $4 that we didn't really need but I felt I couldn't pass it up...it was just too cute and heavy built to leave it there for that price. After I got it home and was looking at it, the Holy Spirit~in that still small voice~said it looked a lot like a hive body and that it would be an awfully cute hive.

So, the plan is to wrap that top in flashing(the only part of this piece that looks to be composite), remove the drawers but reattach the drawer facings, use the drawer slides for the ledge for my top bars and with a few other modifications, turn this little stand into a top bar/Lang hybrid. God even provided a chance to buy a frame to use as a template for making more bars/half frames~which I'll take to Lowe's and get them to cut some 1x1s to the proper dimension and add a groove for comb~ and the plastic comb sheet to cut and use for comb root on the bars.

I hope to bait in a swarm, so I need to get this thing done and out there when the bees come scouting for places to live. Can't wait to see how it all looks when I'm done and also can't wait to see if I can bait in a swarm. God is so good!!!

Got my breeding pen tweaked and I just need to finesse my nesting sites and it will be finished. Used all reclaimed wood~some out of a dumpster dive, some from a set of bunkbeds my brother deconstructed and gave to us, some we've had for nigh on 50 yrs. I even reused the screws from the lumber we found in the trash, so even the hardware was reclaimed.

Then used a free screen door, a $5 door from the habitat store, and a new sliding closet door kit to revamp this pen and a few new lattice panels, making it bigger, more streamlined and more functional. One door now slides open, while the other opens on hinges to make this pen open wide for other purposes.

I plan to use it for breeing and brooding, then remove the screen doors to use for dehydrating crops this summer, then the pen will be turned into a sort of root cellar n the fall/winter, with the use of bales of hay, to store some apples, pumpkins and squash. Half of it will be used for that purpose while the other half will be used for the dog's winter lounging/guarding spot. The doors will then be used as the tops to cold frames in the garden. Come spring the doors go back on the pen and we'll do it all over again, Lord willing.

The rooster is ensconced~using my sawhorses as free standing roosts in this pen~and awaiting the addition of his 4 breeding girls on Monday. Then he and one of my other hens will be going to their/my first show over the Easter weekend, so have to get ready for that as well.

The potatoes I planted late last fall are now coming up and I'm trying to get my cool weather/early spring crops planted in the middle of a dozen other projects. I've been making seed tape 2 weekends out of the month, trying to keep up with the planting schedule to come.

My brother gave us 4 new, semidwarf apple trees for the homestead, so those need to be planted this week.

Meanwhile I'm building lattice, an arbor and gate for my son's town garden and also planting their space.

Many, many projects due this spring,...too many to even put down in a post, but I'm feeling a little swamped already. In a good way, but still....swamped.

Hope everyone is having as much fun as I am already this spring!

 

[Beekissed]

Got the bee hive completed~for better or for worse~and placed where I wanted it. It's leveled in all ways, used a compass to line up the frames/bars with the north/south direction, the area was doused to determine a location close to a geomagnetic line and it's been baited with a few drops of lemongrass and then a beeswax/honey cake rubbed in the hive.

Can't do any more than that. Making a hive quilt for the top "board"~just burlap and shavings~ and will place that as soon as I can.

I know it's not quality work, but it's mine and it was done on the super cheap, it's sturdy and it was fun to make. The yard sale nightstand/bee hive project, using modified Lang mediums(took the bottom of the frames off) with a wedge guide for half of the frames and top bars for the rest. I've got it ventilated a little like a Warre and will be using a burlap hive quilt on top of the bars.

First 2016 new spring project is done....praying it actually draws in a local wild bee swarm.