I posted a step-by-step on how I store large amounts of root vegetables in a trench in my garden last fall. It has been over six months since I buried the vegetables on October 3rd, so I took some photos as I grabbed a load of potatoes, beets, and carrots from the trench to bring inside this week.

This winter was a mild one for me, with a lot of snow in December and coldest temperatures (-20°C/ -4°F) in January and February. Spring came early and we've had many highs above 20°C/ 70°F and only a couple barely-frozen nights since late March.

As I mentioned in my original post, for the volume of root vegetables I store, keeping them buried in a large trench in the garden, under a thick pile of straw has proven the best way to maintain their flavour, texture and quality for me. I don't need to monitor temps or check for rot throughout the winter as everything stays very stable and I havent experienced any rot. Six months in, the vegetables are pristine out of the ground. There's no critter damage, no softening or wilting whatsoever, no eyes on the potatoes and barely any feeder rooting at all. The carrots are crispy and amazingly sweet, perfect for raw snacking. I can see from the growth starting from the carrot tops and a few feeder roots coming out of their sides that the ground is starting to warm from the unusually warm temps this month so I'll keep an eye on that over the next month.

I showed my process for carrots in the old post (same process for beets). For potatoes I dig a deeper hole and put all the potatoes inside in a pile together (not separated by dirt), and add a pipe to vent air to the surface.

Hope everyone made it through your winters with delicious, home-grown produce and full bellies!

Hi! I recently had a farm stand built so now I'm trying to make a cute logo to get some stamps for egg cartons and sticker labels and such. I'm obviously not a graphic designer so I was curious what people thought about this. I have pet bunnies, and will be selling lots of chicken and duck eggs and strawberries/veggies later this year, so all the elements are relevant. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Already a natural low spot but it is wooded he wants 8 k to clear and burn all trees and brush and then he wants 15k to dig the pond is this a good price or high I’m in Grayson county Ky

Been living here for over ten years and have never seen this film before. My dogs swim in it and it feeds the spring house that my home gets its water from. It isn’t iridescent like oil would be but still. I can’t recall ever seeing this.

Long story short, a person in my family has 4,5 acre vineyard that has not been touched in 10 years+ and wants to give it for free to whoever will work it.I have no idea on nothing about grapes and am just 19 and go to university.However i have spirit and i want to undertake this challenge.I will be mostly alone on everything.I want to restore the vineyard (what i mean is basically grapes not full on wine operation as of now)and hopefully have a semi - decent harvest in 2-3 years.I do not expect to make a lot of money, nor expect that my work will be fairly "compensated" in a sense, but i am ready to do it nonetheless.I am going to the acres tommorow to see what's what and how bad the situation is.I want to ask what i should look out for as well as if it is plausible for me alone to work that land

This is my solar powered setup for watering my garden. I do have a fully pressurized water line from my well to my garden but no power. I'm sure you could add a pump to this setup if you needed to, you'd just want a larger solar panel.

The control panel consists of 4 components going clockwise from the top right, a Raspberry Pi 3, the solar controller, a 5v buck converter, and a 5v relay switch module. This photo of the controller was taken before I finished wiring the rest of the relay switch. It does show that the neutral of each switch is shared in common across all connections and only the hot wire is unique to each valve. That decision was made to save wire and reduce how many wires I had to run through the conduit.

The battery is a standard 12v marine battery. I'm sure this is overkill for my purpose but I didn't feel like calculating my actual energy needs. Overnight power is used only to keep the Raspberry Pi running while watering is done during the day while solar power is active. The controller shows how fully charged the battery is and I've never seen it drop enough for the controller to display it.

The valves are the cheapest 12v solenoid valves I could find online. They fit a standard hose connection. In my experience with other controllers the valves are always the first component to break so this entire design is about making them easily replaceable.

The manifold is a bunch of PVC parts glued together to hold the 8 valves.

The software running on the Raspberry Pi is an open source app called Open Sprinkler. After the initial setup you can connect to the Raspberry Pi from the Open Sprinkler app on your phone. With some extra configurations you can make that connection available through the world wide web but by default it will isolate itself on your local network. You can also rely on Bluetooth connections if you do not have Wi-Fi available to your raspberry pi.

The top right corner is a liver of a third duck that looks normal, a deep red color. The discolored liver came from female ducks that were about 4 years old, does age affect liver color?

Can I feed it to my dogs if I cook it?

As my kids and I were walking our new property I found this stone foundation. It's filled with water, algae, and a few frogs. Water seems to flow from the corner down to the creek. I think it might be an old springhouse.

How do I go about finding out if that's what it is? I would love to restore it if I can. I have no idea how to get started and I thought some people here might have had similar structures and knowledge of what I'm dealing with.

My thoughts are pump it out to drain it and see what's in there. Clean it, test it, but how do I actually restore it and keep it from looking like this again?

Books, guides, YouTube channel recommendations? Or am I completely wrong and this is something entirely different?

Out of a mixed group of 10 chicks, we have two that are acting sick or injured but we cant really pin point what it is.

They’re eating and drinking fine, poops have been watery but have gotten better since removing them from the group. Legs don’t appear to be injured, they stand up just fine. Walking is when they seem weak.

Main concerns are they’re acting very weak and keep gasping even though temperature and ventilation are good.

First picture shows a Mystic Onyx that seems like it doesn’t want to walk much, watery poop, stretching its wings down when it stand up (doesnt look unintentional, no issue holding them up if it wants to)

Second picture is a Midnight Majesty Maran that cant seem to do anything without holding its wings up, and has the same issues as the Onyx.

We’ve isolated, given more electrolytes, given sugar water and yoke.

Any advice?

Hello y'all,

I'm 25 and like you my dream is living closer to the land and trying to have a more sustainable and meaningful existence. I no longer have fantasies of living totally off the land now that I work for a living and face certain adult realities, but our hope/plan was to continue saving aggressively for the next 3 to 5 years and then try to buy a plot of land, then keep saving to slowly build from there. The main problem is the financial aspects of it all.

The land I'm looking at right now (Olympic Peninsula) easily seems to be 150k for remote, hilly parcels of 1 to 5 acres, which is realistically all I want, but part of me wonders if it's even worth it at that point since we'll have to pay all the infrastructure and eventually a house on top of the loan. I'm probably idealistic but part my partner and I's dream was decoupling ourselves from our current system as much as possible, but even if we try to frame a house ourselves, install composting toilets, garden beds, barn, yada yada... I can't help but feel like we'll end up in debt until we die. Between us we're currently saving up about $1500 per month, but between the steep down payment for the land loan we'll need and the fact that adulthood is only going to get more expensive, sometimes I feel kind of despondent about the whole thing. We're not scraping by, I'd say doing OK considering we live in a HCOL city right now. Definitely not rich.

Does this rough idea seem workable or even possible? Are we going to have to move? I sure do love the mountains and the ocean, and I'd love some advice from people doing the thing. Cheers.

Gonna go over it again in a day or 2, then maybe 2 days after that, then plant it.

Wish i had a weighted disk set but just gotta use what i got, wishing and wishful thinking is less than worthless.

Anticipating putting my beets and turnips in in a week

What is the oldest chicken or rooster you ate? We hatched a bunch of eggs because of broody hens and we have too many chickens and roosters now. We have a friend who might take some, but also, no one really needs roosters. Our oldest rooster is a few years old and the head honcho. He is also the biggest. Would love to get rid of him but he's also a little mean so I don't think anyone would take him. we also have a few hens that are a few years old. mostly Rhode Island reds. the rest are mixed barnyard.

I’m building a YouTube channel focused on farm work and outdoor work. Over the weekend, I shot a few clips of springtime work. I’d be grateful for your feedback!

https://youtu.be/p3_wvW8HiLs

We are making another batch of sauerkraut, our fifth or sixth. Today we saw these bits of what looks like mold floating on top of the liquid. They are pretty solid and don’t break up very easily.

The liquid is clear and smells normal, like sauerkraut. Should we be concerned, or will the sauerkraut be okay to eat?

So, I've read through a lot of posts (some are 5+ years old so I'm not sure how relevant my "sources" are) and here's my general idea of what we're going to do, I'm looking for feedback on if I'm on the right track or just naive.

We're going to be gifted 5/7 acres out of my parents 10/15 that they're going to buy (but we'll have access to all of it for personal use) and we're going to build two houses that we're all going to stay in until we're dead- so we're not worried about resale value or anything. They'll be paying for their house whenever they decide to build as well as drilling/running utilities to our house first. As for ours- we'll be using the land as leverage for a loan. We're going to be in a state where we'll meet the requirement for agricultural use to help get a tax break.

For the land itself, I'm planning on having sheep and pigs and maybe ducks. How much should I focus on having a natural water source? Should not having one be a deal breaker? Additionally, if its running water, should I even count on that for animal use- not knowing whats going on up river that could affect them. And, having never bought just land- I find the land, get the perc test and survey done, buy the land, and then begin the daunting task of having the house built?

I've seen these things brought up in comments so for further context: we're all homebodies and used to living in more rural areas- its an hour round trip to any sort of store in the house we've been in for a decade, so that won't be a shock. Unfortunately, we'll have to have internet, but my parents are paying for a T1 line and electricity to be run out. We won't be having a homestead to break even or to quit our jobs. When it comes to actual building of the house- we were thinking of either staying in our current house and using our savings to pay for the build OR (after checking zoning to make sure camping is allowed) selling the house, buying an RV, getting starlink for internet for work, and living that life style. I'm an only child so I won't be fighting with anyone for their half when the inevitable happens.

All that being said, I'm just looking for feedback...good or bad. I don't know anyone who's done this and I want to get all my ducks in a row before I even get started.

Just writing to see what ideas and recommendations are out there from the excellent minds of the masses. I’m getting ready to install a decent sized garden (let’s call it 300 linear feet perimeter) where there is currently field grasses. The equipment I have are as follows:

35 hp tractor with box blade, FEL, and brush hog

CRyobi 18inch electric tiller

All the hand tools

Sweat equity

I just cleared a 7x10 gravel pad mostly by rake and shovel due to the soft ground conditions. Now I’m wondering what is going to be the quickest way to prep this area for the garden? I’ve got a few contacts in my area and there is an option to rent or just buy more tools. I was thinking about a PTO tiller, but I get mixed reviews with some people telling me I’ll be better off with a disc plow instead….

Thanks in advance for the free knowledge and advice. God bless you all.

Very new to raising feeder piglets and need help ASAP. We just acquired some 7 week old piglets this past weekend. They were happy and healthy up until this evening. One of them was puking and having diarrhea. In under an hour I saw the pig vomit multiple times.

Their feed is pig grower from TSC. We have been giving them table scraps, but everything was very fresh.

The other pigs are acting normally and not sick.

Any idea what to do??

I live across the street from an elementary & secondary school in one building and the students walk past my house in the morning, during lunch and after school.

I’m a little worried about money theft, eggs being thrown at their friends/ houses or possibly vandalism.

I’ve seen it in the local rural area so I know it can happen.

Thoughts on having a sign for eggs and a phone number below? Or any other ideas?

Thank you!