1 day- maybe?

MOOO?
After the long awaited final response from the Catapano Dairy, I am sad to announce we are goatless. At least for August, so far. With the State Fair coming up at the end of the month, it is almost impossible to find a goat prior to September 8th. After a quick brainstorm my light bulb went off. How about a cow? The idea didn't occur to me before because I figured with the size of a cow and other assumptions it would be a lot harder to handle and keep a cow than a goat. I was wrong. After some research and talking to other people (Orlando and my grandma) who have experience with livestock, I found out that keeping a cow would be a lot easier than a goat and they produce A LOT more milk. The goat would have produced about 2 quarts of milk on a good day. A cow would produce at least 3 gallons of milk a day. That's SIX TIMES THE AMOUNT OF MILK!
64 oz. v.s. 384 oz.

But with less than a day left I need to scramble and do pull an all nighter to find a cow (cross my fingers) for this coming week.

With the extra pen, which was suppose to be the goats, the idea came up of opening up the connecting wall and getting more chickens. With 20 chickens, opposed to 8, we could barter eggs for milk and other produce. Or we could just make very hefty omelets each morning.

Tent? Rain check! With the weather being as unpredictable as always, again we we're not able to set up the entire tent. I, unfortunately, had to work today so I did not go to the sight. Sylvia and Ken created a new blueprint for how to go about this for, TOMORROW! Because the originally layout we created was 16 x 16 and out tent is 16 x 24, they took a head start leap and re-did the layout so we can start tomorrow from where we should have left off.


Today I bought all the personal hygiene products I will need to August. What a load of stuff. It was very time consuming because I had to make sure it was all biodegradable and eco-friendly. Although a lot of things on the market say organic and all natural, it doesn't mean they can be used in the outdoors as part of the environment.

Sleeping? I am currently hunting for air mattresses and old mattresses in my basement and shed. My mom is the type of person who won't let go of garbage so I'm sure I can find three types of sleeping surfaces after intensively rummaging.We are at a pretty good rate, with the tent nothing being set up just yet, we might need to post pone our moving in for Sunday. It would only set us back one day, but it would give us a lot more time to collect ourselves and whatever else we forgot to cover.

I am really crossing my fingers, knocking on wood, and kissing the sky in hopes that everything goes according to plan. One thing for sure, I know that this project would have been way too overwhelming for one person to take on. If Sylvia and I hadn't paired up, it would probably not have worked as great as it has so far.

2 days- the day after tomorrow

First off, I could not have wished for better chickens. They are incredibly obedient, tamed, calm, and beautiful. Yesterday they laid 7 eggs and today they laid 6 eggs. 13 EGGS in 2 DAYS! We let them out of the coop for the first time today to see how they act as free range chickens. Wow! What a success! They did not go further than 15 square feet from their pen. They seemed to adapt really easily and are very friendly with people. There is an old truck next to their pen and they found it very cool and comfortable under their. Most of them spent their time in the pen eating or underneath the car scavenging. Towards the end of the day, Sylvia brought out watermelon and we fed the compost to the chickens. They went crazy eating the watermelon! It was such an exciting sight seeing the chickens really being one with the land and doing exactly what we hoped they would.

So yesterday I said today was tent building day! This is our platform tent:

Well, the wood for it at least. Obviously, we have a lot more work to do tomorrow. After a couple of panic attacks,break downs, discussions about miscommunication, and replanning we began removing the nails, screws, metal posts, and staples in the 44 planks. The problem was that Orlando had originally thought the tent was only going to stay up only for August. Sylvia and I had planned to make a permanent structure. He had a completely different blueprint for the deck. Sylvia was going by the blueprint from the tent, which the completely had sent the wrong one, but got a lot less wood in a bigger size so it would be more inexpensive and it was also reused. Once this was all said we realized we would have to start from scratch and re-plan the deck with the wood we had.
But by this time it was late in the day and all we could do was prep the wood for tomorrow by cleaning it. Orlando, Tom, and Kevin had been working on that all along, but now after Sylvia and I working out the differences we set to help them out. Orlando has been the master of this entire project so far, therefore I was very embarrassed to have asked him to take off work today when we didn't get as much accomplished as we had hoped. Luckily, Sylvia's mom and him worked out an agreement with my translation so that he could help us tomorrow for the last time. The tent will be up tomorrow, it has to be. P.S. I need to get Orlando something for EVERYTHING because he really has done everything.

I checked on the solar panel charger I ordered. Turns out it takes 12 to 14 business days to get here. I did not planned on it taking that long, but I guess I will just have to make do until it gets here.
Sylvia got 25 pounds of almonds and quinoa to help us out throughout the times. This is going to really be useful to beef up or diets and help us not get light headed.

RAIN BARRELS ARE COMING!
Tomorrow or Saturday I am going to make a couple rain barrels for the livestock and hopefully ourselves. A couple other things we need to to is set up a laundry line, a fire place, a storage, some type of kitchen area, and of course install ourselves.
Drossel e-mailed me today about getting involved in a project helping raise oysters as part of a seeding program with Cornell Co-op and Ducks Unlimited. He also said he was going to try to help us find a goat. What a lifesaver. The oyster project sounds like a lot of fun and I hope that comes through because I would love to help out.
Sylvia talked to me about fishing and soon biking over to Ken's fishing shop to get that going. Also, Sylvia mentioned collecting earthworms and creating our own compost. This would be very useful for the garden, the animals, the land, everything.
Today I got a really good look at what really is in the vegetable garden.
CHECK IT OUT!

THE VERY FIRST VIDEO BLOG!

3 days- overload!

I decided to take a completely different approach to this blogging situation. Instead of sitting down at the end of the day and just rambling about what I can remember, I decided to take notes throughout the day on things to blog about later. Oh boy, is my list long.

I ORDERED THE SOLAR PANEL CHARGER! As you can see to the left I ordered a small solar panel that can charge pretty much any small electronic. This is a HUGE deal because with this I will be able to charge my phone, camera, iphone, and whatever other gadget. It claims to charge a phone in only an hour, which is really fast for a small solar panel. OH! its also a... FLASHLIGHT! Another neat thing about it is that charges at different voltage settings; 3.7, 4.2, 5.5, and 9. It also comes with tons of different adapters and converters. Best part, I got it for the low price of $26.99 on Ebay. (Thanks to Molly Channing for letting me us her Paypal account).


Later on, probably tomorrow, you'll start seeing some video blogging! I had originally bought a Flip Ultra HD video camcorder. After I bought it though, I realized it doesn't take pictures, which makes perfect sense since it is a video camera. I returned it an went on a scavenger hunt for my small Kodak digital camera that takes short videos. Good enough for me.

So we still do not have a goat at this moment other than the State Fair one that will be available in September.
The possibility of extending the project is on board, but we are still looking for a goat. Sylvia has taken a stab at e-mailing the Catapano Dairy Farm because out of all the people I talked to, they were the most helpful and maybe likely? She's trying to take a more promotional aspect with them. Hopefully we won't be as confused and anxious as this goat soon.

THREE DAYS LEFT AND WE STILL DON'T HAVE THE PLATFORM TENT!

Just kidding, sort of, we have the tent, but it still in boxes. We can't put the tent up until the platform is complete.
The platform can't be complete without wood.
Sylvia found a center for recycled wood in Brooklyn that we are getting wood from to build the platform tomorrow! We are trying to get all the help we can get to build the platform and
set up the entire tent tomorrow.

This is going to be a huge task because all we currently have is a layout (first picture on the bottom) and we need to build a platform tent (second picture on the bottom).


Once we have the tent set up we are going to start moving in!

What we still haven't figured out is our sleeping arrangements. I suggested blowing up an air mattress and putting a sleeping bag on it. Another thing is fire, how are we going to make fire. Flint, kindling, stones, sticks, magnifying glass? Still trying to work out some kinks.
I have been backing around all my Burt's Bees products because we will be able to use it and Burts Bees makes all the necessary personal care products.
I've also been putting aside containers, bins, bowls, and other kitchen ware that could be useful.

At work today I was talking to the girls about how excited I am and one of the girls is very into living off the land and as she says "hippie with the land scenes." I told her it would be awesome to have her visit us whenever she wanted. She ended up telling me about her friends who have backpacked all over the world and learned a bunch of cool things along the way that would love to visit us and help out. She showed me picture of one of her friends that learned how to play with fire by throwing it on wire and twirling it around super fast and all over. It would be incredible to have him come and put on a show.

The vegetable garden is coming along great.

I had a red string bean yesterday and it was delicious. This entire time I had been very worried the garden would prosper and we would starve.
Right now we have the vegetable garden and about 6 eggs a day from the chickens. The goat would complete our food pyramid with milk.
We had discussed fishing in the beginning and Sylvia talked to some local fisherman about how to go about that and how to make it happen. I have also been talking to local farms about volunteering in exchange for grains and other goods. Everything is wrapping up very well and as the day after tomorrow's tomorrow gets closer I am coming up with more things that we need and collecting them. Right now I have a clear and steady head about what I need to get done and pacing myself for "the day". The goat is the only thing that has me worried, but nothing can be perfect and this is just a challenge we will have to overcome.

6/5/4 days- Cluck cluck!

I AM THE PROUD MOTHER OF....
EIGHT CHICKENS!

Today was a very long and eventful day.
On my drive to Sylvia's house I happen to drive by some scrap wood which had hinges on it!
SUCCESS!
This was exactly was we needed to make the doors for the chicken coop and goat pen. The only things we needed to do now was put doors on the pens, a lock on them, set them up for the animals, and attach the blue plastic tarp for the rain. The wood we found was covered in dirt and bugs so we went back to my house for a broom. Then we went back to where we found the doors and cleaned them off.
Away to our homestead we go.
Once there, we looked around for the other material we needed; nails, hand saw, screw driver, hammer, etc. Orlando and I very successfully and quickly attached the doors, since they were conveniently pre-made for us. Now to close up all the cracks. We folded a huge blue tarp over the roof of the double pen to prevent rain from rotting the wooden roof and to not let water get into the ceiling part of the shelters. With a very helpful staple gun this took no time.
Next we used old sod crates to lay on the floor in the chicken coops for the chickens to be elevated from the ground. In Sylvia's wood stock we found some scrap wood to cover the holes with and to make the resting pole and boxes for nesting.

Now, the most important part.
BUCK BUCK BUCK CAW! Having found those doors saved us a lot of time and being only three in the afternoon we had just enough time to go to Riverhead to get the chickens. I could not believe I was actually going to go get the chickens! Orlando emptied a big plastic bin he had in his van to put the chickens in and we were off.
We went to Agway first to pick up hay, wood shavings, a feeder, water bucket, and layer pellets. With what I got, it is perfect for about a dozen chickens to live perfectly fine. The bag of layer feed was 50 lbs and only cost $10.25. Chickens eat about 2 lbs of food per week. MATH TIME! 8 chickens x 2 lbs of feed = 16 lbs of feed per week.16 lbs of feed x 4 weeks = 64 lbs of feed for one month for eight chickens. BUT! Since our chickens are going to be free range and will eat compost those 14 lbs of feed they won't get will not be missed.

In the end, think of it as less than $15 a month to maintain 8 chickens that lay an egg a day each.

Once we got all the supplies for my chickens we headed over to Garden of Eve. What an amazing place! I wanted to live there the first time I went the other day. It is exactly how I want to live. There were turkeys, chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, all the seasonal fruits and vegetables, and much much more. Everyone was incredibly friendly and the how atmosphere was extremely peaceful. My mom described it as, "when you're there all your problems just go away." I had previously e-mailed back and forth with the owner, Eve, about my project and purchasing chickens. She is incredible. Her and her husband live in a yurt and only live off of their land and what they produce! I was so thrilled to find out she was doing that because that's a big help for us to talk to her about how to successfully survive.

Today, I called and told them I was coming to pick up the chickens. I had to literally pick them up. We drove down a very cracked and muddy path to the HUGE chicken coop of Garden of Eve. There were a couple people there and we told them I had talked to Eve and I needed about 6 or 7 chickens. They said, "go in there and pick what you need. The redder ones are the youngest and the older ones are rosy and white." Orlando and I went in the coop and chased around, cornered, and tackled 6 beautiful chickens. The entire time there had been one chicken that had followed us around. We grew pretty fond of it and it happily came along with us. Then we stopped and saw the black beauty.
One of a kind.
It was a beautiful ebony chicken. Orlando and I looked at each other and eight was both of our favorite number and this was the perfect chicken to complete our luck. We chased it, jumped, tackled, everything. It was the trickiest and most clever chicken of them all. So much that in one of Orlando's attempted to grab her, he fell on the ground and landed on an egg. All the chickens around flew over and started attacking him so they could eat the egg.
In the end we managed to tame the beauty and took her home.

When back at the homestead, Orlando and I began setting up the hay and wood shavings on the coop floor to create a comfortable nest and finish their home. In the meantime we kept the chickens in the goat pen. (P.S. WE ARE STILL GOATLESS) Sylvia pointed out the one of the chickens had a string wrapped and tied around its leg so I went in, grabbed it done, and cut the string off. When everything was ready for them to move into their new home, Orlando and I carefully began moving each one over in their comfy and very well pampered coop.

The chickens have arrived and are set for our big adventure!

7 days- and counting

"My main focus is the sustainable benefit from goat milk, chicken eggs, and other animals. Part of staying local would also include volunteering at local farms in exchange for other goods. This lifestyle intends to explore the benefits of living off the essentials with minimal energy. We will produce our food from land, our livestock will provide us with other nutrients, our shelter will be hand build from surrounding resources, and our means of transportation will not require any fossil fuel."

That is my mission statement in the works :)

A week from today I will not be sitting on the two person couch in which I am comfortably situated right now. Instead, I will be blogging in the comfort of a wooden floor inside a platform tent. With only a week left until I move into the
backyard homestead
which has been built on Sylvia's property, I find myself anxious, yet nervous because I keep thinking off what we still do not have. Right at this moment all we have is the chicken and goat pen set up and part of the platform tent base. If it had not been for the help of Orlando, Tom, and my grandma, we would probably not have any of those right now. In terms of the pens and tent, all we need to do is set up the individual chicken nesting boxes, put doors on both pens, line the empty space with plastic covers, get the wood for the tent base, build the base, and build the tent. That alone is a lot of work.

I also have to get the chickens and situate them in their new home. But with my luck, which is very bad, the chickens happen to be eating their own eggs and I can't move them until they stop. If they continue to have this problem by Monday I will just have to get chickens from Garden of Eve.
The goat. WHERE IS IT?
Turns out its going to the NY State Fair. Yes, I am excited that it is that special, but what about my project? With less than a week left, I don't know where I'm going to find one.

I have organized a list of things I need to get and do before Wednesday.
I need to go to Riverhead and pick up the food and containers for my animals, find more wood for the doors and create hinges, get a copy of L'etranger at Borders, order my solar charger from ebay, buy a memory card reader for my camera, get rechargeable batteries for my camera, and find my camera. Also, I should probably pack all my stuff and see what personal items I am missing. The only thing I am not worried about is my bike because
I bike everywhere already.

If you've read this and are worried, I tend always been this stressed with time lines, but I will meet them. The goat is my main problem. I was thinking if I can't find one by Saturday then I could volunteer at local farms in exchange for milk. Or I could continue this project into September, which is when the State Fair goat will be available again. I must say, the hardest part so far has been finding the animals. You'd be surprised at how impossible it is to find farm animals for sale within a 300 mile radius.

I've been volunteering at the wildlife rescue center of the hamptons to help me prepare for any wildlife encounters. It's a lot of fun and the people there are the nicest around. I'm probably going to continue volunteering once a week throughout my project. Only difference is its going to take me 2 hours, opposed to 10 minutes, to get there (biking from Bridgehampton opposed to driving from Hampton Bays).

Everyone I've told at work thinks I'm crazy, even though my store is all about being one with nature. I work at Annies' Organic Cafe and Market. I'm very excited about this whole experience! This is exactly how I want to live later on in life, of course with a more stable grasp on everything. I have so much e-mailing to do to everyone that is involved in my project and updating them on how it's coming along and finding what I still need. Even though this was a venting welcome to my project post, it's turned into my personal to do list. Very helpful for these updating days.