Horseradish Hill Homestead

Hello All,

My how the time does fly.  Lotta stuff has been going on wrt the Hill, so I'll see if I can recap the doins since last we visited our heros...

A local magazine, Inside Out in the Hudson Valley, did this article  from an interview with my sweet baboo and I on homesteading in "the city," trying to promote the idea that pretty much anyone can do something on the road to self sufficiency.  Cool piece, made us sound quite the green ones, I must say. 

Also featured an article with James Howard Kunstler, a kinda local kinda personnage who writes and talks about the death of suburbia and all it implies.  Author of The Long Emergency, a modern classic on peak oil. There's also a review of his latest, World Made By Hand, guess it qualifies as speculative fiction of life After the Collapse.

 My oompah loompahs have finished their work on the siding, and now the place looks like this...

- haven't gotten to painting the foundation - and

On the corner in the foreground, right - a bit of the old remains.  The electrical service had to be replaced, and my electrician got held up, and Fred and Merlin were quick, so they had to leave that part till, like, spring?

Also note the mondo pile of logs:

Not sure whether I wrote about this before, but we ordered a Tarm (they changed their name to BioHeat USA) wood boiler and it should be ready for pick up in a week or two.  It uses "gassification" to combust all of the wood so supposedly there's very little smoke or creosote etc.  I got what was supposed to be 4 cords of dry hardwood, above.  Funny story... all the illustrations of the boiler's manual showed a log, unsplit, in the hopper.  So I made sure the wood I got was chunk, unsplit.  New manual comes out right after I buy the wood, one which takes care to point out that only 6" wide pieces should go in.  Very funny.  Now I got all this wood to split.  Ah well, there are worse ways to spend one's vacation, I guess.  At least I have a killer splitting axe, a Fiskar - great knives, highly recommend them.  Like wielding an enchanted sword in a fantasy flick.

One of my two hives died back in October.  A sad day for all.  I think they were robbed of their honey by other insects, wasps specifically.  The other hive is doing lovely, though:

Also the worms...they produced a whole lotta casings over the summer, so the year end total for my winter worm pits is enough casings to 1/3 fill an 8' x 4' square foot garden box, plus enough to fill this entire 35 gallon garbage can:

which as you can see sits next to my (temporarily) failed tire potato plantings.  The can of casings is way too heavy to move, so there it will stay till next spring.  Ah, black crumbly worm dooky gold!  Mwahahahaha! Strange how no one else seems excited to gaze into a can full of woim toids and rub their paws together.

Once the boiler is in, I'll feel like we've come to the end of this renovation chapter, hence the "after" title.  Not because we're done with the work, but because we've burned through all the loot we had for it, and then some.  Guess that's how these things work, eh?

My work year is done until mid February.  I'm shamelessly spending my days puttering around the house and killing mad zombies on m'boy's xbox 360.  No more holier-than-thou attitude toward all the slacker gamers in the younger generation for me!  We are all but limbic brains in search of bright, shiny objects.  Really love to spend a couple weeks on a warm beach somewhere, anywhere.  If anyone out there has a connect on a coast, I'm low maintenance and would be forever appreciative.

All are healthy in the tribe, little Mungus and Munga Mama.  MM is still busting herself on this accelerated nursing program with some ridiculous wash out rate.  Poindexter's slaying 'em, though it takes all her time.  Recession proof line of work, that, unlike how I make my bread.  Today's healing arts: doing well by doing good.

Highlight of the last few weeks: me Mum and sister G came up for Thanksgiving, it was a great time showing them all the little projects we've been jerking around with.  Mumsy said Dad would be proud.  Aw.  I know he would, the old bootstrappin' coot.

Until Such Time...