Product Review: Talpirid Mole Killer

In this post I review Talpirid Mole Killer. It's a worm shaped poison that you're suppose to put in a fresh mole hill, the mole eats the poison, and your mole problem is gone.
I give it 2 out of 5 stars: see why.

See you on the ranch.

~ron


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Building a Raised Garden - No Dirt Yet...

I thought it would be a good idea to start growing our own food. My big concern is that I know myself too well. I know that I won't do well if I have to get down on my hands and knees all the time, and I know that I don't do weeds. With those hurdles in mind, I started to investigate what kind of garden I should have.

As luck would have it, my co-worker Jane is a master gardener, she's even done a few segements on HGTV. You can check out one of her segments here. She suggested that I start things out with a book called The Square Foot Gardener. You can buy it cheap on Amazon.com.

The basic principle is to ask yourself how many of a plant you're actually going to eat? Would I really eat 50 carrots in a week? If not, then don't plant 50 carrot seeds at a time... maybe plat 5 carrot seeds, then a week or two later, plant another 5 carrot seeds.

Now back to me being lazy. I was flipping through the book and ran across a garden designed for people in wheelchairs. Seeing as how I have no pride, I thought: "That would be great for me - I won't have to get down on my hands an knees." So that became the plan. The author, Mel, also suggested if you can make it on top of a cement slab, you wouldn't have to cut the grass around the boxes, and you'll also get fewer weeds.


We have a cement slab on the property right behind our house, but the previous owner of the land had used it as a fire pit and there was a big pile of ashes, debris, and bricks on it. Good thing for me I had a couple of friends that live in Seattle that thought it would be a blast to come out and work in the country. Their payment for a day's worth of labor was I had to make them some of my home made bread... DEAL!

This is Dan shoveling some ashes into the bucket. I know should be able to do this with just the tractor, but I just got it and I'm not that good at scooping things yet.




That's Rachel. She's working out her childhood issues. Her parents wouldn't let her play with power tools, so she had to use every tool in the book on this project.









After about 3 buckets full of ash, we had a clean slab o' cement, and were ready to start building the sawhorses. I found some free plans online. Click here to see how to build "The 14 minute Sawhorse..."











Rachel on the chop saw. We just followed the instructions, and it couldn't have been easier.
I figure each one cost about $5-$6. 2x4's at Home Depot are only $1.79 each, and I did have to buy some nails. Very cheap compared to the ready made ones.










First step is make a 2x4 "I-Beam" that is 32" long by nailing together 3 pieces of 2x4.














Then you attach the 30" legs. The I-Beam automatically finds the proper angle for you.









Then we took a goat break for a few minutes... Rachel has a crush on Herb the Goat...



Then it was time to get back to work... Herb got back to eating and pooping - what he does best.




So we made a total of five sawhorses, and it was time to make the planter boxes. I decided to make one box that 8'x4' and one that was a 4 foot square. That was the easiest part of the day.

We used some pressure treated 2x6's and external grade plywood for the job and plenty of galvanized nails.
Next we had to drill holes for drainage. Again, Rachel was all over the hammer drill with exclamations like "This is soooo fun!" And, "I can't believe I'm using a drill..."

Please take note of the fashion forward safety glasses... Rachel thinks they make her look stupid, but I disagree. You know what they say, Safety First!









So here's how the main boxes turned out. The left one is going to be for veggies, and the right one for fresh herbs. We also made two boxes to sit on the ground for tomatoes, corn, and climbing plants.












Time to pay up on my end of the deal. Rachel requested a loaf of Kalamata Olive Bread.














The entire project ran about $200. That pressure treated plywood is expensive... About $40 a sheet - so that really jacked up the price. I also bought way too many 2x4's, but I'm sure I'll be able to put them to work soon. And I bought an entire box of 3" nails for the nail gun - those go quick too. So a few hundred bucks, but not all of it was for the planters. But it should easily pay for itself with just a few crop harvests.

I'll keep you posted on the planting. I've got to buy some clean dirt and seeds. I need to do a bit more research on what crops to plant first in March... So stay tuned.

~ron


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Building A Horse Shelter Part 2: In Da' Crib

If you're a horse person, then you know all about cribbing. I thought it was a reference to a Snoop Dogg song, but it's actually the nasty habit of horses chewing on the wood in their stall. Here's a good article on answers.com about it.

So only after a few months, this is what the center post of the brand new horse shelter looked like:

They make several wood treatments for this (this one is called Bitter Licks), and we bought some. It was too cold for it to dry properly, so I had to take matters into my own hands.


After wandering around Lowes for half an hour or so, I stumbled upon some metal roof flashing.
It's like $0.79 per sheet, and the nails were another $2.50. So I was in it about $10 to start. If you can't tell - I'm a cheap skate. So on these kind of repairs, I always go with the cheapest fix first.

I started the install and put one "L" piece on to cover the chewing, and the second piece would have been a bit too long, so I had to trim the metal. I had just bought a pneumatic metal shears (I got the Central Pneumatic In Line Shear at Harbor Freight), and this was the first time I got to use it.


So I plugged in the compressor and away we went. [Side note: on air tools... when I first started using them, it always says "Oil Daily" on the device, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out where to put the oil. I looked for a little reservoir like in your car or something, but finally someone told me to just put some pneumatic oil right into the air connector before you plug the hose in. Works like a charm, and I haven't had a frozen tool since. Probably a no brainer for construction people, but it was a major revelation for me.]
Worked like a charm. The shears made a really nice straight cut. I was really impressed. I don't think it would work well on really heavy guage sheet metal, but for this flashing type, it worked great. I also tried to use them on some of the roofing on the horse stall, and they did not go through the ridges well at all. I bought some regular hand shears for that.

Note on the install: when I had the two layers of flashing overlapping, it was impossible to get the flashing nail through without bending. So I got a regular framing nail, and did a pilot hole - that saved a lot of four letter words and wasted nails.

Here's how it looks finished:

Turned out ok, but Squid took a bit of fur off her muzzle on one of the edges, so I got some flashing tape that has rubber on one side and metal on the other and put it over the seams to cover the sharp edges. We'll see if it's a good long term fix, or if i'll need to do a bigger repair. I guess I could always put up a metal pole on the each side of the post or something, but for now I'm hoping that this keeps the ponies from cribbing.



(Cain the horse thinks it'll work...)









See you next time
~ron


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Bring on the Ponies - Building a Horse Shelter Part 1

So after the goats (see last post) we wanted to bring The Cowgirl's horse Squid (don't ask) out to the ranch.

And of course to do that we had to have a horse lean to built. Also, in Washington State you have to have a sacrificial confinement area so the horses don't completely tear up your pasture.

Now I had never built a structure that big, so it was quite a daunting task for me. I did some research, and found some basic farm outbuilding plans offered for free from some universities.
LSU has a great collection of free plans on their website.



So I started with this plan for a portable horse shelter. I really like the simplicity of the plan. We thought that we could possibly actually move it around to different areas of the pasture with the seasons. But the more we thought about the sacrificial confinement areas we would need, that didn't seem to be such a good idea.

So I bought a book on Amazon called Habitat For Humanity: How to Build a House by Larry Haun. I really like how simply he lays out his ideas and give practical advice to the first time builder.



Side Note: On buying tools - I had to buy all new tools for this thing. We went through Hurricane Katrina and lost all our stuff so it was time to buy new tools. If you have a Harbor Freight near your house, definitely check them out. Great deals on all kinds of tools.

So with the free plans from LSU and reading from the Habitat For Humanity book, we decided to build a 2 stall structure that would have the sacrificial runs built right in.

We first had to have a spot in our field cleared. Since I didn't have a tractor yet, I found a guy on Craigs List to come out and mow the pasture and level this area for about $350. I absolutely love Craigs List, a truly awesome website. It's amazing that he has resisted selling the website for millions of dollars. But anyway, it was time to build.


As you can see, it's a pretty great setting. The stalls are 12'x12'. Ten feet high in the front, and eight feet high in the back. I framed out the corner posts and bottom stretchers with pressure treated 4"x4".

I would go with bigger posts in the front if I had to do it again. Probably at least 8"x8". I know it's a lot more money, but it's worth it.

I used Simpson Strong Tie connectors for all my corners and roof connections. They're really strong and not that expensive. You can get them at Home Depot or Lowes, usually right by the lumber dept.

I was pretty lucky on some of my materials. My real estate agent who did the deal on the ranch had the metal roofing. He was going to build a garage and never got around to it, and his wife got sick of looking at it in the back yard. And our next door neighbor had a bunch of plywood left over from his llama barn that he sold me for $5 a sheet. That was a great deal.

After we got the stalls done, we put in fencing on the sacrificial runs. They're about 60 feet by twelve feet. Here's another great tip to save some money. I found some 5' fencing at a building supply auction here in the Puget Sound. It's called Ehli Turner Auctions. They run the auction every other Saturday, and I scored about 500 feet of really good quality fence for about $150. I figured I saved at least $500 on that deal.

After the stalls and the runs, we added a hay storage room and tack room.
Here's where we're at as of last weekend. The front part is pretty much done except for a few odds and ends. We bought some pre-primed exterior siding from Home Depot and painted it red. Got the barn door kit off of Ebay for a great price, and built the sliding door out of pressure treated lumber, and CDX plywood. It still needs to be painted. We added a few little planters from IKEA, and a thermometer from Harbor Freight for $1.99.

That's all for now, but up next I'll tell you the lessons learned about construction and cribbing.

See you next time.

~ron


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A Word About Critters...

If you're anything like we are, the day after you move in you say to yourself, "boy, there's plenty of room for some animals..." And so you go get some. For us that meant our existing two dogs Gerty and Frank.

Then, The Cowgirl (nickname for the fiancee) said she's always wanted goats. Interesting enough, the city of Seattle just approved goats within the city limits. See this story in the Seattle Times.

So I come home one day and we have not one, not two, but three goats.








First up, we have Herb.
He's my favorite goat.







This is Crash.




And we also had Bo, a little pygmy goat. Things were going great with the goats until Christmas '07. I was visiting my folks in Florida, and got a frantic call from The Cowgirl that something had gone terribly wrong. Somehow, the goats (minus Herb) got out of their area and into the main field by the barn, and they were attacked. We think it was by the dogs.

After the fact, we found that there was a little hole in the fence inside a blackberry bush. We hadn't seen it and that's where the little guys squeezed through.

Herb survived and we now have him and Abby to keep him company. We also reinforced the fence line in the goat pen.

All of that to say that if you didn't install the fence, be really thorough on your inspection before you bring any animals out.

~ron


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Speaking of home inspectors...

Last post I mentioned that I should have had a Wetland Engineer look at the land in addition to my home inspector. But I happened to stumble upon a really good home inspection company. I've had two houses inspected by them. The name of the company is Pillar To Post http://pillartopost.com/

I've had two different houses inspected by them by two different inspectors, and I was very happy with both of them.

This is the house we bought in Auburn...
An old Sears Craftsman. Really cute little house. I found an the old catalog on Ebay. The house originally cost $2,093 in the 1920's. That still blows my mind.

Pillar to Post did the appraisal on this house. I think it was around $325, and they give you a really good notebook with color pictures of everything. It also has a cd that shows you how to do many of the repairs.

So when it came time to buy the farm, we used them again.


Here's the barn that's on our new land.
(We'll get to that later.)


But back to the wetlands. Going into this, I thing I was like most people. You think, "I'm buying 10 acres, that'll be plenty of room to do everything I could ever want, and then some." But I was really uneducated about the entire concept of critical areas. King County passed a law that says I have to keep 65% of my land in its "Natural State." There are also buffers from 25 feet to over 100 feet on any kind of wetlands.

So if I had to do it over again, I would have a wetlands recon done. We ended up doing a basic wetland report with a guy from Evergreen Aquatic Resource Consultants. Their website is http://evergreenarc.com/

For about $800 they came out, walked the site, took soil samples, and came back with a report of the usable land that we could develop. This report was by no means exhaustive, and we couldn't use it to issue building permits, but it gave us a good idea of the possibilities.

The green triangle is the only suitable site on the entire acreage to build a new house.

I have to be honest, that really surprised me. I thought I'd be able to build in many places on the land.


There is a clearing in the back that seemed like the perfect place to eventually build a new house, and that's one of the features that we fell in love with. I guess you can look on the bright side, and say that at least we have one viable building site.


All of the dotted area on the map is wetland buffer. So if there had not been a house on this land, I probably would not be able to even build the existing house that's up in the front right hand corner of the property. That's how strict the King County CAO laws are.


Here's a pic of the clearing in the back. The previous owner had put in a road, and cleared the trees. I don't know if the picture does it justice, but it really is an amazing site to have a home. Hopefully, we'll be able to build our dream home down the road in a few years.

That big pile of wood on the right is a burn pile that was never burned. We have two of those in the back area. That is definitely high up on the project list for this spring, to take care of those. My neighbors keep telling me to just pour some diesel on them and burn them, but I'm still not convinced. I might hire a dump truck to come back there and haul it away. We'll see.

So the moral of this post is if you are buying land, and actually want to use it, get a Wetland Report done. Especially if you live in the Pacific Northwest.

~ron


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From the city to the Country

Hi, and welcome to my new blog.
My name is Ron, and I work in Seattle, WA.

And while I own a condo with a Lake Union view in Seattle,
my fiancee has always wanted to try her hand at having a ranch out in the country.

She has owned horses most of her life,

so about 8 months ago - we took the plunge and bought 9.4 acres of land in Maple Valley, Washington.

My goal for this blog is to give you information on things I wish I had known going into this endeavor.

Let's start things out at the beginning... I have owned a number of houses in my life, so I felt comfortable with the process of buying a piece of real estate. But if I could do it over again, I would definitely educate myself more on the Critical Area Ordinance (CAO) of King County, Washington. Turns out we have one of the strictest land use rules in the country. I don't want to bore you with all the details yet, but let's just say that I should have spent the $350 that went toward a home inspector on a Wetland Engineer.

I don't regret the purchase of our land, but I definitely had no idea what I was getting into from the beginning.

So that's the basic outline for what I hope to accomplish, I'll post again soon.

Happy Farming,

Ron


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