Archive for January, 2006
January 3, 2006 – 2005 in Review
Ok, I’m behind a bit on my “best of” lists. At any rate, here is a month-by-month selection of my favorite entries from each month in 2005.
February – The blog began this month. The mismatched socks and comments show all that a blog can be!
March – Hopeful signs of spring. I treasure the days when Martin and Daddy both have fun!
April – One of the things I most associate with Iowa’s natural landscape is prairies. This is a mini-pictorial of a controlled prairie burn. Ok, I have to sneak in two this month, so here’s the May – Goats and all their quirks were a notable addition to the farm this year.
June – The gardens and fruit trees begin in earnest in June.
July – Emma’s search and rescue added to my greying hair.
August – If there’s one event that capture’s the nation’s attention on Iowa, it’s the annual state fair.
September – The school tour and filming for “Market to Market” was a fun day.
October – Lots of good choices, but how can you beat graveside on Halloween?
November – Big storms in November – love the home footage of tornado ripping through amateur video taker dude’s town.
December – Early December was crisp and cold – great for a hike to a very local historical site.
January 2, 2006 – No Fun Project
Getting the attic cleared out to begin work on the dormer is no fun! We usually like to get one fairly big project done over New Year’s (tile a bathroom or something like that). This year, we had smaller projects – Linda and Emma sewed a quilt, Linda and Claire made jammies, I made more room in the corn crib, and we worked on the attic – this requires sorting, washing clothes, old memorabilia, moving furniture, deciding what stays/goes and if it stays – where?
While we were doing this, the kids made a band out of tinker toys, complete with guitar, mike stands and keyboards.
January 1, 2006 – Open Source Cattle Panel Feeder
Computer geeks have “open source” software, meaning collaborative, free software instead of software controlled by a company, like Microsoft. But I digress as a point of departure for “open source cattle panels.” Fellow sustainable sojourner Steven Smith brings this design for a hay feeder to our farm.
There are many uses for cattle panels – someday I’ll devote an entire section of my web site to the many designs and uses, but for today – it’s a hay feeder. Here’s a first look at the feeder.
Here’s what it looks like full of hay.
The design is simple and flexible – cut a panel the long way however wide you’d like it, leaving a little stub from the wires to insert into an existing vertical panel. Take another piece of wire and make it the length you’d like, and bend “hooks” in it to connect from the vertical panel (in this case, the board that makes the top of the fence). These can be quickly moved as needed.
