It was in 1999 that I relocated from a rural area of Northeastern Pennsylvania to Northeast Florida. I had been planning a move to Florida since my grandparents took me on vacation to Disneyworld when I was 12 yrs old.
I couldn't wait to get away from the simple life, the farms, the endless boredom of living in the middle of nowhere, not to mention the miserable weather. Finally after years of waiting the opportunity arose for me to move. I had put in a transfer request with the airline that I work for and there was an opening in Jacksonville, Fl.
Finally! I was 26 and I was out of there, so long hicks so long cornfields, so long snow! . I arrived at my new home and life was good, i had the beach just s few minutes away tons of things for single guy to do. I was out at the clubs night after night, dragging my poor hungover ass to work everyday and I was having a blast!
I kept that up for a few years and eventually met a woman, fell in love (so I thought at the time). After about a year and a half we split up, two weeks later I get a phone call at work, shes pregnant. I moved back in and tried to make it work but it wasn't meant to be so we went our separate ways. I did however take responsibility for my child and I'm now the proud daddy to a beautiful 6 yr old daughter, more on that later.
Fast forward to 3 yrs ago, I had been living in a townhouse in a no so great area of town but still within a mile of the beach. The place next door to me had been vacant for awhile but eventually someone moved in, I knew someone was living there , I would see a car in the driveway but months went by and I never saw my new neighbor. As luck would have it, one day I came home from work and decided to take a nap on the couch. I woke up to about 2" of water covering the entire bottom floor of my house but I couldn't find a leak anywhere. My next thought was maybe it's coming from my neighbors place so I rushed around the back to the neighbors patio door and proceeded to scare the hell out of a girl living there. Apparently just as i went to knock on the door she spotted me at the door with one arm in the air looking like I was about to smash the glass.
After a near heart attack by this girl I manage to tell her I'm the neighbor and I have a flood in my livingroom and want to know if it was only in my place. A moment later another woman comes to the door, a beautiful blonde in pink PJ's.
She laughs and says "you about gave my daughter a heart attack" I apologized and explained the situation and found out the leak was coming from somewhere in my place. I called my landlord who had maintenance come over and check things out, turns out a water pipe had broken in the downstairs bathroom just underneath the tile.
Fast forward a bit more. I eventually got to know my new neighbor and I would go over and we would sit out on the patio and talk for hours and hours. One thing lead to another and we eventually started dating, got along really well and we have been together ever since. Needless to say the pretty blonde in the pic is Gena and I'm the ugly guy in the other pic. In my defense I had been helping do paint and bodywork on the bike in the background and the pic was after the 3rd 15 hr day in a row
Beginning Homesteaders
Beginning Homesteaders part 2
Moving right along. After about a year of dating, my neighbor she decide she really needed to go back to school and become a nurse like she has always wanted too. To make things easier on all of us financially she and her daughter moved in with me. She concentrated on her nursing school and graduated a little over a year later.
We had been talking about getting a house for quite awhile but neither of us had good credit and didnt think there was any chance we could get a mortgage, we couldn't even get a credit card approval let alone a mortgage. I started working on fixing her credit report, mine is hopeless especially with a bankruptcy on it. After a few months of getting her report cleaned up we saw her credit score start getting better and better.
Eventually it was high enough to get an approval on a home loan. We decided that we were tired of living in the ghetto neighborhood, if you seen the movie "Friday" that the only way I can describe it.
I couldn't believe I was saying it but I actually missed the very lifestyle that I couldn't wait to get away from years ago. We talked about getting a house in the country, growing our own foods, raising chickens and pigs, setting up a solar system and doing as much as we can to be self sufficient.
Another reason for my decision to get away from the city was my daughter, I wanted her to be able to experience things that I did when i was a kid and not being so concerned about her playing outside alone.
We searched and searched for the right place. We found a few that we wanted but they fell through and then one day we were just driving along and spotted a for sale sign in front of a home and we both knew that was the place we wanted.
It was only and acre but laid out like a football field, zoned open rural, right up the road from the inlet to the ocean, close to the beach, totally fenced in and gated and on a dead end street. The home itself, a small 8 yr old but very well cared for singlewide mobile home.
I'm Happy to say that we closed on the house last week and life is good.
The intent of this blog is to chronicle the evolution of our small homestead.
I'll be adding a list of our short and long term plans and add photos as we go.
thats all for now.
an added note: the way the blogger is set up it publishes new posts to the top of the blog, to keep it in order I have to change the dates so new posts are dated earlier than old posts
Todays Project Saltwater Reef Tank
Back a few years ago I had put together a saltwater reef aquarium. Lots of work to get everything going but once I did it was a self sustaining, balanced ecosystem with no mechanical filtration except for a protein skimmer, in simple terms a device that injects air into the water to create bubbles and cause foam which traps organic compounds before they begin to decompose. pretty much the same thing ocean waves do when they create seafoam.
Once it's up and going the entire system takes care of itself, nitrifing bacteria colonize calcified coral skeletons AKA live rock. the live rock becomes the natural biofilter in the system. Invertebrates such as snails, small hermit crabs and cleaner shrimp are introduced into the system as cleanup crews. they control unwanted algae and sift through the dirt and rock cleaning up all the debris.
Now that we have a house of our own and aren't renting I decided to set up my reef once again. First thing I needed to do was change the color of my tank stand. It was originally pine that was coated with polyurethane clearcoat but because all of the cabinetry in the house is a red mahogany color and I am going to use the tank as a room divider between the dining/kitchen areas I wanted the tank to match the rest of the cabinets.
Stripping clearcoat from wood is not as easy as it may seem. I started out with 80 grit sandpaper and a small electric sander but after about an hour of sanding and getting nowhere fast I decided to go the chemical stripper route. The first chemical stripper i bought was a cheap all purpose stripper, I learned my lesson in a hurry, you get what you pay for.
The stuff was useless and I ended up going back to the store and buying a can of Formsbys wood stripper. Brush it on, wait 30 mins, scrape the finish off. It worked pretty well but still not good enough. In my frustration I looked over at my DA sander and air compressor and decided to give it a shot. It slapped on a disk of 60 grit paper , fired up the DA and it tore through the clearcoat easily, a little to easily actually. The DA left some deep swirls in the wood that weren't so noticeable on the bare wood but when I hit it with the stain all of those areas got really dark.
At that point I decided , screw it, it's staying that way. Once the stain soaked in i coated the entire thing in polyurethane clear. I also needed to close in the back of the stand since it was going to be seen from all sides, simple fix, some furring strips and a 24"x24" sheet of plywood and the stand looks like it was made that way.
here are some pics of the finished stand
The next thing I had to do was build a canopy to house the VHO (Very High Output) lighting for the tank. My lighting system should put out 440 watts of 10,000k (sunlight spectrum)light. Most types of corals need intense lighting to thrive and this should give me enough to keep almost any type of coral.
for the canopy I used 1x4" lumber with 2"x2" posts in the corners, i made it 14"high with a 2" overlap that will go over the top of the tank.
I'm no carpenter so I'm pretty happy with how it came out. 
heres the tank sitting on the stand with the canopy frame on top. I still need to cover the frame with plywood and build a hinged lid for the top. 
thats all for today, i'll post updated pics when the stand/canopy are complete and lights have been installed.
Reef tank part 2
Continuing on with my saltwater reef tank project. Today we went to a store called Bio-reef to check out some of the stock and pickup some supplies for the tank. I got a bag of instant ocean salt to mix up 50 gallons of saltwater and on the way home we stopped at Home Depot to pick up (2) 50lb bags of play sand for the tank substrate.
I got home and cleaned out all of the shells I was storing in the bottom of the tank,
then we poured in one of the 50lb bags of sand. turns out I only needed one bag. oh well it was $3.50 a bag so no great loss there.
I crushed up the shells that i had sitting in the tank and added them to the sand. the shells contain a high amount of calcium which helps to maintain the proper PH levels in the water.
Next came the rock.At one point this rock was loaded with life from the reef in figi, it also cost me about $4.00/lb when I bought it years ago. Sadly, after I tore the tank down and pulled the rock from the water everything died off and now it's just base rock. What i'm going to do is purchase some fresh live rock and add it to the base rock. this will seed the base rock and after a short while you wont even know the difference, the dead rock will be live again.
next steps:
finish the canopy, add the lighting, fill up the tank, drop in a dead shrimp or two to start the cycle, add a few pounds of live rock to the base rock and throw in the cleanup crew. Since I live at the beach I'm going to go collect a few dozen red legged hermits if i can find some this time of year.
Reef Tank Part 3
Time to finish up the light canopy. I'll be running 4 florescent VHO lamps with an Icecap 660 ballast for a total of 440 watts of lighting.
I picked up a 4x8 sheet of 1/4" plywood and had it cut to size at Lowes and attached it to the frame with paneling nails.
next I measured for the risers to mount the endcaps for the bulbs, then i remeasured 10 more times and test fit before drilling pilot holes for mounting screws.
then I checked the fit and checked it again just to make sure.
I mounted the remaining lamps the same way and switched it on to test it out. (note:do not look directly at the lamps when you plug them in, i was seeing spots for 30 mins after)
Damn thats bright!
I finished up the top and mounted it to the hinges
Then i placed it on top of the tank and switched it on
perfect, now I have to mount the ballast, clean up the wiring , add the handle to the top ,add molding around the corners and stain it to match the stand.
when it rains...
it pours. It's been a rough couple of days around here. I get paid twice a month, the 10th and the 25th but due to x-mas I got paid on the 23rd and dont get another paycheck till the 10th, 18 long days, plus I used most of that check to buy x-mas presents for my daughter.
We used Genas paycheck to cover bills and buy a couch for our new place but what we didnt plan on was Genas truck having electrical issues so we spent $80 on a battery and that didnt solve the problem so we spent another $150 replacing the alternator.
Finally it seemed like it was all good to go but that night she left for work and called me to come get her. The truck broke down about halfway to work. To make matters worse, my bank account was empty and I had 1/8th of a tank of gas to get me to work the next day so i could get the $35 a coworker owed me for repairing his computer.
I managed to make it to where she had broke down, popped the hood and found that one of the clips from a wire on the alternator has vibrated loose. I pushed the clip on tight, jumped started the truck and followed her back home going very light on the gas pedal as opposed to my normally heavy foot. We got the truck home without any issues but my car was sucking fumes at that point and with all the unplanned expenses and all of the money we spent closing on the house and getting moved we were both flat broke till payday.
Luckily we had a big water jug with a bunch of change in it and we scrounged up $11.00 to put gas in the car. This is where not having a credit card can really suck.
I managed to make it to work and my coworker saved my ass by paying me the $35.00 he owed me and I was able to put enough gas in the car to cover me until payday.
If something isnt done about the price of gas rising we're all in deep trouble. Of course, nothing will be done about it and it will continue to rise. Oil company profits are at record highs and the bureaucrats are lining their pockets by protecting and subsidizing the oil companies. Add to that the fact the dollar is at an all time low, prices keep rising and our income is not keeping up.
That right there is why we decided to be more self sufficient, why pay for things that you can grow yourself? we can use the money for other things that we need like fuel.
Many People think Ron Paul is out of his mind but he's really trying to do what we are doing only on a large scale, take care of ourselves and don't rely on the government for anything. I think as prices continue to rise and people have less and less disposable income the idea of being self sufficient will catch on. 
ok sheeple, that all for now
Go Jags!!
Slightly off topic but I just had to toss in my support for the hometown team. Great game against Pit as always, total nailbiter but they pulled it off.
Tomorrow we learn whos next. Will it be New England or Indy? either way it's going to be an uphill battle. I'll still root for the underdogs!
florida bobsled
Ok, maybe not a bobsled but still something you usually don't get to do in Florida, Sliding on the ice. It's been below freezing for a few nights and while at work cleaning the planes I realized that all of the water and ice I had been dumping from the galley had frozen onto the beltloader. Last night my coworker and i got the brilliant idea of letting the belt freeze up and then using trash bags to slide down the belt.
belt frozen and ready to go.
Jamie decided to go headfirst and pull a superman move.
I went feet first just in case I wasn't going to be able to stop when I got to the bottom.
I got a little braver on the second run.
and managed to crash into a big pile of ice at the bottom. Short lived but we had a blast!!
short term plans
We have some short term (within 6 months) goals for the property.
- Build chicken coop and purchase chicks for spring, we plan to get hens for laying as well as some cornish cross birds for meat.
- garden, rather than the traditional garden we will be doing things a bit differently. We will be building an aquaponic system. This system is a combination of Hydroponics and Aquaculture in simple terms fish are raised as a food source and the water from the fish tanks is pumped into the plants. The plants feed off the nutrients which in turn filters the water before it's returned to the tank.
- compost. since we no longer have a dishwasher and garbage disposal waste from the kitchen will be composted in order to fertilize plants which can not be grown in the aquaponic system.
- Build a pig pen and purchase one or two feeder pigs.
It's been a long time since I have raised any farm animals so i'm planning on taking it slow.
My daughter is very excited about the animals and she already knows the plans for the chickens and pigs. Everytime she calls me she says "Did you get the chickens yet? what about the piggy?"
She made the mistake of telling her mother "we're going to kill the chickens and the pigs and have bacon , pork chops and chicken in the freezer".
She said her mom got mad and said "you have GOT to be KIDDING me!"
Apparently her mother didn't see the good in raising your own food.
LOL
lesson learned
It's been about two weeks in our new place and things are slowly coming together. But, we learned an important lesson the other day. Our dryer kept tripping the breaker for some reason so I pulled the plug and noticed it was warm and melted around one of the prongs. Figuring that probably wasn't good and whats causing the breaker to trip I removed the old cord, proceeding to lose one of the screw down the back of the dryer. I searched everywhere and I couldn't see or hear it moving around so we headed off to Lowes and bought a replacement cord. Lowes, it's hard to leave it's like being a kid in a candy store. After drooling over everything I wanted I managed to get out the door and replaced the cord, still missing one of the screw to attach the hot lead I searched and searched to no avail. I looked through all of my toolboxes and junk drawer for a replacement and of course couldn't find one that fit.
Just as I was about to give up and drive back to Lowes for a damn screw I tipped the dryer one last time and teh screw came rolling along the inside of the dryer. Success! the dryer worked ....
For about 5 minutes when it tripped the breaker and gena said a spark came out of the outlet. not being one to mess with home electricity and after several warning from family members about burning the house down I had gena call the home warranty company and they sent an electrician. She called me at work and said that the outlet was the problem and it looked like we had a fire in it. He replaced the outlet and checked the other outlets in the house warning us that we have old style outlets that don't meet new fire codes and we should replace them because they are a fire hazard. he also said "you're lucky you didnt burn the house down with that dryer!"
Lesson of the week, when something, especially a dryer on a 220 line trips the breaker, don't pass it off and just reset the breaker without having the problem checked out.
Aquaponics for homesteaders
Aquaponics, what is it?
by definition "the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a recirculating environment."
what that means:
Fish such as Tilapia are tank raised. the dirty fish water is pumped through gravel filled grow beds, where plants growing in the gravel extract the nutrients. The water then returns to the fish tank cleaned and freshly oxygenated. The two combine together beautifully to create an efficient growing system that uses little power, very little water, and yet produces quite an incredible amount of produce for the area that it uses.
no chemicals and no wastes, using about one tenth of the water used in dirt grown vegetables.
Aquaponics can come in a myriad of forms, and likewise the amount of money that you spend on a system can vary just as much. Aquariums, bathtubs, barrels, old swimming pools, water troughs and plastic tubs, right through to custom made steel or fiberglass, the possibilities are endless, but with a few basic principles a system can easily be built, and quite often with bits that you may have laying around the house or farm. So long as you can find water proof containers, then your on your way.
Systems don’t need to be made using gravel grow beds either, it could be as simple as polystyrene foam sheets floating on the surface of the water, with plants poking through the foam into the water below, NFT (nutrient film technique) guttering, or aeroponics can also be used, systems are limited only by your imagination.
Aquaponics is just beginning to catch on in the US, but has been popular in europe and asia for years.
We'll be working on construction of an aquaponic system in the near future.
for more information see the Australian based backyard aquaponics forum at Backyard Aquaponics
weekend projects
now that we're out in the country and I have room to let my 6 yr old daughter outside to play, I had to make good on my promise to build her a tire swing in the front yard.
Gena and I had been out driving around and we stopped into a small garage/tire shop and I asked if they had any old tires they needed to get rid of. One of the mechanics pointed to a shed near the garage and said "go for it, take all you want".
I picked out a nice big "bubba truck" tire. a 36" mud tire. I've been making alot of trips to Lowes since we bought the house so i told my daughter "Babygirl, we have to go to Lowes" she does her best horror movie type scream and says "not againnnnn". Once I told her we needed to go and get parts to build the tire swing she had a whole different attitude.
I picked up a u-bolt, a snap swivel and 50' of poly rope and we were in business.
I drilled two 1/2" holes in the tire and installed the U bolt then drilled two more in the opposite side for water drainage.
We cleaned the tire up with some bleach and the garden hose and I hung it from a nice big branch in a tree in our frontyard. Shes been having a blast swinging on it all weekend and it was "the best xmas present ever"
