The Post Is Finished

We were without internet for about three days and had patchy touch and go service for another few, but I think we are up and going good now. We have lots of pictures to share of our last couple of weeks on the farm. This has been a post in progress for many days now.


As usual, Dane has a variety of projects going. He read that tea seed oil (not tea tree oil) is a very healthy cooking oil like olive oil that is used commonly in China. It can potentially be used to make biodiesel as well. Since we have six acres of tea and tons of tea seeds just lying around, Dane decided to try pressing some. He used his vice to do so, and stuff came out! :-) Next, he wants to take some to Obera to be pressed in an actual seed press to see what the end product is. The oil will have to be processed and that is going to take some more research too. Anyway, it is exciting to think that eventually we might be able to supply our own oil needs.

Here is what the tea seeds look like before they are shelled.

Here are the seeds with their shells removed.

Dane worked on getting the wood up around the attic until he ran out of wood. The rest of the attic and the columns he enclosed with plastic to help keep out the rain and insects. Since it is a possibility that we may not get the rest of the wood that we ordered from the sawmill, Dane may just brick in the two unfinished exterior walls around the first level porch and remove wood off the back wall to finish the attic and brick the back wall, but we will see.

The vertical wood around the attic has turned out very nicely. We like the contrast.

Dane has also been working on plowing a field above our garden. It is going to take quite a few passes with the plow and disc to chop up all the vegetation, but we hope to plant corn, beans, and squash in this one and half acre area in the next few weeks.

Here is Dane working on the disc.

Dane purchased all the pipe for the hydroelectric project. It is going to take one hundred meters of it.

Dane bought a few fruit trees: two peach, two plum, two pink grapefruit, and a persimmon.
He planted them high on the hill by the internet tower. Being low in the valley, we get later frosts, so we thought the trees might do better at a higher elevation. The pasture where the tower and trees are is about 40 meters higher in elevation than our homesite.

This is a picture of the persimmon tree in the corner of the garden before Dane got it planted.

These are all the other fruit trees in the garden before they were planted.

We discovered that we have a mulberry tree right by the house. I don't know how we missed it last year.

Three brothers: Elijah, David, and Joseph.

One morning Joseph pushed a chair up to the kitchen counter and grabbed a sponge and started cleaning. It was cute, so I had to take a picture of him. He was very serious about his work too.

We Have Cows!

These are our new cows. They are both pregnant. The grey cow is supposed to have her calf any day now and the red and white cow is due in February. We pray we are able to milk them.

Here they are resting in the grass one afternoon.

Here are Sarah, Abby, and David petting the red and white cow. They have requested a brush to brush her hair. Lol!

This is a picture of Patita, our little female duck. Our male duck disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, we probably won't have ducklings for a while until we can get another male duck.

Well that is all for now, but it took me so long to get this post out that I already have pictures and things to tell about for another. Hopefully by next week I get it up.

Take care,
Jessica