Home Ag: More Garden / Mini-Field pictures

Well this time it's more or less just pictures, since I've done some more work to the garden and want to show it off...











First picture: The garden (this year it's just a corn field) viewed from the road, with electric fencing installed and the first three rows planted. For this field I used "poly-wire" for the electric fence. Poly-wire is, in this case, comprised of three strands of PVC-encased fiberglass rope interwoven with three aluminum wires. The advantages of poly-wire, especially here, are enhanced visability to both people and animals (the "poly" in this wire is bright yellow and black) and ease of handling, which will be very important this fall when I will have to coil the "wire" back up before I cut the dead cornstalks down with my scythe.



















Second picture: The (most likely) temporary hookup for the garden fence, with three pullets and the rooster making a cameo. The gate handle is made out of nonconductive rubber, and a strand of highly visable poly-wire connects the chicken fence to the garden fence. Eventually I will probaly replace this system with a buried cable with a disconnect switch, but for the moment, at least, this system should work just fine.

That's all I have for now. More after my corn starts to spring up...

Home Ag: Tilling complete!

Before

After

Finally, the tilling is done... Needless to say I'm very tired right now, so this post will be short.
The tilling did NOT go easily. The sod was very thick, well developed and so on. It took everything I had to keep the tiller under control, even on the final (supposedly easy) pass.
Before the last two passes I added 20 pounds of 12-12-12 fertilizer to further improve the already good soil (corn is a very intensive crop after all). After those last two passes I was too tired to continue, though it could've used it.
Anyways that's all for now. Below is a picture of my Uncle Marv's tiller that I used, and my spreader. I'll post again once I have my seeds planted and they sprout.

Is this... Corn?

I finally aquired my corn seed today, and all I have to say is it doesn't look the way I expected! Of course the corn seeds are much smaller than the harvest kernels, but the color is what threw me. I knew that the seed was likely to be coated (generally with fungucide and/or starter fertilizer) but I hadn't expected the color.
The reason the seed is multicolored is because the bag contains several different brands of corn. This is a very good thing, as diversity helps avoid problems. THis is the seed that was left over when the farmer cleaned out his planter this year; it is all high-end seed that should yield very nicely!
Now I just need to till under the jungle and actually put some of this into the ground...

Home Ag. prospects: Putting the Lawn into Production!

Let's be frank here; I don't like mowing the lawn. And I am cursed (many would say blessed) with a 2-acre lawn, a solid chunk of which grows at a near-rediculous rate. For much of the time that I have owned this property I have wanted to put this "jungle patch" into production, and grow a large garden. However my current job situation (extremely busy) all but prevents this (I don't have near the time or energy to maintain a garden with "traditional" practices, such as hand-pulling weeds and a mixture of companion planting and nicotine spray to manage insect pests). So I have come up with an alternative that also supports my poultry hobby; grow my own feed corn!

Pictured to the right is the result of my "homegrown" (quite literally in this case) soil quality test two years ago. Whilst out woodchuck hunting I "borrowed" a couple of modern hybrid dent corn seedlings (which are virtually dependant on fertilizer) and transplanted them on my lawn, just outside of the "jungle." I only used fertilizer of any sort (TSC-brand 12-12-12) once, WAY too late in the season. Yet the picture shows the results. The two surviving cornstalks, though decidedly stunted, each yielded an ear this size, very close to the size of the whole-ear corn sold commercially as squirrel feed! I'd say my soil quality test was a success!
I have currently staked off most of the "jungle," an area that measures 25x100 feet, and plan to till this area under within the next couple of weeks. By doing the math, and using the preferred planting rate for modern field corn of 36,000 seeds per acre, I figure this entire area would require about 1,200 seeds (which equals just under a pound of seed). The problem is that corn seed is sold in 80,000-seed bags costing between $70 and $400! I will need to talk to the farmers I know and see about buying a couple of pounds of seed...
I want to set aside the last few feet of this mini-field aside to grow a few tomatoes and a couple of rows of sweet corn, but that's all the gardening I have planned for this year. As I stated I simply don't have time to do more... The corn (both the sweet and field varieties) require minimal maintenance once established (especially since I'm not going for maximum yield, it's mostly for fun, and to put my land to use). Of course come fall I'll have 1,200 ears of corn to harvest (by hand!) and store, but I do have the space and (hopefully, by then) the time...

The Chicken(s) and the Egg(s)

Finaly, time for an update on my hobby farm project...
My chickens are now fully grown, and they are none too small. The silver waterer pictured here holds five gallons, and you can see how big the birds are standing next to it.










Here is a better picture of my rooster. He is not a small bird; I'd say he's easily as big as a house cat.
















And, finally, I'm getting eggs on a regular basis. Right now I'm getting about four a day, and as you can see from this picture they are quite large too.

The Server Rack: Almost a real server rack!

Pictured here is a shelving unit that came "free" with my property, albeit in rather decrepit condition, in my workshop. I knew as soon as I saw it (even before I bid on my property!) what I wanted to do with it...
Well I finally did it!
After about a week of drilling, fitting, frustration and procrastination I finally repaired the shelf and moved four of my servers onto it.
The names of the computers are, from top to bottom and left to right: Dell-Orean, Volatile, The Hive and Quadrajet (the SCSI enclosure is there solely for storage).
And yes, Quadrajet (my genuine IBM server) is the massive monolith beneath the two mid-towers and SCSI enclosure! It really is that big!

Hopefully more updates about lower-tech stuff soon...

Inside The Hive: Information Technology, Redneck Style!

Look at the captions on the images... I think that's about all I need to say....