Progress on the bug barn

Smoky skies can have benefit! Our skies are filled with the smoke from a fire up at crater lake. Seems this happens every couple years... A major fire just north of us in mid summer. As usual, the bright summer sun is blocked, dropping the daily high from the expected 110 to barely over 90. So we made use of the more manageable day to start on the bug barn project.

The project? Insulation! The bug barn itself is a shipping container, all metal skin. Great longevity and strength but wow is it hot! When that direct sun hits the outside, the walls get so hot you can't hold a hand against it inside. With an air temp of 11p, that makes the bug barn into an oven, quite literally!

We tried insulation on the inside, but that didn't work out. Didn't help much with the radiant heat, and attracted mice. So we are doing something new... Insulting paint!

Insulating paint is a new technology (apparently developed for NASA) that blocks radiant heat quite effectively. For situations such as this metal building, the paint reflects the radiant heat instead of absorbing it and transferring to the inside. Does nothing for conducted heat, only radiant, but that ok for the bugs. If it can just stop the heat gain from direct sun, the bugs will he happy!

There are several brands, all claiming to be the best, most seem to be scams or at least cheap knockoffs. We chose one that seemed most legit.. insuladd. This is an additive to be put into any exterier paint to create insulting paint.

Fortunately, by God's grace, we were given a free contractor grade ( but older) airless paint sprayer to apply this with! It needed some work, and a new tip, but I got it working enough to build pressure with only a small leakage around the old seals. Woohoo! As a test, I painted the top of the brooder a nice avacado green .

Yes, the pain itself was also donated ! We ended up with about 25 gallons of free exterior paint, various colors. Not sure which color the barn will end up, maybe a rainbow!



So back to today... I spent the afternoon pressure washing the outside to knock off as much of the old crumbly paint as possible. Took a while, but ended up nice! Now I just need one more day of moderate sun o apply the paint itself. (Just wait till you see my fancy homemade paint mixer!)

Stay tuned!

posted from Bloggeroid

New Chicken Resortland

Summer is here!
And with summer came... southern oregon heat
And with the southern oregon heat came... stressed chickens
And with stressed chickens you get... NO EGGS!

well, significantly lower production.

So we set about this weekend to design a new "resort" for the girls, a place where they can live comfortable in the shade and soft winds, safe from predators but not confined.

The idea is to create a single "complex" from the four coops, arranged into a square. The center area covered with a tarp tied to each of coops in the corners. This provides a huge open area that is sheltered from predators yet allows for free airflow and solid shade. One of the coops is dedicated to the "watering hole" which will eventually be a shallow "pond" that they can stand in to cool off. The nesting boxes sit at the edges of 3 sides to provide more shelter while giving a cool spot to lay those eggs.

 Here is the result!

South entrance, this is the largest opening, on the downwind side. 

West end. The coop on the left is the watering pond (right now just a waterer left to overflow with continuous slow water flow.)

North end, mostly blocked by a nesting box pointed inward.

Inside on the east end. the nesting box to the left is the one blocking the north entrance.  The long feeders sit in the middle of the shade. 

Inside, on the west end. In the very center is the "stand" which is an old sprinkler covered with a greenhouse bucket. This holds the tarp up in the center.

This will obviously not work once the rains start, but then by that time the need for shade diminishes greatly.

The Chicken Transport!

What do you do when you need to haul over 300 chickens?  Build a chicken transport!

Thats what we did last weekend... we ran across a golden opportunity to acquire a set of over 300 laying hens that met our standards, so we purchased the entire set to jump start this year's egg harvest.  But getting them home on short notice was quite the challenge.

So....

I turned the stock trailer into a chicken transport with few 2x4s, some pallets, two pieces of vinyl house siding, 2 sections of vinyl lattice, and some bailing wire.  the whole process took about 2 hours and worked beautifully! There are now two floors in the trailer, upper and lower.  And all the wind and escape routes were blocked while providing just enough ventilation.

Here are some pics!

The drivers side finished. The grey is the vinyl siding to block wind and escape route. Right below the siding is the top of the pallets that form the second floor. 

Looking into the rear door. Yes, the door still opens! Across the back is the lattice for ventilation, and a 2x8 to fill the gap (scraps dont always match the perfect size!). Below that is the pallet of the second floor, seemingly hanging in mid air. 

You can see the 2x4s that stretch across from left to right and hold up the pallets. The 2x4s actually just go right through the center of the pallets to hold them. Then 1x1 strips screwed on the inside hold the 2x4s in place. 

View of bottom floor looking from the rear door. The 2x6s on the floor are for when we transport grain pallets, allowing them to slide across the wood floor without hurting it. 

Here is the roomy second floor! Three pallets make this floor an almost perfect fit. Look closely on the edges and you can see the 1x1 strips that hold the 2x4s in place. 

Here is the support setup. 2x4s slid through the window, then 1x1 screwed across them to hold them from sliding in either direction. This provides solid support with no holes in the trailer!

One little patch of lattice covers the leftover hole in the front beyond the siding,. Then.. the ultimate.. a chicken ladder from the bottom to the top made from 2 wire shelves. 

The whole odd setup performed extremely well! We were able to transport about 250 chickens safely and comfortably without any double stacking of passengers. They all made it home perfectly fine.

Sad to dismantle this crude work of art, but it's use is over. Perhaps I will store the pieces away for use in a couple years ?  Who knows!

DIY Bee Vacuum, Direct to Hive!

Continuing from the last post, of the bee swarm that we watched happen from our one remaining hive...

The bees had landed on the old post inside a bush along the driveway. But then they shifted from the top of the post to the bottom of the bush!  The mound of bees was partly in the grass, situated inside 3 thick trunks of the bush.  An impossible situation for any normal recovery.

So, we built a special bee vacuum! Not really a vacuum, more of a method of moving the bees into a hive right on the spot.

Here is the starting point... a clump of bees in the grass and shrub trunk. 

First thing to do was to move a fresh top bar hive within a few feet of the swarm without disturbing them. this worked perfectly!

The top bar hive is placed to the right of the swarm, within a couple feet. We placed the divider in the middle to give an appropriate sized home for this little swarm. 

The next step was to seal the hive. Yes, seal it. This was accomplished with two kitchen garbage bags across the top, and duct tape all around. The tape sealed the edges of the bags to the outside of the hive. plus the entrance and vent holes. We even sealed around the glass viewing window. the only opening was one bar, removed to make room for the vacuum hose that would bring the bees. The hose fit perfectly through the slot left by one bar, and that was securely taped into position.

Here is the completely sealed hive, with vacuum hose for bee extraction in the middle and shop vac on the right. 

The hose for the shop vac was taped over a vent hole, that had screen inside to prevent the bees from getting into the vacuum. To hold the hose in position, we taped it to the fence right behind (past the right of the pic)

Here is a closeup of the vacuum hose connection. You can see the extra top bar holding the lid just open enough to provide easy access. 

Now, just turn on the shop vac and here we go ! The vacuum was perfect. Just enough to barely pull the bees into the hose, but not hurt them. In fact, we had to stop multiple times to "clear" the bee clog inside the hose. The little bees kept grabbing the ribs of the hose and each other.. instant clog! Otherwise it worked perfectly!

Hunter takes a turn sucking up bees into the hive

Here you ca see the hose taped to the fence to hold the weight. 

The silly looking contraption worked amazingly well! We managed to get 90% of the bees into the hive, including the queen, with virtually no causalities! The hive remained so calm for most of the operation that we didnt even need a bee suit or gloves.  Thy got a little flustered when the queen disappeared up the hose, but otherwise they just stayed happily crawling around or buzzing around.

The bee vacuum at work, almost done!

When we were all done, we had to remove hte hose to prevent the bees from escaping or gluing it shut! So we did pulled off the tape around the hose and quickly, very quickly removed the hose and dropped the bar back into place. The bees almost started spilling out to attack us, but things went just well enough. Everyone was tired and testy, so we just walked away to give them a chance to calm down.

Here is the after shot, all bees inside but not totally cleaned up yet. They got a little testy when we started pulling the tape off. We decided they had been through enough and waited till nightfall to finish

Now isnt this peaceful! by evening, all was quiet, we cleaned everything up and the bees are busily building their new home inside. 

The gently buzz of happy bees hard at work... a few scouts coming and going... all is well!

The bee vacuum was such a success, we are talking about ways to take this on the road and collect wild swarms this year to populate all the hives again.

Little Sprouts is back int he honey business!

Quick Update on things for April

Sorry, no pictures on this post. Quite honestly... we have been a bit too busy to keep up with reporting on things.  So here is a quick update:

1. The fave beans are sprouted, reasonably well. Not as good as hoped, but not bad. The week of warmer rains might bring a few more to the surface... hopefully.

2. We did manage to get the entire main garden tilled this week, just in time for the rain. As always, the plan is to till as soon as dry enough, then let it sit through a warm rain (at least not cold) to sprout initial weed set, then a light till when it dries again and plant.  We have the first tilling done, now waiting for the rain, sprouting, retilling and planting. For the curious, the main garden this year is right at 1 1/2 acres in size.

3. We have 2 more areas hoping to get planted before summer, the old goat pen and the present pig pen. Those two are well fertilized and ready to go. But, the goat pen is much too muddy yet and the pig pen is.. well.. housing pigs yet! Plus the pigs totally tore down one side of fencing, held up by a pallet, so that must be replaced.

4. There are 2 more potential areas to plant this year... one has been housing horses for several years, and the other is the original winter garden spot. both should grow well.

5. The goats are almost all into milk now, ready for the season.  It has meant some serious restructuring of the barn to accommodate the bulk of the herd all at once, but it is slowly coming together.

6. We did manage to get the milking barn rebuilt, cleaned up from the winter, and useable again.

7. The new chicken flock is doing well, we ended up with right at 150 young birds that look healthy and happy. They will be coming out of the brooders this week and into their first job of fertilizing one garden area.

8. The new guinea fowl arrive this week, which means we will be retiring the old flocks to start anew, providing some excellent meat and organs for sale.

9. We have tested last year's home made "feed" of dehydrated zuchinni and greens. It stored exceptionally well! opening the buckets after 6 months revealed perfectly dry, aromatic, well preserved vegetables! The chickens were the first recipients of this marvelous free feed and they love it as long as it is ground a bit into smaller chunks. And their eggs... WHOA! the best eggs we have ever produced! Thick orange yolks, well developed whites, perfect aroma and a beautiful soft flavor. These are , in my humble opinion, the best eggs I have ever seen! And that is without the bug barn in operation, just zuchinni and greens! It looks like the experiment is a smashing success!

10. This week with the rains we hope to spend time finishing the barn insides and getting the chickens moved into their spring positions. Then it's office work! We have lots of paperwork to do to support the new may announcements!

I think that's about it for now. Please forgive us for not keeping up with emails this week, the pleasant weather break meant some long days, and enough hours in the sun to build a nice sunburn! The rains means that things will settle a bit and we can get back on top of things.

Thanks for all your support!

Chick Days at Little Sprouts!

It's HERE!     It's HERE! 

The chicks have hatched! Right on schedule. Well over half arrived by tonight, and the rest should be hatching tomorrow, at 21 days. So far, there are 109 chicks running around tonight in the indoor brooder, and another 24 drying in the bottom of the incubator.

A veritable sea of chicks!

This little guy seems to be somewhat in charge, keeping watch over his brothers and sisters and cousins.

 This hatching is the first of likely three hatchings this year. This is the start of our new approach to raising chickens for both meat and eggs.  More on that in a later blog post!

These will also serve as the winter egg layers! The eggs were collected in mid February from hens that needed no extra light to lay through the winter. In theory, they should be more consistent layers during short days in winter when they mature.  Next we will do a summer set of hatchings to get hens comfortable laying in the dry heat of summer.

I'll explain more in later posts.

Brooder Setup

We are trying a new "indoor brooder" setup this year. The weather is a bit wet and clammy to send these newborns right out into the night air, so they are going to stay inside for a week or so as they get strong. But by tomorrow night, there will be 200 chicks if all goes well. How do you keep that many little feathered friends warm and dry ?

We used to use the eco-glow heaters from Brinsea.  They are wonderful heaters! But as you may recall, most of ours burned up in the chicken coop fire a couple of years ago. They are quite pricey, so we opted not to replace them. Instead, we switched to homemade brooder heaters using ceramic screw in heater elements.  These elements come in  50 to 250 watt varieties, produce no light, and provide a decent even heat without much waste.

So the design is simple, a plywood base with 7 screw in light sockets mounted underneath. Each socket then gets a 50 watt heater. The base is 34" x 34" with 350 watts of heat. Then we put legs on the corners that are adjustable height.  It is a decent homemade version of the EcoGlow heater.

The sides are 8 inch tall plastic panels from an old bed frame. Underneath is a piece of greenhouse plastic to protect the floor, covered with a few layers of newspaper. Tomorrow we might add a few shavings.

For extra safety this first night, we added Styrofoam panels to hold in heat and insulate a bit. Probably not necessary, but don't want to take any chances!

This little guy looks like she is basking in the sun at the beach in mid summer! The black circle above him is the ceramic heater element.

Book Series Brochure!

Big Launch Just around the Corner!

It is finally here! After years of developing our unique "farm model", followed by months of soul searching and writing, the day has come to take this model to the world! This coming weekend, Feb 17 and 18, we will be at the Mother Earth News Fair in Belton, Tx for the official launch.  Exciting Days!

For those who have received the "executive summary", there has been one fairly major change in the layout of the offering. We spent the last couple months floating this around potential investors and colleagues from the executive world, collecting feedback. This feedback has convinces us to change this offering into a straight "farm franchise" approach. A model that people understand already, accept, and are comfortable funding and using. I had tried to stay away from "franchising" becasue of negative experiences in my own past with franchises (from the franchisee side), but after careful consideration, it just makes sense. At the end of the day, this IS in fact a franchise. Explaining it in any other way just confuses people.

So, Farm Franchise it is...  Lots of work to do, but we are now looking for partners, investors, and initial clients to get this rolling and launch 100,000 farms across america!

Progress on the Book Series - "Save the Children"

It has been a very long weekend!

With only two weeks left before the big Grand Unveiling in Texas at the Mother Earth News Fair, we are scrambling to finish enough book material to meet demand. The goal is to have some books available for sale, and some as "mock-ups" to show the content and depth across the entire series. This will enable "pre-sales" of the series (at a discount of course).

But it is a sizable amount of work to prepare eight books, complete with covers and chapters on short time frame. Fortunately, it looks like we might just make the deadline for ordering books from the print on demand service.

Here is a sneak preview of the entire line of books coming :


Save The Children: Restoring Health Through Grandpa’s Farm

Book 1. Grow Your Own Feed: The Model
                 Stop outsourcing animal feed

Book 2. Grow Your Own Feed: Drip Irrigation System Plans
                 Automate germination to harvest

Book 3. Grow Your Own Feed: Gardening for Animal Nutrition
                 Create Live Feed from Sun and Soil

Book 4. Grow Your Own Feed: Fertilization and Land Rotation
                 Let the Animals do the Work!

Book 5. Grow Your Own Feed: Fertigation
                 Irrigate with Fertilized Water

Book 6. Grow Your Own Feed: Weed Burning HowTo
                 No Chemicals – Low Labor – No Weeds!

Book 7. Grow Your Own Feed: Pest Control with Guinea Fowl
                 Turn Garden Pests into a positive

Book 8. Grow Your Own Feed: Dehydrating the Harvest
                 Storing Home Grown Feed

The theme of this series is "growing feed on farm" to raise quality, save money, and create profits for the farm. This is one of the cornerstones of our model.  Growing high quality produce based feed on farm is the key to raising meat products at low cost without sacrificing quality. The animals are healthier consuming fresh or dehydrated produce, grown in soils fertilized by a variety of species living out in the sun and fresh air. There is just no way to duplicate this in a bag of dried feed bought from a supplier.

Following this series will be additional series on other aspects of small profitable farming and creating nutrition. The key is the synergy created buy combining all the right ingredients.

But for now... It's time for a good nights sleep.

Success!!! Feeding Home Raised Zucchini in the Winter!

It's always a great feeling when something works! This is one of those days... as we sit inside covered in inches of still falling snow... we are able to feed a mix of feed based on zucchini from our own garden!

How you ask? Zucchini is a decidedly summer plant, thriving only in hot weather, surely not growing underneath all that snow!

My reply... have you read the book?  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520227116   A chapter in this first book touches on growing feed in the summer, dehydrating and storing it, for feeding in the winter.

And the good news is, it works! Today in January we started opening the storage buckets that were filled mid summer, and the feed looks literally perfect!

Click on the picture for a closer look, you can see whole seeds, stalks, roots, leaves, from the fresh plants. the orange color comes from the mature zucchinis. We allowed some to mature to increase the protein content of the seeds. 

This particular recipe looks like a mix of zucchini, dandelion greens, and kale. We ripped up the fruits and plants, roots and all, added some mineral rich salt, and dried the mixture on our special home built drying trays.  After only 4 days in the hot summer sun, the dried flakes are scraped off easily and stored in air tight buckets for the winter.

This 3 gallon bucket of dried feed represents about a quarter of a full RTV bed load (about 4 x 4 x 2 feet) of fresh vegetables and plants.  the compression ratio is immense, which means the storage space required is minimal compared to what the fresh veggies were.

The nutritional content is very high. Unlike feeds based on some "cheap" source of protein like soy (which is NOT a natural feed for any animal) this feed gets its protein mostly from the mature zucchini seeds, which are about 40% protein, plus the protein in the kale plants which makes up about a quarter of this mix.  But besides the protein, this mix contain all the nutrients of zucchinis themselves, plus kale complete with roots and dandelion greens (a super green) and dandelion green roots (highly medicinal). AND these are all heirloom varieties AND grown organically, fertilized with the very animals it is feeding.

From a financial standpoint, this feed is virtually free. It only requires a few seeds, a little water, and some labor to grow, harvest, and dehydrate. The labor is minimal compared to the cash it would take to buy this much high quality feed on the market. That is, IF you can even find such a feed!

So bottom line, it is better nutrition and much lower price than any commercial feed.

New Farm Advertising Campaign

We have done very little advertising for the farm since we launched Little Sprouts some 6 or 7 years ago. The customer list has grown slowly from a dozen to a few hundred in that time by word of mouth, interviews, etc.  But as we approach 2017, and have left the off farm income behind, there is a desperate need to speed things up.

So, we have launched a new advertising campaign. It is primarily based on "doodle" add, where a hand draws the story on a whiteboard in a video.  I personally love that format! It is entertaining, crisp, simple.  So here we go!

At this point, all of the ads are made in-house, with some special software.  It has been a learning curve and challenging, but below you can see the first results! Yep.. I know.. it looks amateurish. That's ok.. we are amateurs! Constructive feedback is appreciated, but lets keep in mind that no professionals are involved.. so keep expectations realistic!

The Ads themselves are, for now,  graphics and music. The combination of audio and visual tells the story without narration, well that's the goal anyway... so be sure to turn on the sound as you watch.

Save The Children

Ebooks Coming! - Volunteer Reviewers?

We are VERY pleased to announce that finally, at long last, I have committed to writing the Ebooks promised long ago. In fact, the first one is almost done! It should be finished by next week.

The Ebooks have three purposes:

1. To spread the knowledge of our unique model so that others can make use of these innovate approaches to farming
2. Augment our own income in this tight financial period
3. Begin the longer term strategy of launching ten thousand small family farms across america.

We are laying out a series of Ebooks covering every unique aspect of our operation in a way that enables other farms to follow and reproduce what we have accomplished. Some books will be broader, covering principles (i.e. gardening for animal feed), while others will be specific (dehydrating zucchini for winter storage). That way, you can pick and choose the major and minor topics that apply and get right down to business. 

Why Ebooks and not regular printed books?

First, Ebooks are easier to keep up to date. This farming model is a evolving understanding and with Ebooks I can make changes virtually overnight and release updates.  Printed books mean a committed number of printings, at cost, before changes can be made.  That would stifle "up to date-ness" of these writings. 

Second, Ebooks are quicker and easier to distribute at no cost. You simply download the file, and view or print it at your leisure. It puts you in control of how you want it delivered and stored at your end.  An Ebook turns into a printed pamphlet by simply printing!

that said, we will be distributing printed pamphlets (paperback stapled "books") through certain channels for those that really do want only a printed copy. 

What Part can YOU play?

We invite you to volunteer to review and edit these books as they are released for this. The first one will be available sometime next week (last week of November).  Here is what is expected for both  volunteer positions:

Reviewer - Simply read the book, making notes about sections difficult to understand, redundant, incomplete, awkward, etc. This is more about reviewing content, not hard things like sentence structure or typos or layout.  This is more about WHAT is said than HOW it is said. Just look at the information and ask :

1. is it easy to read?
2. is it easy to understand?
3. does it convey the information enough to be doable?

Editor - All of the above PLUS attention to sentence structure, typos, word choice, punctuation, layout, etc. The mechanics of writing and conveying information this way.  This is about both WHAT is said and HOW it is said. This would also require a basic understanding of the art/science of writing and communication.

Please feel free to volunteer for either of these positions by emailing to info@littlesproutsfarm.com at your earliest convenience.

FYI: Please remember that any suggestion may or may not be included in the books. Either way, your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Cauliflower in place of watermelon

Today we finished planting the cauliflower patch where the watermelons used to be.  This section took about 6 hours start to finish, to convert from growing watermelons to freshly planted cauliflower.

This is a new approach to the drip irrigation setup. The header pipes were spaced wide, for watermelon vines, by using the spacer pipes between each spigot pipe. To convert to narrow spacing was a simple process of unscrewing the spacer pipes and screwing on the spigot pipes. This took the area quickly from 6 wide row to 11 narrow rows.  But the Crenshaw melons are not ready to come out, so this narrow spaced section simple screwed right into the existing wide melon header in place. No changes required to the rest of the setup. I am pleased with the flexibility and ease of change with this drip irrigation system we are developing.

So.. as of today we have 11 rows of 70 yards each, with two types of heirloom cauliflower.

Here is the new patch... right next to the crenshaw melons in the background. 

You can see where the narrow spaced cauliflower  row header connects into the wide spaces melon header.  as easy as screwing two pipes together! 

Imagine this filled with cauliflower plants, half purple, half white.. ready for the slow  winter growth.

Winter Beets are in the ground - Milker area is resting - and we MADE lots of Dirt!

We managed to convert the milker barn area into a winter beet garden this week.  27 rows of about 25 yards each, planted with heirloom beets that grow to about 5 lbs each over the winter.

This also gives the ground behind the barn, where the milkers have lived for a couple years, a well deserved rest. There wont be any goats on this ground or in those barn stalls for at least 6 months. That rest, combined with the tilling and cleaning, will prevent a parasite overload that could come after constant use through multiple winters.

This ground, I must say, is absolutely AWESOME! I mean.. this plot is like intensive grazing on steroids! Taking measurements, the goats have produced an impressive 1 to 2 feet of .. dirt. Fresh, organic, fertile dirt.  yes, made.  that's the beautiful thing about mixing plants and animals the way nature intended... the animals consume the plants, and in turn make the best dirt possible, for even more plants to grow. It's a marvelous synergy that life on earth is based on.  This dirt looks just like what comes out of bags of premium top soil, rich, moist, plenty of variety and biological material. When I first tilled it, there were literally millions of earthworms.. the surface of the ground was .. moving, with a life of its own.

This is a great combinations, as the fertility of this soil is higher than any in the ground we manage, which means the later than desired planting date should be helped through fast growth in this soil.  At the same time, the ground can recover from intensive animal use, produce winter feed thats organic, heirloom, and so nutrient dense.

The other good news is, our drip planting system is paying off well. The conversion from goat stall to planted stand alone garden took about 8 hours.  Just clear, till, build headers to size (just screw together), drop seeds with our Hoss seeder, install water controller, and walk away.

The area is laid out as 3 sections of 9 rows, about 25 yards long. We left enough space for a road on the end to the right, and a run on the end by the barn.

You can see the controller, filter, and feed mounted to an old table. There are 3 controllers on the timer (one per section). 

Feed Dehydrating - Round 2 Success so far

We are on round 2 of our feed dehydrating operation.  The first test was very successful, but of course left room for improvement.  The second test, slightly larger, now drying in the sun, holds even greater promise!

To Recap, we are experimenting with solar dehydrating of "chipped" zucchini as storable winter animal feed. The goal is to harvest all the extra zucchini while we can use melons and fruit for feed, run the Zukes through our PTO (tractor driven) chipper / shredder, lay them out on trays to dry, then store in food grade buckets for use later in the winter.

The first test showed that each 4x8 tray produces about one 4 gallon food grade bucket of feed. That's a HUGE compression ratio! That tray was holding about a quarter RTV bed load of zukes.  Basically compressing a typical RTV bed load of zucchini into a couple small 4 gallon buckets of dry feed.

The improvements made this time around are:

1. Raise the exit flap on the chipper to allow freer flow of zucchini chips. This means less "minced" and more "chipped" giving a better texture of final product, plus holding more juice in while dehydrating.  When the juice is held in, and evaporated, all the nutrients in the juice are transferred to the feed. If the juice drains off, so does that portion of nutrients. Simply allowing the chips to exit more freely improved the nutrient ratio dramatically.

2. Adding Salt. Redmond RealSalt or Himalayan of course. (not that toxic white stuff).  the salt adds those important mineral nutrients to the feed, but also aids in drying. Salt helps to "pull the moisture" of food to the surface where the sun can dehydrate it faster. It appears to help a lot, as this round is dehydrating maybe 50% faster in cooler weather.

The overall layout. we now have 6 trays in use. The design seems to be holding up well. Easy to use, light, strong enough, and fast drying with airflow.  The "kiddie pool" on the right is where the chipper sits when in use, to catch the chips and mulch. Then we simply shovel it into 5 gallon buckets and pour out on the drying trays. It takes about 4 to 6 5 gallon buckets to fill a tray.

Here is a closeup of the zucchini chips at one day in the sun. You can see that this has a lot more chips and less minced "sludge" than the first try. 

Here is another closer view. After the chips are laid out, salt is sprinkled across the entire top surface, then every day or two the chips are "stirred" or "scratched" as the kids call it. 

Based on this success, we may be building another half dozen racks so that we can dry an entire harvest at once.

Next time, we may even add some greens to the mix by running the greens through the shredder part of hte chipper / shredder. That will nicely mix the greens and provide even better nutrition.

Dehydrating at Scale

We started working on our feed dehydrating operation today. The garden is producing more veggies than we need on a daily basis, so now it is time to start storing for the winter.  Plus, we need to start our annual pear harvest again, where we hope to grab about 10,000 lbs of pears this year.

why dehydrating?   Several reasons:

1. It is fairly quick and cheap if the sun is the power source
2. It can scale easily
3. It preserves sugar (where fermenting converts sugar into acid)
4. It separates juice from bulk, so both can be utilized

The overall plan is simple... the extra produce goes into our chipper/shredder to pulverize it and separate the liquid juices from the bulk.  the juice is captured and stored in buckets to freeze. The bulk is placed on drying racks for a few days and then bagged for storage.

Today we built an initial drying rack to test the design. The cost per rack with this method is around $12 for a 4' x 8' rack covered in standard fiberglass window screen.  2x2 and 1x2 pine form the frame to make it sturdy but light.

Here are some closeup pics of version 1:

The finished screen, version 1. 

Closeup of the design

Standard 45 corner braces

I cut a slot to accommodate the standard spline to hold window screen. this might need to be reinforced.

Here it is in the garden, on blocks and ready for use!

The Chipper / Shredder is a large PTO driven model with a wide screen. I would like an even wider screen to make larger chunks, but too expensive to warrant buying one. Some adjustment of the exit door should make things flow nicely.

We placed the chipper / shredder into a kiddie pool, so that the juice is caught and can be easily removed to store in buckets separately. When we do pears, there will be a LOT of juice.

the produce is slipped into the branch chute, not he brush entry at the top. This makes larger chunks with less shredding.

The finished working setup, a tarp underneath keeps the dead grass down and out of the way.

And here is the finished product.. a tray full of dripping pulp and chunks, drying in the sun. 

Crash, Burn, Rebuild Air Conditioning Control

Remember when I rebuilt the air conditioner thermostat in the farm kitchen / fermenting room? Well.. yea...  sometimes things dont work out so well.. that one  sort of.. exploded.

The mistake was.. while the relays inside the temperature controller were large enough to handle the load, the actual connectors are not. After running flawlessly for a few months, one of the connectors overheated and the eventual result was... disaster.

So yesterday after deliveries I rebuilt the controller into a more robust unit... another  temperature controller just like before but  I added optoisolators to handle the compressor / heater load.  Should work beautifully. The whole thing is mounted inside a plastic storage bucket for safety (with ventilation holes cut in the sides).

Completed unit, installed and running

Here is a top view, you can see the two optoisolators, one on the left and one on the right. one does cooling and one heat.

side view showing hte heat sinks on the optoisolators. you can also see the vent holes up the side.

Here is the fancy schematic (hand drawing) of the wiring.

This is a gret temperature controller for projects, capable, cheap, accurate. 

And.. last years model after the accident

As you can see, the connector on the right end overheated and melted, shorting out he unit and blowing the fuse.