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Mobile Chicken Coop

We are reaching the stage of property ownership where projects completed in the first couple of years are showing their age. We moved to this properly in August of 2013, so we didn’t really start work in earnest until the next spring. Our first chicken coop was one of these projects.

Needless to say, it’s starting to show its age. I’ve had to patch the floor multiple times. The front side that is open has rotted in places and I did a major repair on that a year or two ago. The roof sheathing is starting to rot.

We always really wanted a mobile coop we could move around. It’s a great way to spread the “nutrients” around and not overly wear out certain spots in the pasture. At one point I tried to add some hitches to the existing coop and pull it with the tractor as it’s on some skids, but it was just too heavy and embedded in the ground. And not really meant for moving.

So given we needed to replace the coop, I wanted to do a mobile version this time. Was hoping to find a used trailer or wagon and looked for a few years, but they are surprisingly hard to come by. Farmers don’t tend to get rid of them. So I decided to bite the bullet and just buy a new trailer from Tractor Supply.

The new coop is a bit smaller, but the layout is pretty nicely streamlined. I also added a better automatic door and decided to purchase a roll-out nest box. We’ll see if the chickens figure out how to use it. They seem skittish about it so far, but it’s only been a few days of use. I think it turned out pretty well.

You can see the build out and finished product in this Google Photos album.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Az4JW9p5z7H6JT9QA

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Homestead Tour 2025

One thing I like to do each year in late spring or early summer is video a walk around our property. It’s a great way to see the progress year over year and have a visual record of various changes.

The property is in pretty good shape this year, which has a lot to do with all the extra time I’ve had over the past few months due to my job layoff. So I guess that’s one silver lining.

No big major projects planned this year, but we are continuing to work on some of the same things like

  • Expanding growing areas by removing overall lawn, including in the front of our back garden and in the rain garden area northwest of the house
  • Replacing empty spots in the various orchards and continue to expand the newer orchards in the front of the property
  • Clean up some weedy areas and lay down a lot of additional wood chip mulch

Here are the videos for this year.

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Spring cheer in front flower garden

Kristin has been working on the front flower garden pretty much the whole time we’ve lived on this property. It looks great this year, with a wonderful mix of daffodils, tulips, grape hyacinth, bleeding heart and other flowers all showing off.

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Personal website update

This is a bit of a housekeeping post, so ignore if you are only interested in the homesteading content.

I’ve had some version of a personal website around about as long as I could afford to do so. Long before this blog, I hosted a site with my swartzentruber.net domain.

Since being laid off in February, I had time to catch up on a few personal things, including updating this blog. I also explored some technical areas I’ve been wanting to learn more about.

<nerd alert>I have been wanting to play around with Docker a bit more in a practical sense, so I spent some time to

  • update and clean up the content
  • move to the latest version of .net Core
  • Dockerize the resulting site
  • Set up an AWS Lightsail container
  • Figure out how to upload a Docker image, deploy it and get it working with HTTPS

Definitely had to figure out a few quirky things that started to make sense after troubleshooting, but that’s part of the reason I wanted to do this. Doing something >> reading about something.</nerd alert>

Anyway, everything is up and running now with a new look. Rather than spend a lot of time on doing a design from scratch, I found a Bootstrap template that I liked well enough and adjusted it for what I wanted. While my personal site has mainly been a pretty simple site with some homesteading and hobby talk, I decided to make it a bit more of a portfolio site and added information related to my career and job search. I’m not sure if anybody takes the time to see what exists at swartzentruber.net, based on my main email address. But it doesn’t hurt to look like you have something relatively up-to-date and informative. I do want to add a few photos here and there for some visual interest, but the bones of it are ready.

So feel free to check out the new swartzentruber.net and let me know what you think.

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Winter 2025

I just updated my blog server configuration, so thought I would write a quick post to make sure everything is working well.

It’s already March in Vermont, still snow on the ground and icy. We’ve had a few warmer (40s) days, but not enough to start the significant thaw/melt than tends to try to mess up the driveway.

I’ve got some small seedlings poking up in my grow area in the basement, hoping to get better germination and growth this year. I’ve been experimenting with various LED lights to try to cut down on electricity usage, but whatever I did last year didn’t seem to work very well. Had a lot of trouble with seedlings not taking off and really get up to size. We did get a new greenhouse last spring to replace the one that blew down, but it was ready in time to help many of the seedlings along. This year should be better with that as an option.

Otherwise, I’m expecting some apple rootstock to arrive soon, as well as some scion wood. I need to soon take some cuttings from the orchard as well to try to start a few more trees of some of our favorite varieties. Hoping to get another 8-10 trees started and also still have a bit of rootstock in pots from last year where grafts didn’t take. So I plan to continue expanding our various orchards, It will be interesting to see how many of the new trees from last year did okay through the winter and take off this spring.

This past year we got enough apples to press about 2 and 1/2 gallons of cider from fruit from our orchards. This is the first time we’ve had any substantial yield from fruit grown on the property, so that was an exciting milestone. Lately I’ve been focusing more on full-size to nearly full-size trees as the wind around here is not very nice to the semi-dwarf trees and we keep losing some each year. Also focusing more on crab apples as they seem to be much less picky, don’t have as much trouble with disease and still make a great cider. Looking forward to seeing what this year’s growing season brings.

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Spring 2023 Homestead Tour Videos

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here, but just in case anyone is still checking this out. I’ve been creating a decent amount of content for my job, which leaves me not wanting to spend my free time doing this as much. On the other hand, I’m gradually getting better at video production and narration so I can put that to use here.

These videos are very lightly edited, mostly free-form. To be honest, I mostly do them for myself as one way of tracking progress over time on the property. But hopefully you’ll find it interesting to see what we’ve been up to lately as well and see various new projects we’re working on.

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Completed Stone Walls in Garden

Quick post to show the completed stone walls. The masons came yesterday with some beautiful flat rock from over the mountain in Vermont. The walls are now capped and generally finished out and the whole effect looks much more complete.

From the deck
Here you get a sense of the lovely late spring flower bed in front of the garden
Detail from inside the garden
Looking from behind the wall across the valley
More detail from the back of the wall
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Starting Again With Ducks

Every since we lost most of our flock to a bobcat, we’ve been wanting to get ducks again. They are so much fun to watch and act very differently from chickens. Weather doesn’t really phase them and they mostly forage for food when there isn’t snow on the ground. Plus you get eggs, although our last group was fairly sporadic.

It’s difficult when you only have room for a small flock as most hatcheries like to ship at least six or seven and we don’t have room for that many. However, we found that Metzer Farms will ship fewer, but there are extra shipping costs for a heat bag and some other things. It’s pretty pricey, so we went back and forth for awhile. Ultimately decided it was worth it since we wanted to choose the breed and the expense over time really isn’t that bad if they all survive.

We now have the fenced-in pasture, so we think they will fare better against predation this time around. Unfortunately the little mini-pond we created is outside the fence boundaries, but maybe we’ll dig that out again and let them free-range a bit in the summer. The field that is fenced also gets pretty wet in the spring, so perhaps there is an opportunity to create a swale or small ditch as well.

Given the recent troubles with the post office, we were a bit concerned about delays. The ducks ship from California. However, they actually arrived sooner than expected, shipped on a Monday and arrived early Wednesday morning. They were in great shape and very active in the shipping container. They all look great so far and are growing like crazy. We’ve already had to take them out of the initial brooder (a stock tank) and put them in our old chicken tractor inside the garage. They still need a bit of heat, but I think even that won’t last much longer. It has been a bit cooler at night here going into fall, so they still need a bit of help to stay warm. They seem to find cuddling together works most of the time though.

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Spring 2020 Homestead Preview – Back Garden

I wanted to complete this series of videos by showing progress in the back garden. Almost getting into summer at this point, but we’re still getting things planted here and there. Still have a handful of seedlings in the greenhouse finishing up that aren’t quite ready to plant out.

It’s been really hot here, the better part of last week saw highs in the upper 80s and 90s. It may have even cleared 100 one day. Kristin is saying we moved to a place that is too hot. All joking aside, the typical Vermont year sees about 4 days over 90 and we’ve already had 6 or 7. To compound things, we’ve gotten almost no rain as this high pressure system is very strong and persistent. Typically you would get thunderstorms when it’s this hot, but other than a bit of messing around on Saturday afternoon, even that hasn’t happened. This week doesn’t look much better until next weekend, at least as far as rain. I’ve been having to water something every day. At least the tomatoes and peppers like it.

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Spring 2020 Homestead Preview – Orchard

This will mainly be a short post to point to the video I made for this, but a couple of notes. I was looking at some photos from the very first planting (2014) and it was a bit surreal to see how empty this space was at the time. We planted a lot of trees the first three years and then slowed down a bit. We’ve lost a few. Figured out the lower end of the slope is just too wet for apple trees to thrive, so going to discontinue using those spots. I’ve tried a few trees there, none of them are happy. This year I moved up to the top of the slope and out towards the swale a bit more. I think those will do better.

We’re also trying cold-hardy peach and apricot this year, as I probably mentioned elsewhere. These are not in the orchard, but on the northwest side of the house where there is a lot of shade in spring and the ground warms slowly.

Also, this year I bought some root stock and I’m going to try to graft a few trees myself. If that doesn’t end up too terribly, I’ll try to show some pictures of that at some point.