[Von Helman]

Out on the ranch – Photo Thread

Though I post some pictures of our cows out in the pasture and post it here in the Farming & Gardening Section. I have discovered through trial and error (more error) that this area (Farm & Gardening) should become my new “down to earth” home here on survival boards because of the number of real self sustaining country folks here and the fact I find myself in disagreements easily with dem der city folk.

I have really enjoyed the people, posts, and threads here in this section and don’t know why it took me so long to get here. Guess I’m not as fast as dem city slickers are

We are on over 20,000 acres and if you notice the land stretches as far as the eye can see without any man made structure or cell phone towers, and to quote Austin Powers; “This is as rural as it gets baby!”

Soon we will be starting construction on a new old world kitchen and I will post picture of this as well. The kitchen will have a stone bread oven, a wood burning stove, and all the goodies for baking bread and making cheese.

It will take some time as we are having to get stones brought in to use as construction material to give it an old world look. Once the construction begins and we are able to get it going I will post pictures. In the meantime enjoy these pictures here.

Enjoy!

VH

 

[shawn]

Looks like a nice place.

 

[musiklover77]

This does not make me feel in anyway that I'm at all prepared looks like your pretty much gonna be o.k. when the SHTF. LOL This would be wonderful! What a dream, what beautiful scenery! You are definitely lucky! I look forward to the kitchen pictures! I love seeing creations like those.

 

[bridgierapa]

Hi Von Helman, your scenery looks a lot like mine in a way! but - just wondering; is it normal for them to be that thin where you are? Or have you just come out of drought? Do you have time to get something on them by winter and if not, what happens then?

And finally : how you get those big pictures in text instead of thumbnails attached at bottom lol!

 

[Von Helman]

Hi Von Helman, your scenery looks a lot like mine in a way! but - just wondering; is it normal for them to be that thin where you are? Or have you just come out of drought? Do you have time to get something on them by winter and if not, what happens then?

And finally : how you get those big pictures in text instead of thumbnails attached at bottom lol!

As for the cows being as you say thin and is that normal here, yes this is because they do a great deal of walking each day and the exercise does them good. If we leave them in the corral and let them eat they get fatter, but we walk them to the pasture because there the grass is free.

As for the pictures I think the reason they come out the way they do is that I do not upload them into the actual post but rather link them to my Free Photobucket account. Then you can click on them and see a large picture which I prefer.

 

[Blaik]

Lookin great! I'm envious, but glad, cuz this helps motivate me! :thumb:

 

[elkhound]

good job ! i am really interested in the kitchen you speak of...as this is one of my goals too.i am sick and tired of paying for electric and gas to fill propane bottles to do a bit of cooking.when i own so many trees and has free wood all around. i have my kitchen stove in storage and it awaits to be called back to duty of making me self reliant and in no need of power or gas company.

 

[Von Helman]

This does not make me feel in anyway that I'm at all prepared looks like your pretty much gonna be o.k. when the SHTF. LOL This would be wonderful! What a dream, what beautiful scenery! You are definitely lucky! I look forward to the kitchen pictures! I love seeing creations like those.

Don’t feel overwhelmed or under prepared, just work your plans and make sure you cover the bases that fit your personal needs.

Well we will see how prepared or “lucky” we really are if anything happens, might be a lot of city folk coming out here saying, “Yea you were right all along…blah… blah... blah… ”

The good thing is that the population density here is almost zero, but the bad part is we know that will change not to mention there is nothing really we can do to secure every acre.

I love the wide open out here and the natural beauty of it all but we still need to get some things in place ourselves and have let other things take priority.

As for the kitchen we are working on the plans and fine tuning them. We are also looking at the materials and design of the stone bread oven.

The kitchen will have 14 foot tall ceilings and walls build out of stone and mortar to give it that old world look. Stone arches will be evening spaced out and there will be four of them in the kitchen. The bread oven will be built into one wall while an enclave will hold the wood burning stove.

There will be a large extra wide wooden table in the center of the room for prep work. The sink will be an old time farm sink form the 50’s. We think it will be neat as it will look and feel like an old world working kitchen, and it will be one too. We will also have an actual working hand pump for water in the kitchen that will access an underground cistern. We think it will all be very neat, or at least we hope so.

As I said as soon as we get stated which might be a few months I will be taking pictures and posting them.

 

[Von Helman]

good job ! i am really interested in the kitchen you speak of...as this is one of my goals too.i am sick and tired of paying for electric and gas to fill propane bottles to do a bit of cooking.when i own so many trees and has free wood all around. i have my kitchen stove in storage and it awaits to be called back to duty of making me self reliant and in no need of power or gas company.

Yes I described in more in detail in the above post I just responded to. I am specifically designing it to work with no electricity and no gas. We will have an old gas stove in the back with a tank but will try not to use it unless we have to for a special or specific reason.

We are adding really high ceilings so it won’t be as hot inside and will add some windows at the top for ventilation as well. We really want it to feel and look as if you walk inside the kitchen you are walking back into old time Italy.

I think you already know in our cheese kitchen we have and are using a wood burning stove.

And the hand mill

And just outside a wash basin

I think I also mentioned we are currently constructing a round dome Italian style oven to see how it turns out. We still have to finish / cover the top of the dome and then light it up and burn it.

You can learn abou tthese ovens here

http://www.fornobravo.com/pompeii_oven/pompeii_oven.html


We are almost set

 

[musiklover77]

Those pictures are fabulous!!!

O.k. do you people realize, where I live, you have to pay 8-10 bucks to get into the older revolutionary houses in order to see these things? Wood stoves, milking of cows etc.

Some places are actually "living" farms the one I know of I think they accept donations, but the people that get dressed up are volunteers and really it's just to teach the young people about history and how things used to be.

I do find myself more advanced in survival then the average person in these parts which I am gratefully thankful for, but the furthest I could get away from the city without killing ourselves to drive back and forth to work is 3 hours per day.

How do you make a living monetarily where you live? Do you have a trade, construction, plumbing etc. How do people live where you are? Travel to the nearest city? And to be quite honest, where we live now, working in the nearest city would not work monetarily for anyone here, everyone flocks to NYC or NJ... The only other way to be in these parts is to be retired or a trust fund baby.

 

[Von Helman]

Calves

Sheep

The piglets now bigger

Pig slopping up the Whey

One of the ducks

Duck Eggs

Cow back in one of the corrals after being out in the pasture, and still eating

Chickens

Sometimes you get uninvited guests

 

[tuffnutt]

Nice looking spread you got there Von Helman, you don't need a hand do ya? I got me a nice little cowpony that would love it there lol

 

[elkhound]

the outside oven looks great.i been looking at these on youtube and how some have made them and their operation.i think these outside ovens are a true key to self reliance and getting abck to do more for ones self than running off to make money and then useing ti to buy the same end result.so why not jsut stay home and enjoy ones life.

when things get rough and they are getting rough folks will wish they had built a stove like this and had a outdoor kitchen area for their daily cooking needs.

the life most live here in u.s. is just crazy to me.

99.9% of the entire worlds population down through the ages..since begining of time have been peasants.whats wrong with liveing that way now.:thumb:

 

[musiklover77]

Oh my Word!!!! I want to hug them and love them and squeeze them and protect them all. They are so wonderfully beautiful! I want to come live on your farm! I think my husband would kill me! I'd be in the slaughter house next to Wilbur.

You are so blessed.

 

[Von Helman]

Those pictures are fabulous!!!

O.k. do you people realize, where I live, you have to pay 8-10 bucks to get into the older revolutionary houses in order to see these things? Wood stoves, milking of cows etc.

Some places are actually "living" farms the one I know of I think they accept donations, but the people that get dressed up are volunteers and really it's just to teach the young people about history and how things used to be.

I do find myself more advanced in survival then the average person in these parts which I am gratefully thankful for, but the furthest I could get away from the city without killing ourselves to drive back and forth to work is 3 hours per day.

How do you make a living monetarily where you live? Do you have a trade, construction, plumbing etc. How do people live where you are? Travel to the nearest city? And to be quite honest, where we live now, working in the nearest city would not work monetarily for anyone here, everyone flocks to NYC or NJ... The only other way to be in these parts is to be retired or a trust fund baby.

How do you make a living monetarily where you live?

We have to put these funny little costumes on while we work and people pay to come through and watch us like zoo animals. Ha ha! j/k :
Sorry I couldn’t resist

Yes isn’t it something that you have to pay to see one of those old time working farms as if it’s a museum. One of the benefits to actually building the kitchen like I have described and making it more esthetically pleasing is so we can use it to market our cheese and bread. Maybe we should add a “paid tour” too :

As for monetarily how we are able to do it out here? First we live very modestly here, and have very little bills. We produce a lot of the things we need to eat which keeps our bills down even more. As for how to make income out here, well our largest income comes from the crops each year, and then livestock can yield some decent cash when you sell them.

We also do things like paying cash for anything we need and waiting until we have the cash to do such things. For example when I purchased my suburban, I was able to get a much better price for it by paying cash. I had to plan the sale of some livestock and other items to get it done but by paying cash I saved $6,000 from what the dealership was asking and the truck was used.

 

[BrowserCat]

I can has cheeseburgers when cowz r ground, yes? : )

 

[musiklover77]

THAT IS SOOOOOO FUNNY! Get a little sheep costume with a bell. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
You probably could make money once you get your abode operational! You should make it a bed and breakfast thing, I would have to make it my annual retreat!

Yes it's very odd. If you were in these parts, I would take you to these museums that look quite like your pictures and that I would have to drive several thousand miles to see.

Yes we have cows, even saw bison today go figure, very odd...and yes some may even cook with a wood stove, but that's not seen, no way no how.

You should be proud.

 

[Lark]

Very nice place you have there. Thank you for sharing it! :thumb: (did you get rid of the rattler?)

 

[tn-dave]

Great place and good pictures..!! That looks like a mean bull....

 

[Von Helman]

Here is something I find amusing,

Our ducks are kept in the protected corral which is walled. This corral is where the pigs, the cowboy’s horse, and the dairy cows are all kept but the ducks own this place and are not afraid of the cows at all. Often the ducks chase the cows and peck at their hooves to get them to move or just out of being territorial and mean. It’s rather funny to see a duck trying to bully a 1,000 pound cow.

The duck lays her eggs under the feed trough for the horse and doesn’t have any fear