Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

LachiusTZ said:

Might go ahead with the garden at our house . . . prolly 20x20, or 20x10. Not huge, but something to put in and do etc.

Anyone have a good written hard copy resource (like twist of the wrist for motorcycles) w/ the crop rotations, what to plant to maximize yield etc?

Prolly gonna do garden OR chickens, not both. And since I might sell the house in the fall, a nice garden set up would give a harvest, wouldnt have to fuck w/ moving it, and would be a selling point for the house (I think).

So prolly garden.

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See if you can find something specific to your state. If you were in florida id have recommendations.

whoo said:

My experience is the same. They should last 20 years unless you are chewing them up with heavy tracked equipment.

Are you not using pressure treated lumber? Maybe you're getting dry rot fungus or something.

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Yeah weird. I was doing research on forums and kept coming across people bitching about steel rusting to pieces and wood rotting (neither has been my experience).

Maybe they’re just buying shit ass trailers? Dunno.

How big of a deal is it to make your garden beds go north/south? I understand it’s to get even sunlight across them but not sure that exact direction is gonna work for me.

Any you guys do composting? I’m planning from food forest and want to have a compost bin. This three bin setup seems like a good idea. Any feedback?

Spent the day devining the forest visible from house. So much fucking devining to do. It’s amazing how trees and shit pop up 10-15 ft high after you get vines off. I have vines in my cypress trees as thick as a python.

lurkingdirk said:

Foler what's the towing capacity of your vehicle? Don't overdo it with your trailer. For example, I know someone who had an older truck, a smaller one, and they bought a covered trailer. The trailer itself was nearly the towing capacity of the vehicle, so they could load almost nothing in it. Dumb move. Figure out what you're most likely to tow. For me I periodically tow my tractor around, and it's about 3,500 pounds, which is the limit of my trucks towing capacity unless I got a trailer with brakes of its own. Then I can tow up to 7,500 pounds. So I'm golden. You might want to be looking for a trailer with brakes of its own so you don't have to update your vehicle.

You can look at something like this:

Big Tex Trailers 70PI (7' X 16') Tandem Axle Utility Trailer with brakes on BOTH axles and 7K GVWR | East Coast Autos & Trailers | Wilmington NC Trailers and Storage Barns

The 70PI-X Tandem Axle Pipe Top Utility Trailer comes standard with a generous 83-inch width. Ideal for hauling compact trailers, small equipment and other farm & ranch applications. We order all of ours with brakes on BOTH axles so that you can confidently leave the state of NC as the laws in s

www.eastcoastautosandtrailers.com

I don't want a flat trailer, as I often move dirt/mulch/gravel/firewood or whatever. Its super helpful to be able to put up my 20 inch plywood walls in the trailer (I made them easy in, easy out, and that's not hard to do). You can haul a lot more of anything like dirt that way.

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Not concerned about towing capacity. I have a 2500 diesel truck I used to tow a 16k lbs boat. Trailer did have hydraulic brakes but I did tow it with no brakes once when fluid had leaked… Amazing how much these modern diesel trucks can tow. Can tow pretty much anything I’d imagine I’d use.

ditto on your last paragraph - love the idea of being able to tow dirt/mulch/gravel - good idea on 20 inch plywood. Big Tex also seems popular - I see them around a lot.

Only concern is as we’ve been discussing is that this trailer will live outdoors in florida - hence the primary benefit of aluminum was longevity. Also with aluminum you’ll usually get a higher payload capacity because the trailer itself weighs less when on the same rated axles as a steel trailer.

edit - lurkingdirk surprised you don’t own a hd diesel truck. You should snag an old ford (pre 6.2L iirc), duramax or Cummins for around the farm. Then again as I wrote this last sentence I remembered how expensive even a 15 year old truck may be right now. Bleh.

Borzak said:

When I first saw devining I thought you had a religious thing going on there for a sec.

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When you have an entire forest to do it almost becomes religious.

Bought myself a nice Stihl ht 251 pole saw for those monster cypress vines.

BrutulTM said:

It's horrendous right now. The engine went out in our '06 F-250 V10 and it's $8500 to put a new engine in it and there's no used engines available or if there are they want $500 under the price of a new one for it. I figured I could get a pickup at least as good as that thing for less than $8500 and move our bale bed onto it. Holy shit was I wrong. Pickups with from the 90's with 250K miles on them are going for $15k. That '06 just has a little over 100k on it so if it ran good would probably be pushing $25k. Insane. $8500 engine it is. I really dislike that V-10 and it chaps my ass to pay that much for one but I don't know what other option there is.

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Wow that blows. Yeah, not a fan of the v10… Really hard to go back to gas for towing after having diesel. Don’t think I could stomach putting a new 8500 v10 in an 06 Ford F-250..

Yeah I’d go diesel in the future - just be careful on the engines. I think it was fords 6.2L sometime around 06-09 that would get fucked up and to fix it they had to take the truck off the frame to just get to the part of the engine so I heard. I’ve had great success with duramax/Allison.