The Sifford Sojournal

Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.

Category: homestead (Page 12 of 13)

A House – Update II – Foundation

August 19, 2009 / / 14 Comments

We just wanted to catch you up on the progress of the house the Lord is granting that we be able to build right now.

I decided to use a pier and beam foundation, using 12 inch concrete piers.

And here is the first hole! I’ve found that below the surface is a layer of boulder rocks; and so I’ve been digging down to that point and leaving them so the piers will sit on the rock, hopefully creating a more firm foundation:

I cut rebar pieces and pounded them into the sides of the hole in eight places to help hold the pier in the ground against any lift that might occur:

And I tied them together with cross pieces so they act as a single piece in the concrete:

Here I tied in some vertical rebar pieces that would actually stick up into the pier:

And here is the base after the concrete pour:

For the pier part, I decided to use concrete tube forms. We’re finding the height of each tube by using a water level, which is just clear, plastic tubing with water in it. One person takes one end to an already established pier, the other person the other end to a leveled, empty concrete tube in place on the concrete base. The person next to the unfilled concrete tube gets in place, and the person at the established pier moves the tube up and down until their water level is level with the top of the pier. Then, the other person marks the concrete tube where their water line is showing. We’re doing this on four places on the tube, then marking a line all the way around the concrete tube and cutting it to size on that line. Also, we take each measurement from the same pier so that any error introduced only affects the new pier and doesn’t compound from pier to pier:

Once the tube is cut to the proper height, it is re-leveled on the concrete base and held in place by a wood form and stakes pounded into the ground:

This is the bolt that is set in the concrete which will hold on the brace which holds the beam. I tied in a couple of small pieces of rebar at the bottom to a washer held on by a nut to better lock it into the concrete:

And here the bolt is ready to be set into the concrete using the plywood to hold it “suspended” in the concrete:

Here is the pier after the concrete pour with the bolt set into place:

I decided to do the first two front corner piers so I could run a string between them so as to be able to line up the whole row of piers:

And here is the first row completed!

This past first Wednesday of the month was our community work day, and the men helped us with our foundation work. We poured a pier and three new bases:


I decided to complete the other two corners so I could have straight lines for all of the other outside piers, and here is where we are now:

We are again grateful to God for the provisions, ability and community to work on the house.

— David

 

Shack Caddy

July 12, 2009 / / 6 Comments

The initial plan for our goat sheds was to make them portable. On one I put some wheels; but on the subsequent ones, I decided it wasn’t worth the time nor expense. I am able to lift one side and shuffle them along, which is fine for moving them around inside an individual pen; but moving them from pen to pen would take some effort. I thought it might be nice to inexpensively throw together something on which to haul them around.

Here’s what I came up with: essentially it’s a shed tote made of landscape timbers, bolted together in a square, with the back cross timber on top of the skid timbers, and the front cross timber below, which would angle the skids up allowing for it to be more easily dragged along.

And here it is:

The next pictures show the process of a move:





And the goats check out the “new” place!

Thanks to the Lord for this idea and for the resources to be able to put it together.

— David

A House – Update I – Kindle Care

June 5, 2009 / / 2 Comments

A couple mornings after some pretty good soaking rains, with dew on the ground, vegetation being green, and only a slight southerly breeze expected (which would blow away from the wooded area behind the clearing), we decided it might be a good time to burn down the left-over wood pile collected from clearing the trees. And so, I grabbed the diesel containers, doused one end (I was hoping to have it burn very slowly from one end to the other and thus didn’t pour diesel all over the pile), said a prayer asking God that we not burn the place down, and lit it. Meanwhile, Sue started filling water containers to have around the fire, and I got some shovels and rolled the generator into position next to the well and hooked up and strung out several hoses in case they were needed. Once the fire started to go, I figured there was no turning back.

There was a slight north breeze to start (which was blowing into the side where I started), and that helped burn things down a little quicker, but was also into the direction of the woods. However, the fire maintained a slow burn as I monitored it, and I would pour diesel on the edges to try to keep them going as the middle was burning out nicely. Eventually the breeze changed to southerly and (easterly and westerly at times), which at least brought a little more of a comfort level.

Here is the fire about half way done. I did have to put out a little fire that started to crawl away from the main fire, but easily did so, thankfully, with a shovel and some water:


And here it is burned down. It smoldered for a couple of days, which I was hoping would help burn down the stumps more. We could see the coals glowing at night, and we prayed they would stay put. A couple of nights later, some thunderstorms blew through bringing some heavy winds, which really whipped up the sparks and cinders from what was still hot, but it had been raining already pretty heavily, and so we weren’t too worried, although we prayed some more that the fire wouldn’t ignite somewhere else on the land:


We burn a lot of our garbage, and whenever I interact with a fire and how hot it is, I think of things spiritual regarding fire:


(It was a little hard to understand one part, and I wanted to clarify: the words are, “…how the Bible talks about the eternal torment in flame, in hell, for those who aren’t saved, who don’t fall at the foot of Christ for salvation, and Christ alone, and His righteousness…” Very important!)

We are thankful to God for allowing us the opportunity to burn down the wood pile and continue the house project, and we are very grateful He in His mercy kept us from making mistakes with the fire, held the wind back, and kept the fire in control.

— David

A House

May 18, 2009 / / 7 Comments

Now that several of the larger, what we would call important, projects have been fairly completed, the Lord has graciously granted us the resources to be able to begin working on a house. We hope to have a very simple, southern-styled one, with fireplaces for warmth, and no electricity.

And so the ground-breaking began. Here is the site before any clearing:

I was able to use a bulldozer from a neighbor to knock down the trees:

Here is the same picture as the one above after the tree felling:

And here is the land mostly cleared, with unsaved branches in a burn pile:

Finally, this is the firewood we were able to put up from the felled trees:

Lord willing, we’ll post updates as things progress. We are grateful to God for allowing us to begin this project.

— David

Hi-Ho, The Derry-o, The Farmer is a Belle

March 13, 2009 / / 6 Comments


I do a lot of the outside chores around the homestead here, and there are ways of doing things that are either required by the task at hand or the implements being used for it, or that are based on good procedures I’ve discovered for performing the work. I try to teach Sue these things and especially why I do them or how the things involved work so that she understands those and can perform them herself if I am not around, not in a robotic way just following directions, but in a way where she can analyze a situation and respond properly.

One of thing things I thought would be good for her to know, and might be fun for her to do at the same time, is drive the tractor in delivering hay to our animals:


And so, here is the fun in action! (Please be careful with the volume; it’s often a little loud.)


We are thankful again to the Lord for granting us the resources to feed our animals and perform these duties around the homestead, and I am thankful for the wonderful and willing to learn help meet He has granted me.

— David

Homestead Development

January 23, 2009 / / 2 Comments

Slowly we have been building a fenced in area that is essentially a controlled environment, set apart for most of our homestead endeavors and free from roaming cattle, which if given the opportunity get into everything, and will eat other animals’ feed, fruit trees and other planted vegetation. At some point we hope to allow the cattle to free range the entire land, which would require each homestead to fence off areas they do not want to allow the cattle access. For us, the final section of fencing that we needed to close off was behind the barn, which was originally a complete fence; but I opened it up so we could drive through the woods to one of the public roads so that we didn’t have to go through several other gates to get to that road. Also, we hope to put a house just behind the fence; and so, I thought we would add a couple of 12 foot gates in that opening, which together would span the road nicely and would allow for large equipment and the like to get through.

Once again, we hired our neighbor Kelly to work on this. Here are some pictures of him working on the project, and finally the gates set in place:


Once again, we thank Kelly for his work; and we are grateful to the Lord for allowing us to be able to complete the enclosing of our main homestead area.

— David

Warm Up

June 26, 2008 / / 3 Comments


In an effort to step backward with things (which actually for us is a step forward! 🙂 ), and given the volatility of refined fuels, we decided to look into getting a wood burning stove. Hopefully this would be able to be used for heat as well as a place on which to cook.

In the local ad paper we were able to find a pretty big stove, which also had a smoker. I thought this would be a pretty good deal, and so we purchased it; and with the help of the men, we were able to get it moved.

We don’t have a house in which to put it, and so we decided to go ahead and install it in the barn. Hopefully that would allow for warmer fellowship days during the winter; and if needed, we could even sleep next to it.

Here is a picture of it installed. We haven’t really tried it, other than just a test to see if it would at least work, because, by the time I got it installed, winter was waning. However, I figure it will probably get more use this coming winter:

A quiet, tender moment…

One thing to remember is, when adding stove pipe to a roof, use lots of caulking. I thought I used quite a bit, and we’re still getting a leak during heavy rains (at least, I believe it is due to the stove pipe installation).

Here is the wood pile, ready to go! These I did with a chainsaw, although I now have a double-headed axe ready for felling the old fashion way:

We are grateful once again for the Lord’s provisions and resources, with this stove, and with the many trees on the land that are available to be used to keep us warm and to cook.

— David

« Older posts Newer posts »



© 2025 The Sifford Sojournal

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑