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A House – Update XXXV – House Lift

September 13, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 2 Comments

Even though most of the piers of our house were built on top of boulder rock underneath the ground surface, apparently on at least a few of the piers, that sadly hasn’t been good enough. One day I was looking longways down the south beam and noticed a distinct sag — at least a couple of the piers had definitely dropped some. Not a bunch, but enough that I figured I had better do something about it. When I was doing the upper south siding, you could see the dip in the roof in that area too.

If you look closely, you can see the dip in the beam around piers two and three from the far end:

But how to go about leveling the beam?

Well, I researched plastic industrial spacers, but those ended up being fairly expensive. And then I thought I would just use 2×4 yellow pine spacers, since the beam 2x10s are made of yellow pine.

And then, how to lift a house. 🙂 After some quick research there, I found some quite inexpensive 20 ton bottle jacks; and after reading the reviews of people using them to level houses, I figured a couple of those would work well.

Once I received the jacks, it was time to proceed…

Here they are lifting the beam. The two work just great! It was really weird jacking up a house. 🙂 In the end, I found I could use just one jack, but I also figured it was good to have a backup, so the house wouldn’t come crashing down in case one jack gave way. I found too that plywood on top of the bottle jack held the best with the pressure from the bottle head:

Here you can see the space between the beam and the pier bracket:

Once raised, instead of trying to use 2×4 wood, I thought to use leftovers of our cedar siding fence slats, which I figured are going to be fairly durable and hopefully strong enough, being made of cedar; and they’re already 1/2 inch thick, which would work well for the various spaces I needed to fill:

Oddly, once lowered, the beam on that end wanted to torque outward, away from the house, in order to be set in the middle of the pier bracket. That I assume isn’t great, as it appears the pier is maybe dipping on one side. Hopefully it’s done. But I needed a way to push the beam back to a more vertical position, so I used a floor jack and 2×6 board:

More Pushing Beam Vertically with Floor Jack

Still More Pushing Beam Vertically with Floor Jack

And I needed something to hold it in its new place on the pier bracket, so I used cedar slats again and shims:

But, it all seemed to work for now; I pray things don’t move any more. And here is everything in place. The worst sag ended up being 1 inch, with others at 1/2 inch, and I ended up lifting piers one and four as well:

And a view down the beam again, this time more level:

Again, we pray things don’t get any worse; but we are thankful to the Lord for allowing this to be successful, for the safety and ideas He granted during this process, that the house hasn’t toppled over by now 🙂 , and for the continued progress on the house.

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: The Ninth of 2015 Chick Hatchings

September 6, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

Another hen went broody this year, and so we put her in one of the little fence pens we have in the barn stall. At one point it looked like she had fewer eggs under her than I originally thought I had put under her, and then one day, the hay on the ground around her was scattered about, and so were some eggs. We had had a couple of young chickens die in a barn stall chicken pen before, where their heads were slicked back, and figured that a snake had tried to swallow them but found them too big. Well, I figured our barn snake was the culprit here, so I moved her into the summer kitchen with her eggs, and she hatched out three!

And here they all are, a bit grown up as you can see, still doing well, with thanks to God!

And their video:

As always, we are very thankful to the Lord for granting these new provisions of chickens!

— David

Wheat 2015 – Update II

August 31, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

Back in June, we began to harvest the wheat the Lord had graciously granted us!

The Stongers graciously offered to help, so Mr. Stonger and the boys got out there and began gathering in the wheat. We started with sickles, but found we could just pull it up by hand:

Here I am tying the wheat into sheaves:

And here’s the first row done, with the sheaves put into stooks:

This is about a month later, mid July. Amidst all of the other projects around here, I was able to continue and do about another row before the weeds took over:

Then, it was time to get them out of the field and into the barn:

With us unable really to harvest anymore, the goats were able to enjoy the delectable delights of the overgrown field! 🙂

Goats Continuing to Graze in the Wheat Field

And here are most of the sheaves in the barn (I had already begun to process some by this time):

And speaking of processing, the next step with the wheat was to try to extract the berries. This is always the fun part. We’ve tried flailing in the past, but that just sort of ended up being a bunch of flailing more than anything else. So, this time, I thought I’d try a couple of different things.

I tried turning a bicycle upside down, pedaling it by hand, and trying to thresh the wheat in the spokes. This actually kind of worked, but not too well, and often the heads would break off. I also tried a harder rubber mallet, and that worked not too badly — good control, just a lot of pounding. Then, for some reason I thought to try a 9 inch, 2×4 block of wood, and up to this point, this has worked the best. You can control things so the wheat heads don’t bounce around, you can use the sides to cover more area, or use corner edges or even corners for more accuracy. It’s a little tedious, but it seems to work pretty well.

Here is a little demonstration video of that process:

We’re still in the threshing process, but hopefully at some point Lord willing it will be finished, and then it’ll be onto the separation process!

We are grateful to the Lord for granting the wheat, and for being able to continue the process of it, even for the physical strength to do so!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2015 Goat Kids, Rounds 2 & 3

August 21, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

We had some late arrivals with our goat kids this year, but we are thankful for the two more kiddings the Lord graciously granted! Below is the departure of the main herd of kids, and also some of the goat goings-on around the farm, for your entertainment. 🙂

The Kids

Winnie gave birth to a little buckling! She had been having quite a bit of rumen problems last year, and we think that’s why she was delayed in giving birth, but thanks to the Lord she did so in health and with a healthy kid. In honor of her name, we called him Wilfred:

And here’s their video:

Then, it was time to ship them off with their new owner!

Here we are setting up:

And here’s a video of the process and saying goodbye:

We are grateful to God for providing a buyer who likes to come every year and collect our kids.

And then, thankfully after what we think was originally an aborted pregnancy, Lucy gave birth to twins about a month ago! They have their sire’s oolors, with the blotches, and they reminded us of ice cream — the light colored buckling like chocolate chip cookie dough, so we called him “Chip”; and for the doeling, we couldn’t think of a good ice cream name, so we went with Jane Dough, or what we call her, “Janie.”

Sleepy…

And here’s their video, with an intro about their mommy before she gave birth:

Around the Yard

Goats are interesting, fun, smart and troublesome quite often. So, we thought we’d share a few of those moments…

Um, yeah…

Here they are lounging around in the sun one day:

And then all around the camper, which they do often. There’s a nice little breezeway under the camper they can usually count on to provide some refreshment and relief from the heat:

And Hannah sometimes gets some extra lettuce or kale, and then comes around looking for more. She’s an expert at convincing you she is an innocent victim and has fooled us many times…. but she’s probably the most wily of them all 🙂

We are grateful to the Lord once again for the kids He granted us this year! We had to give several of our goats de-wormer this year as some of them got pretty anemic, but God granted they get better; and we thank Him for the continued safety and health for and milk from our goats; and we’re thankful for the adventure they bring to our lives here! 🙂

— David

Garden – Spring 2015 – Update II

August 14, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 2 Comments

The Lord has graciously granted our 2015 Spring garden to continue. The mulch bed gardening allows us to set hoses from the cistern and only have to move them every 10 minutes, which keeps from having to constantly monitor the watering for 2 or more hours.

Here is how everything looked a couple of weeks ago, end of July…

Okra:

Beans, butternut squash and zucchini:

Here are carrots growing out of the hugelkultur bed. If you look closely, you can see the remnants of one of the bed’s “tenants”:

More okra:

And our one pumpkin plant, and the okra again:

The pumpkin plant really took off, up the fence, which actually had a pumpkin hanging on it:

And up the tree:

And here are the tomato plants:

As for the produce, turnips planted a couple of years ago continue to show up!

And here is butternut squash down in the root cellar we’ve been granted:

And a couple of good-sized pumpkins!

Here are the few carrots we got from the hugelkultur bed, along with some okra and zucchini. The carrots were something of an experiment as I did nothing to improve the bed ahead of time, and it was just nice to see a few come out. The Lord has also granted several, but not a lot, of zucchini, and the okra keep coming in almost daily. We’ve been able to tuck quite a bit away by lacto-fermenting the vegetables in jars:

And here are some tomatoes. We have pretty much just been eating these as we go:

And here is where things are now, after about 5-6 weeks of straight upper-90 to 100-degree weather with no rains.

This is Garden 2. The okra is still going, nearly 6 foot tall; some of the green beans are still there; the butternut squash are still producing; and only 1 zucchini plant remains:

And this is Garden 1. The okra here is even taller, and the pumpkin plant is basically done. Sadly, a couple of the pumpkins didn’t make it:

And the tomatoes. I had to dust them with an insect dust because it appeared blister beetles were making their way over there, and they do damage very quickly:

Finally, because it appears that only soil that’s covered will work well without requiring hoards of water, I decided to start mulching the rest of Garden 1, over the raised bed area, hopefully in time to plant a Winter garden!

This week is about the last week we can do full watering because the cistern is getting to a point we want to make sure we have enough for ourselves and the animals; so if it doesn’t rain, watering is going to have to be reduced.

We do have rain percentages this weekend though. But God knows best, and we are very grateful for the provisions He has granted from the garden this year thus far!

— David

A House – Update XXXIV – External Siding – Update III

August 7, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

It has been almost two years since I took the first pictures of work on the external siding of the upper west section of the house, and after the upper east side was completed, I was able to just the other week finish the upper south side of the cedar fence slat lap siding, and thus wrap up the external siding of the entire upper part of the house!

Here is the tar paper, which Sue helps me put up, and window frames in place:

House Upper South Siding Window Frames in Place

And the rest of it done:

Whew! Now just to paint it with the wood protector I’ve been using on the other sides.

Thanks to the Lord for the provisions to continue on this, the strength to even perform the building duties, safety while working up there, and continued progress on the house!

— David

The Orchard – Summer 2015 – Plums & Peaches

July 31, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

God graciously began to grant fruit to grow from our fruit trees!

I believe these are our first plums from the trees!

Here are more. Often, the wind would blow the trees and drop many of the plums to the ground before they were ripe, so they would ripen off-tree:

That looks yummy! (And they were!)

Here they are on our solar food dehydrator:

There were a lot more on the trees too, like bundles of grapes. Interestingly though, a couple of days after seeing them like that, they were all gone…nothing…like they had never been there. I’m assuming birds got them, but wow.

But then, it was on to peaches!

And then onto the food dryer for them too. We were getting so many at one point, it was hard to find room on the dryer!

And here are almost all of the peaches, conveniently stored away in bite-sized, fruit-roll-tasting morsels!

And some extra ones pressure canned on the left, and made into jam on the right!

We are very grateful to the Lord for these gifts! It was so great to be able to walk out to a tree, pick a fruit, and eat it straightaway! We are very thankful.

— David

The Sifford Sojournal

Page 46 of 93

A House – Update XXXV – House Lift

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: The Ninth of 2015 Chick Hatchings

Wheat 2015 – Update II

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2015 Goat Kids, Rounds 2 & 3

Garden – Spring 2015 – Update II

A House – Update XXXIV – External Siding – Update III

The Orchard – Summer 2015 – Plums & Peaches

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