Diy Water tower

I forgot the pictures of the new bees last time.  I got two more boxes of bees this spring, though because of a cold snap the weekend that they arrived one swarm died.  so here are a couple of pictures of the new hive (with the windows facing the right way).

This is about 3 weeks after they have been installed

This seems like the right place for a picture of the robin's nest in my wood shed.  I had planned to take a couple of progression pictures of the robins as they grew... but in about two weeks they went from this size to flying around and have now totally left the nest.  So you'll have to settle for another picture of the pigs.

And now to the subject of today's post, my water tower.  Because of poor planning I have a well that isn't connected to my house in any meaningful way.  so to get water I need to turn on a breaker in the house, immediately after water comes shooting out.  Not hugely problematic, but a little bit of a pain if I just want to do a water a corner of the garden.  So I developed a cheap diy water tower.  It consists of 4 50gallon barrels sitting about 200ft up the hill from the house all connected with this spidery looking thing...

This contraption makes the individual barrels act as if they were one giant 200 gal barrel, because it draws from or fills all four simultaneously

testing with three barrels

Done and Done

I've finally finished with the clearing, had just barely enough time to do rent a chipper for a weekend and then over the past two weekends have planted over 85 trees. I am weary. But, I've got no time for that complaining crap. The pigs also showed up a couple of weeks ago, along with a new friend who I am still trying to decided whether to call Rex, Zeke, or Soup. I've also been trying to whip my garden into shape, between the weather and the water I haven't been able to set foot in the greenhouse so it got overrun with grass. Drastic measures were necessary, sheet mulching was in order and the dirt guy was called. luckily I had a bunch of wood chips from clearing to make everything look sharp. Now on to the pictures!

The finished cleared almost acre

The pigs digs, high on the hill

The chipper team hard at work

Lesson of that day: no use in crying over a tipped chipper

The second brush pile

My tree order from Fedco, a good 38 trees or so.  All went into the ground in an afternoon.

All the trees are planted!  hard to tell though mostly they look like sticks sticking out of the ground.  This one front and center is a plum.

This one is a pear

The view that I got from the top of my clearing.  It's also the view that the pigs get.

My grass problem

Wet cardboard and compost can fix this.

And a little mulch makes it pleasant to be in, hopefully encouraging me to weed a bit more

My little friend, he came free with the pigs.  I was going to call him Rex or maybe Zeke, because for the first few days he followed me around.  Then started crowing all the time and picking fights with me. He needs some chickens to occupy his time, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, so his name is slowly turning to Soup...

And now, a video of the pigs!

Their names are: Southern Pacific Railroad, Adam Smith, and the "Invisible Hand"

if you can't tell this years theme is Capitalist Pigs.