I cracked it.

I haven’t posted anything in awhile but that doesn’t mean my brain has been turned off. If you’ve enjoyed my posts here, get ready. This page is going away soon and being replaced with something much better. Holy shit.

They say youth is wasted on the young. Whoever ‘they’ are, they’re right. I’ll spare you my thoughts on ‘The Worst Generation’ and do a little introspection instead. I look back at my teen-to-20-something self and cringe a little, but mostly I think about all my mistakes and wasted opportunities, most, if not all, of which I could scarcely have known would turn out to be such a bug in my ass a few decades later, but still… If I could go back in time and talk to that guy, and if he would even listen to me, here’s what I would tell him:

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I finally broke down and ordered a Best Nest Box. If you’re not a chicken farmer or you haven’t heard of this product for some other reason, here’s the rundown:

Chickens poop on their eggs, and they lay their eggs on poop. They don’t always do it and some do it more than others, but generally you have to wash eggs, especially if you don’t collect them multiple times a day. This isn’t a huge chore, but it is a problem because washed eggs don’t last as long. Washing removes some of the ‘bloom’ — a protective layer the hen’s reproductive system leaves on the eggshell to keep microbes from getting inside.

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Last year when one of my ganders entered into a romantic relationship with a rooster, I thought it was just a summer fling, but with springtime on its way, the two have paired up again. What kind of dirty, nasty stuff does a gay, interspecies couple do together? Basically they stand next to each other, protect each other from any perceived danger, and occasionally stand on one foot, as a couple.

I don’t know if they’re really gay or if each one thinks the other is female, but it is pretty interesting to see these guys getting back together as goose mating season approaches. The gander doesn’t even seem to mind that the rooster cheated on him all fall and winter, right in front of his face.

It’s actually going to be colder in central and southern Texas in the next few days than it has been here in years. I’m not saying I don’t still want to move there, but if I could skip it and go straight to the tropics I think I would.

Being homesick for a place where you’ve never lived is weird, but it’s the best way I can describe how I feel, especially when the winter weather starts wearing me down. It’s more psychological than physical. I can handle the cold, and I’ve been through way colder winters than this. I still go out barefoot in this stuff. The cold doesn’t hurt me, it offends me. And apparently my cockerels feel the same way.

On the plus side, I don’t have to round up the waterfowl at night, because they’re already inside when I get there, including the geese, who normally stay out. And my RV is warmer under a blanket of snow than it is on a cold, windy night.

Could be worse. Sometimes I’m tempted by the low price of farms in northern Michigan and Wisconsin, but then I look at the weather report.

Hard pass. I’ve had my share of frostbite over the years, and I think I’m willing to put those days behind me for good.

A few years ago a Verizon employee was passing through my town, and he told us he was upgrading the local cell towers for 5G. Back then I always had four bars of 4G and I usually got over 20 Mbps, even out here in the sticks. When Verizon started offering unlimited data again, I dumped my crappy DSL service, which never got more than 6 Mbps and cost over $100 a month. I bought a Jetpack for my home internet, and quickly learned that my unlimited data wasn’t actually unlimited; Verizon throttled back by speed each month when I exceeded my 15Gb limit. I did that pretty quickly, because I stream video while I’m doing other things, and sometimes the videos autoplay for awhile after I fall asleep at night. There’s nothing better than using up all your good internet for the month on the first night while you’re sleeping. Continue reading →

I pulled a bunch of images off the Internet for this entry. This is an educational entry so I’m considering the use of these images to be educational fair use. I’m not selling them or making any money from them, or anything else on this site. If you own one of these images and want me to take it down, let me know. Moving on …

I have a rat problem. Continue reading →

There are a lot of different ways to move animals. When I make my move inside the US, I’ll be hauling them in a trailer and/or inside vehicles. I’ve done a lot of animal transport that way and had very few issues, even in the middle of the summer. The main advantages to doing it this way are cost and being in complete control of the process — when you transport animals at a professional level, which I do, entrusting responsibility to strangers, regardless of their credentials, does not make for a very pleasant emotional experience. The drawbacks to overland transport are how long it takes and the variables you encounter along the way, and you’d better not break down. I’ve driven through blizzards, heat waves and tropical storms on the same transport, and on everything from city streets to mountain roads. It can be hard on the driver and even harder on the animals. Depending on what kind of animals you’re hauling, it’s often best to have two or three drivers and just power through it, but with horses and other animals that travel standing up, you do the opposite unless you can get from A to B in one driver’s shift.

Here, I’ll discuss some of the other ways to move animals around, some pretty standard and some a bit more ‘out of the box’ — not my favorite phrase ever since thinking outside the box became such an inside the box exercise. Moving on… Continue reading →

I’ve got to be honest— I’m not ready for another Pacific Northwest winter. I had hoped I’d be moving this month, but thanks mostly to COVID-19, things haven’t been unfolding quite like I’d hoped. So here comes the rain, and I don’t feel like being cold and wet.

October would have been the ideal time for a Texas move. All the birds are done breeding for the year, even the pigeons. (I took their calcium away.) The day length is now pretty similar here to what it is there, so that won’t mess with the birds’ biorhythms. That said, it’s still pretty hot in Texas right now. Maybe I’ll pull off a miracle and get out of here in late winter or early spring, before the geese and turkeys start laying eggs, and when temperatures in the Northwest and in Texas are as close as they ever get.

Moving from Texas to the tropics, there’s a little less to worry about where the weather and the length of the day are concerned. Where I would avoid a summer move from the cool Northwest to the hot South/Southwest, a place like Panama is going to always be about 85 to 90 degrees F, so only a midwinter move from Texas would present any kind of difficult temperature adjustment for the animals. Moving in the middle of summer would even be a welcome change, with about a ten degree temperature drop. And in terms of day length, Panama has roughly an hour difference between its longest and shortest day, and it’s never more than about an hour and a half off from Texas. Of course, it’s been my plan to take mainly eggs to Panama, rather than a large shipment of live birds, rendering differences in temperature and photoperiod moot.

Awhile back I did a sort of thought experiment; I tried to figure out how to make a ranching and forestry operation totally portable, such that a camp could be broken down and moved in just a few days. The idea was to move onto a property, partially log it, graze it, and develop it into a campground, a housing development, or whatever the property was best suited for, and then move on. I figured out most of the details on how to do it, using RVs, shipping containers, semi trailers, and tents. I even invented a 24×40’ barn that compresses down to eight feet wide for transport, and can be set up or taken down in just a few minutes. Continue reading →

One thing people invariably ask is why I would attempt to move abroad with a ton of animals, and it’s a fair question. The simple answer is that when I get there, I want to have a ton of animals, and the places I’m looking at moving to don’t have the same diversity of livestock breeds that we have in the US (or in Europe, for that matter). So if I’m going to have to import animals anyway, why not import the ones I already have?

The more complicated answer is that in the case of my pets, I have a responsibility to them, which includes not dumping them when they become inconvenient. And in the case of my poultry, while I also have a responsibility there, they are much easier to find suitable homes for than my dogs, however, I would be throwing away all the genetics work I’ve already done and starting over.

The good news is that there are a lot of different ways to move a large number of animals to another country if you’re willing to take your time and do it right. Another piece of good news is that when it comes to all of my birds except my pigeons, I don’t have to deal with the import/export process at all — I can simply take eggs. If something goes wrong and I lose a bunch of hatching eggs, it’s not the end of the world and I can just have my birds back in the States lay more.

I recently scored a top of the line incubator on eBay for a fraction of its actual value. Google Grumbach incubators if you’re curious. I won’t be able to hatch a thousand eggs at a time, but I can do 80 or so, and that’s not bad. And between now and then I may manage to get another incubator or two.

Unless I want to hand raise pigeons, and I’d really rather not, they’re a little bit different story, since baby pigeons can’t feed themselves. So pigeons will have to be transported. Fortunately you can typically do that on any commercial flight, so long as your paperwork is in order. I would almost certainly sell off my surplus pigeons prior to the move, and probably make enough to pay for the transport of the remaining birds. That’s assuming I don’t just put all my animals on one big cargo jet. You know, with all the millions of dollars I’ll magically have…

So that’s the gist of it. If all I wanted was to lie around on a beach for the rest of my days, I’d already be doing it. But I’m looking to do something more complicated, and that means a more complicated, and expensive, move.

I’ve realized that when I last posted to this site I was not fully committed to moving to Texas, and some things have changed. I now have as my short term goal a move to central or southern Texas, and here’s why:

1. I’m not financially or logistically ready to move abroad yet. While that remains my ultimate goal, making that move with animals and equipment is complicated and requires an intermediate step. I want to move to Panama, though I haven’t ruled out Mexico; in either case, getting to Texas and having a ranch there from whence to stage the move, slowly and deliberately, would be a major benefit. And yeah — I just said whence.

2. I don’t want to wait to ramp up my agroforestry efforts. I’m not getting any younger, and there’s a scenario where I’m in my 50s or even my 60s by the time I get to where I really want to be living and working — I don’t want to sit around doing nothing in the meantime. I can raise animals and grow trees and do research in Texas.

3. Texas has a lot to offer. There are multiple international airports within a few hours of each other (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio) and that means more competitive pricing for international and domestic flights. Overall, flights to and from Texas are the cheapest I’ve found anywhere. And it’s a quick drive to Mexico, and a day’s drive or less to almost anyplace in the contiguous US. There are a lot of excellent schools in Texas, including a great veterinary school (A&M); good schools mean good interns. Texas is livestock central, but it’s also close to other states that are good sources for livestock. Texas has some of the best hospitals in the country. Austin is a tech hub. Houston is one of America’s largest ports, and there is a massive railroad infrastructure, including trains that cross the border. Texas has a better business tax system than a lot of states, as well, and some very favorable property tax cuts for agricultural land. Texas has so much going for it, you can almost look past how god damn hot it gets there. Almost.

4. Texas is getting bluer by the day. I’ve made no secret of my political affiliation, but I also don’t love living in a place where my vote doesn’t carry much weight. I’d rather be in a battleground state for a lot of reasons, not just to make a bigger difference with my vote, but also because when my party runs everything they can get a little carried away. It’s good to have some pushback, something I especially feel as a gun-owning Democrat.

Having said all that, Texas is a big place, and each region is pretty different from the others. I’ve spent a lot of time researching and mapping the state; I can show you where all the oil and gas wells are, every tornado path, where the hail is especially bad, where the ground water is and how deep the wells are, the soil types, rainfall, average temperatures, and so on. Considering all the data, the conclusion I’ve come to is that the area between Austin and San Antonio (San Marcos, Lockhart, etc.) is ideal. Unfortunately a lot of other people agree, and it’s some of the most expensive real estate in Texas. I don’t want to be too close to the coast (hurricanes), too far west (desert), or too far north (tornados, hail, Republicans), but I think I could be happy in most of central or south Texas.

If you’re reading this and thinking, ‘I want to buy this guy a ranch,’ here’s what I’m looking for, besides the location:

1. Property size: as large as possible. For free range poultry, 35 acres or more would be ideal, but that doesn’t allow for much in the way of additional animals of the hoofed variety. I’ve seen some places over 100 acres that are in my price range (but if you’re a generous, wealthy person trying to buy me a ranch you don’t really care about my budget…)

2. Homes: the main house needs to be big enough for a family with five kids. Three bedrooms/two bathrooms are the absolute minimum, since I can always add on, but a bigger house would be better (just not a mansion — the people who will be renting it prefer a smaller house). The second home should be two bedrooms/one bathroom minimum, but I could also work with an RV or mobile home hookup. I’ve also looked into getting a vacant parcel and developing it myself, and I’m not opposed to it, but the main issue there is financing both the purchase and the improvements.

3. Outbuildings: I need at minimum a barn and a workshop, but the more the better. I will inevitably need multiple barns, and having a garage or at least covered parking would be great.

4. Water: there must be surface water of some kind, or at least the ability to build ponds and have them functional for ducks and geese fairly quickly.

5. Fencing: it’s expensive, and having some already on the property would be great. A lot of larger properties in Texas have exotic animals on them and are fenced; that’s kind of a mixed bag, as I don’t have any interest in trophy hunting or running a hunting ranch, but I also don’t believe those animals belong in North America and I do eat meat…

6. Minerals: I don’t want any drilling on the property. I don’t care if I have mineral rights, so long as there are no minerals to have rights to. I don’t want trucks coming in and out, I don’t want oil spills, I don’t want fires, and I don’t want my groundwater or surface water polluted. Hopefully that sounds reasonable.

7. Since you’re buying, why not a pool? It’s not so much for me as for the renters. I mean, it’s really hot there, and kids like to swim.

8. Income: if the property has housing for guests, workers, or long-term renters, or a place for storage rentals, that would be excellent.

In a later post I’ll talk about some of the things I want to do on a Texas ranch and how I want to stage a move abroad from there.