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Miscellaneous Questions/Comments |
Name: Trying to Helpful Comment: If you want people to drop on your site every day, then get rid of the roster crow at the load of your site. It's annoying and is startling. If you read the suggestions from Entrecard, they do not recommend you put any sound on your website that automatcially plays when the site loads. I will check back in a few days. If your site has removed the sound, i will gladly drop. Email: Not Provided |
Dear "Trying to Helpful" [sic]. I am sorry you find the roster [sic] crow on Swampy Acres annonying and startling. Thank you for the feedback. Let me return the favor by offering a couple of my own comments. 1) The sound is actually a hen cackling and not a rooster crowing. 2) The Swampy Acres Farm Webmaster is himself "annoying and startling" so this is a good fit. 3) Not sure what country/state you come from.. but here in New Hampshire it is "Live Free or Die".. so the cackle stays! There are plenty more "silent" blogs out there for you. Thank you for your input though! |
Name: Ron Gibson Comment: can i come and get the stuff i left there? Email: Not Provided |
Okay, this is a joke question. Thank you for ridiculing the hard work I put into my website (my guess is Bryan is the culprit). However, that does give me the opportunity to explain how Swampy Acres Farm came to be. Long ago, while searching for the perfect place for my farm…. I came upon this particular location. It would appear that the previous owner was in pre-foreclosure due to financial difficulties and the house was rapidly disintegrating due to neglect. The place was filthy, there were bats in the attic, there was about 2 drops of oil in the furnace (I bought it in the dead of winter…just waiting for the pipes to freeze), and there was junk all over the yard (see Junk Piles section). Additionally and despite the fact that the sale was imminent… the previous owner didn’t seem to be “moving out.” Piles of furniture/clothes/dirty dishes… (you name it) remained inside the house as well. The real estate agent actually paid some junk removal company to come in and clear out all the crap (as I refused to close until the place was “broom clean” as required). The day before the closing I showed up for the walk-through (again, middle of winter) and every window was open. It appeared as though the junk removal squad was hard at work just throwing items out of every orifice of the house into the yard…. while a couple people chucked it into a dumpster. I guess this is considered “moving day” in New Hampshire. From the amount of beer cans I have found wedged in every nook and cranny of the house… (not to mention the hundreds found in the woods)… I would suspect alcoholism was contributing to if no the route cause of all the problems. Here is one of the little aluminum treasures the goats or chickens dig up for me. Multiple this by about 2 million and you will have a rough idea of the situation. |
Anyway I digress, part of the “junk” that wasn’t disposed of included tons upon tons of bricks, pavers, stone, pipes, hoses, etc. Apparently the previous owner still wanted to collect this stuff (how he would move it or where he would store it seemed to be an issue… as previously mentioned…. I don’t think he was moving TO anywhere… except out). Now since everything was buried under two feet of snow and frozen solidly to the ground and nothing short of dynamite would dislodge it, (and out of the kindness of my heart) I signed an agreement with the previous owner to allow him to keep all his stuff in the yard until spring. Well spring came and went and the previous owner never called or came to collect any of this stuff. So, in the summer, I purchased a 30 yard dumpster and started pitching this stuff out. I also used a good deal of the salvageable items in construction of my collection of ramshackle farm buildings. I considered the matter closed. Come the following September, I got a knock on the door at about 7am on a Saturday (thanks for calling first). It was the previous owner wondering where all his items were. I explained the situation to him. He had moved out nearly a year ago, and I had not heard a peep from him, nor did he have a phone or an address of any kind that I was aware of. However, he was not pleased. He apparently thought he could just leave all his items in my yard perpetually, and sell them a little at a time as the need for beer money surfaced. Since I have no interest in running a free construction material storage facility from my yard… I had to get a little more curt with him. I told him “his” items were actually “my” items. I carefully explained that when you sell your house and leave a bunch of your stuff there for months on end…. You sort of lose the right to come back at some point in time and want it back. I think blunt logic eventually permeated the alcoholic haze and he became discouraged and wandered off the premises mumbling that I would be hearing from his lawyer. That was the last I heard of him. There are quite a few lessons to be had from this encounter 1) Yet another example of the dangers of alcoholism 2) Don’t give your website URL out to idiots 3) If you buy a house insist that all materials must be removed before signing regardless of the situation |
Name: Eggatron Comment: Dear Swampy, My diet consists of 86% eggs and 14% reindeer milk. As a self proclaimed environmental steward of the earth, I seek to reduce my waste output by recycling anything possible. My question is around the potential use of egg shells. With a diet that depends primarily on egg consumption it is unfortunate to have such large piles of shells in my home. Please let me know what I could use them for. Thanks egg-ain Eggatron Email: Egga.Tron@scramble.net |
Dear Eggatron... mildly amusing at best. |
Name: turnip Comment: You have to buy hay and grain, the animals themselves, fencing, feeders, and many other things. At the end of the year, do you find yourselves losing money or making money from running your farm? Website: http://turnipofpower.com |
Hmmm. Good question. My 50 (now) chickens are eating about 15 bucks a week worth of food (more in winter less in summer, as they supplement with bugs and what they can find in the fields). My 5 goats eat about 15 bucks a week in hay and grain. I usually make about 10 bucks a week in egg sales (5 dozen or so sold to co-workers at 2 bucks a pop). So, the chickens almost pay for themselves (when you add in what I eat, they do). The goats are a negative. If you add in what I spent on fencing and wood and everything else. Forget it. I am in the hole thousands and will never catch up. |
Name: Pam Comment: Comment: I came across your website after Googling the NH Regs on beaver trapping and read about your on-going beaver problems at your farm. I have several years of experience dealing with beaver conflicts in MA on the regulatory side & I know NH laws are very different. But I thought I'd offer some advice. I'm all for hunting and trapping in order to keep wildlife in check. It's a proven fact that trapping beavers is actually a short-term fix because more beavers will recolonize if the food supply is there and there's already a beaver dam built. Similarly, breaching or removing an established beaver dam is also a short-term fix and can have devastating consequencing, such as down stream flooding. Plus, beavers will rebuild within hours of a full or partial breach. The long term solution is actually installing a water flow device (a trapping may be neccessary, too) and it also the most cost effective. I recommend you check out Beaver Solutions, LLC beaversolutions.com |
Hmmm, I considered this, but here is why I don't bother with "beaver deceivers" or "flow regulators" as you call them. 1) I am told you need four feet or so of water to make them effective. The beavers aren't quite getting the water that deep. If I were to allow it get that high.. it would still flood out acres. 2) I would need a million of these as they typically build five or six dams in the reedy marsh. 3) I would need to maintain these. They are building the dams in a swamp. It is a pain in the butt to get out there to check on them periodically. Trapping is generally once a year in the spring. 4) I would need to worry about trespassing neighbors vandalizing and/or destroying them. 5) Even if the beaver deceivers worked... the beavers would still be around, ringing and killing all my old growth trees and killing all the saplings too. Regarding your other comments. 1) When I breach a dam.. I do it slowly so nothing floods out. Again, they are only holding back about three feet of water, so this isn't that much released over a few days. 2) If they are dead, they won't come back and rebuild within hours! I have had good luck with once a year trapping. For all these reasons I trap them. Yes, I will need to do it every year, but I would need to maintain and periodically replace beaver deceivers too. They are hardly "set and forget". I just consider it a chore I need to do. Thanks for the information though. I will file it away for use someday. |
