The Beginning

This blog is my journey through many hobbies which I have found to be fun, enjoyable, and for some of them, wholesome and healthy. The first posts are going to be how I began, what I'm doing now, and my future plans for that hobby.

First let me introduce myself to you. I am the 5th child and the only boy in my family of eight. I have four older sisters.  Beginning with my youngest sister,  their names are Ruth (12), my twin sister Elizabeth or Lizzie (15...and 3 minutes older), Anna(18), Marguerite (Mag or Maggie)(22) who is responsible for getting me into beekeeping, and Sarah (24) who is responsible for my schooling and for getting me to start this blog. I'm Allen and I'm 15. The pictures below are to show you what I'm doing now in some of my hobbies.

                    These are some of the ducks we've raised in years past. We've raised multiple Mallards and Muscovies.

These are the Cornish Crosses that I have raised.  They were housed in the chicken tractor shown from the inside in this picture. Since the first batches of chickens, I have made better, lighter, and bigger tractors that can be easily moved by myself every day.

                 ...and these are the best of the chickens I've ever raised for meat production. I raised 50 of these Freedom Ranger chicks last year and came out with 334 lbs and 6 oz of dressed chicken 16 weeks later!   

     This is the honey from two of the three hives that we own..... straight from the comb! This honey is called ''water-white'' because of the light color. This is the honey at the store that's marked 1st grade.

This is me operating my ham radio base station that consists of an all mode all band HF Icom -718 with an LDG Electronics IT-100 automatic antenna tuner which tunes an 80-6 meter G5RV mounted in the center at 30 ft.  The ends are 25ish , and a 2 meter Icom 2000 mobile rig. My goal station is a Yeasu FT-897 all band all mode transceiver attached to a 160 dipole up at 40 feet and tuned by a Mega-Match antenna tuner that I'm homebrewing. I also have a Yeasu VX-7R quad band HT. My latest projects include sending up a weather balloon equipped with APRS tracking and imaging, and completing a ''38 Special'' 30 meter CW transceiver. Also working on 15 wpm code and hoping to start digital communications soon.                             

For these past few years I have been thinking about starting an aquaponics system. So during the slow part of this past winter I did the research and designed the system shown above. This system has the nice-to-have features like a biofilter, built-in aeration, and self drainage...which is nice so that if the power goes out the system doesn't overflow. The system consists of a food grade 55 gallon drum, a 65 gph pump that has 2 feet of head, a rubbermaid bin that measures about 3'(l)x14"(w)x8''(h), and a feedback loop that lets the filtered water return to the tank, thereby completing the cycle. The tank is currently stocked with 10 fresh water clams and 5 water snails as a clean up crew. In 3 weeks the 25 Red Nile Tilapia from White Brooks Farm will arrive and be put into the tank until the weather permits the use of the outside 850 gallon stock tank.  

These are my three Bourbon Red heritage breed turkeys along with our Mallards. The turkeys, when dressed, in came at 13 lbs for the two hens and 18.5 for the tom.      

Since I was a little kid I've wanted to take a martial  class of some kind. Well on

 Aug 18, 2008 I started taking Tang Soo Do (pronounced tung soo doe) and 3 years later was a red belt. But this hobby has been put on hold for a short time while I recover from some growing pains and am taking physical therapy to prevent  serious long-term injuries. I should be back in class in 3 months.