Week 1, 2017-18 Season

Harvest is set for this Saturday.  Looks like we will have loads of zucchini and yellow squash.  The green beans surprised with a good harvest of beautiful pods for this weekend.  Broccoli raab looks like it might have been a week early.  We will see if we can harvest enough for everyone.  Strawberries are starting to flower.  This is about a month earlier than last year.  To round out the baskets are diakon, turnips (which look excellent), roselle, patty pan squash, oregano, and garlic chives.  Things are looking good and doing well as the season starts.

We will be planting cabbage, broccoli, scallions, more bok choi, lettuce, and cauliflower grown from our own transplants for future harvests.   

Week 13, 2014-15

Finally a cold blast has hit.  We came out of the weather in pretty good shape except for the zucchini which amazingly produced for 12 weeks and eggplant which never produced a fruit.  Otherwise we were good.  We covered up a few crops with freeze cloth and tightened up the greenhouse.  We also moved around some cold sensitive crops to the shop overnight.
I noticed a potato starting to emerge from the row and I still haven't planted the another row yet, but that will give us a few weeks spacing between crops.
We harvested our first nice looking red cabbage last week and it tasted great.  We had an awesome salad week with red kale, red cabbage, green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, a little bit of broccoli, tomato, and some store bought carrots.  Delicious!  I was surprised to see everyone gobbling it up and the whole bowl of salad disappeared in a day.
I planted more lettuce and cauliflower this last week and some more carrots.  I'd like to see our own in the refrigerator. I also sowed seeds for eggplants, peppers, and butternut squash.  We are going to give that a try this year from a recommendation I got at the end of last season.

beautiful red cabbage

protecting the greens

ice in the field

Week 12 harvest

Week 8, 2013

Things are looking pretty good thus far. We are steadily moving along in the season. The broccoli is the best we have ever grown and the collards and the new kohlrabi look fantastic. Our komatsuna has dropped off with the higher temperatures and the turnips and the diakons are in suspended animation. The root aphids are back again and sucking the life out of them. I am trying a few organic pesticides to remedy the problem but not having any luck so far. Ladybugs and predators are now widely dispersed around the crops and are doing their jobs keeping anymore aphids at bay.

I had to make an unusual night harvest last week which was the first of its kind at Steed Farms.  I went out with my head lamp on in the pitch black after all the kids got off to bed.  It was actually pretty nice to harvest at night.  Its a whole different world at the farm at night.  It was nice not to be rushed to harvest and wash everything before noon.  I am very thankful that my brother Pat was able to cover for me in the morning and wash everything while I could assist with a retreat at our church.  It was nice to see the stars and moon while I worked.  It was a little creepy when the coyotes started to howl not too far off.  I also found out that I have a family of rats where I keep my pots.  I could hear them moving about.  My white light died out but still had the use of my red LED light on my head lamp.  I shined it over there when I heard them and I could see their little beady, red eyes watching me.

We lost a spinach planting, and a carrot crop to bad germination or possibly fertilizer problems. I lost about 25% of our tomatoes and our entire pepper crop from transplants in the greenhouse. I thought that maybe I had done something wrong until a fellow grower spoke with me about all the problems he had with losing crops with the same fertilizer I was using. I did notice huge amounts of fly larvae in the fertilizer in the pots and just assumed that those flies came in after planting. My friend mentioned he had the exact same thing under plastic mulch out in the field which would be next to impossible to get flies that fast under the plastic. He is pursuing the company for the problems and we will see what happens.

We tried a few more strawberry plants again this year for our own trial. I planted them in pots with non-organic slow release fertilizer. They are doing much better this year. It seemed that the organic fertilizer never would release enough nutrients to produce much fruit. This year we have already harvested a half pint off of about 20 plants. The taste was out of this world.

We have planted leeks, lettuce, radish, onions red and sweet out in the field. I will start dusting off the seed packets for the spring here shortly. In no time at all we will be sowing squash, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, peas and beans again.

We are eagerly awaiting potatoes for planting. They should be arriving in the next few days and will get planted immediately. I ordered red La Soda which worked pretty good two years ago. Last year the freezes got them and we got very little yield.

I have pictures but can't seem to get Blogger to accept them.  Maybe next post...

Last Pickup 2011-2012

Well here it is already.  It is in some ways hard to believe that 24 weeks have elapsed from the start of the season and in some ways I am ready for the end of the season.  Overall it was a pretty good season aside from the weather which was very squirrely, but it proved good for the end of the season with dry weather.  We didn't get as many fungal diseases as we usually do.  Some things from this season to take forward are to plant a bunch of veggies in excess of what we need.  Never ever take more than a two day vacation in the middle of the season.  I really need to reevaluate my fertilizer plan.  Seems like things are running out of steam towards the end of their cycle.  I learned that planting beans behind bok choi is a good thing.  I learned that is a lot of fun to have volunteers out at the farm during picking time (Thank you very much John-Carlo and Dali for your help).  Next year I am going to try strawberries again but I will need to adjust their fertility.  I will need to do something different about the chickens.  We did manage to catch two racoons but only after they killed all the hens.  Here is a picture of the crime scene and the killers.   We used the dead chickens to bait a trap and caught a small raccoon the first night.  Nate was really excited because he got to go with me to pick up the trap and set it up at night staying up until 9:30 on a school night.  But he got to spend some time with Dad and it was an real adventure for him.  I thought there might be more than one culprit and we set it up again and caught a much bigger raccoon.  One that liked to growl.  Handling the cage was difficult because there were no hand holds were the critters couldn't get to you.  The small raccoon we just used a towel to hold on to the cage, but the big one I used the loader on the tractor to get him in the truck.  I then drove down to the river and let them go.  I hope that is the last we will see from those two.
The veggies are finishing up the pumpkins turned out nice and we have two weeks of picking with them.  the corn struggled this year due to fertility and pests which erupted when we were away.  That is why we will not be leaving the farm during the season.  The zucchini are awesome this year and so are the Roma tomatoes.  We will be getting ready for our cover crop which will be cowpeas and sorghum x sudan grass.  We will also be looking forward to a little easier weekend.

Hot, Hot, Hot

It is dry and hot out there.  But things are still growing.  Our lettuce plants are starting to bolt again because of the heat.  The greenhouse eggplants are nearly ready and some of the cucumbers from the house have been harvested.  We really missed/stuggled with the lettuce growing window this year but I am very proud of the fact that we have an entire salad ready all at one time.  Lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, scallions, onions, carrots, radish, and spinach are all ready now.  I've been trying to do that for a few years and the seasonality has been off for the cool to warm season veggie transition.  This year with the greenhouse we have much earlier tomatoes and are catching the tail end of the cool season veggies.  Next year hopefully I can start things a little earlier in the greenhouse and also add peppers to the mix.  I was thinking about my tomatoes and keep remebering that my Grandad in Ireland grew them in a small glass house and sold them to the city folk.  My Dad had to go water them by hand with buckets and wanted to move far away from the farm.  It is funny how things came back around with me and my tomatoes except for my Dad who moved far away again from the farm.  
We planted corn (two types), beans, more brocolli, flowers, peppers, a kidney bean trial, and more cucumbers all in the field.  The green beans are starting to flower, and the leeks will be ready soon.  I've been mounding up the soil on the stems to get more soft white stems from the harvest. 
I got a couple of cuttings from a tropical raspberry called mysore raspberry and have potted them up into 1 gallon pots.  They would be a great addition to the mix.  We love raspberries!  I am hoping to plant blackberries, a few grapes, and the raspberries out into the field this year. 
I am starting to think about growing the herbs in pots under the shadehouse.  It might be a little more manageable especially the mint to grow it in pots.  We might also extend the harvest time a bit.
Here are a few pictures of the happenings on the farm.

tropical pumpkins started from seeds

red mustard being killed by downey mildew

greenhouse tomatoes

Mysore raspberry rooted cutting

Week 24, 2011, Last Pick up and End of Season

Well this is the last pickup of the 2010-11 season. I think it went rather well overall. Not without complications but I feel that the amount and variety of produce over the season was pretty good. I hope that our patrons feel the same way. Things have really run their course in the field and there is very little to pick for this last week. Some things like the silver queen corn, watermelon, and the tropical pumpkins will not be ready but we will have an after-season pickup. This final pickup after the season is one that will be like a gleaning day. Anything in the field is up for grabs. There won't be a whole lot of stuff to pickup. Much like the pre-season pickup that we had before week 1. Where things are ready that falls out of the normal season and we would rather share the produce with our members than see some of it go to waste. The corn and other stragglers should be ready then. By the way, the silver queen is about a foot over my head and I have never grown corn that looks so robust and healthy. I am really looking forward to picking it, if the good Lord wills it.

I finally had to remove the rooster from the laying flock as he was causing some severe damage to some of the hens. I processed him and brought him home for dinner. The kids were really keen on eating him and seeing what he would taste like. Anna had 2.5 helpings of the bird. I was a little apprehensive, Jenn more so. But the kids lead the way with a fearless example for the grownups to follow. I must say he tasted just like chicken :) He had extremely dark meat that almost tasted like a cross of chicken and turkey. He was very good and much more tasty than store bought meat but a little tougher as well. The one thing that struck me was how sturdy his legs were. The leg bones were about 30% longer than the ones in the store. Maybe it is because he got way more exercise. He really was a very beautiful rooster with really nice plumage. If he was nicer he would still be running with the ladies. There might be a lesson for thought there.

I am turning my thoughts to covercrops, where I will plant next, and equipment repairs/maintenance over the summer. I am thinking that I will fix up one of the greenhouses for vegetable production this winter. It would be nicer to grow in there than worrying about covering up the warm season plants with freeze cloth and then taking it off each time. I think that I will try tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and either zucchini or cucumbers. I am also working on a plan to replace my Dad who has been a tremendous asset to the farm over the season. He will be retiring after Saturday from the operation. We thank him for all the hours he puts in during the week. He is moving to Clearwater so commuting would be out of the question. We will miss him dearly around the farm. But I hope he enjoys his time away and not worry about the daily operation.

Week 17, 2011

The summer is here. It is now 90 degrees plus in the afternoons. We had a tremendous storm a few weeks ago that dumped 3.5 inches of rain and pounded our transplants with extreme winds. The storm spun off six tornados that skirted us, but thankfully we were spared the worst. We had a few problems with structures of the greenhouses failing but nothing major.

We have planted Contender beans, bell peppers, sweet peppers, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes, seminole pumpkins, cantaloupes, cowpeas, watermelons, sweet corn, okra, and basil. The red potatoes are doing well and eggplants finally picked this week. Loquats are finished and I was able to make an orange/loquat jam that I wasn't too happy with. It needed more acid. I think lemon would have been the trick. I used a not quite ripe Valencia orange with higher acid but it wasn't enough. I'll try again next year. The peaches are nearing maturity and hopefully will be picking in a few weeks. I am trialing lima beans, a black eye pea, and will be planting some climbing beans to see if I can interplant with the corn we planted.

We will be taking a week off to allow for things to grow a bit and have a troop meeting of one of our member's girl scouts. This should be fun showing teaching them all the happenings around the farm. I am busy lining up jobs for them to try to learn what we do and how important the production of food is. I am also hoping to convey that there are alternatives to the way some small farms run.

Here is a photo update on our small grain trial. Photo credits go to A. Steed. Oats, rye and wheat are shown.

I came up with a good recipe for spinach. That the kids could not get enough of it.

Sautee a clove of a garlic in olive oil and butter.

Chop up the spinach and wilt down. Add some salt.

Add some chicken broth (1/3 cup) and reduce. Then serve and keep your fingers out of the way of the forks!

Farm Happenings

We have just planted our squash, zucchini, napa cabbage, and red bok choy out to the fields. We also planted 10 different varieties of lettuce in 72 cell trays. I had to spray some organic pesticides for aphids and whiteflies. We are also starting to develop some downy mildew on the cucumbers. The cucumbers are coming in early this year; we have already picked about a dozen. I hope they hold up for harvest time in November. Our green beans are looking very yellow and our eggplant seems to be in a holding pattern. This is what happens when you change fertilizers. It is best if you can see how it works on different items and different conditions. We were not able to get our usual Sustane fertilizer and had to go with something else. It is not reacting the same way. We also have not had any rain lately so the fertilizer that is releasing is not making it to the roots. This might explain our yellow beans and slow eggplant.

My youngest brother Patrick has joined us for a few weeks out at the farm. He needed a place to crash and was willing to work in the fields. He has been a big help so far, cleaning up the nursery and planting many of the vegetables in the trays and field.

It's nice to see the oranges starting to turn orange again. They almost go unnoticed during most of the season disguised in a camouflage green. One really needs to look for them on the tree. And then almost magically they start turning the first shades of yellow, and then reappear into view. This is where I start thinking about how good they taste in the wintertime, and about how nice it is to cut one off the tree and eat it while I'm working.

We had a loss of one of the young chicks this last week. Something, maybe a raccoon reached under the hen house and took a bite of one and killed it. We made some adjustments to the pen and hopefully it will not happen again. Nathan and I got it out of the pen and buried it beneath one of the orange trees

End of Season

We wrapped up a fairly successful season. I am happy to take a breather and regroup for the fall and this summers cover crops. It is a pretty intense activity to plan 12-15 organic vegetables each week for pickup for 24 weeks.

I harvested some of the seeds from dandelion, mustards, arugula, broccoli, rye, and cosmos. I hope to get some corn and sunflowers before the season ends. I think that I will need to start over on the cucumber breeding program with so many setbacks.

I have some pumpkins ripening up nicely and I hope that they will be ready for our field gleaning day. We are going to have a final pickup for anything left in the field. We still have some herbs, scallions, onions, carrots, cukes, zukes, and tomatoes as well.

I have also added a few fruit trees to plant this weekend. A peach, nectarine, and three persimmons.

Our one olive plant is producing olives this year. I hope to add a few more of these trees to the farm.

Our peaches did great this year and we are trying to figure how to use about 60 peaches we will harvest this weekend.

Week #7 of the Third Period

We are winding our way down to the end of the season. It looks like the trial of Surround clay mixed with copper is working pretty well on the cucurbits and the tomatoes.

Here is a picture of a zucchini with Surround spray

I have remarkably fewer stink bugs on the tomatoes this year. And they are almost ripening up so I can actually pick them on the plants instead of picking them a the greenish pink stage and holding them. That was a big winner. The sunflowers did well this year and I would like to do more next year. The peaches are ripening up and are still small. But they received no fertilizer this year and are doing better than expected. I hope to fertilize them in the next month with local horse manure.

I was able to get the local forester and the extension agent for forestry out to the property to look at the pines. Nobody is sure why they all died. There was some thought that they were planted too shallow, but even the ones that were planted high died. I think that the ground was too sandy and didn't hold water well enough for them. Now it is on to plan B. Two more harvests to go to the end of the season.

Harvest and pickup continues into our third portion of the harvest season. The beets are finally looking good and the lettuce continues to produce heavily. Our warm season crops are starting to grow after being battered by the winter. We have had a really nice basket the last few weeks. The spinach, mustards, bok choi, some lettuces, and radishes are starting to bolt but we are harvesting what we can. The squash is starting to fruit and I think that one more week we will be able to pick for everybody. There is an abundance of loquats starting to ripen up and we will picking them shortly. This is an exciting time with the produce amount and variety.

One of the very neat things that I tried this year is a little patch of grain I was trying to grow. I planted a small portion of Wren's Abruzzi winter rye. I planted it to see if we could grow a grain for the chickens. So far it is really looking neat. I am very excited to see the small grains forming on the shoots. I strikes something really deep at an emotional level. I am not sure what it is but I really find something extremely fascinating watching the rye heads blowing in the wind and seeing the grains ripening up. It must be something evolutionary that strikes at my core. I hope to expand this for next year if it continues to ripen to maturity. We will be purchasing our camera within two weeks and I will catch up with the pictures.

Easter Break

We will be having a weekend break from our last 8th week pickup and the start of our 3rd season, 8 week pickup. Now is the time to sign up if you are interested in joining the CSA for our last 8 week pickup!

It seems like vegetables sometimes purposefully disappoint. We have some of the best looking lettuce we have grown and it seems like it will be at peak harvest during our break. It is funny how that works out.

Things are going well and it seems like we are starting to find a few core members for our CSA. We get a bunch of trial members but I think that a Saturday pick up and the mix of vegetables available during the winter is not what many people expect.

The chicks have been doing great and we are giving away eggs on a rotation basis on Saturdays. I think that maybe the Easter Bunny might bring some more chicks to add to the flock. It is really great not having to buy eggs anymore. But we have to buy feed. I haven't decided yet to go with more Buff Orppingtons or try some new birds out. I guess it will boil down to what is available at the feed store.

I have started to see a few more beetles showing up and causing some damage. It is finally starting to warm up a bit and now is when the insects start to get nasty.

I planted an olive tree this week end from a nursery that we have propagated for in the past. What is interesting about this tree is that it is flowering in our area this year. We will see what happens.

Heat Again

The weather in farming can be your biggest ally or foe. This year it is not cooperating well with us. It reached into the 80's again this week and the plants are really thrown for a loop. The lettuce that was just about to be picked, bolted and is useless now. The brocolli raab crop is starting to bolt and not mature properly. Last year we planted it in the spring and it bolted due to the heat. It really seems that it is warmth sensitive and does best in the cool. It would be nice to see some moderately cool temps last for some time.

We are seeing nice garlic in our trial. We tried that before and nothing ever happened but I think that we planted it way too late and it rotted before it sized up. I am also building up my courage to try tomatoes again as well as some melons. It takes me a few seasons to forget how awful I feel to watch all those fruit rot. But I am going to try something different this year. We will see what happens.

First Pickup

We had our first farm pickup the week before Thanksgiving. It was great to meet out new community of supporters. We have heard back from some saying that they really enjoyed the greens that we grew. We also gave them an extension handout on how to cook greens. It is always nice to have new folk visiting the farm and sharing stories about their lives and traditions. I find it really refreshing to visit with everyone.

We are slowly catching up to speed on the vegetable harvests. Finally the lettuce is getting ready after missing about 4 weeks of growth. Now that it has cooled off, the cole crops are doing what they should have been doing a month ago.

We planted a cover crop of rye grass on half of our plot to reduce the weeds for the spring and summer crops. We also have been watching the weather the last two days. We are experiencing a violent front that moved through the area but it has treated us very mildly so far.

We are slated to have our next pick up this week.

Dixie Chicks are out

The mobile chicken coop.

We finally finished the mobile chicken coop. It took a while but it is in good order now. It was constructed from mostly recycled farm materials and some purchased bolts, chicken wire, and wood. I still need to finish their nesting area inside the coop but the run is complete. The chicks are so used to being confined in a box, they spent the entire day just peeking out of the entry way. We released them from the back of the coop and they walked around inside eating and pecking and jumping from everything that moved. After day three they are much better adapted and enjoying their new digs. I hope they are happy enough to lay eggs for us in the near future.

Dixie Chicks shy from the media

The rest of the farm is moving along. I planted our basil transplants and took cuttings to start some more. I also started the sweet potato vines, planted queen anne black eye peas and the white acre peas. I am still waiting for our tomatoes to turn red. They have sized up now but are still green. All the remaining lettuce has bolted. We lost a bunch but learned a lot.

The radishes did really well this year and are delicious. Last year I thought I would never try them again because they all split. This year they came out great. They are also my new favorite vegetable. I found that you can fry them in butter and salt and they taste great. I can hardly eat a radish raw. But they taste totally different when cooked. Thanks for the cooking tip Corner Store.

Chugging along

The Dixie Chicks are getting pretty big and curious about life outside of their box. They are really wanting out and I can't blame them. I am hoping to finish their new comparatively elegant grand coop. They will love their new space.

We have harvested all of the broccoli at one shot. It was ready really quickly as well as the lettuce. I will need to delay planting times better. Smaller quantities and more plant dates. Much of our awesome lettuce went to seed fairly rapidly. We were able to harvest some and sell some but we lost too much this year.

Jalapeno peppers, eggplants, and radishes are producing now. The red mustard and the turnips are inundated with beetles and spraying them is not helping. About every three days the pests would return after a spray. I will try them again next year but earlier to see if that makes a difference.

The Valencia oranges are ripe now and are delicious to eat off the tree. A few peaches and plums are ripening. We lost most of them to the frosts.

We are thinking of adding goats to the operation. "What goats!" I know...like we don't have enough to deal with already. We will see. I still have a little bit of sanity left to spare.

Looking Pretty Good

Here is our awesome lettuce trial!

The lettuce have all grown amazingly. Not one bad variety in the whole lot. We will be harvesting a bunch of really great looking organic heads and will be distributing them to our lucky customers.

We have added a few more customers to our Organic Produce Community Supported Agriculture endeavor. One of the customers is a vegetarian and absolutely loved our produce. She said it was incredible and very tasty. We are extremely pleased that our hard work is producing such a great product.

The "Dixie Chicks" as we have named them have been moved to a bigger box and are getting bigger by the day. Nathan loves to see them in the mornings and likes to wave at them. Our dog Copper would love to get a look at them up close but we have been hurrying him out the door to the yard in the morning. He knows they are there and tries to get a look.

We began harvesting kohlrabi this last week and we cooked some up. We steamed/sauteed them in some olive oil. It was delicious. We have never had them before and I would like to eat them again soon.

Our tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers are growing well. The broccoli and cauliflower are not. It is just too late and hot for them. We have been having an infestation of beetles in the mustard and turnips. I can't keep them off those plants. I hope some predators show up and help in the work.

Merry Christmas from Steed Farms to You and Yours

Well, the fall is behind us now and winter starts. Our weather has vacillated between hot and cold as the usual for Florida weather. It is really hard to grow things with such uneven temperatures. Our butterhead lettuce (Sylvestra) is doing fine but some are already bolting due to the hot temperatures we have experienced. The one that are not bolting look great. There is a lot of variation in the plots and very little uniformity. I guess this is good for now when we pick small quantities to sell and eat. We are still harvesting arugula, collards, mustards, mint, oregano, bok choy, napa cabbages, parsley, and lettuce. I also let Anna pick the first two carrots from the plots. We had a terrible germination on the first plot of carrots. The second and third plantings did much better. I factored in the uneven drip line watering, the dry bark, and the warm temperatures and did much better. We will be picking our first cilantro next week as well.

One butterhead lettuce plant! Pretty nice!

Butterhead lettuce rows

I also started some peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and our saved cucumber seeds in the green house in organic mix sown in trays. They have started to put on their first true leaves and I plan to plant them in the greenhouses in pots since I am not using the space at the moment.

I planted some avocados from seeds and they germinated well in the soil. I just transplanted them yesterday to make nice trees for sale. I am planning to spice up our wholesale landscape plants to include a retail type farm stand and I would like some variety of tropical, color, and edible plants. That will be my main goal for this year as well as making sure that I can grow the right mix and variety of vegetables.

As the holidays approach, I would like to wish all who read this glad tidings and may the blessings of the spirit of Christmas be upon you, your loved ones.

Fall Season Underway

The strawberries around the county are growing, the citrus is turning sweeter by the day, and the vegetables are being harvested. I enjoy this time of the year. Holidays, baseball finals, (Go Rays!), college football (Go Gators), pro football (Go Bucs), and eating events.

Two pictures of our harvested crops!

We are still planting lettuces, cilantro, carrots, and onions. I started the red onion (Mars) in a tray and will be transplanting them out. I used organic soil and when they started to germinate out of the soil I top-dressed with an organic fertilizer (Sustane). I didn't have much luck with the horse poop this year. There was way too much wood shavings and it is having a very bad effect on the the germination of the seeds. I guess that they are drying out too fast. We are harvesting bok choy, oregano, mint, mustard, and collards. New this week to harvest are the citrus (Hamlins), dandelion, and parsley. The cucumbers are finished. I top dressed the entire field with an organic fertilizer (Bradfield) and weeded half of the plot. I will weed the next half this week and plant a few more things. The pest pressure is pretty light and there are ladybugs all over the place.

Harvest Starts Again!

We have started harvesting some plants. Nothing too big, but we have picked some arugula, cucumbers, mustards, mint and a bok choi. I have never eaten a bok choi before but it was really good. I put it in a stir fry with some leftover steak and it was really nice. It had a unique flavor but not too strong to offend.

Our seeds did not germinate like we had hoped and we had a lot of empty plot so I had to reseed were the water was reaching from the drip tubes. The tubes have worked well aside from that one point. The water travels pretty much straight down and not laterally to wet the row middles. If we were using transplants it would have worked fine. We have had some problems with grasshoppers and some caterpillars on some of the plants but we are taking care of them with pyrethren and bt sprays. In the next few weeks since the temperatures have fallen I will be planting the lettuces again. It was too hot for the a month ago.

We are also adding a composting toilet to the farm so I can rent out the mobile home that we used to live in. I am nearly finished with it and just need to add a door, a flap in the back for the waste removal, a hole where the waste enters, and some paint. I also would like to put some screen for the top for air flow.