Starting Over 2.0

Our wild one with her swiss chard

 In 2015 we left behind the beach life and in 2019 we left behind the sunny, summer Florida life. No longer are we homesteading in Zone 9, now we are getting used to life in Zone 5. We bought a beautiful property with great potential, but no plumbed or electrified coops. In fact, it has no coops, barns or greenhouses and definitely no duck pond. We learned a lot from the duck pond we built at our last home so we are excited to try again. 

It was very hard to say goodbye to that home and life. We had redone the house and built so much towards our homesteading goals. We passed our home onto another young couple who is eager to add horses and make use of the infastructure we built for homesteading. During a visit back we drove by and saw the field had been fenced and they had horses happily grazing. It feels good to know our home is now their home, and being loved. 

We are approaching our 3rd summer here and have done or are doing the following: 

• Hatched and rehomed a small flock of chicks, keeping 3 for ourselves. 

• Fenced an upper garden area and transplanted 3 rows of raspberry bushes that date back to my husband's childhood home as well as 3 beds for herbs and vegetables.

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  A few of the pumpkins we grew

  Built 3 garden beds in the tennis court (yes, the house came with a tennis court) and grew cucumbers, tomatoes and sunflowers as well as squash. The cucurbits struggled since I didn't add any compost or growing medium to the areas where they sprawled outside of the bed, across the clay. This year we have garlic growing in 1.5 of the beds and the other we built up another 8" so it's better suited to deep root plants. Currently the deeper bed has brussel sprouts growing in it, but there is more space (the beds are 4'x12') for herbs and perhaps a cucumber or two. 

• Built a bed for rhubarb, but used it mainly for pumpkins and squash during the 2nd summer. We had over 30 pumpkins, butternut squash and honeynut squash as well as some Southern Anna butternuts. I made a rookie mistake and left them out during a frost and most of them became chicken food. I will not make that mistake this year!  This year it is being keyholed to make it more accesible. We planted rhubard crowns that we bought and 2 big clumps that we were gifted from a family friend's decades old garden. 

• Working on an upper garden expansion with 5 or 6 more garden beds, using the same locust posts and welded wire fencing. We are planning a third expansion for this garden, but that will likely wait until next year.
  

• Started work on a mobile chicken coop, and are raising 24 chicks for meat and eggs. We are partnering with a local soup kitchen to pilot the project that was put on hold for the move: diverting their food scraps from the waste stream to feed the birds and make compost with eggs from the flock going to the soup kitchen. Our goal is to raise our birds without the use of commercial feed through careful pasture management and composting practices. 

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  Chicken coop

  Planted 10 balsam fir trees, 5 white spruce trees, 2 native honeysuckle bushes (to creep along the upper garden fence), 10 different cranberry and lingonberry for ground cover, 2 elderberry bushes, 10 chestnut trees, 7 hazelnut bushes, 5 apple trees, 1 cyprus tree and 2 pear trees. 

• Planted a test patch of native grass last summer, which has reseeded nicely this spring. This will be our main pasture area, but interspered with the elderberries, keyholed rhubard bed and the hazelnuts as well as crab apple trees. We are hoping for a meandering, hybrid food forest and pasture space. 

• Planted a test patch of tilling radish, buckwheat, peas, oat and vetch in a sandy area that is being overtaken by an invasive bedstraw. 

Raspberry canes

We are hoping to raise pigs in 2022; we never got the chance on our last homestead before moving. Local slaughter facilities are already booking for next year and we have work to do before we can bring on pigs (I have no desire to haul water, especially in the snow). In a future post I will revisit our estimates that are helping guide our plans to raise much of our own food. The pigs are certainly a piece of that plan, but we also hope to put up all of the tomatoes, pickles and most of the root vegetables we use in a year. 

Our property abutts land owned by family and they are looking to bring their donkey here in the fall or early winter. We are hoping to bring a mini from the down road to be her friend. Our fall projects will, hopefully, include building a barn so we can bring them here. Our land desperately needs manure and these two sweet equines would be a wonderful addition. 

We have many seedlings growing that will be put out in the next few weeks, as the last frost date here is May 15 (Zone 9 lfd was March 15!) and we are started our seedlings late. Last year we started them the 2nd week of March; we had tables filled with enormous squash and pumpkin plants! I was pleased with their production given the head start they had in growing, but they seemed to take over the house! 

Maybe we're meant to be banana farmers? When we left behind the beach life we took 3 banana trees with us. Now? We have a small area near the house with 5, the upper pond has 6, and a kiddie pool has 2 while each corner of the enclosure has 3. They were literally growing out of the upper pond and impeding the water flow so it was time to separate them out.

It's been a while since we've had a fish update. Our original goldfish are holding their own, and at least two koi have survived, and 1 comet. They also bred, as koi and goldfish can breed. Comets are a type of goldfish. I believe the hybrid offspring will be sterile, but time will tell. We also added 5 tilapia in the spring of 2016. It seems some survived and spawned, or we just have a lot of small, brown goldfish.

Compost

I firmly believe that the majority of the food justice issues facing the world are logistical in nature. I will address that, in depth,  with another post. This post is to discuss our newest bit of data collection on the homestead: food waste. Along with poor distribution, food waste is a massive issue, environmentally and socially, when discussing food security. As we begin incorporating intentional, rotational plantings into our chicken pasture, we cannot overlook our own food waste. We have always placed our compost near our chickens to aid in the decomposition process, but now we want to consider a few, key questions.

1. How much food waste do we generate?

2. How much feed do our chickens consume?

3. How much does our compost offering offset our need for conventional feed?

4. How much forage do our chickens need to offset the conventional feed and compliment our compost offering?

We are beginning to collect this data and will continue to provide this information as it becomes available.

Hard Freezes and Delicate (?!) Fish

Our quackaponics system has actually been humming along quite well. Sure, the edging needs to be finished, a proper fence put in, and more plants,  but the fish are multiplying,  the ducks are happy, and the algae is, relatively, in check. The 3+ thousand gallon system seemed immune to cold snaps as it is always moving, in direct sun, and in the deepest spot over 6 feet. Unfortunately, the South experienced extended,  uncommon cold where multiple days in a row didn't see the daily high edge past 38 degrees. Our normally resilient fish could not compete. The stress overtook 9 of our biggest tilapia and 2 of our foot long plecos. It was sad, but others across the region saw greater percentages die off.

Instead of adding them to the compost, I decided to make 2 new garden beds in the chicken yard lined with their, healthy looking, remains. One area was planted with the green manure mix we commonly use, comprised of oat, vetch, and peas. The other was planted with a new blend, intended specifially as forage for the chickens and ducks. It contains annual and perennial ryegrass, buckweat, flax, millet, peas, red clover, and alfalfa. I don't expect all of it to germinate and take hold, but in hopes of not having 11 fish perish for no reason, some is better than none. We've also seen such slow progress that the 2 small beds are heartening to watch grow.

Not the prettiest, but the first beds made while wearing The Peanut on my back so it's a huge win my book!

Some Help from Friends

Homesteading is not easy, especially in the southern heat with an infant. We have always talked about living the commune life, but are a bit persnickety. We have made some great friends who are also committed to the homestead life, and also find it challenging.  We decided to start a monthly work day. We will rotate among families, where once a month a group gets together and focuses on the project of their choice! A potluck after, and the hope of building stronger homesteads and community is our goal. There is a lot of knowledge to share, tools to exchange, and, of course, work to be done. We start this month at our place with plans of clearing out the blueberries and grapes and getting the woods bush hogged. Some homemade bread, a bit of grilled chicken, and a bonfire after make the prospect of diving into our sorely neglected 'orchard' almost something to look forward to, almost.

Then We Were 3

The newest addition to the homestead has 2 feet, but won't be offering much in terms of labor for a while. Garden beds are fallow, the coop is eeking by, and we mistook a dust bunny for Max the other day. Our biggest undertaking; a human baby was born healthy at home last month. We are looking forward to more sleep and cooler weather this fall, which will hopefully allow for projects to start again.
Please excuse long pauses between posts, but know that more content will be coming.

Homestead Donations for 2016

One of the coolest things we have been able to do in 2016 is finally make donations of eggs to a local food pantry. I work with a community garden through my nonprofit and the homestead has been a great extension to help the garden.

Our 2017 plan includes final preparations for the garden beds so we will be able to include vegetables with the egg donations. The eggs and land designated for the food pantry's benefit will expand with time, but for now we are proud to have donated 58 pounds of eggs (duck and chicken), which was 30 dozen. Our ducks took a while to come online and we had a lot of smaller chicken eggs in the beginning of the year, explaining the weird pound : dozen ratio.

Pumpkin patch for the ducks, chickens, and turkeys

Two of the smaller ponds feeding into the larger duck pond - lots of muscle and tractor work to get this set up!

Watermelon treats for babies is much more fun to watch!