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!