Welcome to the journey,the tale and the saga of our
Homestead.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Lookie here,









Wow we got tons done this weekend.First the tree project which is still in process.On Tuesday a neighbor who owns one of the BIG chippers on a trailer is coming over so he and Chance can turn the left over tree parts into chips for a path . We are putting all of the tree to use,fire wood for the wood stove and Earth oven, a path and a drum body. Reuse it not lose it.
Today we got to work on the new garden beds in the front yard. This adds to what we started last year.The converting of the front yard into all beds is going to take a couple more years since our lot is bigger than our budget. We chose the organic lines for the beds to follow the curve of our front yard.We live on one of four larger lots in our neighborhood which is awesome. The front yard is sort of a pie shape.The house sits on the end that would be the pointed end of the pie piece.
While working on the new beds we had a neighbor stop and ask about the tree and what were we currently doing. She was a bit surprised that we were not worried about people stealing our veggies from the front. Why not? A. Our bedroom window is right there and Chance sleeps lightly and B. If someone is willing to trespass to get some thing to eat, they just may need it more than we do.
To build the new beds we would have had to do some major digging through the layer of river rock below the grass.We did this last year for the bed we have closest to the curb.Not fun.For the new beds we used an idea that may be familiar; we layered thick cardboard (not waxed) then we put down more mulch from the neighbor and top dressed it with the garden soil we had delivered yesterday.They look nice and we will continue to add more mulch and soil as we go.These beds are giving us more room than I first thought we would have to plant in.
A resource we have come across is the produce section at one of our local markets.We ask at the door to the back stock area, if the y have any produce scraps. We usually get 2 produce boxes full of veggies. We feed half to our chickens and half to the compost.Today when we made this stop we we given 2 boxes and there was a sad surprise at the bottom. We found a dozen good apples.We looked them over carefully and there was not a thing wrong with them. So I kept them to make pies with.Food not Bombs dose this all the time to feed the hungry and come up with some good food. We found this sad because it was going to end up wasted. Someone who is going without could have eaten it. Wasteful America bah!
The quickest project to be checked off our list was adding the soil to the hay bales. They still don't look like much but it was the next step.Now I can plant some early things this week.
I am still getting the lay out part to adding photos.Needless to say I put some up so everyone can see our progress.In the back ground of a couple of the photos you can see our mountain of brush waiting to be chipped. People keep driving buy really slow. We live on a blind corner but I think its because most of them seem puzzled by what we are doing.That's ok , we lead by example in our household.
Enjoy the rain if you live close by, enjoy and accomplish some thing new everyday.
Rois

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