Our First Year On This Homestead: Her Thoughts
Last year…
This week marks our first week on the homestead. I have no idea where the time went. Moving in so late in the summer/early fall, about all we did when we first got here was buy a zero turn mower (cash of course), to keep our 5+ acres in check as we unpacked and settled in.
Oh, we did put in a fire pit the day after we moved, and really enjoyed all of our stars on those campfire nights. We watched the seasons change, and rain/snowmelt pool and run off.
Why unpack when you can put a firepit in…? We’re obviously huge fans of campFIRE! : D
Then we waited out the winter, holed up inside as much we could. The wind in Nebraska will blow right through you!
Planning & more planning!
These were great date nights for us to brainstorm with hot drinks all the things we wanted to build out on our homestead
While inside, we planned and planned some more. We drew out our property on the chalkboard to figure out our systems, where the garden would be, etc. We ordered seeds and silage tarps to start prepping the ground. We had high hopes of starting a small CSA along with growing our food.
And then the COVID wrecking ball...
We scaled down our planting, not knowing if we’d be able to sell at the farmers market with social distancing rules. This scaling down turned out to be a good thing because I killed a ton of our seedlings one day.
We built a rabbit hutch and got our breeding stock. We brought home chickens and a little coop to get started. We were off and running!
Our garden is larger than our house, in square feet. I LOVE this fun little fact. And I wanted to fill it, planting a little bit of everything. I’ve never had a garden so big, with so much room to try growing lots of things, not just basically peppers and tomatoes. But that meant trying to grow a lot of things I didn’t know how to grow! On thick clay soil, with almost no amendments.
While planting, I kept looking towards next year. I really wanted to fast forward through this year, to have the benefit of knowing which plants would take, and when, and how many plants might be too much, etc. That’s not how experience works through. You’ve got to go through the whole experience, not just a cursory version, in order to learn from the experience.
I started journaling because I wanted to laugh in the coming winter about how silly we were, from the lofty tower of hindsight. With COVID though, I struggled to keep this up. It was a time of being in a funk for everyone, adjusting to the pandemic. Which is a bummer because not having records means ill be relying on my memory next year.
The heat really zaps me, and I wasn’t good about getting up earlier as the sun got up earlier, to take advantage of the cooler morning hours to weed and water. Now we have little Luna, who makes sure we’re up bright and early, so this won’t be a problem at all next year. But this year, I was a slacker with weeding and our garden was overrun. It didn’t slow the plants too much, they had a good head start, but the grass did shade out some sun, and give a good habitat for lots of bugs to hide, multiply, and devour some things.
She’s sure cute!
But not so much when she’s whining to wake us up!
I’m reclaiming two rows for our fall garden. And our two raised beds, since they have plastic covered domes to extend the season. And am really exited. Evening chores are the best. Working until it’s too dark to see is a great call it quits point. (Headlamps would resolve that but resting and recovering is a good thing!)
Next year...
For year two on our homestead, I want to record all the things. I want to know how much we consume, and what, so I can replace it with things we produce. For example, in the summer, we eat more granola bars because it’s too hot for hot food. I’ll make a bazillion in March or February and set them in the freezer, so we can benefit from a hot oven in those months, and not have the oven on in July.
I also want to create a bit more structure. I like having things organized, and lately I’ve struggled to create those types of systems. I would like for our food tracking to be easier, and chore tracking. Having daily or weekly patterns helps take a lot of guesswork out. When was the last time I cleaned Luna’s ears? becomes, her ears are always clean because they get wiped out every Sunday!
I’m very glad we have our seeds, for the most part, for next year’s garden. Having our deep pantry stocked to include seeds is very comforting. I think we have such a split set up now, it will be a lot easier to refine going forward. Easier to restock the pantry when you can clearly see what’s missing, and what’s been consumed, so that’s yet another motivation to track all the things.
The spoiler alert is that we’re considering relocating. While that’s sad to think about it in the sense that we might not be here another year, we’re really excited about the opportunities related to this potential move. Well keep putting our energy into making this the best home possible until we know for sure, but our wheels are turning! We’ll see what the year brings! Thanks for following along on our journey! We hope you’re learning from our highs and lows, just as we are!
