Homesteading Plans

Poor old blog. A bit neglected these days. I’ve been rather taken up with plans and schemes and research around gardens, and chickens, and goats. And while I’ve sort of held off posting about these things (lacking suitable visuals) I will do so now, to explain my absence!

First, The Garden: Doesn’t everybody start making garden plans in February and March? Something about knowing spring is coming. I use the snow as a sketch pad and tramp about, outlining beds and fencing. We want to put more into our vegetable garden this year (now that I can help!) and I have plans for a little front garden of herbs and country flowers. With a wattle fence. I got a copy of The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener for my birthday and am very excited about the possibilities. We may not get things in terribly early this year (other things going on….as you will see) but I am very keen to extend the harvest into the winter, and focus energies perhaps more on that than on growing to preserve. So far everything is just in my head but I’m itching to get at it. As a small start I just put a cloche over some chives to encourage the little green tips.

Chickens: Sometime this spring we will be getting 10 chicks. 5 Plymouth Rock and 5 Silver Laced Wyandotte. We need to figure out how to brood them until they are big enough to go outside. And then they will need a coop. After MUCH deliberation we decided on The Garden Coop. We plan on having the chickens free range, but wanted something predator proof (!) and an enclosed run if we are away. This coop seems to have good instructions and the blog has lots of info, alterations and will be great for support.

The Goats: These twin angora/pygmy doelings will be joining us in May.

We decided they would be right for us because of their small size, and space and food needs. I was also intrigued by the possibility of fibre.  Next year, after they have been bred and kidded, we will milk them. Pygmy goats give little (but supposedly very good) milk but I’m hoping it will be about right. We need fencing, and a pen, and I need to finish shingling the barn….

And today finds me,  back to the wood-stove, the trusty John Seymour tome close to hand, plotting ways to grow food for said chickens and goats. (Kind of ties it all together. Which, of course, is the point.)

New Ground

(Yes, I’m still alive. Post are few and far between, I know!)

 

The plot from the bathroom window.

There has been a lot going on this spring and it has made getting a vegetable garden going at Good Cheer a little tricky! The ground was plowed for us (incidentally, on the day Ruth was born!) but we couldn’t find anybody to till it. And of course, we were unable to get to it right away. We had a big garden planned, and I had researched rotation schedules and all that, but in the end we had to just make do. Gary valiantly hacked away at the ground until there was a plot decent enough for us to plant in and then we bought some transplants. I really had very little to do with any of it, as I was otherwise occupied, but one day, when I can put the baby in, I look forward to getting “stuck in”.

So it was not the grand start we had in mind but it’s a start nonetheless. These are our first scratchings in the earth where in years to come we hope to see a large, productive garden.

 

Toadstool Terrarium.

This toadstool terrarium comes from my Granny Alice. I remember it at her house and  I was always pretty fond of it. Something about a little tiny contained world of green, I guess. It also reminds me of the miniature gardening set she gave me, with a tiny watering can and trowel. I wish I still had those! But I’ve had the terrarium for ages and keep meaning to plant it so when my eye fell upon yesterday I thought “Today is the day!”.

First I took some “before shots”. This is when I realized that the photography would be a challenge!

So I made a cup of tea.

Then I got to work filling the terrarium. Strictly speaking I think it should be miniature plants but since that was one of the reasons I never got around to planting it, I just used some moss and a few other things from the garden.

After I was done I decided the terrarium was not complete without a tenant.