Today I thought I would share some photo's of the homestead and a little backstory + future plans we have for around here.
Enjoy!
We moved here about a year and a half ago. At the time we had been living in the "city" (older subdivision) with plans & dreams of moving out on a parcel of land to start doing what we had always been talking about doing... . Homesteading.
We were living in an older neighborhood on about 1/2 acre lots. Suitable enough to garden and keep some chickens but unfortunately, with some restrictions in place, we weren't allowed to have chickens (and certainly not any other sort of barn animal...). Heck, we couldn't even burn a small pile of leaves without someone calling the Fire Department on us (true story!).
We had, had enough.
So we finally took the steps to get to where we are now. And we haven't looked back since!
We purchased 10 acres. Half of which consists of thick woods with trails. The other half consists of the house, a barn, an old metal shed (which will be the future feed/storage shed as well as outside shelter for the goats) and a red shed which we have since turned into the chicken coop.
The property also boasts a fair amount of fruit trees, nut trees and grape vines!
The metal shed (pictured above) has a bit of an overhang that extends out. We plan to "clean it up" a bit and extend it out some more as well as add some walls to the sides of the overhang. This will be the shelter for the goats. This back corner of the property (right up to where our woods are, behind me in the photo) which we call "the back field", we plan to fence in and keep the goats back here. We also plan to fence in another section up more towards the front of the property, along the side tree line (to the left in the photo). This way we can rotate the goats (and future cow!).
The metal shed is in good shape (as in good bones) but it's a mess inside. The previous owner kept all kinds of scrap wood from projects and everything else and it's been sitting in this shed. We're still trying to decide the best way to empty it out... whether to keep some of it or burn it (the scrap wood) or just free cycle it and have someone come and get whatever they want out of it...
The red shed seemed to be fairly new. It has a concrete foundation and good structure. We ended up turning this one into the chicken coop which made it easy since half the work was already done (the actual shelter part). All we had to do was make the outside run and some boxes and roosts.
We tried to reuse as much as we could for the chicken coop. The boards for the run and the chicken wire we purchased but the door leading in/out of the run was an old door that was left in the barn attic. So we cut the inside parts out and then attached chicken wire to it. The nesting boxes were made out of scrap wood we had laying around :)
The garden was a really big project in that we wanted to spend as little $$$ as possible when creating it. So we went through the property and the woods and harvested wood from downed trees and created fence posts. We used inexpensive deer netting as the "fence" and planted straight into the ground instead of building boxes.
Everything was started from seed which was a bit of a challenge because we didn't (don't) have a greenhouse. So we had to rotate everything between bringing the seedlings in the barn at night and then bringing them out in the sun during the day. It got a bit annoying but it was worth it...
FUTURE PLANS
We took the garden "down" and will be moving it to another spot on the property. If it's one thing I learned with our first "homestead garden", it's that the terms "go big or go home" doesn't always apply to every situation ... The garden we did was just way too big and I became overwhelmed (I admit it). I did manage to can tomatoes and tomato sauce and pickles but this summer we will downsize it a bit and keep it closer to the barn (makes more sense, logistically).
Clean up the metal shed (as I mentioned earlier) for the future goats and milk cow (although, still convincing the husband on how beneficial a cow would be ha!).
Make an herb garden and a wildflower garden (not sure if it will happen this spring but I'm hopeful).
Paint the floor on the back porch and turn it into a nice little outdoor/indoor space.
Finish the top floor of the barn for when we have guests come and stay with us.
Make a plan for getting some meat chickens.
Make a plan for possibly getting a couple of pigs.
Fix the well.
Make a greenhouse!
That's pretty much the current "to-do" list. I hope you enjoyed our little homestead tour. Also, if you have any tips or tricks or helpful info, please let us know in the comments! :)
Great post and BEAUTIFUL plot. You've done so much for being there a year and a half. Really good to see how you've recycled a lot of the wood and found stuff from the woodland on the property.
I look forward to reading more. :D
Thank you for the comment brimwoodfarm! :)
Congratulations @kaseymccoy!
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Oh wow, thank you very much!
Love this post @kaseymccoy ! The photos are awesome! Sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you.
Moving the garden seems like a pretty daunting task, yikes. The nice thing about starting over with something like that is you get to incorporate all the lessons you learned from the previous one into the new one and hopefully make the whole process a lot more efficient.
I can't wait until I'm done university so I can make some real moves to find my dream property :D This post gave me some good inspiration so thank you for posting it :)
Anyway I'm pretty new here and I'm really looking forward to meeting some like-minded Steemians.
Do you have any recommendations for good homesteading/self-sufficiency/gardening blogs to follow here on steemit?
Cheers,
BTB
Thank you for the comment! Yes, you're right about the task being pretty daunting... I am not completely looking forward to having to make a whole new garden but like you said, I will use what I have learned from last seasons and incorporate it into the new one!
I am pretty new here myself so I am trying to find some good blogs in the same categories that you are looking for, as well. So I'm not much help... (although you can check out my followers as I have found a few of them so far) :)
Have a great day!
Ok I'll check out your followers and I'll be sure to let you know if I come across any other good homestead bloggers here :)
Thanks, you as well. Good luck with the property.
this is just wonderful. My dream. I am hoping we will be able to move into a home with some land next summer. I plan on inviting family and friends from the city to garden with us as well. I have a HUGE list, and eventually we want to be self sustaining!
It was our dream for so many years. When it finally came a reality, it was just wonderful. Never lose sight of the dream you have and when it becomes a reality for you, I wish you much fun and success! Also, side note... Start planning now! That is the only thing I wish we had done before moving, was to plan more. It wasn't until we finally settled into our home/land did we start to plan everything out (garden). Thank you for the comment! :)
Welcome to steemit fellow homesteader!!! Great to meet you.
if you're looking for a great and supportive group of homesteaders on steemit, I'd like to pass on to you the Discord group I belong to. We are one big happy homesteading family there.
here is the link
https://discord.gg/VKCrWsS
looking forward to you posts!
Thank you goldendawne :) Thank you for the invite to the group, I just joined and look forward to chatting with everyone!
that's awesome! I am sure you will love the group! Full of exceptional (homesteaders) people!
Excellent write-up and pictures. I've been thinking about doing a greenhouse as well and look forward to your post on it. Following.
Thank you! :) :)
hi! omg that is for sure goals because i also come from a small city where all was calmed and life was pretty cool, now i moved and live in a big city , i wont say it is not good but you know how llife style changes 100% since everywhere is crowned, noise, somw days when you get kate for traffic or stuck in metro you have to hurry up so my next goal in some years is to get to move to a place as whre u are after i finish my career and form a family. enjoy it as much as u can :)
Great tour. I am happy that you have begun to live your dream! Something about having a little room to stretch out makes one feel more free. Your plans went well and you accomplished a lot . I hope this next season will be bountiful for you also! 🐓🐓
Thank you very much! :)
Nice going! The results of your hard work is inspiring me :) Impressed that you grew everything from seed and went to the extra effort of hardening them off every day. Have you ever grown day lilies? They are beautiful, delicious and come back year after year!
Thank you! I have not grown day lilies but plan to grow many of them next year for my flower garden (I love lilies). We do have Trumpet lilies which grow to about 10' tall. We also have spider lilies that grow wild on our property as well :)
Really cool! I hadn't heard of spider lilies before, the look really unique.
I really enjoyed your photography and reading about your homestead adventures and plans to come. Looks like a beautiful piece of land.
Cheers - Carl "Totally Not A Bot" Gnash
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Thank you very much!! :)
How wonderful to have ten acres to plan with!
And to choose to have goats, well ... thumbs up lol. Goats are one of my favourite farm animals - I've had them in the past, and perhaps one day I will again.
The garden you created from scratch looked just stunning, and a good working garden - kudos! A suggestion I might make is, if you haven't looked into it already, is the no-dig gardening approach as it may save you a fair amount of labour & time, especially once a system is established. (Charles Dowding has wonderful videos up on his YT channel.)
One hard-working farm animal to encourage is the bee. You didn't mention hives, but certainly planning on planting bee-friendly flowers (especially those that are helpful to bumble bees) is another way to support your property; along with bumble bee boxes & insect hotels.
Looking forward to reading more from you. :)
Thank you for the no-dig suggestion. I will definitely have to look into it (never heard of it before lol)! As for the bee's.. I would love to have hives and we have talked about having maybe one hive. I love bee's so it's definitely on our potential plan list. We need to research it more and all about bee keeping before we dive into getting our own hive(s). I love the idea of making some insect hotels and bee boxes. Last year we got so many bumble bee's in the garden so this year I think adding a few boxes for them will be perfect.
Thank you for the comment!!
Your property is breathtaking. Love your photos. It seems every year the homestead is different. New gardens, pigs one year, meat birds the next. It is never dull! We have been on the cow versus dairy goat debate for THREE years now. I am leaping over to honeybees and then I'll start my campaign for a cow again :)