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! :)
