A dream...come true

When we bought our property, it was really rugged! Picture a tiny house in the midst of a huge, thick forest of trees.  It was a far cry from the “little cottage on the farm” vision we had, but little by little we have tamed it. Our first couple of years, we cleared many trees away from the house.  What a difference that made by giving us a much more light and airy feel inside the house and by opening up the space outside too. 

Out buildings are essential for a farm.  We needed a barn, a milk-room, and a covered area for the firewood and tractor.   Ahhh, but before we could even begin on those big projects, we needed to deal with the downed trees and giant piles mini mountains of debris that were the result of clearing.  The trees were cut up into rounds and moved to a place where they could be split for firewood.   That summer, the chain saw was my husband’s best friend.  My sons learned how to split wood by hand with a maul and an ax.  (P.E. homeschooling style.)

That literally has taken several summers because there were a lot of trees and because well, it rains here, just a little.  What a blessing, though, to have plenty of firewood each winter.

Next we had to tackle the huge, unsightly piles of tangled branches and huge stumps that clearing leaves behind.  Thankfully, we do have a chipper.  We can push branches through and use the chips on the paths and in flower beds for weed control.  It’s the stumps that are stubborn!  They don’t seem to burn easily, they only char.  With persistence and patience we have tackled two of them. 

After several years, we actually look a bit civilized.  We now have a large barn (10 x 40) with 4 stalls. That has been so useful to have different pens for different situations dependiing on the goats and kidding. We also have a "milk room". It's just an 8 x 8 cedar shed, but it holds 2 milk stanchions, large galvanized cans that hold grain and minerals, and a cute little storage bench - perfect for our use.  We have a home for the split wood and tractor too.  But the thing we've been dreaming about from the very beginning is now happening...now, we will finally have a garden!

My men at work

Matt exercising his supervisory skills

Caleb

Matt

Dan

Eric and the boys have worked hard rototilling, picking out rocks, and putting up the fence. They  added the darling pickets - just for me.  We still will need to put up metal fencing (like chicken wire) on the inside of the picket fencing to keep the voracious, little, cute, bunnies out.

We still need to rototill again and move dirt to level it out, but we are almost ready to plant!

We have a shorter growing season up here on the mountain, but that's o.k., we’ll plant starts. We can’t wait to enjoy some goodies from the garden. We've been dreaming about this for a long time....now it's a dream come true!