You may have noticed that it's been quiet on the blog for a while.
Part of that is because I've been putting more effort into my Ruth's Homemade business (click the link to see what I've been up to
over there), but mostly it's because (surprise!) we moved again. Our last move
was only three years ago (just enough time to start to get things humming on
the homestead). The log house, though beautiful, ended up needing a lot more
money invested in it than we had anticipated, and so one June evening we
decided we should try to sell it. The very next day, a friend asked if we knew
anyone in the area who was selling a home in the in our area with some acreage! One
thing led to another, and in a matter of weeks we had a buyer lined up (after
explaining very carefully just what they were getting into! We didn't want
someone else to end up unprepared like we were).
Unfortunately, the market that made it easy for us to sell made it
more challenging when we were looking for something to buy. "In the
country with a little land" seemed to be what everyone was looking for in
the summer of 2020 (one house we looked at - on the day it came on the market -
had three offers (over the asking price) before we looked at it at noon!) But
eventually we found a place with some acreage, a few outbuildings (including a
chicken coop and garden shed!), and a house that all seven of us (plus our
German shepherd and two cats) could fit into.
We hadn't been planning
to move; our first really serious thoughts of selling were on that June
evening. So in the spring I had planted the garden, bought feeder pigs and meat
chickens, and generally did all of my normal spring homestead planning. When we
closed on the house mid-August, all of that needed to be either moved or
harvested – which meant that in addition to packing, I needed to do all of the
canning, freezing, dehydrating, etc. that a normal garden season required. I
didn’t get many tomatoes, but I put up all of the carrots, potatoes, cucumbers,
beans, onions, and herbs that I could (I am so thankful for my five helpful
teenagers! I don't know how I would have done it without them!) We processed
the meat chickens the weekend before the move, but we had to move the pigs to
the new farm (that ended up being quite the story! We’d never moved pigs before
(we’d always put them down on-farm) so although we’d read horror stories of
moving pigs, we didn’t really know what we were getting into!)
Finally, the closing
date came, and whatever we hadn’t harvested had to be left behind. But now we
had to put in the perennials we’d dug up to move with us – I had a couple
elderberry bushes and an ice cream bucket full of Egyptian walking onions from
my brother (the granddaughters of some I’d given him a couple years
ago), and my 14 year old daughter had been assiduously tending a few dozen "daughters" from her strawberry plants.
So now we had to hurry up and prepare a place for them!
I saved all of the
cardboard moving boxes that I could, and a friend had some old, otherwise-useless
hay. I used these to cover a 50'x40' patch of grass for a new garden spot. We laid out the basic plan
for the new garden beds and put up fencing to keep the chickens out (otherwise
they would make a mess of the mulch, not to mention digging my daughter’s
strawberries!) By the time the ground froze, we had a good start on the spring
garden. We were even able to get in a late planting of spinach!
We spent the winter
settling into the house - and of course, planning for spring! We have apple,
plum, and pear trees ordered, as well as cherry bushes, blueberries, raspberries, and a
mulberry tree. It's hard not to try to replace everything we had built up at
our old house right away - we'd like to get our new place producing food as
quickly as possible - but we can only afford to do so much.
We're hoping to set up a permaculture food forest, following some of the ideas on Stefan Sobkowiak's YouTube channel (although
I still have to sigh every time I realize that even though he's in Canada, he
still has a better growing zone than I do!) The east side of the property was
planted in field corn when we moved in, leased to a neighboring farmer. He
harvested it in November, so now we have almost 5 acres of blank slate to fill
up this spring. Only a small part of that will be orchard; we're also hoping to
use some of it for pasture and a start to a future woodlot (including maple
trees - it broke my heart to sit on the sidelines during maple syrup season
this year!) My daughter is planting a corner of the old cornfield into a food
plot for the chickens, rabbits, and pigs - and also hoping to keep the local
deer population coming around (she put two of them in our freezer using her
crossbow this fall!)
And now, ready or not,
it's spring - I have eggs in the incubator and trays of seeds coming up under
grow lights in the sunroom. My homestead project list is a mile long (which is
a good thing - if I wasn't keeping busy with infrastructure work, I'd be
planting seeds outside much too early - again!)
As much as I hate losing
all of the work I put in at the last farm, I'm trying to focus on the
excitement of setting up our new place - fresh with no mistakes in it (yet!) I
keep reminding myself that each time I start over, I have the chance to make
the garden better from the start, with nothing to re-do or fix later. My
daughter commented this spring, "This is our best garden ever!" - and
it was. It took three years to get it to that point - maybe on this property
I'll make it there in two. Sounds like a worthy challenge to me!
Have you ever had to
leave a garden behind? What was the first thing you set up on your new place?
Comment below and let me know how you made the transition!
