Starting Over - Again

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!