Homesteading Middles

When we first settled in our home I wrote a small series entitled “Farm Beginnings.” Having been informed very kindly by a farmer that we have a homestead not a farm – I am entitling this Homesteading middles.

My father, when he was alive, loved to do silly poems. Ahem:

Homesteading middles

Rhymes with giggles

The adventures of the land

The sky, the food that is canned

Bees for honey, fruit for jam, chickens for eggs and livers

Coppicing wood lot to stave off winter shivers

Late life learnings fueled by curiosity

The glory of nature in all that we see

The balance of family, leisure, and toil

To lay on the hammock or to weed the soil

A readymade science lab for a burgeoning child’s mind

How many frogs or newts float in the pond to find

We push forward learning along the way

An adventure for all as we work and play

This is a small summary of what I have learned so far in this adventure. We planted sticks in the ground when the Bean was 2 weeks old (“oh great, you are here to see the new baby… Could you help us dig 30 holes for fruit trees instead of holding an infant?”). The fruit trees are now, 7 years later, flush with fruit. The sour cherries color the whole tree with color. We are working to strip the tree and dry the fruit before the birds have taken one bite out of every cherry.

This is the first year we have a significant number of apples, pears, and peaches – finally we will get to taste what we planted. We didn’t really believe that fruiting would happen this year, so the fruit is definitely ugly – but applesauce doesn’t care.

We have noticed with some of the trees we planted – oaks, pecans, chestnuts, black locusts for the wood lot – that it takes three years for a plant to really start to grow. The first year it is still the stick in the mulch. The second year there might be a bit more leaf expression. Then, all of sudden, BOOM the third year the plant doubles in size like a rocket. It is amazing.

This is the first year that we have a stewartia blooming – thank you Winkie.

The greenhouse is growing watermelons. The grape vines we planted are now all reaching the arbor and anchoring along the top to give us shade and fruit (though grape vines don’t fully leaf out until mid July – a note for shade doings). The comfrey we planted continues to go bananas and is happily devoured by the chickens.

When we arrived to the land we had hand tools and gloves. I now understand why farms have so many outbuildings. All we do is get tools that need to be stored - a mower, a wood splitter, a solar dehydrator, a generator, a wheelbarrow, another cart, a chainsaw, ANOTHER chainsaw, oh wait, a BIGGER chainsaw, etc etc. It is also nice to have space to store the extra wood from projects so that we can use it for the next project/repair necessity.

A far cry from my life in the city – but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

We are working with Tenttr to have a glamping campsite on the hill (if you ever want to come and visit here is the link). I want to learn about growing ginseng in the shade of the trees in the wood and I am curious about drying lavender for sachets and whatnot.

So many ideas and possibilities!!! Hooray!