I wanted to give you a little picture tour of where we are living. I love it here! It's a perfect place for us; I love sliding into an old farmstead where everything is in place, like the garden spot, the chicken house and brooder, raspberry and gooseberry bushes, some grapevines, flowers, a cellar, a clothesline, some fruit trees... even some asparagus, though some of it got plowed up because we weren't sure where it was. Oh! And there is wild onions and garlic all over the place!
Here's the view when you drive in the driveway.
When you continue down the driveway, you'll see the chicken house on the left, the garden spot, the chicken brooder/storage shed, the garage (which doesn't really house any vehicles), another storage building, and the corner of the house on the far right. If you turn to your right at this spot, you'll see the house, pictured next.
This is a closer view of the chicken brooder house on the left, the pathway through the owner's land, and the vehicle parking spot.
The guys were going to do some tilling the morning I was picture-taking. You'll maybe notice that the entire garden is fenced in, which is neat. Also, we're trying a method called deep bedding with hay to keep down weeds and keep in moisture. The idea is to not have to till all the time.
If you turn around from the previous picture, you'll see the house, pictured below, and back up the driveway. The house has an enclosed entryway, which goes into the kitchen, then the dining room, with a small bedroom for the boys off of that. Then the living room, which has a big bedroom off of it, which has our bed and the crib in it. It's not huge, but it works for us right now.
This is my laundry room, which is in an outdoor room. It's not far from the house, about 12 steps. You'll notice on the right a table with little seedlings growing. There's a fire place in the middle that you keep going in the winter so the wash machine and pipes don't freeze.
And last but not least, the dog that adopted us, Buddy. He's a good dog, pretty gentle with the kids. I think he's chased away lots of the rabbits, which is excellent for the garden. Before he came, the peas were getting eaten, but not anymore. He usually doesn't notice the chickens when they're out free-ranging, though occasionally he will chase one, so we just need to keep an eye on him. We had been feeding him scraps and eggs, and then we decided to buy him some dog food, and then it was like, whoa! That dog suddenly had so much energy.
Thanks Megan! This is so fun to see. I'm glad it's such a nice fit for you.
ReplyDeleteAs a note, I grew potatoes with the deep mulch method one year and the slugs were like nuts. The potatoes were worthless, but besides that, the entire garden was slug eaten.
But the ground underneath the straw was awesome the next year.
Now we use cardboard boxes in the rows, with a bit of straw if we have some. Otherwise rocks to hold it down. We never had a tiller so we had to be creative. But just a few weeks ago, a member brought us a brand new, still in box, mini craftsman tiller. It will be fun to see what it can do.
But then, of course, we have another month or so before we can start thinking garden.
Supposedly the slugs don't like onions, so we planted onions in with the potatoes. Hopefully that will help. Did you know that those white grub worms turn into June bugs?! They do! And we have loads of Junebugs, so I'm guessing there may be a problem with the grubs in the garden, though time will tell...
Delete