I have a farm now. So much in that one little statement. Three years of planning and work and learning and ideas and mostly overcoming. It started with an idea to provide the family with lean protein and more vegetables because food and rent were so expensive and my pay wasn’t doing it. Tiny backyard, walking distance to Busch Gardens, some chickens and rabbits and plants. Eventually,
I thought a water feature and fish. But the owner wanted to sell the house and move to California. So, I was, as I have been many times (by circumstance and choice), in a camper in my parents yard. There are two homes on the property already but my kids and sister use one and parents, the other. I do love it out here though. So, long story short, the pandemic started about a year into my transition to still trying to grow the food except now on the untamed back woods on the five acres. About three acres in the back hadn’t been used or touched much in twenty years. I had just started talking to a friend about buying her dairy goat that she was retiring. When the pandemic started I decided to rush the goat process a bit and we got two of them. Once we had goats, we started buying fence. The goats cleared the vines and underbrush and we moved and expanded fencing. A mentor of mine died around thanksgiving that year and her daughter asked me to take two goats. Things really started rolling. I’m skipping a lot of learning, breeding chickens and rabbits, and this is a very goat centric version of events actually.
Here we are, three years later with our first litter of kunekune piglets on the ground and twelve goat kids growing out. It’s been an adventure to terribly describe it. I could write for weeks just about the wild birds here. The crows just started coming onto the farm area after all this time. The woodpeckers are my favorite to watch probably and they are quite comfortable with us. I’m purposely leaving the dead trees up because they nest in some and rely on others.
We’ve been using trash basically, free mulch, free pallets, and tires to build things. Repurposing wood, Feed bags, basically anything we can get free to serve in necessary purposes. It’s still cost everything I can get to keep going but the progress is worth it. When this is done, the place will be awesome and productive without a lot of physical intensity needed or monetary upkeep and it will be sustainable from an environmental standpoint. It is the plan for that tiny backyard on steroids. Oh yeah, I moved into a tent, a big tent, in the back almost three years ago now, I think. It’s been pretty helpful for the farm. So yeah, wow, I guess I have something to blog about again and maybe the time to bother.
