Wednesday, 15 October 2008

• First entry: New House, New land...new garden

  First, I guess I should introduce myself:
   Hi. If any of you are also xangans, it's possible that you've run across at least ONE of my xangas.
  I have a politics one. An icon one. One for short stories. AND  a journal.

  I knew that the xanga team also had started other websites, and I didn't wanna add a FIFTH xanga...soo...here I am.

  I'm just a youngun' (still in my teens). I grew up on an organic farm on 43 acres, and now after an amazing series of events I'm now on a little more than an acre and going to make my first attempt at my own business...microfarming.

  We JUST moved.
   We were growing some in the city, and while not all of our plants are over here yet (AAAHHH, FROST COMING...AAAHHH) -- a few of them already are.

  For example:
  
  Strawberries!
   That's my Mom, we were planting them together. We'd never transplanted strawberries before, but they hd been growing quite healthily in their garden bed in the city. We had dug them up, wrapped them in newspaper, placed them in several bags and carried them over.
  

  Oh, and mind you, the bed you see there? My Dad re-dug. It was already here when we arrived.
   Looks rather nice, doesn't it? Even if the earth is a bit..um, not very healthy because the previous owners used alot of roundup. (AGH, chemicles. The bane of my existance).

  

  The other bed next to it, is quite overgrown and will be dug up this weekend so that either I can plant my blackberries there, or Mom can plant her chard.

  
  ^ A bonus. Wild grape. It's in the THIRD bed which was already here when we arrived. It sprouted in the second (and presently undug) bed and has spread into the third with a tree that we haven't yet identified.
   We've moved most of the vines bac toward the tree and have transplanted my Mom's rhubarb.

  
  We're also bringing somewhat unpractical things, like that lilac Dad's planting in this picture.
   On the other side of that fence is also my roses, who were most displeased about being moved.

  Just on the other side of the lilac though, I transplanted my hyssop...which I'm plotting on experimenting with and trying to use their flowers to help me make something I'm calling rootbeer tea...if I accomplish it, I'll write about how I did it.

  
  Only the middle of our front yard. We've lotsa big trees -- too big for me to hug in some cases!
   I'm hoping to put mostly fruit trees up here, like peaches.

  On the other side of the road is a huge field that's usually corn...from our neighbers which live far away and from whom we rarely see. On the other side of the corn is a nice sized forest, which makes the area where we live very cool.

  
  This picture was taken last April when we were first thinking of moving here. The fenced in area was overgrown once we did finally go through with the trade, but we mostly cleared it out, and it's now an area for my dog.
   You can catch a good glimpse of how much of a back yard we have though, all the way back to those trees.

  For being out in the middle of nowhere, we do have two close neighbors. Mr. Policeman, and a little old lady.

  The rest of the surrounding properties are all owned by farmers.

   

  We have a little over an acre, and this lovely new house. Right now, I'm trying to prepare for my new life in 2009.
   There's a few little things which we need to do before we can fully settle though:
  #1. We need a mailbox
  #2. Finalize the paperwork for the house. (It was a square trade. For our old place which we were burnt out of, and this place which was bought by this guy whose business is buying and selling properties. He bought this place at an auction. It was foreclosed on the last people, and the bank knew the only way it was gonna get money was to sell it outright and to forget the mortgages entirely. Which, I must say, suits us very well).
  #3. Tell the people we were renting from in the city that we want to break the lease. Which SHOULD work out for them, because of today's economy's made it a buyer's market...and they had never really wanted to rent the house out in the first place. So I have hopes they won't mind.

  As for microfarming my goal is this:
  Learn to feed my family, have enough to dry, freeze, can...as well as enough to sell.

  A sustainable micro-farm, and lifestyle.

  So...not too bad for my first post, is it?

   

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