I’ve lived on this property for 20 years. My husband Don has lived on the property for the majority of his life. When we moved into this house on 8 acres together we both had businesses and careers which were our priorities at the time, but had we realized we would be creating a homestead and rentals as our main income stream we would have done things a little differently.
To say we wasted some time putting energy into other projects that didn’t benefit us would be an understatement. But it wasn’t all a waste. We built the outdoor shed but never dreamed it would be converted into the cutest little cabin for others to enjoy. We broke ground and put some hard work into our vegetable garden and we’re reaping the rewards today. We always heated our home with an indoor wood furnace which we realized was getting more dangerous, so we invested in an outdoor wood boiler which not only heats our home but also heats the tiny cabin and the garage and can heat more, safely and economically. More about that later.
Don is a talented guy with a mechanical ability and energy that to this day astounds me greatly. I’ve never met anyone else in my life who is so motivated and determined to complete every task he sets out to accomplish. His 40-plus years in the timber harvesting industry shaped him into the man he is today. Early last year when the timber industry took a nose dive, we realized it was probably a good time for him to walk away from it and close the business. I was working on retiring from my career as a Manufacturer’s Representative while building a business on eBay and Amazon so I could stay home. We had talked about renting out our guest cabin on the homestead for additional income and we just started brainstorming ideas on how to create income from our tiny acres. And today we’re still brainstorming on how we can create a haven not only for us as we get older but for people who come and stay in our rentals.
Along with making our dreams a reality comes the realization that we have not kept up with the maintenance of our homestead as we should have. This property has so many things going for it and we neglected to care for it how it needed to be. It’s not because we’re lazy or shiftless. We just got caught up in other priorities through the years that didn’t pan out for us.
For instance, our garden has about 14 raised beds and a lot of empty space. Many times not all of the beds were planted every year because we either ran out of time or didn’t plan accordingly. So this year, we are committed to making the most out of as much space as we possibly can and not overprint but not underplant either. We added 2 raised beds one of which will house our medicinal herb garden. We tilled up some vacant area to try our hand at elderberries.
One thing that I’m looking forward to is giving some much-needed love to the old apple trees that are on our property. Several haven’t been pruned since we lived here which makes me feel guilty. This year we’re going to remedy that, but in educating ourselves we learned it’s a process. The only thing we need to do is to cut back the suckers (those little branch-like growths that stick out all over the tree in the spring) and to only cut about 20% of the dead wood from the tree or else we could kill it. We have about 7 or 8 trees on the property that are heirloom variety apples, one of them being the Transparent variety.
Pictures below of old gnarly apple trees who are going to get a haircut as soon as the parts come in for Don’s pole saw:
Picture of newly tilled bed on our homestead ready for elderberry transplants when the weather warms up. In front is the garlic bed starting to sprout:
In keeping up with our motto of “repurpose on purpose” we save coffee grounds and eggshells and put them in our compost which once broken down in a year or two feeds nitrogen to the soil and eggshells add calcium and other nutrients. It feels good to utilize these things and to know that one day something that normally would be tossed in the trash without a thought is creating healthy soil and escapes the landfill.
Picture of some of our brassica (brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and bok choi) plants grown from seed. We have to bring them in from the greenhouse at night because something is chewing on the leaves and we lost a few plants:
We’re also going to start saving our seeds from the year’s harvest and experiment with building up our “library” of seeds.
Once things start greening up we’ll share fresh pictures of our homestead including ones of the tiny cabin and the gardens. But for now, we wait.
If you have a garden hack you’d like to share please feel free to put it in the comment area below.
More Later,
Nancy and Don