Time slips away from me faster and faster with every passing year. I had anticipated writing this post closer to the beginning of 2021, but here we are almost at the end of the month... but hopefully close enough for the purpose of this post.
A Review of 2020:
The beginning of the year for the farm was pretty quiet, but for our family, a big change because we had our fourth little girl. All the outdoor activities were put on hold for a new member of the family and the shifting dynamics and responsibilities to accommodate the little one.
But quickly soon afterwards, the world outside our farm changed with the shutdown of COVID. We were blessed to be outside of the city, and in so far as my children were concerned, our day to day life was almost completely unchanged.
We got a late start on getting seedlings in the ground, but we tried some new crops with varying levels of success:
-Corn germinated well, but because of our poor soil content, they struggled to produce large ears. I also learned that using the wig-wag style sprinkler is not good because it knocked the delicate pollen off of the flowers and prevented higher yields.
-Carrots were a hit with the children, but I think again, poor soil content made the size of the taproot small.
-Korean melons---these were volunteer plants. The ones I purposefully planted died, but the ones that just ended up in the garden from the compost thrived and made beautiful little yellow melons that we enjoyed all summer.
-Cantalope and Honeydew also seemed to do well, despite our poor soil. They take up a lot of room though, so we will have to rearrange our gardening plots
-Beans grew, but then I stopped watering them regularly... and well...
And then we had our favorites:
-Tomatoes -- they got a late start as seedlings, and didn't produce well because we hadn't put up a shade cloth for them. Our summer suns can get to 115F and the poor veggies just fry in the heat, or develop a tough skin.
-Peppers do well in our heat, but we should've started the seedlings sooner to give them a chance to produce as much as possible.
-Green onions are one of my favorite vegetables. And they are the easiest to grow. We start them with just ones that we get in the store, and put them in a cup in the window to regrow. When their roots get bigger and there's a bit of stalk growth, we plant them outside, and just cut as we need because they're actually perennials and just get bigger and taller if you let them, and they reseed themselves. Yay!
-Perilla leaves, a Korean vegetable that I love, love love. Thankfully they grow like weeds (because they are weeds) and I find volunteer shots everywhere and replant as many as I can.
-Kale/Broccoli/Brussel Sprouts have been a struggle. My goal is to get a couple good plants in and just let them reseed themselves, but it's hard to get any to survive. I know once they're rooted, they are so hardy... will continue to try.
-Daikon radish grows well everywhere. I have to work on timing because the summers are too hot, and the radish is fibrous and bolts easily because of it.
-Zucchini, squash, gourds---the ones I planted did not do well. The volunteer ones grew monster fruit that overtook parts of my garden but we couldn't eat them because they were too bitter. (Toxic poisoning from volunteer zucchini type plants is a thing. It can make you incredibly sick. Thankfully good for animal feed, though)
-Asparagus---it's been two years since we planted our first asparagus crowns. This will be the year that we can start harvesting from them. Yay!
-Potatoes were doing well but then a gopher found them. Likewise, sweet potatoes also did well, and no rodents found them this year. But I think I needed to give them more space and plant them in a deeper space to give them a chance to grow bigger roots.
I learned about hugelkultur gardening methods from my friends, and hope to be implementing them to a degree this year. I would love to designate garden areas specifically for practical use as well: a tea garden (for actually tea plants like mints, tansy, chamomile, etc.) and a medicine garden (for herbs/plants to use for health purposes like plantain, calendula, aloe, etc.)<---the tea garden and medicine garden could end up being the same thing.
Through the summer, we acquired more pigs, ducks, chickens, turkeys, guineas, and our biggest addition to the farm: Cookie the cow. And we had to tackle all that comes with caring for so many animals---fencing, feeding, cleaning, etc.
We started composting more seriously now that we had several animals contributing their manure.
We got pretty good at butchering the birds. My husband says these are our dates now--because it's just the two of us (perhaps a sleeping baby on my back) in the dark, in the garage, scalding and plucking and wrapping food for the family. Butchering the pigs has become an opportunity to our small community to get together and work and help sustain each other. We taught our children the importance of respecting and appreciating where their food came from and how not to be wasteful with what is provided for them. Good life. Good death. Good chef, as they say for raising meat.
We tried our hand at a small winter garden this year, and it has actually done pretty well, providing a bit of lettuce, spinach and other brassicas that enjoy the cold. And what we haven't gotten to, the chickens have been helping themselves (whether or not I want them to).
As quarantine continued, my husband and I started seriously discussing what we could do to be more self-sufficient. We chose to be homesteaders, but we were moving at a more leisurely pace, and a blessing that came out of this lock-down is that we were given an opportunity to accelerate our plans. So in the coming year, there is a direction that we will continue to go (hopefully)
-Wheat: one of the hardest parts of becoming self sufficient is having grain. Flour and rice are such staples in our diet, but they are the hardest to grow/harvest. Rice seems like such an impossibility, but wheat! We will be experimenting this year, growing a small patch of wheat to see how it would work out for us. What comes with wheat will be growing, harvesting, threshing, storing, grinding. But we have to get it in the ground first.
-Milk! Cookie will have her calf (God willing) in June. And all that entails is so exciting: milk, cream, yogurt, cheese, ice cream, sour cream... you name it! I am slowly collecting milking equipment, cheese making equipment, building a cooler room to store all this exciting dairy goodness, and planning the logistics of milksharing so that we can share Cookie's gifts with our loved ones
-Beef. The other animal meat that plays a large role in our diet that we have not yet tried to raise ourselves. Cookie is lonely. As a herd animal, she needs company. Having the pigs around helped, but they are not always around, and I think another cow would be good for her, and a chance for us to raise more of our own meat.
-Gardens: bigger, longer, better. My goal is to grow more food at home for consumption. We have found a few wonderful sources of locally grown produce, but it would be lovely to have it right out of our farm. My hope is that with all of the composting we've been able to amass, our soil will be substantially better than what it was last year. We're going to plant in bigger beds, in longer rows, in larger quantities. We've far outgrown our 20'x40' garden house and need to expand. This will probably mean that we will lose a bit to pests, but the goal is that the production will far outgrow what is taken. I kept a record of what plants did well and what season we need to start/plant/harvest them. Hopefully that can help us be more successful this year.
[Also, this might be more for next year and later in the future, but it would be great to start growing/harvesting food for our animals right at home as well. We are hoping to gather grass for hay at least for bedding or for our grazing animals, and focusing more on breeds of farm animals that have good foraging abilities.]
-Fruit orchards. Because I am a fruit monster. And I have given birth to more fruit monsters. And my husband is aghast at how much we spend on fruit, even if I am getting the best prices. I've spent more time this year pruning and nurturing the small existing orchard that came with our farmhouse, but we have also ordered substantially more trees to put into the ground come springtime. This means gopher cages to protect their fragile roots and digging large holes and providing soil amendments so they have the best start because it will be at least 3 years before the little saplings start to bear fruit.
-Irrigation system updates and new lines---because there is no point in planting more if we can't water them and keep them alive. It amazes me every year, what a difference consistent watering does for the successful growth of plants. It's like they need it or something. I had been watering garden beds that weren't in our little fenced in area by hand, but this year, we have expanded so far that we will have to put in new drip lines. I can't spend the whole day outside with a hose.
-Learning to store and preserve everything. It'd be amazing if we had a bumper crop of everything. It'd be even better if I had a way to store everything so that we could have food throughout the year. My dream would be to have a root cellar. My goal is to be able to utilize our pantry/garage/extra space to it's maximum potential. I am trying to use more canning and other preservation methods in order to not rely on our refrigeration/freezers too often. I don't anticipate for electricity to be a scarcity, but we had several days throughout the summer and whenever there is a storm where the power is gone for hours, and there isn't a point in storing food if it cannot be kept.
-Infrastructure to store animals, their feed, and keep their pens. The fencing situation is an ongoing struggle. Partly of our own volition. While eventually, we would love to have permanent fencing for our animals, right now, we are experimenting on different locations to see where each variety of animal would do best. It also makes that animal permaculture thing I talked about before, a little easier.
This isn't directly related to the farm, but more for the family---doing better at balancing the farm work with the homeschooling and the housework. I felt like this year was the first year where we are sort of finding that balance. My oldest is able to work more independently on her school work, which gives me an opportunity to focus on her younger siblings. Also as my girls get bigger, they are able to help more with the outside chores, or at least able to not be in my hair while I'm working. :) My kitchen counters are riddled with different jars of bubbling, fermenting things amidst the normal clutter that seems to collect there. I am cooking most things from scratch instead of buying them: breads, granolas, extracts, condiments, sauces.... and storing them for bulk use. We are also actively purging the unnecessary as often as possible, to hopefully, live as simply as possible. Don't get me wrong, my house most definitely looks like four children (and some wild animals and the intermittent tropical storm) live here, but we are getting better at getting chores done and prepping meals and working together as a family rather than just expecting mom to do it all (Yay!).
My husband is forever encouraging and optimistic. Everything we do he says is great. Any mistakes we make, he says is a good lesson and the next time will be even better. His attitude and support is what makes this kind of life so rewarding and exciting, and I look forward to every new project we attempt to tackle together. We laugh constantly at whatever ridiculous situation we get ourselves in. We are always writing down lists and plans and discussing our goals for the day/weekend/week/month so we are always on the same page on what our individual/family/farm goals and priorities are. My favorite moments are now the time in the morning where we talk over our respective morning mugs of hot beverage what we are going to try and do that day, or our evening conversations after the kids have gone to sleep about what things we got done, what new twists introduced themselves, and what we are planning for the next day. Touching base so frequently is a big comfort for me, helps me keep my thoughts in order, and we always have a general idea of what lies ahead for us.
The to-do list on our fridge only gets longer, but it gives me something to look forward to, every day. I have high hopes for 2021, whether or not it any "better" or "worse" than 2020, because it is another year of making a better life for my family.
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