I promise I’ll post an update on the Cabin progress soon. First I wanted to share how the many, many plants have been doing and how the property has been shaping up throughout this summer. Here is an overwhelming amount of flower pictures as I haven’t been keeping up on sharing:
We finally had some of our annuals we planted as seeds flower as well! The last two pictures above are a couple of the flowers that popped up in the garden. Speaking of the garden, let me just rave about my MIL’s dedication and hard work finally paying off!
My FIL worked very hard on getting a ton of irrigation lines around our massive garden, and my MIL has been putting in endless hours cultivating the garden into what it is now. (Though if you mentioned it to her she’d say, “oh no, I’m just puttering!”). We are already eating massive amounts of cucumber and zucchini, as well as various types of greens. We’ve had cabbage and cauliflower and a few tomatoes. Radishes and green beans. Probably more that I’m forgetting. She’s harvested and prepared everything. She’s amazing. I’m hoping that next year the Cabin will be completed and I’ll have time to help and learn how to plant, grow, harvest, and prepare all the goods for storage to be used throughout the year. This year is a getting settled in year, and the homestead is already so enjoyable. I can hardly imagine how awesome it will be when we’ve got real homes and are better set up (and have more animals!!).
My FIL is essentially retired, so he spends his days on the homestead working tirelessly at improving the spaces. He built this super cute garden shed complete with south facing windows and a skylight. He also has been chopping wood like a mad man in preparation for the winter (we’ve only got wood stove heat thus far!).
I’ve been working on keeping the landscaping in order by mowing and weed eating. For my birthday, my in-laws got me a battery powered weed eater that’s SUPER COOL. I spent days trying to get the tall grass (nearly hay) all cut down on the sides of the driveway. For some reason there is a bunch of thick steel cable, electric fence wire, electrical wire with plastic around it, and barbed wire all wrapped up in the blackberries and along the whole length of the north side of the driveway. I got nearly everything cleared and gave up on that section of blackberries in the middle. I haven’t been able to use it much the past couple weeks as we’ve been hitting the Cabin project pretty hard, but it’s getting to be time to break it out again! I also worked on redoing one of the garden beds that previously was overgrown with this crazy invasive rose bush. The change was astounding!
I of course didn’t get very good before pictures. So here is a picture from last Fall and last Winter to show it at its worst. I was mid clearing the rose bush away in the second photo. The larger bush in the middle with the white looking branches is actually a beautiful Weigela! It flowered like crazy this Spring. It took me some time to finish the project as I was hoping I could eradicate the whole rose bush before finishing; unfortunately little starts keep popping up. I just keep clipping them down and hoping the root system dies with no leaves to gather sunlight. Eventually I’d love to restore the pond, but it’s in really rough shape. Our best option might be to pull it out and put in a new one. But I really like the idea of fixing up the old. We’ll see what happens.
Still tons and tons and tons of work to be done. But the progress is motivating, and the property is incredibly rewarding to work on. Ten years from now I think we will have built something really extraordinary.
The Homestead Journey 