Looking Back at a Year on the Farm

Looking out my window at the beginning of this new year, I see a big garden slumbering under a blanket of leaves that was bountiful and beautiful this summer. Beyond that, I see a large plowed field growing a winter cover crop and an enormous pile of wood chips waiting to become more pathways and mulch. In this still time of winter, when I look back over the past year, I see a lot of hard work and dreams realized. I also see that I’m going to need a little rest before I jump back into it out there, and thank goodness winter is a time for resting.

So, here we are on a frosty morning at the beginning of the new year. Whenever I feel that progress on our homesteading endeavors has been incredibly slow over the past couple of months, it helps to look at the big picture of the year as a whole.

Here’s the place when we first looked at it a year and a half ago in May. It was a lot of open ground, a lot of grassy field with potential, and a very solid old farmhouse. After our long, exhausting house hunt, things fell into place very quickly and this became home. Getting our family and our flock of chickens moved and settled occupied the summer and fall, as well as the important tasks of installing a wood stove and re-lining the chimney to meet code. Then there was the search for firewood and construction of a woodshed. Our agricultural pursuits were limited to building a flower bed that wrapped most of the way around the house and transplanting all of our rag-tag bunch of herbs and perennials we had been hauling around with us all those years. Our neighbor plowed the future garden and we sowed a winter cover crop. By the time the holidays were over and 2010 began, we were ready to jump into a year of living on a small farm and get our hands dirty…really dirty.

We spent the winter mulching, planting fruit trees and native shrubs. We put in pears, plums, a peach, apples and one heirloom hard cider apple tree. We planted a quaking aspen grove in front of the house and a hedgerow of wild roses and dogwoods along the front fence. We used leaf and straw mulch to cover all the beds we wouldn’t get to planting right away, and put a cardboard and straw sheet mulch over the entire front yard.

We gave our chickens their own large pasture to free range on in anticipation for all the new chicks we ordered from the feed store. They were sure happy to roam around eating all those bugs and fresh green things, and with around 30 chickens in our flock by the end of the spring, they all needed the extra space!

We built some raised beds and planted potatoes in straw, and put in rhubarb and raspberries out in front of the kitchen window. Little by little, the lawn was giving way to food production space.

Our neighbor came back to plow the garden cover crop under and till up our larger field for the approaching growing season. Most of it we planted in a summer cover crop of crimson clover, but a good portion we planted in potatoes, garlic, onions, corn, pumpkins and gourds. We built a little hothouse to start all our seedlings in, and began planting things out in the garden. We spent many a late night out there after dark working with head lamps to put little starts and seeds in the furrows.

The cold frame greenhouse where we started all the seeds became a hothouse for tomatoes. By the end of the summer it became a tangled jungle of tomato plants bearing their juicy fruits (and a good place for cats to take a lazy, summer nap.)

By August, the garden was amazing and brimming full with vegetables and flowers. Sunflowers towered over our heads abuzz with honeybees from  hives across the road. I was putting in hours and hours hand watering the whole place, which was exhausting at times, but well worth the efforts. We enjoyed countless fresh meals grown as close to home as you can get.

The corn, while not incredibly tall, grew well in spite of the wet early summer out in our field, watched over by our friendly scarecrow. He was put together by the children in a homesteading summer camp held by some friends on our property. They also dug potatoes and planted fall broccoli and carrots.

We began our harvest, digging out piles of potatoes and carrots, and filling baskets with corn, tomatoes and beans. 

It was a good feeling to look out at that open space of possibilities.

The garden was tucked away for a winter’s sleep under a bed of leaves and a few trial winter crops grew in little patches. We planted some garlic and let the garden rest.

The winter came and things were very quiet outdoors.

Beyond the garden gate, it looks as though there isn’t very much going on right now, but some of the most important things in life are unseen. Little seeds and dreams lie dormant, preparing and saving up energy for a new year of work and growth ahead. With all the work of this past year under our belts, we have a lot to build upon from here. In the stillness and resting time of the new year, I am looking forward to germinating more dreams and continuing to create this life I have set out to live.