We have had both a lot of chaos and a lot of progress around the homestead lately. The two seem to go hand in hand. Last month I wrote a post about all the unfinished works in progress, and as we have cleaned up the mess of felled trees, pruning and things that needed moving; beautiful things are taking shape. This weekend I dug into the task of moving the raised strawberry bed to make room for the new chicken coop, and moving the quail coop to make room for the strawberry bed. Everything seems to have a ripple effect on a homestead, and once you change on thing, you will quickly find several other things that need shifting as a result.
Surprisingly, the strawberry bed was not as difficult to move as I expected it to be. I dug up all the strawberry plants and trimmed their dead leaves, filled every bucket and tote we had with the displaced soil and actually moved the cedar bed quite easily with Corey’s help. The remaining space will house a cordwood chicken coop with a chicken run “moat” around the garden. I have never been so excited about an empty space.
Once the strawberries were re-planted with pond netting over the top to keep the cats out, the bed was looking pretty snazzy in it’s new full-sun location. It’s now in a high traffic area, where we should be able to stay on top of the ripe berries as we are working out in the yard.
The quail coop had lost it’s shade source when we cut down the cedar tree in front of it, so we not only had to pivot it around to make things flow with the strawberry bed now in front of it, but to take advantage of the Ninebark bush for shade. We had some friends visiting, which allowed us to move the whole thing in one piece without having to take the coop and run apart. In it’s new location, the coop shades the run in the morning, the Ninebark shades the top through the day, and the newly planted raspberry patch in front of it will do the rest. Now we will be able to snack on raspberries while visiting the quail and collecting eggs.
Just last month, there was still a huge pile of limbs and logs in the middle of the yard and a lot of things to move. There were piles of branches we had pruned off under all the fruit trees. It was chaos. After a few weekends of work, things are taking shape and progress is visible. Now there is room to grow more food and put in new flower bed, with everything getting full sun most of the day. The greenhouse and chicken coop are next on the list, and on from there. We’ll just keep on making progress out of chaos. I will admit, this life is a lot of work, but there is a lot of fun to be had in the working. There are also a lot of berries and quail eggs, which are fine rewards.
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