Summers on a homestead are a blur, at best. Everything that must be done is crammed into a few short months sandwiched between winters. Few and far between are the moments when one is afforded time to pause and reflect on accomplishments.
Just this year alone, we took on 7 new bottle babies; 5 calves and 2 goats. We boarded 2 Horses, gained a flock of guineas, and watched hen after hen brood chick after chick. We ran miles of fencing, built coops, huts, houses and stalls, and made great gains toward our five year plan. That doesn't even begin to touch anything we did with plants.
I began a new method of cloning tomato plants this year, and the results were phenomenal. In fact, this method proved so successful as to put me nearly a month ahead of schedule, thus creating its own set of issues. I wasn't prepared in terms of space to have tomato plants of the size they became using this system. Chalk that up to the list of things that I've learned in this adventure. Sometimes, things can go a little TOO well.
In a similar vein, I have been working on a new sprout fodder system, also incorporating the same apple snails. The attempt here is to set up a naturally filtering feed system, growing sprouts, snails and bivalves. I hope to be able to replace oystershell calcium and offer a high protien feed additive to my poultry. I might even get some escargot for us. Fancy.
This year also saw the inception of our barn restoration project. The roof was replaced last fall, and we've begun the long process of cleaning out and rebuilding stalls and a new feed/tack room. A new building is being constructed from repurposed above-ground pool framing; the same materials used to make our brooder addition to the main laying coop and the A-frame duck house. I took a pair of truck cappers, and fabricated 2 small hutches of salvaged lumber from a housing demolition, perfect for mobile shelters to accommodate the aforementioned bottle babies, or whatever else may find need of them in the future.
I've been blessed enough to have been gifted a great many things this year, including IBC totes, barrels, lumber, pallets, stone, canopy shelters and so much support. People are really starting to spread the word and get involved with what we're doing here, and the help we are receiving is really incredible, catapulting us toward our goal of developing a non-profit homesteading school. With a little more work on our infrastructure, we will be able to start offering formal workshops and really start to move forward with the educational focus of the Forgotten Forty.
One such infrastructure upgrade consists of renovating the existing mobile home on the property into a commercial kitchen to offer more indoor space to hold food preservation workshops. Another is to convert the silo on the barn into a food preservation tower. Install an unusual edibles arborsculpture and pleaching orchard. Build a covered bridge across the creek and begin construction on a cob home. Retrofit our current home for alternative energy. Erect an aquaponics greenhouse/methane digester unit. The list is exhaustive.
As autumn grants an extension of the warm season, and we batten down the hatches in preparation for winter's icy descent, the dreaming cycle begins anew. The farm drifts into a slumberous lull, and the knowledge gleaned from this years endeavors blends with the reflections on our accomplishments, and we can breathe new energy and possibilities into our aspirations, ever evolving as we head toward tomorrow.
These are vivid dreams; a brilliant future.
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