looking past the mess at the future plans for the homestead

The landscape on the homestead currently looks more like a logging operation than a farm.  In a sense, that is what it has been, as we slowly clear away the Norway Maples that have taken over the orchard (those Norway Maples haunt me, I feel like they are mentioned in every single post!).

Ira and Ian visited from Montreal in March and helped a bit with the cutting

Piles like this one dot the property, we tried to burn one, but the wood is too green

It's sometimes hard to see past the mess, but we quickly use our imaginations to remember our dreams and plans we have for the homestead, and as you can see, we are far from troubled ;)! We just tell ourselves that the endless mountains of brush aren't clutter :) they are resources, materials that will be used for the various projects we have planed: trails, fences, lumber, sauna, outdoor shower... They will soon disappear as these projects come to life.  

Just yesterday, with the beautiful sunny weather, Alex and his friend John practiced some tree climbing techniques, to be able to begin pruning even the tallest of our apple trees, big and small.  They climbed our prized and magical crabapple, which we hope to turn into delicious homemade hard cider this fall.

We have been doing all this clearing to make room for the garden (which is already in full production indoors!), but also for our new trees which are set to arrive in May.  We will be diversifying our fruit trees with the addition of some cherries, plums, pawpaws and we'll add some protein with walnuts, hazelnut and butternut.

Getting ready to transition to the greenhouse

Tomatoes nice and warm next to the stove

Meanwhile indoors, our garden grows. In the cold winter months I got to reading The Seed Starter's Handbook by Nancy Bubel (great book, part of the collection of farming books gifted to us by the previous family who lived here), and in order of plantings, we now have seedlings of onions, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, celery, kale, basil, cabbage, lettuce, leeks and potatoes either sprouting in the greenhouse or next to the woodstove or already growing and luscious under the grow-lamps.  For the rest of the vegetable varieties we plan to grow, I think I will simply wait to do direct planting.

One cool technique that Sabrina and I started doing last year: pre-soaking the seeds in water, it works!  It's like starting sprouts, and this way you give your seeds a headstart.

The temperature inside the greenhouse already gets up to 95F (35C) in April, when its sunny all day, luckily Alex planned for good ventilation!

One exciting plan that is currently under way is the relocalization of the chickens to their permanent home.  We also got to reading the Permaculture Garden book by Graham Bell and the Edible Forest Gardens Vol II book by Dave Jacke during the colder months, and we got the idea from both these books, to design a chicken moat around our largest vegetable garden plot. By creating a gated 4 foot wide corridor all around the garden, where the chickens can roam, our new garden 'guardians' will be ridding us of any potential weed seed or most insects trying to enter our coveted food pantry, all while foraging for their food. 

So far we have moved them into the summer coop on top of the knoll, have created their pen, complete with roosts and access to the compost pile, and this week the rolls of 150 feet of 6 foot tall chicken wire will arrive.  Currently, the chickens are busy eating away at all the weeds that grow where the garden will be :) Thank you chickens! More on this project later...

And I leave you with these photos of Léo, who is now 10 months old :) has four teeth, will soon be walking without the help of the table or chair, and does poo poo in the potty everyday! It's the little things in life... ;)

Seems crazy I know, but he is really regular ;)

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Until next time, be well

This winter

While Léo sleeps, I take a few moments to let you know about a few of the things we have been up to, in this beautiful snowy winter. 

1. First and foremost: enjoying Léo's presence, his personality, good nature, and his growing appetite!

Léo is 8 months! and he has 4 teeths :)

Visiting the Canadian cousins always makes us have a cold, but we are still in good spirits:)

hmmmm... sacred wild blueberries, yum!

Multi-flora rose taking over a tree

2. Removing the invasive plants on the homestead.  Every chance I get more than an hour outside, I spend it bush whacking through the heavy and often impenetrable thickets of multiflora rose, which over the years has taken over, completely cover and toppled over some areas of the native vegetation. To think that the government used to give this non-native plant for free to land owners to protect wildlife and soil erosion! This removal process has proven very meditative, slow, silent and oh-so-satisfying :)

Invasive multiflora rose thicket taking over

Take that you mean thorny plant!

It can take 3 to 6 mechanical removals per year for 2 to 4 years to eradicate the plant. ouf!

 I have been creating piles with the cuttings, placing them in the middle of the fields and soon we will be returning the 'waste' as valuable organic matter to enrich the soil :) through some awesome permaculture garden techniques that I have been slowly discovering while reading many a garden books in front of the fire (where I spend most ALL of my time), like the Edible Forest Landscape and Permaculture Garden.  Our favorite techniques at the moment include the Chicken Moat, German Mound, Tree garden and Grass into vegetables, and we hope to test them out this season and give you our feedback about which ones worked best here.

Our new farming and gardening library, beautiful wood piece found in the barn just last week!

 3. Building the greenhouse: It will have taken a year, but we are really almost done building our second-hand solarium/greenhouse. All of the glass panes are now in place, only a few triangular holes along the top of the wall remain to be sealed.

Adding the very last pane of glass

Just this morning, after the snow storm

Since there is no better time than today, we have set up a smaller temporary greenhouse in the house to accommodate our already germinating onions and such, until the official greenhouse is ready to receive them.

 4. Cleaning our tools.  A little bit of elbow grease, some steel wool and some linseed oil.  For this season, we plan to use the 'sand box' method which we just learned about in the book 'self-sufficient gardener'= a mix of sand and used oil that you dip your tools in every time you return them to the shed, cleans and sharpens them every time!

Cleaned and oiled

Still dirty

On a side note, Alex has also been doing quite a number on the entire barn, emptying it completely, vacuuming, cleaning, repairing, setting up his workshop, and we hope to be able this year to bring back the original barn door.  Just this paragraph wont give it justice, so we'll have to dedicate a post to it.

 

5. We played in the snow ;) With these constant snow storms we are loving the winter weather and enjoying more cross country outings than during last year's non-winter! 

Creating our own cross-country trails on the homestead

The snow just keeps coming :)

Snow shoeing at KLT's Holman Conservation Area

The snow was so deep at times, we were sinking to our waists

Léo taking a nap after a long walk (and me cutting more roses while he sleeps!)

We hope you are taking the time to enjoy the snow, the pure & fresh air, and letting yourself slow down a little bit in this most peaceful season. We cherish this time to reflect, dream and plan the season to come. Because spring is coming... soon enough.

We always love to share ideas and knowledge with like-minded people.  Please feel free to share comments, links or ideas with us about homesteading, gardening and sustainable lifestyles.

Until next time, be well.

Its begnning to look a lot like winter... ;)

Hourray! The first snow arrived yesterday and I was all smiles shoveling the front steps :)

It might not last very long because today its raining, but its always exciting to experience it again for the first time.

Alex has started chopping down more Norway Maples

 and splitting more firewood for next year

We have 15 overlapping glass panes left to install!

Lets be hopeful (and really idealistic!) that winter will give us a few more snow free, 40F days so we can continue to prepare the greenhouse... it's almost finished ;)

I have put all of our cherry and grape seeds in the freezer to mimic the winter dormancy period and actually speed it up, and next month they will be ready to start growing indoors, and who knows maybe in the greenhouse in the spring.  A little dreaming never hurt anybody!

We hope you are all enjoying the wintery blanket.

'Til next time, be well.

The greenhouse will be up and fonctional by winter!

Things seem to happen slowly but steadily as the fall season gives way to colder and colder weather.  It snowed for the first time today in our part of Maine.  In the last week we have managed to plant the garlic, onions and radishes already for next spring and covered them with a nice layer of dry leaves (we'll never have to buy mulch or wood shaving for the chicken litter, with the amount of leaves we have on this property), saved enough dry leaves for the chickens and most importantly of all...

before... putting in the ditches

after! Finally starting to take shape :)

We have begun to finish building the greenhouse.  Now that Alex has dug out the drainage system in and around the structure and we have put down enough garvel, we have started putting up the old and beautiful storm windows of the house as the back and side walls of the structure and started adding the finishing cedar planks and insulation to the front wall.  By the end of this week we should hopefully :) be done.

Look at those floor to ceiling storm windows, amazing!

Its going to be amazing!!!  As you can see there are barrels inside already.  Some of them will be used as passive solar heat sinks and other as rain barrels to collect the rain water from our roof. Our plan is also to route the dryer exhaust into the greenhouse so that when and if we use the dryer in the winter and spring, it will help to increase the heat and humidity inside the greenhouse.  One machine's waste heat will be our baby plants treasure I'm sure :)

True story: today, Léo and I took a walk around the property and we found a plethora of wild Oyster mushrooms growing on a dead tree. I have already quickly processed them into a yummy mushroom soup and dried the rest for later. yey wild foraging 2 minutes from our front steps!

Til next time,
Be well (and vote!)


P.S.: Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason 
Should ever be forgot...
           - it was on this day in 1605 that Guy Fawkes
             tried to blow up the british parliament

First frost!

 

Our first frost happened in the night of Oct 12 this year, and the thought of up-coming snow filled my heart when I woke up the next morning (it's really silly, but the seasonal changes never cease to amaze me).  Seeing the miniscule icicles all over the vegetation was a reminder that soon we will be celebrating our first year on the homestead.

I was doubly thrilled because a few weeks back, during fall cleanup, I had moved my cold frames right on top of my garden beds, to lengthen the growing season for the few vegetables we have left, but also to protect them from the up-coming frost. We have been watching the weather on a daily basis, and I was eager to see if the cold frames would do everything that people claim they do.  Result: on October 13, on my daily morning walk around the grounds, I noted that the peppers, eggplants, ground cherries and squashes had succumbed to the cold, but that my carrots, parsley, lettuce and turnips were strong and still growing quite well under there little glass roofs.   The kale, my favorite green, doesn't need a cold frame yet.  There have been two frosts so far, and it is still tall and green :)

our garden taken over by frost, but inside the cold frames...

the warm lettuce and other greens are 7 degrees warmer and loving the fall temperatures :)

Léo, my garden helper

We are both loving his new entertainment center :)

Yesterday was a beautiful, unusually warm day, so I took advantage of the sun.

I don't know if you can tell the difference, but the parsley inside the cold frame is twice as big as the one outside.

My garden helper disguised as grass

Because of other pressing issues (painting before it gets too cold, redoing the mud room, fixing the gutters, etc), Alex has had his hands full and couldn't really work on the greenhouse.  Here are the latest developments: he has dug and put up the foundation posts (with some help from Andrew, a couch surfing visitor) and is nearly finished the network of drainage ditches which will receive the excess rain water from the roof when the rain barrels are full.  Soon, the walls will go up, Exciting!!!

Alex, reaching for many rocks in his 5 foot hand dug holes

The structural posts are up and drainage ditches in

With everything that we have done over the last 10 months, some of you have the impression that it is work work work on the homestead, but it is not so, there are plenty of opportunities to rest as well :)

Hunting mice is exhausting!

The boys during their evening nap

 Since we've been here, we have had many visitors on a constant basis.  In October it was our turn to do the visiting, with Léo's first vacation to Montreal.  Our first stop was of course the coolest co-op in the world www.coopdugrandorme.ca (ok ok... I'm a little biased), and Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue where we received a good dose of love from our friends over there (we miss you guys!).  Then, no Montreal trip would be complete without stopping at the TamTams, and Léo took part in the dancing :)

Beautiful Sunday at the TamTams

Tia Antonella :) and cousin Saja

We knew we were going to love our wood stove, but we are now realizing how much.  There is nothing better then cooking your food on (or in!) a nice hot wood fire.  And so, I am enjoying a nice spaghetti squash and tomato ratatouille, cooked on and in the wood stove, as I write this very late October blog.  Hopefully next time won't be too far away

Til next time, be well

Encounter of the third kind :)

ummmmm... solid foooooood