It's been quite a while since I posted anything. I've been a little distracted. But now that we've settled into the house and the holidays are over, I'm finally able to get back to it! The house was completed at the end of July, but I didn't really feel like it was ours until we were able to convert the construction loan to a permanent loan and that didn't happen until the end of November.
Once the financing was in place the holidays were upon us! We had a wonderful time because both of our sons and their wives were able to come from California, so we had the whole family together for Christmas! Now we begin a new year and the process of turning a house into a homestead!
It's amazing how much work is involved in turning an acre of land into a productive piece of property! First you have to get past all the mud! Since most of the land was graded and all the vegetation that was there was scraped off to prepare for things like foundations, septic systems and the like, we are now left with not much more then mud. Since we don't want to put sod in we have to wait until spring to spread some grass seed. The result of not having much vegetation on the land has caused quite an issue with loss of soil when we have our torrential downpours here. We have been able to make some progress on this by installing gutters and drainage paths.
We are currently working on the basics, things like fencing, walking paths and planting trees. I didn't realize how much work it is to install a livestock fence! We started working on this project at the beginning of December and we probably have a couple more weeks until it will be complete! We are down to installing the t-posts and the gates, but the weather has not been cooperating with us. Although the breaks we get from the weather are helping my muscles heal!
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| A man and his mower - he wishes it was a tractor :) |
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| Walkway from leftover limestone |
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| Just planted apple trees in front of the almost completed fence |
The next few projects on the list include: installing our water catchment system, planting a few more fruit trees, preparing the garden space and building a chicken coop. So we are making progress and looking forward to the day when the dog can go out without being on a leash and we can watch chickens in the yard.
Happy New Year!
Mamawizzy
Your new home is absolutely lovely! Well worth waiting for. In some ways, having just dirt (mud) isn't terribly bad. We have decades of established runaway vegetation that we battle with every day. My biggest regret is not taking charge of the soil after we had a new drainfield put it. I let nature reclaim it, but I should have had more input.
ReplyDeleteThanks Leigh! We are currently trying to get some grass established on our drain fields and it's not easy. We are trying to let nature take it's course on other areas and trying to weed out what we don't want as we go along. I'm sure a couple years down the road we'll find out what we did right and what we should've done differently :).
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