Our little piece of ground

During the summer of 2009, Troy and I began the hunt for our first home. We were very fortunate to be able to find this property: almost 3 acres (~1 acre wooded, 2 acres open) with a nice ranch-style house. We closed on the house on October 16, 2009, and began moving in the same day. There were several large home repairs that had to be made right away that our home inspector didn't find: mold in the basement all over the drywall, a water-damaged bathroom floor, a tree growing into our septic tank, a leaky roof...just to name a few. After fixing the house and reclaiming about 1/4 acre that was taken over by brush and saplings, we have finally had a chance to relax and enjoy the place. Here are some pics from when we first moved in:

Home sweet home...and Bear, of course!

Our front yard. The patch of dirt on the left is where the tree was growing into the septic tank. Thankfully it was cool outside when we worked on that project because those roots were ridiculously strong!

The pond. The smelly, smelly pond. It has been filled in since the neighbor's dog decided it was a good place for a swim. Why not? It's great to go home smelling like dead frogs, isn't it? This is now an herb and flower bed.

Another "feature" of the property that was promptly removed: the pool. It was home to many tadpoles (dead and alive) and would have been a mosquito breeding ground if we left it in place. That combined with the very shoddy, dangerous deck around it was reason enough for us to rip it out. We are now attempting to grow grass here, though the only thing that really wants to grow is bindweed. Que sera, sera...

See that shed in the distance? We had to reclaim all of the ground between the grass and the shed that was allowed to grow up. We're still working on getting rid of the poison ivy that's on that hill...

In the spring of this year, we got a colony of honeybees and a dozen heritage breed hens. Both of us have experience with chickens, but the honeybees were a  new venture for us. We joined the local beekeeping club and read some books, and I think we have a decent handle on things so far. We'll see when harvest time comes!

We also began our first garden together this April. Our tiller came from Walter G. Coale, Inc., the same tractor supply company that Troy's family has been using for several generations. We new that our soil wasn't that great, but after tilling it that became even more obvious. It is in serious need of some organic matter and we picked up hundreds of pounds of rocks, and it seems like more surface every day! We have our work cut out for us here, that's for sure.

We tilled a small patch for buckwheat, and that came up pretty well. There is a bare area where a visiting snapping turtle killed the growing buckwheat (looking for a place to lay her eggs I assume), but it looks like we'll have a pretty decent yield other than that. We also planted several types of corn: dent, shoepeg, and the standard sweet corn. There are quite a few stalks that didn't grow very much, most likely due to the bad soil. Some of the corn is doing well in part of the garden where the soil is a bit better. We're also growing sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, green beans, okra, lima beans, zucchini, yellow squash, patty pan squash, acorn squash, potatoes, watermelon, and pumpkins. We're harvesting whatever the bugs and animals don't eat first!

More posts and pics to follow!

--MB