As we gear up for a very busy year on our homestead, we thought it would be fun to give you a rundown of what changes are forthcoming, and why we've picked these projects to start with.
1) Fix up old horse barn for new inhabitants. This one is currently our top priority, followed closely by fence-mending to allow for adequate pasture for two horses. We need to fix a few roof leaks, rebuild two new barn doors, and clean up and re-do parts of two stalls. Additionally, we'll be removing barbed wire from the pasture fencing, and repairing a few broken sections of fencing and gates. This needed to get done quickly, as the horses are coming before spring. Ideally, we'll be done by the end of January with most of the work.
2) Re-roof the existing greenhouse, and make a few additional tweaks/repairs to it's structure so that we can start plants for our collaborative garden. We're looking forward to growing more of our own food this year - and the existing greenhouse will be a big help to extending our season. We estimate starting on it in February, and hopefully completing the bulk of the work, weather permitting, before March.
3) Prep chicken coop - there was one existing, and we'd like to clean it out, add some fresh bedding, and make arrangements to start raising layers and probably some meat-birds. Of all the early projects, this one is sort of the lowest priority - but still something we'd like to accomplish by April. Making a mobile coop or tractor is something else on the "it would be nice list" - so that might happen depending on my scrap lumber pile and "extra free time".
Beyond this: garden plans are in progress. We grew a considerable amount when we lived on a small city lot (roughly .25 acre, with about 400sq feet of growing space), so we're excited to dig in and put up some serious food for the year now. We can and ferment veg, and will probably experiment with freezing some things as well so that we can enjoy more of nature's bounty throughout the year. We've got a nice variety of seeds, will buy some started plants from a few local sources (because those always seem to do better!), and have some help from friends to make this a really exciting adventure.
So that's mostly it for the year. We're making small tweaks to the main house and apartment, but are fortunate that a lot of both spaces was already pretty much how we wanted it to be. Luck happens some times I guess - which is great. Most of the fixes are kind of low-stakes, minimal investment fixes, or general upkeep.
Thanks for following along - we hope to have a farm and house tour up to share soon!
-Megan, for the Giltners in VA.
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