Homestead Projects

We realized last year that during the winter our driveway gets kind of muddy. So, we finally decided to get a load of gravel from the quarry not to far away. It was an exciting morning, as the kids were really looking forward to seeing a dump truck. The poor truck driver probably had no idea there as going to be such and audience. He was able to crack the tailgate (probably some other word for it) and run the truck up and down the driveway leaving a nice coating of fresh gravel. Then dumped the remainder in a pile behind my car. The kids and I worked on spreading some more of it in areas that had dips or looked a little light.

Our chickens are truly free-range now, as they have figured out how to fly over the 4' fence. So, far we have not lost any, and they are fun to see in the yard. Today they followed us down to see if they could help with our fencing project.

The Fencing Project - Phase 1

We wanted to start enclosing our property a little better, so that we can consider getting some larger animals and keep more predator's (coyotes) out. The first phase is along our South property line that borders the berry field. The kids and I have been working on stripping off the old wire and straightening/replacing posts as we worked our way down.

We built our first horizontal brace at the corner.

We are going to be installing 47" high field fencing. It won't keep the deer our, but they are only troublesome in the garden.

Farm Hands.

All the seats in the tractors were taken, so Mia had to right in the back, but she is still light enough to do that, and was thrilled with it.

Here we had a bent t-post, so the boys hooked up the chain to pull it out with the tractor. We were able to bend it back into shape and put it back into service.

Luckily I found a book at the library that was specifically all about fencing, so I did not really know what I was doing. We are slowly learning the skills required to keep up our Homestead.

Phase 2 - Is when we fence North to South splitting our property into two pieces. Lord willing we will get that done this winter. Our neighbors have offered to let us borrow their 6-8 goats for our blackberries, down on the lower section. This would be a huge help.