New Homestead on the Horizon

It's been a heck of a year.  We threw out most of our garlic last year due to the wet conditions we had. Almost all of it was either rotten or just so wet that when it dried, there was nothing left of it.  That was pretty rough.  So we went into the fall thinking we would plant corn in 2016.  Then, I got a new job in December.  It required me to drive to the city at least 2-3 days a week, and sometimes more.  We immediately decided that it was time to upgrade our homestead and move closer to the city, closer to my wife's family, and closer to our old friends.

We almost bought a 30 acre farm that was already set up for beef cattle, with plenty of woods to heat the house and hunt on, but that didn't work out.  Next up was a house on 17 acres, but it failed the inspections pretty poorly.  Finally, after almost a year of searching, we found a house that we both really like, with a barn, fencing, a pond, and 8.5 acres of land.  There is currently long horn cattle on the property.  We are now looking forward to moving to our new farm in 4 weeks.

And with that new farm comes a lot of new things to learn.  We need to get the pond stocked with fish and make sure that we have a good habitat for them to breed, with a goal of harvesting a good portion of the fish that we eat from the pond.  We want to get cattle and possibly some goats, and learn how to get a small grass fed beef/goat operation going.  We've had so much demand for our eggs just from my colleagues that we need to expand our flock.  And where we are moving to, we could probably sell 2-3 dozen eggs per day.  We need to get a wood heating source for the new house, get it installed, and get a stock of wood as we are moving in right before winter.

There is a lot of stuff to do and a lot new learnings to share.  We're hoping to at least do weekly updates as we learn how to take care of cattle, goats, and aquaculture.