November 22,2018 Re-imagining Creekside Farm

The New Farm Plan
The little images are hints of the nature of each place.
Click on the picture for a larger version.

Thanksgiving is an everyday occurrence here, we seldom take any of this for granted. Our good fortune in the past few years has been notable. Many would never believe the place where we started from, or what we did to get to this point. All I can say on this is that we did start from nothing and have come this far with God' good graces.  And for that we are truly grateful.

The Farm was a dream at its onset. Once we found the property I imagined what we might eventually build there, then as more information came to the forefront I spent time re-imagining the plan to fit the new circumstances and conditions. Today I put some finishing touches on the new Farm Plan, the changes forced by having to re-locate the house in order to get a permit to build it. This plan takes all of our previous ideas into account, but changes all of dimensions from previous plans. If you are interested in looking at the old plans click here.

This new plan is merely a vision of perfection, not likely to ever be completely built. There will be many more re-visioning images as we go forward with building because things change and reality gets in the way of good imagining. I make these pictures so that I can keep the entire thing in my visual mind as I do everyday work. This past week, for example, I began to think about the Creekside Path (which follows Dairy Creek outside of the fence at the back of the property). So as we cut and burned the brush I began visualizing the different aspects of the proposed new path, because these aspects will become the backdrop for the gardens to eventually be found inside of the fence.

And then there is the County approvals needed to build the thing, which may or may not come (easy or at all). We will need a Type Four land use approval in order to fully realize the Farm plan as a public space. There will be three other land use approvals decided before we get the thing built and in use.

All this being said, we didn't remove much from the original plans, and the new things incorporated in the new plan are:

A Cherry tree lined path which runs from near the proposed Barn Store to the Northeast gate at the back of the Farm. It should make a very nice picture and add a substantial length of walking path. In designing this space I am trying to add a colonnade sort of thing. Something like the Colonnade images taken at the White House to add a sense of time and removed contemplation to the images taken there.

I moved the Yin Yang Pond to a new location due to a lack of a proper surrounding in the northwest corner gate. In the old place the pond would not have had a good backdrop, or provide a good backdrop for pictures taken there. But the pond might have a chance of making a good picture with the Cherry Tree Lane and Chinese Gazebo in the background. And since this is a semi-reflective pond, mirror images might be more interesting.

We had been toying with allowing each guest to have their own fire pit near their cabin, but this is a bit dangerous and would take a load of maintenance. So instead we thought of putting a centrally located fire pit in the midst of a communal gazebo where all guests might come and be together as they wish. I have an idea about surrounding the space with a curtain water feature, something of a rainy day during the hotter months with water falling gently on the landscape surrounding the Gazebo. But this space is intended to allow a gathering of people around a fire in the evening, something which people have been doing for the entire history of people.

As we build, we find new things to build or things which ought not be built. But each change is a refinement of a vision which, at its heart, is intended to bring things to people and ourselves.

Today it is three years since the very beginning of the Creekside Farm Project and only two years from beginning this written BLOG chronicle, so much has been accomplished. In this three years we have reclaimed the land from trash and wildness, planted food and flower crops, raised a flock of chickens and dozens of dogs for a profit, and begun actual building of what we hope will be something special. It seems a lot longer, but it has only been eight months since we began living on the Farm (full time) in our tiny home cabin, which doubled in size while we also added hundreds of feet of covered space for animals and work. Is seems incredible that we are only five months from the point of achieving the money to begin making the bigger dream a reality. Time means nothing once you reach fifty or so years old, days tend to flitter by unnoticed. So taking the time to reflect is important or we might miss all of the fun we are having.

November 1, 2018 A Necessary Update.

Life goes on apace at Creekside Farm. So much is happening, most of it too small to write about, most of it is fairly meaningless in terms of the bigger picture. But I have been remiss in keeping our history up to date. So here's what has happened since the Summer Supper Party in late August.

The biggest thing is that we finally got all of the readily available trash removed from the place.  But so much has happened, is happening, will happen.

Jack helped me build it.

We got the new septic system installed. It was a big project which might have needed an article of its own, but didn't because it really wasn't very interesting. A lot of digging, a bunch of laying things into trenches, and then a lot of burying. It is enough to say that we got the thing in, saved a ton of money doing ourselves, got it approved by the County, and this past week hooked the tiny home cabin into it so that we are better off right now than we were.

As soon as we got approval to apply for the septic permit we hired Erik the Architect, along with Trena the Intern, to design our new farmhouse. Up to this point the only thing we knew for certain was that my dream of putting the house at the northwest corner of the property had to be changed so that we got a quick land use decision. Putting the house in the corner would have added at least six months to the project and we wanted to get building. I had already done a preliminary plan for the house (and thought myself pretty clever for nearly a year), then these two clever people got hold of it and changed most parts for the better.  We're quite happy about the new design and should get actual plans this month at some point. From there it goes to the engineer, then to the building permit people, then maybe we can build. Since we are doing most of the building ourselves we expect to move in by next November, but we've said this same thing before.

The early version of their design work.

I added in some details.
You can click on this for a bigger picture.

MacGreggor's Garden produced (2) pretty well this summer, but not enough to build the produce stand this year. Next year in Jerusalem, as they say. This morning we began pulling everything that won't Winter over out in the garden. It will look better to see rotting mud than to see rotting plants, and our compost pile looks quite happy.

The chickens (2) have been selling about twenty dozen eggs a month for the past two months. Not much of an income, but we got some business done this year and so we can claim victory even if it is something a bit more hollow than we had planned. Winter is coming and so we expect less of them as the weather turns colder.  They will process the compost pile all Winter for use in planting  in the Spring.  This morning I ordered cartons and labels for future egg sales. Not that I needed to, but it will feel more like a business effort.

Our hounds are doing very well, but we had to put Henri Hudson down in early September. He had taken a turn for the violent crazy and killed a few chickens . . . He's been planted behind the new home site along with our LizziBeth, who was his girl and who went into the ground before him  We did get a new girl puppy, named Grizelda Laffee Taffee, in September and she is both growing well and a double handful of fun. Since we are not going to do any breeding until the new kennel is up and running there is no puppy business. But we are probably looking for another female in the Spring so that she can start growing old enough to put to work.

I am working on a new design layout for the Farm and Gardens since the old one had the house in the wrong place, also since we have some experience which can be put into the plan, and since we already change the plan by putting some stuff into the ground to propagate more plants for the gardens.

The Party Tent, now workshop.

A few weeks back I converted the Summer Supper Party tent into workshop and covered it for the winter's rain. It will be a great place from which we can stage the house building, but the dogs love it to play in when it is rainy out and the chickens like to stay in there for keeping out of the rain too.

As for the rest of it . . . The rains started last week and the lack of old growth weeds makes the place really a big mud pit that one must keep out of, for the most part. We will do what we can through  the Winter and try to keep up the momentum we believe has finally begun to grow faster, but the Farm has its own plans, and its own schedule. There seems no way to rush anything. The Dream of Creekside Farm is still in place and working (for the most part), though changed by time and the needs of Creekside Farm and Washington County.

October 6, 2018 A day of days

Today is something of a milestone. 

This is what we started with.

After we decided to engage in the Creekside Farm project, it took nearly a year (and many months of work) to clear the Farm off enough to see the ground, the edges, and get the larger things broken down into what might be called "trash" properly. Before that we couldn't begin to remove the stuff  with any efficiency at all. There was a double wide mobile home that had burned down, an RV motor home that was more than just a wreck, a shipping container full of paper and other waste, and everywhere you went on the property you found some new pile of miscellaneous debris.

After we emptied the container.

There was trash everywhere.

In the first year we spent quite a bit of time simply trying to get some idea of the size of the problem. 

Eventually we got the bulk of the debris pushed into one large pile.
The pile was about eighty feet long, twelve feet deep, and eight feet high.

We had a four yard dumpster dropped early on, but the scale of the work required something more massive. The real clean-up started in May of 2016 when we had two gigantic dumpster boxes dropped on what became the driveway and loaded them up for three days. After the sixty yards of debris was removed, the remaining pile (only forty feet long, ten deep, and six high) simply had to wait for time and money to present themselves. The time came when we moved to the Farm and got settled in. The money came when we sold our house in town.

Since then we have done so much at Creekside Farm, not the least of which was having a four yard dumpster brought nearly every week - filling it - and getting another. Each week we chipped away at the pile.

Today we got the last of the "one large pile" cleared away. 

There are no pictures to show you how we feel about today. We have been working toward this for so very long and all anyone would notice by looking is that there is no giant pile of trash sitting in the middle of the place. Today we have the place torn apart as we put together the new septic system and prepare to build our farm house. There are also a few very large burn piles sitting around waiting for a match. So anyone driving by the first time might only see the mess we have created. But the septic ditches will be filled in this week, the burn piles lit next weekend. Once these are done all anyone will see it a Farm. And it only took three years of blood, sweat, tears, and cash.

September 21, 2018 Wormfest at Creekside Farm

Never let it be said that our chickens are poorly fed.
Today I tilled two new gardens and the hens had a worm feast.

We have happy, fat, hens.

Normally we give them what everyone else gives their chickens: Layena Pellets from Purina. The pellets have a higher than average percentage of calcium and are not medicated, so the eggs are good and the shells are hard. But they can go through about fifty pounds of the stuff in a week, so we augment the pellets with copious amounts of whole grains we got from a client who had about 3200 pounds of defunct survival food stored in his attic. Mostly wheat (3 varieties),  but there are oats, barley, and corn too. We mix one scoop of grain into their pellets. But they eat quite well here besides.

The vegetables from MacGreggor's Garden, that don't come up to snuff aesthetically, go into the chicken run for nearly instant disposal. If  tomato has a defect, and plenty of them do, then the chickens get a feast. About every three day or so I put five pounds of tomatoes out but they also get beans that grow too large, monster cucumbers, failed melons, and the kitchen scraps from cooking. 

Needles to say, they a free roaming, so there aren't very many bugs on the ground. They chase around all day, browsing bugs and seeds from all around the Farm. Nearly omnivorous, I even seen them eating a dove that didn't pay attention and they occasionally find a vole, or a mole, poking his head up  and chase each other around trying to steal it away for themselves. 

Many of the more mature hens have taken to following me
around whenever I am on the tractor.
They seem to know that I bring good things to the surface.

As Fall comes in and Winter approaches, our chickens are going in very healthy, fat, and happy.

September 17, 2018 Homegrown Harvest Part 2

The nightshade family of plants includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and (surprisingly) Potatoes. We put in five varieties of Tomato, four of peppers, tomatillos and ground cherries, as well as the root crops written up previously.

• The tomatoes did well, and are still doing well. We had a hard time controlling the heat in the greenhouse, but eventually got some 50% shade cloth to cover it so things started growing and producing. The plants in the greenhouse produced very well, and still are, but next year we'll plant them quite a bit differently. Tomato cages made us prune them too much, keeping the yields artificially low. The flavors of the four different varieties came through very well. The few we planted outside did very little production, they seem to like it hot. We feed the dumpy ones to the chickens, keeping only the perfect fruit for ourselves. We would have sold them, but we didn't open the fruit stand this year, so most of the good stuff was given to people as gifts. Ann just loves being able to go pick a fresh tomato from the plant and prepare it immediately.
• We put tomatillos and peppers between the tomatoes and so these got over-crowded. The tomatillos never did anything worthy of eating, but instead gave us marble sized fruit. It had a good flavor, but wasn't a real tomatillo. The Ground Cherries (something like a tomatillo) were also disappointing. We'll try again next year. 
• Our peppers did well outside of the greenhouse, they are coming in this month and we have a ton of them. The greenhouse peppers did some, but were probably too hot and so did not meet our expectations. We also put in "cool" jalapenos which have no heat to them, but haven't found a use for these yet. Ann makes wonderful chili rellenos of the Poblano peppers, superior salsa from the jalapenos. The cool jalapenos are for experimenting.

We grew a lot more than I'll speak of here in this post. Strawberries did well, if only for propagating new plants for next year's success. We'll move them in the Winter to another temporary, but much better, home. But we hope to get them into a vertical garden next year at some point.

The Marijuana crop is as simple as falling from a log, if you get the right seeds. We got the right seeds and so Pot is always a good, easy, crop to grow. We'll harvest it in late October on the eve of the first large rain event and give most of it away to friends and family because these plants put out.

But there were other crops worthy of talking about too:

• Cucumbers produced only enough to eat ourselves or serve to the chickens when they inevitably grew larger than they should have. We did two varieties, a pickler, and a slicer. We will put them in heavier once we open the produce stand.
• The cantaloupe melons did nothing and probably needed better sun. 
• We did eat some nice Sugar Baby watermelons and so will put them in heavy next year. 
• We also did quite well with pumpkins too (even though we don't want to do these as a cash crop). We have Jack-o-lanterns galore.
• Pole peas did enough to tell me how many to put in next year, and how to do it. Peas are not a favorite crop and take a lot of work to prepare, but they will work in the produce stand, if only for show.
• Bush beans produced very well too. These will be given a larger grow next year. I found that sorting them into visually  similar classes made preparation better. The big ones would be for canning, but I doubt we'll can them. The slender ones are spectacular for poaching and quick frying them in bacon fat afterwards. Yummy.

All in all the garden experiment gave me local clues as to how to proceed, and reading gave me ideas for improving the crop next year. I can't wait, so we're working on finding a winter crop to put it and planning the gardens for next year while waiting on paperwork to build our farm house.