On our beautiful, 10 acre, farm we grow animals, a garden, orchards, a forest, and experience. It’s been five years since we came here and what a journey it has been. Lessons have been learned and mistakes have been made, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We currently run cattle and sheep, we also have chickens and ducks. Occasionally, we bring pigs on but they are a fair bit of work so we don’t have them every year.
The garden is currently 15 beds but I’m working to add two ‘crop’ gardens for larger things. Eventually, I hope to put in a ‘kitchen’ garden right outside my kitchen door. I have a flower garden, or a piece of ground with some flowers in it. This is a work in progress and will one day have a large section of flowers and herbs.
We have 3 orchards, one I call the north orchard and most the trees there are still small. We have a paddock orchard, these trees are pretty young still too. Lastly, we have the chicken orchard. The chicken orchard cause it’s in the chicken. Many of these trees are pretty well established but most of them need some love (lookin at you apple trees).
Then there is the forest, if we can even call it a forest anymore. We went from bit run down and filled with fallen trees and piles of branches to nearly one third of the trees down. It feels like it will take forever to clear them all. Good news though, we don’t need to fell trees for firewood for ages.
When we got here there was a massive amount of unwanted undergrowth. I insisted the help of the livestock to help clear. Undergrowth is down and grass has been coming in well. Ultimately, my vision for the forest is a silvopasture.
When we first moved in here all those years ago, I had a vision of our farm being a place to gather. And I’m finally looking to make a space to for hands in the dirt, chin wagging and knowledge shared. You can see what’s happening here.