Our Road to building a Homestead – Year 1

This year we decided to embark on the road to sustainability and self-sufficiency.  It is becoming a popular goal among households trying to make it in world that promotes dependence on technology and economics.  Our goal is not to go to the extreme of off the grid living that is not a practical solution for our family.  We want to be able to rely on no one but ourselves for our most basic needs.  

The first thing we did was write out a plan.  Aaron and I answered important questions that needed answered for any chance of true success.  What do we want, what are our goals, and why do we even want to do this, and are we doing it for the right reasons?  We made list of what we want to accomplish this year, the next, and what we would like accomplished in the next 5 years.  By going through these steps, we determine what is most important to us and keeps us on track to succeed.  For our first year, we are beginning our journey by focusing on the most basic of needs, food.  

For year one, we have planted a garden and planted a whole orchard.  Both of us have some experience with gardening from when were children, so this was one area where we had some experience.  We looked at our needs, our wants, and what we could practically grow in our area with nothing more than dirt, fertilizer, and sunshine.  Wildlife in our area is a huge issue.  Deer, does in particular, are overrunning our area and we have to be aware that anything we plant above ground will be enjoyed by the deer before we ever get to it. We are doing a mostly root garden, with food that will keep for long periods of time.   

We are lucky to have inherited the beginnings of our orchard.  We have several fully grown mature apple trees that are great producers (just ask the herd of deer that enjoy them).  There are several wild blackberry, raspberry and a few wild black raspberry bushes growing on our property.  There are several blue berry bushes on the property, some great producers, some not so great as well.  Expanding on our orchard is where we went overboard, I openly admit.  Aaron has planted approximately 90 trees/ bushes this spring.  And most of them are flourishing.  We prefer fruit and nuts, so this was only a practical step for us.  Yes, we should have probably planted these in stages, but most of them are bareroots (barely twigs, really).  They are not going to produce for several years.  This is a long term investment that will pay off over time. 

There have been setbacks and we are just getting started.  Despite all our preplanning and organization, our first year still has not went as smoothly as we would have preferred.  We had trees shipped that we weren’t told about and it was a rush to get them in the ground.  Potatoes that were supposed to be shipped didn’t get in the ground until the first week of May.  The weather wreaked havoc on our garden, switching from freezing temperatures to blazing beach weather for 3 months.  Then we had a flood and our garden was overrun by grass in a matter of days.  This is not even taking into account our own inexperience.  Our first year homesteading is really just getting started and we have already learned so much.   This isn’t an easy road, we knew that walking into this adventure, but we feel like we are one baby step closer to our goal of sustainability.