Chris & Rachel: The Month of May: Beginnings of a Homestead

Well after having family visit, graduating, going on vacation, visiting Oregon, and being in Josh & Amy's wedding we only had a few days left in May to really top off the month. So why not start our next chapter in life with some homesteading?

I mean we live on a farm anyway, why not learn how to farm!

Raised Bed Garden

(This is our third try at planting a garden, the others have failed miserably...I think we were lacking passion and commitment)

Supplies...check

We didn't have the means to invest in all of the "proper" start up equipment, so we improvised a lot and used what we had. Definitely not the safest thing to use milk cartons as a table saw...sorry mom. Don't worry all limbs are still intact.

Chris was very adamant on fully pest-proofing the garden beds, so that meant I had to lay chicken wire on the bottom on the bed to prevent moles from digging up through our garden.

I learned two valuable lessons in this whole process.

1. Even if something is going to be covered in dirt it still needs to be straight. [insert sarcastic tone]

2. Building things together is good for your marriage.

Once the beds were built and filled with compost I planted heirloom zucchini, 3 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, heirloom yellow squash, basil, parsley, 3 varieties of heirloom bell peppers, and heirloom cucumbers.

Voila! Mission accomplished...now to keep the plants alive

Chicken Coop a.k.a. Chicken Hilton

The first step was to build the 'coop' portion of the project. While we were on vacation Chris read a farming book and starting drawing out plans of how he wanted to build his coop. Let's just say building the raised beds together was a good warm up...haha because building a chicken coop together was a whole new level of communication. Advice: it is probably a good idea to be on the same page for the end result before you start the project. As I said earlier...building things together is good for your marriage...eventually :-)

The next step was building the frame for the pen

Hands on the hips...always a good sign that I'm about to be in trouble ;-)

The ramp into the coop has a rope tied to the end and goes out the side. That way at night we can pull the ramp up for extra protection from predators.

Chicken Hiltons have to look pretty...so I picked the coolest color I could think of for a chicken coop and went to town. Advice: paint BEFORE you attach chicken wire to boards.