We Become Farmers -

You know those easy projects that should only take a weekend and end up taking an entire month? Okay, that describes all my projects.

We wanted to go a little simple for our first project at the farmhouse. You know, warm ourselves up before we go in with hammers blazing. And we figured our garden was our first tackle. It was the right time for it and it’s not like we haven’t we have gardened before. We just haven’t exactly done in ground gardening. We’ve only used raised beds and the square foot gardening method. Which is a great, easy method, but the garden was already plotted out here so we figured we might as well use what we had available.

Well, when I start a new project, I buy books. Which is exactly what I did when I knew it was time to start building the homestead. In fact, I bought 3 books. One that tells me what to do to build a homestead, one that guides me through building useful things on the homestead, and a third that told me exactly what to do each month of the year to keep the homestead functioning easily.

At the farmhouse, there is an upper plot and a lower plot used for gardening. We decided to start with the upper plot because it was smaller and already had a partial fence and a fruit tree (we think apple) and a large grapevine growing in it. Five mounded rows were already in place, covered in heavy tarp. However, it had been awhile since much clearing had been done there and the tarp was grown over with grass and weeds and we knew that clearing that out was as good as any place to start.

One by one we pulled grass and weeds and removed the heavy tarp, pinned down by hundreds of rusty stakes. And when it rained, I continued to work (while Tyler hid in the creepy shed). The tarp not only covered the garden mounds, but also the walking areas in between. So there was a lot of tarp. We also trimmed back the grape vine which had grown so much, it had a choke hold on the poor apple tree. And soon we had a clear garden and several hills of tarp, weeds and vines.

I did find one treasure during our excavation. A large object which I lifted up proudly and showed to Tyler. Until I realized it had teeth. And then it quickly became a projectile. Not sure what poor animal’s jowl I was holding, but we looked it up and apparently dinosaurs were not common in Vermont, so we can probably cross that off our list of options.

Tyler had researched different methods of gardening and ended up deciding a line of garden mats sold by a guy here in Vermont. They are a thick mat with different sized and spaced holes cut out for specific plants, which makes them pretty much gardening for dummies. I’m certain they are amazing though because the guy who made them said so. He also assured us we would never be back because they were so good which seems like a terrible business plan.

The mat shop was set up very much like the soup nazi from Seinfeld. You entered the building one at a time and stood on a designated spot in the doorway. From there, you announce your order and hope that you did everything properly because if you do, you are rewarded with Gardening dummy mats that will be your gift from the gardening gods. Tyler apparently did well because he came home with several mats.

We spread out each of the mats on the gardening rows. But at that point we decided the original placement of tarp in the walkways in between was a good idea. But all we had was the original tarps we had already removed.

So one by one, I stretched out the tarps, removed every rusty stake remaining, and pulled off every root and weed I could find so we could put the tarp right back on the dirt where it came from. At this point, the garden was fully covered covered and just awaiting happy little plants inside the little holes. Unfortunately, this is not suggested until late May.

So we moved on to our next garden project. A little garden fence around our cleared garden.

I swear in my head, this was to be a simple task. I drew out the fence exactly how I wanted it. Kept it very simple with small amounts of wood and chicken wire to keep the critters out. It all seemed very straight forward.

Until I started reading my books.

The first step was to dig holes for the posts. But the book said that, in order to prevent the posts from popping up when it freezes, you need to dig your hole to the “frost line”. Which, of course I wanted to make this garden fence as sturdy as possible and I didn’t want to be playing whack-a-mole with my frozen posts. So I looked up the frost line in Vermont.

60 in. Basically, they wanted me to dig down 5 feet for a 3.5 foot fence. Yeah that wasn’t going to happen. Doing that would require a digging tool that costs more to rent than the fence itself. So we decided whack-a-mole was a pretty fun game and decided 2 feet down was sufficient for our posts.

The first foot was a breeze. The dirt was soft from the rains and came up easily. This fence was going to be cake to make!

We did not, however realize that an entire medieval kingdom was buried beneath our garden (obviously one taken over by dinosaurs). Which is the only possible explanation for the wall of compressed boulders we ran into once we got past that first foot of dirt. Obviously it was a castle. But one by one we removed each rock, chiseling out dirt and clearing the holes. Donovan suggested dynamite because that works in Minecraft but we were fresh out.

At this point in our adventure, we have very little in the line of power tools. In fact, all we really have is a handheld buzz saw. And we had to somehow figure out how to cut a 6x1x12 inch board into 2 3x1x12 inch boards. Thats when Tyler came up with the “cut in half-a-nator” (name will be rethought when we get the patent) which was all the fence boards, piled together in a way that allowed the saw to guide straight down the middle of the board. A creation, of which, he was very proud of.

We got the kids involved at this point. Donovan helping with holes while Calvin dug trenches in between the posts. Trenches, of course, because we have moles and ground hogs and foxes and weasels and bobcats and field mice, and rabbits and probably about 50 other critters whos only goal in life is to break through the barrier that is my garden fence and eat my vegetables like Peter Rabbit. Really though, I’m kind of feeling Mr. McGregor on this one. But a trench with chicken wire going into the ground is a good way to discourage these critters from taking the low ground into my garden. But if we are being honest, it didn’t stop Peter Rabbit.

Weeks later, our garden fence was complete. With a cute little gate and everything. I gotta say, it was hard work but I’m pretty happy with it. Hopefully plants grow and critters stay out.

Also added to our homestead collection this month is “Old Betsy”. Which isn’t actually old at all. It’s brand spanking new. But Old Betsy seems like a good tractor/riding lawnmower name. Or maybe because I felt pretty old once Tyler finally made a decision on which one to get. Because Tyler can’t make a decision without a thorough research into every available option.

In this case, he looked. He researched. He asked facebook. He researched some more. He went to a tractor store with the intention of coming back with a tractor. He came back with nothing. He researched some more. Finally, he decided on Old Betsy. And who should be the perfect driver of the old girl? Well the 15 year old in the family who is at drivers permit age of course!

We got Calvin behind the wheel. He complained. He whined. He wondered why we were ruining his life.

And once he got behind that wheel and started doing figure 8s in the field, he was SMILING! He drove all over the place, circles and loops and squiggles and got a good 80% of the grass mowed. Technique is the next lesson apparently. And when he was finished, we asked him if he had fun.

He shrugged and said “it was okay.” Which in teenager language means “That was the most fun I’ve ever had and you are the best parents ever.”

So, win win for all!

Goals fro may? The orchard, the chicken coop and start fixing up the Happy Glamper again. Because that thing is saaaad.