Farm Goals for 2011

Holy cow did we ever sign ourselves up for a headache when we decided to embark on this build-a-farm-from scratch adventure! We bought a great house in the perfect location for us, however, this place was in no way ready to roll as a working farm. There is no existing garden, nor any barn or garage for storage. There are a few fences in place, though they are old and sagging and no longer much of a deterrent to critters who wish to go out or come in. It needs work - lots of it, and urgently.

And so, our 2011 has a whole lot of projects lined up, all of them in the ASAP category, as Spring is now only 10 1/2 weeks away, Thank God!

Here's what our to-do list looks like -

*Build a new, 3-4x larger chicken coop with multiple runs.
*Turn over/establish the garden, including building some raised beds
*Deer fence around the garden
*Fix the fencing in the back pasture - this one is a DOOZY
*Build a new goat yard and an additional goat shelter for the does & kids
*Expand our laying flock and establish a meat flock. (chickens)
*Read, research and learn everything under the sun about dairy goats and the art of home cheesemaking.

In the we really need to do this, but it's not the end of the world if we don't category-

*Prune dozens of rosebushes and fruit trees which have been ignored for nearly a decade.
*Possibly buy or build a new shed/outbuilding for storing animal feed and farm equipment.
*Explore the possibility of raising turkeys.

In the probably not this year category-

*Turn the hot tub room (complete with broken hot tub!) into my (Chelle's) studio. It has great southern light and is already plumbed for a sink. We really just need to rip out the gnarly old hot tub and put flooring in it's place, and install a sink and 220v outlet for my pottery wheel & kiln. It'll be my space - MINE! :)

*Have a powder room built upstairs for the girls.

Of course in addition to all of the projecty-stuff we have the everyday stuff that we are going to try to keep up with - wine making, home brewing, knitting, writing, foraging, fishing, etc. We're going to be busy bees this coming year! I know that it is going to be exhausting, but the rewards are so great and so satisfying that we're going to give it all we've got to make this vision of our farm a reality. Here we go!