Getting Ready for Farm Life: 3 Months To Go

After a lifetime of planning and dreaming, it’s hard to believe I’m less than 3 months away from owning my own farm.

I’ve been finding myself recognizing the little things I’m really looking forward to, things I greatly enjoyed but left behind in my various moves. Having a compost pile instead of throwing my waste in the apartment dumpster. Golden hour walks around the property. A sink that has a detachable faucet. Not having to listen to my downstairs neighbors have (and I mean this literally) Nerf gun fights. You know – the little things.

For all the excitement, I’m also nervous. Years of preparation for this, yet I still feel like I might screw it up – that I’ll burn out, or won’t be able to handle the work that a homestead requires. That I’ll bite off more than I can chew (or afford).

One of the things that settles my anxious mind is to work with my hands. There are a lot of things I can’t do before I’m actually on the property – planting fruit trees and gardens, painting and decorating, installing upgrades and getting quotes on labor. But there are still plenty of ways to use this time to ease the transition into my new life. Here are a few of the things I’ve been working on:

1. Experimenting with soil blocks

Although I won’t be able to have a full growing season on my new farm, I will still be able to have a garden on my family’s farm next door. I’ll also have containers, and will likely have time to construct a few small beds for a fall planting.

My overall goals for my homestead involve ‘closing the loop’ in my life: reducing my use of plastic, reducing my overall waste, and reducing my inputs from outside sources. As such, using soil blockers has always appealed to me. These little metal contraptions compress a soil mixture into blocks, allowing you to start your seeds without using the disposable plastic pots you’ve likely seen at nurseries.

With the farm on the horizon, I finally bought a set of soil blockers and used them to start our tomatoes and peppers for this growing season. Actually, we went a little wild – we planted forty of each, and almost all of them have germinated now. I suppose we’ll have plenty to share with friends.

The trickiest part so far has been refining the soil mixture. Most of the recipes online involve a lot of ingredients from outside sources, including substances like perlite, which is a non-renewable volcanic glass product that improves drainage. We’re trying to mostly use composted horse manure from our own horses, and my adopted mom bought rice hulls in place of perlite. It takes the right consistency to make a sturdy soil block, and we’re getting closer to figuring out the ideal ratio.

2. Giving fruit trees a head start in grow bags

I planned the beginning of my orchard a couple months ago. One of my non-negotiables is mulberry trees; while I’ve never tasted a mulberry, my late dad used to tell stories about eating them as a kid when their family briefly lived in Kentucky.

As part of my research, I learned that mulberry trees can be successful in containers – especially in the short term. They also can be hard to come by as the growing season draws near. In fact, my first order of two Dwarf Illinois Everbearing trees from Stark Brothers was cancelled for lack of availability.

As a result, I panic-bought two not-dwarf mulberry trees from Gurney’s (not the worst panic purchase I’ve made…) Which means I now have two 4-foot-tall mulberry sticks planted in grow bags in the corner of my family’s greenhouse. They can be moved outside when it’s warmer, and by late summer or early fall I will plant them in the ground.

3. Learning how to prune fruit trees

My family’s farm once had a little orchard as well – out of neglect and disease, only two peach trees, one pear tree, and one plum tree remain standing. All have produced fruit over the past few years, but the fruit is small and unpalatable because the trees are wildly overgrown.

(If you know about fruit trees, you might be confused by something I just wrote. Yes, there is only one pear tree. Yes, I have seen it produce fruit. This is against the laws of nature and yet, it is happening. I’m not going to look a magical gift pear tree in the mouth.)

All of my planning for my future orchard must have been inspiring, because my adopted mom ordered some new trees to expand the orchard; between our two properties, we are going to have a ton of fruit! And, she let me go wild with learning a new skill – how to prune fruit trees.

4. Learning how to use a scythe

I feel most secure when I can rely on myself to maintain or fix my belongings, but I also have a limited working knowledge of machines. While I’m willing to learn, these two traits combine to produce a natural affinity for hand tools. (Did I mention that I did most of the tree pruning with a hand saw?)

My farm will have a fair bit of land that needs to be maintained lest it get overrun with blackberries and wild thorny rose bushes. While I will need to mow a lot with a traditional mower, I have loved the idea of using a scythe ever since I first stumbled upon Jim Kovaleski’s method for maximizing the organic matter in his market gardens.

This is a guy who really puts action behind his words. He often speaks about reducing our society’s reliance on fossil fuels, and he makes the process look absolutely beautiful: he spends his mornings expertly swinging his scythe to cut grass in a nearby field (which he describes as a similar exercise to Tai Chi), and then in the afternoons he uses the previous day’s cut grass as mulch for his plants. The microbes in the soil benefit by ‘eating’ the grass, the plants benefit from the healthy microbes and the reduced loss of water, and Jim benefits by getting a gentle, relaxing exercise that involves stretching and maintains flexibility with relatively minimal exertion.

He’s a pro, so while he makes it look easy, I’m sure it’s going to be a lot harder than it looks. However, after seven years of watching his videos, I’m stoked to finally give it a shot. I received my custom-built scythe from Scythe Supply in Maine – now I’m just waiting for the spring grass to grow long enough to be worth cutting.

5. Writing

This blog has been a really important part of this whole process. As a teacher, I often find that trying to explain something to someone else is the best way to work through your own misconceptions and ultimately develop a comprehensive understanding of a concept. The same has been true with this entire farm project; while plenty of my plans have changed or shifted since I first wrote about them three months ago, having somewhere to ‘think out-loud’ has forced me to consider more angles, perspectives, details, and potential problems than I otherwise would have.

Thanks for being here – it really means a lot.

Talk soon,

KC