Planning the farm

So we've spent the last week or two planning our farm. We eventually hope to go off the grid and maybe even self-sustaining. By off the grid we don't just mean to have alternative sources of electricity, but rather to go without. So a lot of plans are working towards that goal. First thing, of course, is getting the house livable. We can start work after the 15th. I still don't have any pictures, but promise to get some as soon as possible. I should probably start packing, since we move in less than two months, if everything goes to plan. But alas, the baby hasn't been feeling well so I'm barely keeping up with laundry and dishes. Right now we're having discussions about where to put the wood stove. There's already a place where one was, though we would have to protect the walls and such, but it's in the middle of the master bedroom and clearance would take up a lot of our room and DH is worried it'll be too hot in there to sleep. So he talked about moving it to a corner of the bedroom, but I"m thinking, if he's going to move it, he should just move it to the family room if he's that worried about the heat at night. We also have been discussing about the whole summer cooking thing when we go off grid and what we want to do about that. Here's our plan so far, though subject to change as we learn more. We have a fireplace to heat the front of the house and we'll be getting a wood stove big enough to heat the back of house. Then we'll build a cook/wash house off of the kitchen to put a cook stove in. That porch area will have fold-down walls and screens so in the summer we can open it up and not heat up the whole house while cooking, but in the winter I can close it up (so I won't freeze!) and can hang laundry up in there as well. Right now we'll just get the wood stove to heat the back of the house, but in the future will buy the cook stove. DH wants to go all out and get one that has a water tank on the back for hot water. Less work for me!

We've also been planning the garden and chicken area. My dad grew up on a farm and told me this great idea that I only found mentioned in one place so far online. What you do is fence in two garden plots, and put the chicken coop between them. The first year, you let the chickens out on one side and put your garden on the other side. Then the next year, you switch them. So the chickens are eating up all your left over garden stuff and composting it, completely weeding the area and fertilizing it. So every year you have a great garden plot to plant in. Awesome! We're going to go ahead and raise layers and meat birds. Hopefully, every 2 months or so we'll get a chicken to raise a brood of chicks to slaughter. Which means we'll need a rooster. I think we said if we start out with 18 or so chicks that should be plenty to get us through until we get some good layers to raise up some more for meat. I'm so excited. Not so much at the thought of slaughtering chickens, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

Speaking of slaughtering, DH is also planning on learning how to slaughter deer (shot on our own land!), and eventually cows that we'll raise too. We're not sure yet exactly how many cows we'll be able to pasture on our land, so that will have a big impact on how we do that, of course. We know for sure we want a dairy cow, and we'll have to freshen her every year or two so we might as well raise the calf for meat, but we don't know what we're going to do about mating her. I don't think we want a bull just for one, at most, two dairy cows, but I don't want to pay to get them inseminated either. Maybe we can find someone to trade use of their bull for something...

But I'm rambling and really need to try and put the baby down so I can switch laundry and wash two days worth of dishes. Thanks for listening to my rambling!