Rural Gardening: Adventures on Dirt Rich Farm (City goes Country), 1 by Hineni

Hineni wrote:
Well, I've posted stuff here n' there, but I figure that this is the place where a homestead-in-the-making progress thread probably belongs, ya think?

We named our farm Dirt Rich Farm long before we ever found it. We've not a lot of money, but we wanted a place with lots of good dirt, so it's a play off of 'dirt poor'; we are DIRT RICH :)

The last few weeks since we officially took up residence here (or rather, *I* took up residence here), have been busy with checking things out at the farm, checking out the neighboring towns, checking in with Darius (grin) and basically trying to get a handle on what we have here, and what we should do. The beginning thread can be found here, under Farm Life:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/860827/

We inherited a retired draft horse (owner's pet) and a very old, nearsighted pot-bellied pig. We brought a citified, dyed-in-the-wool prissy Jack Russell whom I have spoiled for years, and acquired two Great Pyrenees pups within two weeks of arrival. When J joins me officially, we will add to the menagerie an old, blind-in-one-eye, bladder-challenged tomcat. We plan to add chickens, goats and a cow/calf pair eventually. First we have to see who we can feed...LOL!

Most weekends to date have been basically mowing and discovery. The land isn't flat enough in most places for a riding mower, so J has tackled that task with a push mower and his mighty weedeater. This work has reduced our 'tick-load' quite well. Although I grew up in the country, we didn't have ticks there. This was a new adventure for me, and I've had my share of tick bites already. I've actually considered that the phrase "honey, will you check me for ticks?" might well be the country version of foreplay...the jury is still out on that one ;)

My first project was a small flower bed that I could actually plant (gasp!) in the dirt. I hauled up plants from my former home in GA and plunked those babies in the ground. After all, a flowerbed is the start of a homestead, right? I've begun a small herb bed as well, which currently includes bee balm, salvias, St. John's Wort , a few thymes, some mint, and lavenders. But all during this time I have been ignoring the monsterous task of ....weeding the existing garden. Now, all who garden have the task of weeding. But this my friends was no ordinary weeding job, oh no. I joked with a few folks that it probably should have been called 'deforestation' rather than weeding. Here is a sample of the stalk of some of the weeds that I spent nine, yes, nine hours tackling today.