Rural Gardening: Calling all experienced homesteaders - input needed!, 1 by MaypopLaurel

MaypopLaurel wrote:
Hineni, I'm here too. :>) The chimney and roof took many months of last summer until November. Lost the flue for the Pilgrim woodstove and had to rebuild that as well. Maypop is an A-frame cottage, on a south-facing mountainside, with a boathouse-type basement. The house and gardens are all stepped while there is some level pasture area below. Water is all spring fed via a Diviner's gifts. The pond is the spillway from the house springs.

I'm firm about land ownership. It's not necessary to micromanage all of a property with lawns and gardens, only what you need to be sustainable. Be a custodial keeper and use what what is needed. I asked DH's opinion on this and he agrees. We should have bought everyone around us out. Extra land is a future investment. We have over fifteen acres in hardwood and way more comes down each year than we can burn to heat. I'm building a solar tub/shower. The solar part is in, but I'm needing to address realities like yellow jackets that like to share my outdoor moment.

Podster, thanks. The garden is all on hillside steps. I must be part goat. lol. I've been known to go over the edge with the tiller on more than one occasion. I now realize it's safer, though more time consuming to hand dig the edges. The hillside, up to the woods, has perennials and herbs. The main kitchen garden is the flat space. More perennials and herbs on the next embankment. The next level has fruit trees...pears, apples, figs and iris and the part merging into the woods has blueberries and ramps. I really wanted a flatland farm with ten acres and some water. There were other plans for me though.

I've lived out here for months over the past twenty years with (and without three kids) before the advent of cell phones and the internet. Often with no car. Our roads, in and off the property, are over a third of a mile. Hauled water from the cistern, fired the stove all day and every night at 4 a.m. and cooked with cast iron for days in the fireplace when there were outages. Took care of animals (horses, dogs, cats, rabbits and ducks). I was often without power as I'm at the end of a line and it took a call in to let the power company know. There was not the technology to inform them unless we called in...but how? The phones would be dead too. DH would go back to the city while I was busy with my homesteading experiment. I'm not so complacent as to say my end time is predetermined. I'm just determined to have a meaningful experience. How sixties is that? So here's a pic from last year when cabbages and zinnias were accommodating.
Laurel