A Productive Season

One of our biggest issues to deal with since moving here has been our pasture. When we moved in, it was late April, there was trash everywhere (and I mean everywhere), deep ruts in the ground (probably from a bulldozer), giant mounds of fill dirt, blackberry bushes that were out of control, and lots of tree debris from several of the dead trees we had to cut down. Worse yet, because the drainage in our pasture was so bad, we weren’t able to access most of it until the ground had dried out mid-August.

To be honest, we weren’t sure how much we would be able to accomplish in the pasture this year. We wanted to smooth out the random piles of dirt and fill in the ruts, especially the piles that were up against the creek, keeping the groundwater from flowing in. We wanted to pile up the brush and debris for burn season, gather all the trash (which continues to unearth itself) to take to the dump, and we wanted to reestablish the creek so water could flow through. Basically, it was our goal to restore the land to how we imagine things originally were, and then to get our perimeter fence built so we could rotate the goats around in the pasture to help control the brush. Believe it or not, we may actually accomplish our goals by the end of fall.

But once again, we had a lot of help from our family members. My dad lent us his bobcat, my mom brought her excavator over, and Matt’s parent’s came in to help us cut down trees, paint the house, saw up logs... We absolutely could not have accomplished what we’ve accomplished without their help. So what started as an ambitious list of projects for spring/summer has turned into something beyond what we could have imagined, and yet we were able get so much done.

So no, we still haven’t finished our End of Summer to-do list, and now that it’s raining and dark and cold outside, we definitely have to slow our pace down, but I really have no complaints. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in the six months we’ve been here, and grateful for the people who helped us make it happen.

If you’d like to see some of the changes we’ve made to the pasture to get things cleaned up and (hopefully) help with our drainage issues, check out our latest homestead vlog below.