five acres in florida

score! we have chantrelles growing quite happily under the oak right next to the house. i found a little patch of 5 or 6 golden lovelies which i brought in to identify, and my suspicions were correct :). i have never eaten chantrelles and i will need a recipe to know what to do with them, but anything i get wild makes me happy (especially in my own yard).

yesterday i picked a whole bag full of wild grapes from the neighbor's front fence, and today i mixed them with some of our june harvest of blackberries to make wine. only about 3/4 gallon, but with a few more episodes of picking i could theoretically make a decent-sized batch of the stuff. last time we made blackberry wine we used a "fancy" recipe, complete with special yeast and clarifiers and plenty of high-tech equipment, but it turned out not unlike mouthwash in terms of alcohol content--though tasty enough, if you could stand the burn--so this time i'm doing the hillbilly sugar+yeast version. it's also ready a lot quicker that way; 6 weeks instead of 6-12 months. i'll be ready for this one just about when the little mister is arriving... maybe we can have it as our celebration wine on his birth day :)

i used the weed-eater for the first time today, and i must admit it wasn't really very fun. the vibration was intensely unpleasant, it was heavy, and apparently the freaking string was busted b/c i wasn't really making a lot of progress... but matt cleaned up after my attempt and at least i can say i tried. i also discovered a flower on my morning glory vine (planted to grow up the hand rails to the front door), which delights me! i have recently been training them up the sides, as they are now long enough to really get up there and make a show. matt has done a great job cleaning up the back yard from all the leftover debris of the old trailer... he was actually shoveling little handfuls of broken glass and crap into a trash can today.

(train of thought interrupted, blog over. but i'm sure i'll pick it up later!)

my uncle, who lives just down the road, was kind enough to give us a rooster and a laying hen recently. the rooster is a great little man; he finds bugs for the hens and thus far they all seem to really like him (though he hasn't tried to jump them yet). the new hen was friendly too--but she attacked the rooster all the time--and even started laying eggs for us after a few days of being here (the others don't lay yet as they are not old enough). then, after 4 eggs collected, our dogs got her. apparently they pulled her THROUGH the fence...???

that's the third chicken they've killed since march, and it's a bunch of bullshit. matt is ready to get rid of them, which of course is a terrible idea out here--we need dogs, nevermind we love them--and i'm in a bind as to what to do. chickens are stupid and will wander where they shouldn't be. dogs kill things (especially our wild pair). it's a bad combo but that's life, right?

the real problem is that we can't keep the chickens OR the dogs in their designated spaces. the chickens hop their fence at will, and the dogs keep finding ways to dig out of theirs... we can technically roof the chicken coop but that won't prevent the dogs from getting them when i do let them roam free. and as matt points out, we'll never be able to have goats in the pasture with the dogs because they will either run them to death or kill them outright. he's right.

we don't have money to fence a separate dog area (which was the original plan) and anyway i don't see how that would keep them from digging...

on the agricultural side of things, we're abounding in tomatoes, the okra is fruiting, we've got a gourd or two drying in the laundry room, and it looks like the corn will be ready soon. the squash is still going but may be slowing down slightly and i think matt gave up on the cucumbers after a nice big harvest. everything else is green and growing. we also have wild cherries ripening on several trees, the wild grapes are swelling, and we've got about 11lbs of wild blackberries in our freezer waiting to be preserved via wine or jam, plus another 50lbs in the yard waiting to be picked. i cannot wait until the passion vines start to fruit in the fall!

living out here is really, really fantastic.

so after a lot of ridiculous delays of no major importance, we moved into our new home in mid-march. it's perfect.

in the few months we've been here we have somehow managed to get matt's workshop up (18'x36' steel building), get the garden producing regularly, acquire some hens, and move in comfortably. it's been awesome!

chicken update: we actually got two little hen chicks back in january before we moved and kept them in our then-office (which got interesting once they learned to jump out of their box). about a week after we moved, one of the hens found her way into the dogs' pasture and met her sad little end. shortly after that, i bought another couple of chicks, so now we have 1 barred rock about 6 mos old, 2 barred rocks about 3 months old, and 2 australorps about 3 months old. no eggs yet, but it should be soon.

rabbit update: we haven't bred them yet this year, though i keep pestering matt that he needs to--that is why he bought them, after all. right now they just sit in their cages... but sadly, we lost the big buck last night. i had given them water and checked up on them around 7pm and i could tell they were all really hot (it was VERY hot yesterday and rabbits are super-sensitive) but we didn't have any frozen water bottles ready just then, and it was getting dark anyway... but around 9 or so matt went outside to lock the dogs up and he came back to say the buck was dead. it had to have been heat stroke, which makes me so sad. it's our fault he died! so today i am ready with the ice first thing and will make sure they each get a bottle in their cages. the rabbit had only been dead a little while and so matt went ahead and dressed him for the freezer :(

about 2 or 3 of our 6ish acres are solid blackberry bushes in full fruit. i've been collecting them here and there as they ripen with the intention of making wine and jam again this year. nothing beats homemade wild berry wine! and rowan LOVES the berries, she calls them "nomnoms" of course.

the garden has been giving us a few squash a day, some cucumbers, and so far one zucchini. the tomatoes are fruiting but not ripe, and it looks like for the first time ever matt might be able to grow corn, hehe (last crop was utterly demolished by caterpillars). there is a bunch of other stuff that isn't ready yet, but i'm not sure exactly what he planted. he's also got some really nice-looking gourds out there, though i don't know what we will do with them when they're dried.

i planted a flower bed FULL of seeds i ordered last year, and not a damn one sprouted. i have no clue why. i managed to be successful with store-bought morning glories and hand-harvested cosmos from my mom, and that's it... it's pretty disappointing; i was so ready to have a gorgeous flower garden in my yard just as birth is approaching. oh well.

other than that, i've been knitting a lot and i think i am gearing up to sell my creations online. more on that later. in-laws will be here soon...

working backwards from furthest to soonest:

on monday i have to go into work and tell them that i am moving and can no longer work full-time. i have decided if they are willing to let me be part-time i will stay (2 days a week commuting), so it will be up to them what happens. it's not going to be a fun or pleasant conversation, but it has to be done. there will be tears on both sides.

also on monday, i meet with a potential nanny just in case i need one. she sounds good so far and has an 18-month old for rowan to hang out with, which is nice. i hope i don't need her; i think between my mom and my best friend we will be covered if i do end up working.

on friday i will be going to buy our new home! i'm so excited, but trying to stay calm and focused and really ponder what it will mean to leave gainesville, so that i don't get overemotional after the fact. mental preparation is important, here.

tomorrow i go for an interview with the birth center to be their receptionist two days a week. even though the pay is very little and it will be 35-mile commute one way, i would love to work for them. it sounded like they really want me, too, but i will only be able to accept if things don't work out with my current job to stay part-time. i'm not sure what i hope happens--staying at my job will be more money (and benefits) but working for the BCOG will be really fulfilling, i think.

in the meantime, we've been planning our first steps while the house is being built. we need to get fencing up, a workshop built, and acquire some animals. pretty straightforward, though finding sheep has not been easy. i still don't know if we have a source for the florida native breed that matt wants to get.

i'm also going to have a truckload of flowers to transplant to the new yard, since i am not wasting all the effort i put into growing them by leaving them to rot! i just hope they survive the move. we have a small apple tree and a rose tree that i cannot bear to leave behind... i have to say, i will really miss the 24/7 access to the prairie that i have now. it's beautiful out there this time of year.

anyway, that's the agenda for now. i think we found a family friend to dig our water well at a dramatically reduced rate, which is lucky. every $ we save is one more that can go towards the rest of the necessities...

as i read over the first two posts, i felt i should give a little more background on our situation, since in fact we aren't making as drastic a change ("city" to "country") as it may appear on first glance. yes, we live in a suburban college town, but we've done a decent amount with our .33 acres.

two seasons ago matt dug out a 20x20ish plot in our backyard to put in a garden. and when i say 'dug out' i mean he removed 18 inches of sandy soil and replaced it with an unbeatable mix of composted horse manure and topsoil. that year we grew the biggest lettuce i have ever seen in my life, plus enough sweet potatoes to strangle a house, among other things. the next year matt doubled our garden size to about 850sqft. for never having grown anything before, his thumb is neon green.

next he decided he wanted to try raising rabbits, which i was totally opposed to. being vegan for 7 years (though i am no longer), the thought of bunnies being murdered on my property was a little too much to handle... i tried to compromise on chickens but he wasn't having it. so we got 4 rabbits (new zealand and californians) and he successfully bred them and has "harvested" several of the offspring the past few months. apparently they are really tasty, but for now i don't want to know.

we also co-own a dairy cow living on my sister's 1.5 acres, so fresh milk is available and they have generously supplied us with as many eggs as we can eat (most of the time) also. so really, moving onto more land will just mean upgrading our current setup and intensifying it in terms of time and resource commitment. e.g.:
1) bigger gardens, maybe a full acre
2) fruit trees
3) bees--we know an agricultural entomologist who works with bees in the area
4) goats and sheep
5) chickens of our own
6) cultivation of the wild blackberries and passion fruit that grow rampant in the area

i'm really looking forward to brewing beer and wine, so at some point we will have to work on hops... but that is a while away. we'll probably do it on purchased supplies until then, though we have made our own wild blackberry wine in the past with success.

matt has been a master canner over the last year also, canning store-bought and home-grown fruits and veggies as well as chicken and beef stock to the point where we have no place to put it! and we got a chest freezer also, for storing the fruits of the animals, so to speak.

the biggest change will be my taking on the role of genuine homemaker; i have always been at least 50% of our income working in an office. i cannot wait to devote my time to things i care about and to be able to cease my zombifying "career" for a life of practicality.

so it's not a wild leap of faith to think we can make it on a farm--we started small changes living in town and will be expanding on them as we move away. my point is that it's possible to 'homestead' even if you don't have the amount of land you want... start small and you'll be surprised what you can do. just look at path to freedom...