… or what have we NOT? (That might be a shorter list)
Here’s a short photo-tour of the happenings this spring:
That’s it, pretty much. We’re growing bunnies, ducklings, piglets, and a calf, besides our regular posse of children. Babies all over!
Summer has been very, very busy. I write something in my head, and before I have a chance to sit and write it out, something else happens that is Even Better, and causes the previous thing to be uninteresting. Right now, chickens are The Thing, but we’re hoping to get the cows moved in before the end of the month, and maybe ducks next week. Goats need to be here before the end of the month. And everything takes longer than we expect, and requires at least twice as much talking as we anticipate, but the things we do are so much better together than they would be if we were making decisions individually. Here’s a few pictures of what’s happened over the summer:
And now, I think you’re mostly caught up. We are having Such A Good Time.
I was going to call this “On Construction” but we haven’t really constructed any buildings yet.
But we are getting things done! Really!
With Jasmine’s help we have moved our Big Steel Boxes that I mentioned here back in May when we got the property (Wow! Only 2 months!) onto our boneyard. (Erin already covered this, but still! Berm, yard, gravel pad for the boxes. Plus, our stuff!)
Now, the first pic in that post was the Sunriver sign at the gate. Well, we couldn’t leave it like that, so with some chalkboard paint and chalk, and a ladder, and Christiana’s artistic flair, now that sign looks like this:
But wait, that’s not all! We need roads to get places, and we have a creek( really just runoff flowing down a trench) which means we will need a bridge. So, prep for a road and bridge:
Sounds like lots, and it is, but there is more! Those darn pesky fields keep growing grass! Oh wait, it’s a farm, that’s a good thing. If you can get it into bales. So, a quick call from Tony to Roger Hodgkins, who has been haying these fields for years, and the hay has been cut, dried, turned over and dried some more. Now it is in rows waiting to be baled. Which I hope happens today! To be followed by moving the bales (let’s see if I survive that!).
Of course, we still have a farm with no hookups to power, gas, water or any of those things. But we do have the ball rolling on that. In fact, We have a well in the process of being drilled right now. The steel casing through the sand and gravel and clay is actually more expensive than drilling through bedrock!
There is also the barn which is being prepped to hold hay and livestock. (Will we have cows?) Christiana ran into a young couple that have done WOOFing, and they helped out by clearing the rotted boards from the barn floor, removing the bee nests, and leveling the dirt floor. Thanks Tomas and Naomi!
The bees actually cleaned up, and you might not notice them now. Which reminds me, I have to flag that, so they don’t get stepped on!
That’s it for now, but more to come, as we get there. You know what I mean 😉
Scott.
The Bees have completely moved, so I don’t need to flag them.
Drilling still going, down to the 80-100 foot range…
(updated tags and Categories)
We’ve had the marvelous and adept Jasmine at our farm, for the past little while, and she drives Big Machinery.
Jasmine has scraped away the two inches of soil on top of the driest and least living part of our farm, so we can use the space for materials storage and parking. She built an earth berm, filled with brush and old wood, so we have a bit of privacy and delineation (dogwalkers like to know where to go, and we made a nice path) in the short term and a decent place to grow things (hugelkultur!) after a wet winter. We had our containers delivered, on to cement blocks on top of carefully leveled (by Jasmine) gravel. Of course, the containers weigh an average of 15,000 lbs apiece, and so they crushed the cement blocks immediately and settled comfortably on the gravel. Due to Jasmine’s expert leveling job, we didn’t need to do any adjustments to the ad-hoc, not quite-as-planned delivery.
We’re planning to make a roof between them, for a workshop space and materials storage. Solar panels on the roof, though that plan is still developing and may change.
Having some heavy machinery on site definitely makes things go faster. We’ve discovered that the bottom-most field, where there isn’t much growing but trailing blackberries, patchy grass, and alders, was used as a dump site for excess rocks and gravel. “Lots of road-base!”, declared Jasmine happily.
We’ve got a second berm underway, and a proto-goat-yard. We’ve planned two minimalist access roads (though no road is minimalist with Jasmine around – she has to make sure it’s level, and won’t get potholey or mucky, and probably has to dig down a meter or so and add some of our newly uncovered road base to make sure it will continue to be a road. “I’m just returning the land to what it was, before those developers messed around with it!”, says Jasmine, “And don’t you want it to look nice? How about a nice road, here, and clearing out all that brush?”. She’s an artist with a backhoe, and it’s awfully nice to have her, even if I have to keep convincing her that some of the plants are fine just where they are.
Great Things Are Afoot!
Sometimes it’s so hard to stop doing fun things in order to document them.. but now, we have a new format!
We painted over our “For Sale” sign in chalkboard paint. Of course, for the reason enumerated above (also a distinct lack of ladder), we have not yet written on it. But we will!
What is ours? 2385 Phillips Road, Sooke, BC.
You can use the CRD Atlas viewer (<-here) to check it out. On the left side, under the ruler is the World icon, which you can use to do a Search for a street address. Our 11.96 acres are east of Philips, and both north of Shambook Drive (3 acres) and south of Shambrook drive (the rest of it).
ALL OURS!
OK, so we might have to share a bit with dog walkers from time to time, but the paperwork is complete, and we have the key to the shared gate at the start of Shambook Drive.
Which of course, moves us onto the next phase. Building!
But wait! Build what? Where? And what do we start with first?
Will it be a tool shed that we can get power to, so we can run tools? Do we make use of the two structures already present? Or perhaps an outhouse like the one pictured below? It will take time before we can hook up to the city, after all.
What about the storage containers? Are they too ugly to have them be visible from the road? Or do we put them where we are most likely to be doing work projects, and have them convenient? We can always move them again later after all.
Clearly, decisions need to be made. Stay tuned, and find out what choices we made!
Scott.
Here’s the entry to the foundation off the road, on the west side. This is the highest part of the property, with a big sunny field below.
The foundation is sturdy and whole, though full of junk. There’s a spot for a door, windows, and a pillar-thing for a fireplace. Someone wrote “Foundation” on it.
Here’s an image of the car for you, Ingo!
and another.
We have a fair amount of work to do, if we want to use the foundation for anything. Years and years of random junk and rocks have been dumped here, including a big pile of broken glass, and there are a handful of mature alders growing inside. Still, it might be a good place to start, during the early days when we haven’t gotten animals yet. I look forward to getting some heavy-duty gloves (and perhaps a tetanus shot) and getting started.