Back in September 2012, we purchased 1.5 acres, plus a home from Marianne's Grandmother located in Essex County in southwestern Ontario. The neighbouring 1.5 acres attached is owned by Marianne's mother which we tend to look after with half of it consisting of Norway Spruce, tamaracks, the occasional maple, mulberry, plus a couple of sycamores on the property line.
At that point on our new property there was one garden plot which had butternut squash, along with some roma tomatoes that Marianne's Mom would use to make soup.
The following year in 2013, we mowed the back field which consisted of goldenrod, milkweed and long grass, and created three more garden plots while keeping the long grasses in hope of planting some wildflowers in the future. Being on sandy loam we have pretty good soil that seems to grow almost anything! We also built a chicken coop and we have now had three years of chickens for meat and eggs. Our first year of trying to live a bit more sustainably is illustrated in our blog called "back2basics 2013":
http://www.back2basics2013.blogspot.ca/
Besides gardening, we also obtained seven 55 gallon rain barrels for collecting rain water in the future, purchased a pressure canner, lost chickens to predators, created a compost bin, lost crops to disease and frost, and learned a few more things along the way.
2014 was a little more relaxed since we now had more of a foundation set. We built another compost bin, dug up brambles in our yard and replanted them where we built a trellis, and also built a cold store in the basement that has two air vents leading outside under our front step to bring in cold air during the winter. A major project that we looked into was getting solar power, but because the grid capacity is maxed here the micro fit program is now unavailable to us. This means we would have to do it ourselves, which, at this current time is unfeasible.
In 2015 we built another trellis and purchased some raspberry plants, created a strawberry bed with June bearing plants, and planted asparagus rootstock. Towards the end of the year we cleared another patch in our yard in the hopes of planting a small orchard and started building the framework of a greenhouse before the cold set in.
Over the past few years we have accumulated some knowledge (mainly through trial and error) and have had some pretty good memories. That is the purpose of this blog, to share our journey with those interested, as well as to help ourselves remember everything we have done by easily accessing it through this blog. It would be nice to go completely off grid and live the life on a real homestead, but this seems not to be an option at this point in time in our lives. To go completely off grid on a homestead would be great but at this point in time this seems out of our grasp.
-Aaron and Marianne
