Category: agriculture

105 Articles
agriculture, self sustainability

I’m getting good at changing implements

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A nightmare if you’re allergic to pollen

Stuck in the mud once more… The truck will pull it out.

Take 2, with board to help not sink in. We need more culverts.

Off we go! later suckers, me & my tractor have got some fields to mow.

agriculture, self sustainability

From one Vermont hill

To our Vermont hill

Featuring: some guy with a giant ass tractor

Compost is gold, we haven’t been so good at making our own and the raspberries haven’t grown so well. This year we’re trying to pamper them more by weeding them more aggressively and making sure they’ve got more than enough nutrients in the soil.

agriculture, self sustainability

We’ve been watching an excellent crowdfunded documentary series called Woodlanders. It brought to our attention a guy working to reintroduce the chestnut tree to American forests. We couldn’t believe it was even possible to acquire young chestnuts so we pretty much had to place an order. It arrived this week and to our surprise it still had leaves from the season previous. This is when it hit us what it meant to be planting this.

agriculture, self sustainability

We’re moving the garden to an area closer to the house and with much better soil

Found a few carrots from last season 🙂

Added 18 blueberry plants to the ~40 we have now; 18 more to come in 2 weeks.

agriculture, self sustainability

A bit late and not super well done but we don’t want to skip a season. We planted ~400 cloves.

 

We got leaves from the forest, one the of many things trees give us.

 

Today’s insulation is tomorrow’s soil

agriculture, self sustainability

IMG_9486The wettest May I’ve ever seen in Vermont and by far. Everything is made harder by the constant rain and the soggy grounds it creates. Of course this is the year we chose to do a big push planting fruit bearing trees & shrubs. Nicole already planted a row and the garlic is still growing but we’re going to keep the garden fairly tame this year.

agriculture, self sustainability

2 pear trees (one heavily defended)IMG_9459

2 more red currentsIMG_9461

2 plum treesIMG_9462

3 more apple “trees”IMG_9463

2 cherry treesIMG_9464

With everything we are putting in the ground this year, in 4 to 5 years, we should reach the point where our land produces much more than we know what to do with. This will coincide with being close to, if not entirely debt free. We might even have built a rental house by then too.

It’s impossible to know what things will look like exactly, but it’s easy to foresee there will be a tipping point where we finally reap the rewards of our hard work and investments.

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