How We Got Here

Beautiful harvest basket from our home garden.

Over the past several years, our family has spent endless hours changing our backyard into more usable space.  We bought the house when I was pregnant with our first daughter, which was over eight years ago now. Every inch of the yard was covered in flowers, bushes, trees, and weeds.  There was literally not one blade of grass or open space left to be planted.  When we started clearing the property, it was not with the intention of growing our own food.  We simply wanted more open space and a nice yard for our kids to play in.

When we first bought the house, there was no open yard space for vegetable gardening.

My first garden was an 8x4 rectangle, planted in the shade of our backyard.  The soil was thin and mostly devoid of any type of plant-growing nutrient.  It was clearly a bad location for a garden, but it was all we had available at the time.

As our two young daughters got a bit older, we had more time and energy to devote to gardening, a hobby that was quickly becoming a passion.  Year by year, we slowly transformed our yard into more usable space for gardening.  We cleared forested land, brought in sand and compost to mix with our mostly clay soil, and installed underground drainage to address flooding.

Over time we cleared the land, added compost and started a proper vegetable garden.

While working to improve our land for vegetable gardening, we also added apple trees, cherry trees, blueberry bushes, grape vines, and a strawberry patch. We have a flock of egg-laying hens and this year, we raised our first batch of broiler chickens for meat.  We even make our own maple syrup in the Spring.

Despite all of the improvements to our land and the expansion of our garden, we still consider ourselves to be very novice! Most of our learning has been the result of making mistakes first.  Matt spends his spare time watching YouTube to learn about the care and maintenance of everything on the property.  I spend my spare time preserving and preparing all of the food we now produce.

Sometimes we enjoy the thought of being "homesteaders" some day.  For now, though, we will continue to add to our family farm and try to learn new skills to make us more successful!

Our current garden, complete with a fence, automated irrigation and weed mat.