The Power of the 5-minute tidy

I am an avid believer in Flylady's system of cleaning and household management. At one time in my life it was the ideal system to get my household in order and then I adapted it to help manage the farm at Whisper Wind. So one thing that Flylady says is that you can do anything for 5 minutes and she is so right about that. You CAN do ANYTHING for 5 minutes. Set a timer and check it out if you don't believe me. The best thing about doing them regularly is the huge difference they can make in cleaning, organization, and cutting down big messes/projects into little chunks. They have to be my favorite part of the flylady system. We have been cleaning up around here ever since we moved in. There was 30 years worth of stuff left here by the previous owner. Then when the house was renovated, extra material unused materials from the house were just dumped in the flower beds and out by the barn. When I say there was stuff I wasn't kidding. The barn was full, next to the barn was full, and then there was discarded stuff all over the place. We are still working on this although we have hauled off and burned loads and loads. We still have hot spots as flylady would say because we had nowhere else to put our stuff and then there are the piles where stuff was being used. Anyway, I think you get the picture. Anyway, I have used the power of the 5 minute tidy to clean up and organize many things. This week, I am going to challenge myself to complete as many 5 minute tidy's as I can without making it a chain, which then becomes real cleaning. I am going to take before and after pictures so that you can see the power of the Tidy and the versatility of it as well. It doesn't have to be limited to the inside of the house at all. Let's get set, ready and tidy! Blessings, Kat

Our Goals for Willow Pond

I realized this week that this blog for Willow Pond will be like Whisper Wind Farm a little, but mostly it will be very unlike Whisper Wind Farm. Whisper Wind Farm was all about experimenting, learning, and adventuring into a new life filled with better health and more self sufficiency. Willow Pond will have a bit of that as we have talked about with the garden. But for the most part I know what works for us. I am mostly done experimenting just for the sake of trying  something new. Our family is smaller so our needs are a bit smaller as well. Our eating habits have changed and seem to be changing a little more. I am sure that our goals might evolve a little more as time goes on and we get more used to our new little place, but for now here is where we are thinking of our journey heading.

Retirement- We will be here when we retire and most likely this will be the last house/farm that we will buy. We like our way of life and will probably continue doing this to some degree or another for a very long time, health permitting. With that being said we are looking at our design ideas from a retirement aging in place perspective. Making things built well, in a permanent type manner so to speak, with a design that will be easy on aging bodies. Hence the raised garden beds in an enclosure. I think it will make gardening well into our golden years much more possible and also much more enjoyable.

Livestock areas more easily managed- Of course since we are working with something already here it won't be exactly what I would like to have in my minds eye. But we are doing a great job of making what we have into what we want to have. It is taking time and money but will be worth it in the long run. Some of this goes along with our long term gold years/retirement plan of having things easier to deal with on aging bodies. Our livestock area is set up to easily move animals with minimal effort (the simple opening of a gate). It is also set up so that there is a place for everything and things can be kept where they are needed most.

Manageable Landscaping- I love a beautiful yard and I love cottage type gardens. But I also love to do many things...not just one. So our thoughts are to continue the previous owners idea of having a beautiful landscaping that needs minimal input from us. We have things blooming throughout the year here already and those things need very little from us. Average care needed is about an hour a week. I could do more and probably will do more as I love gardening and do want to add some more. We also want to cut down on the grass that we mow.  We have already cut that down by adding another paddock. But the gardening that I am planning for beauty is also being planned for ease of care. Perennials are definitely the way to go.

House-- We spent 16 years in a house that we hated because we loved the property and it was in a location that was good for us at the time. When we looked for property this time, the house took a bigger priority on the list, which is why we settled for 6.5 acres when we were searching for 10-15 acres. I love my little cottage. It is beautiful. It isn't falling apart and won't be the money pit that the other was. It has been updated and cared for over the years unlike our previously vacant and neglected hulk of outdated everything. The rooms are big and open and it is charming for us.  We love our little cottage and it is easily maintained and I imagine will continue to be so as we age.

Economics- Our biggest goal was to be able to go into retirement with no house payment. We have no illusions that our retirement will be smaller than we would like it to be. We started saving young, but life's hardships hit us badly and we not only had to stop for a number of years but wound up living on what had been paid. We would have starved otherwise and are thankful that the money was there to see us through. However, we are a bit more behind than we would like. So we wanted something that was reasonable enough to be paid off in 15 years. This house will be paid off before we retire and that will be a huge boon to being able to live off our retirement.

Health- We are no longer interested in experimenting. We know what we eat, we know the ins and outs of processing different animals and what we use the most of. So the food that we either grow or raise will be what will be most beneficial for us both in time and use. I will make very little cheese, because I eat very little dairy anymore. My youngest daughter doesn't like cheese at all. So my husband is the only one who eats cheese. Also for that matter will mean keeping fewer goats. Fewer goats is always easier, I don't care what anyone says.

Lifestyle- My youngest daughters interest is in horses. She is looking to do some heavy competing and maybe one day make a career as a trainer/coach/barn owner/competitor. So our focus is beginning to shift to be more on horses again. We are looking at paddock setups for our little place. It will also serve the other animals well also as a rotational system. However, we are leaving enough room for a jumping area and a full size dressage arena. Right now her training bill is high and will only get higher unless we can bring that training home. This is huge for us. As a homeschooling mom my goal is not only to teach my child in the traditional subjects, but also to give them the extra training/schooling that might be a career path for them. This daughter is severely dyslexic. She has thought about it and said that maybe college isn't the right path for her and she might be right. So maybe she has another path that is uniquely hers and being homeschooled she has the opportunity to explore that path early. We are giving her that opportunity. And of course I am delighted since riding was a big part of my life and probably would have been my career choice had my family supported me in any way.

So that so far is our list of goals and aspirations for this place. We are excited about this journey that we have entered into with more confidence thanks to the ups and down of our journey at Whisper Wind Farm. Blessings to all, Kat

Trying New Things with Hugulkultur

What?! is...hugulkultur. Well, simply put hugulkultur is a method of gardening designed to save water and add nutrients and tilth to the soil. I lazily used hugulkultur for a large flower bed at the old farm and I am planning to use a combination of HGK (hugulkultur) for my new raised beds because they are so deep and wide enough to accommodate this to a certain extent. That old flower garden did grow beautiful flowers that multiplied and all of that without much of any effort on my part. I rarely watered in and only once a year pulled a few weeds out of it. Of course, like everything that I do I modify things a bit to suit me. So let me explain HGK in the way that I understand it. Typically with this method of gardening a pit is dug, filled with wood and then the soil mounded over the top of the wood. Like I suggested this created a mound on which all sides can be planted. This is much like the concept of biodynamics and deep digging. As the wood breaks down organically is tends to hold more moisture therefore creating less need for water. It also improves the tilth of the soil. Much like a forest floor that has years of organic matter broken down on it. The soil is soft and spongy, easily workable. Getting a little more scientific it is thought that the breakdown of the carbon in the wood will lock any nitrogen breakdown into the soil so that it is available for the plants to use. Therefore the soil is full of nutrition for healthy strong plants. The true puritan method of hugultur sounds like a lot of work and seems like it would require a good amount of wood. Since I am building raised beds then I have my own bit of work of a different kind, but at least it isn't digging a trench. Also, we don't have a lot of excess wood. We have some....mostly small branches cleaned up from around the yard and off the fenceline. Just tidying up kind of stuff. However, all that little stuff will help fill these large raised bed containers that I am building. See that is my main motivation, because having moved and not able to bring all of my good soil from the old farm I am starting fresh. Starting fresh translates to I don't have much to start with. I am simply trying to fill some space that might actually have some use. I get rid of the yard trash in a useful manner and it might help make my garden grow. But if you are really interested in hardcore permaculture then check out hugulkultur gardening more in depth. Hardcore permies type folks swear by it and they know a whole lot more about it than I do. Blessings, Kat

Lasagna Gardening

I read the book Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza right after it first came out years ago. I used that method for my first couple of small gardens and did really well. Then I moved more into biodynamics looking for more production and bigger gardens. The reason that I abandoned this method as my gardens grew was that it was hard to find enough "lasagna" materials for a very large garden without spending money and.. well.. back then we didn't have any to spend. So all of our materials had to be free and found. However, we are shrinking in size again and I need to help fill all of these deep raised beds. I have a large round bale of hay that is old and needs to be gotten rid of, I have an uncomposted pile of horse/goat/chicken manure, I have a copious amount of weeds being cleaned up from a very overgrown yard, and now I have a ton of leaves falling daily into the yard. Sounds like lasagna material to me. With the lasagna method you build a compost pile, layering green and brown material. Ideally, you would then let it compost. Then you would plant it and watch your garden grow. However, in the book Patricia was in a rush one year and so she built her "lasagna" then planted directly on top before it had a chance to fully compost. She had the best garden ever that year according to her book. I am using relatively fresh horse and chicken manure which tends to compost "hot" and can burn plants. I have a few months before I plan on planting. I also am putting that material further down in the lasagna layering so as not to burn any plants from the heat produced. So, once I layer my lasagna layers then I will have filled most of the space within my beds and will be able to scrounge up enough dirt (from the French drains around the barn) to layer on top. Then I should have some really rich material from which to watch my garden grow! Let's hope it works. Blessings from the farm, Kat

Our Raised Bed Garden

The garden at Whisper Wind was a double dug garden and it was rather large with beds going in several different directions. during the peak of growing season it often resembled a wild overgrown jungle. Vegetables intertwined with flowers and herbs to make a mass of vegetation that only a gardener could make sense of. It was beautiful and I loved the wildness of it. However, we have one thing in abundance here at Willow Pond that we did not have in abundance at Whisper Wind.....snakes. Some of which are venomous and I really do not want to find one in my wild tangle of vegetable madness. I don't mind the non venomous ones. We have a very large black rat snake living in the tree behind the barn and we had a nest of baby corn snakes near another tree. But we have also had 3 water moccasins and one copperhead. Our dog was bitten by one of these nasties already and I don't relish joining him on the victim list. While I cannot completely snake proof a garden I can do what I can to make it not so accessible to them. So I am going with raised beds in a square keyhole configuration that will provide an outside wall to discourage snakes from entering inside the working area. The beds themselves will be 2 feet tall and covered in recycled roofing metal. Then the outside perimeter of the garden will be another 4 feet high with chicken wire covered in bird netting. We are then going to use an old screen door for the garden gate. So all of this will form our garden "room". I could have done the raised beds shorter, but I am trying to think long term. We plan to retire here and at some point in my life I won't like to bend over very much. I will still want to garden and I am sure it will remain a sort of therapy for me. So the extra height will mean that I won't have to bend over hardly at all to work in the garden. I will also be able to sit on the side of the beds to work if necessary. Typically, it is recommended that a raised bed garden be 4 feet wide, but I am short and since I won't be able to work this garden from both sides because of the wall of chicken wire I kept it to 3 feet in width. This is a comfortable reach for me since I am a bit short, but also if I am sitting. I am filling the beds in a combination huegulkultur, lasagna garden fashion. We have had many small limbs and such that needed to be cleaned up around the yard and especially in the pasture so I am gathering these and packing them into the bottom of the beds. Then I am layering old hay on top, with a layering of weeds and yard clippings, then old hay, then manure, then old hay and then soil and compost mix. It is a good deal of space to fill and I am just getting started with the filling as I am building so this is a work in progress that I expect will take several weeks to complete. I truly can't wait to see it finished though and expect that I will be really happy this spring working in my new garden. Happy Gardening, Kat