Once Again it has been Awhile

 Yes, once again it has been awhile. I always have the best of intentions, but life this past year was a bit "more" than I planned. Or ever thought it would be. I thought I was leaving the restaurant business last July. However, I was asked to stay and for some reason I just could not say no. Shortly after my mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was in her bones, spread all over her body and no one could determine where it originated from. After a whirlwind month of appointments, testing, radiation to shrink a tumor for pain relief; Mom was sent home with the diagnosis of there is nothing more that we can do but try to manage the pain. Mom went downhill pretty quickly. In July, we were going out to lunch after doctor's appointments. In August we were doing the same but Mom was tired a little more. In September, it was becoming harder to manage mom's pain and even though we went to lunch a couple of times the pain became too much and our trips ended. By October the pain was really hard, but she did not want us to call in hospice. Toward the middle of October she stopped eating and just drank a few sips of an ensure. We called in hospice the last week of October and Mom passed away the first week of November.  My mother's health had been horrible for years and there had been many times that I had called my sister from the hospital and told her to come home. Mom always made a recovery....until she didn't.  It was expected, anticipated, prepared for....but it still hit me like a freight train that my mama was gone. The person I had coffee with each week and went out to lunch with at least once a month if she felt like it. The person I called in the event anything good or bad happened in my life. It has been a tough year even though I know Mom's suffering is over. She missed the birth of her first great grandchild by just 2 months. It was a hard day. I also lost my Godmother in August, just as things were ramping up with Mom. Work became much more busy than I bargained for and then I was hit with another blow. My Goddaughter passed away. She was young. Now, I am in another transition period. I am leaving the restaurant and coming back home. I will go back to writing and working on my artwork. Our little homestead is still going strong and we are getting ready to search for a new buck for our little herd. The rabbits are breeding like rabbits and we currently have 2 chickens. We have had a difficult time with chickens here on this homestead, but I think that might be another post. My oldest had a baby in January, she is now 25. My youngest is getting ready to finish high school soon and thinks she wants to be a marine biologist. I am a Nana and my husband is a Grandaddy. Yes, time for another chapter in our life and I guess back to blogging about our goings on and our thoughts. I guess it is time for the Journey of Willow Pond to actually become a real documented journey. So, my goal this week is to write daily and let's see if we can catch up on this journey. Blessings to all, Kat

It's Been Awhile

 Wow, 3 years!! It has been 3 years since I have posted anything here. Time to rev it up and get going again. So let me shake the dust off my keyboard, crack my knuckles, and see what my brain can come up with. It has been a very busy 3 years. Little britches has been riding horses, schooling, and playing volleyball. As if that isn't enough to keep a mom busy and a dad broke, I started what was supposed to be a part-time job. A very part-time job to help pay for all of these extras and extra projects to improve our little farm turned into a much bigger part-time job. At one time in my life, I was a restaurant manager. I went to a local restaurant just to be a relief cook on Saturdays. Earning a little extra money would help with some of the extra projects we wanted to do around here. Somehow, I am still not really sure how, I once again became the restaurant manager. I am still part-time, but a little more involved than just Saturdays. We have done quite a bit here on our little farm. Too much to list in one post, so I will work on that separately. I simply can't believe we have been here 5 years. The time has gone quickly. I feel like it is time to shift back to writing and crafts. I have some ideas that I am itching to get started on and it looks like my part-time job is going to become more part-time in the near future. Time for a shift in focus. Welcome everybody to Willow Pond. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as we are.

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

Book Challenge #2

Well, I finished the Time Machine and I must say that I enjoyed it very much. It was not at all as I expected it to be. It was an exciting book full of adventure. The general plot is that a scientist invents a time machine and travels to another world where he stays a little while because it seems like paradise. However, he soon realizes that the gentle people that he is staying with are actually "cattle" for the wild animalistic people of the underground. These almost inhuman beings have captured his time machine so that he cannot leave without encountering them on a very close and personal level. Then, of course, he runs into the dilemma of what to do with the sweet gentle people he has grown to care for now that he knows their eventual fate. As I said, not at all what I expected it to be.  It is a very delightful book. I suppose I could expound on deep theories and analyses. However, I was reading this simply for fun and to broaden my mental library. So I won't expound on anything other than it was a fun book and not overly long so it can be finished rather quickly.

My next adventure in reading is the complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I have read a few of these (Hound of the Baskervilles), but have not read in its entirety. I must say it is a bit drier than I expected so far. Anyone else out there in blogger land adding to their mental library?

 Blessings to all, Kat

Photo Friday 11/3/2017

Well, I have decided to post photos on Fridays to keep track of the progression of things around the farm. Really I will try to do better about keeping up with this. So here is the first set of photos.

This is the front of our cottage

Front of the barn. Complete mess because of all the projects going on.

Back of the barn, where the livestock stalls are at.

This is the fence that needs to be moved so that stall 1 in enclosed in the dry lot area.

Beginning of the garden area

Another view of the garden area

Fence line hayrack that we built. Can be utilized from both sides of the fence. Lattice work enables slowfeeding and less waste.

Wood Floor in stall 1 built from crossties and gravel dust

Our Willow and our Pond.

This is the newly cleaned rabbit colony almost completed. This was just before the last few hay bales went in.

Have a happy weekend!

Winterizing the rabbit colony

I really like to keep things simple in the winter because I just don't like being out in the cold anymore than I have to. So, I winterize the rabbit colony so that not much time needs to be spent in there. Today, I cleaned it out really well and cleaned all the "holes"/nesting areas. Then I lined and stacked enough hay bales so that there is enough hay for the winter in the colony but they are stacked in such a way that they also provide hiding places or nice warm beds for the rabbits. I put a good deep layer of clean shavings on the floor and made sure the feed can was full of feed. The feed will have to be refilled as it only holds enough for 2 months at a time. I also put another water bucket in there so that if I only get out there once a day then they have plenty of water, feed and hay. I moved the nesting holes around so that everyone of the girls can feel like they have some privacy. I also swept down all spider webs and covered a hole with hardware cloth to prevent anything from coming in the colony. It is a good idea to do maintenance things before inclement weather so that things stay in good working order and you don't have to be out anymore than necessary when the weather is bad. I do like where we have the colony in the barn, but I am just not sure that it is as big as we need it to be to accommodate all of our bunnies. We will see how it works out in the next year though and see what is happening by next summer. I might try putting some does in cages raised off the ground to kindle so as to prevent overcrowding. I have seen where we have had litters since we have moved but something killed one litter and then another litter was killed and eaten. hence the hardware cloth over the hole that might allow something small in. We know we have snakes and we have killed one rat (a really big one at that). Both love to eat baby bunnies, but competing does will also kill rival females' litters. The first litter that was killed was scattered all over the colony so we think that is what happened. Putting does in raised cages separately will give more room for does that are nesting on the floor. So we will just have to get a feel for our colony in this new situation and new place. Adjustments might have to be made. Blessings, Kat

Boy I am bad at posting on this new blog!

Man, I am really bad at updating this new blog. Our life has been really busy trying to get all projects done that are necessary for using the barn this winter. We had major flooding issues and so we put a French drain around the barn that now directs the water around the barn and into the pond so now the inside stays very dry even with copious amounts of water raining down. Fortunately we have very different soil than we did at Whisper Wind. There we had heavy clay soil and here it is much more sandy mixed with loam. It is beautiful soil and it perks really well. So, the French drain took some time and was a bit slow going. However, it is done and the inside of the stalls in the barn stay nice and dry. We then had to move a wall to make the stalls a little more horse friendly even though a couple of them will be used for goats. We had one large stall and then one that was really too small, but by moving the dividing wall a couple of feet both stalls are now comfortable for a horse. They aren't as large as I would really like them. Due to the age of the barn and stalls were not designed for maximum comfort of livestock back then we are doing pretty good to have them as comfortable as they are. The feed room is almost finished only needing the back wall and the back doorway. We still have some flooring to do but that small portion can wait until spring. We also had to refloor one stall on the back of the barn completely because it had bee dug out so much over the years that it was a good 2 feet lower than the outside, so that you had to jump down into it. We decided to use crossties and gravel to floor this stall. It isn't something that is common anymore to see stalls floored with wood because it can be slick when wet. However, wood is very insulating and has "give". We spaced the crossties a few inches apart and filled the spaces with gravel dust. This will allow for drainage and help with traction. The crossties are old railroad ties and so are well treated and will hold up for many years. Covered with shaving this will make a very comfortable and sturdy floor for any animal that the stall will hold over the years. This winter it will be goats. They will stay nice an snug in there with the new floor. The horse will be at the other end of the barn together and the chickens will be in the middle until we move them and then their stall will be used in February for kidding stalls for the goats. As I say it has been a ton of work and we still have the back fence to move and finish, along with the back of the feed room. We are almost done and the animals will be nice and snug this winter. It will also be sooooo much easier to get them all fed and cared for when it is cold and wet outside. Much nicer for me this winter. I really do think we are going to like this new place so much. Blessings to all, Kat