New Garden Spot

I ended last my post about our new house with the following picture and a promise to update you on our new garden.

One of the things I love are the paved walkways between the beds.  We had enough paving stones for a couple of walkways.

And, we used bricks left over from the house for others.

The raised beds we built are taller than the ones we had before.  These make weeding so much easier.  This one contains carrots which have done very well this fall.  We've had several nights with temperatures in the teens, but the carrots have not been hurt.

Another of these beds contains lettuce which has done great. The tops of some of the plants did get nipped by the cold weather, but not too badly.

This bed is only 2 concrete blocks tall.  Nothing was planted (intentionally) in it, but we used some of soil from the garden at the old house in this bed and we have a bumper crop of cilantro!  

We moved our cattle supplement tubs from our old house and will be using them this spring.  You may remember in the past, I wrote a couple of posts about using them in our backyard garden.   Cattle Tub Garden

We took down our large hoop house (high tunnel) when we moved and have yet to decide whether we want to put it back up.  We are looking at the possibility of selling it.  However, we have built a small one.

We planted peas in it, along with a few onions and a couple of rows of lettuce.

We are experimenting with how we can make the most of gardening in this small area.  I'm sure we have a learning curve ahead of us.  But, I think this is going to be just right for our new "down-sized" life.  We still have a larger "in-ground" area for things like corn, tomatoes, okra and peppers.  However, we do not plan to continue gardening on a large farmers market scale, like we used to.  

New House and Garden

It's been several months since I updated this blog.  In March, we divided 2 acres off from our property and started building a house.  We were getting to the age where navigating the stairs in the old house just didn't feel safe anymore.  The house plan we chose was a small one-story 1500 sq ft plan.  We asked the builder to make it handicapped accessible.  This included wide doorways and a walk-in shower.  We had a lot of rain this spring and summer, so it took longer than expected to build it.  However, it was worth the wait.   We are now moved in and settled.  Here's a picture of the house.

One of the features I love about this house is the breezeway which separates the attached garage from the living part of the house.  We have moved our recycling containers and a potting bench into the breezeway.  We also park the Gator there.  The garage is over-sized, so there is room for both vehicles, along with an extra refrigerator and a workbench for whatever farm projects we have.

You may be wondering what we did with the rest of the farm.  We sold it along with the house and outbuildings to our daughter and son-in-law.  It puts him much closer to his work.  So, it worked out well for all of us.  The two acres we kept has plenty of room for a big garden, our chickens and raised beds. 

The biggest reason I didn't write anything for the blog during this period of time is we lived in an RV for 4 months while the house was being built.  

It wasn't easy with the two of us, a dog and cat, but we survived.  The RV is 20 something years old, but is in good shape and we got a really good deal on it.  The best thing about the experience was we parked it in the back yard and could check on the new house progress everyday.  We got to know most of the workers and gave them extra produce and tomato plants.  In turn, they built us a deck for the RV out of scrap lumber.  We do not plan to use the RV anymore.  It runs well, but we are not comfortable with driving it.  So, we are looking for a buyer.  If you know of anyone who would be interested, please contact us via the blog.  

While I spent most of the summer inside the RV trying to keep up with the garden produce in the small kitchen, Hubby was busy getting the chickens moved and building some new raised beds.  I'll write more on these topics later, but I want to share a little about the raised beds he built.  

As you can see, he made them 3 concrete blocks tall.  It was amazing how many concrete blocks we had when he disassembled the old beds and collected others we had laying around here and there!  He also put paving stones around them to help keep Bermuda grass out and it is nice to have paved walkways between them.

We also have plenty of room for an in-ground garden, as well.

I'll write more in the next few weeks about our new scaled-down life.  But, for the time being, I just wanted to give you a summary of the last few months and to let you know we are still alive!