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Winter 2025

I just updated my blog server configuration, so thought I would write a quick post to make sure everything is working well.

It’s already March in Vermont, still snow on the ground and icy. We’ve had a few warmer (40s) days, but not enough to start the significant thaw/melt than tends to try to mess up the driveway.

I’ve got some small seedlings poking up in my grow area in the basement, hoping to get better germination and growth this year. I’ve been experimenting with various LED lights to try to cut down on electricity usage, but whatever I did last year didn’t seem to work very well. Had a lot of trouble with seedlings not taking off and really get up to size. We did get a new greenhouse last spring to replace the one that blew down, but it was ready in time to help many of the seedlings along. This year should be better with that as an option.

Otherwise, I’m expecting some apple rootstock to arrive soon, as well as some scion wood. I need to soon take some cuttings from the orchard as well to try to start a few more trees of some of our favorite varieties. Hoping to get another 8-10 trees started and also still have a bit of rootstock in pots from last year where grafts didn’t take. So I plan to continue expanding our various orchards, It will be interesting to see how many of the new trees from last year did okay through the winter and take off this spring.

This past year we got enough apples to press about 2 and 1/2 gallons of cider from fruit from our orchards. This is the first time we’ve had any substantial yield from fruit grown on the property, so that was an exciting milestone. Lately I’ve been focusing more on full-size to nearly full-size trees as the wind around here is not very nice to the semi-dwarf trees and we keep losing some each year. Also focusing more on crab apples as they seem to be much less picky, don’t have as much trouble with disease and still make a great cider. Looking forward to seeing what this year’s growing season brings.

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Spring 2023 Homestead Tour Videos

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here, but just in case anyone is still checking this out. I’ve been creating a decent amount of content for my job, which leaves me not wanting to spend my free time doing this as much. On the other hand, I’m gradually getting better at video production and narration so I can put that to use here.

These videos are very lightly edited, mostly free-form. To be honest, I mostly do them for myself as one way of tracking progress over time on the property. But hopefully you’ll find it interesting to see what we’ve been up to lately as well and see various new projects we’re working on.

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Completed Stone Walls in Garden

Quick post to show the completed stone walls. The masons came yesterday with some beautiful flat rock from over the mountain in Vermont. The walls are now capped and generally finished out and the whole effect looks much more complete.

From the deck
Here you get a sense of the lovely late spring flower bed in front of the garden
Detail from inside the garden
Looking from behind the wall across the valley
More detail from the back of the wall
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Starting Again With Ducks

Every since we lost most of our flock to a bobcat, we’ve been wanting to get ducks again. They are so much fun to watch and act very differently from chickens. Weather doesn’t really phase them and they mostly forage for food when there isn’t snow on the ground. Plus you get eggs, although our last group was fairly sporadic.

It’s difficult when you only have room for a small flock as most hatcheries like to ship at least six or seven and we don’t have room for that many. However, we found that Metzer Farms will ship fewer, but there are extra shipping costs for a heat bag and some other things. It’s pretty pricey, so we went back and forth for awhile. Ultimately decided it was worth it since we wanted to choose the breed and the expense over time really isn’t that bad if they all survive.

We now have the fenced-in pasture, so we think they will fare better against predation this time around. Unfortunately the little mini-pond we created is outside the fence boundaries, but maybe we’ll dig that out again and let them free-range a bit in the summer. The field that is fenced also gets pretty wet in the spring, so perhaps there is an opportunity to create a swale or small ditch as well.

Given the recent troubles with the post office, we were a bit concerned about delays. The ducks ship from California. However, they actually arrived sooner than expected, shipped on a Monday and arrived early Wednesday morning. They were in great shape and very active in the shipping container. They all look great so far and are growing like crazy. We’ve already had to take them out of the initial brooder (a stock tank) and put them in our old chicken tractor inside the garage. They still need a bit of heat, but I think even that won’t last much longer. It has been a bit cooler at night here going into fall, so they still need a bit of help to stay warm. They seem to find cuddling together works most of the time though.

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Spring 2020 Homestead Preview – Back Garden

I wanted to complete this series of videos by showing progress in the back garden. Almost getting into summer at this point, but we’re still getting things planted here and there. Still have a handful of seedlings in the greenhouse finishing up that aren’t quite ready to plant out.

It’s been really hot here, the better part of last week saw highs in the upper 80s and 90s. It may have even cleared 100 one day. Kristin is saying we moved to a place that is too hot. All joking aside, the typical Vermont year sees about 4 days over 90 and we’ve already had 6 or 7. To compound things, we’ve gotten almost no rain as this high pressure system is very strong and persistent. Typically you would get thunderstorms when it’s this hot, but other than a bit of messing around on Saturday afternoon, even that hasn’t happened. This week doesn’t look much better until next weekend, at least as far as rain. I’ve been having to water something every day. At least the tomatoes and peppers like it.

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Spring 2020 Homestead Preview – Orchard

This will mainly be a short post to point to the video I made for this, but a couple of notes. I was looking at some photos from the very first planting (2014) and it was a bit surreal to see how empty this space was at the time. We planted a lot of trees the first three years and then slowed down a bit. We’ve lost a few. Figured out the lower end of the slope is just too wet for apple trees to thrive, so going to discontinue using those spots. I’ve tried a few trees there, none of them are happy. This year I moved up to the top of the slope and out towards the swale a bit more. I think those will do better.

We’re also trying cold-hardy peach and apricot this year, as I probably mentioned elsewhere. These are not in the orchard, but on the northwest side of the house where there is a lot of shade in spring and the ground warms slowly.

Also, this year I bought some root stock and I’m going to try to graft a few trees myself. If that doesn’t end up too terribly, I’ll try to show some pictures of that at some point.

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Spring 2020 Homestead Preview – Stone Wall Progress

I’ve mentioned before we have been working on a dry stone wall to run along the back of our garden. This is a landscape element I’ve long been fascinated with, mostly due to its relative permanence, the history attached to it and the almost zen aspect of building them. I have a mason friend who has been helping us who has a lot more experience and training than me, but I have been able to put what I’ve learned so far to use. It’s one of those skills where learning the basic techniques is simple, but mastery can take a lifetime.

We made good progress last year and should be able to finish off this portion by mid-year or so. The hardest part is getting the right selection of rock without breaking the bank. We got a load of quarry rock delivered last year, but many of those rocks are too large to easily move without equipment. One more reason to finally buy that tractor. Still, there is a lot of good stone there and it was relatively cheap.

I was happy to see the wall barely moved all winter and so far it’s been good with all the rain this spring. So I think the foundation is working reasonably well.

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Spring 2020 Homestead Preview – Windbreak

Here is the second video showing the windbreak area we’ve been trying to establish on the northwest to north side of our house. It’s probably going to end up being a visual or noise break more than a windbreak. It won’t quite be tight enough to completely break up the wind, but hopefully will at least disrupt it a bit. The wind on this side of the house hits our bedroom directly and there are always some nights every year where it is so loud it is hard to sleep. In addition, we actually get a lot of road noise from the main road running not too far from our house. So trying to break that up a bit as well.

Initially, we planted a few evergreens and those are the oldest trees. A few years ago, we worked with a local agro-forestry expert to come up with more of a plan. The result of that is the two lines of trees you’ll see in the video.

We’re also hoping to start to fill in some of the space between the house and the windbreak with edible landscape plants. Hoping the shelter of the trees starts to create a bit more of a micro-climate, with some wind protection and temperature moderation. I’m also still on a quest to reduce the amount of lawn on the property and replace it with more diversity. Gradually moving towards a more permaculture way of approaching the landscape.

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Spring 2020 Homestead Preview – Front Garden

As we start to make progress on transforming our property, I thought it might be interesting to video the state of things here at the start of spring. I’m planning to do several of these videos focused on different parts of the property.

This first one is showing what is going on out in front of our house. The front garden has been problematic, although we’ve been able to do some good things with it. It generally ends up overtaken by weeds by the end of the summer. Because this used to be pasture, there are well established rhizomic grasses that like to run about 6-12 inches under the soil. The grass shoots then pop up everywhere and unless you get rid of the roots, it just comes back. I’ve tried doing major digging and weeding to pull out roots, but it’s a bit of a fool’s errand.

There is also some sort of low ground-cover weed that probably came in on wood chips originally. It also has a rhizome growth habit. Between these two weeds and the heavy clay soil, it’s been frustrating. I should’ve listened to my wife and cover-cropped it for a few seasons before trying to plant there. Although with all the grasses underground, it wouldn’t have completely solved the problem. I just purchased an EGO edger, mainly for our flower beds and other beds in the lawn. But it might help here as well if we can cut off the traveling roots.

As I mention in the video, we’re going to use this more for perennial food bushes, possibly growing tree starts and then try to use raised beds and hugel for anything seasonal we grow. I also think the hardscape around much of the boundary of the garden will help keep the lawn from encroaching quite so much.

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Kicking off 2020

Well, just a note to say I haven’t disappeared. I had a very busy 2019 with work that involved more travel than usual. As a result, I barely had time to keep up with the garden, much less blog. Still had a pretty good year as we continue to move toward a more permaculture and less structured approach.

What that meant for this past year was more hugelcultur, which we continue to see good success with. We’ll probably add some more mounds this year. Also additional raised beds. At this point, we are doing very little traditional row gardening at all.

The other thing I started working on last year was basically putting hardscape around the beds and edges of the garden. Not fully done yet, but got a good start going. I didn’t want to do this for a long time as it involves basically giving up on any exposed soil that we don’t have things planted in. However, the reality is we spend way too much time weeding garden paths, the edges of the garden where the lawn encroaches and other areas mainly used for plant access and not for actually growing anything. That’s not the part of gardening I enjoy. I would rather spend time weeding just around actual plants, harvesting, amending the soil and so on. Practically, what I mean by hardscape is landscape fabric/weed barrier covered with stone. This has the added advantage of looking nice, keeping surrounding lawn from moving in and also may act as a heat sink to keep the overall garden micro-climate a bit warmer. Not sure on that last one, but seems reasonable.

I also finally started working on a dry stone wall last year and will continue this spring. I took a class a few years ago, so I know the basics. Don’t have much practical experience though, so I have a more experienced stone mason helping out. It’s been slow, but rewarding. The first wall is running along the back of our rear garden. Pictures to come as we start working on it again. We should have the first run of about 25 feet done this spring. It’s fairly short, about 30-36 inches tall. Looking very cool already.

Last weekend I did my first round of seed starting, so the 2020 growing year has begun. Hope to provide more updates this year than last.