Humble Beginnings

(by Jay MacRobert)
So why did we (my wife and I) decide to start homesteading? Well, why not? I guess that is the easy answer, but truth be told it wasn't something we just up and decided to do one day. It started with relatively small interests in the different aspects of our current operation, without any expectations of where it would go. Then at some point along the way we discovered how rewarding these individual accomplishments were, how good we felt when engaging in the farm-stead activities, and how much we enjoyed visiting and working with others. Over the past several years we have made incremental commitments, or better put, we have incrementally increased our commitment to food production independence.

Seven years ago we moved out of our 950 square-foot townhome in town to a house on 10 acres about 10 minutes outside of a rural town in the Sierra Nevada's of Northern California. The house was built primarily of concrete blocks (cinder-block) in the 1950's. The land, while rectangular in lines is best described as topographically diverse. Most of it is very steep on a heavily-wooded north-facing slope. There are, however a few usable acres at the top of the property, which caps the hill and has some southern exposure. So there is some potential.

We did not initially set out to grow anything, our first order of business besides some overdue updating to the house, was to clear back the overgrown brush that presented a significant fire hazard. After that first winter we decided to get some chickens. Oh chickens. Let me go back a bit. When we lived in the townhouse we got a couple hens for egg production, which we had to give up due to HOA objections (rules are rules). So our prior experience gave us the false sense that we had a handle on things. Back to the new house and our second attempt at chickens (first at the new residence). It might be good for me to point out the absolute rural-ness of this location. We live in the fickin' woods man! Lions, skunks, and bears oh my. So it is to be expected that our first 'coop' was easily infiltrated and our hens (~6) decimated in a week. All those hours under heat lamps, etc. wasted. Our second attempt was a little more successful, but again we lost the lot. The third time around I acquired some building materials and put my carpentry skills to the test and constructed our first serious coop. This solution served well for a few years until about 3 years ago we converted a temporary car port (one of those you can get at the auto parts store or big box store) into a 20'x11' open air coop. This is our current solution and a very cost-effective one. I'm certain that there will be a future blog covering our chicken experiences in much more detail.

Around the time we were on our second batch of chickens I planted my first fruit tree, an almond. I did this in part because I liked almonds and they grow well in my climate, but also because I had started working on some changes in my life inspired by an earth-based spirituality that I had been doing a good bit of reading on (I may post something about the AODA in the future).

As the months and years clicked by we began expanding from these seeds. At one point we had several dozen birds, raising ducks, turkeys, chickens, and most recently Guinea Fowl for egg production, meat production, and pest control. We got our first couple of goats in Spring or 2013 and have had as many as 14 after a couple of kiddings but more regularly have between 5-7 goats. Look for the post on goats as well as the one on chickens.

It was probably spring of 2014 when we really started making progress in the garden department. We had both chicken and goat manure to use for fertilizer so we expected to do well. It is now fall of 2016, we have had both success and failure, but as it stands we have 2 peach trees, an almond tree, 2 cherry trees, a fig tree 5 small garden areas that we've irrigated, including those that also have an orchard component with a 6th in the works. We have 6 goats total, 3 does, one wether and two bucks. One of the bucks will soon be going to freezer camp like his big brother did last month. We have around 20 chickens including a huge Buff Orpington Rooster, and a few bantam hens. Add a couple of runner ducks and a half dozen Guinea fowl, three dogs and a cat and you might have an idea of the typical homestead cacophony we enjoy every day.