one year in a new homestead

gotta start by saying i havent been on here much in the last year and i miss it.  but there is alot to do on a new homestead.  so last year we finally got our place.  8 acres in rural northern nevada.  its pretty flat  dry desert about 4600ft in elevation. the land is mostly hard clay.  test i have done show about 50%, with 25 sand and 25 silt approximately. the valley is large but completely surrounded by mountain tops..  i wanted a place i could really put my heart and soul into, that needed it, so i could make my own little paradise and help heal at least a little piece of our beautiful planet.  lots of work, but very rewarding.

the front yard was previously sodded and has an automatic sprinkler system that had been really let go.  started out trying to find all the heads.  got 12 lines with about 6 heads per line. some heads work,  some of the selenoids are still good, but there is alot of work to be done there,  got all the selenoids and input lines dug up, and plan on replacing some and changed the layout a lot.

the yard was/ is overgrown with these desert plants that i have been thinning out. piling them up on some of the bare clay areas.  only organic matter i have for free right now.  they are really deep rooted so pulling them out really helps till the soil.
along the fenceline by the road i have been digging 6 foot wide mounds with 6 foot in between.  these will eventually be for fruit or nut trees, but need to get some good organic matter in them first. i also dug a ditch around each mound and connecting them all.   plan on staggering mounds like this from the fence toward the house creating a little forest between us and the road.  i dig a 2 foot hole in the middle of each mound and dumped a few days worth of kitchen scraps in then water the heck out of them. planting 3 sisters, or okra and a mix of seeds, on each mound.  t in between the mounds i planted a mix of stuff just to see what would come up.  pretty much took all the seeds i have been gathering over the last couple years and put them all together. lots of okra and buckwheat plus some turnips radishes carrots peppers lettuces beans flowers.   been told root crops grow well here.  i have found lots of worms so loving that.
along the fences i have been planting beans.  all the free food they are giving away right now tends to include alot more beans then people think they can eat.  had several friends give me a few cases of dried beans.  definately gonna help with my organic matter for my soil around here.  so much of it is just bare, but not as much as last year

we were given 4 hens and a rooster.  and also a billie goat. i was not ready for any animals, but we are making it work.  our only shed became a coop, and we built goat a little lean to.  apparently they are all pretty happy.  so much so that 3 of the neighbors hens came and joined our flock.  we tried to take the back but they just came back so he said just keep them. his live in a barn and there are about 20 of them.  ours roam all over the yard working and eating and making all sorts of noise from sunup to about an hour before the sun sets then go back to their coop.  doing a lttle research i found our originals were originally raised for fighting.  their eggs are about half the size of a regular chicken egg, with dark gold yolks.  i had quit eating eggs when all we could get was store bought, but these are good and filling.
the goat was a rescue.  i wanted to borrow him from the neighbor to eat up some of my tall weedy stuff.  our neighbor has a professional rodeo arena that doesnt get used anymore.  goat was living out there all by himself.  he had been giving to the neighbor, so he said keep him.  didn't know what else to do so we keep him as best as we can.  he is lonely for other goats, probably, so we try to visit and interact with him as best we can. not ready for another one yet.    definately learning a thing or to from him.  like don't play if you dont want him to play back.  he hasnt intentionally butted anyone hard.  he will look fierce go up, go down, charge, then stop just short and gentle put his head against you and push a little.

our back 5 acres was just a field full of desert sage and creosote bushes.  my husband drug most of that up, with the woody parts all going into the start of a hugle bed.  it wont be the greatest but it will be a start.  found out the ground wasn't as flat as we thought it was.  there is no slope per say, less then 2 feet difference from the lowest to highest point, but it was something to find some contour,
the neighbor has 2 bulls that we let him run back there.  they get hayed back there so hoping to see some alfalfa coming up, pretty sure that is what the majority of the hay it gets is.  got all sorts of piles of their leftovers covering the bare ground.  gonna work on putting a few dew ponds out there in the lowest areas to help catch and store moisture.  we don't get much except in the winter and an occasional night flash storm.

we have a decent size carport off the entire east side of the house. it really helps block alot of the summer sun from heating the house up to much. it is slowly getting enclosed to help heat and cool the house a little better.  a little greenhouse will fill up the south end.  gonna build in a rocket mass heater. also planning a sunken outdoor kitchen just of the carport with some type of hot tub and herb garden.  want to do temporary hot houses and eventually a full nursery around most of the rest of they house.  both to grow foood and to help warm and cool the house more naturally.

well thats about my year in review.  just plugging along trying to get stuff done and hoping someday i will find some permies close to home so we can help each other out.

Interesting to hear of your progress, well done.
Photos would be nice?

soon

Lisa, welcome back!

Great to hear all that you have done and it sounds like there is more to come.  Keep us posted.

I am looking forward to the pictures, too!

The low tech movie brought back so I guess maybe a little update.  Haven't got much growing up to any kind of production yet.  Experimentations in growing in a new very, pretty unique environment are what I am working on in that front.  Starting with hard compact clay we are using various methods to try an loosen it up and get some life in to it. Building soil and getting organic matter to feed back into the soil is my main objective right now.  Working on finding more localized sources for seed has been a problem.  Reno is over 200 miles away, but that is where most of the northern nevada permies are.  Just today though I got some gojiberry bushes and strawberry spinach seed (which I have never heard of) from a friend who has been living 16 years off the grid up the mountain from us. He let me know the strawberry spinach will spread worse then the goji, to me that translates to lots of organic matter.
I spend a lot of time observing all the miraculous changes happening with only small inputs or energy on our part.  The back five acres is putting up lots of green things.  After being dragged the first year, the leftover organic matter mixed with the weather, has started to change the topography.  There are actually noticeable differences in elevation that weren't there before.  Other then our one steer grazing around a bit we haven't been focusing much time or effort back there.
Our chicken coop now houses about 22 hens and our original rooster.  The neighbor sold us his flick because he could no longer take care of them.  We still give him eggs, as we get way more then we need.  We supply him, our neighbor across the way, and our butcher friend with all the eggs they need, and always have plenty for ourselves.  Sometimes we take a few dozen with us to town to give to anyone who will use them.  People have been leary and even said no thanks until I explained it was a gift because I don't feel like dealing with trying to get a license to sell them, so I just share them when I have to many.  
Our neighbor across the way came with his backhoe and dug me a pit for my in ground green house.  I got used free metal trusses from the next door neighbor.  Using it for framing in the greenhouse.  It's a long hard project with most of the figuring and work involved being done by one 50+ year old woman who has no clue what she is doing but is figuring it out as I go along.  It will be 8ft wide facing due true south with a 60° angle on the south wall.  Won't be sure of the other dimensions until I get it built.   I am using railroad ties stacked and anchored into the ground, down in the pit on the south edge, to hold up the south edge end of the trusses.  These will extend up at a 60° angle north to the peak.  My husband welded leg extentions on the north end of each truss which extend them out past ground level at the north end of the pit.  The south wall will be glazed, the north slope eventually hopefully a shallow rooted chicken feeding plant area.  I don't know yet how to make an earthen roof, but will research it when I get there.  The west wall will be beamed for sure, but I am still working on an entrance for the east side and how I will berm that.  Very ambitious project for where I am at in my experience, but when the offer came to come dig up whatever we needed that day it was time to make a quick hasty decision based on materials we had laying around.
I dug a big hole in the middle of my front yard and kinda sank an above ground pool a neighbor gave me in it for that summer.  It looked very ghetto from the road, but I could get in and Noone could see me unless I stood up.  Very private oasis during that devastatingly hot bit of summer. With no trees here yet it was heaven  But it couldn't last and I knew it.  Last year I dug out all the dirt the gophers had returned to the hole, dugout the middle of that a little deeper and filled with rock to maybe hold extra water. All that soil got put around the edge of the hole in a mound with other sticks and organic matter I then mulched the heck out it and scattered seeds from everything I had collected.  It created a wonderful environment in the hole.  I was harvesting some lettuce and a few carrots.  There were lots of flowers and bees.  If you got inside all you could hear was the buzz.  It was like a tiny jungle.  Mostly we didn't harvest much.  With our lack of growing season and lack of good soil biology I get excited about anything growing.  I let this die and go to seed on its own.  Did not take any of the organic matter out.  But it is bare ground this year again, the wind took everything that didn't get back into the ground.  I have just hauled enough chicken coop clean out material to put a good layer to cover the hole and will strew out more seeds and straw like last year.  The mounds will also get some chicken poo ammendments and straw before purposely trying to plant some things
So much work to be done.  I will try to get pics and post later, but can't promise anything.

We are planting a lot of buckwheat and Siberia wheat grass as that is what I have been able to find here local.  Hope to find more things like perennial rye and such.