Newbies in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Hello all,

We are Frank and Jess and our two (soon to be three!) children. We’ve just bought a 5 acre property in Cranbrook, British Columbia at the southern end of the Canadian Rockies. Originally we are from Ontario but we spent the last three years travelling coast to coast (to coast to coast… long story!) across this beautiful country in search of the “Goldilocks” property for us - the “just right” property in the “just right” town that we had confidence we’d find in our travels.

Once we found this property, we knew we’d found our winner. It is a rectangle oriented due north-south, with a house at the north end surrounded by trees and the southern approximately 2/3 is wide open field that the current owners allow a neighbour to graze a few horses on, meaning we have a largely blank slate to work with - both a blessing and a bit of a curse, as we can do whatever we want, but everything seems a bit daunting since we are starting largely from scratch.

We close on the purchase on July 15th. As in *this Friday*!

Here’s our hopes and dreams for this property: we want to tightly integrate vegetables, berry bushes and a fruit orchard with animals (chickens/ducks/geese, some pigs, sheep and goats) into one positive impact homestead where we can build the soil, harvest the rain for as much of our use as possible, and have as light a touch on the environment as we can.

Our plan, and we are 100% hoping to hear your comments and critiques, is as follows:

1) we’ve been reading The Holistic Orchard and want to get started on building the fungal base needed to support an orchard and berry bushes, so we’ve sourced via landscapers effectively as much wood chips as we want (not necessarily all Ramial wood chips, nor all deciduous, but beggars can’t be choosers and we are hoping this isn’t a major issue - please correct us if you feel otherwise!) and hope to get this laid in the future orchard area as soon as possible. We’ll augment this by dumping grass clippings so there is “green” balancing The “brown” of the wood chips to hopefully speed up the compost in place. Thoughts?

2) we’ll find a suitable area for a vegetable garden near the orchard this year but likely leave the Current cover as-is until the spring when we will cut it down and lightly till in place, and then start with vegetable plantings in rows.

3) I plan to build a chicken coop so we can get chickens this year to help work the soil and eat and ticks, etc.

4) over the winter I plan to design and obtain permits for a barn so first thing in the spring we can get construction started on that and get animals to help enliven the soil and add some biodiversity to the farm.

5) from the base established above, figure out the next steps and where changes have to be made. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Your thoughts and opinions are certainly welcome!

Thanks!
Frank & Jess

HI Frank & Jess;
Big Welcome to Permies and Congratulation's on finding your perfect location.
I live an hour or two south of you in NW Montana.
I've been in the Cranbrook area many times. Beautiful town and area!
One of my favorite places to go in BC  is due west of you on the other side of Kootenai lake, called Ainsworth Hot springs.
I highly recommend you check it out  when you have the time you will be impressed, the cave system with hot water pouring from the rocks is awesome!

Sounds like you guys have a good plan in mind and we would love to see pictures and posts of your progress.
Your fruit trees and berry bushes are a good start and everyone needs a veggi garden.
I do suggest moving slowly forward with the animal portion of your plans.
chickens/ducks/geese, some pigs, sheep and goats are a big handful if you get them all at the same time.

I raise piggys.   They dig on fence lines.  Use old metal roofing laid horizontal and buried 1/2 way deep.
Your pigs will  root down to the bottom  of the metal and find nothing but dirt.
It also keeps baby piggys from seeing the green grass on the other side and squeezing thru your fencing to get to it.
Large piggys are to lazy  to worry about the other side of their fence as long as the grain bin stays full!
Trying to herd piggys back into a pen is one hard job!

I've not raised goats but I've heard horror story's of the damage they can do  (Trees , Vehicles, tractors)
I've also heard of lots of folks that just love raising their goats.
We eat goat cheese and butter daily its wonderful stuff!
Sheep are relatively docile but need sheering.
Chickens are easy if your predator population is low.   Birds of prey can wipe out a chicken patch in a few days!
Ducks and geese ?  Well that's not for me but plenty of folks like raising them.
And of course, as with all animals you must be on top of their health.
In just a few days or less you can lose an animal to sickness.
Vet bills can be scary.
As I suggested, approach raising animals slowly but surely .
Get comfortable and knowledgeable with one  breed and then experiment with a different breed.
In the long term things will flow much smoother with the slow and steady approach!

 

Congratulations on purchasing the start of your dream. My wife and I just left Cranbrook after 10 years to live on an average in Burns Lake BC. I have lots of family and friends in Cranbrook and if you ever need anything do not hesitate to ask. We gardened and had chickens ourselves in the gold creek area. feel free to private message for any info you might want.

again Congrats

Hi Frank (belated) welcome to Permies! Hope the purchase went smoothly and you are now at your new home. Well done!
It sounds like you do have a blank slate there. What will be your main challenges: short season, cool winters, lack of rain in growing season? In my case it's wind and shallow acidic compacted soil.
You'll find you want to do everything, but do take time to just observe and sometimes it is surprising what you find out that makes your life easier. Also start small! I'm not one for following my own advice here either, although I did plant my tree field over 7 years or so.
Can I respectfully suggest that with that many animals on 5 acres you will need to buy in a lot of feed, which will make you more dependent on outside inputs. It might be better to concentrate on fewer (say pigs and ducks, or sheep and chickens) and organise barter for other meat if you want. This is said from one who has no livestock and it might be you are already an expert husbandsman. I never fancied the responsibility - where there is livestock there is deadstock and they are a tie than means taking any time away is much more difficult.

Hi Dylan,

Welcome to Permies.

Nancy Reading wrote:Hi Frank (belated) welcome to Permies! Hope the purchase went smoothly and you are now at your new home. Well done!
It sounds like you do have a blank slate there. What will be your main challenges: short season, cool winters, lack of rain in growing season? In my case it's wind and shallow acidic compacted soil.
You'll find you want to do everything, but do take time to just observe and sometimes it is surprising what you find out that makes your life easier. Also start small! I'm not one for following my own advice here either, although I did plant my tree field over 7 years or so.
Can I respectfully suggest that with that many animals on 5 acres you will need to buy in a lot of feed, which will make you more dependent on outside inputs. It might be better to concentrate on fewer (say pigs and ducks, or sheep and chickens) and organise barter for other meat if you want. This is said from one who has no livestock and it might be you are already an expert husbandsman. I never fancied the responsibility - where there is livestock there is deadstock and they are a tie than means taking any time away is much more difficult.

Hi Nancy,

The purchase went smoothly! We've been super busy and loving every second of it. Here's what we've done so far:

1) We found a source of wood chips and had four truck loads (each around 6 yards) delivered. I am working on sourcing a grass whip to cut through some areas of particularly high grass where we want our future vegetable garden to be. As soon as this is cut down (with clippings left in place), we'll cover in the wood chips. I've used a bunch of the chips already to cover areas of the property that were particularly barren from past over grazing.

2) We converted part of the shop into a chicken coop and this morning our flock arrived - 12 hens and 1 rooster!

3) We are in talks with someone to have her horses graze the land. This time we'll rotate between the different areas, to avoid overgrazing.

Not bad for 13 days on the land (including moving day!).

To answer your questions, our main challenge will likely be cold winters (there can be cold snaps below -30C. Not for long but pretty consistently 1 - 3 weeks worth spread throughout the winter), and hot, dry summers (we've been over 35C for the last week). For the winters, I think we just deal with this via planting to the hardiness zone. For the summers, I think the wood chips will help to shield the ground and maintain moisture rather than the current situation to date, which has been letting the soil bake into dirt in the intense sun.

I appreciate your advice and I agree. We won't add new animals of our own until next year and then only one species at a time. We are happy with our chickens for now, and if we can get a deal to get horses rotating in the fields, that's a bonus.

Frank - I'm glad the purchase went well and wish you all the best on your new adventure - be sure to keep us posted. Lots of pictures please!