2nd year homesteading

Hi i'm in my second year of establishing a small size homestead;
i joined the forum recently to share my experiences and open myself
to advice from more experienced homesteaders out there.

in the first year i fenced off the property and build a small
house with an integrated greenhouse in front of it. the construction
began in April 2022 and i moved in in December same year even if not fully finished.
small stove was enough to keep the place quite cozy in the winter,  
i do embrace a simple living and small house with very basic setup
is a great opportunity to really exercise that notion.

i experimented in gardening last year, with modest successes,
had a lot of construction and moving around to do,
and the whole project is still a work in progress.

its been a learning curve in design, construction  and farming,
but for myself i decided that's the way to go and i feel a
lot of satisfaction with each step in the process of
transitioning towards that sort of living, i'm finding
that this environment support me on many levels,

as to my ambitions this year i want to further improve and expand the house,
make a relatively extensive plantation of zucchini, squash and pumpkins
within an established apple orchard, establish a nice herbal garden with
big stones and nice pathways going through it,
i plan on getting chickens for eggs and quail for meat, i want to experiment with
small scale farming of grains - mostly for feeding birds, so
not much processing would be needed, though i guess quail would
prefer  more protein rich beans, also a maggot bucket should
be a suitable treat for them too.

Zaratustra Narsudin wrote:Hi i'm in my second year of establishing a small size homestead;
i joined the forum recently to share my experiences and open myself
to advice from more experienced homesteaders out there. ...
still a work in progress.

Welcome to the forum! It is great to have you here.

It sounds like you are off to a great start so I can't wait to hear more.

be sure to ask lots of questions because we have lots of folks who just love to answer questions.

Holy Catfish, Z!

You're a colossus of energy. How in the world did you do all of that in two years!??

If you're looking for a place where people "get" the full import of what you've done, you've found it. Welcome aboard!

P.S., I quite enjoy your blank verse style of posting.

Anne Miller thanks, i'll try

@Douglas Alpenstock thanks, second year has just started and the second season has just began...

i'm inspired much by the amish and i set on adopting what's
known as 'the appropriate technology', which might include
using donkeys for transport, raspberry pi for computing,
and deliberately not having internet in the house.

as to my choice of technologies, when possible i
choose resilient things over fancy things,
my style is somewhat primitive, but it works well enough,
and the big asset of my design is that for most part there's
just not much to break in it, so there's little maintenance
involved by default.

last week i planted lavender and rosemary in the garden
but in cold night they both died, i found dead rat and
dead bird on the fence, rat was hunted by the dogs around
their place, and a bird flew into fence in most unlucky way,
i buried the poor thing in the garden. i contemplated the
set of the events as the final battle between spring and winter;
kale and garlic so far keeps strong;