Hello Permies. After lurking for too long and biding my time, I have moved again to my long term property. A lot of hard work and generous
people have helped me acquire a 1/2
acre homestead in Rutland Vermont. It has three mature
apple trees, a proudicing young pear, sprawling grapes, asparagus, berries, HUGE comfrey patch (blk 14), 20+ raised beds, open meadow, and many more suprises in store. Before getting into the details of everything, I must officially relegate the previous Pancakery
project log to the history
books. It served me well to record my various
permie projects across my journey to a permanent patch of
land. The old log can be found
HERE .
So now onto my piece of heaven. The lot is roughly 90'x200'. Mostly level with a slight depression towards the far(east) end of the property. The house is circa 1870, updated electrical/insulation/walls/fixtures a few years ago. The previous owner had taken the entire lot from grass to the raised beds, herb spiral,
fruit trees etc. After working on the
yard for 5 years, she devoted her attention to updating the house, leaving the yard fallow for three years. Needless to say the
garden areas were overgrown 6' tall. The google image below shows the property while still in working order, it is NOT this clean and mowed now. The herb spiral has since turned into a 20'x20' comfrey patch.
And a closer look at the cultivated areas.
I have cleared the overgrown beds in the larger bed area. Two of the three
apple trees are in the beds. It went from jungle to messy garden. I did not even know there were beds under all these overgrown plants! My goal for the coming summer is to
mulch and cover crop these beds
enough to have some semblance of a proudctive garden. I came up with a list of plants I want to grow in the beds, and a rough sketch of the primary plantings. There will be poly cultures built around the main crop plants, but it's not fully fleshed out in the sketch.
I have a woody plant list too. But have yet to make a larger map of the yard and overall plan of what goes where. I need to trim and train the fruit trees and grapes, so that might be my woody plant goal this year. Availability and time will be the true decider on how much woody plant
gardening I get done.
I have a lot of planning and work ahead of me, but this is what I have been striving towards. Working a plot of land as an urban homestead. Thanks for reading so far, and I will keep adding more progress as it progresses. Here is my mountain view of Killington to send this post off. . . . . .