"The best laid schemes of mice and men..."

Well, they say if you want to make God laugh, make plans.  But that seems to be what my family is best at!  We have endless plans for our little farm-to-be.  In fact, we often have to check ourselves to make sure that our goals are at all realistic.  I'd like to share some plans with you, fair readers.  If you have any input or advice, we would love to hear it!

CSA

We would eventually like to implement a small CSA program.  I have decided that I need a season or two to "practice."  I'd like to grow for just a couple other families in the first year.  I'd love it if they could be friends of ours so that they understand if things hit the fan.  Maybe then we can add a couple   more families the next year and then really get into the swing of things.

The real problem with this plan is that we need a greenhouse.  I'm still exploring ideas and designs for one.  At first, I determined that the greenhouse needed to be portable so that we can use it to start seedlings and brood chicks in the Spring, but then also move it over beds to extend our season.  But now I'm thinking that the structure can be more or less permanently placed and we can use low tunnels over crops as need be.

Goat Dairy

As you know if you have been following this blog, we would like to keep dairy goats in the future.  I would like to incorporate milk, cheese, and yogurt into the CSA shares.  This is going to be a huge undertaking.  The initial investment is more impressive than I had originally assumed.  It will probably not happen within the next year, but I hope that we can make it happen during the following one.  I'd love to have goats!

Layers & Broilers

Again, if you have been reading this blog, you know that we have recently made headway on building a chicken coop.  We would like to finish the coop building by the Spring so that we can begin with laying hens.  I have experience with chickens; my parents have kept chickens for several years.  Part of the reason we are so anxious to get our chickens is that my parents no longer have any and we want eggs!  We eat a LOT of eggs.  In a couple of years, however, we would like to expand our chicken horizons.  I would love to have meat birds.  That would require more space, more time, more feed, etc.  It will happen when we are willing to take all of that on.

In the meantime, we keep on livin'!  Andrew set up his tree stand over the weekend.  Hopefully we have some fresh venison in our near future. Rural Maine living allows us to harvest our own meat seasonally.  It's definitely not a bad way to eat!  Charlie and I went to "supervise" while Andrew set the stand up.  Charlie was fascinated by the leaves crunching under our feet.  When I helped him stand in the leaves, all he wanted to do was reach down and play with them!  Nothing makes us happier than watching our little guy discover nature's little wonders.  The world is such a fascinating place for a baby!  I wish we could all live with that kind of awe of our surroundings.

This is without doubt my favorite time of year for a walk in the woods.  In fact, it is my favorite time of year altogether.  We just celebrated Andrew's birthday and our fourth wedding anniversary.  Here's to many more years!

Here's a picture of our beautiful autumn wedding in Greenville four years ago, and a picture from our walk over the weekend!  Man, time sure does fly.

"The language of friendship is not words, but meanings."

Well, we have fantastic friends and family.  We recently had them over for a coop raising!  We tore down an old out building and used some of the salvaged lumber (plus materials from various other places) to begin building a chicken coop!  We had a wonderful time.  There was chili, cornbread, and beer for all.  We would be rather lost without all of you guys!  We managed to get about half of all construction done in a single day.  We'll chip away at the rest as we can.

We plan on chicks in the Spring.  We would also like to invest in a couple of goats but we have been having trouble finding the right ones at the right price.  We would like to buy them as kids and raise them for a season before getting into the business of milking.

Our son is growing beautifully alongside our farm-to-be.  We've been having a ball going to consignment shops and to the Belfast baby fair to find used clothes and toys for Charlie.  It's amazing how little we've had to spend on keeping him diapered, clothed, and fed thus far.  It's that time of year to stock up on warm winter clothes but there are ways to do it on the cheap!



Here are some photos from the day!