July 2013
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| The road to our homestead site |
After years of searching for land we finally found the perfect homestead site in rural North Carolina. Close enough to the city to commute to work, yet quiet, remote and woodsy! We purchased 24 acres in two different parcels. A 10 acre parcel that will be managed as a
woodlot, and a 14 acre parcel that will be transformed into our homestead. Both lots are mixed hardwood with some areas of pine. They were selectively logged several years ago, but there are still lots of very large trees on the land. The sites are hilly with several different
ecosystems in each.
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| Wetland |
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| Entrance to our homestead |
One of my favorite ecosystems on our homestead lot is a wetland area that is adjacent to a year round creek at the back of the lot. It is not always wet, but floods after several days of rain.
Our goal for our homestead is to
clear a road, then clear an area for a house,
drive shed and barn, make terraced vegetable gardens and have some areas of pasture for goats and maybe a horse. We definitely plan to have chickens. We have a lot of work to do!
August 2013
We have spent many hours marking our property boundaries (wouldn't want to build a road on our neighbor's land!) and making trails. We have made some good use of the
Husqvarna 343 FR brush cutter saw to clear saplings. There sure are a lot of
ticks this year! The other vile creature that we have become acquainted with is the
chigger. As former Canadians, we were not familiar with the chigger, but have become very well acquainted as we spend time at our beautiful land. We spent a lot of time walking the whole property so that we could find the best place to locate a home.
October 2013
We made a plan for our homestead design and had the health department come out and approve where we wanted to locate our well and septic field. We located the house centrally but well above the flood plain of our triangular shaped lot. We are planning on practicing
permaculture based on concepts presented by
Ben Falk in an excellent book called The Resilient Farm and Homestead. Our ultimate goal is to live as sustainably as possible.
November 2013
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| First stage of road clearing |
We started clearing trees in preparation for road construction. We are clearing the trees ourselves to save money, and because it is just fun to be out working in the woods! This required the purchase of a bigger chainsaw (
Husqvarna Rancher 450) as some of the trees are fairly large. We plan to heat our home with an efficient
wood stove, so the cleared trees were bucked and stacked. We will have to move these piles of
firewood to a sheltered woodshed later, after the road is built. We are really enjoying working without getting bitten by ticks and chiggers!
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| Road progress by end of November |
We left the stumps so that a bulldozer can come in and push them out. The wood pile is growing. The next stage of the road will involve clearing lots of small brushy trees.
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| I think we need to start a new wood pile! |
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| Hungry logger |
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| Log shaving station |
December 2013
We had so many tall straight pines that it seemed a shame to cut them all into firewood. One of the side projects is preparing logs to use to build maybe a
small log cabin, and also an
outhouse. (Some of the workers are complaining about using the bushes...). I have been using a
draw knife to shave the bark off these logs.
The outhouse will house a beautiful hand-made composting toilet based on the
Loveable Loo plans. Merry Christmas to me!
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| Composting toilet |
January 2014
We are now in the final stages of road clearing. The rest of the work will be removing small trees and saplings. They are easy to cut down, but a lot of work to drag into piles some of them are entangled in vines and prickly stuff. We have some giant brush piles to deal with now. I think we need to rent a chipper.
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| This is not so much fun! |
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| Taking a break to visit some of our beautiful beech trees! |
One of my favorite ecosystems on our homestead lot is a wetland area that is adjacent to a year round creek at the back of the lot. It is not always wet, but floods after several days of rain.
