A Forced Break From the Homestead

There has been little progress since my last posting.  Jenn and the girls went out and mowed and watered the berry bushes.  Jenn managed to get some trails cut through the woods from the front to back of our property.  We have a wet weather spring that cuts our property in half which is going to require a culvert and some gravel so that we can access the back of our property without having to use the four wheel drive.  I plan on building some foot bridges over the springs and creeks that flow throughout the woods but that will be at a later time.

Our current method of watering the plants

 

 

As you can see from the picture our current method of watering is inefficient and costly.  We have to pay sewer charges for every gallon of water we use not matter if we are using it to water or irrigate and it costs more in fuel to pull a trailer with 400 gallons of water.  I am designing a gravity fed drip irrigation system which should reduce the burden of watering in periods of dry weather.  When we have our basement dug we are going to put in a pond just below the berry patch to use as a water source for irrigation but that will be sometime down the road.

This picture above shows the pass from the front to the back of our property.  The wet weather spring flows from the left (north) side of the picture to the south and eventually ends up in a decent sized creek.  While I do enjoy the four wheeling to get from one side to the other it is rather inconvenient and a pain when I get something stuck.  My property line is actually in the middle of the picture.  The people who own the property to our south purchased it so they could access their property to the east of us.  I would love to own that section of property as it would allow us to expand our berry patches, give us access to the creek to use as a source of irrigation, and give us a little more land to use as pasture. 

Hopefully I recover from this pneumonia soon.  I would like to place a public awareness ad here in regards to burning of brush.  The type of pneumonia I acquired cultured out as staph and an unknown as yet type of fungus which I more than likely acquired while burning brush.  When burning brush take care to stay out of the smoke and be aware of what you are burning.

There will be no more progress for at least the next week while I recover.  I am using my time to review to plans to the cabin and options for our house when we eventually build. 

Untill next time....Michael