City Girls Going Rural – Update

It’s been a few months since I posted an update about where we are with the move and our establishment of systems at the new place so, while there is still so much to do, I thought I’d give you a little update while taking stock of where we’re at! Honestly, there are so many things to do, the list is quite overwhelming.  Add to that the fact that we are renting and do not own the property we are hoping to grow on/improve and everything takes just a bit longer.

The Urban Farm

Kim and I have been taking turns making trips to the urban farm every couple of days to check the chickens, check the property and gather the mail.  We had it on the market for a couple of months and hoped against hope that it would sell quickly.  Unfortunately, it didn’t.  Maybe we were being unrealistic, but we were hopeful none-the-less.  Unable to maintain both a mortgage payment and a rent payment every month, we decided to rent it out and take it off the market for the foreseeable future.  It took three weeks, but we finally found some renters who we think will be great for the house and for us.  I can’t tell you what a huge relief this is. I have to admit that I was nervous about the whole sale and rental viewing process because the property had been so extensively turned into an urban farm…and to be realistic, not everyone is “into” this lifestyle of ours.  I was happily surprised to find that ~9 out of 10 people we showed the house to were excited about the prospect of continuing to grow their own veggies on our property, or to learn from scratch with the infrastructure already created for them.  It was very validating to me to see that, at least in Santa Fe, the paradigm is changing a bit. The Chickens

We currently have 6 hens at the Hacienda and, truth be told, they’re still in their small, temporary coop at night.  However, they are allowed to free-range in the backyard during the day, so while we’re not the best chicken owners, we’re certainly not the worst either 😉 Not knowing what was going to happen with the urban farm and whether or not whoever moved in would be interested in keeping chickens, we left the last 4 there in the chicken mansion.  Now that we have our renters and know that they have no experience in keeping chickens, we have asked permission from our landlord to bring them to the new property.  We plan to dismantle the chicken mansion, bring it to the new property, and put it up in our little backyard.  It’s a huge project, but one that needs to be done. We’re also working on a design for a chicken tractor so the ladies can help us around our negotiated portion of the field on the property, but haven’t gotten that far yet. As I mentioned in my last update, a friend took 10 of our original 20 laying hens and set them up in an awesome new space just north of our new home in Chimayo.  Unfortunately, after two accidents/attacks, they are down to 3 hens.  Apparently rural settings can be more dangerous for a flock than a backyard in the city.  I am just sorry and sad for them that this has been their first experience with keeping chickens!  I also feel very lucky that we have not yet had any such incidents in all of our 5 years of keeping chickens! The Harvests & Garden Beds

With the exception of a few herbs, everything has been harvested from the urban farm.  I have cleaned up and prepared all the beds for winter but one and three of the five fruit trees have been pruned.  The new tenants are interested in gardening but don’t have much (any?) experience, so we have said we can help them in the spring figure out what they want to do and are just asking them to keep the perennials and trees alive by watering them when necessary throughout the winter depending on how wet our winter actually is. I’ll be updating my harvest totals and will let you know when I know how much we produced this crazy summer.

The Compost

The compost, all those years of amazing soil-in-the-making, is still at the urban farm.  Until we had negotiated land use here on the new property we didn’t want to move it just to move it again.  With land use officially negotiated (again, stay tuned for a separate update on this), we’re hoping to get this task done before the hard freezes take over….so, the next couple of weekends, for sure…the sooner the better! Us Our To Do list these days is ridiculous.  Between the new house, the urban farm, a toddler, a job hunt (that’s me, I’m looking…keep your fingers crossed for me, will you?), and the weather getting colder every day, all these big tasks are feeling a bit overwhelming. To be honest, starting all over from scratch again is way more daunting than I imagined it would be.  The establishment of systems, the negotiation of actions and activities, and the balance of wants vs. needs is intense!  The learning curve here is steep. Acknowledging that all of these lessons are continuing to lay the foundation for our eventual farm and providing us with the experiences we longed for and intentionally chose,

I have to admit that I have asked myself, “What the hell were we thinking?” more than once in the past couple of months. Sometimes, for just a minute, I think we might be better served to just go back to the basics of the easy/convenient/instant gratification filled life of someone who doesn’t do all of the homesteading stuff we do or aspire to the more sustainable lifestyle as we do… But then I go into town or watch the news or read about GMOs and the plight of our bees and am quickly reminded that this whole homesteading thing is bigger than us…

It’s bigger than a plot of dirt to grow some veggies on or a few freshly laid eggs… It’s bigger than the creation of piles of soil and the planting of a few flowers. It’s about the health of my family and of our planet.

It’s about our food systems and our micro-climate. It’s about fresh tomatoes for my little girl and saving seeds for my future grandchildren. It’s about the experiences, the community, and the inspiration.

So, we will cross off tasks, add more and cross those off too, and we will keep our heads up. As we do.

Onward.

xoxo,

M