Spring Planting and Hancock Farm Tour

I've been busy planting; peas, beans, carrots, potatoes, chard....and so on. Its been so nice to get out in the sunshine and fresh air and feeling like I'm actually accomplishing something for a change besides a clean house.
I'm seriously considering a hoop house for our property, looks like a nice big one will run me about a grand for something not too fancy. While on the Farm tour we visited a nursery that had about a dozen hoop houses and he told us he started with just one to start his own seedlings and he started selling and before he knew it he was making more money doing that than his regular job and bought more houses. Seems like its been a good business for him.
Also on the farm tour we stopped at a dairy. Funny because just earlier we were discussing the possibility of beginning our own dairy; not really feasible for us we believe. Anyhow, we saw they had dairy bull calves and the dairy operator said they do sell them for beef steers. I'm thinking this could be a great way to get into raising cattle without the commitment of buying 2 dairy cows, kind of a test the waters approach. We actually plan to do the same with pigs, just buy a feeder pig or two to raise and see how it goes. With chickens we will start out at Tractor supply with their spring chicks. Low commitment but loads of experience I'm sure. I do however plan to get dairy goats right off the bat.
While I'm indecisive about cows, mainly because of their size and quantity of milk, I'm quite sure goats will work beautifully for us. I'm also quite sure I'd like to have turkeys and chickens. Anything beyond that we will just have to see how it goes.
We are still looking at house plans, seems like we just do it in spurts. Perhaps after writing this I'll browse through a few.
Until next time :)

Our house sold!

Finally we have a sale! We close out this chapter of our lives on May 7th. My DH and I decided to move into an apartment so we have plenty of time to find and start building on our property. This is so exciting. We are researching builders right now, getting some mixed reviews on a few; fortunately we have 6 months to find one which will allow us 6 months to build a home. I may have to rename my blog to How to Build a Farm after that.

Our apartment will be cramped for us, a good 300 sq ft smaller (missing a bedroom and a bath from our house). Most of our stuff will remain in storage so building a house will be a priority. One big plus is that our apartment is very close to our property so we will be able to garden and make daily trips out there as the season calls for it.

We spoke to Hallmark builders, they want us to begin building in August... seems too soon for us really since we took on a burden of debt to sell our house and we'd like to pay that down first.

Well more to come as the events unfold...