This time on the not-yet-flowering crab apple.

With Buck Mountain in the background.

And Lilac is back in a big way—laying huge dark brown eggs that span all four fingers when I hold them in my palm. Though her eggs aren’t supersized, Iris is no slouch with her contribution, which are definitely graded large.

Just out of curiosity I compared my hens’ eggs, on the right, to eggs from the famous Polyface chickens (the two light eggs on the left), which I bought to tide me through the dark days when Lilac and Iris were resting. Though they don’t live in fancy chicken tractors or have a famous farmer for their owner, I think my girls stack up pretty well.

Tuck at seven weeks old, right before he came to live with me.

I want to opt out until April.

And so, in 2011, I:

Created a garden from scratch, and fed myself and others from it

Carving a garden space out of a field was a major undertaking, and fencing and tilling and adding soil amendments and lining paths with landscape cloth took much of the fun out of the early garden season. But even with a late start I harvested my own food from May to late December, and for much of the summer ate only produce I grew. Plus, I gave bags of vegetables to coworkers, friends and family. Not bad for the first year out.

Completed the crawl space pit

Several summer weekends, including a historically hot Independence Day weekend, were devoted to mixing and pouring concrete to make the walls of my crawl space entry. This project was started in 2010, and I rest easier knowing my crawlspace is sealed off from, well, the creepy crawlies. The finished product is awesome and will be here long after I am dead and gone, but remind me next time to do concrete work when it’s not 100 degrees outside.

Designed and manufactured garden row covers to fight insects

Sweat + seed ticks is all I will say about this August project. But the infrastructure is in place for 2012’s covered rows.

Installed new forest

A couple of backbreaking weekends in September and I have a new mower slalom course in my back yard. Which, someday, I hope will be a living screen between my neighbors, the road, and my house.

Installed porch ceiling

Dear starlings and mice: Consider yourselves evicted. Now to pick a cool fan for the box up there, install some rope lighting, and reinstall my outdoor speakers…

Trimmed coop

More than a year after the guineas first moved in, their little house is finally looking finished. I just need to hang a window box to pretty it up!

Repaired the garage and installed new doors and openers

This is the post I teased a while back but never got around to writing even though it was the single largest structural and cosmetic undertaking of the year. Much of October and November was spent supervising the repair of this:

Now it looks like this:

And when I come in the driveway after work, it’s such a luxury to push a button and have a garage door open—instead of parking and staring at a depressingly decrepit duct-taped mess.

Painting!

This fall, the completed porch ceiling, repaired garage and newly trimmed coop all got painted to match the house. I am trying to tie all my buildings together and the paint goes a long way toward that goal. As a bonus, I also had the front porch ceiling sealed and both porch floors repainted.

Personal goals

Though all of the above could fall under the personal goal of creating a farmish home, I also got to check off two major life list items.

I learned how to homebrew

For this goal I am grateful to Brad, who set me down the path of true beer appreciation and shared his expertise over a very hoppy early November weekend. I raise a glass of my first IPA to you.

And, I raised a puppy

April 3, 2011

December 23, 2011

Wow, what an experience that was—and, as he nears his first birthday, continues to be! To say he turned my views of both dogs and relationships on their head doesn’t even touch it: all the things I worried about were nonissues and the parts I thought would be easy turned out to be the most challenging. I wouldn’t call much of it fun, but I am incredibly pleased with how Tuck is turning out, and grateful to him that he’s still willing to hang out with me—sleeping at my feet as I type this. I can’t wait to see how he matures.

So those were the highlights of 2011. I think it’s a fair amount accomplished, particularly in addition to living alone and working a full-time job. I am aware, however, of how none of it could have been done on my own. The two people who made most of it possible are my dad, who possesses the magical combination of  neverending creativity, intelligence and energy, and who worked next to me through all these construction projects in addition to having his own full-time job and farm, and my mom, under whose loving attention Tucker has thrived and without whom I would never have been able to cross “raise a puppy” off my life list. Thank you both for being totally awesome.

And I would be remiss if I did not mention the cast of characters who move through this place, lending their skills and friendship to this dream. I am a very blessed girl. Thank you all, and we’ll reconvene soon to talk about plans for 2012.

I walk Tuck on the gravel road past their farm every now and then. Last weekend, for the first time since I got him, Tuck was able to calmly watch this bull from the fence without a single bark. Progress!

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