Goals for 2016? | Page 2 | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

My weight is fine..in 2016. it will stay fine. haha 

All you guys previous comments about marriage  and building a house have def been through it also.  Every little detail about how one uses space and if the gender lines are blurred makes for creative-ness.  AT almost every decision.  We did find also that we cared about different things...and my big thing is that nothing is forever so if we design something and it works for a bit but we decide it need to work better we can refine/redesign.  Basically it ended up me caring more about the overall flow and general earth shapeing and  her about the kitchen and our bedroom.  Size was big for us...i wanted smaller she wanted bigger.  the size is right in the middle and to be honest feels good being our kids will only get bigger and we got a surprise one free of charge !

2015 things we accomplished (just because i hate feeling like i've always got goals and have not accomplished anything lol) : Got the whole insulation and rubber membrane in and around the house backfilled!!  This is the first winter with john haits pahs umbrella installed! woot. This was huge b/c nothing could really be done "permanatly" until this piece was accomplished.  We just kept going around the house and we have now circled it.  Took the whole season!  Lots of rollls of rubber membrane which are pricey(also slowed us here and there) but quality.  Lots of washed round #2 rock ontop of rubber so it drains water and protects membrane from any digging we might do in the future.  Earth on top of that! Hay ontop of that! .   Its so nice after years of looking at insulation to not see it (there is still some but not 6 foot towers everywhere..sitting in the sun and wind degraded...at least they were 2nd's anyway. 😀 

We also managed to get a 1/8 mile-ish new driveway cut in that is a huge improvement in design over the developers over grown road we have used up until now.  It also looks really cool. is less the 1/2 the elevation drop from road.  About 1/2 the total distance. It was an extra I took on..but with out it being done i would have been ripping up things in the future.  Took a lot of working digging up lots of sizeable rootballs with my machine...4'x4' for example were not that rare.  Tt was a challenge but little kubota and I did it! its in..and hopefull will harden the last little bit to get he car completely in all the way.  Got the new driveway tied into an old upper logging trail and blended it so it looked and flowed nicely allowing machine access to eventually terrace above our house.  Condensed the water ways to funnel road run off to spot where it can now flow over future water wheel.  Old driveway can now be used for other things (plantings, smaller machine access paths) being that flat ground here is pretty rare.

Planted 200 christmas trees at remote farm. Tried some attempts at annuals from afar ..had some good luck with squashes.  Been observing the on countour swales over there.. MOST of them seem to storing and restributing quite a bit of water to the ridges..more to come in future!  Lots of learning going on there.  Swales will have permanent crops fruit and nuts and fields will be for mulch/fertility and removable crop of christmas trees.

2016 things to be accomplished:

Plant 400 ish hundred more white spruce and white pine tree's both at our chirstmas tree farm and around the house to start to shape the way the wind interacts with our landscape.  Also as a light pollution screen from down the hill and the town/city lights.  Also get a 100 or so blueberry plants going at remote farm as well for future you pick.  Plant some apple tree's (as much as budget will allow) for my son so when he's old enough his farm will be going.

Loft in my sons room..he's been wanting one for years.  Need some money for dimensional planks and fasteners.

Get garden plots going..my guess is still mostly a soil building year. We actually grew the most we ever grew this year..but that is not alot...but again progress..wifey did a lot of that work !! .  This coming year earthworks will still be prevalent as we move that last of the piles of dirt left over from initial excavation for house.  Mulching best we can and closing up the wounds i've inflicted on morther earth lol.

Water wheel installation.  Digging, setting old electric poles in ground ...mounting wheel ...creating path for water to get above wheel.   I got this great hollowed out log that should work great and look really cool.

Our water spring could use a bit of an improvement in design to aid in extreme dry times.  The spring box always has water and always flows....but my pipe when i put it in is higher then the pipe used to be when they used this spring for 3 houses up to 60 years ago.  I'd then like to put a bunch of cheese cloth bags filled with sand to section off a part of the spring box that will have the pipe put LOWER down into the spring .  Sometimes when we receive LOTS of rain it gets sediment in it, having a sand filter would help and reduce chance of anything clogging down the line.  So this re-design should take care of all the issues.

That would be fine.  We have been pushing so hard for last 6 years i'd like to let up a bit and start to find new slower rhythmns/groove.  For the first time in years I feel like we are getting "there" .  Building an awesome homestead is nothing done over night thats for sure.