Organizing Chaos

I got to looking at the Blog and realized it is really rather all over the place.... that is because my ideas are all over the place. And we are brainstorming on all the things that we need to do, want to do and hope to do and still are in the early stages of prioritizing.

So I thought I would kind of put together a list of what we are looking at doing with the new property. Something so that all the odd posts about floors and greenhouses and rainwater all make sense...

We are working on a 5 year plan. Sure it would be nice to get it all done this first year but we know that it all takes time to get started and then to build on and perfect and to keep changing according to our needs and the lands needs and even our communities needs....


The first winter will be all about the interior of the house and learning to live off grid and without certain resources one has in a larger community (like running to the store at 8pm for diapers because you realized you only had 2 left)

We have some simple maintenance/repair things to deal with and lots of painting to get done on the inside. Because our resources are not as flush as we would hope, we are going to do things like paint the floors and stencil them to make them wonderful. This may be for 1 year or 4 years, we aren't sure just yet. But for now paint will make things beautiful until we are able to lay the carpet we desire and install the wood floors we want. Drywall repair, paint, freshening up all on the list. A stove pipe needs replacing, skirting around the crawl space of the house, a bit of this and a bit of that all will get things looking good.



Come spring! Oh will we be *B*U*S*Y* I do not think that my husband and I will have ever done as much work in our lives as we will from April to July!!!!

PLAYGROUND for the kids is first on the agenda- that is so they have a safe place to play while we work 

GARDEN'S
Elizabeth's Secret Garden, Veggie Gardens, and I would really like some flowers. Oh and lets not forget the trees! LOT'S of TREES! And God willing - a Brush Hog and plow will be provided and we will plant a few acres of mixed grain grasses. All that has to happen very quickly after the frost is over.


PONDS & Harvesting Rain Water
Two of them... the first a simple Koi Pond with a small water wheel. The water wheel will power the pump to keep the water circulating and it will also charge a simple 12v battery for household use. The larger project will be a surface water containment pond. We will be utilizing a natural run off pond for the start and then improving it for rain water harvesting. There will also be some attempts to set up some water tanks for harvesting rain water... I have seen several that are so cute AND functional.



CRITTER CONTAINMENT
We need chicken houses and yards for chickens to play in and a barn for some goats and a well fenced yard for them. Perhaps some rabbit cages and a place to keep a lamb or calf. We will see how time favors us.