Winter Farm Tour

Today, I’m taking you on a tour of the farm before we’ve done anything major. It’s so exciting to think about how this place is going to change over the next few years.

Winter farm tour before pictures. Ranch style farmhouse on a homestead.

We have so many ideas and dreams. It’s just going to take time for everything to start to come together.

Winter Farm Tour Video

I made a video tour so we have this to look back on in the future.

The Front

One thing that Ben and I both originally said we didn’t want was tilled empty land for our farm. Well, we ended up will tilled empty land, because in the end, location mattered the most to us. This just means we get to use our creativity as we are starting everything from scratch.

In total, we have 8.6 acres of land, most of which is an empty corn field. Our property starts from the over-grown hedge to the right in the photo below.

Winter farm tour driveway view.

It continues left, all the way through the trees to the white fence beyond.

Wind breaking evergreen pine trees.

The other day, we had a pretty bad wind storm that blew small branches and dried out corn husks all over the front yard. We now have large piles of corn husks that collected all along our over-grown hedge along the driveway, as well as a lot of branches to clean up.

The Back

We want to add privacy to our farm by adding in lots of bushes and trees. Hopefully, in a few years, this will give us a bit more privacy as well as break the wind that rushes across our land.

Winter farm tour large sky and empty cornfield.

I would love to add a patio or porch off the back of the house. The current patio is pretty small for outdoor eating and in nice weather, outdoor dinner’s are a family favorite.

Winter farm tour ranch house patio plans

My Tree House Dreams

Adding a tree house, in my opinion, is a must for any farm. We don’t have a lot of trees to choose from on our property but the tree that both the girls swings are on might be a perfect tree.

Winter farm tour large maple tree perfect for a tree house and swings

Here are a few tree houses I’ve been pinning on pinterest. Maybe in a few years we will get to build one for our girls.

amazing tree house for kids to play and imagine
amazing tree house for kids

The Apple Trees

We have four old apple trees out back. Apparently, there used to be a lot more but I guess over the years they have died and been cut down. The ones that are left are not in great shape. They have been seriously neglected and are very overgrown.

Winter farm tour overgrown old apple trees and a long haired german shepherd

I’ve been doing some research on pruning apple trees but I still have a lot to learn. Most of the pruning tips and tricks are for young healthy trees and ours are old and sick.

I still hope we are able to get them to a point where we can get some apples. We are going to be planting more fruit trees this years so in a few years we should have young healthy trees producing fruit as well.

The Garden

Behind the apple trees is the much deliberated spot where we put my dream large garden. You can read all about our back to eden garden and plans for what we are growing this year here.

Winter farm tour future back to eden garden spot

We need to put up a fence before we start planting because we have deer and other little creatures that are sure to devour our produce.

My uncle generously gave us his time to help us build this three stage composting bin out of pallets. So far we’ve just been composting leaves and kitchen scraps. Once we get our chickens, we will compost their manure as well.

Winter farm tour large three bin compost made from recycled wood pallets

The Chickens

We were going to build a coop ourselves and get baby chicks this spring, but a lady from our church is looking to re-home her backyard chickens and asked if were were interested. She has 16 chickens and 2 roosters as well as a coop she is willing to sell us.

This is super exciting because the chickens are already laying eggs, so we can reap the harvest right away. We also don’t have to decide what kind of coop we want to build, especially since we don’t even know what we want in a coop yet. We are still very much beginners at this whole farm life thing! Getting some experience will be nice before putting in the bigger investment of building a coop.

The chicken coop and run are going to go to the left of the garden. We will be getting the chickens the first week of April most likely. There is a chance we will get them sooner, but we’d like to build a chicken run to go with the coop before we get the chickens here. That way they can get used to their new surrounding before we attempt to let them roam free.

What Are We Doing With That Giant Corn Field?

The plan for this year is to till under the corn and seed the entire thing in clover. Clover is a great cover crop and will rebuild some of the nutrients in the soil. The clover will also keep the land from becoming over run with weeds. Giving the land a break and letting it recover a bit from the years of growing and tilling will be good for it. The clover will also be a great source of food for bees! Maybe next year we will add some honey bees to the farm.

Winter farm tour large open field to be planted in clover in the spring. Healing the land after conventional farming.

The Garage

Going from having a tiny shed to a huge three plus car garage has been such a blessing. It is perfect for storing all our tools and mower. It makes it so easy to work on projects too. The kids have a few toys in there as well.

Large run in shed off garage

Once we fix the broken garage doors we will also park our cars in there. One of our neighbors wanted to know why we didn’t park our cars in the huge garage. I guess they thought it was a bit strange. The old doors are so heavy and don’t stay open very well. I’m afraid of them coming crashing down on someone. So for now, we just keep them safely shut.

extra large three car garage storage
large three car garage

The Fire Pit

One of the first things we did when we moved was collect a bunch of random cinderblocks to create a fire pit. I’d been dreaming about evening fires on the farm for a long time. I like the rustic look the cinderblocks made and they were free. Maybe someday we will build one out of rustic rocks but until that day this one work just great!

free diy cinderblock rustic fire pit

Follow Along

Thanks for taking a tour of the farm today. Spring is just about to burst out and so many changes are coming to our little farm. I’ll continue to post updates as we work on this little piece of land we now call home!

Be sure to follow along by subscribing to the email list.

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Winter farm tour plans for our first year on the homestead

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