First blog

Well, I am new to the whole bloging experience. So please be patient while I get the hang of this.
My husband, Jeffrey, and I are opening a farm in the Spring of 2010 and with friends wanting updates on our progress, I thought this would be a good platform to keep them up to date.

As of this date, we have gone through all the county meetings and applications so that we could use the property for a pick your own strawberry/vegetable farm with a farmer's market on the property. The land is zoned highway commercial and we had to get a conditional use permit for agricultural use. We are so happy that we were able to get it because we had already planted an acre of strawberries.

We are now in the midst of septic inspections, water inspections, driveway permits, sign applications, and an appointment with the accountant to discuss setting up the business enterprise. There is alot going on this week.

With all of those things going on, there is also much work to be done on the property in just a few short months. There is an old house on the property that has been used for several things over the years from a residence to a restaraunt. Jeffrey's grandfather actually remembered living in the house for a brief time as a child. With that in mind, our decision to have the house torn down was a difficult choice to make. We weighed our options and financially it was in our favor to have a controlled burn done on the house with our local fire department and then to build on the same site. We have an architecture drawing up the plans as I write and are hoping to see them soon. Once we get closer to the burn date, I will post a blog on the requirements of that just in case any readers ever need to that.

We also have to get in the field to pull weeds from around the strawberry plants and pop the flower buds off because it is way too soon for those. The weather around here has been kind of crazy. 4 days ago there was a chance of snow and tomorrow is supposed to be in the 70's. Jeffrey has built the well house and is in the process of putting the roof on it. We are trying to repurpose everything that we can from the property and the roof is going to be from the tin on the roof of the old house. The problem is hornets have made a home there so we have to wait til the cool weather takes care of them for us. The well house itsself is constructed of cinder blocks that were on the property for other uses. It cost more to do that than to simply go to a home improvement store and buy a prefab building but we able to do it ourselves and didn't contribute the garbage in our landfills. I am a huge fan of repurposing everything possible. The corners of the boards used for the roof are going to be sanded, painted, logoe-ed, and given away as door stops on opening day.

There is grading to be done on the property to level some places out and to fix some washing away when we have a lot of rain. For the most part, the remainder of work to be done on the farm is simply sweat labor. Tomorrow is the day to organize the office we have set up at home for the farm. Now that Jeffrey has his Master's degree it's time to make the transition in there.