Bored? Turn Your Dreams into Reality Right Where You Are.

If you don’t know, we recently bought a property. It’s an acre and it was pretty much a hunk of dirt when we move in. But we’ve got big plans.

From about ¾ of the way back in the lot you can see that there was not much going on.

All that space.

All that potential!

This is our attempt to Permaculture the shit out of it. If you don’t know what that is, please look for my upcoming post… “What’s this Permaculture Thing that Everyone is Raving About?” Otherwise read on.

A cute little overhead of the lot. A house and garage and those 2 white sheds and that big crooked cottonwood in the back center. Otherwise a lot of clay and weeds. We have a ditch in the front and water rights so we can water what we want.

Another view from the back corner toward the house. The crooked cottonwood visible in the center.

And then another view when we first moved in from the garage looking back.
Again, so much potential.

We started on our projects pretty quickly. You really should wait a while and feel out the property but it never feels like you have the time for that. You want to start! And we did. Now with snow on the ground and winter holding us back from doing more, I’ve drawn up our plan, but it came through hours of walking around and feeling the way I wanted the spaces to be and feel.

We’ve already planted the orchard (the squiggly area right behind where the pergola will someday go)

Dug and laid an irrigation system

Built the compost bin

Built the small shed behind the garage and house

Built the side gates

Put up the grape trellis (in front of the eventual privet hedge central in the yard)

Built a temporary greenhouse.

Planted the front arborvitae hedge

The chicken coop is almost done

We’ve added solar to the back shed

And have a handful of the plants already planted

And I’ve designed and ordered the trees for the back evergreen privacy screen.

I’ve got over 50 trees and shrubs ordered for the spring that will need planting?! Many are written into this design plan.

We jumped in guns blazing huh?! And you can too. All of this was done by 2 people in the matter of 6 months.

And we have more plans… Coming up…

The rest of the raised beds will be finished before spring planting:

You may have seen them currently being built:

Our dream of a natural swimming pond:

Our daydream of a back cob hut:
(http://naturalhomes.org/cob-sauna.htm)

The Pergola:

The greenhouse:
This is probably going to be the big project this summer. We’ve got much of the supplies that I’ve collected from the salvage yard I work at and I’ve done extensive research with this book and online into what we need to do.

A guest house and root cellar:
(A little example, source unknown) root cellar would be underground below guesthouse floor.

And a lot more planting.

So come on the journey with us. We’re turning this piece of dirt into a magical place. And still dreaming of what the future holds for a larger property.

And you can do all of this too. We don’t have any special knowledge or skills that we didn’t just learn by doing. We aren’t particularly wealthy. And we save a lot of money by reuse and doing things ourselves so get crazy, come up with some of your own ideas and make them reality. If you’re stuck at home this is a perfect time to make something of your space... don’t just look out at your scrubby back yard and wish you were somewhere else. Make it yours. Your garden is a canvas, Express yourself!