Farm Beginnings

Today’s a sunny day; one of the final days of March, with a freshly fallen snow dusting that will soon disappear as early spring snows often do. I’m not accomplishing much this morning as Millie has decided I make an excellent nap bed. I'm trying to remind myself these times pass quickly and dishes are here eternal, so here’s the space to write. I’ve caught you up on our animal acquisitions this far (oh yes, I’m sure there will be more, and soon) so let’s talk land. When I say this land was raw- it had never been lived on in many years. It had been pasture and fields for many years when Kellen’s grandparents owned it, but the homestead is on a different parcel. The only structure we discovered was a concrete trough  overgrown with brush near the watering hole. While Kellen had worked the fields on and off, the pasture hadn’t had animals for several years. 

Our first walk on the property together was in more than a foot of snow; the second time was early spring, wading through swaths of tall grasses, brush, and other nature debris. There was quite a bit of water flowing off the hill, some spring melt, but most from springs Kellen knew existed around the property. 

In one particularly soaked location near a towering old oak I could identify wetland plants in a grouping, and after some tracking through different pools of water we determined it to be the site of one of the larger springs on the property.  Sure enough, after a little digging, we found the spot where water was seeping up from the ground. 

Our first project before moving to the property was to dig a reservoir to use this spring as a water source. Kellen and I took turns digging a small trench to consolidate the flow into a small pond and direct overflow towards the farm ditch in the lower field. There were also several locations along the path that would eventually be our driveway where water flowed off the hillside. The nature of the flows led us to believe they also came from springs, which could prove useful in the future. At present, however, these water flows were an issue. With no ditches along the path to catch the water, the path became impassable once mud season arrived. 2021 was a particularly wet growing season, and I dare say mud season lasted the whole year. We were still deciding on a farm name and the wetness might have fueled a few I came up with: MF Farm (Mud Flats Farm), Always Flowing Farm, Slip N Slide Farm, Moister than Yours Farm, Up to Your Knees Farm, WWF (We’re Wet Farms), EverSpring Farm, Hope Springs Farm... you get the idea.

In early August, we managed to drag the camper out away from the road and between the oaks, giving us privacy and access to the spring reservior. Kellen began assessing how to turn the path into a proper driveway. Just two days later our area suffered a devastating amount of rain, flooding our and nearby villages. Miraculously, we suffered little damage, although our recently installed culvert by the road was nearly washed out.

Kellen's cousin Chad helped us begin the daunting drainage project of installing tile and also helped dig a more proper reservior for our spring water. The driveway is over 600 feet from the road to the camper, but this work got us able to move Kellen's semi trucks and other equipment in from the edge of the road. I believe altogether we now have five drainage tiles under the driveway. The next step was to purchase a backhoe that Kellen and his machinist friend breathed just enough life into to dig several deep trenches spanning the width of the path to place drainage tile. And then she broke down, leaving the driveway impassable by vehicle. We had to use the edge of the lower farm field to get out to the camper for almost a year- Kellen fixes all his own equipment, and the ones he can't, he brings to his Amish machinist friend David, and they tackle the issue together. However the backhoe repair turned out to be a doozy, financially and mechanically, so we needed to make do for that year. In between all of this, Kellen was working on a few neighboring farms, trucking, and fixing equipment to get us in a place to farm our own land. We managed to harvest hay from our fields, the first cut baled on my birthday- now there's a farm memory I'll treasure forever.