A New Beginning

My husband and I have waited a long time to get to this point in our lives ~ retirement and having our own small farm.  We both came from very rural areas (he from Maine & me from Massachusetts) and we settled in the middle ~ New Hampshire.  We love it here in our log cabin on 8 acres of land at the end of a long dirt road.
This place is so quiet and peaceful and it is not for everyone since it requires a lot of work just to keep up with the dogs (Emma & Sadie) and our flock of crazy chickens.  I'm sure that, at some point in the near future, there will be other animals added to our family but, for now, these will do.
We moved here in 2011 after a very stressful experience selling our last house.  It made us even more appreciative of this place.  When our old house was under agreement, our log cabin got sold and we were broken-hearted but the deal fell through and we bought it!!  We both feel that this little farm was meant to be ours from the minute that it was built even though two other families owned it before us.    We closed on our house on January 4th and it seemed like Spring would never come but time passes and we put in our first big vegetable garden.  The results were not what we expected since the weeds took over after a month or so.  We bought a rototiller so we hope that this year, we will have a lot more produce.  We have already been able to harvest peas, asparagus (from a garden put in by the first owner of the property) and some potatoes.  We also planted zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, pickling cukes, watermelon, pumpkins, onions & corn. 
When we checked out the property last spring, we found that there were some established fruit trees (one peach and one apple).  We planted two more apple trees this past Spring and we have two more peach trees ordered.  I will be looking for some good deals on strawberry plants come Spring so that our grandkids can enjoy picking and eating them straight from the garden.
We have a barn for storage and animals but it is badly in need of repair before we can add to our farm menagerie.  The repairs will have to wait until next Spring since we have a lot on our agenda for this year.  The house needs powerwashing & staining and the trim needs to be painted.  The garden needs to be maintained or the weeds will take over again, the animals need to be taken care of daily ~ they require even more care during the summer months because chickens are very sensitive to the heat.
Boy......I could probably go on forever but I'd better save my stories for another time.