June was a busy month for us at the farm. We began clearing land, built some temporary pens and structures on our non-agricultural property, and picked up a dozen white pigs for ourselves and some of other local farmers.
To date we have constructed and entrance and cleared about a half-acre on the new Welbourne Bay Road farm property in Labrador. We removed the standing black spruce trees and the top layer of caribou moss, roots, shrubs and bushes and pushed them into windrows.
These windrows run E to W and divide our 1–2-acre fields and paddocks and are the foundation of what will be our living wind breaks. We will eventually be planting trees and other complimentary perennial plants on these windrows once they settle.
I was happy with the apparent quality of the soil layer on the property. We have not taken and submitted our soil samples for testing yet but are confident we will not be disappointed with the results considering we are converting raw boreal forest soil to agricultural soil. We already know it will be on quite acidic and are prepared to incorporate lime and ash before large scale planting next Spring.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||27px|||”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https://taigavalleyfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/D8F24B59-FC33-44FB-9A43-C52D92E4BF89-scaled.jpg” title_text=”D8F24B59-FC33-44FB-9A43-C52D92E4BF89″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”]We had our main well professionally installed by an awesome local drilling company. A great crew to work with and we struck water at 25 feet all the way down to 50 feet, so we should have plenty of volume and flow. We are now waiting on our quote to get an electrical connection to the property. It’s approximately 760 meters from the pole line to the SW corner of our property so I am estimating it will take at least 13 poles; so we are talking about a significant project. In the meantime I am planning to use solar and a generator to do what we need to do.
After the long and arduous process of securing our land, this much progress this month is both encouraging and exciting.
My goal is to provide more regular updates here on the blog, in our newsletter, on our youtube channel, and at Growerhood.com
I would love to hear about your projects on your urban or rural homestead or farm. So please comment below and share your successes and challenges with us!
Good Growing,
Brian
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