Li'l Sebastian Farmlet

Hello and welcome to this new blog thing I'm doing about our little farmlet. I have no idea what I am doing so I'm just going to give it a go and learn along the way.

The story so far...........

It took us six months to find Li'l Sebastian Farmlet. We wanted something on a few acres enough room to get a hobby farm going, and close enough to commute to work no longer than 30 minutes. There are very few property that fit our needs in our price rang. We almost lost this property when we were out bided but a few weeks later the estate agent called to sale had fallen through and the place was ours.

The dream is to produce as much of our food on the property as possible. We plan of getting Goats, Honey bees, Alpacas, and poultry. We will also grow veggies and start an orchard. This first year we will concentrate on improving the soil and observing the seasons before planting too much. Trying to make good decisions and trying to follow some permaculture principles.

We moved into Li'l Sebastian farmlet on the Friday the 9th of March 2018 four months ago today. In four months we have made a good start.

The first thing we did was make compost, there were horses on the property so plenty of manure was left behind. We also have a friend who supplies us with bags full of leaves and I brought the lawn clipping also from the rental property we moved from to add to the compost.

The first compost bin built

We used free pallets and an old plastic advertising sign the line the bin.

Inside the compost bin

We painted our letter box, which is a short walk from our house on the main road.

The new paint job

Our freshly painted letter box stands out from the other rusty ones

We had a house warming and put up our property sign. The sign writer misinterpreted our instructions and included inverted commas on the sign. The property named comes from the TV show Parks and Recreation for a number of reason's the small town we live in is called Sebastian, we live on Recreation Rd, and it's a very horse related community and we have a dog named (Sebastion) we spelt his name wrong. We are probably he only people in Sebastian that don't really care for horses.

The "Li'l Sebastian farmlet "sign

We couldn't resist planting something so we went ahead and planted over 50 cloves of garlic. I was thinking this would be a years supply but maybe not. We will have to plant more next year if we run out too soon.

Rachelle planting garlic

Me planting garlic

The house has an awesome Rayburn wood cooker. We had to learn how to cook on it which actually was way easier than I thought it would be. The maintenance cleaning isn't too bad either. I prefer cooking on the wood stove over the electric we have now. We just need to collect more wood to keep it running through winter and only use the electric stove in the warmer months.

Cleaning the flue for the first time.

 My Dad converted one of the old stables into a poultry inclosure for us by adding fencing panels and fox proffing with wire running along the ground.

The converted staple poultry inclosure

We ending up rescuing the  neighbours Rooster (Dad told us he was bring us a Rooster or his head will be cut off) so we can breed chickens in the future. I don't want to keep buying chickens so Lucky is our source for chicken self sufficiency. His is a Leghorn which according to Meg Miller (Editor of Grassroots magazine) are the best bread for soil improving and scratching. They are also pretty good egg layers. 

Lucky the rooter

We got very excited and picked up 8 chickens from the Kyneton poultry auction.

At the Kyneton poultry auction loading up our new girls

Unfortunately one died within a few days of getting them home. The second death on the farmlet after the frog I put a shovel through when digging in the Veggie patch.

I dug a grave for the little leghorn chick

We installed a water tank to service the poultry automatic waterer. So much nicer than having to fill water containers manually everyday. The ducks do make a mess of their water so I clean it out most days anyway.

It might be on a slight lean but hey it's the first water tank I have installed and I'm dam proud

The most daunting but exciting of all the tasks was installing the weather station. I now live for giving people a detailed breakdown of what the weather is doing. I'm excited for all the data we will be able to collect and use it to plant for our water consumption needs. We are on town water and we have two large concrete tank's that service our outside tabs. I would like to not have to use any town water to water our garden.

The resarection of the weather station

Well thats it first post done!
Dayna out.