Back in January when we decided that we would start a blog there is no way we could have imagined that today we would be on a mandatory Stay at Home order due to the COVID-19 virus. Yet here we are, like the majority of the rest of the country, learning to be home school teachers to our children, social distancing from our friends and families, some of us losing jobs and on top of it all, having to fight people in the store for toilet paper. With all of this going on, there is not a lack of stuff to keep us busy, but how do we stay sane?
We took a look around our home and realized there is not a shortage of things that need to be done. But we are currently in the twilight zone so we asked ourselves, how could make a long term impact on our home and make our family more self sufficient? With that, we decided to take a stab at gardening. Yep you heard me right, gardening.
It seems logical really. We watched the news and the president says we have at least 30 more days of this with some suggesting through the summer. With that in mind we tried to prioritize our home projects and choose the ones that would have the greatest impact on our current situation. So, this week’s home school class has consisted of lots of hard work moving lumber, digging in the dirt, measuring, cutting (with supervision of course), nailing and even some planting.
Knowing just enough about gardening to be dangerous, we thought it best to do a little research. After looking at ideas online and reading about the best ways to go about our garden we jumped right in. Let me say, we by no means think that our little garden will supplement a large portion of our food supply. However, we do think we will enjoy eating from the garden and teaching the kids all aspects that come along with a small garden.
We first decided on a space in our yard that we would not mind giving up to garden space. We chose an area that was out of the way, gets good sun, is easy to water and could possibly be expanded if we chose to at a later date. We also decided that raised garden beds were the best idea for us. They look nice, they are easier to contain away from critters and the weeds are easier to keep up with (or so we are told).
Next we dug through our lumber pile to see what we had available to use. We like to stock pile random lumber. Just like everything’s we do, this is probably overkill but we found some nice 4x10x18 foot boards for the boarder. Next we laid out the vision and now we will get to work! Stay tuned to see how this whole thing will turn out!
**Tip** If you have a smaller lumber yard in your area that you can connect with, often times they have a “bone yard” in the back. This is lumber that people have either returned, paid for and did not pick up or ordered the wrong thing. Rather than throwing it away you can purchase it from them at a deep discount. Our lumber yard bundles random stuff so you have to take the whole bundle but it can be fun to find projects to do with the lumber and it is substantially less expensive than buying it one project at a time.
Rural Home Renovations 