The purpose of this series will be to document - more or less in realtime - the developments on our small farm in Cedar Creek, Texas. I intend to record challenges, successes, completed projects, projected projects, and growth moments. As a novice, I suspect there will be many of these, and it is my goal to reflect on the various moments through the writing of this blog.
It is my hope that this series of texts will push me to think more deeply about my relationship with the land, learn about the seasonal life of the land on which we live, and to codify thoughts and perspectives as relate to our dialogical relationship thereto. Also, it will help me remember things like planting dates, flora and fauna activity, and climate changes over time.
This, of course, is a wildly tentative plan for these texts. There is a strong possibility that things will change direction, format, purpose, and utility. Also for it to peter out, as have so many other plans.
I am starting this on February 21, 2022, which is just shy of one year since we closed on this property. One year ago, in fact, we were living in Austin and coming out of a catastrophic freeze which saw the Texas electrical grid kick the bucket and city water becoming dangerous (read: unavailable), leaving thousands of us melting snow to flush toilets, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from using gas stoves to heat homes, and all other manner of madness.
The relief we felt quickly catalyzed into a feverish desire to build a homestead here, leaving less time for reflection. In year 1, we have established the main farm field (just shy of ¼ acre), put up 300 feet of deer fence, built a rather large treehouse, started a small orchard, cover cropped (green-manured) the field (in addition to the 1760 square feet which will hopefully soon be enclosed within a 20x88 food high tunnel [partially] paid for through the USDA's NRCS EQIP high tunnel program). Beyond these projects, we've accomplished a great deal of non-farm things, including a new septic system, a large backyard porch, and so on.
Through this first year, I surely missed opportunities to reflect in deference to getting the list checked-off. I intend to employ better balance this year between the doing and the reflecting. Praxis, I think is the word. Thanks, Freire.
