The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Lessons learned in year 3

The mule garden

September 14 is our big anniversary --- three years after the day we moved to our farm!  Every fall, I take a bit of time to think back over the year before, and every year I'm stunned by how far we've come in a short twelve months.  This navel-gazing lunchtime series explores the top lessons we've learned this year on the farm.  I'll start where I left off last fall: "our trials and tribulations --- fencing out deer, not enough hours in the day."

We've discovered that it is quite possible to keep deer out of the garden without a fence!  Last week, I tentatively pulled the last protective row covers off our sweet potatoes and strawberries, and still nary a nibble.  Deer damage was one of my hardest trials last year, and I can barely believe it's a thing of the past.  Pretty soon, we'll be rolling out a website entirely devoted to helping other farmers and gardeners beat the deer problem, so stay tuned.

As for not enough hours in the day --- well, some days I still feel that way.  But due to the wonders of taking weekends off, I suddenly feel like I have more time.  We've managed to pretty much stay on top of the weeding and mowing and harvesting, and still zip through some long term projects.  Maybe by this time next year, I will have forgotten feeling pressed for more daylight hours.


This post is part of our Third Year of Homesteading lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries:





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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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