Outdoor living room
I know this is probably
the first thing many of you would have done, but we've been on the farm
for nearly eight years, and I'm just now starting to do a bit of
landscaping around the trailer. And, of course, even my
half-hearted efforts at aesthetics are primarily edible and
functional. But the small zone I've tackled this summer does make me smile every time I walk past. (And there are a few flowers mixed in, even if they're not blooming yet --- foxgloves from Mom and scarlet runner beans from Dani.)
With skirting
in place in this one small section, I finally I felt able to start
planting right up against the trailer this year for the first
time. In high school art class, I remember being admonished that
edges make or break a picture, and the same is true of a garden.
Having planned greenery rather than weeds up around the base of the
trailer does make it feel more like a residence and less like a campsite.
I'm also pleased to find that the raised bed in front of the south face of the trailer is doing its
job of elevating the soil enough so that water pouring off the roof doesn't
drown the plants. (The gutter and piping that together channel excess water
from that zone to the greywater wetland help too.) We aren't seeing the summer shading of the 
windows
that I hoped for yet this year, but the grape near the
gutter downspout has nearly reached its trellis, promising more and
faster sun-blockage next year. Meanwhile, I filled in the main
space with garden vegetables --- two tomato plants and a row of
edible-pod peas, the latter of which have already been pulled out to
make way for scarlet runner beans.
The third photo in this
post also shows the little square of "lawn" created by letting one
garden bed go to the lawnmower this year. I'm actually kinda
enjoying that dab of open space, but am also pondering whether it might
be a good spot for either a little water garden, a fire pit, or a
bricked-over area to put the charcoal grill on. What do you think
--- would you light a managed fire only five feet away from your
residence?
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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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I might hesitate to put a controlled fire so near the house for obvious reasons, and also because it could really infuse your house with stinky smoke if a breeze floats the right way. But if you can work around that, the grassy nook looks great for a snugly fire pit! We had a house burn down in '04 probably thanks to a standard round Weber BBQ that fell over unnoticed on a wooden deck in a strong wind after we were done bbq'ing one night. We had left the coals to burn down with the cover on as many people do. Now we supervise the bbq, and we soak the coals when we're done. All that aside, when folks go camping the fire pit/BBQ isn't far away from the RV or tent at all, and people seem to survive quite nicely!