2022: A Look Ahead
2022, much like 2021, is all about infrastructure, land clean-up, and inching ever closer to inhabiting the land. Some of last years goals are carrying over to this year, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have all new 2022 goals. Let’s take a look at what’s on the agenda for Black House Farm in 2022!
Finish the tiny house
If you read our 2021: Year in Review, you know that our biggest priority is inhabiting our land. Being on site 24/7 will open the door to so many more possibilities with the farm. If you recall, we were able to get a lot of the infrastructure done for the tiny house, so as soon as we have the time and cooperative weather, we’ll be out there framing the house. We do still have our full-time jobs, so we’ll be spending evenings and weekends building, but aim to be done by midyear. We could hire someone and probably get the house done much more quickly, but there’s something satisfying about doing it yourself, isn’t there? I’ve always found a sense of pride in learning a new skill, finding a solution to a problem, and generally just seeing a real, tangible result to my own hard work. I’ve been slow to come around, but I’m really starting to understand Tia’s love for construction.
Off-grid Solar
I thought calling ComEd to get electricity for a new house would be cakewalk. Surely, they do this every day… right? It is unclear to me whether I was bad at explaining our project or if ComEd was bad at understanding. After making multiple phone calls, asking for advice on how to request electrical service from our contractors, lots of confusion and frustration, I was never quite able to figure out how to get electricity run 300’ from the pole to our house. We always wanted to end up off grid, so this seemed like as good a time as any to start exploring that option. We were able to get a solar system designed and secure financing, so it looks like we will have our off-grid solar system installed this year and we couldn’t be happier about that.
Finish the shed
Aside from the tiny house, our other big project from last fall was the shed. The thought was that we’d knock it out in no time and have a space on site to work on the tiny house. We’ve been storing building materials in our garage and we were looking forward to reclaiming our garage (and treadmill) and not having to haul so many things back and forth from our rental house… that’s not quite how it worked out. The construction of the shed ended up being more complicated than expected, mostly because I wanted to be cute and aesthetic with a classic gambrel roof instead of the much, much easier gabled roof. The increasingly cold and wet weather, plus the fact that it was getting dark at like 4:30pm also did not help things. Now that the days are getting warmer and longer, we should be able to knock out the rest of the shed and get our first permanent structure completed this spring.
Clean up the first quadrant
We have 76 acres and we are 2 people. We have full-time jobs and there is no way we are going to be able to clean up and maintain every inch of that property right away. Last year, we rented parts of the land to the seller so he could remove some of the trees that he wanted to keep for his business. Since we weren’t going to be all in on farming the whole property right away, this seemed more than reasonable. The job of removing all the trees he wanted took longer than expected, so we were asked if we would extend the lease for another year. We are still not going to be able to get to the entire property this year, so it made sense to let him keep doing his thing. However, now that we are getting closer to inhabiting the land, we wanted to make sure we sectioned off an area of the land that was only for us. Not only to maintain some level of privacy around our home, but also so we could start developing the land the way we wanted without worrying about interfering with his work or having our work interfered with.
In the first quadrant that we’ve sectioned off for ourselves, we plan to go through and take down any dead, diseased, and damaged trees; as well as prune the trees that we plan to keep. After our excavator cleaned up the area near our field entrance better than we could have imagined (shout out, Rick!), it opens it up for us to start improving that area that will eventually be the entrance for our farm stand. We will plant some native wildflower and grass seed to attract beneficial insects and feed our bees. We also have a gate which is in good shape, but needs some TLC since it spent about 20 years being reclaimed by nature before we bought the land. Speaking of gates, we would like to install a gate and fencing near the homesite. Not that we’re especially concerned about trespassers, but the land is beautiful, so let’s not encourage anyone to come take a peek, ok? Plus, we plan on getting more animals in the coming years, so fencing will be a must. Might as well get started now since we’re going to ultimately need about 1.5 - 2 miles of fencing, if my math is correct (it often isn’t, but I’m pretty confident about this one).
More classes, content and product releases
We had a blast bringing you a chicken butchering and cooking demonstration last year and really want to bring you more classes in the future. We really appreciated the feedback we received and are so happy to see people getting excited about the things that excite us. We love food in all capacities: growing, prepping, cooking, eating, so we really want to bring you some more classes this year. We will definitely plan to host more butchering and cooking demonstrations, but we’re also looking forward to developing some classes on growing your own food. It may seem counterintuitive that a farm trying to sell food is going to teach you how to grow your own, but we feel that there is not enough good, healthy food available in many communities, so the more good food we can get into people’s hands, the better. Growing food doesn’t have to take up a lot of space or time, so we’ll be introducing our microgreens kit and class next month and we’re so excited to share it with you! For those of you who have more space and ambition, we’ll be developing a class for the fall on cold frames so you can learn what it is, how to use it, and how to build your own. As we settle into this year, we are planning to send out a monthly newsletter to give you a glimpse into the progress being made at of Black House Farm, as well as announce new classes and products being launched. We’ll also post on our Instagram page and hope you’ll join us for a quarterly live chat where we can give you an update on the farm, answer your gardening questions, or just chat!
Build our first hoop house
A hoop house is a major priority for us because it will help us extend our growing season and be able to control some other variables to make our growing operations more successful. Too many other projects took priority over the hoop house in 2021, but we plan to revisit this as soon as we start wrapping up some of our other projects. We’re hoping to have a hoop house built and ready to use during winter 2022-2023 so we can really get this farm up and running!
Stretch Goal: dog kennel/play area
As you may know, we have a little terrier/schnauzer mix named Winston. He loves being outside, running around like a maniac, playing fetch, chasing anything that moves (squirrels, birds, chipmunks, deer), actively avoiding the shade to lay in the hottest possible sun like a weirdo. We used to have a small, fenced in back yard at our house in Chicago, but since we’re currently renting a townhouse, we don’t have any private outdoor area. We take him on walks and let him run around on a long leash in the field across from our house, but it’s just not the kind of freedom we’d like to give him. We love how curious and friendly Winston is, but it’s also gotten him into trouble. We’ve seen coyotes walking near the homesite and definitely hear them yelping and howling at night, so we need a place for Winston to be able to enjoy the outdoors without him trying to be friendly with the resident coyotes. We’d like to build a small shelter to keep him out of the elements (when he chooses) and fence in an area with a playground to keep him happy. Who knows, once we get this built maybe we’ll even get a friend or 2 for him to play with… as long as they’re not coyotes.
Thanks for reading! Please leave any questions or comments below!
