2021: A Year in Review
2021 was all about infrastructure, land clean-up, building community relationships and inhabiting the land. Overall, we did pretty well on our goals. We had to shift some of our 2022 goals into 2021 and vice versa because of scheduling, financing, shifting priorities, unexpected obstacles, and a permitting process that took way longer than expected. So, let’s go through our 2021 goals and how we’re shifting to complete more goals in 2022!
Building our tiny house
The main goal for 2021 was to inhabit our land so we can start farming and raising livestock to get our business off the ground. Having chickens and ducks without living on the farm is a no go because we wouldn’t be able to give them the attention they need, especially since we both work full-time. With that in mind, we set out on the house building journey. Before we even closed on the land, we found our architect and set him to work on designing the modern, net zero Scandinavian/Japanese-inspired minimalist farmhouse of our dreams. The plan was to have our house designed so the second we closed on the land, we’d be ready to get the permits started to build our forever house. Then, we threw a wrench into the plans by blowing the money we saved for our house on doubling the acreage of our farm because, why not?
Considering we now had all this land with no house budget left, we decided to shift gears towards a tiny house. Our homestead was always going to have a small outbuilding to use as an office/workspace, but we decided this would be a good space to expand and redesign to make it a tiny house. We got our architect on it, got our our permits submitted, then we waited…. and waited….. then had second thoughts and completely redesigned the house to make it more livable. Drawings were resubmitted and we went back to waiting. The first set of drawings were submitted for permitting in March and all the various permits started trickling in by late-August with all approvals ready by mid-September. As if the process wasn’t time-consuming and stressful enough, our contractor decided he didn’t need to contact any sub-contractors or prepare any quotes or timelines (while continuously promising he was working on it) for about 2-3 months which was the biggest delay to our project. Needless to say, I was beyond frustrated and he was fired. Thanks to Alex’s awesome uncle who “has a guy” for everything, we were able to connect with the most responsive and knowledgable contractor who has even more “guys” than Alex’s uncle.
Getting our infrastructure set-up (water, electrical, septic, barn)
Once we had the right guy on the job, things started really moving. We ran out of good weather to get the well dug, but we were able to get rough plumbing, septic, driveway and our foundation done very quickly after hiring him on. Unfortunately, all the delays earlier in the year meant we were running against the clock. Each day that passed got shorter, colder, and wetter. Since we are building the tiny house ourselves, we decided there wasn’t enough good weather left in the year to get it built and decided to push it to the spring. So, although the tiny house isn’t completely built, we got all the infrastructure in place so we can start framing whenever the weather clears up. The ultimate, long-term goal for our farm was to be completely off-grid. We ran into some problems getting ComEd to schedule a consultation, so we decided that we should look into getting a solar system since we’re pushing the rest of the project out to the spring anyway. So, thanks to the difficulty ComEd had in understanding what we needed, it’s looking like we will be fully off-grid sooner than expected. So, thank you I guess?
We also decided to hold off on the barn since we’re still trying to figure out the size that we need and didn’t want to rush into something that’s going to be unsuitable for our needs. A much more attainable goal was to build a shed. There were many long nights, countless trips to Lowes, a few mental breakdowns and a lot of hard work to get this shed built. Alex took on the role of apprentice and did very well, if I do say so myself. There’s still some work to do to get the shed completely finished, but we got it weather tight before winter hit which I’m counting as a win.
Gather with our local communities to find out how we can serve them
Because our business isn’t completely off the ground yet, gathering with the local communities looked a little different than expected this year. I talked with communities leaders in Englewood and Pilsen neighborhoods in Chicago to understand what they needed and how I could help. Because we aren’t living in those communities, it was important that I approach leaders within the communities to tell me what their needs are and how we can help rather than us going in assuming the needs of a community that we don’t live in.
Alex, being the chattier of the 2 of us, managed to meet all the neighbors, chatted with all the contractors to learn about everything going on in the area, started meeting other local farmers, and generally focused on learning more about what different farms in the area are doing. His uncle owns property nearby, so Alex spent some time over there learning about the needs of different animals and, most importantly, learning about beekeeping. Because we aren’t living on the land, we don’t have power, we don’t have water, etc., we were hesitant to get too much farming going yet. After realizing how easy bees were to care for, Alex went to the local feed and supply store to order his first box of bees and get his first hive set up. Our hive got started a little late in the year, so he decided not to harvest any honey, but Alex still spent quite a bit of time at the feed store getting to know the employees, learning about beekeeping and just making connections within our community.
Brush and tree clean-up/Setting up our first fields
Land clearing… where to start? Our property was formerly a tree nursery that became overgrown, so there are a lot of trees that are dead, damaged, too close together, in desperate need of pruning… the list goes on and on. We set a goal to clean up as much of the land as we could, focusing primarily on the homesite and the area around the field entrance (which will be the future farm stand entrance), and boy oh boy did we clean. In preparation for work to get started, we got to cleaning up around the homesite and managed to take down a few dead trees and a few others that were going to be in the way of construction. The field entrance was an especially big, overgrown mess of dead and damaged trees, vines, brambles, you name it. We were making slow but steady progress with chainsaws, handsaws, a Gorilla Cart, brute strength and willpower, but a conversation with our excavator changed everything. We mentioned what we were doing and he walked over with us to take a look. For a couple hundred dollars and 2 hours in his machines, Rick was able to clean up the area better than we could have even imagined. We’re considering this a major win. This completely opens up the area for us to get started with the next phase of developing that entrance to the property.
Setting up our first fields did not go quite to plan this year. It was unbelievably hot and dry this year meaning working outside was really unpleasant and, quite frankly, dangerous at times this summer. We had a field next to the home site that we wanted to till up, level out and get ready to plant for our kitchen garden. We collected our tools, got our rototiller our there and…. failed. The soil was so hard and dry and the sun was so unbearably hot, it just completely did not work out like we planned. Rick came through for us again and tilled and leveled the field for us in about 5 minutes. He was even nice enough to move 5 tons of gravel for the base of our shed over to the field (Unfortunately, we miscalculated how much we needed and Alex had to shovel and drag the other 5 tons over by hand in the Gorilla Cart). We are in a good place with this field to get a garden in this year, so even though it didn’t all go to plan, we’re still counting this as a win this year.
Monthly Content
Something we continue to strive for is not only to produce really high quality food and products for you, but to create some learning opportunities and community building content. We are not really social media people, but we try to update our Instagram page to show progress with our farm and share things with you that we’re excited about. Some of you took part in last year’s BHF Live chicken butchering and cooking demo class and we are so grateful for the positive response we got from that. We’re excited to be able to share a microgreen growing kit and class with you soon! Getting the tiny house started and getting the farm set up has been incredibly time consuming (remember, we also have full-time jobs on top of the full-time job of getting our farm setup), so we weren’t able to provide as many classes or major announcements as we would have liked last year. We are hoping things calm down a little bit in the second half of 2022 so we can start creating more content that we hope you love!
Thanks for reading! Please leave any questions or comments below!
