In our first year on the property, the project was all about preparing the land, and the infrastructure in a manner we could reach our goals. This is a photo record of the progress as we transformed the lot from an overgrown wasteland, into a productive small farm. The project began in February the folks from 3E excavating stopped by to visit for a couple of days and they brought along their friend Mr John Deere. Mr Deere is a handy guy to know when you have heavy groundwork to be done, and he did a fine job of clearing and the rough levelling out back. When it was done, we had flat ground, a burn pile, and a compost pile to be dealt with. Shortly after, the rain returned for a couple of months, so the project was on hold until the ground dried enough to finish work. In the spring we built the chicken coop, and started a flock of Belgian Maline chickens from eggs. In early May, the folks from Crockett’s Fencing arrived, as did the little machine from Quadra Landscaping. By the time they were finished, we were fenced to keep the deer and bears out, the land was flat enough to work with our tiny little tractor, and we put down a seed mix intended to give a good green base with plenty of bee forage mixed in. At the same time, the front lawns were overseeded with White Dutch clover to help with forage for the bees. As the summer progressed, we got hive stands built, and added a 30 inch tiller to the lawn tractor. The tiller makes the work for the garlic patch manageable. The first garlic planting happened in October, when we put roughly 2000 plants in, most of which will be held back as seed to expand the patch to roughly 5000 for the second year.