Recently, I came across a brilliant opportunity, a little
house on 5 acres with affordable rent. I’ve been yearning to garden for about a year now, and I’m excited to escape my apartment in town (with nearly zero
outdoor growing space, unless you count the bed of my pickup in the parking lot) and go live in the country, where I grew up. Even though I won’t be
able to move for a month or so yet, my girlfriend and I are already knee-deep in plans for rainwater collection, composting, cold frames and fences.
The prospect of being able to once again share our lives with a pet or two or three has filled us with a kind of mania; we spent a weekend touring animal
shelters and our breaks at work involve furtive rifling through www.PetFinder.com, oohing and aahing over Australian shepherds and Swiss mountain dogs in need of loving homes. We want to have some
chickens, as well, and have been looking at designs for chicken tractors. One of my esteemed colleagues recently brought some beautiful heritage Buff Orpington chickens with her to work – a robust culture of
share-and-tell is one of the perks of working with these wonderful folks – and I really liked what I saw.
We’ve decided to cultivate several
separate garden beds (to aid in crop rotation in the coming years) on the sunny south slope behind our new abode, with permanent paths betwixt the beds to
help control soil compaction. Our good-natured future landlord has kindly agreed to let us start our garden now, even though we haven’t moved in yet.
I’ve dreamt about this stuff for long enough; I think I’m going to love doing it.
