Gardening Full Time
After my retirement last Autumn, I am finally gardening full time. As usual, I’m too ambitious for my own good. I sown more seed than previous years and I’m expanding and reconfiguring several flower beds.
Starting up a farm involves a lot of work. We renovate, rebuild, and construct. We dig, plant, and sow. We also have to get firewood for heating as well as huge amounts of woodchips for our gardening activities. Our farm is not large, but we are lucky to have neighbours that allow us to log in their forests.
After my retirement last Autumn, I am finally gardening full time. As usual, I’m too ambitious for my own good. I sown more seed than previous years and I’m expanding and reconfiguring several flower beds.
Nothing tastes like natural apple juice. No sugar added. Just pure juice – delicious. Here are descriptions of the two methods I have used to make juice.
The summer is usually a busy season. We’ve had lots of visitors and taken time off from our projects. However, the plants have produced an abundance of flowers and food for us to enjoy and preserve.
Finishing the roof on our new build has taken time, but with the help from neighbours, family and friends, the roof is finally complete. All of us have been challenged to do things we have never tried before. The «boys» have laid solar panels and roof tiles and the «girls» have handled power tools and new trades.
Some people claim that you can do almost anything with a tractor and an excavator. During 2022, we have done a lot of gardening with an excavator. We have created a large fire pit behind the house as well as creating a new flower bed and planting.
We have started the build of a workshop, with bathrooms, a large food prepping kitchen and holiday lets. Our budget is 1 mill SEK and we plan to do most of the work ourselves. The building is a major part of our plan to live off the farm and will also have solar panels on the entire roof towards the south.
This time of year, it is all about taking care of the produce from the garden. We harvest, eat, and preserve everything we cannot manage to eat fresh. It is fun to try out different preservation methods and watch the shelves in the pantry fill up.
Although the spring has been unusually cold this year, we have already completed a lot of tasks on our list. Building raised beds, sowing, and preparing for a new-build are just a few of our activities. We have also managed to squeeze in a trip to Poland.
We started building an orangery in April 2020. However, due to Corona-restrictions, traveling between Norway and Sweden has been difficult in periods. The construction has therefore taken us almost two years to complete.
The trees on our property is a mixture of spruce and deciduous trees like birch, European ash, and common aspen. Spruce, like the Norway spruce and Scots pine
Nothing tastes like natural apple juice. No sugar added. Just pure juice – delicious. Here are descriptions of the two methods I have used to make juice.
The summer is usually a busy season. We’ve had lots of visitors and taken time off from our projects. However, the plants have produced an abundance of flowers and food for us to enjoy and preserve.
Finishing the roof on our new build has taken time, but with the help from neighbours, family and friends, the roof is finally complete. All of us have been challenged to do things we have never tried before. The «boys» have laid solar panels and roof tiles and the «girls» have handled power tools and new trades.