Gaia's Garden

My ex-husband's mother (who lives in Ely and whom I've been close to since I was 15) called today to tell me that her neighbor got all excited about my CSA and wants to join!

Okay, so I don't have a CSA (yet) and I don't know how to grow enough food to feed us, much less anyone else (yet)...but still, how exciting is that? The woman whose CSA we're joining this spring told me her children live in Ely and would join as well.

Here's my dream:

A nice big farm house, about five acres of land (I'd say more if we lived somewhere where the extra acres might be wooded or a pond or something, but in Nevada it's all wide-open rangeland. Even in the mountains.) I want to build a big chicken coop, a small barn and a greenhouse.

Because I love to make the gods laugh, here's my Big Plan:

Between now and the end of April pay off $8000 of debt. Our tax return will help.

Between May and August save as much money as possible.

Find our perfect place just in time for the kids to start school in Ely. I go back and forth on this one, because I believe the housing market is going to come down some this fall, so it's tempting to wait a bit longer to buy.

I have to do some research about when we can plant fruit trees. If possible, I'd love to get an orchard in this late summer/early fall. And build a chicken coop before it gets cold so we can get chicks next spring. And maybe till up a big garden and get a cover crop planted on it.

I'm tempted to want to have a barn built this fall as well so we can get goats in the spring, but I'm thinking one barnyard animal at a time might be wiser.

And a greenhouse. Oh, how I want a greenhouse.

I spend a lot of time daydreaming about my little farm. About a beehive in the orchard, my kids picking berries right off our vines. About my neighbors coming by to pick up their weekly produce and eggs. I dream about little pygmy goats that get excited to see me, and a hutch of rabbits for my baby girl to feed and pet. I even dream about spreading all that organic fertilizer over my beautiful garden. Oh, and a basement pantry filled with lovely jewel-like jars of put-up tomatoes and beans and ocra and carrots.

So we're taking our first steps toward the first thing that has to happen--debt paid off. This month we've paid off our two smallish debts, leaving two large ones that (I can hear the gods laughing now) we should be able to pay off, with the help of our tax return, in three months. Paying off these four debts will open up an extra $400 a month, which will really help when it comes time to get approved for a loan.