Author: beautifulchaosorg

Hi, I am Carolien and I am a Dutch woman trying to build a self sufficient homestead on concrete and rubble. Follow my husband and me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@straverhomestead9667

We bought some fruit trees

But we where not finished with the preparations for planting jet

Beside fruit trees we also bought 50 pcs of Lavender plants (Lavandula angustifolia) and 50 pcs of ivy (Hedera helix). The Lavender is not only decorative; in future I also want to harvest them. Lavender is not only beautiful in a dry bouquet, but we also want to have the essential oil. In the future I hope to make my own soap again and I would need the essential oil for that. The Ivy is ideal for covering the soil lively to prevent it from drying out and prevent erosion. Also we used to wash our clothing with ivy leaves and we want to go back to that again. Now we wash with wash nuts, but the ivy leaves will be free, after the plants settle and grow, and you can’t get it more regional than from your own garden.

Other than that we bought 10 pcs of raspberry bushes. Some raspberry bushes we already have and the kids loved snacking them directly of the bush. We just had so little harvest that I had to see that every child would get one. That problem should be solved now. Currant bushes we also have a few and where loved to snack from. We will plant all the berry bushes we have in our new plant beds, because we will put a fens around them to keep the dogs out. The dogs destroy everything and pee over everything. We have all male dogs.

We bought 15 pcs apple trees, 15 pcs pear trees and 15 pcs plum trees. We had not finished the preparations on time, but we planted fruit trees in the finished plant beds right away. So put aside the straw, make a hole put in the tree and put a part of the soil back. Than we watered, so the soil would run in every corner and space around the roots. Than fill up the soil around the tree completely and put in a post to secure the tree so the wind will not rock the tree. Only thing left is to divide the straw back. My husband had prepared a lot of posts with a point for all the trees.

We could only plant 12 fruit trees, so we planted all the other once close to each other in 2 plant beds to wait for them to be planted on there final spot. We had built some more plant beds and could only fill 2, because we did not have anymore soil. The trees are in these 2 beds. Hopefully we will get new soil delivered soon and we will go on with this topic a different time.

Spring is progressing

Even the insects show themselves again

Since my last post about the spring we had some nice and sunny days, so the crocuses have opened up there flowers to invite the insects. We have found some bees to be very busy with the crocuses. The peony sticks its tips just out of the ground. I just love the flowers of the peony. The strawberry plants are showing some beginning of new growth. I even found one single dandelion. Last year we had a pair of coots nesting in our pond and apparently one coot has already returned. We had found it swimming and eating in our pond and I am very happy it did not fly of when our dogs came closer. Other than that some plants are already showing signs of the coming leaves. Here are some impressions of what I have found on our property.

Visiting Sheep lambs / spring cleaning birds nests

Visiting a friend with a lot of sheep and lambs

We visited a friend who sells sheep cheese and sheep meat. He makes the cheese from the milk of his own sheep, so he has a lot of sheep with a lot of lambs. The lambs are so adorable. The children loved looking at them, how they bounced around and drank at there mother. I am really looking forward to having our own sheep, and of course lambs every year, again. Maybe in 2 years that could be the case.

Birds nests

I love it when I can hear the first birds singing again in the winter. For me that means the biggest and darkest part of winter is over and spring can not be long. So it was high time to clean out the births nests we had hung up 2 years ago. We have 3 births hotels for 3 nests of which the first nest in the first hotel was not used and the last nest in the last hotel was not used and the wooden shoe was not used. So we cleaned out 9 nests and it was high time because the space was filled out, because every time the birds breed they will build a new nest on top of the old one. Some nests where build as we typically expect a births nest, open to the top. We also found a nest like a ball with a hole on the side.

Beside the births nests we hung up, the birds also nest in the wall above. These are hollow stones with damage here and there leaving enough space for the birds to go in and out. Since the wall is southeast facing it will warm up nicely when the sun shines. We only have sparrows nesting here.

To build new nests the birds will find enough material here, but what they also love to use is dogs hair. Since one of our dogs needed to be brushed, I provided some nest material. The next day there is hardly anything left of the dogs hair.

Many of the nesting possibility’s are claimed already, so I hope there will be a lot of new birds this year. We love watching the young birds learning to fly.