2024 Recap

I meant to post this on New Year’s Day, but it’s been so long since I dusted the ol’ blog off, I forgot all my credentials. Whoops.

I wasn’t going to mess with a 2024 review this time around. Mostly because I hadn’t really thought about it. But I spent the day cleaning and thinking about what I want to get done in 2025 and wound up thinking about it anyway.

2024 was a big year. The end of 2023 ended with me getting a house and a roommate and setting the foundations for what I want out of life. There’s two acres here, a little house with a full basement, and a big barn that once held horses. The big goal is to turn these two acres into a small homestead with livestock and gardens. 2024 I tried to do everything at once and I did get quite a bit done, but also had a lot of false starts and hiccups and feeling like I wasn’t getting anything accomplished because of so many loose ends.

I started ripping out invasive honeysuckle along one side of the fence line (it’s everywhere and this war will continue indefinitely) and got enough cleared that in the fall I put down ginseng seeds. Ginseng is a long-term crop, it won’t be ready for harvest for five to seven years. But that was a big goal I wanted to get done in 2024, was start that crop rotation. I’ll clear out more honeysuckle in the next couple of months and multiflora rose and green briar and get more space ready. Come fall, I can put in more ginseng beds.

I have always wanted a kitchen herb garden. This house sits on a small incline and in the spring, I grabbed some fallen trees out of the tree line and built up a little two-step terrace. I didn’t really get any herbs in it besides some basil, thyme, oregano, and chamomile, but I did scatter some cosmo, nasturtium, and zinnia seeds and it turned into one of my favorite flowerbeds. It was loaded with butterflies and bees and full of color. Now I’m trying to decide if I want to put the herbs somewhere else and keep that as a little wildflower/chaos garden. There’s space right outside the kitchen window that could be turned into a cute spiral herb garden. It would be farther to get the herbs since it’s not right outside the door like the terrace, but at least then I’d be able to look out and see it as well as use it.

I planted some nut trees, two pecan and two almond. Those should be ready for their first crop around the same time as the ginseng. I put some blueberries in, but I’m not sure how well they’re doing. One of them I had to replace since the squirrels ripped it out and I never found it. The deer also browsed heavily on them.

The blueberries are in the back fenceline and a bit odd all the way out there. But I still have a vision of creating a small ‘boreal forest’ in this area. I cleared out five black walnut trees and dug out their stumps. This was one project where trying to do everything all at once didn’t work in my favor. The full plan is to add some soil and build it up a few inches so I can add soil amendments specific to blueberries, cranberries, and conifers. Blueberries thrive in poor, acidic soil and they have a really shallow root system. The Indiana clay is too dense for them to really get their roots into and that’s why they don’t really do well if you just toss them in and leave them. They also grow in semi-shaded areas where they have protection from hot afternoon sun. With temps easily getting into the hundreds for most of July and August, they need a lot of shade and consistent watering. Long term, I want to get a dwarf pine nut tree and make that the centerpiece of this bed. The usual pine nut trees grow twenty to thirty feet tall, the dwarf in a more manageable twelve feet. Around the pine nut tree will be the blueberries and to help with moisture and erosion control, the edges will be planted with cranberries. There’s also an Indiana native wintergreen groundcover that can be planted in the no-man’s land between this elevated landscape and ‘normal’ ground that keeps its leaves and has bright red berries through winter.

So, 2024, I got ahead of myself and got the blueberries and made a much smaller raised bed for them. We’ll see what they do. 2025 will be getting dirt to get that area built up and setting stones or landscape fabric to prevent erosion. And that is the ONLY thing I’m doing with that project this year. Add dirt, keep dirt in place. Fall of 2025 I can order my pine nut tree and start building it up from there.

I also started getting things ready for my first livestock: Rabbits. I’m doing meat rabbits, but I’m going with an endangered heritage breed called Silver Marten. They’re absolutely beautiful little things and breed standard has them as calm and friendly and a good choice for first time rabbit people. Keeping with that, I have my breeding goals, because this is also about breed preservation, not just food. At some point, I’ll also have kits available for sale as pets or 4-H rabbits or for other breeders looking to diversify their gene pool.

One of the stalls in the barn has been converted to Bunny Fort Knox. During the day, they’ll go out into an enclosed area where they can forage and run around. I got the first layer of fencing done at about three feet high with 19 gauge chicken wire. That’s mostly to keep them in. I’m adding a second layer of fencing in the spring with 14 gauge hog fence that will be five feet high. I’ve got some bird netting that will span the space and a shade cloth to protect them from summer heat. I’m keeping about six inches between the fences to act as a buffer between them and wild rabbits. And I’m sure, because of who I am as a person, I’ll find some kind of groundcover or plant to go between them. I also need to dig a one foot trench around the current fence and put in rocks or more wire as a no-dig barrier for them and any digging predators.

Getting in just under the 2024 deadline, I also got a chicken coop! My grandpa got rid of his flock after my grandma died and had an extra coop. It’s been vacant for a season or two and needs to be cleaned up. But it’s there and now it also needs fencing around it. First chickens I want are laying hens. They’ll stay in their run since the neighbors have a dog that’s often loose and there’s a family of hawks that live somewhere in the tree line. Not to mention the coyotes that live in the area and I’m sure there are foxes around here. Feral cats are also all over the place. Yeah. The chickens will be kept in a run. But I’m trying to work out if I can do something like pasture rotation for them. Where I have an interior fence that splits their run and I can move them every other month or so from one space to the other. Both for enrichment and to give the land some recovery time.

My long term goal for chickens is both laying hens and meat chickens. I want all the different egg colors too. I want to open my egg carton and see a rainbow. There’s a chicken that lays lavender eggs! For meat chickens, I want to get Bresse, another heritage breed. They don’t grow as quickly as the Cornish Cross, but I am fine with the wait. Cornish Cross are just…very sad to me. I also want at least one breeding trio of a melanistic breed. The one I’ve got my eye on is the Svart Höna, a landrace breed from Sweden. They’re from another very small breeding population but unlike the Ayam Cemani, they’re a more docile breed. These guys are very cool because they’re ALL black inside and out; their bones, their organs, their meat, Everything is black.

I’m also thinking about a breeding trio of turkeys. Not sure what kind since I want to see how I like the chickens first before I start adding more. But the thought of having a fresh turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas is awfully tempting.

I did, sort of, get a garden in this year. I don’t have anywhere to really start seeds inside and my attempt to get them started in small diy outdoor greenhouses didn’t work. Only cucumbers and watermelons germinated. Nothing else came up. So some store bought tomato, peppers, and sweet potato plants rounded things out. The watermelons and sweet potatoes did really well. I think final count for the melons was five. I didn’t weigh the sweet potato harvest, but I filled up two five gallon buckets with them. Cucumbers, of course, produced until frost killed the damn things. Same with tomatoes. I felt like I was behind the eight-ball all spring. I was late getting the little spring garden in with kale, spinach, peas, and beets. The beets didn’t do well. I think, with as late as they went in, it got too hot for them. Same with the spinach. The kale did really well all season, though. The peas did all right. Nothing spectacular. This year I’ll do an actual succession planting with them so I have a longer harvest.

I’m also, on the days its warm, making headway on building the ‘food forest’ I envision when I talk about my garden. A food forest is a man-made ecosystem in which edible and beneficial plants are planted together to help conserve water and replenish the soil with nutrients. For example, planting legumes—that are excellent nitrogen fixers—near or around plants like cucumbers or melons that are heavy feeders. Take what you know about the “Three Sisters” and apply it to a much wider scale.

Nut trees all produce juglone to varying degrees, black walnuts are the most famous for it. It’s a hormone that suppresses plant growth. It’s not a poison, but it can make sensitive plants wither and die. It’s an adaptation they have that gives their saplings an advantage. But some plants tolerate it much better than others. Melons, are a plant that aren’t bothered by the limited amounts pecan and almond trees put out. Same with yarrow, borage, clovers, and a lot of herbs also don’t care. These plants can go around the tree to help with moisture control, pest control, and also are nice because they can be eaten or used by humans as well. Once the trees are bigger and cast more shade, some types of leafy greens can be planted in the shadow during the summer to protect them from the heat and extend their growing season.

I was kind of ‘meh’ about the garden in 2024 because there wasn’t a lot growing in it that I was interested in, but for 2025, I’m really excited to get seeds started and in the ground now that I have better idea of what needs to be done.

I also got a strawberry patch started. I’m gearing up for 2025 jam making season because I think these little plants are going to take off. I had to widen the bed twice last year and I’ll probably do it again this spring so their runners have more space to roam.

On top of that, I also got some thornless blackberries from my grandpa put in at the end of the season, but they look like they’re doing all right. They’ll probably be another year or two before they produce, but I can almost taste the pie they’ll make and I’m really excited for that.

I also managed to put in a stone patio around a pre-existing fire ring. The big stones are in and the plan for 2025 is to put fill gravel around them and put some chairs out there. The fire ring spent most of the summer as a weedy mess, but I dedicated a weekend to Getting The Damn Thing Done and it turned out pretty great.

I also put in a path to the picnic table that came with the house. I started pulling up the grass in that area where I want to put in some big beds with mosquito repellent plants. I did get some coneflowers transplanted in that area and planted some tulip bulbs for spring. 2025 I want to finish those beds. There are two big fir trees on either side of the picnic table, I want the beds to wrap around them and transition to shade beds. There’s a hosta on the corner of the house that gets way too much sun in the summer and looks terrible. It’s going to be moved to the backside of the fir trees where it’ll have the shade it needs. Columbine, bleeding heart, and lilly-of-the-valley will also end up in those beds.

I did a lot of other little things throughout the year. I spent most of the year expanding beds and trying to keep up with the weeding. 2024 was a really, really busy year, but I think I’ve let go of the throttle and 2025 will be a year with more projects being completed in a more organized and less frenetic manner. The biggest project I have planned is getting a greenhouse built. I’m really focusing on that and making materials lists and seeing what I can scavenge from work and what’s cheap on Marketplace.

I guess that means we’ll revisit this in a year and see how things shook out.

Key things I want to get done for 2025:

Greenhouse

Rabbits

Chicken fence

Finish firepit

Finish picnic table beds

Put soil down for ‘Boreal Forest’