I found this post in my drafts. Apparently, I never posted it. It’s 5 months later now, and I’m well settled into my new home at The Wallow. What has happened and what has yet to come? Here’s the draft I wrote back in August:

“I won’t be moving to my new house in Tennessee until October. So much waiting! I’m reading up on bees and pigs in the meantime, as well as prepping for Burning Man and Alchemy, which happen between now and then. There’s lots to do, but I’m spending a lot of time daydreaming away, too.”

Now that it’s 2010, I’m thinking towards the year ahead, which always involves a nod back to where I’ve been. The biggest whirlwind of awesome has been in just the last handful of months. In case you missed some posts, here are a few of the highlights for me:

The Wallow has lots of distinct parts to it. There’s the house, of course. There’s the two-story barn, which now contains Joshua’s workshop. There’s the hill, which is behind the house. There’s the forest-ish area on the way to the creek, where the bee hives are. There’s the front yard, which will be the garden area come spring. There’s The Bowl, an area made up of driveway and concrete walls at basement level, making it seem like you’re in a bowl of concrete. There’s The Island, a grass and tree space between the two main driveways where Joshua chops wood and wood that has been delivered is stored. And finally, there’s the area we’ve been calling the field or the pasture.

The field is about a 1/2 acre of space, enclosed in a high-quality wooden fence. This is the area that we plan to use for keeping animals. However, like the rest of the property, it had been completely taken over by brushy weeds.

In the past few days, we have set up most of the rooms in our home, Joshua has tilled three garden beds and built a work bench, I’ve begun building a crafting table, Joshua mowed and we both raked up the grass to become hay for later, we worked on hoeing the weeds off the brick walkways, we ran cable for internet, we’ve grilled out several nights, we sit on our front porch swing and enjoy the view, we’ve met some neighbors, and so many other random bits of this and that.

One of my big goals for homesteading is to raise animals for food. Bees are in the works, and eventually down the line there may be chickens and goats and rabbits. What I’m really excited about, though, is raising a pig!

I first settled on a pig because I’m curious about how I will feel raising an animal on my own and then killing and eating it.