The Before Pictures

When Ivan and I decided that we were going to transform our property using permaculture, step by step, we decided that the first thing we needed to do was take our “before” pictures. There were two reasons we thought this would be a good idea, first for ourselves: for inspiration and encouragement when it is slow going and hard work. And second for that moment when we’ve reached a certain point and decided to do our “after” pictures, then we can put together a movie-slideshow complete with dramatic music. I was also inspired in part to do this blog, and to organize and continue my progress pictures by the blog Bealtaine Cottage, if you have a moment to look, her before and after post is absolutely phenomenal to scroll through.

The following series of pictures were taken at the end of April, 2015.This was more than a year after we had moved in, so a lot of the overgrowth clean up had already been taken care of.

Entering our property from the county road you are facing east. The hideous garden boxes I built on the left in 2014 were taken down soon after these pictures. One day I will figure out exactly what kind of welcoming garden I actually want to put in that area.

The children’s play area with rope swings, a climbing gym, hammock, a line of stumps to the left and an old trampoline frame in the background. This year the stumps are gone, the new trampoline will be moved to that spot, and a treehouse and a picnic table will be added.

This area is to the right of the driveway. One day it will be full of beautiful flower gardens around a lovely gazebo/patio area for our outdoor cooking and campfires.

Ah, the front of our home. Not much to say here, simply because I haven’t really decided what to do with this area yet. This is our southern exposure and there’s not a lot of solar energy collecting going on with this house, yet. This is still a thought in progress.

On the south side of the driveway from our house is the lounging area of our Great Pyrenees and also the pile of random junk that came with our acreage (the broken down fifth wheel is no longer there.) to the east of this area is the start of our line of random buildings (storage, wood shed, barn). The buildings are very old but still work for our chickens and goats, as well as hay and wood storage.

Our back field. The first picture looking north east from the barn area and the second picture looking south west from the far back corner of the property. This area started its evolution within a month of these pictures with the planting of fruit trees and shrubs and the digging of the vegetable garden.

The seasonal run off pond. In 2014, the year we moved here, this pond was twice as big. We had a lot more snow that year. 2015 was fairly dry and this year looks like its going to be even more dry, although its still early enough to get a good dump of snow yet.

This area is the north side of the house. We were busy doing clean up from the previous September when we had a big, early dump of heavy wet snow that broke a lot of the little maple trees there. This is a nice little area, bordered by trees with one large poplar in the middle. The little flower garden surrounding the poplar I discovered by accident after a friend told me the previous fall that the flowers spilling all over the area were not wild flowers.

And finally, here is the northwest corner of our property, an open, windy and exposed pasture that we are going to start changing by planting willows in it this spring.