Monday, January 9, 2012

New Year's Plans, Goals & Dreams

Tim was able to dig and plant the Kyohou Grape vine in the front garden this weekend! (pics to come) Yaaaaay!!! This has been a long awaited event and I'm so glad he did so this weekend as the weather has been EXTREMELY HOT this past week, and I'm afraid if this keeps up, the trees will break dormancy. Now we can breath a short sigh of relief as this grape can grow to it's potential this year and hopefully produce a decent crop. (And maybe we can make grape juice or.....even wine!  Wine-making...sheesh...another project in itself!)

I've been pondering about what I want to accomplish this year in 2012.
In keeping with the self-reliance train of thought, I've always wanted to learn more about solar panels.
So, this year, I'd like to do just that: Learn how solar panels work and even make some.
They may be crude, but if it works, I can make them for a LOT less than if I were to purchase them from a vendor.
It'll also make for an excellent Science Project for my son's on-going homeschooling.
Plus, it's just RAD(ha! who uses that word anymore, right?) to know you have the "power", yes...cheesy pun intended.
So, hopefully by the end of the year, we'll figure out how to convert Photons into Electrons with charge!

Another goal I'd like to pursue, is to learn the ropes on selling some excess fruits from our garden at our local Farmer's Market.  I've never been business oriented, but we have plenty of fruit and if it helps our income, that would be AWESOME!

We're also planning on raising rabbits. You may be wondering, what for? As pets?
Well...we're trying to figure that one too. We are all city-slickers. We've never been raised on a farm (including my mom). So raising animals for meat does make us somewhat queasy.  So, we're going to raise them initially, then decide if we have the "guts" (oh no, another pun) to do the dirty work.
Meanwhile, they do make excellent manures that can be used almost immediately in the gardens, since they are not as "hot" as poultry or cow manures. If we feed them to the worms, it would make the richest soil EVER as well.

If push comes to shove on food becoming scarce, we have a backup plan for a protein source.

4 comments:

Mr. H. said...

May that Kyohou Grape vine thrive in its new location and produce many grapes for you in the coming years. Building your own solar panel would quite an interesting task and definitely a fascinating learning experience for your son. Can't wait to see the rabbits.:)

BLD in MT said...

Ah, Janice! What a swell post and I wish you the best of luck on all these endeavors! Soon perhaps your blog will be bursting not only with photos of awesome garden bounty, but of fuzzy little bunnies too.

(Oh, and I still say rad sometimes...)

1916home.net said...

Raising rabbits for fertilizer is a SMART move!

I was also considering doing this in 2011 but held off for now since we scaled our garden back a bit. I think once we have kids it will make more sense to have rabbits. While my mom ate rabbits during the Great Depression for food, we want our rabbits as pets and fertilizer purposes. As pets we want our kids to handle them so the rabbits are loved and have lots of human interaction.

Ngo Family Farm said...

What awesome goals! Happy New Year :)
-Jaime