Big News! The garden has been "upgraded" for next year!

Well, things have been silent on the blog for good reason! All this past month we have been in the throws of moving to.....A FARM!!! W00-HOO!! After many years of dreaming then planning for it, we got the chance of a lifetime to jumpstart our plans 5-10 years ahead of when we'd planned to be able to get a farm. We found one for rent that we should be able to buy in a mere couple of years time! So we are mostly moved onto it now, and this weekend is the big push to get the last stuff out of our old place and the once-over for cleaning before we turn the keys in.

The farm is a 5.7 acre farm setup for horses and small animals, with plenty of space for kids and dogs and greenhouses and gardening! It's everything we had hoped it to be, in a size manageable for city-people just starting out. Later on we might also be able to buy the adjacent property which would have it at 12 acres total, but that's a plan for the future.

I have everything planted in the Mundare and Camrose gardens that will get planted this year due to our unexpected time constraints, and am eager to get back to them and check on their progress as I haven't been able to get to them since the first week of June pretty much! I have also planted various squash and peppers at the new farm, and have zucchini in a pot plus some herbs and lettuces in pots. The neat addition to the farm is flowers - there is a huge permanent bed for them running the length of the driveway and around the front porch up to the front door. I have started to weed them and plant seeds as the last tenants let them overgrow.

Now that we have the farm, the blog is going to change it's nature a bit with the addition of audio/video podcasts to chronicle what all is going on at the farm. Naturally, the new podcast is going to be titled "TechCowboys!"

We'll be setting up a regular release schedule and have recurring segments like many radio shows to keep things lively and intriguing all the time. Darren is keen to cover all of our alternative energy projects and gadgets, his Steampunk radio build and other Steampunk mods, and general pc geekery; and I'll be covering the agricultural geekery things like the gardening, animal husbandry, and food preservation/cooking topics etc. We're excited that we'll finally be able to try out and document our journey into sustainable farming!

Like other shows we've been inspired by (Geek Farm Life - Farm phone Rocks!!! 206-202-GOAT) we're going to have the ability for listeners to leave us feedback in various different ways: voice phone calls, mp3's, blog comments etc. We believe that the community aspect of Smallholder/farm life is really important so we'll be seeking your feedback all the time!


And now, some pics of the new farm!