Longtime readers of my former blog, Mary Ann’s Country Garden, will notice that I have changed the name of my blog and redirect visitors to this one. I imported all of my old blog posts to this website because we are moving to a new home and garden we are building about fifteen minutes away from my old place. I thought about leaving my old blog up and starting a new one, but I decided to integrate the two onto this blog.
Deciding to move
Although I had lived and gardened on 5 acres in the country outside of Columbia, South Carolina, for nearly 14 years, I always wanted to be a bit closer to town, while still living in a rural setting with land.
My husband and I (mostly me) considered moving a couple of times, but we never found a home or land that fit us. After our last discussion about moving, when we looked at a few properties but felt right about none, I had prayed about whether or not we should move.
I felt God saying, “Not now.” Now was not the time, but the time might come at some time in the future. I was nearly 40 years old, but I was expecting my baby Luke two months later.
Looking for land
In January of 2017, after our house had become a bit cramped with the addition of another child, I drove down a country road close to town looking for land for sale, and I found a battered “For Sale” sign in front of an abandoned-looking field.
We toured the property soon after, and I loved it immediately. It was covered with mature hardwoods, aside from a scruffy, overgrown former pasture of a couple of acres, and several acres in the middle that the previous owners had clear-cut 20 years ago and the always opportunistic pine trees had reclaimed.
The land reminds me of the place I grew up in Spartanburg County, SC. My family has farmed that land for over 150 years through sharecropping and renting land, and my family has lived in the same area of southern Spartanburg County since the colonial days. In the 1920s, My grandparents were finally able to buy the land from the family from whom they rented the land.
On my family’s land, the flatter land was planted in cotton and suffered the ravages of erosion. Mature oaks, maples, and poplars shed their leaves on the native soil in woods with hills too steep to be planted with cotton. The huge trees shade out the underbrush and keep the forest from feeling like a jungle covered with shrubby undergrowth and vines.
On my family’s land is an ancient beech tree onto which, for generations, family members have carved their initials. Beech trees inhabit this new property too, and it immediately felt like home. What was “Not now,” several years ago had become “Now.”
Getting ready for the house
We cleared about five acres total including the pasture out front, the driveway, the house site, and room for the garden, chicken house, septic field, and room for my children to play.
Most of what we cut were fairly young trees that had regrown in the space that was clear-cut about 20 years ago. Farther into the woods are the hundred-year-old hardwoods that we did not touch. We didn’t want to put the house right on the road, in the cleared pasture area, and fortunately for us, and for the trees, the next most logical building spot was in this formerly clear-cut area.
Plans
What will we do with all this land? For many years, I have wanted to try raising and selling pastured meat. If I don’t sell it, I will raise it for myself and my family. The weed-choked pasture out front is the perfect place for hogs to clear, and they will also like rooting among the mature oaks for acorns on which they can fatten. When we turn the pasture into something besides a field of blackberries and scrubby regrowth of trees, chicken tractors will float across the pasture and the level ground will make moving them easy.
My first project will be getting something growing on all that clay, probably brown-top millet, and running some chickens over it for fertilization. Maybe we will get a good perimeter fence up and put hogs on the front pasture or down in the woods.
In the meantime, I’ll put my laying hens on the garden site to work on that soil. I’ll be hauling composted chicken manure from the other house over there if it ever stops raining, thank you Tropical Storm Alberto.