Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Homesteading During the Covid-19 Pandemic

I see that almost all my posts from last year didn’t publish for some reason so I’ll have to fix that later. You’d think I would have lots of time on my hands right now. Canada is in various stages of lockdown depending which province you live in. Steph and I are both gainfully unemployed at the moment and just waiting for things to start to get back to normal in another month or two. But we’re lucky because we were working so the government says we qualify for a little money each month so we’re able to stay home from work and still afford groceries. Jordan finds himself back home because the military sent home all their students of which he is one and Kate and Meghan are also here as is William. Eating food and using all the toilet paper 🤣.

Actually apart from having everyone home this is a great time for us. Steph is getting some amazing projects done including writing software and basically building an automated heating and venting system for our greenhouse. Steph is amazing! Take my advice, marry a funny nerd. You never know when you’ll be in isolation together! My grow tunnel is now heated and cooled automatically, the sprinklers are set to a timer, the seed sprouter is working well in its second or third year, and due to the success of the other unheated greenhouse it received an expansion and will be planted later this week once it’s been weeded and tilled over. We’re getting a lot done at the farm which is great because who knows how the weather or job situations will be this fall. In the meantime we’ve got food, a small mortgage and we’re already planning what veggies we can grow to last us all summer and winter. Since we won’t have so much labour from children and Wwoofers (travel restrictions are stopping a lot of people from woofing this year) we have to plant smarter so that we can manage a huge garden by ourselves. But all things considered were in a good position. Not too much debt, food security is pretty good, we have enough firewood for half of next winter and working on the next bit that we felled last year and need to cut and split for drying this summer in the woodshed. Because we order our seeds early in the year we beat the mad panic of other buyers who found themselves planting for the first time. And we all still love each other. 5 weeks into lockdown we are all still doing okay mentally.

Hope you’re all well and making the best of whatever situation you find yourselves in. Love & Huhs from all of us at Humblebee Farm.