In the Beginning
This past summer we have finally taken the plunge: got out of the city and into country living. We bought ourselves the perfect little piece of property in Amaranth Ontario with plenty of room to achieve our goals of self-sustainability.
For years we have kept our little city garden with dreams of grandeur. But certainly don't discount the city garden, it's not just great for summer veggies, if you are new to gardening it's a great learning environment. We had never kept gardens before the last few years, so those years with the small BY garden were just the learning curve we needed before jumping in head first. Even if you only have a balcony, there's nothing like keeping a pot and eating your home grown tomatoes or herbs.
So, back to the perfect property... Well it is perfect but. That's the key here 'but'. Nothing here is ready to go, so to speak. To say there is a lot of work to do is an understatement of large proportion. Everything we do must be done from scratch, including putting in the garden.
The first thing to do however was tend to some top priority areas in the house. A very solid lovely home built in the 60's. With of course decorating to match. Priority # 1, remove all shag carpeting from the premises. As you can see from the pic to the right, the purple shag and gold walls are not quite in style anymore.
Not to imply that we are slaves to style, in fact pretty far from it. We do however prefer warm colours and natural elements. We'll be renovating most if not all of the house as time allows. 1st things 1st, gone is the shag and faux brick walls in the living area and kitchen. In comes hard wood and granite. As luck would have it, when we removed the shag and vinyl underneath was beautiful hardwood that runs through the entire house. What a bonus that was!
So this is us. Living in our new home with a ton of renovations to do, a garden and chicken coup to put in, a cold celler that needs complete rehaul before we even think of using it. And full time jobs which means all this work has to be done in our spare time. HA! No seriously.
