Island Wise: A year has passed...

So it's been just over a year since we moved out to Vancouver Island. A lot of things have changed over the year, some things were expected and some not, but that's the way life goes I guess. Athena has started school and Ronan started playschool, both of them love going (so far at least). Work and life is keeping us busy.

We have slowly begun working on getting the farm to where we want it to be. The trees provided us with apples, plums and cherries this year, blackberries were picked by the buckets and frozen with some being sent off to be made into wine (by a friend). Our garden produced green beans, carrots, striped beets, pickling beets (which were pickled), turnips (not as popular) potatoes, strawberries, peas, onions, and a large variety of salad greens and spinach. Next year we hope to get asparagus, garlic and larger yellow onions and over the winter we will hopefully harvest broccoli.

The playhouse and greenhouse were built, both still needing doors, but they are coming. New chickens were added to the flock so now we have 13 hens, 2 roosters, 3 Muscovy ducks and 3 misc ducks and 3 chicks.

So here's a pictoral history of the Wise farm, I've tried to take pictures from the same spots to get a good comparison.

Pump house 2010

Pump house 2011

We did a lot of pruning on the apple tree, then there is the greenhouse in the background. Our landlord helped prop the tree up, it had a real lean.

I always hated the giant debris pile in the backyard, it took forever before it was carted away.

Backyard 2010

Once the pile was gone, we gave the whole area a good raking, leveling and then spread grass seed. We got a little sod from the landlord. Pat dug up some old cedar offcuts in the back forest to make steps to the playhouse. It turned out wonderfully.

Backyard 2011

Playhouse steps

Playhouse yard

We didn't do much to the space around the cooler, just cleaned up the debris, cleared off the cement and tidied the surrounding trees. It looks neater though.

Cooler 2010

Cooler 2011

The house wasn't in too bad of shape in the beginning

.Front of house 2010

We didn't do much to the front, hung up a hummingbird feeder, made a couple of flower beds and put out some grass seed, it looks a little more homey though.

Front of house 2011

The yard was pretty mucky when we first moved in, not much we could do with it, paving is out of the question.

Driveway 2010

Pat closed in the shed and pruned up the cherry tree, it's amazing how many more leaves we have now and it's almost an exact year later. Later spring means later fall I guess.

Driveway 2011

Everywhere we looked we had debris piles, it was either there when we started or we made them as we gathered stuff around the yard. The maple tree at the end of the driveway was much smaller too.

Front Yard 2010

The tree has since gotten bigger and the pear tree has been pruned, it needs more pruning as it experienced blight this year. Hopefully we can bring it back.

Front yard 2011

Pat did a lot of work with the coop, we needed to make it pest proof as it hadn't been used in a long time.

Coop 2010

We also added a canopy for the ducks and chickens so they could be outside and under cover. The wire fence keeps them from wandering over into my roses although a Rhode Island Red hen still manages to sneak out.

Coop 2011

Pat used bricks from the old chimney to create a path to the back door. No more mud tracked in from the playhouse.

Back Door 2011

Garden 2011

The greenhouse took some time to paint, but it's coming along, sod in the back gives the kids somewhere to run through the sprinkler. The mews might eventually be made into another coop, but for now, it will remain a mews.