The property at the time of purchase was primarily a mixed woodlot with roughly 7 - 10 acres in pasture. Previous owners thinned the woodlot on occassion and regularly hayed the pastures for the past 65 years.  No herbicides or pesticides were ever used, nor was the pasture ever fertilized or overseeded.  There were no buildings or infrastructure.

There was a terrible ice storm the day we closed the deal on the property and we lost a lot of alders as a result.  Since the woodlot was primarily alder anyway, we took this opportunity to diversify the woodlot and fill in the damaged areas with native trees and shrubs purchased through the local Natural Resources Conservation Service annual plant sale.

Last summer we contour mapped the pastures and keyline plowed them after attending a Whole Farm Fertility workshop with Owen Hablutzel and Neil Bertrando at Nature's Permaculture in Boring, Oregon.  We have left the grasses grow since we've owned it, mowing and leaving it in place.  We have also broadcast seeded winter peas and triticale to start building the fertility back up.

We also put in a 900 ft gravel road up to the future house and barn site, and in so doing discovered the world of wetland mitigation.  We will be designating a few acres of land near the entrance to the property and adjacent to the creek as a wetland mitigation area and will be enhancing the area with the planting of about 800 native wetland plants.

While we had heavy equipment on the property for the road building and we had contour mapped it, we dug in our first swale near the top of the hill.  We had already started cleaning up the storm damage and had piles and piles of fallen alders and branches, so we simply pushed it into the swale.  The logs and branches are soaking in winter rains and the mycorrhizael action is taking off.  We cover cropped the berm in preparation for planting our first fruit trees the following spring.

 In addition to the 14 fruit trees planted below the swale, we also planted 16 nut trees further down the property.  We have since started interplanting the nut and fruit trees with supporting plants and will continue rounding out our first food forests this next spring.  Having just completed the PDC, we realize we did a few things a little backwards by planting the nut and fruit trees before planting our nitrogen-fixing/chop and drop trees and shrubs, but I think it will work out fine.  We'll have a chance to do it right with the next couple of swales plan to install.

We have a 3000 gallon cistern at the top of the property that we've hooked up drip irrigation to water the fruit trees during the dry summer until they are established.  The cistern is filled from a spring and a small, hand dug pond nearby.  We have a couple of 275 gallon IBC water totes also set up with drip irrigation set just uphill from the nut trees. They are filled from another spring nearby.

We have drilled a 9 gpm well, but it has not been hooked up to anything yet.  We have a camp trailer to stay in while working on the farm.  We use some propane in the trailer and to power a small generator for tools, have a small solar system to power LED lights, and have set up a composting toilet. We have a rain barrel set up to catch water from the awning to supply our water needs while staying in the trailer and another 275 gallon water tote we haul back and forth as back up water.

Douglas fir trees (20-30 yrs old) cleared for the road and for the barn/house building site are being preserved for use as round timbers in the construction of our passive solar cob and timber home. Limbs are being chipped and incorporated into compost piles, stumps, more limbs and some logs not suitable for the house will be used in large hugel beds.

We just started building the metal pole barn that will serve as our main workshop.  It should be completed within a month. More on that in my next update.