Today marks an anniversary for our little blog – our 100th post! Since starting the blog about 8 months back on a cold day in February – we never imagined how far it would come in such a short time. Our 100th post also coincides with two other milestones – our 1000th follower to the blog and our 600th follower to Facebook.
The first few weeks of the blog we spent writing and filling in a few posts from the previous year to provide the background for our little farm’s story. After that, we settled into our current format of posting 3x’s a week (Sunday-Tuesday- Friday) about life at the “farm”.
Us at the farm during our first barn party
The past 8 months have been a blast for us. I never imagined how fun this journey to carve out our little “farm” space would be – and documenting it with the blog has made it all the better. Our blog has really helped us to stay focused and working toward our dreams – putting down in words and pictures our efforts to build the farm. The blog is a great motivator on days when your tired and don’t feel like you’re accomplishing enough. When those days hit – sometimes we will just reflect back and read some of the old posts and quickly see that we are slowly getting there. It serves as a great re-energizer for us to keep at it.
We really are more committed than ever to a more simple approach to life and the farm, conserving the resources we consume, and being responsible for the food we eat.
We have tried to incorporate simplicity and responsibility into every facet of “The Farm” as we slowly work on our dream. Our goals to be responsible for the majority of our own food – and to re-use existing materials and products as often as we can have helped us build the farm at a fraction of the cost. At the same time – we want to show that it can be done in a way that can be pleasing to the eye – and without all of the stereotypes that come with “recycling and re=purposing”.
We have been able to get in some apple and cherry trees for our little orchard. The hard part is waiting the few years to finally eat something from them!
There are a lot of exciting challenges ahead for the farm. More work and plantings to grow the garden, orchard and vineyard areas. The building of a greenhouse from recycled windows. The installation of a Sensory Garden. And hopefully, at some point down the road, the process of designing and building our house to go on the property.
Simplifying the Old World Garden Blog:
Much like we do at the farm, we also thought this was a great time to simplify the blog. It didn’t take long to realize all of our posts fit into the three categories that we love most. The Farm, Food and our DIY building projects.
Moving forward – we are going to stay with the 3 post-a-week format – and simplify it into a day for each category. In the coming weeks we will also organize all of our old posts into those 3 categories, with links on our side bar to make them easier to find.
TUESDAY: DIY DAY. Each Tuesday’s post will feature something to do with one of our DIY projects – from building, landscaping or re-purposing something we found.
FRIDAY : FOOD DAY. Each Friday’s post will focus on recipes, canning, and food from the garden.
SUNDAY: FARM DAY Sunday’s posts will be all about the farm – with updates on the garden, the chickens, plantings and everything in-between.
The Farm is starting to take shape…but there is still so much to do!
Our blog, farm and our lives are really are about having fun and staying simple. Thank you to everyone who has followed along, and thank you as well for all of the great comments – we love reading them all. We hope this blog helps spread the word that living a more simple life really is enjoyable. We hope you continue to like Old World Garden Farms and stay with us on our journey as we grow!
-Jim and Mary