There are two big projects on the to do list for the spring of 2012. We’ll be putting in the vegetable garden and also building a large chicken coop and run for the 25 chickens we’ll be getting for the farm. The vegetable garden will be located near the back of the house in an area that appears to have been a rhododendron garden but was overrun by blackberry when we purchased the property. The upside of our property having been logged is that we get lots of sun on our south-facing slope. The downside is that we have lots of stumps and blackberry. We hired Dan the tractor guy to clear blackberry last summer in the garden site, and he also cleared a few huge patches of blackberry in the front of the property. It sure was an exciting day when I discovered what one could accomplish with a tractor! Translation: clear more blackberry in a few hours than one could clear by hand in a whole summer. We’ll need to get some stumps pulled to make the best use of the garden site, but that will probably have to wait until the spring. Deer are regular visitors to the property so we’ll be spending the winter researching deer fence options as well as affordable building materials for the raised beds. Luckily, we have a nearby source of composted horse manure (thanks, Lee!), and we’ll be bringing in a few truckloads of manure to amend the soil. I’m already dreaming of a bountiful harvest in 2012!