Home and Garden

​A new homeowner was very excited for his future, living out the traditional lifestyle of adults, in style.

Not only having his lovely three-bedroom, 2-and-1-half bath rambler, but on a handsome spread of almost 4 acres of land, no less, in quiet area just outside of the city.

Wanting to take advantage of his land, he desired to make himself a little “homestead” for “self-sufficiency”.

The result of this were 6 hens and a rooster, 2 goats, with their feed, a couple of rows of alfalfa on top of their foraging, and a garden with the typical spread of vegetables and herbs.

For the first couple of weeks, the idea of “self-sufficiency” seemed like it was going steady, but soon afterwards, the goats soon became sick,

...4 chickens were provided for a coyote as a midnight snack,

...the deer had their way in the garden, leaving a large percentage of the plants totally uprooted.

By the time fall came around, to say things “hadn’t gone to plan” was a point of fact.

But clearing his head one day, he went to the secluded back of his property to take a walk amongst the cool of the trees.

After sitting down on a log, he heard this quacking sound at first distant but intermittently growing louder. To his pleasant surprise, he realized it was coming from a family of ducks living alongside a little creek.

To compound on his fortune, those little blue flowers growing along the water line, he identified as chicory; the robust coffee substitute .

Amongst the brambles of tangled vine and fallen branches, he recognized both blueberry bushes, raspberry brambles, and a line of mulberry trees.

Perhaps, he thought to himself, he was doing to much,

...the only thing he had to do was harvest.