For some, they’re glad to see the back end of 2018 and for others, well, let’s just say they’re wondering where the hell it went! For us it certainly felt like a whirlwind and before we knew it, we were casting our eyes forward, watching fireworks from our front porch to bring in the new year.

Happy New Year and bring on 2019!

So, 2018 was nothing short of interesting, challenging, busy, amazing, tiring and above all else, rewarding. We welcomed the most handsome of little boys into our life with the birth of our son in late March, Noah John. We feel very blessed to have such a thriving and beautifully cheeky little man to keep us on our toes. Becoming parents has certainly confirmed for us and solidified our decision that raising our family on a farm is the way to go for us.

Whilst we adjusted to life as new parents, the world kept up its turning with work keeping us busy and some developments on the property getting underway. Here’s a quick update on some of the 2018 goals we were able to achieve over the past 12 months.

• Continue to renovate our house was on the list and whilst we haven’t made any big changes as yet, we did paint the entire exterior giving the 1980’s wood panelling a fresh new grey and white colour scheme.

 

• Matt made huge progress developing our backyard space. After letting our KaMa Klucks (Betty, Rhonda & the Olsen Twins) go in July, their coop and garage was demolished, and our tiered levels and flat area has been levelled and ready for lawn and gardens once irrigation has been established.

• Fencing – still a huge project going in to 2019. Now with the Kubota back up and running and its new post hole digger attached, progress is being made already. {Insert excited happy dance}.

• We added two older does to our goat herd as planned. Eager to experience a kidding season, we enthusiastically welcomed three beautiful kids to the goat family – two bucklings KaMa Heights Murphy and KaMa Heights Mac; and a gorgeous little doeling KaMa Heights Apache.

2019 INTENTIONS

2019 will be our third year on KaMa Heights Farm and another year of big change, big dreams and I’m sure, a lot of blood, sweat and tears to see those become a reality.

We are expecting to welcome bubba number two to our family this Winter, promoting Noah to big brother status and sending Mama into a tailspin with two kids under two!!

A few new projects for 2019 and some coming over from last year’s goals include:

• Building the new chicken coop. We think we have decided on the area to put it and we will be excited to re-start our KaMa Klucks herd because let’s face it…there’s nothing like freshly laid eggs! An incubator might also be on the list of purchases so we can experience hatching and raising from chickadees.

• Fencing as mentioned above will be a huge focus for this year. Our existing perimeter fencing will be pulled down and replaced with new fencing as well as internals. Our intention is then to run a herd of sheep, a cow or two to be able to process our own meat. The existing goat pen will stay as the Kidding Nursery and the goats will be moved to opposite side of the property with its abundance of brush and shrubbery, and a hillside they will thoroughly enjoy.
• Irrigation – now that our backyard space has been defined, the next step is trenching from the dam at the bottom of our property and get water running up to our top dam which will service the gardens and lawn.
• A garden bed or two would be great to get up and established as well as defining our veggie garden space. Eagerly awaiting the day we can put our seasonal produce plans in place as we outlined in here.
• Aside from making beef jerky, the food dehydrator has not had a good going so I intend to get that into use a lot more making dried herbs, powders, fruit chips and leathers to help reduce wastage.
• Blog more!!

2019 we’re coming for you!