r/homestead

Hello everyone,

My wife and I are independent growers in the high-desert region of the Pacific Northwest. In 2024, we invested everything into a beautiful piece of land with soil that had been carefully developed over 20 years using organic methods, with the goal of building a legacy organic stone fruit and nut orchard, along with a cannery to process our crops locally.

Late last year, our dream faced a catastrophic setback. Our property suffered an off-target chemical drift event from a commercial applicator across the street from us. The persistent herbicide (Aminopyralid) completely strangled the vascular systems of our 458 mature peach trees, resulting in total canopy mortality.

We are currently working through the state regulatory and legal channels to hold the negligent parties accountable. But as land stewards, we refuse to just sit around and wait for a courtroom. We are moving forward right now to actively heal our earth.

Because Aminopyralid binds tightly to soil organic matter and targets broadleaf plants, we are weaponizing biology to clean the slate. We are launching a multi-year soil remediation plan utilizing deep-rooting, fast-growing forage grasses (like Sorghum-Sudangrass and oats) that are completely immune to the chemical. These roots will fracture the soil profile and pump massive amounts of oxygen down to the native soil microbes, forcing a microbial population explosion to naturally digest and break down the toxin. We also plan to plant rows of sunflowers as natural phytoremediators to pull remaining residuals from the topsoil.

We have launched a YouTube channel to document every single step of this biological recovery—from independent soil core lab tests to the day our new certified organic peach saplings can safely go back into the ground.

If you would like to follow our journey, watch our soil recovery videos, or partner with us in crowdfunding the heavy costs of excavation, biological soil amendments, and our future main street cannery facility, please consider checking out our restoration fund.

🌱 Support our Farm’s Recovery & Replanting Fund here: https://gofund.me/d5586cff2

Thank you so much for standing with independent family farms and backing the resilience of our soil.

— Nicole & Seth

I thought I got rid of them 5 years ago...

Late-ish spring rain and close cutting apparently awoke the beast I battled valiantly.

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!!!

No seeds yet, or even surface seeds as our house has been free of any of the 'worse-than-lego' fuckers.

I've mainly been clearing the areas we path along either by foot or vehicle, and am already at a half 5gal bucket of fresh leafy.

Also, doesn't matter how long you stare in an area, the moment you thought it was clear, somehow three patches popped up in the 15 seconds you look away.

FUCK. GOAT HEADS. THEY NEED TO CEASE EXISTING.

We bought 2.5 acres. Our next step is picking out the home location so we can have dirt brought in. Would you personally rather your house be in the back? Middle? Off to one side? Closer to the road? And why. We originally wanted is 40/60 and centered so 40 percent back with 60
Percent left in the back and dead center in the middle of the property but the more I think about it, I don’t think that’d be smart for homesteading.

We are having well issues and aren’t sure the best way to remedy. Would love advice since we’ve gotten different suggestions from well companies. Short version is that the water turns brown/orange after heavy/moderate usage, and also the well can’t sustain a professional pressure washer. Details at the bottom.

Without actually inspecting the well, these are some suggestions we’ve gotten:
-Iron has clogged up the veins and we need to clean and blast the well to restore the yield.
-Blasting risks collapse, so we should brush, surge, and bail sediment from the well tank.
-Might need to deepen the well, or even drill an entirely new well.

Thoughts on these? Is blasting or surging too risky? We don’t want to jump to an extreme option, but are willing to do/pay what is needed to have reliable, quality water. FYI records show the test rate when drilled in 2017 was 15 gpm, and the pump is set at 140 ft. We have a water softener and a whole house sediment filter (which gets absolutely caked in iron) and water is usually clear. Thanks in advance!

Details:
After heavy (or even moderate) usage, the water will run brown from iron for 1-3 days. ie trying to fill our small fish pond, trying to use my residential pressure washer, running the hose to water newly planted trees. This used to happen more in the dry summer months but it has happened twice during this extremely wet spring. Our neighborhood has lots of iron, but none of neighbors have this same issue. Are we reaching the bottom of the well and stirring up the iron down there? Why does it happen so easily?

We had a professional pressure washer come do our small deck, and he kept having to pause because the pressure was dropping to zero. By the end of the job the water had turned brown. He estimated he had used maybe 100 gallons, and said he very rarely sees wells struggle like this. Not sure if our well is low capacity or what, but it seems like it should be able to handle a small power washing job. This is the only time the pressure has dropped like this…usually the water flows fine, it just turns brown.

Im looking to add a roof over our 16x16ft run but worried about our fairly regular wind storms in the PNW off the Puget Sound. Winds almost always come from left to right in the picture and can easily get to 60mph. Would like to keep expenses down and provide our chickens with some better protection from the rain. Was originally thinking a simple lean-to with corrugated clear plastic but which direction would we want the low side?
Is a lean-to just a bad idea with the wind?

This popped up on my feed today once I cleaned off my keyboard I thought it may bring some fun discussion here as well.

Are they really that insane? LOL

Our 20 year old asparagus patch is thriving, we freeze a whole winter’s worth to enjoy . Asparagus don’t tolerate weeds , need lots of nitrogen, and lots of water. We are fortunate to have unlimited water from our 2 deep artesian wells. We fertilize with composted manure every fall. High elevation Vermont farm zone 5B

Bought 2 acres late last year for our first homestead. I'm spending the first year not growing anything and instead spending time on home repairs and infrastructure for the homestead after repairs such as chicken coop, garden beds, etc.

With the exception of alterations to the main water line done by my plumber neighbor I did this foundation repair myself in 11 days. Rushing at the end to beat an incoming storm.

We have cracks in the foundation letting a lot of water in the crawlspace and the ground was sloped into the home.

Not shown in the pictures is about 3 cubic yards of river rock around the 90 feet of foundation I repaired. 10 pronged pitch fork did a pretty good job of getting most of them. Shovel was much harder. Also a lot of plants and bushes pulled from behind the home.

Unhooked AC (I'm an HVAC tech) Dug down a little over 3.5 feet with a tractor backhoe. Repaired the 4 major cracks by chipping them out a bit wider and filling with hydraulic cement. Painted all exposed foundation with 3 coats of rubber sealant. Added dimple mat over the top. Used 4 inch congregated perforated pipe in a sock at the base of the foundation as a French drain. Solid 4 inch pipe sent out the back of the house down hill as drain. Covered all perforated pipe with #57 gravel. Used about 2 cubic yards. Dimple mat fixed to the foundation with concrete nails. And mat topped with manufactures recommend flashing again mounted with concrete nailed. Sealed all nails and flashing with rubber sealant. Backfilled and tamped dirt down as I backfilled. Hooked AC back up.

Unfinished work-

While I properly sloped the back and side of the house. It's currently backfilled 1 brick high instead of stopping at the top of the foundation. I'm expecting settling and will reslope and remove from siding once it's settled if it's still on the brick.

Back needs sloping. Again waiting for settling.

Need to clean up the area and throw some grass seed. Add some rock around

Mistakes made-

While driving the tractor close to the house to help tamp dirt once it was tall enough I hooked and ripped off a shutter.

Dimple mat flashing is supposed to be mounted every 8 inches with concrete nails. With my foundations 55-year-old concrete. The nails sometimes were just taking chunks out of the concrete even though I was using a concrete nail gun. so I started going every one to 1 and 1/2 ft depending on if the concrete failed to take the nail. I should have just gone to the store and got a masonry bit to pre-drill the holes for the nails as the lack of nails caused the flashing to heavily warp in the Sun causing large gaps that were difficult to seal with the rubber sealant so I had to fill them with caulk.

Comments also mentioned my gravel should have been wrapped in fabric and will clog at some point. I may have to dig this up and redo the French drain in a few years

This is the largest project I've ever taken on and had no experience doing so. I got to say this was a miserable process. I had really long days trying to get this done in time. But after looking at some quotes for repairs from contractors. I felt it was definitely worth my time to do. I had a month off for some parental leave after we had our second child and I used that time to do this. I spent probably $2,500 to 3,500 in materials as long as you don't count the tractor... If you're picky and do count it, it only added $45,000. But I had enough upcoming projects. I felt it was worth getting a tractor. Once we save up some more money I'm going to use it to put in a fence. Part of that $45,000 was also a post hole Driller.

Even including the tractor I came in significantly cheaper than the quotes I got for repairing the foundation. While I didn't reinforce the areas with the cracks with pylons underneath. At the moment they are not causing damage to the house. And by removing the water that's getting under the house this should stop them from getting worse. Several of the bids I got for repairing the foundation including things like encapsulating the crawl space or putting pylons under the areas of the foundations that were cracked. But no one recommended to waterproof the outside which would just lead to more cracks in the future as water got under the foundation and allowed the house to settle more. I'm not willing to pay around 70k for repairs that aren't going to stop additional damage in the future.

TL:DR; repaired cracks and waterproofed my foundation in 11 days instead of spending $70,000 for repairs that wouldn't have prevented future damage.

Spent a lot of $$$ buying and raising ducklings last year, now they’re just spawning when I forget to clean the barn??

Rad.