The last time I posted on here we were still living in Michigan and about to relocate back to the south. We’ve been here for a little over a year now. As much as I loved Michigan and love my friends there it just wasn’t home. Now that we are back I am no longer spending months on end with cabin fever and longing for any semblance of the climate and culture that I grew up in. There was a little bit of culture shock for me though because I’ve always lived in college towns and cities and now we’re out in the country. So I’m adjusting to country living and slowly but surely acclimating back to the heat and humidity. At times I miss sidewalks, neighborhood kids running in and out of the house and quick trips to the store but being able to see the Milky Way from my back patio and the scents, omg, the scents are amazing out here. It’s all totally worth it. For the whole month of April, the air everywhere around here is sickly sweet with the lovely smell of honeysuckle. It’s downright heavenly. So much life and greenery. It’s the very essence of the south and what I missed about it while away. It also doesn’t hurt that we’re back down here with some rather awesome BBQ. Did I mention I’m also within a few hours driving distance of all of my childhood friends and my beloved Gulf Coast?
We did actually start our back yard hobby farm. I’ll start by telling you about the name. We toyed around with a few ideas but finally landed on one that just felt right and that being, Silly Hill. We are named after the homestead/farm where my mother lived as a child. When she and her sister and brother were young they moved from Hillsboro, Al to a house on a hill off of Old Highway 20 in Leighton, Al. My aunt not wanting to move said “I don’t want to move up on that ole silly hill” and the name stuck. From then on that’s what they called it. My grandfather was a sharecropper and at various times grew corn, watermelon and cotton at the foot of the hill. It was here where my grandfather employed the singer Percy Sledge when he was a teenager. When we moved into our new house I noticed that it was on an ever so slight small hill, if you can even call it a hill. There is just enough of a slope that if you were to be on roller skates or a bike you would pick up speed going down the driveway. I am also a big fan of silliness in general so naming the farm after the original silly hill just fit. It was perfect! Then I designed the logo with the help from Dr. J.
Getting the farm going was a lot of hard work, sweat and toil on Dr. J’s part and a lot of learning on my part. We ended up with 4 50×60 plots that we rotate each growing season. Our soil was really crappy and probably had a lot to do with some of the crop failures. I mean really crappy, as in we don’t even have any earthworms. We used organic fertilizer to try to correct the issues but probably not nearly enough. In one plot we grew clover for ground cover. Another plot was dedicated to soybeans, herbs, peppers and pumpkins. The deer took out most of the soybeans and the squash bugs completely obliterated the pumpkins. The hot peppers did well but the bells didn’t come in at all. Another plot was used to grow purple hull peas, green beans, okra, corn and cucumbers. The purple hull peas and okra did great. The squash bugs again killed off all of our cukes and the green beans and corn grew great but were too tough to eat. We eventually put up an electric fence around all four plots to keep the deer out and that worked out well. We also put in drip tape and had the watering system on a timer. That worked well also. The last plot was dedicated to fall veggies. We planted turnip greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and carrots. Out of all that we only had luck with the turnip greens. We only ended up with a handful of carrots, one broccoli plant and the cabbage never formed a head. This first year I didn’t expect everything to go perfect. This was more of a let’s try it and see kind of thing. We know more about what to expect now. This coming spring we plan to plant a few different veggies. I believe we’re going to try to grow some black beans this year, a different variety of green beans and since we’ve grown tomatoes in the past, we’ll grow those this year as well.
On the business side of the farm what we have accomplished is purchasing a business license and buying the tent, table and signage for selling at the farmer’s market. Basically just gathering all the needed supplies to be able to sell our produce and products. We’re still not quite ready to actually sell at the market yet but we have been able to sell some of our excess in other ways. We also started a Facebook page for the farm and a store front on that page where you can order the bath products directly from the site.
Last summer I took the Alabama Cottage Food Law course and was certified to be able to bake and sell baked goods and jams. I also went to Auburn for a two day course in Acidified Foods Manufacturing and was FDA certified. That means that I can legally produce acidified foods such as pickles, bbq sauces, salsas and the like as long as they are produced in a health department inspected facility. There is a lot of paperwork involved in doing that so that little side project has been put on the back burner. However, I did start making home made baked donuts to sell. The pumpkin spice donuts are amazing if I say so myself. Here is a picture of our chocolate glazed chocolate donuts.
I also started making my own bath products. I make seasonally scented salt hand scrubs, bath salts and hand lotions. I decided to start with just four or five scents per season so as not to get too overwhelmed with products. I’ve actually sold a decent amount of them. I am ocd with scented stuff like bath products, candles and the such. I figured it made more sense for me to make my own. I love the hand lotion. It’s not like most lotions that are heavy and greasy feeling. This stuff is light and dries really well while leaving your skin scented and soft.
This winter there isn’t much going on at the farm. We have about 600 onions planted and we are currently researching fruit trees and raspberries. We plan to only buy a few to start with, just enough to feed ourselves. We go through a lot of apples in this family so we’ll definitely be buying a few apple trees. I’ll update more as I can. If you want to see more photos, etc then go check us out on Facebook and give us a like to stay updated on the farm. We are here —> Silly Hill Farm
The Cultess Alura 