After a long stretch of miserably hot weather, we had a lovely cool day today and I spent much of it outdoors working in my garden and taking pictures, a lot of pictures! There is always work to be done, but on days like today it doesn’t feel like work at all. When I told my children how grateful I was for the beautiful day, I hope I planted a little seed of gratitude in their hearts as well.
This old fencing was our sad attempt at protecting our blueberry bushes from our chickens. It didn’t work.
This old piece of farm equipment (thresher-I think-can’t remember) sits in the woods behind our blackberry patch.
My perennial bed looks really terrible because I haven’t weeded it this year and the dry weather has been hard on my plants. Luckily, Echinacea reseeds like crazy and tolerates poor conditions so I at least have something blooming abundantly.
We have lots of daylilies too, but honestly, they aren’t my favorite.
Spotted cucumber beetle on yellow zucchini (it’s not hurting the zucchini that just started producing and already I need to freeze a bunch.)
I planted a big bed of pie pumpkins hoping to can or freeze enough that I don’t have to buy any at the store.
I separated my rows of okra with rows of zinnias and cosmos which will be blooming soon. We are all looking forward to okra, well, not all of us really; only Jonny, Gabe, and I.
(maybe I already mentioned this but,) Between the edge of our garden beds and the fence that runs along the front of our property we layed down cardboard and then Jonny hauled many truckloads of mulch to lay on top in a very thick layer. We didn’t till or dig the grass growing underneath, we are just hoping it will die. Through this layer we planted giant pumpkins, and several types of gourds to grow on the fence and provide us with some fun craft materials this fall. Thinking back, yes I think I posted an almost identical photo a week or so ago and already talked about it 🙂 It’s one thing when you tell someone the same story twice, but it seems worse to blog about the same thing within a week or so of the first post. Well, at least the plants have grown a bit since I posted the first picture.
We plant a lot of blackeyed peas. Mabye it’s because I am from Alabama, but I really love them. They are infinitely better fresh. This year I planted two beds of them, straight in the soil, regular style, and I have gotten so so germination in those two beds. Tomorrow I need to go out and reseed the gaps in my rows, you can see them in this picture. There are three rows, and the one on the right is especially bad. As these get a bit bigger we will mulch them heavily. We are sort of low on mulch right now or we would have already done it.
As a sort of experiment I also planted blackeyed peas between our rows of onions that will soon be ready to be harvested. The onions are grown under a very thick layer of old chicken bedding and I just pushed the seeds into the bedding between the onion rows. I have gotten incredible germination in that bed, and the little seedlings look so good. So I guess I know how to plant them in the future!
First cantaloupe getting started
Eggplant, which I have never liked, but also never had fresh from a garden, so I am giving it a try.
The purple ones are prettier but I was told that the white ones are yummier so I planted a couple of both. They have all been really ravaged by flea beetles and I haven’t bothered to do anything about it.
Today’s pickings.
I think these are the last of the raspberries.
So today while I was watering our garden, I was thinking a lot about our life and the way we do things and why. Sometimes, when I am pouring sweat in the garden and thinking about how much housework is being neglected, I sort of forget all the reasons. I am not sure that we are saving any money, in fact I am pretty sure we are doing the opposite. I think that at some point we will, but for now our motivation comes from a desire to have more control over where our food comes from, and that is worth giving up new clothes and whatever else in order to invest in our land. There is also just a certain quality of life for us that only comes from living a life that depends on our own hands to some extent. Jonny and I are both do it yourself-ers. Yes, I love to grow things, and I always have. My career finder test in high school said that I should pursue a career in farming, and I went on to study agriculture in college. However, even with education and all of our space we have failed in the past to make much of an impact on our diet with what we grow ourselves. I could blame it on lots of things; it’s hard to manage everything when you are raising a young family. We go into our garden every spring with all our might, and fizzle out halfway through: when the flies start biting, the rain stops falling, and the weeds take over. We have wasted so much homegrown food in the past not knowing how or not having the space to store it. This year my goal is to let nothing go to waste, even if I have to give it away. I am realizing that harvesting what we plant is sometimes more work than preparing beds and planting them. In order to complete the cycle, we have to follow through. In a way, I am playing pretend. I am pretending that if I don’t make jam with berries that we pick, we won’t have any, if I don’t can jalapenos, we won’t have any for our bean quesadillas, etc. I am getting covered in scratches and pouring sweat while I pick raspberries, careful not to miss any, I am pulling a million morning glories it seems from my garden beds, I am dividing my time between the garden and the kitchen, with little left over.
Yesterday when we were blueberry picking and my kids were complaining, I was talking to them about the importance of knowing where your food comes from and what a privilege it is to be able to go to a farm and pick your own berries. They are so young, and that is a hard concept for them still. But, I know that just by doing what we are doing, we are teaching them an important lesson, even if they don’t yet realize it.
My children may grumble when I tell them they can’t quit picking berries until their buckets are half full, but the joy on their faces when they discover a baby cantaloupe in our garden, or a fat sugar snap pod that we grew ourselves tells me that they are definitely getting it.
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