May 12, 2020

The garden is taking shape.

I have been busy these past few months – mostly picking up where I left off years ago. This time around though, I am keeping myself more measured so as to not get overwhelmed. It does feels good to be “back at it” and I’m looking forward to having a good season.

I am starting a garden again. The last time I grew vegetables was back in 2014, which was the last year of our CSA. For now, I am going to grow for our family and a little extra for friends and donations. I am keeping the garden simple- squash, pumpkins, corn, beans, peppers, eggplant, and heirloom tomatoes.I also made a raised bed for black raspberries.

I kept the hoop house planted all through winter with arugula, mescalin, lettuce and garlic. I experimented with zucchini, planting it in early March- it is beginning to flower now and hopefully, with hand pollination, I will have crop before June.

I have also re-begun bee keeping after a three-year hiatus. I am taking this slowly too. In the past I have had both good and bad “bee years”. There were years when I had more honey than I could ever hope for, and years when I couldn’t keep a hive going no matter what I tried. By starting out with just one hive I am hoping to relearn the basics and get some beekeeping confidence back.

A new leghorn and blue rock.

We still grow strawberries and raise chickens for eggs. Of course, without the CSA, we downsized these endeavors years ago. We now have a small area of strawberries mixed with day lilies. It works out well for berries and for flowers that bloom well into the fall. Instead of keeping 25-30 chickens as we did back in the CSA years, we maintain a flock of 12-15 now. Of those, only half lay regularly. The other half is made up of retired chickens who deserve a restful life after supplying us with many, many eggs over the years.

One of the things that I am happy about is that we stopped selling eggs in March and began giving them, along with greens that I grew in the hoop house, to three families who’s household heads lost their jobs because of covid -19. We will continue to do this for so as long as needed, and I will expand if the need continues to grow. I think that this is the best reward of having this small farm – that we can use it to help others. Every little bit helps.