Garden Update and the Making of Housewife

Finally we got a break in the weather.  For the first few days of my husband's "vacation", we were supposed to be in the garden, but it was just too cold, so we did stuff indoors, paperwork, more vine crafts (I have sore fingers and too many cuts, pokes and splinters to mention!) and just regular farm maintenance, but then the last two days have been better.....

I am going to attempt actual pictures for a change in this post.  We'll see if I can get better at documenting our life in photos....



Three of the trees I've made....there are now 11 of these all voer my house in different sizes....


We now have the potatoes planted as well as tomatoes, onions, leeks, swiss chard (both of which I have rarely if ever eaten, but hopefully someone out there will eat those!), celery (which I hear is very hard to grow) and some squash.  Today the seeder we bought will apparently arrive and we'll then do all the mini seeds like lettuce and peas.  Everything else has been done by hand as they were actual transplants, so my legs are feeling it today with all the up and down of planting.  We are really enjoying the work and have laughed at how the kids come to help and then within a few minutes just walk away.  Baby steps!  We're just happy to have them observe the process and be involved in any way possible.

The unexpected blessing from this garden comes from where we decided to plant it.  We chose a location quite far from the house as it was far from the road and the view of the whole world as well as being fairly flat.  The nice thing about this location is that it is near the highest point of our property so when we go out there we get to enjoy the view of the whole countryside and it is spectacular!  It's like we just bought a whole new piece of land.  We rarely would be in that spot on the property except when we would bring in hay and now we're there all the time.  It is so beautiful and we are just appreciating our location so much right now.  It makes the whole process of gardening so pleasant when you actually love where you are.




tilling of the land - pre-garden



Perhaps a little hard, to see, but this is the view in the evening....so beautiful watching the sun go down....

As I planted each little plant yesterday I found myself praying a little blessing over each one.  To me it seems impossible that it could grow and produce a vegetable.  To me the soil seems unlikely to be good enough.  I keep questioning if there is too much clay or too little drainage.  Doubts fill my mind, but then after we pray and talk we settle on the fact that even if nothing comes of it, we've again learned from the process and we won't give up.  This will be our learning year.  Each year the soil will get better and each year we'll improve our systems. 

Not being close to the house represented a real watering challenge, at least to me, but, incredibly, it isn't a problem, thanks to my engineering husband.  When we bought the property we purchased a lot of the equipment, including a tractor and implements that we had no idea how to use.  My husband has become extremely good at using them all, fixing them, etc., and that includes a watering tank that attaches to the tractor.  It had a broken pump, but recently he has fixed that, too, and now with a new pump it waters our whole garden easily.  We may add more irrigation once we're more established, but for now, it's great.  I have no idea how we could do something like this without his skill set.

Just like last summer and the summer before that, my kids have had to step up in terms of the housework and meals.  Yesterday we texted my daughter to come to the garden.  She said, "No.  I'm being a housewife.  Do you want your laundry done or not?  It doesn't fold itself."  We laughed our heads off in the garden.  She's 16 and is now a housewife.  I love it.  I'm happy to be replaced and would much rather be outside anyway.

When it was so cold and I was doing vine crafts, literally all day, I came up with one more neat way to use the vines.  I had been wanting to buy a baby gift for my neighbour's new baby and knew I had no time to sew, not to mention I had no fabric.  I had done a meal, but wanted to do another small thing.  A vine tree didn't seem very baby-ish...then suddenly this idea came to me to twist the vines into the shapes of her initials.  I wasn't sure it would work, but I tried it anyway and to my amazement, they turned out so great!  The tendrils on the vines made it look like I had hand-written the letters and they appeared so whimsical and pretty.  My neighbour seemed to really like them, at least she faked happiness!


Today will be a very busy day in the garden again, probably all day.  Looking forward to it.  As I read in Genesis yesterday, Abimelech said to Abraham, "God is with you in all that you do."  That was my prayer all day, just asking God to be with us in all that we do.  Then, when it was just the two of us at the edge of the garden, we prayed together over it and that felt good, to know it was really God's garden.  All we can do is our part, the rest of the growing miracle is up to God.

Meanwhile, while we're out in the garden, my son keeps at it with his flips....here's an amazing picture of my son capturing his ability to flip on the ground.....