An Auspicious Start to the Season

The magic of farm life and being greeted by nature

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
~William Shakespeare

Woah! B went foraging for ramps with some friends and was joined by this little one. I’m not sure there could be a more perfect start to the day 💚

Garden Season Begins~

We finally had a dry, wind free and relatively warm weekend. One of the first things we need to do each spring on the farm is collect the masses of fallen branches from winter storms and inaugurate our bonfire. With a six acre wooded lot, that can end up being quite a task. At the end of last season B bought a fork for our tractor so that he could more easily move some pallets into his shop. THAT was the single best investment of the last year! Instead of dragging branches across the farm to the fire pit, we were able to lay them over the fork and dump them right on the fire! Wow, game changer!

The garden is beginning to come alive

The first things to emerge from the garden are some of our winter hardy perennials. I cannot wait for the chive blossoms, I’ll have a great tip for you on how to utilize those in the near future! A few years ago we planted several fruit trees. The first year there was quite a bit of damage from deer and storms, but they are fighters and beginning to leaf out.

As I mentioned in Paradoxes and Dilemmas (excerpt below), we used to farm 1/3 acre of produce,

Update: We spent a number of years providing food bags (a mini CSA) to friends and neighbors from our 1/3 acre garden. As we began to navigate our daughters mental illness, we did less and less in the garden, but supplemented with farmers markets and farm stands in our area. I still think the most wholesome and inexpensive way to go is eating seasonally and preserving our own food; I have also learned everything in moderation. Sometimes in life, something has to give and when time and energy has to be focused elsewhere, you can still manage to hold onto your ideals, without it consuming all of your time. This was another hard lesson; feeling like I was selling out for not being 110% comitted to the farmstead. It was during this time that I put my blogging on the shelf and turned inward. As life has normalized, we are slowly getting back into the slow food life we once dedicated all of our energy towards. This time it is just for us, and we are not thinking about large scale.

and as we have entered this new phase we have covered the whole garden with weed barrier and then opened beds each year that we use. We rotate¹ our crops as not to deplete the soil of nutrients, and cover them in off years. We will not be able to get much in the way of vegetables in the ground for a while yet as we are still at risk for freezing, but we will be able to begin cool season crops like kale, spinach, radishes this coming weekend.

This year I ordered a Midwest Wildflower Seed Mix² for a cutting garden. Yesterday we scattered them in one of our 18x5 beds. We are due for quite a bit of rain later this week and I hope to have lots of flowers to fill vases and use the Microfleur that I got late last season. I cannot wait to experiment more with it, I was only able to use it once and it was fantastic!

The video at the top was yesterday morning when B went foraging for ramps with friends. After that video was taken, the doe followed them throughout the woods and even gave B a kiss. What a magical moment and auspicious start to the season.

Until Next Time~

1. Crop rotation, planting a different crop on a particular piece of land each growing season, is required in organic crop production because it is such a useful tool in preventing soil dis- eases, insect pests, weed problems, and for building healthy soils. USDA

2. 60% Annual, 40% Perennial: Sweet William Tall Single, Prairie Coneflower, Mexican Hat, Red Corn Poppy, Lance Leaf Coreopsis, Shirley Poppy Mixed Red and Pink, Cosmos Wild Sensation, Blanket Flower, Black Eyed Susan, Wild Perennial Lupine, Purple Coneflower, Russell Lupine, Plains Coreopsis, Siberian Wallflower, Scarlet Flax, Annual Red Phlox, Cosmos Bright Lights, Cornflower Dwarf Mix, Cornflower Tall Mix, Daisy Gloriosa Mix, California Poppy Orange, Perennial Blue Flax, Candytuft Mix.

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