I think I have turned from the person who gardens for fun to the person who
needs to garden in order to stay sane. I am antsy this time of year. There is little to do and I am ready to get things moving. The outdoor chores of the day are not as much as I need them to be and the indoors are starting to feel like a very small wooden (or brick, in our case) box.
We are trying to keep ourselves busy by hovering over our indoor seedlings and building raised beds and cultivating as much soil as we can to fill those beds. Kenny Rogers, our jersey-wooly/angora bunny has been producing an ample supply of fertilizer, and the coffee shop has been filling bucket after bucket with serious amounts of coffee grounds. We mulched up all of leaves from fall, tossed in our vegetable scrap compost, and added some red wrigglers in hopes that it will all break down into a decent amount of good soil. I think we are still going to have to pay for some dirt in the end.
Anyway, a few things are moving along. Our garden is a bit scattered about at our homestead. There is an herb garden on the backside of the porch, a two-tiered butterfly/strawberry garden on the sunny-side of the garage, another tiered bulb and perennial bed along the steps that beans and cabbage and corn starts or seeds get tossed in every now and then, and there are curved out spots here and there with various perennials and veggies... and then there are the rows of raised beds that we add to every year. It's chaos that we reign in with no grace whatsoever.
Nearly everything in our herb garden reseeded itself this year. I guess it never got cold enough long enough to truly kill off the plants. We already have fresh dill, parsley, thyme, mint, lavender, and lemon balm to use. Lucky us!
Until the weather becomes a bit more stable I will continue reading farming memoirs and doing the little things that can be done. This morning I laid out the potatoes on the back porch so the eyes can start sprouting. I am anxious to get them in the ground and then onto our plates.
While you are waiting for your soil to warm up here is a list of memoirs that we've read over the winter (or are currently reading) and would recommend if you are interested in some inspiring books about growing & gathering your own food:
The Dirty Life
The Quarter-Acre Farm
A Householders Guide to the Universe
Girl Hunter
The Rural Life
Barnheart
Fat of the Land
Growing a Farmer
The Feast Nearby
