The Garden is FINALLY In!!

I'm on vacation this week from my 'full time' job and, as usual, wearing myself out catching up on projects around the homestead.  This is Tuesday and so far we have finally cleared and tilled up the two open plots (one about 20 x 40 feet and the other about 30 x 60 feet), planted them with corn, potatoes, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchini, and pole beans,  pulled the door off the barn and ripped off some rotted wood, and painted the barn. 

It feels kind of good to see progress.  Folks who follow the blog will have seen all these, but I'm loading 'then' and 'now' photos for folks who haven't been with me from the start.

So much to do!

Coop is done but look at the garden!  Eeek!

22 beds are in , but the plots are all pigweed, dandelions, lambsquarter, and quackgrass!!

Garden in and barn painted!!  What's next?

Sometimes I get asked by my suburbanite friends what we have in the garden.  Most of them think of a garden as a raised bed or two with salad fixings: lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and maybe some carrots and radishes.  Then I go through the list and usually hear "Wow, what are going to do with all that?'.  What usually follows is a discussion on canning and freezing.  Homesteaders won't be particularly impressed by this list, it's just what we do, but here's what is in the Hoosier Country Home garden this year:

Cabbage -8

Peppers -1 hot; 8 bell

Peas -4 rows in 10' long raised beds

Beets - 4 - 4' square beds

Spinach & lettuce -3 - 4' square beds

Carrots - 1 - 4' square bed

Bush beans - 3 - 4'x8' beds

Pole beans - 1-  4' square bed & 1- 25' long row

Corn- 21 rows split between the two plots (all about 20' long)

Tomatoes -30ish plants in 4 long beds

Onions - 2 - 3 1/2 foot square beds

Potatoes - 2 - 40' trenches & 6 volunteer plants

White pumpkins - 3 hills

Cucumbers -2 hills

Black zucchini -2 hills

Yellow zucchini -2 hills

Cantelope -3 hills

Butternut squash -2 hills

Stripetti squash -2 hills

Chives, dill, basil, sage, coriander, parsley, oregano in a fieldstone terrace herb garden

Strawberries in a fieldstone terrace bed

A raspberry plot that suffered a bit with the harsh weather

Some wild but tended blackberries just into the woods behind the house.

So what's next?  In no particular order:

• First off, a couple days away with De to Holland, MI. on the east side of Lake Michigan.
• Get the rotted wood around the barn door track replaced and door hung back up.
• Weeding
• Brake jobs on at least 3 vehicles. 
• Finish working up some trees that I have down.
• Weeding!
• Turn over the compost pile.
• Get the sprinkler system set up again.
• Weeding!!
• Finish an Amateur Radio antenna tower project I started two years ago.
• Get all the hailstorm damage fixed.
• Weeding!!! (And eventually harvest... but that's another post!)

As I've said before, there are always more projects than there is time to do them.  As I've also said before, we feel very blessed to have such a long list of things under our stewardship.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark