Tuesday, June 17, 2014

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

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