A Bit of background:
This almanac will include a lot about our gardening adventures as well as capture many of our baking & crafting projects.
Although we're mother and daughter we don't live in the same house; in fact we live in two different counties. Serena is mom and lives in a rural county and Trista is daughter and lives in a nearby suburban county. However, they love to start all kinds of projects together. To this end, this year they decided to start a large garden together and share in the rewards & harvest!
A Bit about Serena and Trista:
Serena has fun creating handwoven fabrics and hand-sewn garments. She is also very interested in growing & raising a lot of her own food and cooking from scratch. She is also a part time instructor at a local community college. Trista loves baking and cooking, and is especially obsessed by bread-baking right now. She is also a part time ESL instructor for the local community college. For the past few years along with Serena's daughter in law we've had a baking business called "Farmer's Tea" in which we baked from scratch many delicious goodies using local, fresh and organic ingredients. We decided to stop our baking business this year and concentrate more on our gardening efforts as well as start other projects.
Our Garden Project:
In order to start our organic garden we bought seeds from Seed Saver's Exchange and Jefferson's Monticello. We didn't want to use hybrid seeds and wanted to use varieties that people have been growing for many years with success. We chose a lot of favorites such as tomatoes and corn but also decided to grow some new things this year.
Last year Serena and her family acquired some chickens and built a chicken coop & yard. They were interested in having fresh eggs and all of the benefits that chickens provide to a garden. Now, there are sixteen chickens that are busily weeding and fertilizing the soil in our garden. The hen house sawdust is removed from the chicken house and moved to mix into the garden soil. This has proved to be very beneficial because there are so many worms in the soil that it looks like they are swimming in there! We are also going to try growing most of the feed for the chickens in the form of sunflowers to produce sunflower seeds as well as all of the garden scraps that they enjoy after the harvest.
Last year Serena and her family acquired some chickens and built a chicken coop & yard. They were interested in having fresh eggs and all of the benefits that chickens provide to a garden. Now, there are sixteen chickens that are busily weeding and fertilizing the soil in our garden. The hen house sawdust is removed from the chicken house and moved to mix into the garden soil. This has proved to be very beneficial because there are so many worms in the soil that it looks like they are swimming in there! We are also going to try growing most of the feed for the chickens in the form of sunflowers to produce sunflower seeds as well as all of the garden scraps that they enjoy after the harvest.
We are planting things we've never grown before and we started plants from seed indoors in the beginning of April including tomatoes, peppers, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli as well as onions and some flowers.
Planting season started a bit ago by planting peas in March and later on in April we put in dill, swiss chard and carrots as well as some of our plant starts. Also, we planted gooseberries, raspberries, boysenberries, apple trees, rhubarb, grapes and tea plants. Since Serena and her family live at a higher elevation- at around 800 feet we have to make sure and plant things slowly so that it is warm enough for them to grow.
Serena, along with her family, has a large orchard with many permanent fruit trees in it including plums, cherries, pears, apples, figs, walnuts and hazelnuts. In order to pollinate the orchard and berry patch a beehive has been installed near the orchard and garden area.Trista is starting small with an Asian pear and an apple tree in her backyard. She and her family also have a beehive in their yard to help out with the garden.
There are plans to start some peanuts and sweet potatoes at Trista's home because she lives in a slightly lower elevation which has a warmer climate for such plants. She is also growing strawberries, rhubarb, blueberries and pumpkins at her house in her large backyard. We should note that the lovely pumpkin plant is provided by a "sharecropper" a friend of Trista and her family needed a sunny spot to plant his pumpkin start and so it's in the backyard in a raised bed that it will share with sweet potatoes and peanuts!
We are excited about the possibilities for delicious and healthy food that our garden represents! We'll keep you posted throughout the season with recipes that we create to use our produce as well as how we can, freeze, dry and otherwise preserve our bounty! We'll also update you on other projects including baking, sewing and weaving!
We are excited about the possibilities for delicious and healthy food that our garden represents! We'll keep you posted throughout the season with recipes that we create to use our produce as well as how we can, freeze, dry and otherwise preserve our bounty! We'll also update you on other projects including baking, sewing and weaving!
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