Gardening. Farming. There’s no difference to me right now because it all seems so overwhelming.  There’s so much to learn, and I’m so determined to learn as much as I can. I wish I had a gardening mentor who lived next door so I could just peek over the fence and watch what they were doing. My fall garden would have done amazing if I’d remembered I HAD a fall garden. It grew so well that I had to thin it out several times, and then it got really cold and I went into hibernation. By the time I remembered about the garden it had frozen over. I did end up picking everything and composting it. The crows love my compost area…I’m hoping it will keep them away from the garden!

Right now I’m preparing the beds again for the spring this year. (You can read about the building of the beds and fence here!) It’s been so warm that I feel like I could just go ahead and plant but all the old timers have been telling me it will get cold again before spring is officially here. I picked up compost and soil from Country Road Farms in the neighboring town of Dillsboro. I love just wandering around and looking at all the jars of seeds and dreaming of what I might grow. Today I discovered the apple trees and I think I might plant an orchard while I’m at it this spring.

All my weight lifting has paid off…I moved 1200 pounds of soil and compost by myself today. Can you spot my little assistant Max?

I have so many gardening books and homesteading books I could open my own bookstore. But I’ve started to listen to podcasts while I work around the house and I absorb the information so much better! Especially Gardenerd Tip of the Week. Short and sweet and I always remember the info! The Gardenerd website is here and the podcast on iTunes is here.

So this is big news: we will have baby chickens the beginning of April!  We are still figuring out where we want to coop. My idea is to repurpose Brett’s wood shed into a coop. I found a few examples of people using a wood floor and they just painted it with roof paint to protect the wood:

I’m so nervous because baby chicks are so fragile and I’ll just be devastated if we lose one but that’s the circle of life. The woodshed is right across from the garden so I can let them roam around in the afternoons when I’m working so they can enjoy the sunshine. I already know they will all have names. I hope they live into old age, so we’ll eventually be a chicken nursing home too. I can see it now: Diary of a Wimpy Chicken Farmer.

I read Once Upon a Flock a few years back and it was just the most endearing memoir about the author’s, Lauren Scheuer, experience raising chickens. She details their every move through her writing and illustrations:

This weekend they are starting a local beekeeping course. Oh my gosh… I am so tempted. But maybe I should wait until next year to even start thinking about that.

So this year my plan is basic vegetable garden, berry vines, chickens and starting an orchard. Even an orchard opens up a huge can of unknown. I never knew you needed different types of apple trees so that they can cross pollinate.  I’d love a greenhouse one day…mostly because of my long time dream of being Mr. Miyagi with his bonsai trees. Baby steps.

I love this process of learning about nature and the landscape. It’s my tonic. It’s so easy to be completely oblivious of it all as well. There are so many lessons to be found in nature, if we are sensitive to its blessings.  There is this enormous strength in a big oak tree, but there is also enormous strength in the tiny threads of a spider web.  And have you ever noticed how animals build their nests just big enough for their families? They don’t try to outdo each other, they don’t take what they don’t need, they aren’t embarrassed by the size of their home.

We need the tonic of wildness. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because the unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. –Henry David Thoreau, Walden 

Books I love:

Once Upon a Flock: My Life with Soulful Chickens by Lauren Scheuer 

“This charming story of Lauren’s life with her quirky flock is filled with moments of humor and heartbreak. Enthusiastically immersing herself in the world of her flock, Lauren discovers that love, loss, passion, and resilience are not only parts of the human experience, but of the chicken experience as well. Throughout it all, Lauren documents the laughter and drama of her flock’s adventures with her own whimsical photos and illustrations. At once humorous, poignant, and informative, Once Upon a Flock is a feathered tale like no other.”

 
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long by Eliot Coleman

“Eliot Coleman introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. He shows how North American gardeners can successfully use that sun to raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat. Coleman expands upon his own experiences with new ideas learned on a winter-vegetable pilgrimage across the ocean to the acknowledged kingdom of vegetable cuisine, the southern part of France, which lies on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as his farm in Maine.”