Eating local has become more important to us over the years. There is nothing like eating local when it means "backyard" local; "backyard - garden wish we had our own farm"- local, or "this is the best we can do and are making the most of it"- local. You get my drift I'm sure, my heart is fondly desiring more acreage in our future. But for now in making the most of what we have, we expanded our garden this year.
Daniel has done an amazing job this year tending to our garden. The most I could do this year is help organize seeds and make row markers. New this year to our garden has been potatoes, turnips, radishes, beets, carrots. We expanded our corn, have less tomatoes, but our squash are doing well for once. It has taken us a few years to learn where there is more sun and where spots are less fertile, which crops do better on which row and on and on. I even played around a little this year with planting by the moon. I wanted to do a post on it earlier this Spring, but it just got too complicated. So far it has served us well. I like to think of gardening as a school of nature.
This is the time of the gardening season, where I get to go out and freshly pick our dinner each afternoon. I prefer to pick and eat as we need the food each day, while my husband on the other hand loves to "surprise" me by harvesting a whole row at one time to preserve. A few weeks ago, a lot got wasted because we weren't prepared for the amount of work it takes to preserve that much food (it was turnip greens). As I said, successful gardening is a learned process. Next year, I will be ready and prepared for that type of cooking and preserving, but for now, I'm learning as much as I can and am enjoying what is and what is left to come. It only gets better each year.
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