Independence Days Update: Holding Back…With Difficulty
Sharon April 13th, 2010
I’m restraining myself with great difficulty from planting too much out. I know what April in upstate New York is usually like, and I’ve learned over the years that things planted too early often do no better than the things planted a bit later, but it is hard. Once all the onions, peas and greens are in, I wanna plant, dammit!
It is very hard to get to the computer these days - first there was spring break for Eli last week, which meant more activities planned than usual, now it is catch up time, and the garden calls to us each morning.
It feels like not much has happened lately - little increments of barn cleaning and bed building, transplanting and seed starting, pruning and seeing what survived (worst tree girdling winter I’ve ever seen!). Good stuff, but I’m longing for a day when I go out into the garden after breakfast and don’t come back in until dark.
We lost the baby rabbits, all three of them - Rosemary just wasn’t much of a Mom. I’ve been told to let her have one more chance, and if not, she’ll be culled. We’ll re-breed in a week or so.
Eric is bringing the eggs to SUNY to sell now and a good thing too, since we’re getting 3+ dozen a day!
Ok, reporting in:
Plant something: Peas, sweet peas, carrots, onions, potatoes, chives, garlic chives, hollyhocks, johnny jump ups, pansies, bok choy, kailaan, raab, lettuce, kale, mache.
Harvest something: Eggs, milk, sorrel, good king henry, nettle shoots, dandelion, chives
Preserve something: Nothing
Waste Not: Building raised beds out of barn cleanings, gave blown duck eggs to a neighbor to paint the shells, mulched ground with a winter’s worth of paper feed sacks.
Want Not: Added some bread flour and lentils to my storage. Got new glasses, badly needed.
Eat the Food: Lots of stir frying of greens and making them into salads. Have had chives in everything. Not sure why we don’t eat chives more.
Build Community Food Systems: Various interviews, helped out with a local school garden project.
How about you?
Sharon