One thing leads to another

A somewhat limited view of our garden area before there was a garden.

Despite what I said in my 'end of rope' post from a couple of weeks ago, things are going well. I had my little breakdown and as I normally do, I dusted myself off and got back to work. We've made some nice 'sanity saving' progress since then.

First of all, we have been slowly fixing things up around the house. I realized that having a half-done home makes me antsy, so this has definitely helped. My husband has also put some of his focus into getting the outside of the house fixed up, so he's been working on painting. This will be a big project for us this coming weekend (see to do list).

Lastly, we've shifted from predominantly planting to predominantly harvesting in the garden. As evidence of this, I present the following picture story....

First, we start with what you see in the above photo - a field.

Then we build boxes and fill them with dirt and seeds. Water regularly.


Wait a few weeks to get this:

The boxes are overflowing with greens! Swiss chard, kale, spinach, lettuce, mustard greens...

Which leads to this:

Freshly harvested and washed swiss chard

Which in turn, leads to this:

Swiss chard and artichoke dip

And this:

Swiss chard and tuna salad

And through a trade with friends for their abundant cherries, this:

My first ever cherry pie!

It was delicious, but I think I can do better and a different friend has promised me some sour cherries...so I'll get a chance to try again later this month.

In the meantime, we are working towards giving away or eating as much of our harvest as we can (much to the delight or pain of our digestive systems!) so that nothing goes to waste. When all else fails, I dehydrate the item and hope to find ways of using it later on when things are less hectic.

Towards that end, this is our tenative to do list for the coming long weekend -

Garden:

Harvest as necessary

Put up bean arch and cuke trellis

Transplant the last seedlings from the greenhouse

Add mulch from goat shed

Mow lawn

House:

Finish painting the trim

Scrape the eaves in prep for painting

Pressure wash anything not already done (including the deck)

Tape plastic over all "non-blue" items

Rent sprayer and paint everything not covered!

Order house numbers

Put up dining room lighting

Animals:

Worm goats

Clean out goat shed for mulch

Set up cross-fencing

Wash milking stand

Fun:

Definitely one and maybe two bike rides

Set off fireworks on Saturday

And that's it. Not bad for a three day weekend's worth of work, right? I'm confident that we can get all this done without too much headache.