Homesteading Start
Yesterday, we planted the majority of my vegetable garden. We're doing a lasagna gardening-style system of raised beds, all organic, so I'm thinking that I might add another bed or two and a few more veggies. We planted 8 heirloom tomato plants ("Hillbilly" variety, a big beefsteak type), 4 Roma tomato plants, 4 cherry tomato plants, 8 sweet green pepper plants, about a zillion white onion sets, and 8 buttercrunch-type lettuce heads, and I bought almost every herb imaginable to set out in my herb bed. I'm planning on doing maybe one more raised garden bed so I can plant some squash, pumpkins, vegetable spaghetti, and maybe some green beans. I'm also going to be putting in a bed of Jerusalem artichokes and maybe potatoes. I also did some flower planting, because we have a bed that was already built on the front of the house and it looked a little bare (there are tons of perennials here but I suspect that was where they put their annuals in each year), so I put some petunias and begonias there. I think tomorrow I'll finish putting in the rest of my herb bed.
A little longer term project I'm getting ready to start on is cleaning out and repairing the barn. It's a beautiful old barn, but there haven't been any animals in it in a long time and it was used mostly for storage for probably the last 40 years or so. I'm trying to figure out a good way to store all the lumber that is in there (these farm folks never throw anything away!) in such a way that it doesn't house varmints, snakes, etc and isn't a risk to children and animals. I'm thinking some sort of raised rack that I can stack it in might be good, but I need the barn emptied so that I can start figuring out animal housing. My dad suggested that we remove two of the wings (which aren't in great shape and would need serious repair), but said that the center was sound like I thought it was. He suggested that we cover what's left with the metal used as the roofing on the wings to recycle it and make the barn more weather-sound and warmer for animals. That will ruin the charming antique look of the barn but will make it a lot more functional for us. So, I feel a little torn, but I think that practicality may have to win out in this case. *sigh*
I'm amazed by how much we've gotten done, but also by how much there is to do! One step at a time, right?
EDIT: Here is a picture of my cute, new garden! This bed looks really small in this picture, but the plants I put in are all about six inches tall, so that gives a better idea of scale here.
