Daddy the Farmer

During the first trimester of this pregnancy I should have been tending to the garden in full force, but I wasn't. I was too busy growing a human being from the size of a poppy seed to the size of a lemon. (It's amazing how exhausting that is). But for the sake of our garden, my sweet husband picked up the slack and took over it's care. Through that, he has found a love of gardening, or farming as he'd like to call it. The garden is now his.

 

When it was seconds away from death, I told him to just pull it all up and that it was a worthless cause. He insisted it could be saved. And sure enough, he was right. He did his research, got to work, and resuscitated it. Here's a recent pepper to prove it. I still have much to learn from this man.

 







Berry Picking

3 crazy kiddos ready for strawberry picking

Samuel was thrilled to find a pregnant strawberry!

Rasberries from our bushes at home

Last Harvest

We picked most of the crops left in the garden. We ended up with these two butternut squash and have a small one that we're gonna waiting a little while longer before picking.

We planted 3 pepper plants, one green, one red and one yellow and this is the only one we got! Not sure what happened, but something got to the leaves and ate them all up.

Our tomato plants did the best. This picture was after a good rain and they were all drooping. They grew to be taller than the stakes. We've still got a couple dozen green tomatoes, that we'll pick this weekend and then let ripen in the house.

We never got any cantaloupe or watermelon. We had 4 watermelon start growing, but never amounted to anything. Bummer.


After we clean out the garden we're going to be planting lots of spinach. I'm very excited about this considering we eat spinach daily and it's not cheap. It should be a fairly easy thing to grow.

Even though our garden is small, I think we've had a good return on our plants. I'm still amazed at the whole cycle of plants and how they can grow from such tiny seeds to edible produce so quickly. God is an amazing creator! I love being able to witness his power in this way.

Garden Growth

We have enjoyed so much our garden. What a blessing it has been. Here were our fruits and veggies on July 21st:

baby cucumbers were sprouting up all over

butternut squash, we have 2.

our first tomato to turn red

crookneck squash, had about 3 at that time

Watermelon, we have one other about this size

Mid July

Our church was in charge of the entertainment for the July 4th city-wide celebration. Daddy was volunteering and we were planning on going to celebrate with the other 20,000 people expected to attend, but the weather had a different idea. This is as close as we got to the excitement.

So, I made a 4th of July treat to try to make it up to everyone a little.

Cleaning Annabelle off after dinner one night, we found a pea squirrelled away for safe keeping.

Poppy came for a surprise visit! He had a funeral to attend in NY and decided to take a detour on his way up there to visit us. We had such an awesome time with him. The boys had a sleepover with him at a nearby hotel. They went swimming, watched TV, stayed up late and had a big white sugar breakfast... I suppose that's what grandparents are for... or at least that's what they tell me :)

Our first hot pepper!

We had to stake our tomatoes with even bigger stakes since they were over 5 feet tall.

Andy made an A frame for our vines so they could be supported and give us more room for them to grow up instead of just on the ground. Annabelle loved helping.


About to get dumped on!

Water baby

I finally got the first year of our blog printed out in a book. It came out so well! I hope to be able to print one out for each year and use it as our family's memory book. I love this concept. We get the benefit of having our memories in print, but also get to share them with others online. I know I'll never even come close to capturing all the noteworthy stuff, but it's motivated me to keep blogging as much as I can.

I don't love the layout of the inside. The pictures aren't very big and the text and picture boxes aren't always aligned great, but it's a new company and I think it will only get better with time. The user just doesn't have a lot of options for how it comes out, but it might just be the design side of me being overly analytical in that area. But, on the flip side, it's extremely easy to order. So few options leads to having it ordered in under 10 minutes. If I only knew it would be that easy, I would have done it months ago! And it's reasonably priced. Totally beats scrap booking in my eyes.

The company is blog 2 print.

Tracking Our Garden Growth

Taken April 23

Taken June 8

Our First Crop

Samuel wanted to grow radishes desperately in our garden. Not sure why. He doesn't even love radishes all that much. But, of course, I let him give it a go. We planted the seeds way back in April and this is the only one we were able to harvest. He was beyond thrilled. Kids are so easy to please. He took one bite and said I could have the rest... Haha!

So much joy has come from our garden. We have loved spending time together tending to it. Now we're hoping for some tasty rewards for all our hard work!

Growing Wheat Grass

Juicing wheatgrass or having it in smoothies has been proven to be very healthy for you. And since we have a ton of wheat that we grind I decided to soak it and see if it would grow.... and boy did it... in just a few hours.


This first picture is around 10am and the second is around 2pm. Insane. It's the perfect thing for kids to grow because they can watch it grow so fast and then we can eat it. They just pull out a few stems and chomp away on the nutritional goodness.

Gardening in the City!

When looking for our first home to purchase we swayed back and forth between pretty dramatic scenarios. We both have such an affinity for rural living and pioneer arts. But, we also have a clear calling (for now) to have a home that has an open door policy for our friends and whoever God wants us to love on. Through a lot of prayer and guidance we chose the city living.

At first it was not an easy pill for us to swallow, knowing there were so many things we were saying 'no' to. But, almost immediately we saw the blessings of that decision and have never second guessed it. Though, the desire for those things hasn't faded.

Between moving in 2 summers ago and then having Annabelle last summer, this was the first summer it was possible for a garden. I was determined to figure out a way to make gardening on our hilly and very shady city lot work!

Enter my incredibly creative, selfless husband and sons...

Without me even asking, Andy took over the project and told me he would love to make me a garden. So, for the past 2 months rain or shine, they have tirelessly been blessing me with the gift of their time and labor to make me a garden.







Preparing our seeds