Adventures in Back Yard Farming: Gardening May 2014

So with life events happening I have been away for a while. I am wanting to get back into the game so I will start with gardening. The last 3 or 4 days we have been gardening......A LOT........ I decided that I wanted to grow food and not a lawn. I still have grass but this section all came out.

The straw in the background there is from our EPIC FAIL as a winter garden. (Yes it was covered but never watered). Anyways I will mention now that I was going to get rid of the used bales but then I came across something on pintrest that I am so excited to try that I will mention in another blog post.

Anyways so as the day(s) went on we realized that it was going to be SOOOOO much more work than anticipated.

This is after we rented the tiller. We only had it for 2 hours so we had to run it none stop for the full 2 hours. The hole in the middle there is a tree stump from a tree that our chocolate lab Cocoa decided to eat the bark off of when she was a puppy and killed it. Needless to say the tiller didn't take care of that mess so we had to do it by hand. Well my husband did actually.

Mission complete, he conquered the stump, LOL. There was another stump that we have been very slowly working on for 3 years. Basically as long as we have lived in this house.

Ooh and our house is the green and white one and not the yellow one in the other photos. Gardening so far this year has been very fun and as I was sitting there on the dirt putting in the tomato plants when it hit me. As a homeschooling mamma of 4 I have found if VERY difficult to teach them the way that schools do it. Mainly because God didn't put us on this earth to be in the confines of a room with 29 other children and one teacher with noses stuck in worksheets of redundant math problems and lectures. I was not home-schooled and I did learn a lot in school but what I didn't learn is how to nurse a baby, change a diaper, kiss a boo boo, or wipe a tear. There is nothing that school taught me about growing my own food or hunting or butchering our own meat. In the event of SHTF there would be very few people that could live off the land and provide for their family. No land? No problem! I live right smack dab in the middle of my town. Walmart is a block away and I live on less than an acre of land which is my lot and am surrounded by neighbors and yet I am finding a way to live and be self sustained. For sure a lifestyle change.

Back to my point. As I was putting tomato plants in I realized that we all must let out kids dig holes, trenches, build bridges over running water....etc. I realized that is not something that kids learn in school because public schools don't encourage that sort of play. I was out there doing the same thing that my kids were doing. They were playing and I was working because when I was a child I was allowed to be a child. Can't garden? Why not?? What you say the kids are to much. Why? Take them outside and give them a shovel. Give them some water and let them make a town. Let them play. My youngest child who is also my youngest daughter was making dirt angels, LOL. Yep hair in the dirt and all.

This is my daughter Makenna.....AKA Kenna or Kenna Bear. She was the one making the dirt angels. She was also helping me with tomatoes. Love this little girl.