June at the Homestead

So much time has passed since the beginning of the season, I can hardly believe that this will be the first post I write this year about the gardens, and the vegetables that have been in the ground now for close to two months!!!  We have had a more than bizarre start this year, with ground preparations being delayed by our trip to Norway, a very late spring, strong heat wave in late May, then rain, rain and more rain in June.  But the garden isn't worse for wear.

End of June, the garden is finally starting to look full

What is that beautiful double fence around the garden you ask?!  Well it's a chicken moat!  This winter, while reading about permaculture and gardening, I found this idea in two different books (The Permaculture Garden and Edible Forest Gardens Volume II) and thought it would be a great way for us to expand the area in which the chickens can roam, without having to move them in a chicken tractor.  Plus, they can eat all the bugs trying to come into the garden, and the double fence stops the deer. Brilliant! Basically it is a 4 foot wide corridor all around the garden, made of black locust posts that Alex made from trees from the homestead and of 6 foot high chicken wire.  There is one entrance way for us to go into the garden, and there, the chickens have a little tunnel to go through to get to the other side.  Some people put a gate at the entrance, we haven't so far, and it is working very well.

Alex splitting the Locust logs to make the fence posts

Pounding in the posts in the ground

This year we expanded the main garden by 3 folds, so yes three times more work, and even more because we now have a separate garlic patch, fruit & berry garden, a (tiny) field of oats and two smaller veggie plots so more like 6 times more work! But it also hopefully will mean six times more veggies! :)

This is the old site of the garden, overgrown with weeds, mid-May

We pulled as many dandelions as possible and rented a rototiller for the weekend

Beginning of June, all the beds are made and all the veggies are in

We are still doing ok so far, and that is partly thanks to the fact that we have community and friends helping out in many ways. 

My best helper, ALWAYS there to lend a hand :)

poule poule poule!

The tiny field of oats, today they are much bigger.

Our berry patch, with currants, high bush blueberries, strawberries. raspberries, thornless blackberries and my favorite... nanking cherries!

Leo, Lila and Ruby together on Leo's favorite toy, the John Deer :)

One afternoon I spent 2 hours eradicating the poison ivy, its actually pretty simple, just don't forget to wear protective gear!

Besides the garden fence, Alex has also been playing around with different fencing materials for the area under the big maple, trying to find a good use for the smaller twigs and newest growth on the norway maples he's been cutting down for fire wood.

In a future post I will be talking a bit more about the bugs that are trying to colonize the veggie patch and eat all my veggies.  I am not letting them :) and it's in the most eco and inexpensive way I know so far: picking and squishing!

This will be the first year we'll be trying to put enough food by for the whole year, and it feels pretty amazing. We've already started blanching and freezing lots of kale, beet and radish greens, cutting up and freezing rhubarb, and now I am trying to harvest as many black raspberries as the mosquitos will let me :) We also already made a big batch of homemade kim chi (with young cabbage, bell radishes and celery). On our walks around the property and in the neighbourhood I also collected some medicinal plants, like yarrow, red clover and mullein (my favorite plant in the whole world, it is some beautiful... and useful) which I have dried and stored in paper bags.  And yesterday I saw the zucchini flowers for the first time, that means we will soon be putting to the test the amazing picked vegetable recipe we learned in Norway, and don't worry we'll put the recipe on the blog.  thank you Erik!

We hope your gardens are doing well, send us some pictures!

Until next time, be well.