The Weekly Digs #203
A Little Bit of Reality
I often go through phases of feeling really excited about the garden and preserving, then all the sudden feeling like I’m totally overwhelmed, or not able to keep up with it all. That has already happened so many times this season!
Usually, I just have to work harder or find a different solution in order to feel less overwhelmed and more excited again. But an interesting thing has happened this year, and that is I don’t feel so alone in my efforts.
This post contains affiliate links. Here is the full disclosure.
As it gets closer to the baby coming, my family has come to the rescue over and over to make sure we are still able to grow lots of healthy food.
It had me reflecting on how homesteading used to be, with the family working together towards a common goal, survival. The whole family helped because they realized the consequences that would come if they didn’t.
Thankfully, it’s not life and death on the line anymore and we have a lot of modern conveniences to help us. But I have felt such a huge burden lifted this year each time we work together as a family.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to get all my Spring crops planted in time, but with help, all of it got done. The peas, onions, and potatoes are all in and I can breathe a huge sigh of relief at that!
In the Garden
This week I spent several days weeding around my asparagus plants. There were a lot of perennial weeds that were deep in the ground, like dandelions and wild onions. Consequently, I had to dig them out with my soil knife before I could do any hoeing across the surface.
After the weeding was done, we covered the area with wood chip mulch. It’s looking so much better.
Would you like to save this page?
Email yourself a link to this page and come back later.
We also worked on setting up more irrigation, hallelujah! This is something we half did last year, because we started so late and the plants were too huge to lay down drip irrigation.
We now have a lot more lines laid down and it has been such a time saver already. I need to work on getting them all taught and more secured to the ground, but any progress is good progress at this point!
I got all the peas weeded too, then we laid mulch around them as well. The goal this year is to keep things as easy as possible in the garden. That means lots of mulch so I have less weeding hours.
Cooking
We’ve slipped back into a lot of fresh produce now that spring is here and I am loving it! We’ve been harvesting lettuce, arugula, cilantro, and asparagus.
I love to cook when I have fresh ingredients and can figure out what to make with them. This week we had savory crepes, made with chicken, arugula, pickled onions, lemon garlic sauce, and parmesan cheese. It’s a great spring meal because it uses lots of eggs for the crepes which are always in abundance during this season.
We also had pulled pork sandwiches with lettuce and arugula, homemade BBQ sauce, canned pickles, and canned baked beans from last year’s harvest.
I haven’t done much preserving lately. It’s been really good to have a break before the big preserving push. I need all the excitement and energy I can muster for when the time comes!
