Planning for our garden….already?

It's well below zero today and the ground is covered with a boatload of snow that we got last night.

I don't want to even think about that right now.  Nope.  Too cold.  Not going there.

So let's talk about gardening.  My garden to be exact.

The other evening my husband and I finalized what we will be growing this year and placed our seed order.  When we purchased the farm last September, our garden size increased by like a bazillion, but with that size comes a tremendous amount of planning.  And investing.

You invest in your land, treat it well and work with it…not against it.  For the garden we have invested in all heirloom seeds.  My plan is to save the seeds and never have to order seeds again.  Okay, that's at least the plan on paper.  I realize that seeds cost like 3 dollars for a packet and to some people that might not be that much.  But why would I pay that amount when I can save the seeds for FREE!  Winner, winner chicken dinner.  I love me some free stuff.

We also invested in 5 more apple trees…oh, you read that right.  From a farmer lady who already owns 62 apple trees we just bought 5 more.  Craziness abounds, here.

Stay with me.  You see, our orchard has been around a VERY long time from the looks of several of our trees.  We know good and well that apple trees, in theory, produce for a certain amount of time.  So we are investing in our future apple production.

For the gardens, we going with a variety of vegetables that suit our needs, but I decided to try a few unique items.  One is blue aztec corn.  We love the blue corn chips.  I'm going to try my hand at making some from what we grow.  It'll be interesting to see how that works.  Also, I'm looking into possibly growing some wheat.  I know, I know, why in the world would we do that?  Well, conventional methods spray wheat right before it is harvested.  I'd like to have my wheat without any chemicals, please...

Our overall goal for the farm is to become more self-sufficient.  A lot more.  To say we're going to grow all our own food might be a bit ambitious.  Or we could just call it what it is….crazy.  There's also the fact that I have yet to convince my husband that we need a dairy cow.  Even though we go through 12 - 14 gallons of milk….a week.  Oh yeah, think of the money we would save there alone.  But alas, he says with four kids, an orchard, a boatload of chickens, turkeys, a colony of bees and a crazy amount of garden space….our plate is gonna be full.

But I'm still working on that one…..