For a brief moment, I couldn't see the end of it, and I thought that I was going to forever be in this state of panic for the rest of my life... but as spring draws to a close and the temperatures are starting to climb into summer, we're finally able to take a minute to catch our breath here at the farm.
I felt the crush of spring for the first time this year. This was the first year that we started the majority of our plants from seed. It was pure joy to see the little tiny shoots break through the soil and unfurl their delicate first leaves. It was crushing to see them get too leggy because I don't have grow lights, or see the stems cave in from soil rot, and just the inexplicable failures that happen. So I started more seeds. Trays and trays of seeds.
Then it was prepping the soil. We have fine rocky soil that doesn't drain well. It is also, deplete of nutrients. So just prepping the ground, building raised beds... and this year I followed the example of a neighbor friend and tried to make everything into hugelkultur beds, or mini-hugels at the minimum (Hugelkultur is a German practice of piling logs, sticks, mulch, compost into big hill-like, self-composting beds to plant in to) which meant hauling logs, and sticks, and mulching and composting. Because I had started more seeds than I could plant (because you never know what will make it to the plantable size) I just started putting them in the ground and in beds even before the soil was ready because I didn't want these little babies to get pot-bound. And the results always remind me of the Parable of the Sower... here are the plants in the rocky soil with their roots that can't find places to extend. They're growing... but barely. The plants that get choked out by weeds and the thorny, wild growth. Here were the plants before they were devoured by the birds (and also a wandering cow), and then plants in the good soil!
Once everything was in the ground... then we had to keep it alive! We had extended our gardens so much that we had to put in new automated watering systems, and until we had all of our supplies gathered, I was watering everything by hand. My husband timed me, and it took over 2 hours to get through it all. By the end of the watering, I was exhausted, and it was too hot to be outside anymore, and the next meal was coming up, and the homeschooling was overdue, and getting the baby to nap, and I would throw my hands up into the air and look out in growing despair and everything that I should be doing but had yet again, not been able to do.
Midway through this planting season, I decided to switch things up a bit, recycle the mountain of packing boxes we had growing in our garage (because of quarantining and having things delivered instead of going out), and try the Back-to-Eden style, no-till gardening method. There are lots of references out there to how it works and why it works... so I began laying out cardboard boxes all around the property, without thought. Just desperately covering random spots of weeds to smother them with big, unreasonable dreams that I'd actually plant in all the places where I laid the cardboard.
After this was done, I then realized that I didn't have enough woodchips or manure or mulch (my love of mulch will constitute an entire blog post by itself) to cover my random placement of cardboard. My loving husband gifted me with a woodchipper for my birthday, but I have as yet to accumulate a pile large and deep enough to make this no-till gardening method work (yet. I still have high hopes) --- so our property looks a bit disheveled at the moment. My excuse is that this part of the homesteading plan is more long term and we'll get to the pretty part eventually.
As if that wasn't enough, I had sort of been bitten by a bug. Or perhaps it was this set of expectations I had set upon myself that I felt like I wasn't meeting properly. I very much consider this homesteading project of ours my job. There's been so much invested into everything, I desperately want it to work out. That being said, instead of being the sane person and focusing on a few things and doing them really well, I go through these insanity bursts where I think, "I must do all the things! They have to be done all at once because these are uncertain times and who knows what the future holds?!"---which in hindsight is ridiculous because all times are uncertain times and no one ever knows what the future holds. So while I'm trying to figure out where to plant everything, trying to prep garden plots when I can barely manage what we currently have, and then doing all the non-farmer things... I'm constantly researching the next thing, the next crop to plant, the next perennial to let grow wild, how to propagate existing plants and grafting new varieties, researching the local foraging crops to make into herbal remedies for potential medicines, how to improve the existing watering systems and collect rain water, learning how to preserve and ferment and be less electricity dependent....
The thoughts that are swimming through my head, and the many nights of just collapsing in bed covered in dirt with straw in my hair, and then not sleeping because my youngest has been teething for I-can't-remember-sleeping-anymore... there was a moment when I thought I was going to just break...
But then miraculously, things started to fall into place. The majority of the seedlings are planted. Most of the watering systems are done. Everything is sort of on their schedule that is now predictable and manageable. I finally have room to breathe. I've taken this moment of sanity to update the farming journal and figure out a schedule, see where I went wrong, went too crazy, trying to pinpoint where to improve.
Exhale.
And then, holding my breath for later in the summer when all the animal babies are due and it's time to start the winter garden and the rains come and the soil is soft enough to expand fences and dig more garden beds and time to harvest and then to preserve and then winter garden.
Ah! What a whirlwind! The list never gets shorter, growing longer and more complicated with each new task added on. But thank God for the list to begin with.
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