Makin' Do

I haven't posted here for quite a long time. Since the last time I posted, we have moved to a new house, and beautiful though it is, it is still in the 'burbs. To be honest, I was really upset about it for a very long time. But though I still get a very strong call to land, I have decided that it is better for me to make do than be all depressed about it.

Don't get me wrong - I still have bad days every once and a while where I scour the for sale listings. But now is not the time for that move. In the meantime, it can't hurt for me to sharpen my homesteading skills, so that's what I am going to be doing.

This past fall, I joined a community garden. It is a pain in the butt to drive there, and it is for a local food pantry so a certain percentage of the crop is donated (in lieu of having to pay a steep rental fee - it is only $30 for the year!) but I am still getting a small amount of homegrown produce for my family and I am learning a lot by doing!

This was my plot right after planting my broccoli plants, some garlic chives, and all of the carrot and leafy vegetable seeds:

A 'Packman' broccoli transplant:

I am so mad at myself for not taking pictures as the garden grew!!! And now all that's left in there are the carrots. Next time I will take pictures throughout the process!

This winter I have harvested a few bagfuls of mesclun mixed salad greens, lettuce, and spinach, as well as quite a few broccoli heads and sideshoots, and now some delicious carrots.

Here are a few pictures of the produce!

These were my first harvest of carrots:

And these were the second harvest (cleaned, of course):

I had a really funky looking carrot that looked like someone crossing their legs:

And last but not least some beautiful brocs (these were some of the sideshoots I harvested):

The broccoli was the best tasting broccoli I have ever had - none of the cruciferous vegetable bitterness you find in store brocs, but they were actually sweet!

I will soon be planting more leafy greens for a quick harvest before the major spring planting coming up soon.

In other news, our yard is going to start to be transformed. It is a good size, but it faces a weird direction (southeast-ish) and our neighbors' yards are filled with very tall trees so we don't get a whole lot of sunlight. But I am going to be attempting to make do!  The front bed (that receives some of the most sun of the whole yard) was ripped out this past weekend. No more small shade tree and Dr. Seuss shaped yaupons and freeze-burned annuals (well, there are a few still there, but they will come out shortly - my husband and my visiting father-in-law ran out of time).

Of course I don't have a "before" picture because I forgot to take one, so I had to use pictures from when we bought the house last summer 2012. I don't have a picture of the whole thing so you will have to put the two pictures together in your imagination:

And this is where we are at now:

Yep, I get that it looked nice in the summer and now it looks like crap. My neighbors have been most likely horrified by our seemingly wanton destruction of perfectly good landscaping. But I hope that in the end it will not look like crap and it will produce food. That is the plan anyways. . .

I am going to make an attempt at planting some fruit - mostly citrus, to be exact. Citrus can grow and produce in partial shade, so I figure some homegrown fruit is better than none at all! And I will fill in the spaces with some herbs and such. Basically, I want to turn a boring front yard that is non-productive to a productive and interesting space that does not set off red flags for the homeowner's association. We shall see.

For the backyard, there are plans for a small raised vegetable bed in the sunniest part of the yard near the back patio and possibly another citrus tree back there, some blackberries along the back fence, and maybe if I can fit them, some blueberries. This all seems like a LOT of work, but the sooner I get it in, the sooner I can pick stuff. And now is the time to plant!

So this is the suburban "homestead" so far. It is a work in progress, but it will hopefully be a good learning experience! Stay tuned!