This morning I picked out a flat spot on the hill and began turning it over with a shovel, in preparation for planting some onions, potatoes, and pumpkins. Some of the soil in this particular spot has more clay than in other parts of it, and it will be interesting to see how things grow. My other concern is that the critters may get in and render the whole project a giant fail; since it is our first time planting vegetables down here, I'm prepared for that. But I'd prefer to be pleasantly surprised by a bumper crop of delicious food!
It still amazes me, after a life spent in either the city or suburbs, that I can pick any piece of ground in this pasture and simply start to grow things on it. After a lifetime of running out of crop space before I'd run out of crops I wanted to grow, this feels like such a marvelous thing. I hope I never come to take it for granted, because it's truly a privilege, this space we have that belongs to us.
On the garden side of the property, Big Ag is working on building me three more large raised beds for our kitchen garden. This will allow me to fallow a couple of beds at a time and still have enough bed space for what I want to grow up here. I've grown food crops in raised beds using a crop rotation method (thereby keeping each bed in a more or less constant state of use) but found that, even with regular addition of compost, production dropped off after a couple of years. I think land needs to be fallowed for a season every year or two for a rest/rejuvenation period, and with extra beds I will be able to do just that.
And while we work, all around us spring blossoms are blooming.
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