Garden Expansions and Excellent Toast

The East Garden has been completely laid to rest for the Fall. Each raised bed has been stripped of it’s vile weeds and a thick coating of compost has been laid over it all. Even the bed that surrounds the fence (that surrounds the garden) has been cleared and thus treated, so that next Spring all I must do is plant and water, water and plant.

This has been such a strange year! Usually about this time (actually, two months before this time), I would be done and ready to be so. Now I find myself pouring over plans for next years garden. Some things are already known. That bed I spoke of before, the one that circles the East garden, that will be filled with black oil sunflowers and cased in with beans, both of the shell and green varieties. In the addition to the West garden there will be the corn and the potatoes, the tomatoes and the onions. Already, I find myself looking at other places in which to expand the garden even further. But. With more garden comes more work. With that in mind, I will wait. This Summer took about all I had and that was with the Orchard barely producing. No. I’ve been a slave to the garden before. Better to pace myself and see if the garden expansion will be enough.

Enough for what you ask? Well, to feed us, of course, and those few others who call the Farm home for a time. I have to say there is something wonderful about not having to depend on others for your food. And I hope to do that more and more, especially the way things are going.

Which leads me to today. For breakfast I had two slices of toasted sourdough bread (made in the Farm Kitchen–with wheat purchased from Azure) coated in raspberry jam (made in the Farm Kitchen from berries grown on the Farm and sugar purchased from Aldi) and fresh milk ricotta (one of the birthday gifts given to myself–a quart of wonderful whole milk Italian ricotta–wonderful) and a pile of frozen blueberries (grown on the Farm).

So you see how it is? Most things are made/grown/produced here. But not all. No, for that we would need a cow. A source for a sweetener. And grow our own grains–all dreams of mine. Someday, I call them. Someday we will have a cow. Someday we will grow our own grains. Someday we will keep honeybees.

Someday. But not today.

Because, just like with the garden expansion, too much of a thing, even a good thing is a bad thing. You have to go slowly. Add a bit at a time. Master that, then add another. And so on and so forth. It is better to do a few things very well then many things poorly.

So, for right now, I am eating my excellent bread with my excellent jam and letting someone else worry about the cheese.

For right now.