The nice thing about being “brand new farmers” is that we don’t have the constraint of doing things as we have always done them. I have never done them! So we are doing gardening differently. Different from my grandparents garden, different from the many other local farmers in our neighborhood. Different even from what my husband was shown when he was young.
This year’s goals:
Grow enough tomatoes to produce all of our tomato based needs for the year – for the big family, not just the little one.
Grow as much from heritage seed as possible.
No chemical fertilizers and no tilling- this will make it a challenge but I am committed to this one!
Tilling would have been much easier! But, we are committed to developing the soil and building it up. So the hard work begun in earnest to get the garden spot to look more like a garden and less like a mud slide!
Our big family might be loud and obnoxious sometimes, but when we put our hands to working together, we can get alot accomplished! 
We mapped out a plan and rolled up our sleeves and got to work making rows. Farmer man and my son Aaron have been reading up on no-til, soil building, organic gardening. It made my heart smile to see my son directing and helping Jim get it all lined out. 
Bernie suprised us by showing up with a few trailer loads of “compost” (horse poop)! We had some more surprise guests, and I’m not sure if they volunteered or were drafted into moving poop. But, we surely did appreciate the help! They may or may not be back for another visit any time soon, hahahaha!
Four generations worked out at the farm this past weekend, it was exhausting, fun, loud, sometimes tense, sometimes peaceful. You know – the usual – hahaha!
At the end of the day we had 14 – 30″ rows with 18″ walkways between. We will keep the planting beds permanent planting beds and the walkways permanent walkways. It came out looking much less “messy” than the messy garden. But we haven’t put anything in there yet!
It looks like a garden! All of this talk of beds and walkways leads me to the next step – – – we need a FENCE! Story of my life on the farm: fence, fence, fence! Deer don’t really care where you want them to walk! I told a lady at church that we planned to do some companion planting and we were going to plant things that the deer didn’t like around the edges of the garden. She said “When you figure out what plants the deer don’t like, please let me know – I haven’t found any yet!” So, we will take advantage of years of farming wisdom and run a rather high fence around the garden so we will get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Sometimes you do something new, sometimes you learn from some one else’s experience!
brandnewfarmers 